Posts Tagged “art”
Mangaマンガ – till 26 August 2019 Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery The British Museum presents the largest exhibition of manga ever held outside of Japan. Manga are Japanese comic books or graphic novels with a twist, serialised in magazines and read by a global audience. A multi-billion-pound business that embraces anime and gaming, manga are a global…
We have likely all heard of Hokusai but in truth most people would only recognise The Great Wave off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave or just The Wave. It is a woodblock print and an iconic example of this man’s work; it’s prominent on the cover of Hokusai: The Master’s Legacy, a sumptuous…
Barcelona is a beautiful city and famed for its buildings. Barcelona Sketchbook: Homage to Catalan Architecture allows the reader to view these façades in something of a different light and one that is awash with pastel hues and subtle shadows. Graham Byfield, the artist for this book, ambles with his keen eye through the Ramblas,…
Picasso: Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925 is a unique overview of the artist’s earlier and lesser-known years. This sumptuous volume illustrates Pablo Picasso’s celebrated journey undertaken in 1917, but also the periods just before and just after. He visited both Rome and Naples in the company of Jean Cocteau, French poet, writer, designer, playwright, artist…
Flying Too Close to the Sun is another unique-concept book from Phaidon Press. It is illustrated with every genre of art from every era. There is, however, a common thread and that is ancient mythology. One doesn’t have to have a degree in ancient literature to appreciate Flying Too Close to the Sun: the art…
From the bestselling author of The Art of Forgery, Noah Charney, comes this fantasy art adventure, The Museum of Lost Art. This is a stroll through a museum that could never exist. It’s a visit to a gallery of the ‘once was’, perhaps a wander through a hall of ‘lost forever’, and a tentative toe-dipping into…
Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989 is another book from Phaidon. Not a cookbook this time but a rather topical design book which does indeed offer an insightful overview of iconic images from behind the Iron Curtain. There are some flag-waving posters, as one would expect, but even these have influenced graphic art far beyond the…
Antwerp is often overlooked, visitors to north-west Europe gravitating to its more celebrated cousins of Paris and Amsterdam. It is, however, a treasure-trove of history, classic Flemish architecture and art, and all in a relatively small area; Antwerp is an ideal walking city. It was, for much of his life, the home of Peter Paul…
Ettore Sottsass (1917 – 2007) was an Italian architect and designer. His body of work included furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, and strangely, office equipment, which later became iconic and collectable. Items such as typewriters were masterpieces of colour, form and contemporary styling. He also designed many buildings and interiors. Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria,…
The Mauritshuis is home to some of the most famous Dutch paintings of the Golden Age. The gallery is a perfectly formed and fitting contemporary venue for its much-loved collections. It has a beautiful and leafy location in the heart of The Hague and it houses masterpieces such as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring…
From 8 March – 15 July 2018 – The influence of modern Greece on the lives and work of three influential artists is explored in a new exhibition at the British Museum this spring. Charmed lives in Greece: Ghika, Craxton, Leigh Fermor (8 March – 15 July 2018) examines the enduring friendship between Greek painter…
The Al Thani Collection Treasures of the Mughals and the Maharajas, published on the occasion of the extraordinary exhibition of the Al Thani Collection in Venice, allows readers to enjoy, at least from a little distance, the jeweller’s crafts and traditions of the Indian subcontinent, from the pre-Raj Mughal period to more recent times. The…
The opening ceremony was performed by The King and Queen of The Netherlands in Leeuwarden-Friesland. Church bells rang out across the entire province of Friesland, a gesture that announced the start of a grand and vibrant cultural year. The province shares the cultural year title with Valletta2018, the other Cultural Capital of Europe. The opening…
1 January – 31 December 2018 The European Capital of Culture 2018 takes place in Leeuwarden, the capital of the Dutch province of Friesland. It is a time for new ideas originating in Friesland to spread to the rest of the world. With culture as the driving force, Leeuwarden-Friesland 2018 shows that it takes courage…
Vincent van Gogh’s Nuenen is documented in charming fashion at the Vincentre Who is this ‘Vincent’ and where is Nuenen? We are exploring the life of THE Vincent. That’s Vincent van Gogh. Yes, he of the Potato Eaters and Starry, Starry Night fame. Nuenen, a beautiful small town in the region of Brabant in The…
This delightful museum is a triumph. Yes, it will be a draw for lovers of art but it has such broad appeal for those who appreciate the open and wooded spaces of this corner of The Netherlands. But who were Kröller and Müller? In fact they were a she and evidently a woman before her…
‘No, Mum, not a museum!’ Yes, many of us have heard that sad and somewhat panic-stricken refrain from youngsters who are dreading the prospect of another 3-hour amble around galleries hung with dark oil paintings or museums stuffed full of glass cases displaying old clothes. What the juvenile members of the group are expressing is…
Dutch artists have, for centuries, been admired for the realistic quality of their work. Seventeenth-century landscapes and scenes of ordinary life are all here. One might suppose that the paintings were done directly from life; but it seems that most of them were produced with the aid of previously-executed sketches. Drawings for Paintings: in the…
It seemed unlikely. A pottery in a church in Eindhoven. But here it was and it is indeed a divine space in which to sympathetically develop well-designed products from natural clay. But not just any clay – this is Dutch clay at Atelier NL. Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck studied at Eindhoven’s Design Academy,…
This is the most comprehensive tome on contemporary art in Vietnam today. It is a page-turner for any art lover but it also appeals to the traveller. Vietnam has developed in every way over the past decade. The world has access to its culture, food and landscape, along with its traditional art. But Vietnam also…