Category: Articles

  • Daniel\’s dance

    The new book Natasha’s Dance by Orlando Figes, which provides a romantic but revelatory overview of historic Russia lacks a full visual arts corollary. The current wide interest in things Russian needs fuller understanding – it’s not just the newly…

  • David Drummond

    And another, discrete but highly influential arts catalyst has also died, aged 95. David Drummond, Earl of Perth worked assiduously behind the scenes to bring about major windfalls to the world of art and culture. The present National Gallery of…

  • Eva Hesse

    The short but brilliant artistic career of Eva Hesse is celebrated by Tate Modern (13 November 2002 – 9 March 2003). Born in Hamburg in 1936, Eva Hesse escaped the Nazi atrocities by evacuating with her sister in 1938. Reunited…

  • High temperatures break the thermometer

  • Mies van der Rohe

    The forthcoming exhibition at the Whitechapel, London (10 December 2002 – 2 March 2003) Mies van der Rohe 1905-38 is a definitive retrospective of his career in Europe. This is the first such show in Britain, bringing together 38 important…

  • Saatchi riding high

    At last there is a strong critic of the public institution of Tate Modern, so long protected by taboos in the ongoing power game. This is Charles Saatchi. Who has finally ‘decloseted’ about the upcoming Turner Award. A groundswell of…

  • Howard Hodgkin: Large Paintings 1984-2002

    Howard Hodgkin is regarded as one of the most important artists in Britain working today. Born in 1932, he studied in London and Bath. He first exhibited in 1960 and has gained recognition since that time. He was a Trustee…

  • Letter from Long Island

    There have been some carping comments in British art magazines, such as ‘The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) isn’t what it used to be’. But the fact is, a major transformation is in place, and activity at MoMA Queens is…

  • Documenta 11

    Australia is often out of synch with much of the rest of the world. The progressive Whitlam Labour era of the 1970s was described as ‘half an hour ahead’; more recently the conservative and xenophobic Howard government was accused as…

  • Artist as Peacemaker – Beyond Conflict

    Beyond Conflict is an exhibition of 24 Scottish artists, which was conceived as a cultural dialogue between Scotland and Islam, in the wake of 11 September.

  • The story of K&M

    Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid. ‘Dmitry Tveritinov’s story’ at Marat Guelman’s gallery.

  • Metamorphing: Transformation in science, art and mythology

    ‘Metamorphing’ is a Wellcome Trust exhibition at the Science Museum, London, 4 October 2002 – 16 February 2003. For humans, change has always been essential, but difficult nonetheless. For most of our history, the mysteries of change and transformation have…

  • Kitagata Garden City, Japan

    The second scheme was essentially led by a brief by architect Arata Isozaki, in which Martha Schwartz was to be the co-ordinating landscape architect for four separate architect-designed housing groups. This was at Kitagata Garden City, Japan. The Garden City…

  • Antony Gormley Drawing – book review

    The new publication, Antony Gormley Drawing, reveals the working processes behind the sculptures of one of Britain’s most significant artists

  • Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography

    Unseen Vogue: The Secret History of Fashion Photography

  • StArt Artists in Malta

    An old tenement building close to the harbour in Valletta seems an unlikely location in which to launch an organisation for the promotion of avant garde art in Malta, especially as the building is believed to have been used as…

  • Rapture: Art’s seduction by fashion since 1970

    Until visiting this exhibition I had, naively and unconsciously, assumed that contemporary art and fashion were much the same thing. Damien Hirst, Stella McCartney, Tracey Emin, Kate Moss, Alexander McQueen — all seemed perfectly interchangeable in the pages of Hello…

  • Andrew Forge 1923-2002

    Andrew Forge, who died on 4 September 2002 in New Milford, Connecticut, aged 78, was a prominent and influential figure, a teacher and critic, and a distinguished painter, whose loss is regretted on both sides of the Atlantic. His contribution…

  • Barnett Newman at Tate Modern

    The Barnett Newman exhibition has opened and is a perfect fit with the Gallery spaces on Level 4. If Newman is pretentious, as one reviewer queried, then Tate Modern is all the more so: magnanimously the same reviewer offered readers…

  • Millennium Bridge Gateshead

    Architects seldom get the opportunity to design bridges. Chris Wilkinson and Jim Eyre of Wilkinson Eyre have made a name for clear structural expression, with poetry too, in their recent works. Now, the £22 million Gateshead Millennium Bridge linking Gateshead…

  • Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting

    Over the summer the National Gallery, London showed Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting, an exhibition that looked at the way artists from the Renaissance to the early 20th century artists depicted dress and drapery

  • Kassel Documenta

    Kassel Documenta is commonly compared to the Olympic games, but, being an inhabitant of former Eastern Empire, I remember great all-Union exhibitions held in the USSR, where regional unions of artists struggled fiercely for the right to ‘represent’. The rhetorical…

  • Accountancy as terrorism: ‘Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry’

    All over Hollywood, producers and screenwriters are pitching ‘high concept’ film projects that capitalise on current news headlines: urban terrorism, bombing Iraq, and the financial crises caused by accountancy malpractice. In 12 months’ time, our local multiplexes will be swamped…

  • Ceri Richards – book review

    Mel Gooding’s new book on Ceri Richards, the first major publication on his work, establishes that Richards was one of the best and most significant artists of the 20th century in Britain. Gooding has also curated the exhibition at the…