thu 03/07/2025

Visual Arts Features

Young Reviewer of the Year Award: the four finalists are...

theartsdesk

In July we launched a competition in association with The Hospital Club to unearth talented young critics. We were clear about what we were looking for: “We want to read reviews that make us think – provocative, entertaining writing that gets under the skin of the art it addresses, that dares to ask uncomfortable questions and offer new answers.

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h.Club 100 Awards: Art, Design and Craft - weaving magic at Dovecot Tapestry Studio

Florence Hallett

Art, design and craft is such a broad category that it is no surprise – even less a criticism – that most of the nominees comfortably inhabit just one of these areas of endeavour.

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Sue Steward 1946-2017: She came, she saw, she salsa'd

theartsdesk

Sue Steward, who died suddenly last week from a brain haemorrhage, was one of theartsdesk’s most loved members, her free spirit and her double specialism in world music and photography making her an intrinsic asset to this pioneering critics’ site in 2009. Her unfussy eye for colour and composition also influenced the early design of The Arts Desk and traces remain today.

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theartsdesk at The Hospital Club

theartsdesk

The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in Covent Garden. There are plenty of private members club in central London, but The Hospital Club is uniquely a creative hub with its own television studio, gallery and performance space, which for certain events are open to non-members.

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Michelangelo's Madonna and Child

Alison Cole

Michelangelo's Taddei tondo, which depicts the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John in a rocky landscape, is the only Michelangelo marble in Britain.

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Road Art: Art's wildest frontier

theartsdesk

They are hardly the ideal conditions in which to create. Danger is a constant and lurking menace, and it comes in multiple guises. Industrial injury is the main threat, as is the constant risk of arrest. Other hazards include deafness, breathing polluted air and public discontent. The tools and materials used in this form of installation - power drill, tarmac and steamroller - are expensive. And the work cannot be sold.

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Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World

Grayson Perry

I have always felt very lucky to have been working as an artist in London during the period when it transformed into the capital of the art world. It has been a beautiful, fascinating and profitable ride.

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French Touch, Red Gallery

Kieron Tyler

Un Voyage Á Travers Dans Le Paysage Électronique Français, the French subtitle, goes further. French Touch is the first exhibition to celebrate and dig into France’s electronic music heritage: exploring the lineage which laid the ground for the world-wide success of Daft Punk.

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theartsdesk in Oslo: Mozart beneath a Munch sun

David Nice

Leif Ove Andsnes directing two great Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard may be the chief attraction when the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra comes to London's Cadogan Hall on Friday to celebrate its 40th birthday. It was certainly the bait which lured me to Oslo last week. But in talking to the Renaissance man...

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Listed: How I Do Love Thee

theartsdesk

Love is in the air. Today, men and women and boys and girls will be pondering how to say it with roses and cards and candlelit dinners: those three words that contain multitudes. As the old strip cartoon never quite got round to saying, love is... the human condition, which is why a good quantity of the culture we review on this site has to do with it. To help you get into the mood for romancing, we have asked our...

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Over 100 years ago, John Christie envisaged Wagner’s Parsifal with limited forces in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. He would have been...

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The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s...

Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and...

Sometimes, as the first act of Beethoven’s Fidelio closes, the chorus of prisoners discreetly fade away backstage as their brief taste of...