Visual Arts Reviews

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012, National Portrait Gallery

Marina Vaizey Thursday, 08 November 2012

The Taylor Wessing Photographic… well, you get the drift. It's quite a long title for what is now one of the most fascinating and wide-ranging exhibitions of photographs mounted in London, and which goes out on tour nationally next year.

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present, National Gallery

Sarah Kent Friday, 02 November 2012

"From today, painting is dead" was the forlorn conclusion of French painter Paul Delaroche on seeing a photograph for the first time in 1839. His gloomy prediction was premature, of course; more than 170 years on, the battle for supremacy is still raging.

Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision, Courtauld Gallery

Marina Vaizey Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Sensing economic opportunity, the Dutch artist Peter Lely (1618-1680) emigrated in his early twenties to London, and was thus the right man in the right place. After the early death of Sir Anthony van Dyck, followed by the Englishman William Dobson, Lely cleverly and charmingly utilised disarming ambition to open up a career for himself and become in due course the most successful painter of his time.

Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou, Nottingham Contemporary

Mark Hudson Thursday, 25 October 2012

I’ve rarely come across an exhibition as loaded with context as this one. Voodoo – or Vodou, as the show has it – is a massively complex and contested phenomenon, from the pin-sticking and zombies of legend and fantasy to the no-less colourful reality. Haitian history is tragic and dramatic, fraught with misinformation stemming from the country’s creation in an 18^th century slave revolt.

Painting the Queen: A Portrait of Her Majesty, BBC Four

Fisun Güner Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Has there ever been a successful portrait of the Queen? Not a photograph - there are been plenty of those (with its delicious air of ambivalence, Thomas Struth’s portrait of the Queen with Prince Philip stiffly occupying two ends of a sofa at Windsor Castle, is among the best) but a painted portrait.

Comment

Hollywood Costume, Victoria & Albert Museum

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 21 October 2012

Going to the movies will never be quite the same again, as the Victoria & Albert illuminates the work of the costume designers for anybody who has ever been seduced by the world of the cinema, which I guess means all of us. This anthology is a trip down memory lane, from Charlie Chaplin’s tramp to John Wayne’s cowboys and gunslingers.

Richard Hamilton: The Late Works, National Gallery

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 14 October 2012

This small, posthumous exhibition illuminates Richard Hamilton’s life-long engagement with both the art of the past and the latest techniques and technological possibilities available to visual artists in the 21^st century. He played with photography, computers, notably digital manipulation, and even built several of his own computers. And he was as fascinated with print media – utilising found imagery from all kinds of publications - as with pencil and paint. He was a polymath.

Frieze Masters Art Fair, Regent's Park

Josh Spero Saturday, 13 October 2012

Things have come to a pretty pass when the old is a breath of fresh air and the new just old hat, but the Frieze Masters art fair in Regent's Park, which closes this weekend, is just that. New sister to Frieze London, which features art since 2000, Frieze Masters is about the best of what came before. And boy is that good.

William Klein + Daido Moriyama, Tate Modern

Sarah Kent Thursday, 11 October 2012

William Klein’s exhibition opens with Broadway by Light (1958), a celluloid elegy to advertising made in the days before neon. Myriad bulbs flash the names of brands like Coca Cola, Camel, Budweiser and Pepsi across New York’s night sky.

Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes, Pace Gallery

Steven Gambardella Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Half-way through Death in Venice, Thomas Mann's tragic hero, Aschenbach, settles down on a beach to gaze out to the sea to "take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity". Aschenbach is suddenly returned to earthly complications when the horizon is intersected by the boy he desires.