GALLERY photographic & art displays

Eyes and teeth: Conductors at the 2016 Proms

theartsdesk Monday, 12 September 2016

The concert photographer Chris Christodoulou has been taking pictures at the BBC Proms for 35 years. Even more than the musicians under their baton, he spends his time watching conductors like a hawk...

Prom 25: Gerhardt, Komlósi, Relyea, RPO, Dutoit

Helen Wallace Thursday, 04 August 2016

"Let the song speak, I pray," exhorts the Bard in the Prologue to Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, "Listen in silence." This was a night for leaning in and listening closely, despite the large forces arrayed...

Strictly goes to the Proms

Marianka Swain Friday, 22 July 2016

The glitterball has landed. After loaning out Proms queen Katie Derham to Strictly Come Dancing last series, where she hauled comedy pro Anton Du Beke all the way to the final, the Beeb’s...

Les Rencontres d'Arles 2016

Bill Knight Friday, 08 July 2016

Nous avons Brexité but we are still welcome at the 47th Rencontres d'Arles. Each summer this beautiful French town gives itself over to an international photography festival which this year features...

Period Portraits: Snapping the OAE

Eric Richmond Tuesday, 31 May 2016

When I was first commissioned by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment I never dreamed that it would turn into a marriage of such long duration. The length and breadth of the collaboration has...

Venice Architecture Biennale 2016

Hugh Pearman Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Arts festivals the size of the Venice Biennale are inevitably patchy. The appointed directors are hardly ever given enough time to curate and fill absolutely vast volumes of space. They can exhort...

Sunken Cities: Egypt's lost worlds rediscovered

theartsdesk Tuesday, 24 May 2016

In a gallery darkened to evoke the seabed that was its resting place for over a thousand years, the colossal figure of Hapy, the Egyptian god of the Nile flood, greets visitors just as it met sailors...

The Best of Photo London 2016

Bill Knight Thursday, 19 May 2016

Asking theartsdesk's theatre photographer to review Photo London is like asking a car mechanic to review the London Motor Show. "Remember the big picture!" I kept telling myself as I tried to...

Avedon Warhol, Gagosian Gallery

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 25 February 2016

It is an inspired pairing: iconic images by the American photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004) and the painter, printmaker and filmmaker Andy Warhol (1928-1987), almost all of whose mature work was...

Lumiere London 2016

David Nice Monday, 18 January 2016

To liberate traffic-choked city streets for pedestrians, to suspend phantasmagorical, literally high art above their heads and give a sense that London belongs to them: that’s an admirable vision,...

Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough Portraits

theartsdesk Sunday, 03 January 2016

Can a portrait really be a portrait if we can’t see a person’s face? And what if the reason we can’t see their face is that it is covered with a lump of dough? Is it a joke? And if it is a joke, is...

Kurt Masur (1927-2015)

David Nice Sunday, 20 December 2015

This is difficult. An official obituary, such as the one I’ve just finished for The Guardian, has no problem in pointing out the achievements of Kurt Masur’s distinguished career. Whatever his party-...

The Amazing World of MC Escher, Dulwich Picture Gallery

theartsdesk Tuesday, 08 December 2015

Walls that are floors, floors that are walls, and stairs that go up to go down: in the brain-befuddling art of MC Escher (1898-1972) the mundane everyday meets a world of paradox in which the rules...

Arena: Night and Day, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey Monday, 23 November 2015

Arena is the longest-running arts documentary programme for television at the BBC, and perhaps the world: as the BBC itself phrases it, this compendium celebration presented 24 hours in 90 minutes...

High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson, The Queen’s Gallery

Marina Vaizey Friday, 20 November 2015

“High Spirits” is a multi-layered title: the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was himself a heavy gambler and a heavy drinker, continually using up his material assets in such pursuits. His...

Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer, The Queen’s Gallery

Marina Vaizey Saturday, 14 November 2015

What is it about Vermeer? Just mention the name and there will be queues around the block. It’s true that there are a handful of other artists with that charisma, but none so rare as Vermeer. The...

