The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
My uncle Robin Ironside bewailed the demise, after the scandal of the Wilde trial and the early death of Beardsley, of the imaginative tradition which, he wrote, ‘had been kept flickering in England since the end of the 18th century, sometimes with a wild, always uneasy light, by a succession of gifted eccentrics’. The truth
Ten years ago, Duncan MacAskill went into Rymans to buy some drawing pins and was struck by the range of colours on offer. That moment of revelation led him to construct a self-portrait from drawing pins, adapting the ideas of Seurat’s pointillism, and the ben-day dot approach of Roy Lichtenstein, to contemporary needs and materials.
As the focus for an Easter meditation, David Jones’s ‘Sanctus Christus de Capel-y-ffin’ (1925), a small, heartfelt painting in gouache on paper, could scarcely be bettered. The Crucifixion takes place in a luminous landscape with the bird of hope in attendance. This is the world of medieval illuminated manuscripts and ivory carvings, a highly sophisticated
As exhibitions in London’s public galleries become increasingly mobbed and unpleasant, it is heartening to report that the drive to take art to the provinces continues apace. New museums seem to be opening all over the country, from Wakefield to Margate, and although one may entertain doubts about their sustainability, their enhancement of our current
One of the more considerable pleasures of exhibition-viewing outside London recently was the Claude show at the Ashmolean. London exhibitions are becoming mobbed by crowds, and there is little enjoyment in shoving or being shoved in the supposed pursuit of artistic enlightenment, and absolutely no chance to contemplate individual pictures in the hurly-burly. As the
Someone asked me recently whether I actually liked Mondrian’s paintings. The implication being that his form of geometrical abstraction was too pure — or too antiseptic — to contain the necessary germ of human warmth required to engage the emotions; and that though one could admire his work intellectually, it was difficult to be passionate
The British Museum’s latest exhibition Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam (until 15 April) sets out to explain the mysteries of this annual pilgrimage. Last year, a total of 2,927,719 pilgrims went to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, something that all Muslims should try to do at least once in their lifetime. Such huge numbers are
The fashion for museum-quality exhibitions in commercial galleries continues apace with two notable shows in Mayfair: Cy Twombly at Eykyn Maclean, and Julio González at Ordovas. Both galleries specialise in this kind of display, which must be more to do with impressing potential clients than with generating income, given that both are loan shows. I
Last November the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles held its annual fund-raising gala. Previously the event had used the tried-and-tested formula of wheeling in celebrity hosts such as Lady Gaga to try to persuade the great and good of Los Angeles to part with cash to fund the museum’s programme. This time, however,
It is easy to take the art and antiques fair for granted. After all, thousands of them take place every year, from humble events in village halls — cardboard boxes, old newspaper and cups of tea — to fairs so glamorous that on opening nights the ticket alone can cost $5,000. It was not ever
Alongside his distinguished career as a painter, Howard Hodgkin has also long been a collector of note. As a schoolboy at Eton he was given to bouts of running away but while briefly in situ his art master, Wilfrid Blunt (the brother of Anthony), borrowed a 17th-century Indian painting of a chameleon from the Royal
The actor Ed Stoppard is kicking off the year in some nice period costumes. One of our brightest young actors, he’s back at 165 Eaton Place in the new BBC Upstairs Downstairs (reviewed on page 60) playing the diplomat Sir Hallam Holland. It’s got gas masks, the Munich Crisis, cocktails, a dead pet monkey, the
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) cast a very long shadow over the 20th century, not least in England. Although he did not visit this country often, he apparently had a high regard for it, despite his somewhat sketchy knowledge of its contemporary painters. He once complained, ‘Why, when I ask about modern artists in England, am I
When Lucian Freud (1922–2011) was hailed as the Greatest Living Painter towards the end of his career, it was almost as a mark of respect for having survived so long and kept stubbornly painting in the way he wanted, without any quarter given to fads and fashions, in pursuit of truth to appearances, whatever that
