Visual Arts Reviews

Steve McQueen: Ashes, Thomas Dane Gallery

Sarah Kent Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Ashes is a two-part exhibition. The darkened gallery at 3 Duke Street, St James’s is filled with the onscreen image of a young black man sitting on the prow of a small boat with his back to us (main picture). He turns occasionally to smile to camera; he stands up and balances precariously as the boat bobs up and down on the swell; he falls overboard, climbs back on and stands silhouetted against the blue sky, grinning down at us.

Rembrandt: The Late Works, National Gallery

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 14 October 2014

All human life, as they say, is here: we witness displays of warmth and tenderness in virtuous matrimony; reflection and contemplation in quiet solitude. We respond to the soft seductions of the flesh in its yielding ripeness, and we feel the pathos of the withering of the flesh in age; there’s even the mocking of the aged flesh still lusting for the piece of the old action. There’s civic pride and intellectual curiosity.

Glenn Ligon: Call and Response, Camden Arts Centre

Sarah Kent Tuesday, 14 October 2014

“I was a nigger for twenty-three years. I gave that shit up. No room for advancement.” This astute joke, by American comedian Richard Pryor, is stencilled in black capitals on the gold ground of a painting by Glenn Ligon.

Cathedrals of Culture

Tom Birchenough Monday, 13 October 2014

Back at the Venice Biennale in 2010, the German film director Wim Wenders showed a 3D video installation titled “If Buildings Could Talk”.

Listening, BALTIC 39, Hayward Touring

Sarah Kent Friday, 10 October 2014

Traditionally, art exhibitions have been about looking, but as more and more artists cross boundaries to engage with sound, touch and movement or to use film and video, work that is static and silent is becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Sigmar Polke: Alibis, Tate Modern

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 09 October 2014

England is in the throes of an unusual Teutonic love fest, and in 2014 no doubt deliberately. Music of course has always been omnipresent: Bach to Wagner, and a passion for Beethoven and Schubert that knows no bounds. But there has been a love-hate relationship with the visual arts. We are somewhat uncomfortable with the Northern Renaissance, preferring the Italian, and as for expressionism, that was, for a long time, far too blatantly emotionally strident and in your face.

Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, British Library

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 08 October 2014

We all romanticise the olden times. Those we think of as belonging to them are no different. The Castle of Otranto – by common consent, the first Gothic novel – was published a quarter of a millennium ago. “Otranto ‘lost its maidenhead’ today,” wrote its author Horace Walpole. To him, if not to us, the 1760s reeked of modernity so he claimed that this was a true story plucked from a cobwebbed Neapolitan library in 1529 – that is, a quarter of a millennium before.

Anselm Kiefer, Royal Academy

Fisun Güner Sunday, 05 October 2014

And so, I finally come to write of Anselm Kiefer, and with something of a heavy heart, as heavy, I’d vouch, as one of his load-bearing canvases.

Constructing Worlds, Barbican Art Gallery

Sarah Kent Thursday, 02 October 2014

“The minute I touched New York,” wrote Berenice Abbott, “I had a burning desire to photograph the city of incredible contrasts, the city of stone needles and skyscrapers, the city that is never the same but always changing.”

Turner Prize 2014, Tate Britain

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 30 September 2014

When did Big Ideas make a comeback at the Turner Prize? Did they ever go away? In its 30-year history it seems that everything that wasn’t painting has been labelled “conceptual art”. But we know that labels can be very misleading, and the “conceptual” in “conceptual art” obviously need not apply.