Visual arts
Marina Vaizey
Sixty years of hard work, encapsulated in 90 drawings and a handful of thickly encrusted paintings, by the distinguished, obsessive, single-minded octagenerian artist Leon Kossoff (b 1926) vividly set out a passionate attachment to a simultaneously immutable and ever changing London. An East Ender, Kossoff has had several subjects: he has painted people, and has continually drawn after the Old Masters, first visiting the National Gallery as a schoolchild. His drawings after Poussin were exhibited at the National Gallery. But here for the first time, is an exhibition concentrating on Kossoff’s Read more ...
fisun.guner
After the marvellous Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words, the BBC has once again rummaged through its documentary archives, this time to see what artists have to say for themselves. Artists are often not the most loquacious breed, which is why they communicate best in the language of images and objects. But it can certainly be instructive to get the lowdown straight from the horse’s mouth, even if it ends up being all performance and no insight.Picasso’s art is turned into performance, though one that speaks more eloquently than any spoken statement canIn this first episode of three, subtitled Read more ...
fisun.guner
With their curious juxtapositions and scrambling of pictorial space a dream-like atmosphere is conjured in Mamma Andersson’s paintings. Her scenes are often confined to the domestic or everyday realm, but, even when peopled, suggest something closer to still life than real life. Or perhaps stilled-life. The Swedish painter (Mamma is a nickname), now in her 50s, received welcome exposure in the UK with her Camden Arts Centre retrospective in 2007. This latest exhibition is, I believe, amongst her strongest work yet.The elements of the picture fit together like a collage in which space is Read more ...
simon.broughton
The work of Alphons Mucha (1860-1939) is immediately identifiable with its decorative flowers, delicate colours and wide-eyed women staring seductively at the viewer. He was one of the pioneers of art nouveau and the art of advertising. In Prague an exhibition recently opened which is packing them in at the glorious art nouveau Obecni Dům (Municipal House) in the centre of the city.Ivan Lendl: Alphons Mucha is the most comprehensive exhibition of Mucha’s original posters and graphic work ever presented – from the collection put together by Czech-born tennis star Ivan Lendl over the past 30 Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Down by the seaside, an array of rather lumpen large naked women are marching, posing, reclining, and even rolling over along the walls of the new Jerwood Gallery, delineated by William Scott (1913-1989). Scott’s centenary is being commemorated with an array of exhibitions and publications in Britain and America, and the market too is revving up with the publication of a four-volume catalogue of his oil paintings.He was born in Scotland, brought up in Northern Ireland, trained at the Belfast College of Art and the Royal Academy in London, and was part of those several generations of British Read more ...