Galleries
howard.male
It’s hard to believe that it’s 30 years since the release of The Clash's London Calling, an album that sounds as vital, immediate and relevant today as it did then. Yet there are probably people who remain more familiar with London Calling’s iconic cover than the music contained on the two discs of shiny black vinyl that came with it. Perhaps that’s one reason a new exhibition inspired by London Calling is about the cartoonist and illustrator Ray Lowry, rather than The Clash or the album itself. Lowry, who died in 2008, designed the sleeve, and the curators have come up with the excellent Read more ...
fisun.guner
There’s a rich vein of comic and satirical humour that runs through British art. Hogarth set the trend in the mid-1700s and heralded a golden age of graphic satirists. These included the three masters of the form: Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruickshank. There’s a direct line that links their work to the political cartoonists of our own day, and Tate Britain’s sweeping survey Rude Britannia: British Comic Art features both the historical and the contemporary: Gerald Scarfe, with his excoriating visions of Thatcher; Steve Bell, who most notably put John Major in a pair of Superman underpants; and Read more ...
fisun.guner
The war was over, Picasso was finally free to leave the privations of Paris behind him and to spend more time in the South of France, marking a return to his Mediterranean heritage. The Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition, curated by Picasso’s distinguished biographer John Richardson and the artist’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, focuses on those Mediterranean years, between 1945 to 1962, when the artist was moving easily between styles. Organised around the works from the private collection of the Picasso family, it features paintings, sculptures, linocuts and ceramics that have come to be known Read more ...
theartsdesk
Click on a picture for full view and to enter slideshowDessay (Marie) and Corbelli (Sulpice)Dessay (Marie) and Florez (Tonio)Florez (Tonio)Dessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie), Dawn French (Duchesse de Crackentorp)Dessay (Marie) and Florez (Tonio)[bg|/OPERA/ismene_brown/fille_du_regiment]La Fille du régiment is at the Royal Opera House on Thursday, 25, 27, 29 May, 1 & 3 June (Colin Lee replaces Florez on 27 May, 1 & 3 June)This production and cast can be found on DVDCheck out what's on at the Royal Opera this seasonCheck out what's Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The Welsh landscape promoted by the tourist board is a known entity. Postcard photographers patrol its contours waiting for the rains to desist and the sun to peer out so that they can snap splendid estuaries, meadowed shores patrolled by a lone diesel train, elegant county towns hibernating in the fold of a loafy hill, aqueducts and crumbling abbeys, beetling peaks and labyrinthine ravines. These photographs by James Morris, from a new exhibition and book, find another, sterner Wales imposed on the old familiar template.The post-industrial Wales depicted here doesn’t always win admirers. Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's an admirable project: to recast the interiors of stately homes as immersive artworks, a musical recital combined with sound installations designed to make the viewer look anew at their surroundings. Certainly as I entered the hallway of Hertford House in Marylebone, where the Wallace Collection is housed, the rich, shifting tones of Simon Fisher Turner's electronic sound manipulations filled the air like perfume, amplifying the opulence of the surroundings and making me – and others – linger on the grand staircase. This was ambient music in the truest sense, deep subliminal bass notes Read more ...
theartsdesk
Johan Persson took the photographs for The Royal Ballet's world premiere of Liam Scarlett's Asphodel Meadows, which opened on 5 May 2010. Read theartsdesk's review of the ballet here.The music is Francis Poulenc's 1932 Concerto for Two Pianos; design is by John Macfarlane, and lighting by Jennifer Tipton. The Royal Opera House Orchestra was conducted by Barry Wordsworth, with pianists Robert Clark and Kate Shipway.Click on a photo to enter the full view and slideshow.[bg|/johanpersson/asphodel_meadows]Opening tableau: Marianela Nuñez, Tamara Rojo and Laura MoreraArtists of The Royal Ballet: Read more ...
hilary.whitney
To accompany theartsdesk Q&A with artist Maggi Hambling by Hilary Whitney, this is a selection of pieces from two new exhibitions of her latest work opening in London and Cambridge. Maggi Hambling: New Sea Sculptures at Marlborough Fine Art coincides with The Wave, an exhibition of Hambling’s wave paintings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. These paintings, sculptures, etchings and reliefs (a new departure for Hambling) energetically capture the restless motion of the sea and demonstrate Hambling’s increasingly bold way of working.
Click on the images to view them in a slideshow Read more ...
josh.spero
One can hardly imagine the spiky dervish Grace Jones sitting still for a second, let alone remaining motionless long enough to have photographs (and plenty of them) taken for her portrait. Nevertheless, Chris Levine has managed to pin her down - in a manner of speaking. Levine's exhibition at the Vinyl Factory - Stillness at the Speed of Light - captures the performance artist's restless activity in a very clever way: several of his portraits are in fact lenticular 3D portraits - holograms. Having shot many images of Grace's face in motion, Levine layers them and illuminates them with acid Read more ...
Jasper Rees
As co-directors of opera, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser's fidelity to each other's artistic vision is one thing. Their devotion to Rossini is also relatively unusual. Their loyalty to and faith in their designers is almost as deep. In this ravishing set of photographs, memorialising five of their productions at the Royal Opera House, the set designs are all by Christian Fenouillat, costume designs are by Agostino Cavalca and lighting is by Christophe Forey. Click on the images to view them. Read theartsdesk Q&A with Caurier and Leiser. [bg|OPERA/Jasper_Rees/Leiser_Caurier]
Madama Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Vladimir Story's 1917 brochure for patterns for building Russia's traditional wooden country houses - called dachas - has been rescued from oblivion by the chance discovery of an ancient copy of it in Georgia. Now reprinted, The Art Nouveau Dacha: designs by Vladimir Story reveals with marvellous detail a unique house-building tradition full of details and requirements that are as modern nearly a century later. Read the story of this book in theartsdesk's Books/Art section, and enjoy a selection of reproductions from everything from a grand "English-style" mansion to a whimsical little Read more ...
ash.smyth
The subversive artist and film-maker Sarnath Banerjee, credited with introducing the graphic novel to India, features in a London show, Royale With Cheese, at Aicon Gallery, 8 Heddon Street, London W1, where his eight-scene graphic narrative Che in Africa is displayed. You can see it here. And read the interview with him here: "I’m very interested in the disreputable men of history, especially the Big Men in Africa – the leaders known as the grandes légumes..."
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Royale With Cheese is at Aicon Gallery, 8 Heddon Street, London W1 until 3 April
Sarnath Banerjee's Read more ...