painters
Best of 2014: ArtTuesday, 30 December 2014
We commemorated the centenary of the start of the First World War and we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The year also marked a 70th anniversary for the D-Day landings. So it was oddly fitting that the London art... Read more... |
DVD: HockneyTuesday, 16 December 2014
Since David Hockney entered his eighth decade (he is now 77), we seem to have witnessed an accelerated output of major exhibitions, biographies and documentaries. The public appetite has never tired of this most tireless of artists, but it’s an... Read more... |
Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years, BBC TwoSunday, 19 October 2014
The chatty, loquacious, exuberant Simon Schama, whose seminal 1987 book on Holland in the 17th century, The Embarrassment of Riches, transformed the anglophone’s understanding of the Dutch Republic, describes himself as historian, writer, art critic... Read more... |
The Story of Women and Art, BBC TwoSaturday, 17 May 2014
Last year, the German artist Georg Baselitz told Der Spiegel: “Women don't paint very well. It's a fact,” citing as evidence the failure of works by female artists to sell for the massive sums raised by their male counterparts. The amusing punchline... Read more... |
Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life, Tate BritainSunday, 30 June 2013
It’s part of the Lowry myth – the myth of many famous artists, in fact, whether or not it actually happens to be true – that he’s never been taken seriously as an artist by critics or by cognoscenti. Even the co-curator of this exhibition, T.J Clark... Read more... |
Lucian Freud: Painted Life, BBC TwoSunday, 19 February 2012
He was uncompromising, honest, personal. He didn't like doing what he was told. He never followed fashion. Is this an accurate picture of Lucian Freud, or is it a description of almost every great artist who ever lived? The intensely banal voiceover... Read more... |
Yayoi Kusama, Tate ModernMonday, 13 February 2012
Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan’s best-known living artists, has spent the past 34 years as a voluntary in-patient in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. Now 82, she was part of the New York avant-garde art scene of the Sixties, making work that anticipated... Read more... |
Lucian Freud: Portraits, National Portrait GalleryWednesday, 08 February 2012
Sitting for Lucian Freud was quite a commitment. Unlike Hockney, whom he painted and who painted him, Freud was a very slow painter and he was methodical. Paying close attention to detail and absorbed by different textures, he was intent on building... Read more... |
Turner and the Elements / Hamish Fulton: Walk, Turner ContemporaryMonday, 30 January 2012
Turner and the Elements is a visual joy and an intellectual pleasure. The backbone of the selection is Turner’s genuine engagement with the scientists of the day. The argument is that he amalgamated the traditional segregation of the... Read more... |
Jane McAdam Freud: Lucian Freud My Father, Freud MuseumThursday, 26 January 2012
In one small room of the Freud Museum, which was once the home of Sigmund in the last year of his life, are the works Jane McAdam Freud made in the final months of her father’s life. Below an imposing photograph of Freud the elder, the progenitor of... Read more... |
Art Gallery: London Art Fair 2012Tuesday, 17 January 2012
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... Read more... |
2011: Belgian Surrealism, Austrian Angst and a Dane in a MadhouseMonday, 26 December 2011
Last year, like every year, is a bit of a blur. I saw a lot, but all the good stuff seems to have clustered near the end. Maybe an end-of-year cultural bloat has finally settled. Anyway, to help jog the memory, I think I should start bottom-up.... Read more... |
