Picasso
Picasso: Minotaurs and Matadors, GagosianThursday, 11 May 2017At 93, Picasso’s revered biographer, Sir John Richardson, has curated a vital new celebration of the artist’s life and work, focusing on one of his most enduring and delightful subjects, the Minotaur. The exhibition at the Gagosian in fact charts... Read more... |
Neruda, review - 'poetry and politics'Friday, 07 April 2017Chilean director Pablo Larrain has described Neruda as a “false biopic”, and it’s a film that surprises on many levels in its presentation of Pablo Neruda, the great poet who is his country’s best-known cultural figure. It captivates for the scope... Read more... |
Love, Art and Rock 'n' Roll, Rambert, Sadler's WellsWednesday, 04 November 2015A good triple bill should have something for everyone, so Rambert have all bases covered with their latest: rare must be the person who likes neither love, nor art, nor rock 'n' roll. In fact, it's a safe bet that most people like all of them, and... Read more... |
Picasso: Love, Sex and Art, BBC FourThursday, 26 February 2015So, Picasso’s last words turned out not to be, “Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore” – yes, those famous last words that inspired a Paul McCartney dirge – but were, according to this TV biography looking at Picasso’s... Read more... |
Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901, Courtauld GalleryMonday, 18 February 2013In Yo Picasso!, a self-portrait from 1901 (pictured below, Private Collection), the 19-year-old Picasso is already projecting an inimitable bravura, emphasised by his dashing orange cravat. He looks out at us with that mesmerising and legendary,... Read more... |
The Riviera: A History in Pictures, BBC FourWednesday, 09 January 2013For a man immortalised by his wails of rainy misery from the moors of Withnail and I, you would expect Richard E Grant to be very happy on the Riviera. He is, with the suave aristo manner of the Englishman abroad. Which is fitting for The Riviera: A... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Philadelphia: In the house of an American MediciSunday, 19 August 2012MoMa and the Met, the Whitney and the Guggenheim – all very fine, but if you crave something different when in NYC, it’s worth braving Penn Station’s circles of hell to get a train to Philadelphia (takes just over an hour) to visit the mind-boggling... Read more... |
Picasso Prints: The Vollard Suite, British MuseumTuesday, 08 May 2012The Vollard Suite is Picasso’s most celebrated series of etchings. Named after Ambroise Vollard, the influential avant-garde art dealer who gave the 19-year-old Picasso his first exhibition in Paris in 1901, the series was commissioned by the dealer... Read more... |
Picasso and Modern British Art, Tate BritainWednesday, 15 February 2012Pablo Picasso is the presiding genius of 20th century art, the most influential artist in the modern period, lauded for his protean inventiveness, originality, individuality and overwhelming productivity. In 1934 poet Geoffrey Grigson declared that... Read more... |
George Condo: Mental States, Hayward Gallery/ Drawings, Sprüth Magers LondonSunday, 30 October 2011The easiest mistake to make in appreciating George Condo would be to assume that his manic style reflects a manic creation or a manic practice. Some of Condo's paintings and drawings, with their childlike loops and gurning, disfigured faces, look... Read more... |
The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, Tate BritainWednesday, 15 June 2011Who were the Vorticists? Were they significant? Were they any good? And does this little-known British avant-garde movement – if it can be called anything as cohesive - really deserve a major survey at Tate Britain? Many of the group’s paintings... Read more... |
Picasso in Paris 1900-1907, Van Gogh Museum, AmsterdamThursday, 10 March 2011An artist as inventive and as protean as Picasso, and one who ceaselessly absorbed influences throughout his life, will inevitably present an ever-changing face to the world. Hence, we have an apparently inexhaustible supply of exhibitions devoted... Read more... |