http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/perfect-products-the-best-in-modern-industrial-design-1823688.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/perfect-products-the-best-in-modern-industrial-design-1823688.html ]]> <p> The Serpentine Gallery first opened its doors to the public in 1970. </p> Features Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:37 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-diary-banksy-ed-vaizey-spandex-van-goghs-and-gurinder-chadha-1823813.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-diary-banksy-ed-vaizey-spandex-van-goghs-and-gurinder-chadha-1823813.html <p> <b>Guerilla wallfare becomes a big draw</b> </p> <p> Banksy's latest "guerilla" graffiti has been graffitied over and the wall on which the offending vandals struck removed from public view in order to "restore" Banksy's original piece of art/vandalism. An ironic outcome, which will no doubt reignite the debate on whether Banksy has become part of the "establishment". </p> Features Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-from-the-side--streets-and-the-alleys-london-rediscovered-1823827.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-from-the-side--streets-and-the-alleys-london-rediscovered-1823827.html ]]> <p> Old photographs – their particular grain, their uncanny illumination of both a living moment and the death of time – can possess extraordinary traction. I'm studying a photograph in a new book, Lost London, by Philip Davies, and it's hard to look away. </p> Features Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/what-is-art-a-debate-for-our-times-1823088.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/what-is-art-a-debate-for-our-times-1823088.html ]]> <p> Robert Macfarlane, in The Wild Places, writes, "I had been told that if you climb Ben Hope on the summer solstice and spent a clear night on the summit, you will never lose sight of the sun." </p> Features Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:50 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/portraits-of-peru-why-supermodel-helena-christensen-returned-to-her-roots-1823080.html http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/portraits-of-peru-why-supermodel-helena-christensen-returned-to-her-roots-1823080.html ]]> <p> When I imagine the horrible effects of climate change, I think of icebergs shrinking in Antarctica. But last month, I travelled to tropical Peru to see a hidden side of a global crisis. </p> Climate Change Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:13 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/gerry-judah-art-from-the-ruins-1822279.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/gerry-judah-art-from-the-ruins-1822279.html ]]> <p>Ruins hide things. Not just the memory of what they were, but the memories they still contain. For years after the Lebanese civil war ended, I would prowl the ruins of downtown Beirut – as a journalist, of course, but truth forces me to admit that I was searching for something more than a reporter's stories – to find that the poor had gravitated into the collapsed buildings, into the wreckage of dentists' shops and post offices and stores. </p> Features Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/interiors/annie-deakin/getting-lucky-at-auction-1822243.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/interiors/annie-deakin/getting-lucky-at-auction-1822243.html ]]> <p> Last week, we had "Friday the 13th", the alleged unluckiest day of the year and also the day that RCA Secret, the country’s biggest art lucky dip opened online and at RCA. The question of luck keeps following us around us this month; firstly the lottery jackpot winners, then the superstitious date and now the artistic gamble of sorts. </p> Annie Deakin Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:20:14 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/national-gallery-put-on-the-red-light-1821231.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/national-gallery-put-on-the-red-light-1821231.html ]]> <p> How many of us have paid for sex? Have I, do I? These are personal questions. People don't much talk about them, except on the quiet. But in these circumstances they're hard to avoid. </p> Features Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:31 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/on-the-agenda-were-off-to-the-shops-at-st-martins-lane-hotel-then-on-to-a-wainwright-christmas-1818795.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/on-the-agenda-were-off-to-the-shops-at-st-martins-lane-hotel-then-on-to-a-wainwright-christmas-1818795.html ]]> Features Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/artistry-and-technology-combine-to-create-hyperphotos-1820192.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/artistry-and-technology-combine-to-create-hyperphotos-1820192.html ]]> <p> In "hyper-photo" artist Jean-Francoise Rauzier's work, "On Time", which is included in his exhibition at the Waterhouse and Dodd Gallery in London later this month, there is image of a beach more dreamlike than real. It encompasses the essence of Rauzier's work: detail. </p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:05:27 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-shantaram-film--lumiere-festival-tom-atkinson-hans-holbein-harold-evans-1819450.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-shantaram-film--lumiere-festival-tom-atkinson-hans-holbein-harold-evans-1819450.html ]]> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/party-of-the-week-a-night-of-pop-art-for-rankin-and-friends-1819462.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/party-of-the-week-a-night-of-pop-art-for-rankin-and-friends-1819462.html ]]> <p>The singer Joss Stone, Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, magazine editor Jefferson Hack and My Summer of Love actress Natalie Press were out in force on Monday night for the private view of Rankin's exhibition Destroy at London's Phillips de Pury Gallery. </p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-gavin-turk-and-paula-rego-take-on-torture-1819473.