Visual arts
theartsdesk
Mark Hudson reviews on another page the National Gallery's exhibition of 17th-century Spanish sculpture and art, The Sacred Made Real, which he describes as "in some ways the most contemporary exhibition in London". Here are some of the artworks on show.
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Saint John of God, about 1655, Alonso Cano (1601-1667), Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada, © Photo Imagen M.A.S. Courtesy of Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada
Saint Francis in Meditation, 1635–9, Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), National Gallery, London, © Read more ...
theartsdesk
An extensive selection is shown here of the work of Romuald Hazoumé, the Benin contemporary artist whose iconic masks made from petrol canisters dumped around his poverty-stricken homeland of Benin launched his international career. A major installation is owned by the British Museum, other pieces have been exhibited in the Saatchi and Hayward Galleries. Read the article on him by Sue Steward. Click on a picture to enter each section.Masks
(Photos Jonathan Greet. Images courtesy October Gallery, London)
Sénégauloise, 2009, Found objects, 33 x 22 x 25cm. .
La Meré Cotivet, 2001, Found Read more ...
josh.spero
Worries that London 2012’s Cultural Olympiad had fallen at the first hurdle – as it seemed when the proposed Olympic Friend-ship, carrying a cargo of British artists and philosophers around the world, was scrapped – can be assuaged. The organisers of the London Olympics have, in fact, turned their course around: instead of this monumental, nationalistic, elitist, pretentious idea, they have moved to the local, the inclusive, the relatable. Artists taking the lead, a co-production of Arts Council England and London 2012, has announced the 12 public art projects it is commissioning for a total Read more ...
anne.billson
I've been having rather a surreal autumn here in Paris. First, I was lucky enough to catch the last day of Une semaine de bonté at the Musée d'Orsay, where the original collages were on display in five colour-coded chambers. For those not in the know, Max Ernst's graphic novel avant le fait is a series of 182 collages made out of printed images cut from old books, and was first published in 1934, in a series of five pamphlets. The title means, "A Week of Kindness", but the contents are anything but kind.In fact, these images are downright sinister and disquieting. In one, a giant sphinx peers Read more ...
fisun.guner
By all accounts Eric Gill had a shocking private life. When it was revealed in Fiona MacCarthy’s biography, published 20 years ago, that he’d embarked on an adult incestuous relationship with not only both his of sisters but, later, with two of his teenage daughters (the family dog didn’t escape his attentions either), there were demands from some Catholic churchmen for the prompt removal of his carved stone altarpieces.But as much as Gill’s personal life appals and fascinates, we are schooled to separate the artist from the person, and this is what the Royal Academy’s riveting exhibition of Read more ...
howard.male
The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of us might define a drawing as some kind of monochromatic sketch, either produced by the artist as preparatory work for a finished painting, or to capture some ephemeral moment. The drawing represents artists, paradoxically, at their most casual and yet most focused, transcribing what is seen with intense concentration, yet often rendering it with Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Thirteen years ago, I visited the magnificent Morgan Library & Museum with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, whom I was profiling for The New York Times. She was starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, and it made sense for us to view the Morgan’s exhibition of Brontë juvenilia together. Gainsbourg seemed haunted by the show; I know I was. It was the sight of the tiny writing, the tiny gloves (Charlotte Brontë’s), and the locks of thin blondish Brontë hair - close enough to touch - under the glass cabinets. One could feel the siblings’ unquiet slumbers.There’s none of William Blake’s Read more ...
josh.spero
If there is one thing which I should impress upon you about the Frieze Art Fair, it is do not believe what anyone else says (a good principle for reviewing generally): go and see it yourself this weekend. It is a great day out: Regent’s Park is beautiful, you can see a tremendous amount of good and not-so-good contemporary art, you can buy an expensive coffee and contemplate your fellow fair-goers. Frieze is the artistic cultural phenomenon of our time and it is worth seeing what the fuss (and there is fuss) is about.This entire past week in London feels like it has been revolving around the 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 ...
mark.hudson
Anyone who has had their sensibilities battered by Tate Modern’s Pop Life show is likely to be equally taken aback if they wander along the Thames to this year’s Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain – but for completely different reasons. If Pop Life leaves you feeling that art can only progress through ever greater acts of outrage – that if you’re not actually having sex on camera you hardly count as creative – the tone over at Tate Britain is measured, cool, even academic. Do these exhibitions even reflect the same world, let alone the same art world?While Tate has been happy to harness Read more ...
josh.spero
Is site-specific the new collaboration? What I mean by this is that where it was once the fashion for artists and dancers (think Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham) or film directors and opera houses (Anthony Minghella and the ENO) to mix art forms, now it is fashionable to have work inspired by and installed in a particular place.Take Punchdrunk with their Faust, which nightmarishly overran a Wapping warehouse, or Turner Prize nominee Roger Hiorns: his Seizure featured a flat in South London whose walls were daubed with liquid copper sulphate, eventually producing a blue crystalline Read more ...
josh.spero
The art world has never been unself-aware – its navel is deeper and more gazed-at than almost any other art form. So what happens when you bring artists unaware of the art world into the contemplated and contemplating fold? The Museum of Everything, a new space in Primrose Hill, north-west London, which opened this week, is devoted to Outsider Art and by extension to answering this question.James Brett is the founder of the Museum of Everything and a keen collector of art made by non-traditional artists; he rejects the term 'outsider art' as being too loose and inaccurate.He sees his artists Read more ...