Wow, a giant! Not quite. Don’t be misled, those are actually very small houses…
Like doll’s houses? Exactly like doll’s houses… Collected by the British artist Rachel Whiteread over two decades and kept in her basement ever since, the doll’s houses now get their chance to be centre stage.
This is the second in an occasional series on the right and proper way to behave in an art gallery. But I really made a terrible error before. Because this is Art Gallery Etiquette 101, lesson 1. Really, this is it…
Read the papers: modern life is symbolised by the recalcitrant mosquito swarm of the paparazzi; the beleaguered celebrity constant prey to the hordes of vicious fucks with the telephoto lenses. And well, yeah, they are. But then they also have their bodyguards, expensive lawyers, millions of pounds in their back pockets from selling the non-pap photos of their firstborn, plus an apparently incurable desire to eat in restaurants that happen to have hordes of those vicious paparazzi fucks outside. You win some, you lose some.
Tate Modern’s sporadically fascinating new photography exhibition – Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography – tells another story though: the control that a photographer can wield over the lives of those who have neither resources nor power. This mastery is a truly double-edged sword. The documentary evidence of cruelty, war, poverty and pestilence has often proved a vital catalyst for social change. On the other hand, the intrusion into the personal misery (or even just mundanity) of those whom are otherwise nameless, penniless and occasionally also oblivious to their role as subject, raises some weighty ethical concerns.
I’m a little embarrassed by how few female artists this blog has featured in recent weeks, so here’s a Picture of the Week by arguably Britain’s greatest living artist. No tokenism here though, this is stunning…
Who? Bridget Riley
To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second English language review of the Prado’s ambitious Goya in Times of War exhibition thus far. As such, I feel the weight of such an important duty rest heavily on my shoulders – I only hope I can do both you, my dear reader, and the exhibition justice.
First and foremost, some (highly significant) context. Madrid’s magnificent Prado gallery already houses the greatest Goya collection in the world, but this is its first retrospective proper in over a decade. The occasion? Nothing less than the 200-year anniversary of the most evocative date in Spanish history: the 2nd of May 1808.
This famous uprising against French oppressors – not to mention the bloody revenge exacted the following day – retains legendary status for the Spanish people and inspired some of Goya’s greatest work. However, as we shall come to see, our friend Goya was somewhat more equivocal in his treatment of the events than many of his compatriots.
Brutalism – the ever-controversial, predominantly (but certainly not exclusively) British take on modernist architecture – has been kickstarting tenuously-topical debate yet again. I already made a brief foray into the comments section on the following Guardian article, but in the days since I’ve realised there’s a wider cultural question I could raise that sits neatly enough within the raison d’etre of this here blog…
Who? Max Ernst.
What? Erm, untitled? This is just (just!) a single page from Ernst’s collage-tastic, surreal novel Une Semaine de Bonte (or, for us monolinguists, A Week of Kindness).
Where? Available at all good bookshops… Read the rest of this entry »
There are unique difficulties involved in coming face-to-face with one of the most significant paintings the world has ever seen. As an art lover in Madrid this is a problem you’re going to face on a regular basis, but I still haven’t come up with a decent solution. After all, when you’re gaping open-mouthed at the greatest painting of the 20th Century, no amount of looking is ever really going to be enough… Read the rest of this entry »
Who? Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Eduardo Terrazas, and Lance Wyman
What? Mexico 1968 Olympics Poster
Where? The V&A Museum of Childhood
The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge 
