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Rich art collectors 'know the price of everything – and the value of nothing'

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Art dealers have been reduced to mere "commodity brokers" as the super-rich have lost interest in the aesthetic value of major works and instead obsess about their monetary worth, according to one of the industry's most experienced auctioneers.

Picture preview: Lucian Freud drawings

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:44:54 +0000

This week an exhibition of British painter Lucian Freud's drawings opens at the Blain|Southern gallery in London, staged to coincide with the major exhibition of his work at the National Portrait Gallery.

How Picasso won over (some of) the British

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In 1905, when Britain had yet to encounter the bright, multi-perspective works of Pablo Picasso, an art critic predicted a great reception for him in the UK, on the basis of a brief but well-received exhibition across the Channel, in Paris.

Portfolio: Joel Devlin

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Images look more mysterious when you shoot them at night," muses the British photographer Joel Devlin – not least, one might add, when using a 40-minute exposure to create eerie landscapes, as he did for "Light Waves & Dark Currents", a series that won him an award from the Association of Photographers in 2010 in the Environment category.

Lucian Freud Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Towards the end of the National Portrait Gallery's Lucian Freud show is a disquieting picture, not by the artist but of him.

Queen's Jubilee portrait revealed

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A new Diamond Jubilee portrait of the Queen has been released by Buckingham Palace today. The photograph, taken to mark the 60th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth II, was taken in the Centre Room of Buckingham Palace by John Swannell.

Never mind the Sex Pistols – punk artist backs Occupy

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

His artwork for "Never Mind the Bollocks" helped bring the Sex Pistols' only studio album to the wider world, defining the image of British punk rock. Now the anarchist Jamie Reid, 65, has stepped back into the limelight, supporting the Occupy movement and espousing the view that politics is now "far more repressive" than when he launched his career.

When Little England climbed the stairway to Modernist heaven

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

One afternoon in April 1934, Ben Nicholson climbed the stairs of an apartment building in a drab Paris street called the rue du Départ. A few hours later, he came down again with the air of one who had seen the light.

Money matters: Photographer Mark Henley snaps the secretive world of Swiss banking

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Thanks to the country's famous privacy laws, the Swiss banking industry holds colossal fortunes within its vaults. Photographer Mark Henley trains his lens on a high-finance haven. Click on the gallery above to see his images.

What To Do, See & Buy: Mr Lawrence; Jerwood Gallery; Mia Hamborg; Alexander McCall Smith; Khodorkovsky

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Move it!

Samuel Aranda wins World Press Photo

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:23:49 +0000

The overall World Press Photo 2011 prize winner was revealed today to be Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda. He takes the gong for his shot of a Yemeni woman cradling an injured relative in her arms during violent clashes between anti-government demonstrators in Sanaa.

Picture preview: Cotton Global Threads

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:15:22 +0000

Although must of us put cotton against our skin almost everyday, in the form of socks and T-shirts, the story of cotton is far from everyday, which is why it has been turned into an extensive exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Jane Austen is back in the frame

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

When academic and biographer Paula Byrne announced the discovery of what seemed to be a new drawing of Jane Austen, there was a frenzied debate over the picture's authenticity. Arguments are bound to be reignited by the news that the controversial portrait will go on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford as part of the celebrations for World Book Day, before moving to Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton this April. The picture, showing a thin-faced woman gripping an inky quill, accentuates Austen's professionalism.

Great Works: Somewhere in America, 2000 (178cm x 254cm), Jock McFadyen

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Sometimes a spasm of perversity strikes: we find ourselves wanting art to take us – transport us if you like (that verb seems entirely appropriate to this particular picture) – to nowhere in particular. We have grown sick of interesting or highly significant subject matter, self-vaunting portraiture, the fanfare of grand buildings in prime architectural locations such as Venice or other places that dress themselves up to look like world-weary grandes dames.

