wed 25/12/2024

Turner

Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review - utterly sublime smog

In September 1899, Claude Monet booked into a room at the Savoy Hotel. From there he had a good view of Waterloo Bridge and the south bank beyond. Setting up his easel on a balcony, he began a series of paintings of the river and the buildings on...

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Peter Lanyon, Courtauld Gallery

Free as air, but there was a very heavy price to pay for his ecstatic exploration of the sky by the Cornwall painter Peter Lanyon, who died in 1964, aged just 46, as a result of injuries received in a gliding accident. The Courtauld Gallery is...

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DVD: Mr Turner

Nothing pinpoints the Oscars' absurdity more than the absences of Mike Leigh’s masterpiece as Best Film candidate, of Timothy Spall from the Best Actor list - New York and London critics as well as Cannes made some amends – and even of Marion Bailey...

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Late Turner: Painting Set Free, Tate Britain

There is early Turner; there is late Turner. Early Turner is very much of his time: a history and landscape painter in the first half of the 19th century, looking back to the classicism of Claude and the Dutch Golden Age tradition of sombre marine...

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Ruin Lust, Tate Britain

The first room of Ruin Lust is a knockout. Three large-scale pictures indicate the enduring fascination that ruins have held for artists over the centuries. John Martin’s apocalyptic view of Vesuvius smothering Pompeii in a vast cloud of volcanic...

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Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner, Turner Contemporary

Helen Frankenthaler is often presented as being both a stepping stone between art movements and as an artist who fell –  because such things matter in the tidy narratives of art history –  between the cracks of various American isms....

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Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape, Royal Academy

All roads start from Rome, and so it proves in this challenging exhibition put together from the holdings of the Royal Academy’s art collection, archives and library. It features 17th-century Italian paintings – some of the grandest by the French...

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Turner's Thames, BBC Four

Amid the splurge of programmes about London saturating the airwaves, apparently designed as a crude propaganda offensive to divert us from the impending Olympics clampdown, Matthew Collings's examination of the mystical relationship between the...

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Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, National Gallery

The British grand tourists not only fell in love with Italy. They fell in love with the landscapes of 17th-century ex-pat artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682), depicting the Roman campagna in which the gods disported themselves. JMW Turner (1775-1851...

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Turner and the Elements / Hamish Fulton: Walk, Turner Contemporary

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...

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Revealed, Turner Contemporary

The opening of Turner Contemporary is being heralded as one of the most important cultural events of the year. Described as "a national and international venue in the regions" the gallery, it is hoped, will attract visitors from London and abroad...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Toby Jones

Toby Jones’s cameo in Notting Hill – he was cast as an over-eager fan of Julia Roberts - was deposited on the cutting-room floor. Most actors would have chalked it up as one of life’s bum raps. Jones, who while on set for his short scene was also...

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