Category: Articles

There is a bloodbath in Frankfurt, and it isn’t the result of Al Quaida’s targeting of the European Bank. ‘’Blood: Perspectives on Art, Power, Politics and Pathology’, runs through until 27 January at Schirn Kunsthalle, Romerberg, Frankfurt-am-Main and at mak.frankfurt.…

The great trajectory of the Solomon R Guggenheim Galleries continues apace. This is a great vindication of the concept of the transferable museum brand, and has confounded the sceptics. Bilbao Guggenheim has been a phenomenal success. What are the criteria…

Another trauma with a quiet ending was the dastardly removal of the highly successful Minister for Culture, Media, and Sport. Was it that Smith too readily favoured art over sport, reversing the interest of the majority of voters in this…

It has been inspiring to see how, through this year, one small European nation continues to achieve a cultural impact wholly disproportionate to its small population of less than 5.5 million, one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom. Quite apart…

Francis Fukuyama has been strident, since 11 September, in re-asserting, in the Wall Street Journal, that history is indeed foreclosed, terminally in suspense, on a drip feed, but nonetheless ‘we remain at the end of history’. There was surely a…

There seems little more to be said of this drama. Although Martin Creed is an appropriate winner for 2001, and Madonna in making the award administered the expletive kick-start that she was bidden to perform more skilfully than many truly…

Tate Liverpool opens a challenging exhibition entitled ‘Telling Tales: Narrative Impulses in Recent Art’ which displays perfect timing. The absence of narrative in contemporary art has not been much questioned this year. Perhaps, 2002 will restore this long-present element of…

Tate Britain’s birthday suits: ‘Exposed: The Victorian Nude’

One of the traumas of 2001 was, for UK viewers jealously treasuring the almost uniquely intelligent comment garnered by Mark Lawson in the chair of the weekly half-hour long survivor of ‘The Late Review’ (long lamented), the peripatetic replacement of…

Currently showing in London is a small ‘cabinet’ exhibition open to the public in the Library Print Room, Royal Academy, through 28 January. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has been a compelling figure in British intellectual life. He died in Cambridge…