The Diary: Laura Poliakoff; Joe Penhall; Black Pond; Dominic West; Damien Hirst

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Laura's launch

Olafur Eliasson's installation is art, but in a new spectrum

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

What better way to see a city than in all the colours of the rainbow? After winning a competition to transform the roof area of the ARoS museum of art in Aarhus, Denmark, last year, Olafur Eliasson installed a 150-metre long multi-coloured circular walkway that looks like a glowing halo from afar. Visitor numbers have more than doubled since.

Yayoi Kusama brings colour to Tate Modern

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:10:08 +0000

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was in London yesterday to open a retrospective of her work at Tate Modern.

Ai Weiwei defies China with Serpentine installation

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Ai Weiwei has been imprisoned, barred from leaving his homeland by the Chinese government and told not to speak to anyone outside its borders. That has not stopped the dissident artist from designing this year's Pavilion at London's Serpentine Gallery.

Berlin: Show and tell

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:55:45 +0000

Dwarfed. That's how you feel in Berlin a lot of the time. Dwarfed by the immense buildings which loom up above the lime trees on Unter den Linden or line the wide boulevards of Prenzlauer Berg. Dwarfed by the enormous number of memorials and world-class museums, sometimes three, four, five to a single street, each commemorating a different chapter of the city's history. Dwarfed, most of all, by the sheer weight of that history, which infuses every place name, lurks under every pavement and hangs heavy in the air.

Picture preview: The Family in British Art

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:49:53 +0000

Throughout the history of British art, the experience of family life and its impact on who we are has provided rich inspiration for artists. From formal portraits of powerful families, long before the dawn of photography, to intimate glimpses into our home lives, an exhibition currently at Museums Sheffield shows how images inspired by those closest to us have always been some of our most revealing.

Alighiero Boetti: An early Damien Hirst who had it all mapped out

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Italian artist Alighiero Boetti spent a lot of time thinking about self-presentation. He loved the idea of the "double", so he re-cast himself as two people (Alighiero and Boetti), sent out postcards showing himself as twins and gave the artist a split personality – that of "divine shaman" who channelled life's profundities and "public showman" who beguiled the crowds with tricks of the eye.

No Place Like Home: A diverse portrait of Jewishness in Britain

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:41:13 +0000

An openly gay couple dancing in synagogue and a Punk Klezmar fan in Regent’s Park are among the images of Britain’s thriving Jewish community currently on show at the Jewish Museum in London. The collection of contemporary black and white photographs is by eminent photojournalist Judah Passow, a four-time recipient of World Press Photo awards for his coverage of conflict in the Middle East, and a former artist in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Israel-born Passow lives in London but was raised and educated in New York and Boston. His richly diverse portrait of Judaism in Britain is the culmination of extensive travel and inquiry over several years.

Turner: On the crest of a wave

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If David Hockney has now been anointed Britain's Greatest Living Treasure, then there is little doubt who is the greatest master of the past.

Michael Glover: Nostalgia as mundane as this doesn't come cheap

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

You could go so far as to say that Cézanne's subject matter is as radically and shockingly insignificant as you could possibly find. Two poor men sit across from each other playing cards in an anonymous café in the south of France. Cézanne would have known the scene. He would have witnessed it again and again. It is utterly of its time and of its place.

The £160m hand of cards

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It is a painting of startling simplicity. Two farm labourers contemplate their cards above an empty table, their expressions as blank as the austere background against which they are posed, little more than objects in a human still life created by the artist Paul Cézanne.

David Shrigley: Brain Activity, Hayward Gallery, London

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:53 +0000

Even more than any of his contemporaries, David Shrigley forces us to ask the Big Question: is it art? Shrigley, 43, is best known for his newspaper cartoons – scratchy, naively drawn figures in black and white, usually with a deadpan legend attached. One that sticks in the mind, for some reason, is a pig with the words “I’m a pig” written on its side. It is not particularly funny, but then nor is it meant to be. Shrigley’s drawings have a higher aim than that. Their maker went to art school, ergo they are art.

