Plaster Casters: Victoria & Albert Museum Cast Courts Reopen – Edward Lucie-Smith
The full re-opening of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Cast Courts occurs at an apposite moment.
12 December 2018
Reviews
Richard Long: The Tide is High – Edward Lucie-Smith
There can be no doubt that Richard Long is one of the giants of British art. Or so a very impressive curriculum vitae would lead one to suppose. He is now in his early 70s. He made his reputation almost half-a-century ago, as what was then called a Land Artist
10 December 2018
Tomas Saraceno: On Air – Palais de Tokyo Paris – Virginie Puertolas-Syn
Tomas Saraceno “On Air” an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo is definitely one of the most extraordinary exhibitions I have ever seen. A once in a lifetime experience not to be missed if you are in Paris.
6 December 2018
Chiharu Shiota: Immersive Elegant Scarlet Threads – Blain|Southern – Edward Lucie-Smith
Today London’s official art world is full of enthusiasm for so-called ‘minority art’, made by artists of guaranteed ‘minority origin’. On the whole, however, the artists so defined and officially promoted don’t come from Asia.
4 December 2018
Iain Baxter& &Information – Hales Gallery – Jude Cowan Montague
That famous aphorism ‘the medium is the message’ was spouted by Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian professor, philosopher and public intellectual back 1964, when his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, set the stage for my current train journey where I overhear the students discussing their A levels.
2 December 2018
Five Academicians: Glasgow Print Studio – Clare Henry
You have to be reasonably senior to be an Academician of any sort. Put five together? The result is an exciting and extremely varied show.
2 December 2018
Fernand Léger A Mechanical Visual Language – Tate Liverpool – Alice Lenkiewicz
It was captivating to see the Fernand Léger exhibition (until 17 March 2019) at Tate Liverpool.
29 November 2018
Robert Rauschenberg Light-Hearted Works With Serious Meaning – Edward Lucie-Smith
The Robert Rauschenberg show Spreads: 1975-83 just opened at Thaddaeus Ropac here in London comes complete with a museum-worthy hardcover catalogue, and is indeed, though this is a commercial space, the kind of exhibition that any museum specialising in contemporary art might be proud to put on.
28 November 2018
Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2018 Round-Up – Jude Cowan Montague
It was a personal pleasure to visit this fair, now in its third year. The ambitious project has taken over the huge warehouse scale structure at Woolwich.
26 November 2018
Gordon Matta Clark: The Chaos Of The 1970s – Edward Lucie-Smith
Gordon Matta Clark died quite some time ago now – in August 1978. And he died quite young, aged only 35. However, like a number of artists from about the same epoch
26 November 2018
Paris Photo 2018 Round-Up – Zoltan Alexander
ParisPhoto, the biggest photo fair in Europe held each November at the Grand Palais, returned with its 22nd edition, attracting nearly 70.000 visitors in four days and gathering more than 200 exhibitors from all around the world, offering an unparalleled presentation of contemporary and vintage photography from grandmasters to emerging young talents.
22 November 2018
Paul Lock: You Simply Are – Review Noho Showrooms – Simon Tarrant
Gauguin once reportedly exclaimed of self-taught artist Henri Rousseau’s self-portrait, “There is the truth and future! There is painting!”
19 November 2018
Hilma af Klint: Paintings For The Future – Guggenheim Museum NY – Ilka Scobie
Hilma af Klint’s abstract paintings first dazzled me when I encountered her work in the 2013 Venice Bienalle.
18 November 2018
Perdita Sinclair An Impressive Visual Interpretation Of Micro-science – Jude Cowan Montague
Angiosperms (roughly flowering plants) produce an incredible variety of seeds that are dispersed in creative, innovative ways, sometimes involving tricksy relationships with particular animals.
15 November 2018
Alex Katz And Richard Smith Two Current London Exhibitions – Edward Lucie-Smith
Despite its title, Coca-Cola Girls, Alex Katz’s new show at Timothy Taylor doesn’t really belong in the realm of Pop Art. It does, however, have something in common with the concurrent Richard Smith show at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert.
14 November 2018
Ashurbanipal – Assyrian King of the World – British Museum – Edward Lucie-Smith
Ashurbanipal
12 November 2018
Mantegna and Bellini In Presence of the Triumphs – National Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith
This exhibition at the National Gallery is a landmark event. It brings together a rich selection of paintings, and some drawings, by two of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance.
