Category: Articles

Ronchamp at sixty: Le Corbusier’s timeless legacy

The Chapel of Nôtre Dame du Haut by Le Corbusier at Ronchamp was built between 1950 and 1956. A small, white building that lies conspicuous and easily visible on its knoll for many miles around, it signifies even from afar…
Frances Walker: Works on Paper

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh 2 April–30 June 2010
George Gittoes: Descendence stories, from Night Vision, The Diaries

Artist and film-maker, George Gittoes has shown new paintings the Descendence series (2009–2010) in his Berlin studio to mark the end of the year he has spent there, before returning to the Tribal Belt of Pakistan
Book review: A Year in Architecture

Compiled by Claudia Stauble and Jonathan Lee Fox Prestel, London and New York, 2009
Book review: George Barbier: The Birth of Art Deco

George Barbier: The Birth of Art Deco, by Barbara Martorelli (Marsilio Editori, 2008; distributed in the US by Rizzoli, September 2009)
Book review: Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage. By Elizabeth Siegel

Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage By Elizabeth Siegel Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009
Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection

Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection Japan Society, New York 12 March-13 June 2010
Book review: Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier

Subtitled Architecture, Space and the Construction of Subjectivity, this book is an important new addition to the discourse, and theory of architecture, art, and visual studies, as the publisher rightly avers, and not merely architecture. The author pursues the issue…
CRASH (Homage to JG Ballard)

Gagosian Gallery, London 11 February–1 April, 2010
CRASH (Homage to JG Ballard)

Decode: Digital Design Sensations V&A Museum, London 8 December 2009–11 April 2010
Drawn Identities: Pepsi, Shakers and Tattoos

Leonardo’s drawing books contain as many words as images, probably more. When words failed him, images took over and when an image did not do the job adequately, his pen moved on to shape words in support.
The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters

Royal Academy of Arts, London 23 January–18 April 2010
MAVEN Commission: Jenny Holzer Collaboration

Jenny Holzer’s conceptual works Blue Purple Tilt (2007), Protect, Protect, Shape the Battlefield (2007) and Purpose (Yellow, White) (2007) were on display as part of the Tate Gallery’s Artist Rooms scheme, in Woking Surrey. There, Blue, Purple, Tilt has become…
Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

Chris Ofili’s mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain is a crowd pleaser, and this is no bad thing. What comes across most strongly in the exhibition is Ofili’s tactile approach to painting and his joy of colour, leading to the exciting…
Obituary: Raymond Mason

He had early been a friend, and something of a protégé, of Henry Moore, who tried to persuade him to return to England, saying that “we have here a fine little team of up-and-coming sculptors”, by whom he meant Butler,…
Petra: Rock City of the east

Richard England recently visited Petra. Here he eulogizes on the unique harmonious relationship between its rock carved architecture and its dramatic natural setting.
Pierre Soulages

Centre Pompidou, Paris 14 October 2009–8 March 2010
Book review: Architecture in Times of Need. Make it Right. Rebuilding New Orleans

Make it Right. Rebuilding New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward
Sargent, Sickert & Spencer

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 8 December 2009–5 April 2010
Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010. Rock Stars, Politics and Ingenious Design

Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010 The Design Museum, London 17 February–31 October 2010
Art Bin: Landyfill

South London Gallery, 65 Peckham Road, London 29 January–14 March 2010
Book review: Ben Johnson. Foster in View

Editor: David Jenkins PRESTEL. Munich, London, New York, 2010 ISBN 978-3-7913-4175-0
Book review: Passion City: STraum a. Landscape Architecture

Editor: Kristin Feireiss PRESTEL. Munich, London, New York, 2010 ISBN 978-3-7913-4305-1
Book review: Maker of Dreams, the Mother of them All. Madeleine Vionnet, edited by Pamela Golbin

Madeleine Vionnet, edited by Pamela Golbin, with photographs by Patrick Gries Published by Rizzoli, 2009