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-gavin-turk-and-paula-rego-take-on-torture-1819473.html <p>Some of Britain's most prominent contemporary artists have donated works to the Medical Foundation Art Auction, whose proceeds will support the victims of torture. </p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-of-the-matter-richard-eyre-on-the-meaning-of-culture-1819476.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-of-the-matter-richard-eyre-on-the-meaning-of-culture-1819476.html ]]> <p> I grew up in a rural backwater miles away from any cinema, even farther from any theatre, in a house where the paintings were of horses and the books were about war. To borrow a phrase from Neil Kinnock, I was the first member of my family in a thousand generations to attend a university but, in case I give the impression that, like the Monty Python sketch, I used to have to get up out of the shoe box in the middle of the night and lick the road clean with my tongue, I should make it clear that my upbringing was in almost every other sense a highly privileged one. </p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-awardwinning-young-artists-master-raphael-and-drer-1819466.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-awardwinning-young-artists-master-raphael-and-drer-1819466.html ]]> <p>The inaugural winners of the Young Masters Art Prize have been announced – artists Hector de Gregorio and Ghost of a Dream, jointly. They are among 16 artists who were inspired by the Old Masters to create new work. For 35 year-old, Spanish, de Gregorio, this year was already going rather well, with a sell-out Royal Academy graduation show which saw Sir Terence Conran and Theo Fennell snap up his mixed-media work, which reinvents historical paintings by introducing his own new narratives. He digitally photographs his subjects and prints the images onto canvas before treating them heavily with varnishes, oils, and waxes to make them look like weathered, 500 year-old, works.</p> Features Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/lou-reed-photographer-1817676.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/lou-reed-photographer-1817676.html ]]> <p>Lou Reed may be a rock legend, the founding member of the Velvet Underground, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a man so cool that fans keel over in the reflection of his mirrored shades. Yet he has an alter ego, a solitary figure, a man who retreats quietly into nature to observe the light and make elegant, romantic photographs, far removed from his life at the heart of New York City. The process could not be more different but there are parallels between his music and his photographs. Putting together a book of photographs is, says Reed, like sequencing a CD. It is intuitive, an indefinable way of working where things happen not through planning and preordained ideas, but because they feel right. He approaches photography with the qualities of a musician. "The response is emotional. That's all I want; they are taken with emotion and put together with emotion, equal emotion," he says.</p> Features Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/frank-auerbach--in-the-thick-of-it-1817175.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/frank-auerbach--in-the-thick-of-it-1817175.html ]]> <p> I could write like that if I had enough ink," Stravinsky said about Olivier Messiaen, (those densely scored compositions). Artists have had similar doubts about Frank Auerbach. </p> Features Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:48 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/modern-comic-genius-the-graphic-art-thats-not-just-for-geeks-1816598.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/modern-comic-genius-the-graphic-art-thats-not-just-for-geeks-1816598.html ]]> <p>Walk into the ICA this weekend and you won't find the usual contemporary art installations. For the next three weeks it's all about art with a cool comic-book twist. At the sixth Comica festival, the annual London gathering of some of the biggest international comic and graphic novel writers and artists around, hip twentysomethings will be watching their heroes drawing a collaborative comic strip live on to the wall and being projected into the bar next door. There will be the latest comic anthologies for sale, DJs, film screenings and talks by some of the biggest names in the comic-book business, including the co-founder of the Forbidden Planet shops, Mike Lake, and Bryan Talbot, author of the first British graphic novel, giving an illustrated lecture on his new steampunk detective thriller Grandville.</p> Features Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/maharaja-the-splendour-of-indias-royal-courts-1815535.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/maharaja-the-splendour-of-indias-royal-courts-1815535.html ]]> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:29:21 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-basquiat-in-photographic-notes-from-the-underground-1815300.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-basquiat-in-photographic-notes-from-the-underground-1815300.html ]]> <p>In a modestly sized apartment on the Lower East of New York, the writing remains on the wall. Despite a childlike charm, they're no ordinary scribblings and the resident, Nicholas Taylor, has no intention of whitewashing over them. Originating from the hand of Jean-Michel Basquiat, they're a reminder of a close friendship that was curtailed by the untimely passing of the artist, aged 27 in 1988. Taylor was part of a very small tight-knit circle of friends that Basquiat trusted as his career spiralled. "All Jean wanted was someone to sit and watch him paint. To be quiet with him," reminisces Taylor. "I really believe he is the most important painter of the late 20th century."</p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/out-of-this-world-the-museum-of-everything-1813065.