Portfolio: Boris Joseph

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If you think we live in an age of austerity, spare a thought for the 7,000 nuns living in the makeshift "city" of Yarchen. Lacking both running water and electricity, this tightly packed encampment made of wood and fabric nestles in a remote Tibetan valley 4,000m above sea level – and is not even listed on Chinese maps.

David Lister: Is this a case of a great but troubled ballet star being wronged? I don't think so

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

On Thursday, it was reported that Sergei Polunin, the Royal Ballet star who dramatically quit the company a week ago, has now lost his work permit, according to a Royal Ballet spokesperson. It would take a hard-hearted person not to feel sympathy with the brilliant 22-year-old. So, call me hard-hearted, because I'm afraid I don't.

Cézanne sale breaks world record

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A painting by Paul Cézanne of two peasants playing cards has sold for a record price of £158.4 million.

What To Do, See & Buy: Niki & The Dove; Mary Shelley; The Forgetting of Proper Names; Shipping Forecast; Fish, Recipes from the Sea

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Flying high

The artist vandalising advertising with poetry

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:00:08 +0000

Scottish artist Robert Montgomery goes about at night illegally plastering over advertisements with posters covered in his poetry. His very pleasing verse is presented in white typography on a black background, screaming out ideas about beauty, consumerism and hypocrisy, among other things. The elegant words, and their sparse presentation, have been appearing on hoardings for the last ten years. But Montgomery, who trained at Edinburgh College of Art, and whose intellectual basis for working tumbles out in glorious verbal torrents, is not really a street artist. Although he has been somewhat embraced by the movement. Instead, he thinks of himself as following in the wake of the Situationists, a group of European revolutionaries in the last century who constructed artistic situations (which today we might call guerrilla installations) in unexpected places, to promote their ideas.

The most expensive wall painting ever?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Jackson Pollock may lose his record for creating the most expensive painting ever – and not to another enfant terrible of the art world , but to a minor Los Angeles mural painter who happened upon the Facebook offices in 2005.

Great Works: Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 1538 (119cm x 82 cm), Hans Holbein the Younger

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In the spring of 1538, after the death of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII sent Hans Holbein to Brussels on an exploratory fishing expedition for future brides. Christina of Denmark, not so recently widowed, was a possible contender. He spent three hours in her presence – no more than that, according to the official records. He probably made a drawing – or even more than one. After his return to England, this was worked up into a full painting, which pleased Henry enormously, to such an extent that he was said to feel acute pleasure when in its presence. It was spirits-raising – a little like the prospect of the 2012 Olympics is said to be, if we are to believe the newspapers. In spite of Henry's positive response to Christina's likeness, there was no marriage. For all that, Henry liked the painting well enough to want to hang on to it – and the nation has hung on to it to this very day, although it nearly got sold off and spirited away to America early in the 20th century.

The Diary: Yayoi Kusama; Stephen Unwin; Charles Dickens; Other Cinema; Julian Barnes

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Spot the difference

Prisoners are pleased to be stitched up for Gavin Turk's new artworks

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Is it art if you get others to do the donkey work? Gavin Turk's new artworks have been hand-stitched by prisoners across the UK. Turk sent out packs to Fine Cell Work (FCW), a rehabilitation programme that teaches needlecraft to prisoners in 29 prisons. Now 35 prisoners have spent months embroidering the coloured "letter squares" that spell out the name Gavin Turk in various permutations, using an original stitch used by Afghani stitchers.

