At the moment there is an undeclared contest going on, both within the British art world and also, on a much larger scale, in the international sphere. This contest takes several inter-related forms. For example, there is the competition between official and semi-official galleries and commercial ones.
The debate about the continuing use of the term ‘Old Master’ has been re-energised by exhibitions shortly to open or reopen, such as ‘Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company’ at the Wallace Collection and ‘Women Modern Masters’ at The Scottish Gallery.
As a sculptor who has used Victorian and other found sculptures in my work for some time, the increasingly heated debate on the future of public Victorian statues, buildings and street names across the country has resonated with me.
11 June 2020
Sotheby’s announced this week that a small, delicate Rembrandt self-portrait is to be auctioned on July 28th, here in London. The painting is unusually intimate, (about 17 x 22cm) and was painted in 1632 when the artist was 26 years old.
Tate Modern is easily the most popular gallery of modern art in the world… For a location that consists mostly of open spaces, lightly sprinkled with the odd moment of art, that is some achievemen
13 April 2020
Who would have thought early February when Art Basel Hong Kong was cancelled that the coronavirus crisis was going to spread like lighting to everywhere else on the planet
As the contemporary art world goes dark, and as galleries – official spaces and commercial ones – slam shut their doors, one inevitably starts to wonder what the art world will be like once all this is over—the British art world, and also the global one.
First, the Louvre in Paris closed. Then the galleries in London started to shut their doors, one by one, like the “lamps going out all over Europe” as the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey remarked on the eve of the First World War, adding “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
Penny Macbeth has been appointed as the new director of the Glasgow School of Art. Following a tumultuous week of uncertainty, as reported by Clare Henry on Artlyst, the institution has been in flux needing a pair of safe hands to sort it out.
Today’s terrible news, a local Glasgow council is closing Mackintosh’s iconic Scotland Street School Museum. I despair. Soon there will be nothing Mackintosh left in Glasgow. Ironically the city needs Mackintosh as a focal point for culture and tourism. Glasgow’s love affair with Mackintosh is far from over.
There have been few iconic institutions more beloved that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art.
On Monday, January 13 the Times (London) published a chirpy article by Ben Luke promising wonders to come in London’s official galleries during the coming year. I have to say that the prospects he offered didn’t look so wonderful to me – that is to say where contemporary art is concerned.
A New Year, a new decade – I’ve been thinking about all the things I currently don’t like about the contemporary art scene here in Britain. Most of all, I don’t like its pervasive self-righteousness, the ever-increasing assumption that ‘official art’ has all the answers.
In 1987, in a eulogy given at a Memorial Mass for Andy Warhol, the art historian John Richardson revealed the extent of Warhol’s Catholic devotion and faith. Richardson shared with the congregation of 2,000 at New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral that Warhol had attended Mass several times a week at the St. Vincent Ferrer parish, […]
Art has incredible power. It is a force for cultural reflection, social change and an invaluable medium through which we challenge existing assumptions, broaden our outlook and catalyse change.
8 November 2019
The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize has come round once again, just as the announcement went out that the NPG will very soon close its doors for a much-needed update, and won’t be accessible again for three years. It’s hard to be entirely regretful about the hiatus.
Recently the Guardian newspaper here in Britain offered yet another of those ‘best of’ lists to which both the print press and websites of various kinds are now addicted. In this case, what it listed was ‘the best art of the 21st century’.
I have always had ambiguous feelings about the annual Masterpiece London fine art and antiques fair, now under the umbrella of the Art Basel Group.
Just recently Tate Modern was named as Britain’s most popular tourist attraction: 5.9 visitors went to the gallery last year. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it – that is till you do a bit more research.
In the aftermath of sentencing the exiled Russian artist Petr (AKA Pyotr) Pavlensky on Thursday, I ask myself why is he doing this? Is it for art? Or should we categorise him as an attention-seeking spoilt brat? Pavlensky was on trial for setting fire to the facade of a French central bank building, a performance […]