GALLERY photographic & art displays

Podium odes to joy: conductors at the 2021 BBC Proms

theartsdesk Saturday, 18 September 2021

They must have been especially overjoyed to be back in front of (or with back to the greater part of) a live audience. But inspiring musicians is what...

Rapture captured: instrumentalists and singers at the 2019 BBC Proms

theartsdesk Friday, 28 August 2020

As two weeks of livestreamed Proms begin tonight, we just want to be there in the Royal Albert...

Antics before an audience: conductors at the 2019 BBC Proms

theartsdesk Wednesday, 26 August 2020

What a difference a year makes. Live Proms will be back from Friday, but the very essence of the world's biggest...

Carlos Acosta: A Celebration, Royal Albert Hall

theartsdesk Thursday, 04 October 2018

Ballet superstar...

Like a baton out of hell: Conductors at the 2018 Proms

theartsdesk Tuesday, 11 September 2018

Discreetly poking his camera through one of the red curtains around the Albert Hall, chief Proms photographer Chris Christodoulou gets the action...

The Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold

theartsdesk Thursday, 16 November 2017

Yesterday the record for the most expensive painting ever sold was broken. At Christie's in New York Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi the hammer was knocked down on a price of $450...

Podium nitrate: Conductors at the 2017 Proms

theartsdesk Monday, 11 September 2017

What do conductors actually do? It's a question that concert-goers, as well as listeners and viewers of the BBC...

Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, British Museum

Florence Hallett Tuesday, 30 May 2017

With its striking design, characteristically restricted palette and fluent use of line, Hokusai’s The Great Wave, 1831, is one of the world’s most recognisable images, encapsulating...

Highlights from Photo London 2017 - virtual reality meets vintage treasure

Bill Knight Saturday, 20 May 2017

At heart, Photo London is a selling fair for expensive photographic prints. You wander through the steamy labyrinth of Somerset House from gallery show to gallery show surrounded...

Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World

Grayson Perry Wednesday, 22 March 2017

I have always felt very lucky to have been working as an artist in London during the period when it transformed...

28 Sequels That Took Forever

theartsdesk Saturday, 28 January 2017

This weekend T2: Trainspotting is released in cinemas. It's taken 21 years for novelist Irvine Welsh, director Danny Boyle, scriptwriter John Hodge and the famous cast to get back...

Photo Gallery: Aberdeenshire Sand Dunes

theartsdesk Friday, 20 January 2017

These photographs of sand dunes were taken by Brian David Stevens in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, along a stretch of pristine Scottish coastline. The pictures themselves, while captivating and...

The Best of Frieze Masters 2016

Alison Cole Saturday, 08 October 2016

The fifth edition of the highly popular Frieze Masters – the quieter sibling of the boisterous contemporary Frieze Art Fair London – is underway in Regent's Park, London. This year, the fair...

Eyes and teeth: Conductors at the 2016 Proms

theartsdesk Monday, 12 September 2016

The concert photographer Chris Christodoulou has been taking pictures at the BBC Proms for 35 years. Even more than the musicians under their baton, he spends his time watching conductors like a...

Prom 25: Gerhardt, Komlósi, Relyea, RPO, Dutoit

Helen Wallace Thursday, 04 August 2016

"Let the song speak, I pray," exhorts the Bard in the Prologue to Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, "Listen in silence." This was a night for leaning in and listening closely, despite the large...

Strictly goes to the Proms

Marianka Swain Friday, 22 July 2016

The glitterball has landed. After loaning out Proms queen Katie Derham to Strictly Come Dancing last series, where she...

Les Rencontres d'Arles 2016

Bill Knight Friday, 08 July 2016

Nous avons Brexité but we are still welcome at the 47th Rencontres d'Arles. Each summer this beautiful French town gives itself over to an international photography festival which this year...

Period Portraits: Snapping the OAE

Eric Richmond Tuesday, 31 May 2016

When I was first commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment I never dreamed that it would turn into a marriage of such long duration. The length and breadth of the collaboration has...

Venice Architecture Biennale 2016

Hugh Pearman Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Arts festivals the size of the Venice Biennale are inevitably patchy. The appointed directors are hardly ever given enough time to curate and fill absolutely vast volumes of space. They can exhort...

Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscovered

theartsdesk Tuesday, 24 May 2016

In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met...

The Best of Photo London 2016

Bill Knight Thursday, 19 May 2016

Asking theartsdesk's theatre photographer to review Photo London is like asking a car mechanic to review the London Motor Show. "Remember the big picture!" I kept telling myself as I...

Avedon Warhol, Gagosian Gallery

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 25 February 2016

It is an inspired pairing: iconic images by the American photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004) and the painter, printmaker and filmmaker Andy Warhol (1928-1987), almost all of whose mature work...

Lumiere London 2016

David Nice Monday, 18 January 2016

To liberate traffic-choked city streets for pedestrians, to suspend phantasmagorical, literally high art above their heads and give a sense that London belongs to them: that’s an admirable vision...

Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough Portraits

theartsdesk Sunday, 03 January 2016

Can a portrait really be a portrait if we can’t see a person’s face? And what if the reason we can’t see their face is that it is covered with a lump of dough? Is it a joke? And if it is a joke,...

Kurt Masur (1927-2015)

David Nice Sunday, 20 December 2015

This is difficult. An official obituary, such as the one I’ve just finished for The Guardian, has no problem in pointing out the achievements of Kurt Masur’s distinguished career....

The Amazing World of MC Escher, Dulwich Picture Gallery

theartsdesk Tuesday, 08 December 2015

Walls that are floors, floors that are walls, and stairs that go up to go down: in the brain-befuddling art of MC Escher (1898-1972) the mundane everyday meets a world of paradox in which the...

Arena: Night and Day, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey Monday, 23 November 2015

Arena is the longest-running arts documentary programme for television at the BBC, and perhaps the world: as the BBC itself phrases it, this compendium celebration presented 24 hours in...

High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson, The Queen’s Gallery

Marina Vaizey Friday, 20 November 2015

“High Spirits” is a multi-layered title: the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was himself a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, continually using up his material assets in such pursuits....

Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, The Queen’s Gallery

Marina Vaizey Saturday, 14 November 2015

What is it about Vermeer? Just mention the name and there will be queues around the block. It’s true that there are a handful of other artists with that charisma, but none so rare as...

Portraits from the 2015 Taylor Wessing Prize

theartsdesk Saturday, 14 November 2015

At first glance David Stewart’s Five Girls 2014, the winning entry in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, is a very ordinary scene. Five young women sit behind a table...

Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, Victoria & Albert Museum

Marina Vaizey Saturday, 07 November 2015

Every object tells a story, nowhere more so than in a museum. The Victoria & Albert has been busy retelling as many stories as it can by rearranging, refurbishing, adding and...

The World of Charles and Ray Eames, Barbican

Marina Vaizey Friday, 06 November 2015

Chairs, chairs, chairs, as far as the eye can see. Plywood or plastic shells, some decorated with hilarious drawings of jolly nudes by Saul Steinberg (main picture), others in all...