Visual Arts Reviews
58th Venice Biennale review - confrontational, controversial, principledTuesday, 14 May 2019
There’s a barely disguised sense of threat running through the 2019 Venice Biennale. Of the 79 participating artists and groups, all are living and there’s a sharp sense that the purpose of the exhibition is to diagnose the ills afflicting the contemporary world. Read more... |
Cathy Wilkes, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale review - poetic and personalTuesday, 14 May 2019
Dried flowers like offerings lie atop a gauze-covered rectangular frame. Pebbles surround its base alongside plaster casts, a desiccated dragonfly and an animal foot charm. Their placement is purposeful; their exact significance unclear. Four rib-high figures with moon faces, sausage string necks and wafer-thin bodies face the frame. Three wear golden gowns like devotees or disciples; all bear pendulous, darkly bellying stomachs before them over their clothes. Read more... |
Fetes and Kermesses in the Time of the Brueghels, Musée de Flandre review - all the fun of the fairSaturday, 11 May 2019
Cassel in Flanders is surrounded by the gentle and verdant landscapes that inspired Pieter Bruegel the Elder to create the populous and festive scenes for which he is still known and loved, 450 years after his death. Now the small town is celebrating his celebrations with a show at the new Musée de Flandre dedicated to his country fairs and weddings. Read more... |
Henry Moore at Houghton Hall: Nature and Inspiration review - big views bring new lightWednesday, 08 May 2019
Placed in a long and artfully Arcadian vista, earthy bronze subdued against verdant grass and trees, the restless form of Henry Moore’s Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut, 1979-81 (Main picture), both disrupts and is absorbed by its surroundings.
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Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, Design Museum review - immersive detailFriday, 03 May 2019
Who would have known that the word “Kubrickian” only entered the Oxford English Dictionary last year? You’d have thought that one of the great film directors of the 20th century would have earned his own epithet long ago. Read more... |
Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light, National Gallery review - a national treasure comes to LondonFriday, 26 April 2019
The National Gallery is on a roll to expand ever further our understanding of western art, alternating blockbusters dedicated to familiar and bankable stars, with selections of work by lesser known figures from across the centuries. Read more... |
Who’s Afraid of Drawing? Works on Paper from the Ramo Collection, Estorick Collection review - surprising and rewardingThursday, 25 April 2019
Paper is traditionally the medium though which artists think. Stray thoughts and experiments can be quickly tried out, pushed further or jettisoned. There are no penalties for starting something which goes wrong or transforms into something else because material is cheap, expendable. Erasure or high finish are equally likely, dead ends and new directions begin in the same place. Read more... |
Sea Star: Sean Scully, National Gallery review - analysing past mastersTuesday, 23 April 2019
Either side of a doorway, framing a view of Turner’s The Evening Star, c. 1830 (Main picture), Sean Scully’s Landline Star, 2017, and Landline Pool, 2018, frankly acknowledge their roots.
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Visions of the Self: Rembrandt and Now, Gagosian Gallery review - old master, new waysTuesday, 16 April 2019
What are we to make of the two circles dustily inscribed in the background of Rembrandt’s c.1665 self-portrait? In a painting that bears the fruits of a life’s experience, drawn freehand, they might be a display of artistic virtuosity, or – more convincing were they unbroken – symbolise eternity. Read more... |
Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, British Museum review - compassion in the age of anxietyThursday, 11 April 2019
Munch’s The Scream is as piercing as it has ever been, and its silence does nothing to lessen its viscerally devastating effect. It was painted in 1893, but it was a lithograph produced two years later – now the star of the biggest UK exhibition of Munch’s prints for a generation – that would make it famous. Read more... |
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