Visual Arts Reviews
Black Sabbath: 50 years, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery review – not heavy goingFriday, 02 August 2019
The well-spring of certain musical genres and hometowns of certain influential musicians have long been a source of civic pride – and a boost to the tourist industry – in many clued-in parts of the world. One only has to think of the co-opting of Bob Marley’s life and influence in attracting tourist dollars to Jamaica or the raising of the Beatles to mythic status – bus tours and all – in Liverpool. Read more...
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Helen Schjerfbeck, Royal Academy review - watchful absences and disappearing peopleMonday, 22 July 2019
Light creeps under the church door. Entering as a slice of burning white, it softens and blues into the stone interior, seeming to make the walls glow from the inside. Beneath the lintel, a milder slot of sun pours upwards. To the right, a plain column, only half in the composition, supports an arch which merges with the back wall, disappearing against its horizontal plane. The chapel is empty but its stillness feels peopled. Here, absence is watchful. Read more... |
Beuys' Acorns, Bloomberg Arcade London review – not much to look at, but important all the sameFriday, 19 July 2019
The City of London is an ecological disaster. Around Bank, Mansion House and Cannon Street there’s scarcely a green leaf to be seen. Glass, steel, concrete and tarmac create an environment that excludes plant life, birds and insects and is detrimental to human health. Read more... |
Yorkshire Sculpture International review - Hepworth and Moore loom largeThursday, 18 July 2019
Sculpture is as much a part of Yorkshire as cricket and a decent cup of tea, with the “sculpture triangle”, comprising four prestigious museums and galleries, feeling almost as well-established as the county’s famed rhubarb triangle. Read more... |
Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, Tate Modern review – beautiful ideas badly installedSaturday, 13 July 2019
At their best, Olafur Eliasson’s installations change the way you see, think and feel. Who would have guessed, for instance, that Londoners would take off their togs to bask in the glow of an artificial sun at Tate Modern. That was in 2003, when The weather project transformed the Turbine Hall into an indoor park suffused with yellow light. Read more... |
Takis, Tate Modern review - science and art collideFriday, 12 July 2019
Half organic, half high-tech, a bank of magnet-flowers sways not in response to a breeze, but to a magnetic field. Their uncannily naturalistic movements are coupled with a form that is blatantly functional: an unseen, elemental force masquerades as nature at its most benignly pastoral (Pictured below right: Magnetic Fields, l969). Read more... |
Les Rencontres d’Arles 2019 review - strength in traditionThursday, 11 July 2019
With 50 curated exhibitions spread across the town, there is much to see at Arles. In an effort to whittle it down I asked the man in the press office what was hot. "The weather," he replied deadpan. Read more... |
BP Portrait Award 2019, National Portrait Gallery review - a story for everyoneWednesday, 10 July 2019
Once a year, the National Portrait Gallery gives us a slice of immediate social history presented in an array of contemporary painted portraits of the young, the old, and the inbetween. Read more... |
Never Look Away review - the healing potential of artWednesday, 03 July 2019
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who made his reputation as a leading German film-maker with The Lives of Others (2006), told the New Yorker that his latest film sprang out of a desire to explore the relationship between making art and healing. Read more... |
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, Royal Academy review – strange and intriguingSaturday, 29 June 2019
Félix Vallotton is best known for his satirical woodcuts, printed in the radical newspapers and journals of turn-of-the-century Paris. He earned a steady income, for instance, as chief illustrator for La Revue blanche, which carried articles and reviews by leading lights such as Marcel Proust, Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie. You can see the influence of Japanese prints in the flattened spaces, simplified shapes and unusual viewpoints that give a comic slant to scenes of Parisian life. Read more... |
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