sat 25/05/2013

Visual Arts reviews, news & interviews

Helen Chadwick, Richard Saltoun

Sarah Kent

It's 17 years since Helen Chadwick died without warning of heart failure at the tragically early age of 42 and nine years since the Barbican staged a retrospective of her work. Time, then, for a reappraisal and this small but beautifully presented exhibition at Richard Saltoun’s gallery contains enough gems to remind us of the beauty, wit, intelligence and originality that made the artist and her work so very inspiring. Showing total disregard for boundaries, she used anything from flowers...

10 Questions for Artist Michael Landy

Fisun Güner

Much of Michael Landy’s work concerns destruction or decay. The British artist, who recently turned 50 and is part of the YBA generation, came to prominence in 2001 with the Artangel commission Break Down, which saw all his worldly possessions destroyed in an industrial shredder. His next project saw him scale right down, surprising everyone with an exhibition of beautifully executed drawings of weeds.Landy’s love of close observational drawing continued with a series of arresting portraits....

The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four

Tom Birchenough

You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the years following his death...

theartsdesk in Warsaw: A New Jewish Museum

Simon Broughton

The Ghetto Heroes Square in the Muranow district of Warsaw is a bleak place surrounded by drab apartment blocks. But at its centre there’s now a new...

Mariele Neudecker, Regency Town House, Brighton

Fisun Güner

Mariele Neudecker is the lead artist of this year’s HOUSE, a festival for the visual arts which is now in its sixth year and which runs parallel with...

Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, British Library

Fisun Güner

A thought-provoking exhibition looking at ways in which the state seeks to wield its influence

Six of the best: Art

theartsdesk

theartsdesk recommends the half-dozen top exhibitions

Leon Kossoff: London Landscapes, Annely Juda Fine Art

Marina Vaizey

A deeply affecting survey of an artist who captures a sense of London as a living, breathing organism

Great Artists: In Their Own Words, BBC Four

Fisun Güner

The BBC tries to cover up its own history of uptight, anti avant-garde conservatism

Mamma Andersson / Andreas Eriksson, Stephen Friedman Gallery

Fisun Güner

Beguiling, mysterious and very Nordic: two Swedish painters in two knock-out solo shows

theartsdesk in Prague: Two Faces of Mucha

Simon Broughton

The great Czech pioneer of art nouveau has a pair of shows, one of them curated by Andy Murray's coach

William Scott: Divided Figure, Jerwood Gallery, Hastings

Marina Vaizey

The centenary of the British artist is marked with an array of his lesser-known and blandly genteel nudes

Ellen Gallagher: AxME, Tate Modern

Sarah Kent

She may be obsessed with a single issue but the humour, beauty and variety of the work makes for a rich experience

theartsdesk in Austin, Texas: The Library with Everything

Markie Robson-Scott

A trip to the Harry Ransom Center's spectacular literary and visual archive

Turner Prize 2013 shortlist: Is David Shrigley an artist? and other thoughts

Fisun Güner

Always interesting for who it leaves out, but at least this year's shortlist won't disappoint for familar names

Saloua Raouda Choucair, Tate Modern

Fisun Güner

A long overdue retrospective of this little-known Lebanese artist

Rachel Whiteread: Detached, Gagosian Gallery

Sarah Kent

More casts by the artist who transforms familiar objects into potent presences

Jacob Epstein: Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Marina Vaizey

The sculptor who got under the skin of his subjects and endowed them with an uncanny liveliness

theartsdesk in Amsterdam: Reopening of the Rijksmuseum

Fisun Güner

A very bold but beautifully sympathetic restoration for Holland's national museum

High Art of the Low Countries, BBC Four

Fisun Güner

From the art of the tapestry to the sensuality of Rubens, this week we get the low-down on Flemish art

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: The Happiest Man, Ambika P3

Marina Vaizey

An archive film installation that makes visible without words both societal failure and indomitable survival

theartsdesk in Florence: The Springtime of the Renaissance

Jasper Rees

A monumental display investigates the Florentine debt to antiquity

Gallery: The Springtime of the Renaissance

Jasper Rees

Browse a selection of images from the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, British Museum

Fisun Güner

An exhibition that powerfully connects you to the life of an ancient civilisation

Ryoji Ikeda: superposition, Barbican Theatre

Louise Gray

Japanese installation artist's onslaught of data stuns

Moore Rodin, Henry Moore Foundation

Marina Vaizey

A deeply affecting dialogue between two giants of modernist sculpture

The arts' search for funding goes digital

theartsdesk

The launch of Donate finds 11 arts organisations striking while the iron is hot

What Do Artists Do All Day?, BBC Four

Fisun Güner

Norman Ackroyd reveals the mysteries of his working day in an engaging new series

David Bowie Is, Victoria & Albert Museum

Howard Male

The Bromley boy’s bid for cultural world domination continues to gather momentum

Footnote: A brief history of british art

The National Gallery, the British Museum, Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Collection - Britain's art galleries and museums are world-renowned, not only for the finest of British visual arts but core collections of antiquities and artworks from great world civilisations.

Holbein_Ambasssadors_1533The glory of British medieval art lay first in her magnificent cathedrals and manuscripts, but kings, aristocrats, scientists and explorers became the vital forces in British art, commissioning Holbein or Gainsborough portraits, founding museums of science or photography, or building palatial country mansions where architecture, craft and art united in a luxuriously cultured way of life (pictured, Holbein's The Ambassadors, 1533 © National Gallery). A rich physician Sir Hans Sloane launched the British Museum with his collection in 1753, and private collections were the basis in the 19th century for the National Gallery, the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, the original Tate gallery and the Wallace Collections.

British art tendencies have long passionately divided between romantic abstraction and a deep-rooted love of narrative and reality. While 19th-century movements such as the Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian Gothic architects paid homage to decorative medieval traditions, individualists such as George Stubbs, William Hogarth, John Constable, J M W Turner and William Blake were radicals in their time.

In the 20th century sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, painters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, architects Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers embody the contrasts between fantasy and observation. More recently another key patron, Charles Saatchi, championed the sensational Britart conceptual art explosion, typified by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. The Arts Desk reviews all the major exhibitions of art and photography as well as interviewing leading creative figures in depth about their careers and working practices. Our writers include Fisun Guner, Judith Flanders, Sarah Kent, Mark Hudson, Sue Steward and Josh Spero.

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