Tuesday, 16th September 2008
5:57pm
The press view at Tate Britain for its latest retrospective of Francis Bacon (the first was in 1960, the second in 1985) buzzed with a level of anticipation I’ve not often encountered. A self-taught painter, Bacon mutilated most of the work he produced between 1933-45 at the time, but once his work became known his popularity was quickly established, lasting throughout his life, and is, it seems, growing by the day.
Tate’s current retrospective is very much a ‘best of Bacon’, taking a chronological approach through a selection of 71 works, broken only by two thematic rooms that group...
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Friday, 12th September 2008
4:29pm
Met announces new Director:
After months of speculation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has named Thomas P. Campbell as the successor to outgoing Director Philippe de Montebello who announced his retirement eight months ago after 31 years in post. English-born Campbell, aged 46, is a graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and has been a curator at the Metropolitan since 1995 where he has developed a reputation for producing scholarly catalogues and ambitious exhibitions. Campbell will become the ninth director in the Met’s 138-year history.
Fakes alert:
The Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo has withdrawn three...
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Friday, 5th September 2008
5:10pm
2008 is the year of Andrea Palladio (above), born 500 years ago. The anniversary is being celebrated with a big exhibition in his home town, Vicenza, which opens at Palazzo Barbaran da Porto on 20 September (until 6 January) and then travels to the Royal Academy in London (31 January-31 April). There are plenty of good arguments for saying that Palladio – thanks to his 1570 book Quattro Libri dell’Architettura rather than his actual buildings – is the most influential architect of all time. Even Le Corbusier cannot quite rival him for the way that his understanding of the classical...
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Thursday, 4th September 2008
4:09pm
Now that summer is officially over and the Olympics hooplah seems like the dim and distant past, we can return to dwelling on religious imagery in contemporary art . Or at least that’s what appears to be currently happening in Essex, Newcastle, Bolzano and Rome.
Back in January, an offended citizen requested a police investigation into the display of Terence Koh’s statuette of Christ with an erection at the Baltic Centre, Gateshead. After receiving little satisfaction, Emily Mapfuwa from Brentwood, Essex, is bringing a private case against the gallery with the financial help of the Christian Legal Centre.
...
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Wednesday, 3rd September 2008
12:40pm
Two articles in yesterday’s press neatly demonstrated for me the two polar forces that characterise the art world. The first was a piece in The Telegraph by Richard Dorment highlighting the current show at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles about the Society of Dilettanti which contrasted with discussion in The Independent of Damien Hirst’s much debated September Sotheby’s auction in which the artist is staging the first single-artist sale consigned by the artist himself.
Hirst’s antics have got the art world and media a flutter. By dispensing with the dealers and art galleries that represent him (Jay Joplin at...
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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.
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