Category: Articles

  • William Hogarth

    Musée du Louvre, Paris 20 October 2006-8 January 2007 The great 18th-century caricaturist, William Hogarth, who signed himself ‘Britophil’, caught the mood with flattering – if double-edged – national stereotypes. People loved his beer-swilling, roast-beef-guzzling, four-square Englishmen, the ‘dread and…

  • Breaking the Myths

    Modigliani and His Models Royal Academy of Arts, London 8 July-15 October 2006 Amedeo Modigliani’s (1884-1920) premature death at the age of 35, as a consequence of bohemian excess, overshadowed a proper analysis of his work for many years. His…

  • Velázquez

    National Gallery, London 18 October 2006-21 January 2007 The current Velázquez exhibition is certainly a show to which two visits can scarcely do justice. The important preliminary to this exhibition has to be his group painting ‘Las Meninas’ (unfortunately unable…

  • London Fashion Week: Sympathy for the Devil

    London Fashion Week coincided very closely with the launch of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, and was surrounded in a mist of infamy concerning size zero models – questioning whether Nancy Regan was…

  • Cocooning Paris

    The £70 million glass museum to house the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Group’s newly planned art gallery has been commissioned by Bernard Arnaud, president of the group. Arnaud has been claimed to be the richest man in France, with an…

  • Kerry James Marshall: Along the Way

    Finishing its last call on 22 October 2006 was the exhibition entitled Along the Way, covering the work of the American artist Kerry James Marshall from Chicago. This excellent show had already been at the Camden Arts Centre in London,…

  • Finders keepers?

    In Robert Hughes’ new memoir, Things I Didn’t Know (Harvill Secker, 2006) lies the harrowing tail-end of a talented life plagued by adversity. An early career surge, followed by taking up the role of Time magazine art correspondent from 1970…

  • Paris Art Fair

  • Rip off

  • The UK/RIBA 2006 Stirling Prize

    The prize has been award to Richard Rogers’ architectural practice, RRP, for the stunning, 1.25 km-long Madrid Barajas Airport. This is a masterly demonstration by Rogers of state-of-the-art airport design, breaking new space barriers in the 21st century. The partnership…

  • Superhumanatural

    Glasgow artist, Douglas Gordon, recently returned from New York, has a mega-exhibition of this title in Edinburgh, centred both on the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Botanic Gardens in the city. He recently exhibited darkly but with success in…

  • Towers have ground settlement

    Richard Rogers and Norman Foster have managed to conceive two towers, one designed by each, close to each other on the contentious Ground Zero site. The towers are also considered by all to be complementary to each other. This must…

  • Maggie’s Zaha

    On 3 November, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown opened the Maggie’s Centre for Cancer Care in his own constituency at Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland. This building has been designed (expenses only – no fees) by Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born…

  • Stirling Prize for Architecture 2006 (RIBA UK)

    This month, the architect, Richard Rogers, has attained a summit point in his career in winning the UK RIBA Stirling Prize. The building that has won the prize is not even in Britain, but the architect very much is. The…

  • Daniel Buren and his Invention Trajectory

    Daniel Buren: Intervention II: works in situ Modern Art Oxford 4 November 2006-28 January 2007

  • Francis Bacon in the 1950s

    Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich 26 September-10 December 2006 The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts seems like a fitting starting point for this fascinating touring exhibition. During the early part of Francis Bacon’s career, the collectors Robert and Lisa…

  • Frieze Art Fair 2006

    Regent’s Park, London 12-15 October 2006

  • The Changing Face of Oz

    The Wonderful Art of Oz The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Massachusetts 11 July-22 October 2006

  • Unmasking the Heroes of American Comic Art

    Masters of American Comics The Newark Museum, New York a 15 September 2006-28 January 2007

  • Building an Identity Through Innovation and Change: The Bienal de São Paulo

    Taking the Venice Biennale as a model, the Bienal de São Paulo has been drawing attention since its premiere in 1951, when it brought to Brazil approximately 2,000 works of art representing more than 20 countries. As any other country…

  • The Architecture of the Last Empire

    The past decade has seen a growing interest in the British Indian Empire and its inner social and economic mysteries. But the physical legacy, in architectural terms, still awaits re-assessment. Indeed, while many of the buildings which remain are carefully…

  • The Horse: 30,000 Years of the Horse in Art – book review

    The Horse: 30,000 Years of the Horse in Art by Tamsin Pickeral is a gallop through art history from prehistoric times to the present, with the focus narrowed on the horse – a long-standing and yet surprisingly unmentioned muse of…

  • Pallant House

    In August, this website featured an assessment of the high quality of the collections at Pallant House, Chichester. As promised in that article, here follows a more detailed appraisal of the new architecture of Pallant House itself. This building is…

  • A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears

    Jules Feiffer: If You Really Loved Me, You’d Find Me: The Strips 1960-2000 Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York 15 June-11 August 2006