art blog since 2009
As with any 21st century talent contest, the three judges in Casting Jesus are impatient, cutting and at times cynical. They praise as well, of course, but not always with great sincerity. But unlike the panels we know from primetime TV, these worldly starmakers are a Vatican priest, a Vatican newspaper art critic, and a …
September 20, 2011
Here are some of the best reads/watches/gapes from the last seven days: What do we really learn from a £440 million memorial to 9/11? asks Tiffany Jenkins in the Indpendent. A child’s eye view of Palestine gets banned from a Museum of Childrens Art in California. Read the story on Hyperallergic and do check the …
September 18, 2011
On paper, this is a place to come face to face with your greatest fear: a labyrinth in whose depths you will find monuments.pertaining to four major religions. But the deity or beast you are most likely to meet will be dressed in your clothes and looking back at you from one of the many …
September 7, 2011
Some links from the last seven days. The internet has been busy again: Once you start building a bunker, it hardly ever ends well. As Gaddafi hunkers down in Tripoli (presumably), Jonathan Glancey looks at his architecture. Does art change nothing? This galvanising piece on The Daily Serving finds street art in the thick of …
August 27, 2011
Things which I have come across this week include: Even as cuts cause pain elsewhere, last week’s auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s confirm that business is booming for blue-chip art. Check out this shrewd report from A Kick up the Arts. In a video for the Guardian, Jonathan Glancey turns his somewhat intense gaze on …
July 3, 2011
In a town where one of the most risky things you can do is ride a log flume on a Grade-II listed pier, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt are an anomaly. The Brighton duo known as Semiconductor have been to the real ends of the Earth to source material for their art. A new show …
June 23, 2011
As widely noted, the biggest shock of this year’s Turner Prize shortlist is painter George Shaw’s affinity with the enthusiasts who build model Spitfires. He doesn’t hide the fact that Humbrol enamel is his medium of choice. And it now looks like a conceptual statement carried to an extreme. He will have got through gallons. …
June 21, 2011
The big news this week is that criticismism was down for about 24 hours. Apologies to anyone who tried to visit on Thursday or Friday. Anyway, it’s back…with links: 18 war photographers talk about shots which almost got them killed in the Guardian. This is an agonising piece that somehow conveys more than the pictures …
June 19, 2011
The fridge looks nothing like my fridge. In truth it is more like a “dark mirrorâ€, a “walled garden†or a “monstrous insectâ€, all comparisons made by an anguished, robotic first person voiceover. Manufacturers Samsung surely realise they are in the business of fabricating metaphors. How else could they justify a $1,799 price tag for …
June 2, 2011
In April this year the story broke that now ubiquitous iPhones and 3G iPads are recording details of everywhere their owners go, storing locations and timestamps on a secret file. This may not be a conspiracy, but it would seem to be one more step towards a transparent world in which privacy belongs to a …
May 25, 2011