Visual Arts Reviews

Deutsche Börse Prize 2014, Photographers' Gallery

Florence Hallett Thursday, 17 April 2014

Not so long ago, photographers were rejoicing in the freedom the digital revolution seemed to bring; unencumbered by the limitations of film, paper and darkroom practice, photography was suddenly liberated from the niggling pedantry of material constraints.

Matisse: The Cut-Outs, Tate Modern

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 15 April 2014

When it comes to the two vying giants of 20^th century art we do – don’t we? – all fall into that cliché of two opposing camps. You have the seductions of colour and decorative form on the one hand and you have the more classical rigours of line on the other, the one exemplified by Matisse, the other by Picasso. It’s not an absolute demarcation – a line that’s never blurred (and Matisse had, of course, a very elegant line); just a profound difference in emphasis and sensibility.

I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart, De La Warr Pavilion

Mark Sheerin Friday, 04 April 2014

Given the kooky title of a new painting show at De La Warr Pavilion, it seems necessary to point out, yet again, that painting isn’t dead. The line is from poet A.E Housman, who wrote a versified dialogue between a dead man and his living friend. So while certain painters may be dead, contemporaries can talk to them. And that’s what 21 painters line up to do in this new, undogmatic survey on the South Coast. Rest assured, the conversation is breezy.

Phyllida Barlow: Dock, Tate Britain

Sarah Kent Wednesday, 02 April 2014

The revamping of Tate Britain has produced such an atmosphere of understated elegance that one hardly dares breathe for fear of displacing a particle of dust. An air of suffocating sterility has seeped into the displays, which are so tastefully arranged that even the most passionate works are drained of emotion; and without a ripple of feeling ruffling the exquisite calm of these genteel waters, British art appears unrelentingly polite – and provincial.

Comment

Miroslaw Balka, White Cube/ Freud Museum

Florence Hallett Monday, 31 March 2014

Perhaps my big mistake was to read the exhibition blurb before going in: as someone who worries about dark, confined spaces, I was anticipating Miroslaw Balka’s new installation with a perverse sort of excitement. Certainly, for anyone who enjoys a dose of controlled terror Above your head sounds promising, with White Cube’s basement gallery supposedly transformed into a “large cage” and the ceiling lowered to a claustrophobic two metres.

theartsdesk in Calais: Monument, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Mark Sheerin Sunday, 30 March 2014

Were it not for the bombs which rained down on Calais, its current Musée des Beaux-Arts would not exist. The 1966 building was part of a civic reconstruction programme, so it too is a war memorial of sorts. And it's now playing host to an exhibition dedicated to the idea of the monument which looks to commemorate the two world wars.

William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum

Marina Vaizey Tuesday, 25 March 2014

Initiating the tercentenary of the arrival of the Hanoverians and thus the foundation of our German royal family, this startling and beguiling exhibition of the work of the polymath William Kent (1685-1748) crams 200 objects – drawings, paintings, plans, photographs, furniture, illustrations, models – into an illusionistic array of gauzy rooms, evocative of real interiors.

Cézanne and The Modern, Ashmolean Museum

Fisun Güner Sunday, 23 March 2014

Has any artist ever painted an apple that gets as close to the essence of appleness as Cézanne? I don’t think so. Cézanne’s apples are the equivalent of William Carlos Williams’s cold, sweet plums. Not only can you almost taste Cézanne’s apples but you can sense their weight, their density. And in your mind, you touch their smooth, waxy skins.

Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice, National Gallery

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 20 March 2014

The National Gallery has produced a revelatory and unprecedented exhibition which shows us an array of paintings from cabinet size to mammoth by a long acknowledged star: Veronese, probably the most flamboyantly exciting artist at the heart of the Renaissance in Venice.

Renaissance Impressions, Royal Academy

Florence Hallett Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Georg Baselitz might seem an unlikely connoisseur of 16^th-century prints, but since the Sixties the controversial German artist has amassed a collection of chiaroscuro woodcuts to rival that of any museum.