sculpture
Year Out/Year In: Art's Giants in Close-UpMonday, 03 January 2011
Last year gave us three giants of Post-Impressionism. The Royal Academy promised to unveil the real Van Gogh by showing us the man of letters; Tate Modern delivered a sumptuous survey of Gauguin; and a significantly smaller but nonetheless... Read more... |
Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders, BBC Two/ The Art of Germany, BBC FourTuesday, 30 November 2010
There is probably only one thing that Ann Widdecombe and I have ever agreed upon: we both think it might be a really good idea to stick William Wilberforce on the Fourth Plinth. Why not? It’s nice to have contemporary art in Trafalgar Square, of... Read more... |
Trisha Brown Dance Company, Tate Modern & Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 20 October 2010
A snaky conga of women in white pantsuits snuggling their loins together in a Spanish dance, and wiggling their way along a wall behind a Joseph Beuys installation may well be one of the indelible sights of my dance year. Mine, and that of only a... Read more... |
Film: Over Your Cities Grass Will GrowFriday, 15 October 2010
Action-movie season ain't over quite yet, folks. Sure. OK. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow isn't exactly your conventional salute to Armageddon. No guns, no baddies, no hot babes, no long-haired hunks. The pace is slow. The dialogue's pretty non-... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Monte Carlo: Nouveau Musée Nationale de MonacoSunday, 26 September 2010
Famous for its fast cars, casino, and stashing away Sir Philip Green’s gazillions, the principality of Monaco certainly isn’t a destination short on bling, nor a sense of faded, somewhat seedy glamour. So it probably isn’t high on anyone’s list for... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Pordenone Montanari, An Italian DiscoverySunday, 26 September 2010
Our culture is hungry for stories of buried treasure, for the lost archive. So when something of startling value is brought blinking into the light after many years, it answers a romantic urge. Of course it doesn’t happen much any more, not in a... Read more... |
Herb Alpert, Tijuana Brass and Other Delights, BBC FourFriday, 17 September 2010
I used to have a childhood fascination with the music of Herb Alpert, because I liked the tunes and always felt there was a hint of melancholy behind Herb’s breezy, nonchalant exterior. Everybody else found Alpert laughably cheesy, but happily,... Read more... |
Rachel Whiteread: Drawings, Tate Britain & Gagosian GalleryThursday, 16 September 2010
Rachel Whiteread is best known for her exploration of space, of presence and absence, of how we look at what is present – and absent – in the textures of our lives. House, her life-sized cast of a house in a derelict street in East London, first... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Fourth Plinth CommissionFriday, 20 August 2010
A playful, subversive mood dominates the shortlist for Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth. Most of the six proposals, in what is a very strong shortlist, play on notions of British identity, probing themes of heroism, heritage and conquest. The models... Read more... |
Antony Gormley: Test Sites, White CubeFriday, 04 June 2010
Many people use that weaselly phrase about Antony Gormley, saying he “divides the critics”. For the most part this is not true: for the most part the critics loathe Gormley’s work. They suggest he is either a bad figurative sculptor masquerading as... Read more... |
Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi GalleryWednesday, 02 June 2010
These days, it seems that approaching any new Saatchi exhibition, especially one that promises to be even bigger than all the previous ones held at the multi-galleried, three-storey Chelsea venue, makes the heart fairly sink. How much bigger, you... Read more... |
David Nash, Yorkshire Sculpture ParkSaturday, 29 May 2010
Wood is a mysterious substance. We do not make it, it makes itself. It is useful to us, alive and dead. Without it, our history would not be the same. But it is so ever-present, so much a part of that history, that we rarely see the wood... Read more... |
