And a peculiarly London sun - against which nothing could be said except that it looked bloodshot - glorified all this by its stare. It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde Park Corner with an air of punctual and benign vigilance. The very pavement under Mr Verloc’s feet had an old-gold tinge in that [...]
Posts tagged with ‘art’
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‘Duchamp Man Ray Picabia’ at Tate Modern
7 March 2008 – 7:44 pm
The exhibition is subtitled ‘The Moment Art Changed Forever’ and the poster is illustrated with Duchamp’s Fountain, the famous work that just consists of a urinal signed with the name ‘R. Mutt’. In 2004 Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the C20th, presumably for having sharply and clearly established the principle that art [...]
‘Alexander Rodchenko’ & ‘Laughing in a Foreign Language’ at the Hayward
18 February 2008 – 10:01 pm
I went to the Hayward today to see an exhibition of the photography of Alexander Rodchenko; the price of the ticket included entry to a show called ‘Laughing in a Foreign Language’, a exhibition which “investigates the whole spectrum of humour, from jokes, gags and slapstick to irony, wit and satire.”
It was a pleasure to [...]
Medieval ivory at the Courtauld
30 January 2008 – 12:20 pm
The Courtauld Gallery currently has a small but perfectly formed exhibition of medieval ivories.
I do love me some medieval art. And I can really see why someone would collect ivories: they are small but full of character, and I imagine they are beautifully tactile although obviously I didn’t get my hands on the ones in [...]
Terracotta warriors at the BM
17 January 2008 – 4:12 pm
I went to see the terracotta warriors at the British Museum. It’s unusual for them to be on show outside China, so it’s a big event; they have about a dozen terracotta figures and lots of associated material.
It’s certainly worth going to, but the warriors themselves didn’t have the wow factor you might hope for. [...]
Millais at the Tate
13 January 2008 – 12:15 am
I went to see the Millais at the Tate today. After my scathing comments about the Pre-Raphs last year, it may not surprise you that I was a bit half-hearted about visiting this. But I’ve got a Tate membership, so I didn’t have to pay, and the exhibition is about to close; so I thought [...]
What a Walrus
9 December 2007 – 2:30 pm
Found while browsing the British Museum archive of 2D art, a walrus head drawn by Albrecht Dürer:
It looks even better viewed large. I think that deserves to be as famous as his equally marvellous rhinoceros.
Renaissance Siena at the National Gallery
13 November 2007 – 10:23 pm
I went to the Renaissance Siena: Art for a City exhibition today. It’s late C15th and early C16th art. I gathered from the audio-guide that by then, Siena had already had its golden age, and was dropping behind places like Florence and Rome as an artistic centre.
So the artists in the show—Matteo di Giovanni, Francesco [...]
Just a little Memling
8 November 2007 – 12:59 pm
Do you like Memling? I don’t know, I’ve never tried it. [boom boom]
Gotta love that Northern Renaissance.
I went to a lecture about fabric and fashion in art recently which used as an example a painting which I think wasn’t actually this one, but was very very similar. Possibly Memling painted various versions of it. Anyway, [...]
Georg Baselitz at the Royal Academy
6 November 2007 – 4:36 pm
Baselitz is a German painter and sculptor. I thought that I knew nothing about him at all, but when I got to the exhibition several of the paintings turned out to be familiar.
Baselitz was born in East Germany, his father had been a member of the Nazi party, and he was studying at an art [...]
Big trees at Kew
31 October 2007 – 1:38 pm
I went to Kew Gardens to see the Henry Moore sculptures. Which were OK, I guess. It’s not easy to display such a lot of very large sculptures—28 in all—but Kew is big enough that there’s plenty of room for them, so it’s quite a good match. I wandered around desultorily looking at them but [...]
Visiting the crack
21 October 2007 – 9:08 am
Last week I went to see the crack at Tate Modern, which is the latest big artwork in the Turbine Hall. You can read what the Tate thinks it’s about here. I found it less impressive in reality than I expected. I’d heard about it before I went, and it looked exactly as I expected [...]
China, the Olympics, and antiquity diplomacy
28 September 2007 – 12:10 am
I was just watching Question Time on the BBC, and the panel were asked what ‘we’ should do about Burma. Simon Schama was on the panel, and he suggested that, if China was stubborn about blocking any action via the UN, we should have a mass boycott of the Beijing Olympics, since Burma is a [...]
The funniest thing on the internet
22 August 2007 – 12:57 pm
I was googling around for pictures of Satan the other day for the Satanic Verses post, and found myself at the Art Renewal Center, which, to be fair, is an extremely good source for pictures of fine art. In fact, I think I’ve been there before and assumed that was their entire raison d’être. But [...]
‘Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan’ at the BM
29 July 2007 – 4:08 pm
I went to see Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan at the British Museum last week.
The exhibition presents works by members of the Japan Art Crafts Association (Nihon Kōgeikai), many of them designated ‘Living National Treasures’ in Japan, a title conferred by the Japanese government on exemplary individuals who carry on Japanese traditions.
In other words, it [...]
Dutch Portraits at the National Gallery
20 July 2007 – 10:46 pm
I went to see Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals yesterday. It was pleasantly quiet; I guess the prospect of lots and lots of paintings of men in black suits with white ruffs and little pointy beards doesn’t produce a frisson of excitement in your average Londoner.
And from that point of view, [...]
Anthony Gormley at the Hayward
11 July 2007 – 2:48 pm
Last week I went to Blind Light, the Gormley show at the Hayward. Gormley must be the third most famous artist in Britain, I should think*, particularly on the back of two spectacular public works: Angel of the North and Another Place.
For those of you who don’t know his work—foreigners and the like—he has [...]
Self-Portraits from the Uffizi
30 May 2007 – 5:21 pm
The full title of this exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is Artists’ Self-Portraits from the Uffizi. But I don’t think it’s overly pedantic to point out that self-portraits are pretty much always by and of artists. The Uffizi has a collection of 1600 self-portraits, apparently; 50 of them are currently in Dulwich, arranged in [...]
‘Canaletto in England’ at Dulwich Picture Gallery
12 March 2007 – 11:31 am
I almost forgot to blog about the Canaletto exhibition at DPG which I went to on Friday. As the title suggests, it focusses on Canaletto’s time in England. I knew he’d painted a few paintings of London, but I was surprised to learn that he lived here for nine years.
Not surprisingly, the show has been [...]
Gilbert and George at Tate Modern
2 March 2007 – 5:08 pm
I went yesterday to see the big Gilbert and George retrospective at Tate Modern. The Tate have done their usual thorough job of putting the exhibition online, so that link will give you a fair idea of what the exhibition’s like.
I enjoyed it more than I expected. Not that I expected to hate it, but [...]