It takes a bold author to open his book about ‘Guernica’ with a quotation from the Spanish artist Antonio Saura lamenting ‘the number of bad books that have been written and will be written’ about it. Fortunately, James Attlee’s study of Picasso’s superstar work of art is not a bad book and he builds on
One day, somebody will stage an exhibition of artists taught at the Slade by the formidable Henry Tonks, who considered Cézanne a ‘curiously incapable’ menace, and a cracking show it will be. Until then, we must take what we can from exhibitions like True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s & 1930s. Here,
Like many artistically inclined children, I was given a set of Daler Rowney watercolours for my birthday one year. My first paints! What delights would I unleash with these cubes of colour? Well, practically none, as it turned out. Unschooled in the art of watercolour and evidently lacking any instinct for the medium, I used
Henry, our springer spaniel, has died, suddenly and prematurely. With the passing weeks, we are becoming accustomed to the strange stillness his absence has left behind, and I no longer expect to meet him hurtling around the house in motiveless delight or to find him sidling against my leg as I sit in the kitchen.
Glamour. It’s Marcello Mastroianni drinking negronis on the Via Veneto; it’s Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Sinatra on the Vegas Strip in ’59… and a composting toilet on the west coast of Scotland. The latter was the only one available when I went glamping in Skye. Glamping is a neologism, an awkward portmanteau word that seeks
The last boat I saw in the galleries on the Mound was a canoe that the Scottish painter Jock McFadyen had been using to explore viewpoints around the waterways of London. Now another vessel has sailed in, a full-scale recreation of the studio boat built in 1857 by the French painter Charles-François Daubigny, from the
In 1961 the Venezuelan-American sculptor Marisol Escobar made a startling appearance at the New York artists’ group known as the Club that would set the tone for her unconventional career. The Club was where the alphas of contemporary American art met. Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and their ilk gathered there to take
If you hope to inspire an appreciation of Renaissance art in your children, look to Hieronymus Bosch. Ideally, your children will not be sensitive types, nor prone to nightmares, but if they can handle a little, or indeed quite a lot, of fantasy, