Galleries
theartsdesk
The BBC Proms are steeped in traditions, many admirable, some arcane, the odd one ever so slightly maddening. In the short life of The Arts Desk - we turned three on Sunday, the day after the 2012 Proms season came to a close - another tradition has come into being. Every year we publish a gallery of portraits of conductors at work. These astonishing photographs are all by Chris Christodoulou, who has been capturing the Proms in pictures for 31 years.These, it should be stated, are the images which are very much not released for use by the press after each Prom. And you can see why. They find Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Before the blonde, there was Bergman. In the second half of the 1940s, Hitchcock cast Ingrid Bergman three times, and on each occasion asked her to incarnate a different kind of leading lady. In the film noir Spellbound (1945) she was a psychoanalyst defrosted by Gregory Peck, and she played the loyal sister of a convict in 19th-century Australia in Hitchcock's first colour film, the costumed period piece Under Capricorn (1949). In Notorious (1946), she takes the role of Alicia Huberman, a good-time girl whom we find drowning her sorrows after her father is convicted as a Nazi spook.She is Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died alone on the night of August 4, 1962, from swallowing too many sleeping pills. The sad story soon became the stuff of legend. When they found her, she was still slumped over the telephone receiver; she had been ringing around, desperately trying to get help. Rumours soon spread about her relationship with Senator Robert Kennedy and possible access to state secrets, which gave rise to far-fetched conspiracy theories implicating the CIA in her death.The intrigue may have helped keep her memory alive, but it goes nowhere near to explaining why, half a Read more ...
theartsdesk
As London 2012 finally settles into the blocks for its two-week dash after seven years of preparation, the British Library has cast a nostalgic look back to the two previous Olympiads hosted by the city, in 1908 and 1948. The story the images tell is of the changing face of the Olympics. Once upon a time amateurism unquestioningly held sway and intensely focused athletes didn't sneer at Baron de Coubertin's long-lost concept that it's the taking part that counts and the notion of sponsorship was still a twinkle in Lausanne's eye.The collection, featuring 2,500 stamps, postal items and other Read more ...
Steve Clarkson
As a giggling toddler posed for a photograph next to a pink sheep, a man in a Barbour jacket moaned about losing his garlic-crusher. On the lake, smitten newlyweds enjoyed a gondola ride, while, somewhere else, an elderly couple watched a show so moving it made them cry. Yes, this could have happened in one place only – the leafy surroundings of Henham Park, near Southwold in Suffolk, at Latitude Festival.The arts event has just enjoyed its seventh July, and retains a vibrant cultural miscellaneousness. In fact 750 music, theatre, art, comedy, cabaret, poetry, politics, dance, literature and Read more ...
theartsdesk
The greatest music festival of them is once more upon us. Throughout our extensive coverage of last year's BBC Proms, we featured the remarkable work of photographer Chris Christodoulou. We have asked Chris to select his favourite pictures of conductors at work, and we present them again for your entertainment and enlightenment as the world's greatest conductors again take to the podium for the summer to show exactly what it takes to do what they do.The portraits find the maestri of the podium displaying the full range of communicative emotions - commanding, pleading, imperious, plaintive. Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brand-free, eschewing sponsorship, and letting kids in for free, the Hop Farm Festival in Paddock Wood, Kent, has risen steadily in stature to become one of the major fixtures on the UK festival circuit. If the festival is young, most of its audience and stars are of a certain age. Last year saw Morrisey, Patti Smith, Lou Reed and Manu Chao headline, while Prince played his only UK show there.This year the emphasis was on great English eccentrics like Ray Davies, Suede, the Psychedelic Furs and, enjoying his newly hip status, Gary Numan, while the likes of White Denim, Race Horses, The Read more ...
Justin Quirk
In popular myth, Margaret Thatcher reportedly said that any man still travelling by bus after the age of 30 could consider himself a failure. The quote is almost certainly apocryphal, but it stuck in the public consciousness because it sounded like the kind of thing that an arch-conservative would say; cars were the preserve of the rich and successful, whereas buses were how the poor, the failed and the antisocial travelled around the city.If there’s any truth in that distinction, then it damns an awful lot of people in London. Every weekday, over 6,800 buses carry around six million people Read more ...
fisun.guner
Featuring over 100 galleries specialising in modern and contemporary British art, the London Art Fair is a January highlight for those who prefer a more relaxed atmosphere to that offered by the international VIP frenzy of Frieze. From the great names of the 20th century to leading contemporary artists and emerging talent, the fair offers a tantalising showcase on a huge variety of British art.It’s ideal for both buyer and browser. In addition to the main fair, you’ll find solo shows and curated group displays in the Art Projects section, while Photo50 is an exciting display of contemporary Read more ...
Jasper Rees
An exhibition of Ken Russell's photographs, taken in the 1950s, spirits you back to a London still in recovery from the trauma of war. And yet seen through the prism of Russell's lively eye, always on the look-out for mischief and absurdity, an era we now view as both innocent and slightly dull appears anything but. He took a series of pictures in Hyde Park designed to lampoon ridiculous local by-laws. He had fun with stilts and penny farthings and assorted props. Above all, he celebrated the great British penchant for dressing up. Enjoy a selection of photographs from Ken Russell: A Read more ...
fisun.guner
The Ashmolean Museum opens the doors to its Egyptian and Nubian galleries tomorrow and in these six refurbished rooms you’ll be able to see one of the greatest collections (among some 40,000 antiquities) outside Cairo. Designed by the architect Rick Mather, the galleries cover 5,000 years of human history, including objects that have been part of the museum’s collection since it opened in 1683. These have been gathered from more than 100 archaeological sites in Egypt and what is now Sudan (Nubia).Highlights include the Shrine of Taharqa (c 680 BC), built at Kawa in Sudan. The intricately Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What we're used to seeing whenever the BBC launches on one of its epic explorations of the natural world is moving pictures. But as well as training film cameras at their subects, from the largest mountains and glaciers to the smallest organisms, the hardy modern-day adventurers armed with their phenomenal hi-tech kit also train still cameras at everything they encounter. The result, thanks to Chadden Hunter, Fredi Devas, Vanessa Berlowitz, Hugh Miller, Jason Roberts and Robert Pitman - who are variously camera operators, producers and directors of Frozen Planet - is a collection of moving Read more ...