GALLERY photographic & art displays
A hair-raising season: conductors at the 2022 BBC Proms
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
Flying manes and flashing eyes are part of the inspirational package. We may laugh at some of these dramatic images, but it's usually a sign of the conductor's commitment to his or her orchestra... Read more... |
Podium odes to joy: conductors at the 2021 BBC Proms
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... Read more... |
Rapture captured: instrumentalists and singers at the 2019 BBC Proms
Friday, 28 August 2020
As two weeks of livestreamed Proms begin tonight, we just want to be there in the Royal Albert... Read more... |
Antics before an audience: conductors at the 2019 BBC Proms
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... Read more... |
Carlos Acosta: A Celebration, Royal Albert Hall
Thursday, 04 October 2018
Ballet superstar... Read more... |
Like a baton out of hell: Conductors at the 2018 Proms
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... Read more... |
The Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold
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... Read more... |
Podium nitrate: Conductors at the 2017 Proms
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... Read more... |
Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, British Museum
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... Read more... |
Highlights from Photo London 2017 - virtual reality meets vintage treasure
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... Read more... |
Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World
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... Read more... |
28 Sequels That Took Forever
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... Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Aberdeenshire Sand Dunes
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... Read more... |
The Best of Frieze Masters 2016
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... Read more... |
Eyes and teeth: Conductors at the 2016 Proms
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... Read more... |
Prom 25: Gerhardt, Komlósi, Relyea, RPO, Dutoit
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... Read more... |
Strictly goes to the Proms
Friday, 22 July 2016
The glitterball has landed. After loaning out Proms queen Katie Derham to Strictly Come Dancing last series, where she... Read more... |
Les Rencontres d'Arles 2016
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... Read more... |
Period Portraits: Snapping the OAE
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... Read more... |
Venice Architecture Biennale 2016
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... Read more... |
Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscovered
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... Read more... |
The Best of Photo London 2016
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... Read more... |
Avedon Warhol, Gagosian Gallery
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... Read more... |
Lumiere London 2016
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... Read more... |
Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough Portraits
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,... Read more... |
Kurt Masur (1927-2015)
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.... Read more... |
The Amazing World of MC Escher, Dulwich Picture Gallery
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... Read more... |
Arena: Night and Day, BBC Four
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... Read more... |
High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson, The Queen’s Gallery
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.... Read more... |
Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, The Queen’s Gallery
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... Read more... |
Portraits from the 2015 Taylor Wessing Prize
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... Read more... |
Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, Victoria & Albert Museum
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... Read more... |
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from the archives
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Three idiosyncratic works tell one story of the world in 1945
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The singer provided a spin on some feel-good classics
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