Category: Articles

  • The Art of Nothing: Ivo Mesquita and the Bienal Internacional de Arte de São Paulo

    The ‘Bienal Internacional de Arte de São Paulo’ is now one of the major international displays of contemporary art, along with two other grand showcases of modern and contemporary art; the estimable ‘Venice Biennale’, first held in 1895; and ‘Documenta’…

  • Book review: Heterotopic visions

    Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modelling in Architecture, Urban Design and City Theory by David Grahame Shane London: Wiley, 2006 Increasingly, contemporary artists, as much as architects and urban planners, have to grope for a clearer understanding of the nature of cities…

  • Book review: Marvellous Melbourne

    Design City Melbourne. Leon van Schaik. John Wiley & Sons, 2006. This important city monograph was first published over a year ago, but it is exemplary within the ‘World City’ genre beyond those established by Academy Group in the 1990s…

  • Seduced by the Oldest Topic in the World

    Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now Barbican Arts Centre 12 October 2007–27 January 2008 Sex is an extremely popular subject, but ‘sex appeal’ is nearly impossible to define. People seem to seek this elusive quality in everything they…

  • Joan Eardley

    Joan Eardley’s life was cut tragically short by cancer in 1963 at the age of 42. Born in England she spent her life in Scotland, after studying at the Glasgow School of Art. Two subjects dominate the retrospective exhibition at…

  • Sleepless in Siena

    Renaissance Siena: Art for a City National Gallery, London 24 October 2007 – 13 January 2008 The current winter show at the National Gallery, London, perhaps springs from mixed motives. Firstly, and laudably, it comes as the swansong of the…

  • The One and the Many: Carlos Ortiz and the Dance of Life

    Ortiz’s conception of Latino identity is a true melting pot, an energetic, all-encompassing swirl made up of a multitude of rhythms. The artist’s vision is, essentially, musical and spiritual, grounded by the physical acts of drumming, singing, writing, painting and,…

  • Towers: from Manhattan to Moscow

    Renzo Piano’s New York Times Building, situated on 8th Avenue, Manhattan, was opened this month to considerable approval from New Yorkers, architects, critics and particularly the press, who will work within Piano’s superb spaces. The tower is 52 storeys high.…

  • The 52nd Venice Biennale

    The 52nd Venice Biennale ended on 21 November 2007. It will have presented an enormous challenge to all those responsible for its dismantling, because it was certainly memorable for its overwhelming scale and complexity. It spread its physical presence far…

  • Breaking the Rules – The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937

    Based on the British Library’s huge collection of manuscripts, sound recordings and all manner of things printed, Breaking the Rules tries to cram 40 years of pan-European avant-garde publishing into the Pearson Gallery. The result invites both delight and frustration…

  • Extreme Embroidery: Art and Craft Meet On the Verge

    In 2007, the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City embarked on a series of exhibits examining ways in which contemporary artists are reinventing the age-old techniques and styles of traditional handcrafts. The first show in the series,…

  • Colin St John Wilson: Buildings and Projects

    London: Black Dog Publishing Ltd, 2007

  • Book review: Archaeology of an Urban Desert

    The birth of graffiti London/New York/Munich: Prestel, 2007 Jon Naar is a British photographer who has been based in New York. In 1974 he joined up with the late Norman Mailer to produce The Faith of Graffiti (1974), which contained…

  • Age of Transparency and Innocence: the Changing Face of Childhood

    The Changing Face of Childhood: British Children’s Portraits and their Influence in Europe Städel Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany and Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Germany: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 2007

  • Bauhaus: 1919-1933

    The complete building is the final aim of the visual arts. Their noblest function was once the decoration of buildings. They were inseparable parts of the great art of building. Today, they exist in isolation, from which they can be…

  • The Apparitions of a Surrealist Eye: Dalí & Film

    Salvador Dalí’s involvement with film was profound and critical to his artistic sensibilities

  • Architecture: London’s new rail terminus at St Pancras

    In the 18th century there lay just to the north of the burgeoning City of London, divided from the metropolis by green meadows, a pleasant leafy village capped by the church of St Pancras, and nearby the salubrious public house…

  • The Art of Seduction

    Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now London: Merrell, 2007 This book is the catalogue of the current Barbican Exhibition in London. It forms a substantial volume, divided into ten chapters, covering different specs of the subject.

  • Art and Survival: Patricia Johanson’s Environmental Projects

    The outstanding American landscapist Patricia Johanson occupies a unique position in American contemporary landscape design. She is first and foremost a conceptual artist who trained as an architect but who undoubtedly has brought a new meaning to the role.

  • Millais

    Tate Britain, London 26 September 2007-13 January 2008 The autumn grand exhibition at Tate Britain is on the work of John Everett Millais (1829-1896), promoted as the greatest painter of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Millais is most notable to Pre-Raphaelite enthusiasts…

  • Sidney Nolan: A New Retrospective

    Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. 2 November 2007-3 February 2008 This is the first major retrospective of Sidney Nolan’s paintings since his death in 1992. It presents an opportunity to unravel something of the artist’s enigma and evaluate…

  • RB Kitaj

    (died 27 October 2007) The recent death of Ron Kitaj has not been the subject of the attention that an artist of such talent and repute would normally deserve. Notably, his adoption of London as his home city early on…

  • Bilbao island dreams

    Bilbao island dreams Zaha Hadid, Britain’s brilliant female architect, has a superb project to dream of, on Bilbao’s Zorrozaurre peninsula. Under her current development plans she will convert the end promontory into an island. Although some 450 inhabitants still occupy…

  • Australian master

    Artist George Lambert, who died relatively young aged 56, was a cosmopolitan who had a major effect on Australian art at the turn of the 19th century. He arrived in 1887 and was soon found to possess something of a…