British artist Julian Opie is heading East – but can his work speak the right language?
Julian Opie has been making art since he was 12. While his friends were misbehaving after school, he was in his bedroom in 1970s Oxford, working on one project after another, revising and remaking. That is where and when, he says, his driving need to go back to things began. He was always figuring out […]
Sportswear, but not as we know it
A new range of high-tech clothing for extreme athletes draws on neuroscience and psychology Steve and Nick Tidball are identical twins who have made their name in advertising. But their real passion is sport. They have raced across the Namibian desert, through the Amazon jungle and over the Alps. So it comes as no surprise […]
Giving new lines to Old Masters
The Städel Paintings Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Nov 5th to Jan 24th The Städel Museum in Frankfurt is celebrating its 200th birthday. To mark the occasion, John Baldessari has made a new series of collages based on works from the permanent collection. “We wanted to give the museum something special,” says the curator Dr Martin Engler, […]
Picasso and his bit on the side
Picasso Sculpture MoMA, New York, Sept 14th to Feb 7th Picasso’s sculptures are not as familiar as you might expect. The reason is partly pragmatic: bulky and breakable, they can be awkward to transport from one institution to another. Simple maths also plays its part. Picasso produced some 4,000 paintings versus roughly 700 sculptures, so […]
Make some noise
Soundscapes National Gallery, London, July 8th to Sept 6th In most museums and galleries, sound is pooh-poohed. The ping of a mobile phone brings a scowl; a mere giggle can prompt a prod from the security guard. The only sound that is welcome is the sound of silence. So the National Gallery is about to […]
The Whitney’s West Side Story
The Whitney opens May 1st 2015 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014 The Whitney has gone west. After 49 years squashed between the swish hotels and designer shops on Madison Avenue, America’s leading museum of its own art has finally outgrown its concrete cube. In need of more than just a bigger café, it […]
The Day Picasso Said Hello, Dali
Picasso/Dali. Dali/Picasso. Picasso Museum, Barcelona, March 20th to June 28th Picasso and Dalí are two of the very biggest figures in 20th-century art—and beyond it, as their impact stretches to logos, clothes and even cars. Both were big brazen characters with an unorthodox stance on life and lust. Both were exceptional draftsmen, and good writers, […]
Van Gogh’s Moment of Clarity
Van Gogh in the Borinage: The Birth of an Artist Musee des Beaux-Arts de Mons, Jan 25th to May 17th Mons is a city steeped in history. Located in the east of the Borinage, an area in the Walloon province of Hainaut in Belgium, it was a military camp for the Romans, a thriving hub during […]
The Making of a Rodin
Rodin: The Laboratory of Creation Musee Rodin, Paris, Nov 13th to Sept 27th 2015 Rodin’s figures have a restless energy. Lean, long-limbed, they stretch and slump, curl and clinch. Unlike that of his friend Monet, his rise to fame was a slow burn. It took critics years to give him the recognition he deserved and […]
Bellotto’s place in history
Rembrandt-Titian-Bellotto Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Aug 22nd to Nov 23rd There must have been some tricky conversations at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich as the curators worked out which three painters were worthy of a mention in the title of their next exhibition, “Rembrandt—Titian—Bellotto: Spirit and Splendour of the Dresden Picture Gallery”. The line-up […]
A zingy colour that suits
Man in a Suit: Julian Wild, a sculptor who “doodles in 3D” gets a suit worth modelling THE MAN “You won’t pick up any Wi-Fi,” says Julian Wild, “but there are plenty of woodpigeons.” Time to put away our smartphones: Wild has swapped London for Danehill, a village in the East Sussex countryside where IT […]
Butterflies and Elephants
Alexander Calder Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, June 21st to October 5th Alexander Calder (1898-1976) trained as an engineer, and it shows. As a boy he made eccentric toys and animals, displaying skill and craftsmanship from the off. In 1930, after visiting Mondrian’s studio in Paris, he tried a new kind of sculpture—an intricate, scientific procedure, relying on […]
Matisse cuts it fine
Henri Matisse: the Cut-Outs Tate Modern, London, April 17th to September 7th Light, immediate, pure—just don’t call them naive. Matisse’s cut-outs, or gouaches découpés as they are more seductively known, may look simple to an untrained eye, with their loose, irregular shapes, but they have a sculptural precision. If the pinks, yellows and greens are garish rather […]
The RA’s happy hotch-potch
Sensing Spaces Royal Academy, London, to January 25th to April 6th “Go and explore, you’re not going to get lost.” That’s the message from Kate Goodwin, the Drue Heinz curator of architecture at the Royal Academy in London, who has just allowed seven architectural practices from different countries to transform the RA’s pristine galleries into […]
Good Form: Hans Arp at Hauser & Wirth
Chance – Form – Language Hauser & Wirth, London, until March 1st “Chance – Form – Language” is a tight, neatly balanced show at Hauser & Wirth’s swish Savile Row gallery. It has been guest curated by Julian Heynen and focuses on the late sculptural work of Hans Arp – a pioneer of abstract art and one […]
A painter re-makes himself
Georg Baselitz In Colour! Chiaroscuro Woodcuts of the Renaissance, from the collection of Georg Baselitz and the Albertina Both at the Albertina, Vienna, November 29th to February 16th Georg Baselitz is not for everyone. His early work stinks of brutality and decay; his self-portrait “The Big Night Down the Drain”, 1962, is worse. Showing a […]