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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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

Hockney has all the time in the Wolds

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A corner of England that is beautiful, mysterious, and well off the tourist map will soon come into focus.

Portfolio: London Art Fair

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

When we define the photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means they do not emerge... they are anaesthetised and fastened down, like butterflies." That, at least, was the view of the philosopher Roland Barthes. The artists showcased at Photo50 would no doubt disagree.

Lucian, me, and the twilight of a master

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The long and productive career of the painter Lucian Freud, who died last July aged 88, is about to come under its closest scrutiny yet.

Heads Up: Picasso & Modern British Art

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

What are we talking about?

A major exhibition at Tate Britain, which will examine the Spanish artist's relationship with this country, charting his rise as both a celebrity and critically feted, collectible artist. It will also trace his influence on seven Brits: Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney.

What To Do, See & Buy: Mark McGinnis; James Bond; Josef Koudelka; Herbie Flowers; Lucy Hutchings; Quo Vadis

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Not for kids

The Diary: Tate Modern; Clint Eastwood; Michel Hazanavicius; Rhys Darby; Kevin Spacey

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Close encounters

Picture preview: The indiscipline of painting

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:56:12 +0000

An exhibition celebration painting for its lack of restraint, indiscipline and whimsy opens at the Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre on Saturday. Conservative ideas of painting, where restrictions of form, perspective and accuracy are king, should be abandoned at the door. This show is a celebration of abstraction, featuring 49 artists and covering off the last six decades, from the daubs and dots of Pop Art to irreverent pieces from the Noughties.

Exorcising the Fear: British Sculpture from the 50s & 60s

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:25:29 +0000

Taking the 60th anniversary year of the XXVI Venice Biennale of 1952 as its starting point, a new exhibition, Exorcising the Fear, will explore a pivotal point in the history of British sculpture.

Picture preview: Young Russian artist Denis Patrakeev in London

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:17:00 +0000

An exhibition by one of Russia’s youngest emerging artists opens in London on Friday. Denis Patrakeev, 24, produces bleak visions of children’s playgrounds in chilly colours and an unusual blunting of perspective.

The crazy spirit of the age

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If you want to escape the blustery winds of winter or thoughts of recession, you could do a lot worse than to take yourself to Leeds to see the new Henry Moore Institute exhibition of British sculpture from the 1960s and 1970s.

Portfolio: Ian Teh

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Until the 1980s, Linfena city in Shanxi province, eastern China, was the centre of a flourishing farming hinterland, famous for its fruit and flower plantations and high-yield harvests. But, like other great swathes of China's rural interior over the past 25 years, the once-blooming countryside has been ravaged by the state's rapid march of industrialisation, and Linfen is now one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Heads Up: David Shrigley: Brain Activity

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

What are we talking about?

The first major UK show of artist David Shrigley's work, displayed over the upper floors of the Hayward Gallery.

What to do, see & buy: L'Atalante; Vicki Murdoch; Seydou Keïta; Yayoi Kusama; Jess Mills

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Va-va voom

Snow patrol: Lois Hechenblaikner's photographs reveal the seamier side of the Alps

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Every year, the Tyrol region of Austria is transformed into the ultimate ski resort: snow guaranteed, party-times promised, a wonderland for tourists to descend upon in their droves. And come they certainly do – over 41 million people visited last year.

Ceramic art: a potted history

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A master potter who famously started potting aged five, took adult education pottery classes from the age of 12, and who five years later became apprenticed to Geoffrey Whiting, disciple of the famous studio potter Bernard Leach (on whom the apprentice would later write a biography), Edmund de Waal, 47, is in his south London studio to discuss with me his latest work, The Pot Book.

The Diary: Keira Knightley; Absolutely Fabulous; Tony Blair; Ben Kingsley; Hatchet Job of the Year Award

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Keira aura

Michael Petry: Assistants were always used by the greats

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Most artists neither grind their own pigments nor make the canvas they use. The notion of the studio and assistants goes back hundreds of years.

The world's first portrait gallery gets a facelift

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The doctors, smeared with blood, gaze at you with a naked ambiguity in their eyes. They hover between life and death, hope and doubt, as ghostly and mysterious as X-rays. The Oncologists, a big and challenging painting by Ken Currie, skewers the mind and emotions. It hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – the world's first, in 1889 – which has just reopened after a £17.6m transformation that has given it 60 per cent more gallery space.

