Visual Arts Galleries
Photo Gallery: Everything was Moving - Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican GalleryFriday, 14 September 2012
Take the day, and a stiff drink afterwards, as you’ll need it for this thoughtful and deeply disturbing exhibition. A picture, goes the cliché, is worth a thousand words, and nowhere more so than in this heartbreaking, beautiful and affecting anthology, which manages to speak with unparalleled directness, yet with nuanced subtlety. Read more... |
Intimate Exposure: Marilyn Monroe 50 Years OnSunday, 05 August 2012
It’s 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died alone on the night of August 4, 1962, from swallowing too many sleeping pills. The sad story soon became the stuff of legend. When they found her, she was still slumped over the telephone receiver; she had been ringing around, desperately trying to get help. Rumours soon spread about her relationship with Senator Robert Kennedy and possible access to state secrets, which gave rise to far-fetched conspiracy theories implicating the CIA in her death. Read more... |
Gallery: Collecting the Olympic Games, British LibraryThursday, 26 July 2012
As London 2012 finally settles into the blocks for its two-week dash after seven years of preparation, the British Library has cast a nostalgic look back to the two previous Olympiads hosted by the city, in 1908 and 1948. The story the images tell is of the changing face of the Olympics. Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Top DeckSunday, 22 January 2012
In popular myth, Margaret Thatcher reportedly said that any man still travelling by bus after the age of 30 could consider himself a failure. The quote is almost certainly apocryphal, but it stuck in the public consciousness because it sounded like the kind of thing that an arch-conservative would say; cars were the preserve of the rich and successful, whereas buses were how the poor, the failed and the antisocial travelled around the city. Read more... |
Art Gallery: London Art Fair 2012Tuesday, 17 January 2012
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. Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Ken Russell - A RetrospectiveMonday, 28 November 2011
An exhibition of Ken Russell's photographs, taken in the 1950s, spirits you back to a London still in recovery from the trauma of war. And yet seen through the prism of Russell's lively eye, always on the look-out for mischief and absurdity, an era we now view as both innocent and slightly dull appears anything but. He took a series of pictures in Hyde Park designed to lampoon ridiculous local by-laws. He had fun with stilts and penny farthings and assorted props. Read more... |
Art Gallery: Egyptian and Nubian Galleries, Ashmolean MuseumFriday, 25 November 2011
The Ashmolean Museum opens the doors to its Egyptian and Nubian galleries tomorrow and in these six refurbished rooms you’ll be able to see one of the greatest collections (among some 40,000 antiquities) outside Cairo. Designed by the architect Rick Mather, the galleries cover 5,000 years of human history, including objects that have been part of the museum’s collection since it opened in 1683. Read more... |
Gallery: David McCabe and the Early Years of Warhol's FactoryThursday, 20 October 2011
Who needs to hear or see anything more of the creepily manipulative world of Andy Warhol’s Factory? We’ve seen the films (well, bits of them); we bought the album (the one with the banana on the front); we’ve bought and dispensed with the images (in cheap repro form) several times over. We’ve seen those grainily evocative images of the Velvet Underground, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga and co looking glassily back at us so many times we almost feel we were there ourselves. Read more... |
Photo Gallery: Corinne Day - The FaceSunday, 04 September 2011
The Eighties, the decade that fed us the creed of “greed is good”, spawned the fashion “glamazon”. She had supergloss looks and a full décolletage, and, naturally, she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than 10K. In the Nineties, the decade that ushered in grunge and Cool Britannia, an entirely different creature emerged. She was very young, very skinny, and had a look that somehow combined the exquisitely ethereal and the very ordinary. She came in the gamine shape of Kate Moss. Read more... |
Graffiti Gallery: Crack & Shine InternationalFriday, 19 August 2011Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
There are no white-sheeted ghosts in this year’s A Ghost Story for Christmas. The...
Since its revival in 2020, All Creatures Great and Small has drawn big audiences internationally and become Channel 5’s biggest hit, even...
Travis arrived onstage with the theme tune from classic sitcom Cheers as an accompaniment. The cavernous OVO Hydro might not be a place...
Robert Eggers' strength as a director is his ability to bring historical periods alive with gritty, tactile realism. He does this...
For many thousands of years, humans have turned to art to tell stories about themselves and others because it feels good. It feels good because we...
Though Death in Paradise is an Anglo-French production filmed in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, the Frenchness seems to have...
Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The...
A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane...
There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so...