Visual arts
Florence Hallett
In the gloomy splendour of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch gazes up at Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading, 1655. The painting has belonged to the Scott family for more than 250 years, and like generations before him, the duke has known it all his life. “She is the most powerful presence in this house.” He pauses: “Do you see what I mean?”It is a statement of spine-tingling acuity, hinting at the peculiar magic that hangs like a charm around Rembrandt's paintings, and leaves its mark on this documentary by Oeke Hoogendijk, which follows on from her 2014 film The New Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Prince of Wales, Prince Regent, and finally King: George IV, (1762-1830) was an unpopular and greedy ruler, but his compulsive collecting and passion for redecorating have made a huge contribution to the arts of the nation, and form a significant part of the Royal Collection. The elegant Queen’s Gallery has now re-opened with a sumptuous display of his over-the-top royal carry-on, spanning the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.He was wildly and continually in debt, his coronation in 1821 costing many millions. After a decade of living at Carlton House, his debts were Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Khadija Saye was 24 when she died in the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, the same year that her series of photographic self-portraits showed in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: she was the youngest artist in a roster of well-established figures such as Joy Gregory and Isaac Julien.Claiming prescience in art is tricky and probably ill-advised, but still it is true that in the aftermath of Grenfell, In This Space We Breathe directly addressed the outrage of that disaster, in which the right to live and breathe freely at home had been so flagrantly violated. Since then, the murder of Read more ...
Florence Hallett
When Picasso left Barcelona for Paris in 1900, he took what by then was a well-trodden path for artists eager to be at the very centre of the art world. Trained in the academies of Barcelona, their ambitions nurtured in the bohemian environment of Els Quatre Gats - the city’s answer to the Parisian artists’ haunt Le Chat Noir – several generations of Spanish artists born in the 19th century went to the City of Light in search of the newest ideas and styles, and a market for their work.Picasso remained in Paris for much of his life, but many of his fellow countrymen returned to Spain, their Read more ...
Katherine Waters
With the first round of galleries opening their doors in June and a new round getting ready to open in July, we’ve a half-way home of a roundup this week. This month’s re-openings include the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Barbican, the Whitechapel, the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, the Mosaic Rooms, the Estorick Collection, the Garden Museum and the Tates – Modern, Britain, Liverpool and St Ives.Visitors will typically have quite a different experience. Expect timed tickets and one-ways lanes, face masks and hand sanitiser – everything that has become normal but may Read more ...
Florence Hallett
From her fourth floor flat, which is also her studio, the painter Celia Paul looks out over the British Museum, the figures of the Muses carved into its pediment huge and present compared to the antlike, and usually teeming, human life below (main picture: British Museum and Plane Tree Branches). Up here, it is pigeons not people who provide company and entertainment, their springtime rituals carrying on as usual in the balustrades and gutters.Paul has lived here since 1982, and though married, she has never lived with her husband, preferring she has said, to maintain her own private space. Read more ...
Florence Hallett
The note of longing scored into this exhibition’s title is well-judged: as things are now, it is the sight of the elderly in the company of friends, watching the world go by from a doorstep or park bench, that provokes a pang of nostalgia, far more than the surface details of the mid-20th century, when these pictures were taken.Produced in response to the virus, this selection of 20 photographs by Shirley Baker (1932-2014), focuses on her depictions of the elderly, who blossom under her gently satirical gaze. The online exhibition includes examples of Baker’s colour work as well as her Read more ...
Florence Hallett
The former home of 19th century architect Sir John Soane has long been celebrated as one of London’s hidden marvels, an astonishing treasure trove of architectural models, paintings, sculptures and historical artefacts concealed behind an elegant but unassuming facade. Now, parts of Sir John Soane’s Museum can be accessed even in lockdown, the result of an ongoing project to create a 3D digital replica of the site and its contents, accessible online by anyone, anywhere.Created using 3D scanning technology, the digital replica follows a major restoration project, intended to return the museum Read more ...
Florence Hallett
The death of Christo, aged 84, was announced on Sunday, marking the end of a visionary and flamboyant artistic career. Best known for huge, ephemeral projects like the Wrapped Reichstag which stood for two weeks in June 1995, the American artist believed completely in the value of art for art’s sake, his vast, technically and logistically mindboggling creations brought into being for no purpose beyond their own existence.Christo was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in communist Bulgaria in 1935, attending art school in Sofia before escaping to the west by bribing a customs officer when he Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Salvador Dalí’s house at Portlligat on the Costa Brava is straight out of the pages of a lifestyle magazine, its sunbaked white walls dazzling in the sunshine, and light pouring in from every angle. It was a fisherman’s hut when Dalí moved there in 1930, extending it over 40 years like “a true biological structure” to make a home and a place to work for himself and his wife Gala, with every window letting in a view of the sea.The house is one point of the Dalí Triangle: another is the Gala Dalí Castle at Púbol, not far from Girona (pictured below right). Dalí moved here after the death of his Read more ...
Florence Hallett
The limitations of life on screen are all too apparent at the moment, and yet still there are instances where online can offer something beyond the reach of an old-fashioned trip to an art gallery. Ultra-high resolution reproductions of works of art are a case in point, and many museum websites now allow us to examine their collections in the microscopic detail once reserved for conservation departments. A new photograph of Rembrandt's The Night Watch, 1642, renders it in a whopping 44.8 gigapixel image, itself a composite of 528 exposures, and allows anyone interested to zoom in on Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Museums and galleries have found innovative and varied ways to keep their collections within reach, and to bring us the many temporary exhibitions forced to close by the virus. But even the most dedicated gallery-goer may by now be tiring of online talks and tours, which so often make unreasonable demands on both guide and viewer and increasingly feel like a very poor substitute for the real thing.For a breath of fresh air, try the Watts Gallery - Artists’ Village in the Surrey village of Compton, whose immersive online offering is as close to a day in the country as we might reasonably Read more ...