Tom Sutcliffe: The luxurious nature of whimsy

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I found myself thinking about the low status of whimsy the other day. The place was the Hayward Gallery, which is currently hosting the funniest art exhibition I've been to for some time, David Shrigley: Brain Activity. The precise time was when I found myself standing next to the artist/cartoonist/provocateur as he gave an interview to a journalist at the press view. He was describing (I think) the libretto for an opera he staged recently called Pass the Spoon, which features a manic-depressive egg and a character called Mr Granules. Those details I turned up later, but what he sketched out at the time was a work that included articulate vegetables and a surreally comical version of a television cookery show. And I was immediately reminded of the first episode of Noel Fielding's new television series Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, which featured, among many other things, an animated chocolate finger who seemed to have the character of an aggrieved PE teacher ("You see I can be a character like Mr Clasby too. I can shine!") and an American detective called Sergeant Raymond Boombox who engages in bantering conversation with a wise-cracking knife wound on his arm. It struck me that there is something quite Fielding-esque about Shrigley's imagination or, possibly, something Shrigley-esque in Fielding's comedy. Their world is skewed in similar ways and, as it happens, they both share a similarly cack-handed drawing style.

Tintoretto's Paradise among 20 artworks earmarked for restoration

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:37:57 +0000

Restoration plans for Tintoretto's 1588 painting Il Paradiso (paradise) and 19 other artworks and artefacts were announced last night at an event at London’s Courtauld Gallery.

Emma Richardson: "My paintings are like a Rorschach ink test"

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:00:53 +0000

Emma Richardson is best-known as the female singer and bass guitarist from alt rock group Band of Skulls, but she is also developing a niche as a visual artist. The covers of Band of Skulls' debut album Baby Darling Doll Face Honey were created by Richardson and formed part of her first exhibition, entitled Meat Me At The Butchers. Her first solo exhibition, Cruisin' For A Bruisin', opens today.

Mona Lisa's 'twin sister' is discovered – 500 years late

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:40 +0000

The Mona Lisa at the Prado in Madrid was thought to be just another fine copy, with added eyebrows and an odd black background. But curators at Spain's national art museum yesterday announced a startling discovery: the painting was actually executed by an artist in Leonardo da Vinci's workshop at the same time as the original.

Picture preview: Last days of the Arctic

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:22:05 +0000

We might have been subject to Arctic winds lately, but as an exhibition by Icelandic photojournalist Ragnar Axelsson shows, the chill wilderness of that region could not be further from here.

David Hepher: Estate of the nation

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Walk down the Walworth Road, away from the hideous south London mêlée of the Elephant and Castle road junction. The first thing you see is the nightmarish Heygate housing estate, surrounded by builders' boards. It is coming down, less than 40 years after the borough of Southwark erected it. Misguidedly, the high, blank flats replaced the previous Victorian terraces, then seen as slums.

Adventures with a lost Nick Drake recording

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:09:16 +0000

What would you do if you discovered a previously unheard Nick Drake recording? A song by one of most famous, cultish singer-songwriters of the early Seventies; a man who died so young that his oeuvre is limited, but is nevertheless one of the most influential English musicians of the last 50 years. You’d want everyone to hear it, right? Organise a tribute album, perhaps? Cash in on the discovery? Luckily, Michael Burdett did none of those things.

Pilgrim's progress: Journey to the Heart of Islam

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It was not the objects that I saw in and around Mecca that made my pilgrimage such an extraordinary and exhilarating experience.

Hanne Darboven, Camden Arts Centre, London

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Were you to start your visit to the Camden Arts Centre's new show in the gallery's study room, you might come away with entirely the wrong idea about Hanne Darboven.

Hajj: Journey to the heart of Islam, British Museum, London

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Trust the British Museum, under the leadership of Neil MacGregor, to grasp the nettle.

Sarah Maple: 'I'm not the new Tracey Emin'

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Sarah Maple likes dressing up. Depending on her mood, and her current obsession, it might be as a big baby, or it might be in a burka. Lately, for her new series of feminist artworks, she has been channelling her inner Disney Princess, donning various shiny nylon costumes – "eBay's finest!" – and photographing herself hard at work in traditionally "male" environments. There's Sleeping Beauty performing open-heart surgery in a pink tiara. There's the Little Mermaid, running a boardroom meeting in tangerine wig and glistening fishtail. And there's Belle, in a gold, ruffled ballgown, screaming at the ref from the dugout – self-portrait as fairytale football manager.