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/out-of-this-world-the-museum-of-everything-1813065.html ]]> <p>You don't have to be mad, but it helps. When it comes to Outsider Art, that's a good general motto, but nobody has a definition. For example, was William Blake an Outsider? You could make a case: the symmetrical images packed with detail, the visions, the home-made mythology. Yet Blake studied at the RA, knew the European tradition, consorted with major artists of his time, sought an audience. In those ways, his was the very opposite of Outsider Art. </p> Features Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:48 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/on-the-agenda-were-going-back-in-time-for-a-dalliance-with-dialup-and-an-aled-jonesthemed-christmas-1811024.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/on-the-agenda-were-going-back-in-time-for-a-dalliance-with-dialup-and-an-aled-jonesthemed-christmas-1811024.html ]]> Features Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/little-miss-big-shot-fifties-america-exposed-ndash-by-a-french-nanny-1811040.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/little-miss-big-shot-fifties-america-exposed-ndash-by-a-french-nanny-1811040.html ]]> <p>The timing, composition and realisation grab you. But it's the anonymous drama of the subjects that keeps you looking: who are the two men talking in earnest on the pier? What is running through the mind of the young black man caught in the mirror on a street corner? Yet in the case of the photos presented here, that mystery extends to the photographer herself. We know she was called Vivian Maier, that she took at least 30,000 shots in Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s. For these few facts, we can thank a young Chicago estate agent called John Maloof, whose chance discovery of the Maier archive has brought publishing offers, invitations to exhibit Maier's work all over the world, and the hope, from some, that a new star of mid-century American photography may have been unearthed. </p> Features Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-new-renaissance-at-the-vampa-1811347.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-new-renaissance-at-the-vampa-1811347.html <p>The V&A's new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, which take up a whole wing of the museum, will finally open on 2 December. Featuring the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, the Becket Casket, thought to have contained his relics, and dramatic Italian sculptures by Donatello, as well as Gothic altarpieces and 13th-century French stained glass windows this is the V&A's most extravagant project since the British Galleries opened in 2001. It has cost 30m.</p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/future-classic-the-worlds-first-public-museum-gets-a-16361m-makeover-1811072.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/future-classic-the-worlds-first-public-museum-gets-a-16361m-makeover-1811072.html ]]> <p>Oxford's Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology re-opens on 7 November, after a £61m transformation, Britain's biggest cultural project since the creation of the £100m Great Court at the British Museum. The Ashmolean's extension doubles its display space with a pale, luminous architectural clarity that puts the flaccid classical pastiche of the adjoining Sackler Library very firmly in its place.</p> Features Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/rhyme-scene-investigation-1810367.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/rhyme-scene-investigation-1810367.html <p>Many of the great 20th-century avant-garde movements had one thing in common: close ties between art and poetry. Yet in the 21st century, correspondences between art and music, or between architecture and fashion, are much more commonplace. The Serpentine Gallery Poetry Marathon, which we have recently staged, sought to address this, encouraging a new exchange of ideas between visual artists and poets. </p> Features Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/up-close-and-too-personal-a-sophie-calle-retrospective-1809346.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/up-close-and-too-personal-a-sophie-calle-retrospective-1809346.html ]]> <p>Looking at the work that the French artist Sophie Calle has made over the years, it is tempting to assume that she is mad. She stalked a man in Venice and invited strangers to her bed. In New York, she recorded the number of times she smiled at passers by and how often they smiled back. When a lover ended a relationship by email she turned it into a large artwork, inviting 107 women to comment on this intimate correspondence. </p> Features Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-diary-mark-wallinger-pink-floyd-royal-opera-house-john-ofarrell-1807169.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-diary-mark-wallinger-pink-floyd-royal-opera-house-john-ofarrell-1807169.html ]]> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/i-thought-of-drawing-a-square-british-arts-biggest-names-reveal-the-work-that-set-them-on-the-road-to-fame-1807171.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/i-thought-of-drawing-a-square-british-arts-biggest-names-reveal-the-work-that-set-them-on-the-road-to-fame-1807171.html ]]> <p>The beginning. The middle. The end. It is always fascinating and instructive to observe the trajectory of an artist, any artist. Beginnings can be particularly instructive. Is he or she to the manor born? Or is this foray into art a sudden flight into unknown and uncharted territory, at which the family now raises its collective eyebrows in a mingling of horror and consternation? </p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-comedy-in-the-frame-at-frieze-1807172.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/observations-comedy-in-the-frame-at-frieze-1807172.html <p>Lurking in the far corner of the Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park last weekend was quite the curiosity – Club Nutz, the self-proclaimed "smallest comedy club in the world", complete with DJ booth, a stage one-foot deep, bar, disco ball and dry ice. If you managed to ride the wave of browsers, beautiful artists and poseurs to booth G22 (in the middle of the younger Frame section of the fair), the 20-person sweatbox provided an entertaining breather – albeit a claustrophobic one – from the rest of the contemporary art fair.</p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100