The RWA galleries offer a superb setting for a sculptor, and Ivor Abrahams RA (born 1935) has taken full advantage of the beautiful top-lit space of the main rooms to present a lively retrospective look at his principal themes and achievements. The work ranges from the 1950s to the present day, and embraces a number
Zarina Bhimji is a photographer of ghosts. Her images of deserted buildings (‘Bapa Closed His Heart, It Was Over’, above) and desolate landscapes are empty, but haunted by humanity; her work is, as she puts it, evidence not of ‘actual facts but the echo they create’. The Whitechapel Gallery is currently home to a retrospective
Remarkably, this is the first solo show in the UK of the work of Albert Burri (1915–95) for more than 50 years. Compare the popularity of other Italian postwar artists — Lucio Fontana, for instance, who only had one idea, the slashed or pierced canvas, to recommend him. Burri remains very much an unknown quantity,
Having studiously avoided the media for years, Charles Saatchi was stirred enough to write an article for the Guardian last December that opened: ‘Being an art buyer these days is comprehensively and indisputably vulgar. It is sport of the Eurotrashy, hedge-fundy, Hamptonites; of trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs.’ He has a point. A new type of
Several people I spoke to when this exhibition was first mentioned thought it would be a Hockney retrospective, considering that he was commandeering all the first-floor galleries at the RA. But actually the retrospective element is very slight, consisting of half a dozen early landscapes and a couple of photo-collages, before we encounter the first
As cuts in government funding begin to bite, the innovative Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn finds itself short of £350,000 a year, and its long-serving artistic director, Nicolas Kent, is standing down as a result. Into the breach has stepped 89-year-old philanthropist and Tricycle devotee Al Weil. He is donating 37 paintings (including ‘The Gulf of
When R.B. Kitaj put together The Human Clay, his ground-breaking 1976 exhibition of figurative art at the Hayward Gallery, he wrote: ‘If you have a great subject, say, a person or people or a face or some complex theme, you have no right to be negligent about form or colour. Great themes demand the highest
The last major show of paintings by Edward Burra (1905–76) was at the Hayward Gallery in 1985 and I remember visiting it with a painter friend who was rather critical of what she called Burra’s woodenness and lack of movement. At the time, I was impressed by her criticisms, but now they rather seem to
When I was at school, I remember the art teacher returning incensed from a trip to London during which he’d taken a group of seniors to the Tate Gallery. The particular object of his ire was what he described as ‘a pile of blankets’ by Barry Flanagan. He could not accept that this was a
Among exhibition organisers, hyperbole is clearly the order of the day. The crowds are going wild over Leonardo at the National Gallery, expecting an exhibition packed with paintings (though only nine are by the master), and now the Fitzwilliam is hauling them in with a show called Vermeer’s Women that contains just four paintings by
In recent years there has been a surge of interest in the treasures hidden in our public art collections, many of them rarely if ever on view. The Tate Gallery is perhaps the principal offender here, showing only a tiny percentage of its glorious and wide-ranging holdings of British art, but attention is now being
At least one market posted strong results in November. That was the market for contemporary art. In just four days in New York — 7 to 10 November — a phenomenal $775 million was spent on postwar and contemporary art at auction alone (who knows what deals were transacted privately). Sotheby’s evening sale exceeded its
I prepared for this exhibition in Düsseldorf by taking the short train journey down the Rhine to Cologne, which would hate to be thought of as a twin city. Its gigantic cathedral is as I first saw it some 40 years ago, still black with soot (but where would you start to clean it?), and
Venice and Alexandria were, as far as the Venetians were concerned, twin cities. According to legend, St Mark had visited Venice before going to Alexandria, where he preached, performed miracles and was martyred. When two Venetian merchants stole the saint’s remains from Alexandria in 828, they were merely fulfilling the prophecy of the Angel that
Historically, British artists have not been good at money management. George Morland (1762–1804) was chronically insolvent; Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846) served four jail terms for debt and eventually killed himself after being reduced to pawning his spectacles; even Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) died leaving debts of £30,000. But the painter who turned serial defaulting into an