Portraits from the 2015 Taylor Wessing Prize

theartsdesk Saturday, 14 November 2015

At first glance David Stewart’s Five Girls 2014, the winning entry in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, is a very ordinary scene. Five young women sit behind a table, obligatory...

Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, Victoria & Albert Museum

Marina Vaizey Saturday, 07 November 2015

Every object tells a story, nowhere more so than in a museum. The Victoria & Albert has been busy retelling as many stories as it can by rearranging, refurbishing, adding and subtracting from the...

The World of Charles and Ray Eames, Barbican

Marina Vaizey Friday, 06 November 2015

Chairs, chairs, chairs, as far as the eye can see. Plywood or plastic shells, some decorated with hilarious drawings of jolly nudes by Saul Steinberg (main picture), others in all the colours you can...

Sticky fingers: Conductors at the 2015 Proms

theartsdesk Sunday, 13 September 2015

Every summer at the BBC Proms the world's greatest conductors are captured in the waiting lens of Chris Christodoulou. His official portraits are sent out to the press straight after most concerts....

Gallery: Philip Jones Griffiths' Vietnam

theartsdesk Sunday, 28 June 2015

The most celebrated reportage to come out the Vietnam War was Michael Herr’s Dispatches, rightly acclaimed as the most visceral journey into the dark heart of America’s first military defeat. But...

Gallery: Christina Broom's Soldiers and Suffragettes

theartsdesk Saturday, 20 June 2015

There were female pioneers of photography before Christina Broom, most notably Julia Margaret Cameron. And others have hidden their light under a bigger bushel: Vivian Meier's body of work remained...

Gallery: The Drowned Man of Punchdrunk

theartsdesk Monday, 15 June 2015

Punchdrunk entered the world of theatre through a side door in the basement. The company navigated a strange path around abandoned warehouses on the edge of town, via the odd wrong turn and sundry...

Tough & Tender: Sheila Rock's English Seascapes

Sheila Rock Tuesday, 19 May 2015

I had never really photographed landscape. But I spent many wonderful weekends in Suffolk and Norfolk along the coast. This project began when I just decided to photograph the sea in a very abstract...

'I'm the photographer. Any nudity? Any fighting?'

Bill Knight Wednesday, 18 February 2015

We are sitting in the lobby of the National Theatre in the early afternoon waiting for the photocall for Dara to begin. Six or seven photographers, one woman, all dressed in jeans and dark jackets...

Boys on Film: Duran Duran's '84 tour

Matthew Wright Tuesday, 09 December 2014

In 1984 Duran Duran were at the height of their fame. Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the band’s third studio album, became their first (and only) number one soon after its release in November the...

Gallery: Honoré Daumier and Paula Rego - a conversation across time

Fisun Güner Monday, 17 November 2014

Baudelaire called him a “pictorial Balzac” and said he was the most important man “in the whole of modern art”, while Degas was only a little less effusive, claiming him as one of the three greatest...

Maestri: Conductors at the 2014 Proms

theartsdesk Monday, 15 September 2014

Chris Christodoulou is the official Proms photographer, writes David Nice. From his uniquely privileged position behind a velvet curtain, he captures the white heat of performance. The official shots...

Gallery: CBeebies Prom

theartsdesk Sunday, 27 July 2014

In recent years the BBC Proms have woken up to the idea that an audience for classical music can be captured young. The Doctor Who Prom was the first to harness a BBC brand and turn it into a...

Gallery: International Exchanges, Tate St Ives

Fisun Güner Sunday, 06 July 2014

This summer, Tate St Ives turned 21. And this makes it as good a time as any for an exhibition repositioning the artists who were associated with St Ives, the small harbour town in Cornwall, where...

Gallery: Stars of the Glyndebourne Chorus

theartsdesk Saturday, 26 April 2014

Its constituent parts come in all sizes, tall and small, compact or full-bodied, and span the ages. But put them all together and an operatic chorus is a vast but single organism that sings – and...

Lumiere Festival 2013, Durham

Fisun Güner Saturday, 16 November 2013

The trumpeting of a lone elephant can be heard all around Durham city centre, blasting across the River Wear. The organisers of Artichoke’s Lumiere Festival, now in its third biennial year, have been...

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