Category: Articles

Richard Demarco’s Edinburgh Edinburgh belongs to a special kind of city deserving of the UNESCO designation as a world heritage site. These are cities of the imagination; cities which exist on the edge, where our memories and daydreams, our histories…

Thursday 14 February The day’s programme began with 10 am meeting at the office of Andrzej Sontag, the Director of the Lodz Region for the Department of Culture, Education and Sport. Also present was his colleague and deputy, Marian Labedziv,…

The phenomenal marketing jamboree associated with the current Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern would have brought a diffident smile to Andy Warhol if he could have seen it all. After the modest 10 entry fee (plus concessions) the 2,500 average…

This month, Richard Demarco reports here on a dramatic return visit to the Poland of Stanislawski, Borowski, and Kantor. Holder now of the Gold Order of Merit, Demarco is at last reaping the harvest of long years of travail and…

A new gallery and a longstanding art collection opened last month in Berkeley Street, London. A flood of nightingales sang all night in Berkeley Square, stimulated perhaps by the strain of bagpipes from the doors of the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation,…

The Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea has just closed (22 February) on Cy Twombly’s thematic group of war paintings relating to the famed Battle of Lepanto of Islamic-Christian shared memory, (and shown within hailing distance of Ground Zero). The point is…

UK television viewers on the first Saturday evening in March will be able to combine uniquely two cultural ‘must sees’. In the first case, BBC2 is hosting BBC4 (Digital)’s launch evening schedule, fronted up by Bob Hughe’s deeply personal ‘Goya…

The UK-based Stanton Williams architectural practice is redeveloping Place Cornavin in Geneva: a tarmac desert in need of an oasis. The solution, Geneva-born project architect Patrick Richard has discovered, is to let high technology form the shade. Such a gateway…

The London Lefevre Gallery, a major player in the London Art scene since 1926, was announced in January to be closing its doors soon. Coming so quickly after D’Offay’s own withdrawal, a trend is well becoming apparent. The Museum world…

Ivan Massow, former Chairman, has now left the ICA, some would say as a martyr, for criticising — among other things — ‘conceptual art’. (Tom Stoppard survived his personal questioning of the phenomenology of that which isn’t. Will Massow?) Massow…

The New York Museum of Modern Art survey of Gerhard Richter’s 40 years of painting is a graceful accolade to a much-loved if controversial European painter. Opened on St Valentine’s Day, and continuing until late May, Richter is a critical…

Mindful of the recent death of the French artist Balthus, it is timely to find (from this month through 21 May) amidst the exhibition ‘Pierre Matisse and his Artists’, the portrait by Balthus of Henri Matisse in the Morgan Library,…

Just when the Rubens’ world seemed to be safely recatalogued, a great masterpiece has turned up in Amsterdam, having an estimated value of up to 6 million when it is auctioned next summer. The subject is ‘The Massacre of the…

There is anguish at St Andrews University, Scotland, that Prince William is not over-enthusiastic about his time there. Perhaps art history needs to be made more inspiring. There are not many masterpieces in St Andrews (paintings we mean) and, as…

No, not the Turner Prize. What Sandy Nairne, Director of Programmes at the Tate Gallery, was referring to was actually the final solution for the Turner Bequest. The 30,000 works on paper and 350 canvasses left to the nation on…

Cromwell as art enthusiast Only thanks to Oliver Cromwell did a very significant proportion of the art collection of King Charles I come to form the basis of the Prado Museum in Madrid. In 1649, with the king beheaded, there…