2:16pm
The Rape of Africa, an exhibition of works by David LaChapelle (at Robilant+Voena, 27 April–23 June) has divided critics over how successfully the photographer has made the transition from fashion and celebrity pictures to fine art.
His new show is the London debut of LaChapelle as the ‘artist’, but his pictures still maintain the kitsch and gaudy, yet delectably captivating, visual style. Scenes of exploitation are meant to satirise the powerful – from the Pope sitting atop a mound of jewels and naked men (Thy Kingdom Come), to the titular The Rape of Africa featuring Naomi Campbell dressed as...
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1:22pm
On entering the exhibition dedicated (a little too late) to these two prominent female sculptors, almost tripping over Baghramian’s Türstopper (Door Stopper) is a good introduction. Though both artists work with seemingly contradictory materials and colour and have evidently opposing creative processes – one throws paint on crates and polystyrene whilst the other uses moulds and meticulously polished aluminium – their concern for carving up space and creating challenging new dialogues with rearrangements of art works seems something at the heart of both their practice.
Nairy Baghramian is an Iranian, Berlin based artist whose work sits on the...
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4:58pm
The 2010 edition of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) got off to a flying and elegant start on preview day, 11 March, with an impressive concentration of Hermès handbags and Chanel suits per square mile.
The private view was attended by a record 10,500 people, and saw some key sales being made. Sculpture specialists Robert Bowman Gallery sold a white marble and bronze bust of Othello by Pietro Calvi to a private collector – who intends it for display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington – for a six-figure sum, while Ben Janssens Oriental Art sold more than...
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Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
7:02pm
If you can find the time for a day or so in Budapest before February 14, make the reservation now. For the city’s Fine Arts Museum - the Szepmuveszeti Muzeum - has organised and staged a huge and unmissable international loan show of Italian Renaissance art, 'Botticelli to Titian: Two Centuries of Italian Masterpieces'. Loans have come from the great museums of the world to supplement the by no means unimpressive home team, but it is those that have been drawn from little-known or little-visited institutions in eastern Europe that prove the irresistible lure to foreign visitors.
In pride of...
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Friday, 11th December 2009
4:02pm
1. Richard Wright wins 2009 Turner Prize:
Glasgow-based painter Richard Wright, 49, was announced the winner of the 2009 Turner Prize on Monday (pictured above). The artist used the painstaking techniques of Renaissance fresco-makers to make his gold-leaf fresco for the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain in London. In keeping with Wright’s insistence that his works be destroyed after being exhibited, his latest fresco will be painted over when the show closes on 3 January 2010. Judges described Wright’s paintings as rooted in the fine art tradition yet ‘radically conceptual in impact.’ Wright beat the three other finalists,...
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A recent exhibition in Nottingham showcases contemporary artists' exploration of the Communist-era space race.
Cast aside by Modernists for much of the 20th century, Classicism
has a comeback of sorts, with an excellent new book reappraising
architecture partnerships and a recent exhibition at one of the very
institutions that so derided the style.
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