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Steve McQueen - Tate Modern, London

Steve McQueen – Tate Modern, London

Steve McQueen is now familiar to us for his critically acclaimed films for cinematic release; most specifically the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013) but he has also made Hunger (2008), Shame (2010) and Widows (2018).

Less widely known, was that well before this, McQueen was a highly regarded visual artist, winning the Turner Prize in 1999. It is this side of his output that brings McQueen…

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Atlas of Brutalist Architecture - Phaidon

Atlas of Brutalist Architecture – Phaidon

For the launch of this spectacular new publication from Phaidonwe were kindly invited on a tour of some of London’s major Brutalist landmarks. Starting at the Barbican on the Southbank and proceeding via a series of impressive landmarks like Centre Point and The London College of Physicians it was pointed out by our insightful guide that much contemporary architecture, almost inevitably, runs…

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California Captured by Marvin Rand

California Captured by Marvin Rand

Mid century modern is one of today’s most prominent design trends – especially in California. Cruise around say, Los Angeles or Palm Springs and you will find no end of shops and businesses offering original, reproduction or imitation mid century furnishing. Around the world decor, design and architecture reflect a renewed interest in the period.

With this significant revival comes a desire to…

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America’s Cool Modernism – the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

America’s Cool Modernism – the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Most histories of modern art in the USA seem to skip through the period after the Great War in Europe. It is easy to do, after all the huge burst in European art movements that occurred in the early part of the 20th Century had by then subsided. The war had split groups and killed artists with those surviving largely shocked and confused with the new world order, unsure of new directions.

In…

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Frieze London 2018

As soon as Frieze makes its annual appearance in Regents Park everyone knows that it is time to check out the London art scene. The annual schedules of the galleries – both commercial and public – are all heavily weighted towards the Autumn and the most important names carefully lined up for exhibition. This is the time when anyone can get an all-round view of global trends without leaving…

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Glen Brown, Come to Dust – Gagosian Mayfair, London

Glen Brown, Come to Dust – Gagosian Mayfair, London

“I am rather like a Dr. Frankenstein, constructing paintings out of the residue or dead parts of other artist’s work. I see their worlds from multiple or schizophrenic perspectives, through all their eyes. Their sources of inspiration suggest things I would never normally see – rocks floating in far-off galaxies, for example, or a bowl of flowers in an 18th-century room, or a child in a…

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Wim Wenders: Instant Stories - The Photographers Gallery, London

Wim Wenders: Instant Stories – The Photographers Gallery, London

Anyone familiar with the work of Wim Wenders may suspect that he has more than a passing interest in photography. In two of his movies in particular the use of Polaroid cameras is a vital part of the narrative: in the road movie Alice in the Cities there is a photo-obsessed protagonist whilst in The American Friend, Dennis Hopper snaps himself repeatedly. Both make appearances in the exhibition,…

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Basquiat: Boom for Real - The Barbican Gallery, London

Basquiat: Boom for Real – The Barbican Gallery, London

Do not come to the latest Barbican Gallery exhibition Basquiat: Boom for Real expecting a straightforward show of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work. This is rather more than that and all the better for it. This is an exhibition where, in the words of Jane Alison, the Barbican’s Head of Visual Arts, we can “see those works in the context of the New York scene of the 1980s.”  We therefore get videos,…

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Rachel Whiteread - Tate Britain

Rachel Whiteread – Tate Britain

Now that Frieze, Frieze Masters and the PAD art & design fair are packed up we can move our attention to what else is going on in London this month. October is always chock a block with inviting exhibitions it is hard to know what to recommend first.

The Tate Gallery seems a pretty good place to start where Tate Britain are currently presenting the most substantial retrospective survey to date…

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October is the very best time of year to see art in the capital. The city is abuzz with the latest blockbuster shows – 2017 brings Jasper Johns as well as Dali/Duchamp to the Royal Academy, Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Barbican and Rachel Whiteread is showing at the Tate. The commercial galleries have pulled out their biggest names – there are Jean Dubuffet at Pace, Jake & Dinos Chapman at Blain…

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Franco Grignani : Art As Design 1950-1990 - The Estorick Collection, London

Franco Grignani : Art As Design 1950-1990 – The Estorick Collection, London

In a peaceful square in the heart of Islington the Estorick Collection is easily overlooked but well worth a detour. This is one of London’s most delightful and interesting smaller galleries. Featuring only Italian modern art it not only holds a regularly changing exhibition schedule but also houses one of the world’s finest collections of Italian Futurist work.

The collection was founded by…

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The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology ed. William Ewing and Barbara Hitchcock

The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology ed. William Ewing and Barbara Hitchcock

This post is also featured at www.cellophaneland.com

Remember that time, not so very long ago, when we all rushed down to the local Boots to drop in our films for printing? From this frustration of impatiently waiting anything from an hour (for those willing to stump up extra) to a week, to see the results of all the careful holiday snapping, lays the foundation of the Polaroid.

Back in 1943…

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Magnum Manifesto edited by Clément Chéroux

Magnum Manifesto edited by Clément Chéroux

This post also appears on www.cellophaneland.com

Any history of photography would be incomplete without substantial mention of the famed photographic agency Magnum, now celebrating its 70th anniversary. Within its 1947 origins are both the reasons for its success and for its often rocky journey: the diverse founding group included both Robert Capa who represented the ultimate in involved…

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Wolfgang Tillmanns 2017 at Tate Modern

Wolfgang Tillmanns 2017 at Tate Modern

This review also appears on CELLOPHANELAND*

This is photography Jim, but not as we know it. Visiting the latest Tate exhibition Wolfgang Tillmans 2017 many unfamiliar with his work are likely to come away with a whole new feelings about contemporary photography, how it is presented and what it means. They may also question the nature of photography.

Although we may consider Tillmans a…

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Bowie/Collector at Sotheby's London

Bowie/Collector at Sotheby’s London

Any passing thought that David Bowie was a casual or poorly informed collector of art disappears within moments of viewing his remarkable collection, shortly to be sold at a special three-part sale in Sotheby’s London.

In his own words David Bowie was an an ‘addictive and obsessive’ collector observing that it can “change the way I feel in the morning.” It inspired him and influenced his work,…

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Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy

Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy

Abstract Expressionism was a watershed moment in the evolution of 20th-century art, yet, remarkably, there has been no major survey of the movement since 1959.

It is a movement that has been tainted with the political interference of the American Government who sought to position the movement, and by association, the country at the heart of creative and artistic world during the cold war…

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A Beautiful Disorder - The CASS Sculpture Foundation

A Beautiful Disorder – The CASS Sculpture Foundation

Having had the recent pleasure of a wonderful short break at the Goodwood Hotel nearby we took the opportunity to revisit the CASS Foundation (see post from��previous visit). Actually located within the Goodwood Estate it displays large scale sculpture in a beautiful woodland location. The works are distributed along woodland trails, whilst a small hall and the main building house further…