Category: Articles
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Chelsea physick
The famous SW3 sanctuary has opened its gates to contemporary art this summer. The oldest botanical gardens in Europe have invited a group of artists to make works for installation within that convey the essence both of the almost secret…
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Awfully Chris
Chris Ofili is the first painter in ten years to have actually won the Turner Prize. His show at the Victoria Miro Gallery (ended 3 August) further consolidated his reputation. Four vast paintings fill the lower gallery, running up to…
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Edinburghs national gallery on schedule
Edinburgh’s annual Arts Festival has long been handicapped by the limited space available in the l9th century galleries. Now a remarkable plan steered by architect John Miller will link the ailing Royal Scottish Academy to its neighbour by means of…
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Ethical Tate Modern
Earlier this summer, on 20 June, Nicholas Serota introduced Artworks: Young Artists of the Year Awards, where 30 schools will be beneficiaries. The awards are designed to persuade children to engage with art through visits and through their own work.…
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Freud for all
The massive hype generated for, rather than by, Tate Britain’s Lucian Freud exhibition had critics vying with one another to write the best eulogy. Still with another month to run, the greatest display of flesh ever since Smithfield revealed unwittingly…
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Take Gabo
Tate St Ives has been running a successful show of the work of the major constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo since mid-July and continues until 13 October. The fact that Gabo had no truck with dealers or commercial galleries during his…
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Thomas Girtin in passing
Few would deny that Thomas Girtin’s ‘The White House at Chelsea’ is a key British landscape painting. Girtin, (b.l775) who died in 1802, was greatly admired by 19th century successors. Turner was his exact contemporary. ‘Had Tom Girtin lived, I…
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Royal gold medal for architecture for Archigram
Britain’s leading architectural accolade, awarded each year by the Queen, goes this year to the Archigram Group. A most famous image from Archigram Walking City was the work of the late Ron Herron. A superb retrospective exhibition of the group’s…
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Hamptons August thoughts
It is over 50 years since Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner moved from Greenwich Village out to Springs. David Salle spends full-time now with a new house built at Sagonapack and Julian Schnabel in 1982 had restored his house at…
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Howards way
The prolific Sir Howard Hodgkin has been distressing critics who equate his stage designs with art. Theatre designs cannot be considered in the same vein. But the designs for Mark Morris’s Kolam (April 2002) for ENO Covent Garden are supremely…