In 1997, the Russian Academy of Sciences gave the names Hermitage 4758 and Piotrovsky 4869 to two small planets discovered 500 million kilometres from earth. The signal honour paid to the State Hermitage Museum and Boris and Mikhail Piotrovsky— its dynastic succession of directors — heralded a new era of post-Soviet expansionism for the former
Christopher Wood (1901–30), billed as the great white hope of British Modernism, who perished by his own hand before his full potential could be explored. Friend of Ben Nicholson, with whom he supposedly ‘discovered’ the naïve painter Alfred Wallis in 1928, he was a Europeanised sophisticate who knew Picasso and Cocteau and dabbled in Cubism
In 1929 the founder of Italian Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, reported from Milan that, after a wartime setback, the movement was ‘in full working order’ under the leadership of ‘the very young and very ingenious Bruno Munari’. Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was 22 at the time. He had arrived in Milan two years earlier as a
The Holburne Museum of Bath is a delight. Its collections were formed by Sir William Holburne (1793–1874), a naval officer who first saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar at the age of 12 and retired to Bath in 1820 to dedicate his celibate life — he shared his house with his three sisters —
Does the costume make the man or the man the costume? Well, a little bit of both if the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the V&A is to be believed. Five years in the making, this collection of more than 100 of the most iconic outfits in movie history, from Scarlett O’Hara’s green ‘curtain’ gown to
There are only eight single paintings in the current show of early work by Gillian Ayres (born 1930) — eight paintings and the four panels of a mural created for the dining room of Hampstead High School for Girls. The mural is over seven feet high and 27 feet wide, and its scale and achievement
The primary experience of looking at painting is the crucial encounter between a painted surface and the human eye. Nothing is quite like it, and this unique experience cannot be replaced or replicated by looking at a painting in printed reproduction or on a computer screen. This may be a truism but it is worth
Every so often, about once a decade, the work of Mark Gertler (1891–1939) is rediscovered and exhibited. I remember seeing excellent shows of his work at the Ben Uri Art Gallery in 1982 and in 2002, and at Camden Arts Centre in 1992. Each time a well-selected body of his paintings is gathered together, we
If you want to see how myths arise from misunderstandings, the Tower of Babel provides a textbook example. In ancient Assyrian babilu means ‘door of God’ and thus correctly describes the Babylonian ziggurat erected to the god Marduk by Nebuchadnezzar II and later seen in ruins by Herodotus. But in Hebrew the word bâlal means
The title of the new show at the Palazzo Strozzi is a little confusing. Most of the artists in Italy in the 1930s weren’t beyond fascism; they were in it up to their necks. They didn’t really need much persuading by Mussolini to come up with pictures like Luciano Ricchetti’s 1939 painting ‘Listening to a
In this Olympic year, when we feel less guilty than usual about promoting and celebrating all things British, it is appropriate to be lauding our greatest writers. Shakespeare is commemorated at the British Museum, but what about Dickens? Unbelievably, in what is after all the bicentenary of his birth, the Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty
Fifty years ago, the Stanley Spencer Gallery was founded in a converted Wesleyan Chapel by a group of local enthusiasts who wanted to celebrate the extraordinary achievement of Cookham’s most famous son. As Joan George recounts in her fascinating book, Stanley Spencer Remembered (Taderon Press, £6), at the gallery’s inauguration, Gilbert Spencer (Stan’s younger brother)
Who was Conrad Marca-Relli? Figureheads of the so-called New York School such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko have long since become art world icons — with attention-grabbing auction prices, fat biographies and plays or films about them to match. By comparison, few people in this country are likely to have heard of Marca-Relli. Tate
John Berger (born 1926) is one of the most intriguing and richly controversial figures in British arts and letters. Actually, since he lives full-time in France, he can scarcely be considered English in any meaningful way, and is indeed an international figure, widely regarded outside this country as one of Europe’s greatest intellectuals and quite
Van Gogh to Kandinsky presents a rare and exciting opportunity to see some 60 paintings as examples of landscape symbolism from major international institutions and private collections. The exhibition extends beyond the usual north European definitions of this subject, with the coupling of the emotionally charged graphic-colourist van Gogh with the increasingly reductive and programmatic
‘Luxury high-rise duplex: lower floor comprising entrance hall with recessed guard posts, grand reception area, kitchen with crockery store, larders and walk-in fridge, armoury and staff WC; upper floor comprising master bedroom with two en-suite bathrooms, staff accommodation, guard rooms and safe deposit. Property provided with the latest hi-tech security systems and 24-hour manned guarding.’
Andrew Lloyd Webber cried when he first came to Wightwick Manor, and standing in the Great Parlour of this magnificent Victorian villa you can see what moved him to tears of joy. Lloyd Webber loves the Pre-Raphaelites (he’s always had the common touch) and Wightwick is a living monument to the one artistic movement that
Circles and Tangents sounds like a show of abstract art, but actually the title is somewhat misleading. As Vivienne Light, the exhibition’s curator and author of the accompanying book, explains, the circles are intended to denote networks of artists (not the circular forms in a Ben Nicholson painting, though Nicholson is included in the show),
Anyone interested in art holidaying in the Lake District this summer — or indeed taking a short break in the Lakes — is in for a treat. The Lakeland Arts Trust, which administers both Blackwell and Abbot Hall, has mounted a pair of exhibitions which offers a range of painting and sculpture a good deal
Catherine the Great was born neither a Catherine nor with any prospects of greatness. As Sophie Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst she was a minor German princess with modest expectations, but when the Empress Elizabeth of Russia chose her to be the consort of her nephew and heir, the Grand Duke Peter, Sophie’s and Russia’s fates