The icemen cometh

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace calls its latest exhibition of photographs of Antarctic exploration, The Heart of the Great Alone after a description, by Herbert Ponting, the photographer on Captain Scott's fateful expedition of 1910-12.

Michael Glover: Hockney's is a talent that deserves a place in the limelight

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

He marches sturdily, stolidly on through his eighth decade, sipping at his Bovril as he goes. This month there will be a huge show of recent work in the main galleries of the Royal Academy, where, relatively recently, he hung the largest multi-part landscape painting to have ever almost overwhelmed its walls. Can Hockney, that will-o'-the-wisp of a talent that blazed so bright at the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s, still be going at it? Oh yes, and with no holds barred.

Portfolio: Sharon Montrose

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

How do you persuade an energetic infant monkey to pause long enough for a photograph? You don't. "I put the camera in front of him, let him do whatever he wanted and tried to capture his natural charm," says Sharon Montrose. "Of course, you do need a lot of patience for that."

Hockney and Turner take the scenic route

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

Fans of English landscape are in for a bumper year, kicking off in January with the Royal Academy's David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture (21 January to 9 April).

Ten people who changed the world: Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist became a truly global force

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

For an illustration of Ai Weiwei's unique position of influence in the art world, you could do worse than look at his tax bill. In November, when the Chinese authorities stung the dissident artist with trumped-up charges of 15 million yuan (£1.5 million), members of the public lined up outside his Beijing home to hand over cash. Some of them folded banknotes into paper aeroplanes or scrunched them around fruit and lobbed them over the wall, straight into his courtyard. Within a fortnight, he had raised well over half, enough to pay off the deposit and begin to contest the bill. Like the eight million or so tiny porcelain sunflower seeds with which he carpeted the Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall, his many supporters had come together to stunning effect.

2012: The unmissable cultural treats

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

No such thing as bad publicity for the city slickers

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it," muses the cartoonist and author Hugh MacLeod, in his book on keys to creativity.

Katsushika Hokusai: Swept away by Japanese genius

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Go up the steps of the main entrance of the British Museum, turn immediately to the right as you pass through the door and there, in a room to itself, is the most iconic, and to my mind one of the greatest, images of all art. Indeed this picture of a giant wave rearing above the skiffs below could be the symbol of our times as the euro crisis, recession and the decline of the West threaten to engulf us all.

California dreamers still make a splash

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The artist John Baldessari is grumpy, or perhaps just tired.

Portfolio: Kalpesh Lathigra

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

This is Westminster. Not the one with Parliament and Big Ben – but rather a city in California that chimes with locals just as regularly. For Westminster, you see, is a focal point at Christmas, when streets upon streets of homes are encased in the most over-the-top decorations, putting on a show that draws visitors from miles around.

Arts review of 2011 - Visual Art: Calm down – it's just another Leonardo...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Lest you hadn't noticed, this was the year of Leonardo, the National Gallery's much-tooted show selling out in hours.

The Diary: Nick Clegg; Alexandra Roach; Lucian Freud; Secret Cinema; Graham Linehan

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Nick Clegg: a tragedy

Souza is in vogue thanks to a royal appointment

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The Brazilian photographer Anthony Souza, 25, was hand-picked by Madonna to take photographs on set of her new romantic drama, W.E, which she has directed. The film, starring Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson and James D'Arcy as King Edward VIII, which is out next month, tells the story of the royal love scandal, which ended in the King's abdication. "I remember my first day on the film set as the stills photographer," says Souza. "I was a little nervous as it was my first ever job on a feature film. But Madonna was immediately approachable. Somebody gave her a first-day shooting gift of a water bottle with 'Keep Calm and Carry On' printed on it. She held it up and asked me to photograph her."

Tom Sutcliffe: Mystery appeal of scuffs and smears

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

I'm not sure how universal this is going to be as a metaphor but it strikes me as so exact that I'm going to have a go anyway. First, I'd like you to think (if you can) of that odd residue you sometimes get when a coffee cup dries out and you're left with the remnants of espresso-stained milk-skin, a kind of ropy twist of dark material, often with a plasticky shine to it. The colours, in my experience, can range from a glossy chestnut brown to something almost black in colour. Now imagine a portrait-format painting almost entirely composed of this unlovely material, with the occasional admixture of other lighter stool-like colours and the odd swipe of dun red. Actually, I'm not sure you need to imagine the red after all. I'm working from the catalogue for the Haunch of Venison's new show The Mystery of Appearance and in my memory (possibly faulty) the art-work itself is a good deal grimmer and more swarthy than it's reproduction. Anyway, with red or without it, you should now have a reasonable image of Leon Kossoff's Seated Woman No 2, by some stretch the muddiest and most rebarbative painting I've seen this year.

