art collectors
Adam Sweeting
The story of the Pitmen Painters, a group of Northumbrian miners who decided to study art appreciation in their spare time and developed into a group of untrained but powerfully expressive artists, has been documented in a book by William Feaver and a play by Lee Hall. Robson Green's particular interest in the story stems from the fact that he's a miner's son, brought up in Dudley, a few miles south of the pitmen's hometown of Ashington.Green may be a successful actor, but he's no art critic - "I would actually think, why is he showing us this?" he said, confronted with a slide of Read more ...
fisun.guner
Damien Hirst is finally getting his first UK retrospective in a public gallery next year, but the question seems to be, “Why now?” It seems both far too late and far too early, especially since Hirst has made no significant work in some years. That the Tate is organising it to coincide with the year of the Olympics, will, of course, be good for them: it will almost certainly see an unprecedented number of visitors, and tourists from around the world will flock to see it.But there’s no getting away from the sense that this doesn’t feel so much as a mid-career retrospective but a YBA autopsy Read more ...
fisun.guner
Collecting contemporary art needn’t be daunting. Even if you’re just starting out, there are plenty of art fairs that offer a bespoke service designed for the budding collector. But if it’s insider tips from leading collectors and dealers you’re after then a course offered by one of London’s major public art galleries might be just what you’ve been waiting for. The tailor-made, five-week course begins with Whitechapel Gallery director Iwona Blazwick giving a guide to contemporary visual art from Warhol to Whiteread. And further sessions will include How to Collect, Meet the Maker and Where Read more ...
Jasper Rees
This week a new exhibition with no pretence to seriousness opens at Tate Britain. Rude Britannia: British Comic Art is a comprehensive tour of a great national tradition: having a laugh in a line drawing. The show covers the boardwalk from Gilray and Cruikshank to Gerald Scarfe and Steve Bell. It also includes the work of a cartoonist and illustrator whose world view, more than any other, now seems deliciously quaint and old-fashioned: Donald McGill. All four examples from the exhibition are included here.It's not widely known that the greatest collector of McGill's in this country is the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Doctor Who crew are fond of their encounters with historical characters. In his time, and let's face it he has infinite supplies of it, the Doc has rubbed shoulders with Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie, and recently weathered the Blitz with Winston Churchill. For this one, "Vincent and the Doctor", le Docteur voyaged back to 19th-century Provence to straighten out a puzzling temporal kink.While visiting the Van Gogh exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where art historian Dr Black (Bill Nighy) was holding forth about the marvels of the tormented Dutch genius, the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Thanks to the shenanigans of Brit-art superstars like Messrs Emin and Hirst, Art has become a lucrative appendage of pop culture, so it’s only logical that it should be given its own version of X Factor, with a bit of Apprentice-style authoritarianism bolted on for good measure. In School of Saatchi, a panel of judges sifts through a long list of hopefuls who are whittled down to 12, then six, then finally to the chosen one who will be installed in a London studio for three years under Charles Saatchi’s patronage.Saatchi (“one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in the world of Read more ...