11 November 2018
Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery – Revd Jonathan Evens
‘Life-destroyer’, ‘get lost’, ‘monkeys’, ‘in bad faith’, ‘malediction’, ‘concealed dungeon’, ‘poison head’, ‘parasite’, ‘disenchantment’, ‘lechery’. The titles of Peter Howson’s latest work, in translation from often Latin or Anglo-Saxon words or phrases, give a graphic sense of the content.
10 November 2018
Bradley, Burden, Fischer and Pascali Four London Shows – Edward Lucie-Smith
Here, lumped together for the sake of convenience in an overcrowded Autumn season, are four London galleries.
7 November 2018
Lorenzo Lotto Metaphors Through Gestures And Symbols – Edward Lucie-Smith
Tucked away in a group of spaces on the gloomy ground floor of the National Gallery is a superb exhibition that seems likely to attract less attention than it should in fact get.
6 November 2018
Modern Couples Shaped By The Society Of Their Time – Barbican – Edward Lucie-Smith
The Modern Couples show currently at the Barbican has eyes slightly too big for its own – or at any rate for my stomach. Nevertheless, it is, in the present climate for the visual arts, an event that is both timely and important.
5 November 2018
EMPIRE 2 Project Moves To Paris – Jude Cowan Montague
As one of the participants in the globe-trotting EMPIRE 2 project, exhibiting the moving image on a world tour, I came to Paris for the project’s opening at Le100Ecs, an artist centre at 100 Rue de Charenton.
4 November 2018
Camille Henrot: Scientific History And Creation Story Mash Up – Revd Jonathan Evens
Twenty-one video and film installations, 11 hours plus of imagery created by today’s most radical image makers and at the beginning is an installation that takes us back to the beginning by mixing scientific history with Creation stories belonging to religious (Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc.), hermetic (Kabbalah, Freemasonry, etc.), and oral (Dogon, Inuit, Navajo, etc.) traditions.
4 November 2018
Ann Grim: Carving Positive Messages Into The Dark – Jude Cowan Montague
Arriving at Montparnasse, I don’t at first see any sign of the Gallery Granville. With its modest frontage, it’s located just off-road in a modern shopping centre.
1 November 2018
Klimt And Schiele: Naked Social Disruption – Royal Academy – Edward Lucie-Smith
The R.A.’s show of drawings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, almost all of them loaned by the Albertina Museum in Vienna, arrives at a crucial moment in the long history of visual art.
31 October 2018
African American Art vs Art From Africa In London – Edward Lucie-Smith
As is becoming more and more apparent, contemporary art in the United States is becoming increasingly regionalised. Which is to say, identified with one geographical location: California North or South, Louisiana, New Mexico, Seattle – rather than being an expression of American culture as a whole.
30 October 2018
Taylor Wessing Photo Prize 2018 Identity Politics And Culture War – Edward Lucie-Smith
Looking around the NPG’s new Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, I was immediately reminded of the fact that we are right in the middle of a culture war.
29 October 2018
Raqs Media Collective – Caio Locke And Rammellzee Three Reviews – Edward Lucie-Smith
Just as I had begun to despair of the future of video, or of video + installation, as mediums for genuinely convincing contemporary art, two major examples arrived to change my mind. One was the video by the Maori artist Lisa Reihana that forms part of the Oceania exhibition at the Royal Academy.
28 October 2018
William Hunter: Anatomy of the Modern Museum – Clare Henry
Celebrating the tercentenary of Glasgow University Hunterian founder, Dr. William Hunter obviously calls for a significant exhibition. This impressive memorable display, immaculately presented, is organised by the Hunterian Art Gallery in collaboration with Yale’s Centre for British Art where it travels next Spring.
27 October 2018
Alternative Miss World: Logan’s Long Running Peace & Love Happening
The Alternative Miss World Pageant which took place at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Saturday night was a triumph of artistic anarchy.
21 October 2018
Bruegel The Painter Who Painted Things That Couldn’t Be Painted
Few painters have fascinated and enthralled over the centuries as much as Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30‒1569) Now, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has unveiled the most comprehensive exhibition of this 16th-century Netherlandish painter ever compiled.
7 October 2018
Gauguin And Laval In Martinique: Building Paradise With Savagery – Paul Black
Artlyst recently visited the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, which is currently presenting Gauguin and Laval in Martinique
6 October 2018