CONTENTS March 2007
CONTEMPORARY ART
Looking down on design
The V&A’s surrealist show provokes the question why today’s artists seem to have no time for the decorative arts.
ARCHITECTURE
A Canova for today
Alexander Stoddart’s superb sculpture in the classical tradition has inspired some fruitful collaborations with contemporary architects
Roll up, roll up, for the greatest art museum on earth
The Ringling Museum, Sarasota, built in 1925-30 by the circus impresario John Ringling, has just completed a major restoration and expansion. Its 66 acres are home not only to outstanding Old Master paintings but also to a 1920s palazzo and the largest model circus in the world. reports on this inspired revival.
Antonello’s lost ‘st Augustine’ rediscovered
A panel depicting St Augustine, re-attributed to Antonello and dated to 1460 in the first part of this study (Apollo, January), is evidently part of a polyptych and, as such, is the earliest surviving example of the artist working on the altarpiece scale (Fig. 1).
Art that just goes ‘ping’
The radical simplicity of Fred Sandback’s work – installations created with just a ball of twine – have paradoxically led to a multiplicity of complex and often conflicting interpretations, assessed here by .
Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines
At the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines was both praised and reviled as an exemplar of the new style. However, it has never been clear which of his two 1873-74 views of the street – one now in Moscow, the other in Kansas City – was shown. reveals the answer.
A Turner reclaimed
re-examines a watercolour in the National Museum of Wales and concludes that its much-doubted attribution to Turner is correct. This remarkably beautiful image of a church and rainbow probably reflects anxiety in the 1830s about the fate of the Church of England in a period of parliamentary reform.
Brancusi’s women
Constantin Brancusi died 50 years ago this month. To mark this anniversary, draws on the sculptor’s recently released private papers to explore his relationships with the women who sat to him for portraits, which include some of his greatest masterpieces.
Egypt’s sunken treasures
An exhibition at the Grand Palais presents the astonishing finds made in the Nile delta over the past 15 years by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio. assesses their significance for our knowledge of Egyptian art.