What To Do, See & Buy: Martin Creed; Babar; Bombay Beach; Transport Museum; Utile; The Black Keys

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Marble arch

National Gallery staff in walkout

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:48:41 +0000

Workers at the National Gallery in London will stage another strike tomorrow in a continuing row over jobs.

The Picasso that's been in the wars

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Every night, after the last visitor to Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum has left, the prestigious art gallery's newest curator flickers into life. The expert is a ground-breaking robot, which this week began the most exhaustive research exercise ever performed on Picasso's controversial masterpiece Guernica. Its mission: to establish the true extent of the damage that the painting has suffered in its turbulent 75-year lifetime.

Great Works: A Pair of Boots (Les Souliers), 1887 (33cm x 40.9cm), Vincent van Gogh

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Enid Blyton, that writer adored by children and despised by the middle classes for her straitened vocabulary and unimaginative plots, once wrote a story called "The Brownie Biddle's Boots". It was read to me from a children's omnibus during the 1950s in Sheffield, when I lay a-bed at nights, and I always wanted it to be repeated again and again by my mother because, being an afflicted child of (presumably) imaginatively straitened, working-class parents, I found it imaginatively inexhaustible. It told the story of a pair of old boots that took matters into their own hands one day by going off on their own without a pair of legs to lead them. They were stout, wilful items of well used footwear that chose to please nothing but themselves, forever on the tramp, tramp, tramp. Yes, tramping was their game, on the road to the forever unpredictable excitements of nowhere in particular.

Cape made of silk extracted from spiders to go on display

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:09:39 +0000

A cape created from golden silk spun by more than a million spiders is going on display this week.

£80m Design Museum plans unveiled

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:03:40 +0000

Plans for a new £80 million museum of design and architecture were unveiled today.

Into the wild with a high-flying YBA

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Indifference is a curious sort of non-emotion to set your artistic stall on, but it’s the one that Gary Hume – the British painter who emerged from Goldsmiths alongside his fellow YBAs in the early 1990s – has been attracted to for many years.

Hirst rewards lovers of his hot spots

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Three art lovers travelled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars in pursuit of a personally dedicated spot print from Damien Hirst. And hundreds more are set to follow.

Is it art – or science? The robotic Rubens that redefines portraiture

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Meet Paul, the toast of this year's London Art Fair. He has one arm, he scribbles out portraits in 20 minutes and uses a biro. Oh, and he's a robot.

David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Most weeks, choosing the armchair lady to put at the top of this column is easy enough, exhibitions being consistently good, bad or so-so. Not this week. No armchair lady exists who could encompass the horror of some works in David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture, and the wonder of others. Given that our designers might struggle to devise a figure throwing streamers with her left hand while putting a gun to her head with her right, I am going to award this schizophrenic show two armchair ladies, one standing and clapping, the other slumped in despair; the first time I've done so in 13 years as a critic for this paper.

What To Do, See & Buy: Roots Manuva; Kevin Lyons; Mark Hix; Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene; Martina Evans

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Back to Roots

David Lister: Jay-Z might be rethinking his degrading lyrics, but why do women in hip-hop stay silent?

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The hip-hop star Jay-Z has apparently vowed to stop using the word "bitch" in his lyrics now that his wife and fellow superstar Beyoncé has given birth to a daughter, Blue Ivy. He was reported to have made his pledge this week in a poem, one verse of which reads: "Before I got in the game, made a change and got rich / I didn't think about using the word bitch / I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it / Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it / No man will degrade her and call her names."

Great Works: If Not, Not, 1975-6 (152.4cm x 152.4cm), R B Kitaj

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

This painting, made by an American painter who spent much of his life in London, wrestling with the nature of his European influences (Cézanne, Degas, Kafka, for example), and striving to reconcile those influences with his own conflicted Jewish-American identity, is both lovely and unlovely, a seductive visual object and one that is replete with much troubling and morally uncertain subject matter. At first glance, it looks almost paradisal – look at that palm tree against the flush of an orange sky. But in its details, it is often dystopian – is that orange not a fumy and soon-to-be-choking rage of smoke or flame, rather than the untroubled colour of the rising or setting sun?

