Visual arts
simon.broughton
The work of Alphons Mucha (1860-1939) is immediately identifiable with its decorative flowers, delicate colours and wide-eyed women staring seductively at the viewer. He was one of the pioneers of art nouveau and the art of advertising. In Prague an exhibition recently opened which is packing them in at the glorious art nouveau Obecni Dům (Municipal House) in the centre of the city.Ivan Lendl: Alphons Mucha is the most comprehensive exhibition of Mucha’s original posters and graphic work ever presented – from the collection put together by Czech-born tennis star Ivan Lendl over the past 30 Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Down by the seaside, an array of rather lumpen large naked women are marching, posing, reclining, and even rolling over along the walls of the new Jerwood Gallery, delineated by William Scott (1913-1989). Scott’s centenary is being commemorated with an array of exhibitions and publications in Britain and America, and the market too is revving up with the publication of a four-volume catalogue of his oil paintings.He was born in Scotland, brought up in Northern Ireland, trained at the Belfast College of Art and the Royal Academy in London, and was part of those several generations of British Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Ellen Gallagher is obsessed by the issue of black cultural identity; but if that sounds tedious or tendentious, think again. She explores her theme in work that is so varied, so beautiful and so humorous that the furrow she ploughs seems more like an endless opportunity than a narrow limitation.Take the early paintings, for instance. From a distance they look like exquisite minimalist compositions – explorations in pure abstraction. Gallagher paints onto sheets of penmanship paper used by American schoolchildren when practising their handwriting. This underlying grid is enhanced by the thin Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
April in Austin means South by South West is over, but the city’s permanent attractions remain: Torchy’s tacos, bats under Congress bridge, grackles (the most in-your-face birds ever) as well several cultural destinations on the University of Texas’s huge, pristine campus. Everything really is bigger in Texas, and that includes literary archives.For years I’ve wanted to visit the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, a library, archive and museum on the campus where anybody who’s anybody’s papers are stored: Kerouac’s notebooks, the manuscripts of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, DH Lawrence, Read more ...
fisun.guner
“Is David Shrigley an artist?,” a journalist asked at Tate Britain’s Turner Prize shortlist announcement this morning. Well, many would say so, though The Arts Desk critic Judith Flanders had her own reservations after seeing his Hayward Gallery show, Brain Activity, for which he was nominated. “Just because the work’s funny, doesn’t mean it’s not serious”, was the short-shrift response of Tate Britain director and chair of judges Penelope Curtis. Her reply showed how seriously she was prepared to take the question.Some people were thrilled by these interactions, some decidedly Read more ...
fisun.guner
Saloua Raouda Choucair began her career as a painter, initially studying under Lebanon’s two leading landscape artists, Mustafa Farroukh and Omar Onsi. In the late 1940s, she trained in the studio of Fernande Léger while studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her exposure to art in her native Beirut would have given no hint of the vibrant modernism she would embrace, albeit several decades after Europe had been all aflush with the new. We see its late Middle-Eastern blossoming in the first room of this beautifully curated retrospective, which is, in fact, a world-premier for this 97- Read more ...
Sarah Kent
When I visited Rachel Whiteread two years ago, there were two old sheds gathering dust in her basement as though waiting to be loved and put to use. Why was she cluttering up her studio with such large and intrusive objects, I wondered? “Things fester,” she told me by way of explanation. “I like to mull things over, so they might lie about for years. It’s to do with me noticing them; they need to relate to my train of thought and investigation. I’m drawn to things that are not too considered or self conscious like bathtubs, wardrobes and windows that are taken for granted as part of everyday Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
“I don’t like the family Stein; There is Gert, there is Ep and there’s Ein; Gert’s Poems are bunk, Ep’s statues are punk, And nobody understands Ein” (Anon).Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) did indeed sculpt Albert Einstein when the physicist was briefly interned in London on his way to America in 1933; Epstein’s bust of the quizzical shock haired scientist is currently on view at the Victoria and Albert. Epstein described his subject, already legendary, as humane, humorous and profound and was particularly struck by his hair going every which way. Henry Moore said Epstein was the pioneer in Read more ...
fisun.guner
The Rijksmuseum is reopening after 10 years. What took it so long? Escalating costs, contractual problems, a protracted battle with the cycling lobby (this is Amsterdam, after all). I’m sure there’s more, but one whole decade’s worth? It’s a long time to go without a national museum that represents the best of Dutch art to the Dutch people, and to the world.It’s easy to forget what a spectacular Medievalist fantasy the building actually isBut it’s all OK now. It’s been worth the wait. In fact, the improvement is staggering. The crepuscular gloom has been lifted and light has flooded in. You Read more ...