5:33pm
In an earlier blog (Building a Legacy) I commented that architecture was a shared theme in the London and Rome mayoral elections. And just as Rome’s Mayor Gianni Alemanno conceded after his election that his pledge to tear down the Ara Pacis Museum was not a top priority, so has London’s new mayor done a U-turn on his proposal to replace the Fourth Plinth with a permanent statue of Sir Keith Park. In a letter read out to parliament, Johnson cited ‘planning issues’ and the site’s ongoing commitment to contemporary art as obstacles to the proposed memorial of the Battle...
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10:46am
There are few artists whose death will merit extended slots on the television news and double-page obituaries in virtually every newspaper. It certainly didn’t happen to Robert Rauschenberg, but in the UK this week the accolade was extended to Beryl Cook, painter of fat ladies having a good time. Her death prompted the familiar discussion about why an artist so widely popular is not represented in British national collections. The Guardian quoted the critic Brian Sewell as saying that she was responsible for ‘a very successful formula which fools are prepared to buy’.
Whatever you may think about such a...
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12:45pm
Jake and Dinos Chapman are turning their collective hand from art to celluloid after announcing their intention to make a satirical comedy about the art world. Anyone familiar with the Chapmans’ output will know that it already contains a dark strain of humour but while Jake has previously made documentaries – at least one has been shown on British mainstream television – this is their directorial debut in the world of cinema fiction. No further details on plot or cast have been released so one can only speculate… a YBA version of Robert Altman’s ‘Prêt à Porter’ perhaps? Or maybe...
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1:38pm
A lecture at the Hay-on-Wye Guardian Festival this weekend focused on the role of the English landscape in Ben Nicholson’s work – a fitting theme given the festival’s idyllic setting, and one overshadowed by the artist’s international modernist style. The lecture, given by Tate Britain curator Chris Stephens, was not to plug a book – unusually so for a book fair event – but to promote a forthcoming touring exhibition on Nicholson that opens in Abbot Hall, Kendal, in July. The show, entitled ‘A Continuous Line’, explores the artist’s life and work in the British countryside from 1922-1958 to reveal...
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3:46pm
It is one of the curiosities of the art world that a profession entirely devoted to visual matters should be so oddly coy about party clothes. I am used to the fact that black is the default option, but does everyone have to be so corporate? There were two big parties in London last night, and thanks to sympathetic timings (the V&A decided to stay open late) it was possible to attend both the announcement of the winner of the Art Fund Prize for Museums and Galleries in the spacious Art Deco hall of the RIBA’s Portman Place headquarters and...
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The Lower East Side, once home to immigrants and aspiring artists, is no receiving the uptown treatment.
The National Trust's plans to acquire Seaton Delaval Hall are a tribute to a genius who has inspired writers and artists for centuries.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating the centenary of the directorship of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell with an exhibition that makes clear that he was in many ways the first modern museum director.
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