3:42pm
Yesterday’s was a rare fine summery evening and a pleasant one to walk through the courtyard of Somerset House, home of the Courtauld Collection. I told Nicola, my drinks companion earlier in the day that I was going along to visit ‘The Courtauld Cézannes’. She was not particularly impressed and rolled her eyes sighing, ‘All those wretched oranges’. (I think she was subjected to a roomful of still lifes at a mid-90s Cézanne retrospective somewhere.) It’s safe to say she’s not a fan. Last night, however, I found that I was.
In the upstairs galleries were the exhilarating blues...
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Wednesday, 25th June 2008
4:37pm
Exhibitions about clothing and fashion provide critics with one mighty visual-arts axe to grind. Pull out the frocks and museums are immediately subject to charges of dumbing down. The public, however, love ’em. The Victoria and Albert Museum is currently showing ‘The Story of The Supremes from the Mary Wilson Collection’ of dresses worn by the Motown trio and last year’s exhibition of Aussie pop chanteuse Kylie Minogue was a tremendous sell-out show but, like its predecessors – including a Vivienne Westwood retrospective attracting the likes of Kate Moss and Sadie Frost – was subject to sneers.
Although...
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11:57am
It was announced yesterday that installations by Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare are the next projects to grace the fourth plinth, replacing Thomas Schutte’s neon coloured Model for a Hotel 2007. Gormley’s proposal, entitled One and Other, will see the plinth occupied by members of the public for one hour at a time over 100 consecutive days, enabling some 2,400 volunteers to participate. This human installation will be followed by Shonibare’s scale replica of Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, with sails made from African textiles bought in London's Brixton market. The model ship will sit inside a giant glass bottle, gleaming...
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5:23pm
A quietly pleasing intervention occurred on my journey to work this morning, courtesy of London Transport’s Art on the Underground scheme that has commissioned new works by Anna Barriball, on display this week around the tube network. For nestled among the array of glossy but uninspiring adverts for Magnum ice cream and the latest crime novel, is Barriball’s series of posters, wryly entitled – given the context – About 60 miles of beautiful views.
The posters consist of short phrases found by the artist on the back of photographs in a discarded album in a junk shop, presented in...
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5:12pm
Nothing announces the arrival of the British summer better than the Royal Academy's annual summer exhibition. Now in its 240th year, the exhibition opened its doors last week, offering us the opportunity to view the spectrum of established, emerging and unknown artists.
We would like you to send us your reviews of the show, in no more than 250 words, and we will publish the best reviews online in 'Muse'. So tell us what you think about the room that Tracy Emin has curated – she has said that she set out to provoke visitors but has she suceeded?...
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6:18pm
A recent article in the Art Newspaper in the wake of Art Basel reported on the growing trend of private collectors buying with the intent of establishing their own museums. Among the examples are film director Claude Berri who has recently opened a space in Paris for his contemporary art collection; Christian Boros who this month opened a Berlin gallery; and industrial heir Udo Brandhurst who is due to open a museum later this year in Munich.
While the growing wave of collectors setting up public spaces is undoubtedly good news for dealers and artists seeking prestigious exposure, I...
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12:52pm
The new regime is getting into its stride at the National Gallery, London. On Tuesday, the director, Nicholas Penny, unveiled to the media plans for the gallery’s big autumn exhibition, ‘Renaissance Faces’, which opens on 15 October. It seems to have everything going for it – a popular subject with good academic credentials, starry loans, a partnership with another major museum, the Prado, and – importantly – sponsorship from a big player, Axa insurance. Since disputes about exhibitions that were under-performing in terms of visitor numbers are rumoured to have undermined the relationship between the last director, Charles Saumarez Smith,...
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4:57pm
Yesterday evening a sale exhibition of William Blake prints and books opened at antiquarian booksellers Henry Sotheran Limited in Sackville Street, London, where there was Pimms and strawberries despite the very unseasonal weather outside. Among the items was a very rare etching from the ‘Songs of Innocence; an original pencil drawing of Paulo and Francesca from Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’; and a complete set of prints from ‘The Book of Job’, described in the catalogue as ‘Blake’s major single achievement as a printmaker after the illuminated manuscripts’. A three-feet-long etching, engraving and drypoint of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims is a captivating sight...
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5:33pm
In an earlier blog (Building a Legacy) I commented that architecture was a shared theme in the London and Rome mayoral elections. And just as Rome’s Mayor Gianni Alemanno conceded after his election that his pledge to tear down the Ara Pacis Museum was not a top priority, so has London’s new mayor done a U-turn on his proposal to replace the Fourth Plinth with a permanent statue of Sir Keith Park. In a letter read out to parliament, Johnson cited ‘planning issues’ and the site’s ongoing commitment to contemporary art as obstacles to the proposed memorial of the Battle...
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Moma's show on the impact of new media in the 1960s and 1970s recalls an idealistic age, before art aspired to control its audience.
The 500th anniversary of Palladio's birth is rightly being celebrated, but his influence on architects has in many ways been pernicious.
The National Galleries in Edinburgh and London and the National Trust have formidable fund-raising tasks in hand, but the targets would be even higher were it not for Britain's tax laws – which could be about to get better.
