Britart
josh.spero
Thanks to the wonders of council applications, theartsdesk can bring you an exclusive preview of Marc Quinn's new sculptures to be placed outside the White Cube gallery on the grass of Hoxton Square.Quinn will be putting two colossal orchids (over two metres squared each), cast in bronze and painted white, in Hoxton Square as part of his new show Allanah, Buck, Catman, Chelsea, Michael, Pamela and Thomas (7 May-26 June).
According to the application, submitted to Hackney Council, The Archaeology of Desire is "based upon a naturalistic Phalaenopsis, a genus of the orchid family, which has Read more ...
fisun.guner
Goldsmiths has produced 20 Turner Prize winners. It produced Damien Hirst and the majority of the Brit Art pack that caused such a Nineties sensation. It has attracted some pretty impressive tutors to its fine art department – ground-breaking artists in their own right, in fact. As such, the school is considered to be something of a star in itself. So what’s its secret? This BBC Four two-parter aimed to find out - and, you’ve guessed it, in keeping with a certain jaunty documentary-making tradition, it gave the participants just enough rope to hang themselves.If you tuned in last night, you Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Seven Ages of Britain began in the same week as A History of the World in 100 Objects on Radio 4. You wait a prodigiously long time for a massive cultural overview and then two come along at once. Do they think in a joined-up way about these things at the BBC? Or has this double helping been a sign of a wider moral and structural chaos that characterises the new world disorder? Last night David Dimbleby concluded his tour of two millennia of British art. It has, inevitably, been a bit of a sprint. In this final episode, the horror of the trenches was wrapped up in less screen time than Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Is Eddie Izzard running a lot of marathons really worth three hour-long documentaries? No, but it was worth watching this first one. Having seen close personal friends gearing up to run the London Marathon, a process involving months of training sessions and muscle-group-specific workouts, it was barely believable to see a patently un-honed Izzard strolling into the Olympic Medical Institute in Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man, confessing that “I’ve run before, mainly for buses,” and proposing to run 1,100 miles round the UK in a month’s time. Specifically, he aimed to run 43 marathons in 51 days Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It’s been a very good year for Beatlemania, with all the albums re-repackaged and the group going virtual in Rock Band. The BBC lobbed in their own Beatles season-ette, and one of the more striking images from their riot of documentary footage was of John Lennon escorting his Aunt Mimi up the steps onto the plane taking them to America, with her handbag and Sunday-best hat.That surely settles any debate about his real feelings for Mimi. She is depicted in Sam Taylor-Wood's absorbing film about Lennon’s teenage years as a stern exemplar of moral discipline, but driven by honourable motives and Read more ...
ben.ferguson
Damien Hirst this week unveiled No Love Lost, Blue Paintings among the Old Masters at the Wallace Collection. Although an exhibition of 25 new paintings by Britain's most talked-about artist might seem a change of direction, Hirst takes a different view. The new works, created between 2006 and 2008, mark the artist's return both to hands-on production and a quieter life at home. Is it the recession? Or is he getting old?BEN FERGUSON: No Love Lost is a move away from your trademark plastic pieces. What has brought about this shift to painting?DAMIEN HIRST: I have always had a romance with Read more ...
mark.irving
Damien Hirst's new exhibition at the Wallace Collection is evidence of a deal between nervous guardians of the past and a contemporary artist seeking to burnish his future historical credentials. It stinks. Entitled No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst - the clunking allusion to Picasso's Blue Period marks out the scale of Hirst's ambition - it presents 25 paintings that we are assured are actually by Hirst rather than a cohort of assistants.The emphasis on these paintings as autograph works is rather sweet, pandering to those for whom certificated originality is the first hurdle Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Does Britain have too many film festivals? Not so very long ago, there were only two of these games around: the London Film Festival - which unveiled its full line-up this morning and begins on 14 October - and Edinburgh. Now, though, there are hundreds.The London London Film Festival website remains the behemoth in size and scope. Long a "festival of festivals", which selected the cream of films already unveiled on the international circuit, it has slowly built the clout to command its own major world premieres: this year there are 15.
With increased funding from Film London, it has also now Read more ...