Galleries
theartsdesk
Every summer at the BBC Proms the world's greatest conductors are captured in the waiting lens of Chris Christodoulou. His official portraits are sent out to the press straight after most concerts. But at the end of the two-month festival he supplies theartsdesk with action shots snaps which the maestri may perhaps not choose to stick on the mantelpiece. For the sixth year running, we publish them here (click on some previous galleries in the sidebar). Feast once again on images of flying hair, glistening foreheads, popping eyeballs, gurning gobs and helicopter arms.Read theartsdesk's reviews Read more ...
theartsdesk
The most celebrated reportage to come out the Vietnam War was Michael Herr’s Dispatches, rightly acclaimed as the most visceral journey into the dark heart of America’s first military defeat. But unlike all wars before it, Vietnam was a genuinely visual conflict, brought into the homes of the public via television and photojournalism. And among its most accomplished witnesses were two British photographers. The one everyone has heard of is Don McCullin, but his work was matched picture for picture by the Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths.Jones Griffiths, who died in 2008, was Read more ...
theartsdesk
There were female pioneers of photography before Christina Broom, most notably Julia Margaret Cameron. And others have hidden their light under a bigger bushel: Vivian Meier's body of work remained stashed away only to be discovered after her death. Broom's importance is partly one of timing: she prowled the streets of London at a time of great historical significance. As suggested by Soldiers and Suffragettes, the title of a new exhibition and book celebrating her work, she was a witness to the struggle for universal suffrage and the First World War.Her career starrted late. In 1903, at the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Punchdrunk entered the world of theatre through a side door in the basement. The company navigated a strange path around abandoned warehouses on the edge of town, via the odd wrong turn and sundry culs de sac, and fetched up two years ago at an old Royal Mail sorting office next to Paddington station. It was here that they performed The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable.The company has been going since 2000, but it was in Faust (2006), inspired by Edward Hopper’s images of alienation and set in a warehouse in Wapping, that they attracted their biggest plaudits and audiences so far. Later came Read more ...
Sheila Rock
I had never really photographed landscape. But I spent many wonderful weekends in Suffolk and Norfolk along the coast. This project began when I just decided to photograph the sea in a very abstract way. The sky and the light and the flatness were quite inspiring for me.And then commercial jobs were taking me to places like Staithes near Whitby in North Yorkshire, and Cornwall, and I just thought it was so beautiful that I’d say to my assistant, “If I book you for a day or two, let’s travel along the coast and do some more atmospheric pictures.” As I began to explore other parts of the Read more ...
Bill Knight
We are sitting in the lobby of the National Theatre in the early afternoon waiting for the photocall for Dara to begin. Six or seven photographers, one woman, all dressed in jeans and dark jackets with large camera bags, some on wheels. There is not much conversation. As a relative newcomer I don't normally speak, but on this occasion I venture a remark.“I have seen this play.”After a pause one of the company says, “You're keen.”I explain that I went to a preview. Another silence then, “In one sentence, what's it about?”“It's about Sharia law.”Complete silence.Then Susie arrives and ushers us Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In 1984 Duran Duran were at the height of their fame. Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the band’s third studio album, became their first (and only) number one soon after its release in November the previous year, and announced a sharper, more dance-friendly, synth-driven sound. The world tour (apparently the band wanted to spend a year abroad to avoid tax), began in Australia, but was mostly spent in Canada and the US. It was the band’s first as major headliners.They played 51 shows to over half a million people, and were received with delirious abandon almost everywhere they went. It seemed at Read more ...
fisun.guner
Baudelaire called him a “pictorial Balzac” and said he was the most important man “in the whole of modern art”, while Degas was only a little less effusive, claiming him as one of the three greatest draughtsman of the 19th century, alongside Ingres and Delacroix.Honoré Daumier has always been held in the highest esteem by fellow artists, both in his own time and today, with contemporary artists such as Peter Doig and Paula Rego keen admirers. But beside his technical skills, Daumier was also among the most socially alert and politically engaged artists of the 19th century. A socialist and Read more ...
theartsdesk
Chris Christodoulou is the official Proms photographer, writes David Nice. From his uniquely privileged position behind a velvet curtain, he captures the white heat of performance. The official shots roll off the press a couple of hours after the concert, but for the past five years our man in the Albert Hall has supplied theartsdesk with unofficial contraband images of conductors in action.No doubt the presence of only two women in the roster will provoke comment. Blame the Proms for not doing more: the change is happening, but not fast enough. Some of these conductor portraits will make you Read more ...
theartsdesk
In recent years the BBC Proms have woken up to the idea that an audience for classical music can be captured young. The Doctor Who Prom was the first to harness a BBC brand and turn it into a stealthy orchestral primer. The Horrible Histories has served its turn too. This season the Proms aimed at smaller listeners are multiplying. Last weekend there was the Sports Prom, with a programme of popular theme tunes bulked out by music on the theme of outdoor pursuits. This weekend there brought the CBeebies Prom with the BBC Philharmonic.The programme included a BBC commission for Barrie Bignold Read more ...
fisun.guner
This summer, Tate St Ives turned 21. And this makes it as good a time as any for an exhibition repositioning the artists who were associated with St Ives, the small harbour town in Cornwall, where you'll find the gallery on the sea front at Porthmeor Beach. These artists, who moved to St Ives in the late Thirties and who included Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Bernard Leach, and Peter Lanyon, were, in terms of ideas and idioms exchanged, part of a wider international community of artists in both Europe and America (Leach, the celebrated ceramicist, spread his net further, having lived Read more ...
theartsdesk
Its constituent parts come in all sizes, tall and small, compact or full-bodied, and span the ages. But put them all together and an operatic chorus is a vast but single organism that sings – and moves – as one. The current Glyndebourne Chorus consists of 15 sopranos, 12 mezzos, 13 tenors and 18 basses. The longest-serving member has been singing with the Chorus for 18 years, but there is an annual intake from music colleges which will include several aspiring soloists.Not everyone will make it all the way to the top, but our gallery of greats supplies ample proof that the Glyndebourne Chorus Read more ...