Just in

Art

American and British art of the twentieth century

In our art course these past few weeks we have been considering American and British art of the twentieth century. American art before the twentieth century was colonial art depicting the West. America’s emergence artistically in the first half of the twentieth century owed much to the camera. [...]

March 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

Art & Crime/Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm

Art & Crime is an account of looters, forgers, and fraudsters in the art world by two German journalists. They concentrate on Germany, though a small player in the art market. In 2018 the global art market was valued at $67 billion of which Germany only represented 1%. The book begins with the [...]

February 17, 2022 // 0 Comments

My art week

Monday evening on BBC 4 is excellent for the arts. Waldemar Janusczak concluded his series on The Impressionists with Georges Seurat, an enigmatic artist specialising in dot painting, who died only 32. Claude Monet in his final years painted the lilies in his pond at Giverny which are to be found [...]

February 11, 2022 // 0 Comments

My art week

I cannot really add to Derek Williams’ appreciation of the Tudor Portraits at the Holburne gallery in Bath. I’m not a huge fan of royal portraiture as it constrains a great court painter like Velazquez, but thankfully not Gustav Klimt who left the court of the Habsburgs in the secessionist [...]

February 4, 2022 // 0 Comments

Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko

In the week I saw two interesting documentaries on these two major figures of American twentieth century art; the first on Andy Warhol was on BBC 4, the second last night on PBS. In my view Andy Warhol was a genius at self-promotion and marketing, but not as a painter. Like Rothko, he came from an [...]

January 8, 2022 // 0 Comments

Lowry and Dali/BBC 4

BBC 4 on a Monday has some excellent art programmes and yesterday there were two such: Fake or Fortune and another on Salvador Dali. On Fake or Fortune the son of a successful northern businessman was seeking to authenticate 3 Lowrys acquired by his father. His problem was, whilst they [...]

January 4, 2022 // 0 Comments

More viewings

My picture fest continued in London with 2 visits to the Royal Academy and a view of the pictures on view at the Richard Green Gallery. I visited the Summer Show at the RA. In trying to reposition themselves for a younger audience, standards have dropped and most of the pictures –  garish in [...]

December 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Courtauld Collection

In the week I saw the refurbished Courtauld Collection which by and large the art critics appreciated. I was underwhelmed. Matters were not helped as the taxi driver who took me there from Marylebone was one of those ‘miserable old gits’ who – when he was not stuck in a traffic jam when [...]

December 10, 2021 // 0 Comments

Sickert/A Life in Art – Walker Gallery

Yesterday I travelled up to Liverpool to view the Walter Sickert exhibition at the Walker Gallery. There are two misconceptions about Sickert – that he was quintessentially English and that he was our leading post-impressionist. In fact he was born in Munich in 1860 of Danish and Irish [...]

December 8, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

I have just finished Art of the Extreme 1905-1915 by Philip Hook the ex-Director of Impressionism and Modern Art at Sothebys. His background is sales. He writes well. He is on safer ground discussing the great collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in Russia and the emerging super rich ones [...]

December 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

1 3 4 5 6 7 26