Kazimir Malevich at Tate Modern – Video
Rosie Rockel introduces Tate Modern’s dazzling new exhibition, which charts the career of the radical Russian artist. Watch the Video on YouTube.
Tag Archives: London
Inside artist Louise Bourgeois’ New York home
Untouched since the day she died, Louise Bourgeois’ New York home-cum-studio offers an intimate portrait of the artist. At 13ft wide, the townhouse in New York that was both home and studio to Louise Bourgeois is almost as tiny as the artist herself. It was here, on the site of an old apple orchard, half […]
Why Germany would win the World Cup of modern art too
Beuys, Richter, Kiefer, Polke, Ernst … such a formidable lineup shows up British contemporary artists for the commercial, over-hyped and celebrity focused lightweights that they are. Germany has proved its global footballing eminence by winning the 2014 World Cup, yet soccer is just one of many things Germans excel at. There’s also art. What is the […]
Damien Hirst Blocks Sale of Early Spot Painting
An early Damien Hirst painting titled Bombay Mix has become the source of controversy London, reports the BBC. The artist is blocking the sale of the piece, claiming that his company, Science Ltd, still holds the certificate for the spot painting, which was painted directly on the wallpaper of a London house in 1988, and is therefore the piece’s […]
10 of Art History’s Most Important (and Now Defunct) Galleries
As a business model, the art gallery occupies a unique position. Functioning as the bridge between art’s existence as a commercial enterprise and its role as a philosophical pursuit, a gallery, unlike other businesses, has a measure of success that is completely divorced from its financial earnings: by championing important artists, and putting on daring […]
Use your imagineering: Ryan Gander’s art world of pranks and puzzles
Eyes in the wall, coins glued to the floor: Gander’s new show at Manchester Art Gallery is full of spoof and childish wonder – he’s having a laugh, but is it at our expense? The eyes swivel and follow me round the room, blinking with an echoing clack! Insouciant eyebrows are raised then furrow with […]
Franz West review – his sculptures look like they’ve wandered in, up to no good
Showing the Austrian maverick at the temple to Britain’s greatest female sculptor reveals what a complex and joyous artist he was. If you stand among Barbara Hepworth‘s carved and rounded plaster and wood shapes at the Hepworth in Wakefield for long enough, you feel that time will wear a hole right through you. Hepworth’s art seemed to aim […]
‘Chelsea’s Not Going Anywhere’: Alex Logsdail Talks Lisson’s Upcoming New York Gallery
There may not be many Americans at Art Basel compared to the droves of Europeans, but this morning, the buzz here briefly centered around New York City when Lisson Galleryannounced plans to open a brand spanking new 8,500-square-foot space in Chelsea, constructed under and around the High Line. Nearly 50 years after Nicholas Logsdail opened Lisson’s […]
The great art fair scramble
Moving the opening of the Venice Biennale to May has set the cat among the pigeons. When it was announced that the Venice Biennale was shifting the date for the opening of its 2015 edition to 9 May (with previews from 6 to 8 May), it sent the whole art market into a frenzy. The […]
Hallelujah! Why Bill Viola’s Martyrs altarpiece at St Paul’s is to die for
Forget the bloody martyrdoms and hot pincers … Viola’s glorious new video installation is a hi-tech Caravaggio that redefines religious art. Bill Viola has created a powerful modern altarpiece for St Paul’s Cathedral that perfectly suits the restrained spirituality of this most English of churches. Coming into Christopher Wren’s great building on a weekday morning when crowded buses […]
Ai Weiwei: UK Galleries Play Host To Important New Summer Exhibitions
Two exhibitions of new work by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei have opened in the UK. The first at a public art gallery in Yorkshire (Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is his first in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in 2010. iron tree, 2013 is a majestic six-metre high sculpture […]
Three current Ai Weiwei exhibitions display his wit and courage
Yorkshire Sculpture Park has a strange new tree. Solid yet graceful, inspired by the street vendors of Jingdezhen in southern China, who sell wood for its beauty, “Iron Tree” (2013) is a collection of fragments held together with bolts. It seems to have been in the wars, this tree, much like its maker Ai Weiwei. […]
What Makes an Art Capital?
How do Dubai, Istanbul, or Hong Kong differ from the “traditional” hubs of London and New York? How can artistic activity and its economic corollaries be encouraged? Such were the questions put to a panel chaired by the indefatigable art market expert Georgina Adam at Christie’s London on May 27. Art Dubai director Savita Apte, art critic […]
Contemporary art isn’t original – even copying has been done before
The row around Marina Abramović is redundant, as the story of art is one of homages and remakes. But that’s not to say there isn’t a problem. “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” said Pablo Picasso. Or at least he gets the credit for saying it. Perhaps he pinched the words from Oscar Wilde. For there […]
Art star Marina Abramović caught up in row over ‘Nothing’
A group of curators and art historians have argued that the Serbian artist’s latest performance piece, due to open at London’s Serpentine Gallery on 11 June, fails to acknowledge the influence of another artist’s earlier work. A prestigious group of curators and art historians have written to the gallery questioning why Abramović’s latest performance piece […]
Shardenfreude: London’s copycat craze is crystal clear
The Shard has spawned a host of angular glassy lumps across the capital. But is this new crystal city full of Shardettes a welcome change? When Renzo Piano casually described his design for London Bridge Tower in a press conference as “a shard … a shard of crystal,” he must have had little idea what […]
Tracey Emin’s My Bed is up for sale at what may be a dream price to some
The furore around the work, complete with vodka bottles and pregnancy tests, helped to give lift-off to Emin’s career. Few pieces of art have divided opinion quite like My Bed – in whichTracey Emin claimed to have spent a week after a bad break-up. Complete with vodka bottles, cigarette butts and pregnancy tests, the installation didn’t […]
Ai Weiwei, Lisson Gallery
Ai Weiwei’s activism and his 2011 detention by the Chinese state have made him one of the world’s best-known artists but can you picture his work? Google him, and his portrait, not his art, dominates the images that appear. This is a useful reminder that he’s a top conceptual artist, with a knack for finding […]
Edge of the Seat: The Artist’s Chair
From the suggestive to the precarious, a new exhibition casts the humble chair in a new light, writes Louisa Buck. Q: When is a chair more than just a chair? A: When it is an artist’s chair. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that sculpture can be experienced as much by the body as in […]
The top 10 artworks of the 20th century
From Picasso’s formidable whores and Magritte’s provocative pipe to Pollock painting like and angel, the best 20th-centrury art reflects a world of flux, abstraction and imagination. The century was not yet out of its teens. For most of the small minority aware of the experiments of modern art, the bright colours of Matisse were still […]