sat 20/04/2024

Picasso

theartsdesk in New York 1: Guitar Month

February is guitar month in New York City. Synchronicity rules at those two giants, the MoMA and the Met. At MoMA, Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914 shows his austere guitar paintings, collages and drawings - often using newspaper, wallpaper and sand - as...

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Year Out/Year In: Art's Giants in Close-Up

Last year gave us three giants of Post-Impressionism. The Royal Academy promised to unveil the real Van Gogh by showing us the man of letters; Tate Modern delivered a sumptuous survey of Gauguin; and a significantly smaller but nonetheless...

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Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev Exhibition

The show's curator Jane Pritchard revealed this wonderful kitchen story in a unique walk-round with theartsdesk this week. Her two-year hunt ranged from Diaghilev's passport to glorious Nijinsky costumes, from the Ballets Russes accounts book to...

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'Sale of the Century' falls flat

Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto by Picasso

This time, the hype was perhaps deserved: Christie's did have a claim to be putting on, last night, the sale of the century.The Impressionist and Modern works were of a distinctly high calibre: Picasso's high Blue Period Portrait of Angel Fernandez...

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Picasso Special - Picasso: Peace and Freedom, Tate Liverpool

Picasso the genius, the sensualist, the womaniser, the priapic beast. This much we think we know of the great Spanish artist. But how about Picasso the political activist? Picasso the supporter of women’s causes? Picasso the… feminist? Oh, yes, that...

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Art Gallery: Picasso Special - The Mediterranean Years

The war was over, Picasso was finally free to leave the privations of Paris behind him and to spend more time in the South of France, marking a return to his Mediterranean heritage. The Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition, curated by Picasso’s...

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Art 2009: Best and Worst

Mark Wallinger instals his stainless steel 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space' at the Hayward

2009 hasn’t been a vintage year for art, exactly - no queue-round-the-block showstoppers, if that’s your type of thing. Nonetheless the year was nicely topped and tailed by some memorable, and quietly seductive shows. My top five are Picasso, Mark...

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Hi Society: The Wonderful World of Nicky Haslam, BBC Four

Nicky Haslam, social butterfly and interior designer to the impossibly wealthy

This odyssey of party-goer and interior designer Nicky Haslam frequently resembled a Private Eye diary by Craig Brown, who’s always at his best when lacerating narcissistic name-dropping diarists from earlier generations. We watched Haslam swapping...

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Drawing Attention, Dulwich Picture Gallery

Schiele's Portrait of a Girl: stretching to the very limit the pared-down language of decisive line and white space.

The first thing to say about Drawing Attention is that its title decidedly undersells the scope of this compelling and unpredictable exhibition, which spans five centuries and includes 100 works from the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection. Most of...

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