Thursday, 8th September 2011
10:41am
If I said to you that a 50-minute film largely made up of grainy monochrome footage of miners and mining was one of this year’s supreme cultural experiences you might have your doubts. In which case let me try to allay them. A first-time collaboration between the renowned American filmmaker Bill Morrison and the acclaimed Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Miners’ Hymns is a transporting and unashamedly lyrical portal onto Britain’s industrial past, and a requiem for the proud and resourceful communities that owed their existence to the raw materials beneath their feet. Morrison and Jóhannsson both have...
Continue reading...
ShareThis |
Permalink |
Comment
1:08pm
At the age of 88, Lucian Freud died on 20 July 2011. It was a sad day marked by many, including his friend, the art critic Martyn Gayford, who gave an intimate recollection of Freud in the Daily Telegraph. He recounts Freud’s musings on mortality and his career: 'I’m not frightened in the slightest of death; I’ve had a lovely time.' Grandson of Sigmund Freud, Lucian Freud was born on 8 December 1922. He moved to Britain in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism, where he gained citizenship in 1939. Freud trained at Central School of Art (now...
Continue reading...
ShareThis |
Permalink |
Comment
2:56pm
The Serpentine’s new exhibition, ‘The Mirror of Judgement’, is an anti-climax. Pistoletto is an important artist for several reasons; he is a founding member of the Arte Povera movement, winner of the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2003) and has played an intrinsic part in the development of conceptual art. In his youth, Pistoletto made a name for himself by encouraging collaboration, audience participation and an interdisciplinary approach – he has initiated workshops and foundations for the study and promotion of creativity of all kinds. However, ‘The Mirror of Judgement’ does little to affirm this...
Continue reading...
ShareThis |
Permalink |
Comment
11:45am
The American artist, Cy Twombly, died recently on 5 July 2011. This came at a poignant time in the artist’s career, when an important and comparative show of his works with that of 17th-century painter, Nicolas Poussin, ‘Arcadian Painters’, opened at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. The exhibition celebrates works by Twombly influenced by Poussin, his favourite old master, whose works are hung alongside his for the show. Twombly said, ‘I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time’. It is therefore a timely loss to the art world that Twombly died at an age...
Continue reading...
ShareThis |
Permalink |
Comment
4:30pm
Visitors today are making the most of the excellent weather with ice creams in hand, whilst taking in the many delights on offer here at Masterpiece, supported by Apollo. Two exhibits specialising in photography stand out. Hamiltons Gallery, who won this year’s ‘Stand of the Year’, are showing a very attractive Richard Avedon photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which is in prize position on the front of their stand and continues to stop visitors in their tracks. Caught in a fleetingly vulnerable moment, American Marilyn Monroe, New York City (1957), is a large gelatin silver print on offer in the...
Continue reading...
ShareThis |
Permalink |
Comment
Now in its 30th year, the London Park Lane Arms Fair returns with its annual array of fine arms and armoury. Elsewhere in the capital, impressive surveys of Freud, Hirst and mid-century British art can be found.
George Gilbert Scott described the dome as ‘the noblest of all forms’, and it appears as a powerful symbol in secular and religious architecture throughout history. On the island of Malta, however, the craze for dome-building reached astonishing heights.
Previous