Cultural Life: Mat Collishaw, artist

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Film: 'The Visit', 1964. A strange little tale, directed by Bernhard Wicki, about a wealthy woman who returns to her impoverished childhood village and offers a huge sum of money to regenerate it. Her one condition is that they execute her ex-lover who betrayed her 20 years before. After an initially appalled rejection, the villagers start to appear with new clothes and consumer goods, their loyalty eroded by the allure of money.

The mane attraction at art exhibition

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A customised coffin from Ghana in the shape of a lion, and another like a Mercedes, feature in an exhibition celebrating death.

The Diary: River Phoenix; Arthur Darvill; Adam Fogerty; Kate MccGwire; Owen Sheers

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

River remix

Tom Sutcliffe: Happiness hides the bigger picture

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

When I was at university, a friend once said to me, apropos of something I can't remember: "It's all right for you. You're always happy." I was, quite naturally, deeply offended. Not only was this not true (I'm sure I was, at the very least, averagely unhappy for a 20-year-old). But I understood that such a charge carried an unstated implication. I might not be up to being unhappy. I couldn't hack angst and had settled for cheerfulness instead. And the really grave thing was that I wasn't being accused of dishonesty, of hiding unhappiness in a rather unsporting way. It was a suggestion that I didn't have depths in which to hide anything. Perhaps I was projecting a little at the time. Perhaps my reflex of indignation had something to do with the fact that I was studying English at the time... and thus not attuned to think of happiness as a particularly desirable quality. It was, after all, a negligible feature in the canonical works I was being invited to explore, which addressed themselves far more often to the many nuances of human discontent. In literary terms, there were a hundred words for misery, but just a handful for happiness; a gallery-full of portraits of human despondency but just a smiley-face lapel badge when it came to good cheer.

No death please, we're British

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:56:25 +0000

More unpredictable than love, more taboo than sex, it is a fundamental feature of life that unites us all: death.

Jane McAdam Freud: 'How my sculpture of my father, Lucian, helped me cope with his death'

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Lucian Freud's sculptor daughter, Jane McAdam Freud, has made a gigantic earthstone triptych sculpture of her late father's head, to help "keep him alive". Made in terracotta and measuring 3ft x 3ft x 1ft, the giant relief only came out of the kiln last week. "I can't put in words how it helped me with the grieving process," she says. "I was keeping him alive in a metaphorical sense – he was there the whole time I was making it."

Picture preview: London Art Fair

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:32:46 +0000

The UK's largest art fair for Modern British and contemporary art begins today in London.

Hockney goes back to nature

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

When David Hockney pronounced "all the works here were made by himself, personally" of his new exhibition of landscapes at the Royal Academy, he wasn't only taunting Damien Hirst and his younger rivals. He was laying claim to a whole tradition of British and Western art and declaring he had made it his own.

Former drug addict wins prestigious poetry prize

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A celebrated poet who has documented his battle with alcoholism and drugs saw off competition from a heavyweight shortlist including laureate Carol Ann Duffy to win the highest accolade in British poetry at the third time of asking.

Block party: pattern-cutting beyond the garment

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:09:29 +0000

Those of you who are handy with a needle and thread, will be pleased to hear that a new exhibition exploring the creative possibilities of pattern-cutting (beyond making garments) is touring the country.

Art collective Liberate Tate uses Arctic ice to protest at gallery's BP sponsorship

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:18:56 +0000

An art collective protesting against the Tate Modern's partnership with oil giant BP used a block of Arctic ice to express their grievances this weekend.

Still dotty about Damien Hirst

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

You don't understand. This is a really monumental project," exclaims Stefan Ratibor, director of Gagosian in London. As indeed it is.

Strike threatens Leonardo show

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Staff at the National Gallery in London are to walk out on Thursday in a dispute over staff cuts, which could disrupt the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition.

Portfolio: London Art Fair