Visual arts
Florence Hallett
A retrospective is often a daunting prospect for all concerned, not least the poor visitor who must prepare for a gruelling marathon, visiting every forgotten cul-de-sac of an artist’s career. Putting together a retrospective of a living artist whose output shows no sign of slowing up certainly lessens the obligation to be definitive, and in this refreshingly sparse look at the career to date of sculptor Richard Deacon, one can sense the curators enjoying the opportunity to pause and reflect rather than catalogue his career.With just 30 objects on display, it is certainly tempting to infer a Read more ...
fisun.guner
Helen Frankenthaler is often presented as being both a stepping stone between art movements and as an artist who fell – because such things matter in the tidy narratives of art history – between the cracks of various American isms. Frankenthaler, who made her name in the fertile New York art scene of the early Fifties and who died in 2011, found success and fame early, but then had the possible misfortune to be seen as a “transitional figure”. Since she created a bridge between Abstract Expressionism (specifically Pollock, with his drip technique) and later Color Field Read more ...
Sarah Kent
If you're suffering from the January blues, hurry to the Southbank Centre where Martin Creed’s exhibition is bound to make you smile. The man best known for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 by switching the lights on and off at Tate Britain has filled both floors of the Hayward Gallery with things that not only lift the spirits but reveal how to make magic from virtually nothing.Nor is this an example of art lite; we tend to think of humour as an easy option, but sustaining a joke over five galleries and three terraces is a serious challenge. One false move and the whole thing falls apart; Read more ...
Christopher Beanland
Sydney has a nervous tic. People think Australians are brash and bolshy but that's not true. There's a deep sense of ingrained anxiety here. That anxiety comes from being at the edge of the world, a long way from Europe and in an unfamiliar and unrelenting land. It has been expressed through the art of Australia for 200 years. Today the country and its biggest city are both more confident, so the anxiety expresses itself in subtler ways.Yet Sydney still cares what people think. Jorn Utzon's Sydney Opera House presides over the Harbour and in its 40th year it is still an absolute bobby dazzler Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It is 20 year since Derek Jarman died of an AIDs-related illness. To commemorate the event King’s College London, where he studied English and History, is staging Pandemonium – an exhibition, a symposium, a 24-hour installation in the ornate chapel and coach trips to Prospect Cottage in Dungeness where Jarman retreated after discovering he was HIV positive and created an idiosyncratic desert garden in the shingle.The earliest exhibit is a cubist self-portrait dating from 1960, the year he entered King’s College aged 18. He won a prize for it in the University of London Union Art Competition; Read more ...
fisun.guner
If you’re going to make a programme about the Rococo, that ornate and playful decorative arts movement that began in France at the start of the 18th century and flourished under the French king Louis XV, naturally you’d want to start in Bavaria. Or perhaps not. But Waldemar Januszczak does, heading off with his bag-on-a-stick and his lolloping gait in the nature of a weary pilgrim to visit a German Rococo splendour or two in stone and pastel-coloured stucco. “Travel was one of the great inventions of the Rococo Age,” he tells us, before settling down on the steps of the Basilica of the Read more ...
Florence Hallett
An exhibition of work by a giant of 20th-century painting cannot reasonably be expected to turn up too many surprises; the most we can usually hope for is a good proportion of lesser-known works to temper the “masterpieces”. To reveal a whole body of work hitherto ignored by art historians is something of a coup, but the Estorick Collection’s new show does just this, introducing over 20 sculptures that will be unknown to all but the most committed fans of Giorgio de Chirico.Known almost exclusively as a painter, de Chirico (1888-1978) is famous for his series of bizarre but seminal paintings Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
For a film that opened with Ai Weiwei’s statement, “Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one,” there was an irony in the fact that Andreas Johnsen’s Big Brother Watching Me… started practically without words. When the artist was freed in June 2011 following 80 days in prison, one of the conditions of his release was that he would not talk to journalists. For a while we wondered if this Storyville film might be purely observational, without an utterance from its central character.However it happened exactly – presumably the concept of documentary was eventually Read more ...
Sarah Kent
As you may recall, Jeremy Deller represented Britain at last year’s Venice Biennale and a distilled version of English Magic, his British Pavilion show, is now installed in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. It's an especially relevant first stop on a tour that continues to Bristol and Margate, since Morris features large in Deller’s idiosyncratic commentary on British culture. William Morris is best known as the brains behind the Arts and Crafts movement and designer of those famous wallpaper patterns, but he was also an ardent socialist keen to improve the lot of the poor – not Read more ...
fisun.guner
What once appeared daring and transgressive will often barely raise an eyebrow given time. This much is obvious – or at least up to a point, since much avant-garde art continues to challenge and/or bemuse well into the 21st century. But the reverse can also be true. What was once produced as a work typical of its time can now make us feel very uncomfortable. Hannah Höch was a member of Berlin Dada in the years immediately following the First World War. These were the Weimar years in which artists who were later denounced as degenerate by the Nazi regime produced scabrous attacks on Read more ...
fisun.guner
In 1920, Man Ray, now better known for his solarized photographs, produced a sculpture made from found objects. L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse, named after the 19th-century French poet who used the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont, is a sewing machine wrapped in a wool blanket and tied with string. The title refers to the poet’s evocation of the strange, even threatening beauty of familiar objects in startling juxtaposition, and is a line later adopted by André Breton to suggest Surrealist dislocation. With regard to Man Ray’s sculpture, we have to take it on trust that it’s a sewing machine Read more ...
fisun.guner
Not an exhaustive list, but, in no particular order, these are the shows I'm still left thinking about as the year draws to a close. The best have opened my eyes to new ways of thinking about an artist. A few are still on. Try not to miss. And do suggest your own favourites in the comments below. As you'll see, I've also nominated one "Disappointment of the year" and one "Most ill-conceived show of the year". Don't hesitate to suggest your own in these catagories too.1. Jake and Dinos Chapman: Come and See, Serpentine Sackler GalleryBehind that mask of tom-foolery, Jake and Dinos Chapman are Read more ...