Visual arts
fisun.guner
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 names of the 20th century to leading contemporary artists and emerging talent, the fair offers a tantalising showcase on a huge variety of British art.It’s ideal for both buyer and browser. In addition to the main fair, you’ll find solo shows and curated group displays in the Art Projects section, while Photo50 is an exciting display of contemporary Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Witnesses will have been puzzled. In a southern suburb of Paris, a group of maybe 16 figures trudge with purpose along the pavement at the witching hour of half past four in the morning. Some are carrying rucksacks. We are mostly male. Mostly tattooed. We loiter, attempting anonymity.In groups of five we are instructed to march across a main road, then slip furtively out of sight behind a low barrier. The grammar of the covert military operation is unmistakable, it occurs to me, as we scuttle into position and skulk behind the wall at this ungodly time before dawn. I look at the faces around Read more ...
mark.hudson
2011 was a year when now was difficult to find. The YBA/heroic monetarist era was definitively over – though Tracey Emin was accorded a far better retrospective than she deserved at the Hayward (see image below right). Yet whatever will be replacing the dominant art trend of the last three decades, The British Art Show – a vast five yearly survey of cutting edge contemporary art – felt very much not the place to be looking for it. The work, mostly by artists a decade or so out of college, was bright, attractive and entertaining, but a touch callow, like good student work that strays little Read more ...
Graham Fuller
My Top 10 movies of 2011, in order, are: Mysteries of Lisbon, Melancholia, Meek’s Cutoff, A Dangerous Method, Aurora, Hugo, The Princess of Montpensier, City of Life and Death, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris.While I couldn't sneak a British title onto that list, it seems to me that UK film is flourishing for the first time since the false dawn of the 1980s. It would be folly to suggest a renaissance is afoot, but it's clearly an exciting time. Lynne Ramsey, who should be making a movie annually, returned after a nine-year hiatus with Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It took a relatively little-noticed television documentary, Vlad’s Army, broadcast in Channel 4’s Unreported World strand to confirm that theartsdesk has a readership in Russia. Peter Oborne’s film (the presenter pictured below) caught the pro-Kremlin youth movement, the Nashi, with its defences down, and the result depicted, no holds barred, how politics works there today. Recent events hint, somewhat unexpectedly, that political change in the country is in the air; at the least what had seemed a depressingly predictable certainty before December’s elections now at least now looks up for Read more ...
alice.vincent
In a year when eyes turned to London for the riots, the budget cuts and the hacked phones, there seemed to be a fair amount of middle England portrayed by British creatives. Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s London Road at the National retold 2006’s Ipswich murders as a darkly comical contemporary musical, with middle-aged gardening competitions and dull community-centre realism success. Tracey Emin’s retrospective, Love is What You Want brought Margate’s grey, salty waters to the South Bank through giant blankets and explosive short films. Later on in the year, Paddy Considine’s writing/ Read more ...
theartsdesk
Competition alert! Start 2012 with a surprise arts trip. On theartsdesk we love crossing the borders - "Surprise me," was the edict of the great impresario of theatre, music, art and dance, Serge Diaghilev, and it's one we hold to here, because we believe in the pleasure of surprises. So please enter our competition, and a pair of tickets to one of the splendid events listed below could be coming your way, but you will take pot luck with which one you win, and who knows? You could discover a new passion.We will email winners on Sunday 1 January - New Year's Day - with details of how they Read more ...
Sarah Kent
For me, 2011 will go down as the year in which the fact that artworks have become luxury goods – playthings for the rich – could no longer be ignored. In response Damien Hirst, one of the first artists to turn himself into a brand, is sprinkling the globe with spot paintings (pictured below left). In January, 300 of the 1,400 produced so far will be shown across the world in all 11 Gagosian galleries, from New York to California, London, Rome, Paris, Athens and Hong Kong. It's the art equivalent of saturation bombing, a tactic employed to stifle any lingering hint of resistance. Shock Read more ...