Graffiti: Meet the street writing women

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

In the 21 July 1971 issue of The New York Times, Richard Goldstein wrote an article on the subculture that was gaining momentum in New York City. He profiled Taki 183, a male graffiti writer whose tags had been blazoned across subways and street corners. Goldstein also briefly mentioned that "he has spawned hundreds of imitators ... including Barbara 62" – who would go on to become one of the most influential female figures in street art.

Picture preview: The day the music died

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:50:00 +0000

One of Amy Winehouse's favourite London haunts, Proud in Camden, is celebrating the late singer's life with an exhibition of photographs of her, and other musicians with a significant cultural impact, whose lives were tragically short-lived.

Why Britain's got talent once again on the big screen

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

"The British are coming!" Colin Welland wailed incautiously after bagging a screenwriting Oscar for Chariots of Fire in 1981. And it always seems like the British are coming, but they never really seem to be.

Post-war artists who stuck to their guns

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

After the Second World War, American artists rejected the European past and took to Abstract Expressionism.

Portraits of the artists: Abe Frajndlich turns his lens on the greats of photography

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Abe Frajndlich is what you might call a photographer's photographer. And not just because his colleagues admire his work – but because they are his work. For several decades, Frajndlich has turned his camera on the faces of those usually found behind their own. What began as a series of portraits of "Grandes Dames of Photography" for Life in 1988 was picked up and supported with funds from Kodak as an ongoing, globe-trotting project. These portraits have now been published as a book, Penelope's Hungry Eyes. The glossy volume contains more than 100 shots, intimately revealing some of the biggest names in the history of photography, from the other side of the lens.

Portfolio: Terry O'Neill

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

He saw them come and he saw them go. He was there as Mick, Keith and Bill sauntered down London's Baker Street in 1963, unnoticed and unmolested – the year before the Stones would break it big. He was there to capture a 16-year-old Lesley Hornby, just as the newly minted "Face of '66" was reinventing herself as Twiggy.

Everybody loves a winner, but we like a trier even more

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

In the Norwegian Polar Museum in the Arctic city of Tromso, there's barely a mention of Captain Scott. It's Roald Amundsen who dominates – his mammoth stone bust guards the entrance, and the upper floor is filled with artefacts from his polar missions, particularly the one that reached the South Pole 100 years ago on Wednesday.

Charting emotion: What makes me happy

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Researchers have tried to quantify how happy people are by charting the emotion on an index. From Tuesday, it is the turn of the arts to explain happiness, with a new exhibition aiming to express the emotion through objects.

The Diary: Russell Tovey; Katie Leung; Martin Boyce; Sheridan Smith; Bennett Miller

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Sex without Her

Tracey Emin and the Margate Birds

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Tracey Emin has long shown a sometimes bittersweet love for her home town of Margate. A keen supporter of the resort's recently opened Turner Contemporary gallery, she is now hooking up with a different group of local artists: the surf-pop gang Two Wounded Birds.

And then there were four: Ringo picks up his paintbrush

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Asked to gauge Ringo Starr's musical abilities, John Lennon joked: "He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles." But could the drummer yet prove the finest artist among the prodigiously-talented group after unveiling his first public sculpture?

The Ideas Factory: Curating the future - a US gallery's digital reframing

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, Minnesota is one of the United States' premier modern arts spaces. Its permanent collection features works by Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe.

Picture preview: Terry O’Neill's screen sirens and rock rebels

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:20:47 +0000

It was an ordinary day in 1959 when Terry O'Neill took a chance photograph of the then Home Secretary asleep at Heathrow Airport which would change his life forever. Snapped up by a newspaper, it would set him along the path to stardom as one of the most influential photographers of our time.

Picture preview: A Moving Masterpiece

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:28:24 +0000

The Moving Masterpiece exhibition is a 128m by 6.5m animated reproduction of the painting Qing Ming Shang He Tu - a national treasure painted by Song artist Zhang Zeduan in 11th Century. Over 30 times bigger than the original, the installation was the star attraction of the China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and has now toured Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei and Tai-Chung attracting over 10 million people.

