sat 08/02/2025

Visual Arts Reviews

Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Barbican review – a must-see exhibition

Sarah Kent

The exhibition starts on the Barbican’s lift doors, which are emblazoned with photographs from the show. They include one of my all-time favourites: Herb Ritts’s Fred with Tyres 1984 (pictured below right), a fashion shoot of a young body builder posing as a garage mechanic, in greasy overalls. Despite his powerful muscles, he looks tired and petulant.

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Steve McQueen, Tate Modern review – films that stick in the mind

Sarah Kent

The screen is filled with the head and shoulders of a man lying on his back; he could be dead in the morgue or lying on the analyst’s couch. He doesn’t move (it’s a still), but we hear his voice recounting the terrible story of the day he accidentally killed his brother. 

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Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium, Whitechapel review - ten distinctive voices

Sarah Kent

“From today, painting is dead.” These melodramatic words were uttered by French painter, Paul Delaroche on seeing a photograph for the first time. That was in 1840 and, since then, painting has been declared dead many times over, yet it refuses to give up the ghost.

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Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre, V&A review - a timely look at the value of art

Sarah Kent

It looks as if vandals have ransacked Whistler's Peacock Room. The famous interior was commissioned in the 1870s by shipping magnate, Frederick Richard Leyland to show off his collection of fine porcelain. The specially designed shelves have been broken and their contents smashed; shards of pottery lie strewn across the floor.

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Imran Perretta, Chisenhale Gallery review - a deeply affecting film

Sarah Kent

“I forgive you,” he said. “I forgive you… for the bombs.” Spoken by a young Muslim in measured tones that can’t hide his fear, these chilling words recall a random encounter with a stranger. 

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Picasso and Paper, Royal Academy review - the most versatile of materials

Florence Hallett

Even more than most, Picasso exhibitions need a focus: he was so prolific and diverse that the alternative is neither practical nor comprehensible.

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Best of 2019: Visual Arts

Florence Hallett

Notable anniversaries provided the ballast for this year’s raft of exhibitions; none was dead weight, though, with shows dedicated to Rembrandt, Leonardo and...

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Caravaggio & Bernini, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna - high emotion in 17th century Rome

Florence Hallett

It doesn’t matter where you stand, whether you crouch, or teeter on tiptoe: looking into the eyes of Bernini’s Medusa, 1638-40, is impossible. The attempt is peculiarly exhilarating, a game of dare made simultaneously tantalising and absurd by the sculpture’s evident stoniness.

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Dora Maar, Tate Modern review - how women disappear

Katherine Waters

In one of Dora Maar’s best known images, a fashion photograph from 1935 (pictured below), a woman wearing a backless, sparkly evening gown appears to be making her way backstage through a proscenium’s drapes. The star of the show exits the limelight, cheekily concealing her face behind a six-pointed star snatched, maybe, from the star-spangled scenery.

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Eco-Visionaries, Royal Academy review - wakey, wakey!

Sarah Kent

As I write, I’m listening to Clara Rockmore intoning The Swan by Saint-Saëns. Her melancholy humming also welcomes you to Eco-Visionaries along with a globe suspended in the cloudy waters of a polluted fish tank. This simple installation by artist duo HeHe neatly pinpoints our predicament; our planet is suffocating.

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