Opinion Archives

The Trouble With The Turner Prize – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Turner Prize continues to be in trouble. The competition has an aim: to single out the best new artists living and working in Britain

Billy Childish: The Timeless Present – Neugerriemschneider Berlin – Edward Lucie-Smith

Billy Childish has been around a long time. He is not only an artist but a poet and a composer of music.

Marcus Lyon: Human Atlas Explorations – Interview Revd Jonathan Evens

Marcus Lyon is an artist whose early work took him to the slums and ghettos of the developing world to explore issues surrounding street children and child labour.

Mary Wollstonecraft: A Lumpen Statue By Maggie Hambling – Sue Hubbard

It’s been quite a year for statues. Normally no more than street furniture that no one bothers to look at – old white men standing on plinths in all weathers extolling some arcane ‘victory’ of the Empire

Tracey Emin’s Last Hurrah? And Other Stuff – Edward Lucie-Smith

Just as the new lockdown was being announced, the Sunday Times (UK) was unusually full of stuff about contemporary art. The main colour supplement led with a piece about Tracey Emin

Black Art Matters – Paul Carter Robinson

This is long overdue, but under the worrying circumstances that have dominated the news in the past week, I feel it is essential to voice an opinion representing Artlyst.

Art And Faith A Time For Seeing – Revd Jonathan Evens

Edward Lucie-Smith has rightly wondered, as ‘the contemporary art world goes dark, and as galleries – official spaces and commercial ones – slam shut their doors,’ ‘what the art world will be like once all this is over.’ However, the immediate wondering is simply, what do we do now?

An Appreciation of the Life and Work of Susan Hiller – Sue Hubbard

On my way to Tate Modern in the rain, last night, I smiled, thinking just how much Susan Hiller would have liked that there was to be an evening there in her honour. Susan could be famously grumpy and the last time we had lunch together she spent much of it complaining that the Tate […]

Brancusi Sculpture Damaged: Should This Devalue The £18m Work

When someone attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta with a hammer in the 1970s, the sculpture was severely damaged. It was restored and put back on display at the Vatican. A few years later a paranoid schizophrenic slashed Rembrandt’s masterpiece ‘The Night Watch’ putting a gaping hole in the canvas with a bread knife, at the Rijksmuseum.

Sackler: A Family Divided – Dame Jillian Sackler Speaks Out

Dame Jillian Sackler, third wife of the late Arthur Sackler has defended her branch of the family’s philanthropic donations with a statement to the Washington Post, outlining that her side of the family has never participated in the manufacture of OxyContin or benefited from money generated by Purdue Pharma, which is wholly owned by the other side of the Sackler family.

Bill Viola And The Art Of Contemplation – Revd Jonathan Evens

In welcoming Bill Viola’s installations at St Paul’s Cathedral, Mark Oakley noted that: ‘Viola’s art slows down our perceptions in order to deepen them.’

Zombie Formalism: Ticking The Right Boxes Be Damned – Edward Lucie-Smith

I’ve been looking again at Georgina Adam’s recently published book, The Dark Side of the Boom (Lund Humphries). It ranges over a wide variety of contemporary art world topics and is quite largely concerned with recent art world misdeeds – that is, with the commercial rather than the official sector of art world activity, insofar as these can be fully separated from one another.

2018 A Melancholy Year For Art Exhibitions In Britain – Edward Lucie-Smith

It has been in many ways a somewhat melancholy year for art, here in Britain – or should I say: ‘here in London’? -since pretty well all the shows I will mention here took place in a capital city that seems to be drifting steadily away from the rest of Britain.

Has Frieze Become More About Instagram and Less About Art?

I’m what you could call a seasoned Frieze regular. I may have missed the first London fair but I was soon sucked into the great black hole of mega-international art fairs and beamed myself out beyond London to Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, not to mention the first Frieze in New York. Galleries […]

The Decline And Fall Of The Turner Prize – Edward Lucie-Smith

There can be no doubt that the Turner Prize is pretty much of a sick puppy right now.

Women Need More Recognition For Their Contribution To Visual Arts – Edward Lucie-Smith

Nobody, I think, could be keener than I am to see women obtain more recognition for their creative contribution to the visual arts.

Populist Matters: The Rise and Fall of London’s Museum Attendance – Edward Lucie-Smith

At a time when London’s big art museums are going all out to be populist, they also seem to be witnessing a fairly general fall in attendances.

Blue Chip Bling Art Features In New Las Vegas Gambling Palace

High value bluechip contemporary art displayed at alternative venues is usually something that excites us here at Artlyst; however,

Royal Academy Renewed: Integrating Culture With Daily Life – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Royal Academy’s radical extension of its premises including some splendid new exhibition spaces and an imposing new lecture-theatre excites me, but also generates some doubts and mixed feelings.

The Art Of Smug Turner Prize 2018 – Edward Lucie-Smith

This year’s list of finalists for the Turner Prize has just been announced. While the names on the shortlist are virtuously unfamiliar, the general artistic direction is not.

Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited – Revd Jonathan Evens

Overshadowed by iconic images from Picasso 1932 and Bacon/Freud two of the Tate’s current exhibitions feature powerfully expressive crucifixion images.

Stuckism Is Alive And Well And Living In Prague – Edward Lucie-Smith

I’m just back from a visit to Prague. I went there specifically to see an exhibition of new British painting organised by an organisation called ArtLines

David Bowie Statue Not Fitting A Man Who Loved Fine Art

The latest in a long line of examples is a new statue honouring the late artist David Bowie, unveiled over the weekend in Aylesbury.

Tate’s Big Faux-Pas: Picasso Exhibition Opens On International Women’s Day

Today (8th March) is International Women’s Day, it’s also the public opening of the new Picasso exhibition at Tate Modern. For those of you familiar with Picasso and his self-mythologized monster; you may need to read that sentence again.

Pablo Picasso: Genius Or Just Another Misogynistic Pig – Edward Lucie-Smith

With Pablo Picasso 1932 – Tate Modern’s major exhibition for the first half of this year – ready to open (March 8th), the drumbeats are already beginning.

Edward Lucie-Smith Bids A Final Farewell To The Avant-Garde

The contemporary art world seems an increasingly strange place to be.

Frank Gehry: Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris – An Architect’s Impression – Alex Murray

I had never experienced a Frank Gehry up-close. Never stood slack-jawed, gawping at the gymnastic splendours that the photographs in the glossies promise.

Sean Scully Indisputably The Most Universal Living Contemporary Artist- Edward Lucie-Smith

One name immediately sprang to mind – that of the born Irish, once British, now American painter Sean Scully.

Things I Hate About The British Art World Today – Edward Lucie-Smith

The British contemporary art world is apparently in a healthy state at the moment.

Elisabeth Murdoch Appointed To Arts Council England National Council – Should We Worry?

On 5th December, seven new appointments were quietly made to Arts Council England’s (ACE) National Council, its governing board. This included the controversial choice of Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Basquiat: Colour Blind Expressions Of A Society Unheard – The Barbican

Basquiat used what he knew was out there on the streets the injustices towards black people.

Matisse vs The Multi-Cultural Multi-Ethnic 21st Century Art World – Edward Lucie-Smith

I went to see the R.A.’s new Matisse show, but not at the press view, as I was abroad. I did go very shortly after it opened. Not unexpectedly, it was jammed with visitors, and I mean jammed. You had to dodge round backs to get a proper view of some of the smaller items, notably the drawings.