Visual Arts Reviews

Richard Serra, Gagosian Gallery

Marina Vaizey Saturday, 18 October 2014

The septuagenarian American sculptor Richard Serra can treat the most massive sheets of steel as though they are handy pieces of paper for his version of origami; or he can decide to stack huge dense metal blocks as though they were children’s play bricks.

Germany: Memories of a Nation, British Museum

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 16 October 2014

There is a 1953 Volkswagen parked in the Great Court of the British Museum, and we are reminded that Hitler persuaded Frederick Porsche (who gave his name of course to a hideously expensive luxury automobile) to design a people’s car. The postwar economic miracle of the defeated Germany finally allowed the Beetle to go into mass production; 21 million of them in fact – the largest number of a single model ever produced, until its hugely successful run ended in 2003.

Comment

Richard Tuttle, Tate Modern / Whitechapel Gallery

Florence Hallett Thursday, 16 October 2014

It could be an aircraft, hastily covered with some very inadequate wrappings and squeezed into the great hangar of the Turbine Hall. Or perhaps an eccentric sort of bird, its bedraggled wings missing chunks of orange plumage, in contrast to its plush, red body.

Steve McQueen: Ashes, Thomas Dane Gallery

Sarah Kent Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Ashes is a two-part exhibition. The darkened gallery at 3 Duke Street, St James’s is filled with the onscreen image of a young black man sitting on the prow of a small boat with his back to us (main picture). He turns occasionally to smile to camera; he stands up and balances precariously as the boat bobs up and down on the swell; he falls overboard, climbs back on and stands silhouetted against the blue sky, grinning down at us.

Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 14 October 2014

All human life, as they say, is here: we witness displays of warmth and tenderness in virtuous matrimony; reflection and contemplation in quiet solitude. We respond to the soft seductions of the flesh in its yielding ripeness, and we feel the pathos of the withering of the flesh in age; there’s even the mocking of the aged flesh still lusting for the piece of the old action. There’s civic pride and intellectual curiosity.

Glenn Ligon: Call and Response, Camden Arts Centre

Sarah Kent Tuesday, 14 October 2014

“I was a nigger for twenty-three years. I gave that shit up. No room for advancement.” This astute joke, by American comedian Richard Pryor, is stencilled in black capitals on the gold ground of a painting by Glenn Ligon.

Cathedrals of Culture

Tom Birchenough Monday, 13 October 2014

Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.

Listening, BALTIC 39, Hayward Touring

Sarah Kent Friday, 10 October 2014

Traditionally, art exhibitions have been about looking, but as more and more artists cross boundaries to engage with sound, touch and movement or to use film and video, work that is static and silent is becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Sigmar Polke: Alibis, Tate Modern

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 09 October 2014

England is in the throes of an unusual Teutonic love fest, and in 2014 no doubt deliberately. Music of course has always been omnipresent: Bach to Wagner, and a passion for Beethoven and Schubert that knows no bounds. But there has been a love-hate relationship with the visual arts. We are somewhat uncomfortable with the Northern Renaissance, preferring the Italian, and as for expressionism, that was, for a long time, far too blatantly emotionally strident and in your face.

Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, British Library

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 08 October 2014

We all romanticise the olden times. Those we think of as belonging to them are no different. The Castle of Otranto – by common consent, the first Gothic novel – was published a quarter of a millennium ago. “Otranto ‘lost its maidenhead’ today,” wrote its author Horace Walpole. To him, if not to us, the 1760s reeked of modernity so he claimed that this was a true story plucked from a cobwebbed Neapolitan library in 1529 – that is, a quarter of a millennium before.