Visual Arts Reviews
Franz West, Tate Modern review - absurdly exhilaratingThursday, 28 February 2019
Franz West must have been a right pain in the arse. He left school at 16, went travelling, got hooked on hard drugs which he later replaced with heavy drinking, got into endless arguments and fights, was obsessed with sex and, above all, wanted to be an artist but hadn’t been to art school. His life reads like a bad novel or Hollywood’s idea of the tortured genius struggling to make his mark in a world indifferent to his talents. Read more... |
Phyllida Barlow: Cul-de-sac, Royal Academy review - unadulterated delightSaturday, 23 February 2019
It doesn’t get better than this! Phyllida Barlow has transformed the Royal Academy’s Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries into a euphoric delight. Entering the space, you have to turn right and process through the three galleries; but by closing the end door to create the cul-de-sac of the title, Barlow has turned this somewhat prescriptive lay-out into a theatrical experience. Read more... |
John Ruskin: The Power of Seeing, Two Temple Place review - inside the mind of a visionaryThursday, 14 February 2019
The power of seeing was the bedrock of John Ruskin’s philosophy. In the bicentenary of his birth, a revelatory exhibition at Two Temple Place in London opens out the idea and makes it manifest through both his own work and the treasures of his collection. Read more... |
Don McCullin, Tate Britain review - beastliness made beautifulMonday, 11 February 2019
I interviewed Don McCullin in 1983 and the encounter felt like peering into a deep well of darkness. The previous year he’d been in Beirut photographing the atrocities carried out by people on both sides of the civil war and his impeccably composed pictures were being published as a book. Read more... |
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory review, Tate Modern - plenty but emptyTuesday, 05 February 2019
“Slow looking” is the phrase du jour at Tate Modern, an enjoinder flatly contradicted by the extent of this exhibition, which in the history of the gallery’s supersized shows counts as a blow-out. Read more... |
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, Victoria & Albert Museum - sumptuousThursday, 31 January 2019
The heart of the V&A’s sumptuous Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams is a room dedicated to the workmanship of the fashion house’s ateliers. Read more... |
Fausto Melotti: Counterpoint, Estorick Collection review - harmonious thingsSaturday, 26 January 2019
For an artist whose cerebral and frequently playful works reference physics, myth and music, Fausto Melotti’s artistic education was appropriately heterogeneous. Read more... |
Bill Viola/Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth, Royal Academy review - empty rhetoric versus focused intensityFriday, 25 January 2019
Its a preposterous act of hubris, isn’t it? Pairing large scale video installations by American artist Bill Viola with drawings by Michelangelo can’t possibly illuminate our experience of either art form; or can it? Read more... |
Best of 2018: ArtMonday, 31 December 2018
Exhibitions routinely claim to be a once in a lifetime experience, but there can be no doubt about the prince among them this year, the Royal Academy’s spectacular Charles I: King and Collector. Read more... |
Edwin Landseer / Rachel Maclean, National Gallery review - a juxtaposition of oppositesTuesday, 04 December 2018
Familiarity breeds contempt, which makes it difficult to look at Edwin Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen (pictured below). The reproduction of this proud beastie on T-towels, aprons, jigsaws and biscuit tins blinds one to the subtle nuances of the original painting. Read more... |
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