Category: Articles

  • Fashion in Colors

    Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York 9 December 2005-26 March 2006 Costume is usually viewed through a frame of fashion: a piece of clothing is set against its context in chronology, trend and social ambience under normal circumstances of speculation.…

  • Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination

    Tate Britain, London 15 February-1 May 2006 What fascinates us in an artwork? One answer to this question is content that conveys a sense of harmony and rightness: summer landscapes bathed in sunshine; human beauty, strength and agility; stories that…

  • Michaelangelo\’s Etruscan roots

    The remarkable exhibition of Michelangelo’s drawings currently causing major traffic congestion around the British Museum (through 25 June) raises the question of capacity control. The viewer has to be determined in this sardine syndrome. The drawings for the most part…

  • Moholy-Nagy and that transient London spring

    Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a brilliant luminary who was a formidable influence in Europe and England, in the period up to 1935. After that brief sojourn in London, he left for the United States, where he died prematurely in November 1945.…

  • The Istanbul Modern Art Museum

    The Istanbul Modern can be hard to find. It is still new enough that taxi drivers are not quite sure where it is and guidebooks have not been published recently enough to include it. However, it could not be in…

  • Joseph Beuys Collection, Museum Schloss Moyland

    Driving through the landscape of the north Rhine on the Dutch-German border is an almost mystical experience. Here, extensive glacial moraines have been washed down over millennia from the Alps, hundreds of miles distant, to create a topography of flat,…

  • Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul

    Museum of Modern Art, New York 19 February-8 May 2006 ‘I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the…

  • William Nicholson: Paintings

    Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York 16 February-25 March 2006

  • Americans in Paris, 1860-1900

    The National Gallery, London 22 February-21 May 2006 Paris, at the end of the 19th century, encompassed European tradition and the avant-garde. Having superseded Rome and London as the art capital of the world, it drew artists from all over…

  • Martin Kippenberger

    Tate Modern, London 8 February-14 May 2006 Kippenberger’s restless stylistic movements resist the monumentality that a retrospective can impart, and this resistance gives the exhibition a manic energy. Rooms full of painted pastiche spill out into sculptures, books, catalogues and…

  • The Trees for the Wood – the Enigmatic Genius of Jacob van Ruisdael

    Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape The Sackler Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London 25 February-4 June 2006 There is major significance in Seymour Slive’s excellent exhibition currently showing in the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy, London. Jacob van…

  • Tom Hunter, Living in Hell and Other Stories

    The National Gallery, London 7 December 2005-12 March 2006. Since 1997, Tom Hunter has turned his camera on his surrounding neighbourhood of Hackney, showing empathy without being polemic. He is known for a remarkable blend of political commentary, history of…

  • The Sound of Colors: A Journey of the Imagination – book reiew

    Jimmy Liao, Sarah L Thompson. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006 ISBN: 0316939927

  • Moonrise over Europe: JC Dahl and Romantic Landscape

    The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham 20 January-23 April 2006

  • The Gao Xingjian Experience: A Personal Journey to the Infinite

    Singapore Art Museum 17 November 2005-7 February 2006

  • Brussels Dispatch: A Review of Some Small and Unusual Spaces for Art

    A Review of Some Small and Unusual Spaces for Art

  • On the Trail of Wise Fools and Simpletons in the Himalayas

    Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas The Rubin Museum of Art, New York 10 February-4 September 2006

  • Asian Traffic: Magnetism – Suspension

    Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai 22 October-21 December 2005

  • To the Finland Station and Back: RUSSIA!

    RUSSIA!, The Guggenheim Museum, New York 16 September 2005-11 January 2006 Russia is not accessible to reason and cannot be measured with a yardstick; Russia is a special country that can only be taken on faith. Fedor Tyutchev (1803-73) The…

  • Cultural exchange

    The British Museum is poised to lend some 270 of its valuable hoard of historic artefacts to the Capital Museum in Beijing. This cultural exchange follows on from the exhibition from China, currently at the Royal Academy of Arts, ‘The…

  • Menzel masterwork acquired by National Gallery

    The long tentacles of European illicit art dealing seemed to curl recently when a stolen Matisse, ‘The Luxembourg Gardens’, appeared briefly on the Russian auction site, Mastak, for some four hours before being speedily removed. There appears to have been…

  • The return of Tracey

    Following what appears to have been a successful and inspiring trip to Australia, Tracey Emin has flow back to snowbound Britain. There were some hang-ups at Ayers Rock, caused by a sudden hatching of flies, and a wise decision was…

  • Royal Academicians in China, 2003-2005

    Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London 23 December 2005-20 January 2006

  • China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795

    Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries Royal Academy of Arts 12 November 2005-17 April 2006