Leonardo: What’s a show like you doing in a space like this?

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Last week the national museums and galleries were celebrating 10 years of free admission, hard fought for by some. The trustees of the National Gallery, however, had been aloof from that debate. They had never charged, and when in the 1970s Edward Heath suggested they might like to be able to, they not only eschewed the idea, they said they did not want to do so at any time in the future. The public should never have to pay to see pictures they already owned.

Laura McLean Ferris: A sense of the heavenly in a depressing urban setting

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Martin Boyce created a rather gorgeous, atmospheric installation for his Turner Prize exhibition in Baltic, which was scattered with cream-coloured light thrown around by pale tree-like forms. It marked a slow gradual trajectory in the artist's work over the last five years or so.

Picture preview: Goldfish Salvation

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:55:26 +0000

Ten years ago when the artist Riusuke Fukahori struggled to find inspiration, it came to him when he looked at his pet goldfish. Ever since he has painted fish using acrylic painted on clear resin poured into three-dimensional containers to give the impression of fish in water. His work is currently on show at the ICN gallery in London.

Eastern promise: George Chinnery

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

To us, the experience of empire may have been about power, commerce and occupation.

Portfolio: Christopher Jonassen

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

They resemble planets viewed through a telescope, from fiery infernos to icy wastelands. But the subjects of Norwegian fine-art photographer Christopher Jonassen's series "Devour" are, in themselves, actually something far more prosaic: the surfaces of tired, battered frying pans.

Tiger mother: Wildlife artist Pollyanna Pickering meets Deborah Ross

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

So off, at last, to meet Pollyanna Pickering, whose name alone fills me with the most fabulous joy – what I wouldn't do to be called 'Pollyanna Pickering'! – and who is one of Europe's foremost wildlife artists and if you think you don't know her work you are wrong: you so do. Her paintings are spectacularly popular and are reproduced everywhere. They are on greeting cards and tea-towels and T-shirts and diaries and notebooks and ceramics and clocks and stamps and bags. Her 'Westie' tote is a Harrods bestseller, and she is the artist who annually paints the Harrods Christmas bear on to all their gift products. More exotically, she travels the world painting wild animals in situ – "I've always believed that to fully capture the realism and vitality of my subjects it's vital to sketch them in their natural habitats" – and has visited some of the most inhospitable places, including remote China, where she ate slug thinking it was mushroom ("very chewy"), and the High Arctic, where it was all raw, frozen caribou until, one day, her Inuit guides miraculously produced a Pot Noodle from somewhere, "and it was absolute luxury!". So she is daring and adventurous and if there is one other thing you should know about her (and I can't blame you for not knowing) it is this: she is also a delight and a hoot. She once painted the Queen's favourite racing pigeon. A good model? Not a bit of it. "I kept having to poke it in the bum to make it stand up straight." This, I now realise, is why you rarely see racing pigeons on the catwalks in Paris, London or Milan. Or New York.

The Diary: Alecky Blythe; Martin Creed; James Corden; Darren Criss; Jo Nesbo

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Theatre to stoke the fires of hope

Soho celebs strip off for charity show

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Sadie Frost and Jaime Winstone have posed naked in photographs at London's Groucho Club to raise money for the National Autistic Society. Frost is stretching naked on a bed and Winstone is sitting on a chair, with nothing but a vintage red gypsy curtain over her lap. Organised by Bernie Katz, the club's manager, this collection of nude and semi-nude portraits of stars of Soho, snapped by Andrea Vecchiato, are on show this week at London's The Gallery Soho.

Turner Prize and our friends in the North

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

In the first week of the 2011 Turner Prize exhibition at Baltic, in Newcastle, a queue snaked out of the gallery and along the riverside path. Record numbers of visitors came to see the art. Of the four artists on show, only Hilary Lloyd works in London – although she was educated in Newcastle. Karla Black and Martin Boyce are based in Glasgow, George Shaw in Devon.

Doglegs, Chicanes and Beelines

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:04:03 +0000

English artist Katie Pratt’s new show is curiously titled Doglegs, Chicanes & Beelines. The reason? The painter’s unique, splashy and abstracted style involves a definite process by which she seeks uniformity and pattern in the paint she has (quite literally) “slapped onto canvas”.

A new life for Egypt's ancient treasures

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Right at the entrance to the Ashmolean's newly refurbished and expanded Egyptian galleries you know you are in a different place.