Remember the kid who climbed on the Donald Judd sculpture at the Tate Modern? Well, her parents have taken to the London Evening Standard to set the record straight. They want the world to know that their daughter, Sissi Belle, was only on the sculpture for a matter of seconds and meant no harm — and that the nine-year-old […]
The fashion-designer parents of a young girl who shocked art-lovers by climbing on a multi-million pound sculpture at Tate Modern today said their nine-year-old daughter was simply being “anti-establishment.” “It’s not right, but they were just interested. Their only crime was to be seduced by a ladder of jewel-coloured shelving. Sissi has always been anti-establishment […]
Bushwick gallerist Stephanie Theodore is at the Tate Modern today and spotted this hilarious/sad/incredible/unbelievable (so many mixed emotions) scene of parents allowing their child to use a Donald Judd sculpture as a … er … a bunk bed. In response to my question of whether she actually took this almost-hard-to-believe scene she responded: yes. I told […]
Silly, serious and a sensory delight. Work from the artist who won the Turner Prize turning the lights off and on. If you’re suffering from the January blues, hurry to the Southbank Centre where Martin Creed’s exhibition is bound to make you smile. The man best known for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 by […]
The Hayward’s Martin Creed show is more like a glorious tour of his mind. Adrian Searle has the time of his life squeezing through balloons, ducking a steel beam – and watching an endless erection. The variety of Creed’s work makes it hard to talk about touch, manner or voice. But they’re there all the […]
Grayson Perry, the Turner Prize winning artist has collected his CBE from Prince Charles in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Dressing as his alter-ego character Claire, Grayson wore a ‘Mother of the Bride’ midnight blue dress and jacket, heels, and an over-the-top Camilla style black hat complete with ostrich feathers. The Queen’s official spokesman commented; […]
Like seeing double: the Amsterdam and the National Gallery Sunflowers hang side by side for the first time in 65 years at London’s National Gallery. What would be the ultimate blockbuster exhibition? High up anyone’s list would surely be a show of the still lifes of sunflowers that Vincent Van Gogh painted in Provence between 1888 […]
When Creed opens a retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery on Wednesday it will be the latest chapter in one of contemporary art’s most glittering careers. It’s hard to believe he was once such a nobody that when this unknown artist sent Work No 88, A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball, to Nicholas […]
The artist Jonathan Monk makes work that casts an arch eye on art history, his fellow artists, and the transition of a work from the studio to the gallery to the collector’s wall or museum. In other words, his target is art and the entire artistic process, which he lampoons with wry humor and an unabashed use […]
At least two guiding spirits hover around To Leave a Light Impression, the new show by British artist Darren Almond at White Cube, Bermondsey. The most obvious is Charles Darwin, in whose footsteps Almond followed to make several of his images. The other is the lesser-known Scottish nature writer, Nan Shepherd, whose book, The Living Mountain, provides the […]
The Royal Academy in London is mounting a major a retrospective exhibition of the artist Anselm Kiefer who has made it his life’s work to confront the dark pre and post-war past of his native Germany, wrestling with its moral inheritances. Massive paintings, artist’s books, drawings, photographs, watercolours, sculptures and installations, will be presented by […]
“The National Gallery’s great advantage is that we are obliged to give prominence to works of art that are important in the collection but don’t mean much to people today,” he says cheerfully. Conceptual works by trendy names – notably installations by Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger alongside Titian in 2012 – have entered the […]
From the streets of Manhattan Alan Cumming whips through the history of Pop Art in America and Britain, from Andy Warhol’s soup cans to Peter Blake’s blue jeans.
The Chapmans not only are what they are, but they embody what they are to perfection. And just when you think you may have outgrown them yourself – like you might a lover whose jokes have grown wearisome, but really, it’s you, it’s you – they hijack your affections once more by being both brilliant and […]
The not-so-young British artists on provocation, prostitution and spicy soup Jake picks up a paper napkin. “The second that Martin Creed does that” – he crumples up the napkin – “then it’s worth £50,000 or whatever. The point is there has to be some sort of syndicative agreement that if he or she does it” […]
The critic of today’s art is ironically its biggest benefactor: Perry has taken a fifth-rate talent and made himself an old master. In the great game of contemporary art, Grayson Perry is a master. He has perfected the move that trumps all others: denouncing the art world from within. His Reith lectures, to be broadcast on Radio 4 […]
The bookmaker’s favourite to win is Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley whose piece Life Model features a larger than life naked male robot. Show-goers are encouraged to take part by drawing the model and their efforts are displayed around the gallery. Among the best known artists in the running for the £25,000 prize money is Berlin-based […]
Crotchless trousers, baths of excrement, John Cage, Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic … in the first of a series of exclusive films with the Tate, in which stars give potted histories of art movements, Frank Skinner opens up the wild world of performance art.
A work of art falls and breaks at the height of the London Art Fair. How did the piece still manage to get sold? This gallery girl has some confessions to make. Oh dear oh dear, when things get broken, do they ever get pieced back together the way they were? I like to think that broken objects gain personality: been there, […]
As two of the world’s most prominent collectors of contemporary art, Anita Zabludowicz and her husband,Poju, have amassed enough work over their four decades of collecting to fill not only their homes but also elegantly appointed public exhibition spaces in London and New York. However, the couple stands apart from the majority of the elite collector class […]