Featured ARTicles
High Cross: a new look at Brutalism ?
Today we learn that the National Trust is to open High Cross House , Dartington to the public. This is good news, it shows that brutalist architecture is being recognised; at last. Usually, whenever modern architecture is in the news, the media will trot out their favourite library pictures of the worst examples of 1960s brutalism. [...]
David Hockney: Not just a Signature
Critics do not seem to be overjoyed by David Hockney’s latest exhibition at the RA, but as the man himself has said, it is all his own work. All the work on show was produced by the 74-year-old artist himself. The art journo’s were also falling over themselves to report that Hockney was criticising, the once [...]
Gallery rage
Gallery rage is a recent phenomena plaguing our museums and galleries. What is it? Well, it amounts to too many people trying to look at a famous piece of art and getting mad because they can’t see it properly … blockbuster shows are packed, so having dozens of people blocking your view may just be part of the territory. If the [...]
Dali : Persistence of memory
Dali branded himself as the artist as a crazy guy, the large waxed moustache, thought to be modelled on Velasquez’s portrait of Philip IV, was part of his brand. Dali was no crazy guy, just very clever. ‘The Difference between a madman and me,’ Dali said, ‘is that I am not mad.’ We are going to take [...]
Looking at: In depth ARTicles
Looking at: Mr and Mrs Andrews – Thomas Gainsborough
From what we know of him, Gainsborough never really liked his rich patrons, in fact, some say he loathed the upper classes. From his letters it would seem that he was patronised in every sense of the word. Indeed, he wrote to friends that most of his clients only had one part worth looking at [...]
Looking at : Guernica
Picasso completed this huge work in 1937 after the bombing of the small Basque town Guernica by German forces supporting General Franco that same year. In a post blitz, post holocaust, post atom bomb age attacking a civilian population in this manner is, sadly, nothing new, but in 1937 it was an outrage. It changed [...]
Portrait of a marriage? Looking at Van Eyck
Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, painted in 1434 is one of art’s most contested paintings. What is so contested about this painting? I hear you ask, it is a nice double portrait of a man and woman, and that’s that. The portrait hangs in the National Gallery in London and their official blumph about [...]
