Category: Articles

  • Mark Rowan-Hull: Seeing Music, Hearing Colour

    Mark Rowan-Hull’s abstract paintings form a dialogue with music. Firstly a pianist, Rowan-Hull (born England, 1968) has an intellectual approach to his artistic practise that links aspects of visual art and music

  • The art of home improvement

    Michael Landy’s ‘Semi-detached’ is an arresting sight at Tate Britain. A perfect – full size – reproduction of his parents’ house in Essex. The house is split in two, separated by a columnated space, with two large screen facing one…

  • Bacon\’s female lover, back on the market

    Isabel Rawsthorne, the subject of famous portraits by Francis Bacon, died in 1992. She had met Bacon in her late forties, having earlier been painted by Picasso while living with André Derain in Paris. Bacon was fascinated by her, and…

  • De Kooning plots posterity

    The enigma of de Kooning’s late works, when he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, persists; they are notorious if only for the cloud that hangs over them. The centennial exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, closing on 19 June…

  • Earth to earth

    The Chelsea flower show once again grabbed all the headlines in the colour sections at the end of May. Tate Britain attempt to hijack the thematic approach, with their exhibition ‘Art and the Garden’, running to 30 August 2004. What…

  • Michael Jackson forcibly removed

    Not the person, but the portrait of Jackson by Maggi Hambling (perhaps an opportunistic choice of subject by the artist) was rejected by the Royal Academy’s ‘Summer Exhibition’, following distaste expressed by Anthony Green – who holds no little sway…

  • Klimt rises

  • MoMA reborn

    The disappearance of the ‘old’ Museum of Modern Art has left old modernists in old New York gasping. But, to quote Michael Winner (in those irritating car insurance ads) – ‘calm down’. The remodelling is more; it is totally new…

  • Other beaches too

    The Barnard Castle, Co Durham, Bowes Museum is hosting (until 30 August 2004) ‘Boudin, Monet and the Sea Painters of Normandy’. The exhibition allows the rare opportunity to compare Boudin, Courbet, and Monet closely with lesser known artists such as…

  • Awesome Archigram

    Design Museum, London Until 4 July 2004

  • Dior Omotesando

    With the latest trend of fashion houses stamping their presence in Japan by engaging architects to design their flagship building along the trendy Omotesando in Tokyo, Dior is no exception as well. Fifty years after the first Christian Dior fashion…

  • Lawn Road Flats

    There is a beautiful film called ‘England: Home and Beauty’ that is a testament to the glamour of the 1920s and 1930s. In it, young elegant women wearing long, sleek evening dresses arrive home late at night, alighting from their…

  • Everchanging mirage – Louis Vuitton Roppongi Hills

    Louis Vuitton first started as a manufacturer of expensive luggage and bags. Over the years, the company has ventured into the greater world of luxury and came up with a range of products that is a direct equation to status.…

  • Roy Lichtenstein

    Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, London 26 February-16 May 2004

  • Norman Foster: Works 1

    Edited by David Jenkins. London, New York: Prestel Publishing, 2003.

  • Archives

    The John Murray publishing house would have had little difficulty in finding a home and a purchaser for its archive, which is thought to be worth some 45 million. However, it is intended that it will go to the National…

  • BritArt, how we have loved you

    The nation’s love affair with BritArt was hyped up as recently as last February, when Sotheby’s sold 14.7 million-worth of the genre. Can it really be true that, ‘Britain’s love affair with BritArt meant that a new generation of young…

  • Bugatti memories

    Brian Sewell was right to question (The Independent, 6 April 2004) the attempt to resuscitate the revered name of Bugatti in the 21st century. Surely the untimely end of Ettore Bugatti in 1947 aged 66, and of his son Jean,…

  • Gormley at White Cube

    For the period through to the end of May, White Cube will be showing works by one of the world’s most recognised sculptors, Antony Gormley. His new work, ‘Clearing’ at White Cube, is composed of 7 km of rod that…

  • The Pleasure of ‘Pain’. Pain: Passion, compassion, sensibility

    A Wellcome Trust exhibition Science Museum, London until 20 June 2004 Sadism and salvation, torture and tenderness, martyrdom and mercy: these are the subjects of Pain: Passion, Compassion, Sensibility – the first major exhibition to explore the enigma of pain…

  • How we kept meeting

    Sir Peter Blake and Sir Colin St John Wilson, as interviewed by Peter Stanford in The Independent on Sunday (14 March 2004) seem more like mentor and student than buddies. But buddies they are, and they represent a revealing slice…

  • Isokon Reborn

    The once semi-derelict Isokon building, in Belsize Park in North London, has now reopened, and following a 2.3 million renovation, the flats are being snapped up. But in a unique adherence to social ethos, some 25 of the 36 flats…

  • It’s that Libeskind again

    Daniel Libeskind slipped unobtrusively back into London from New York, again, for 8 and 9 March 2004 to attend the opening of London’s stealthiest new acquisition, the Graduate Centre for London Metropolitan University on the Holloway Road in North London.…

  • Liverpool

    A rare conjunction of musical and architectural genius has been brought about by the provision of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s 12.5-second reverberation time, found now to perfectly accommodate Sir John Tavener’s ‘The Atma Mass’, at Liverpool’s great Anglican cathedral. Tavener…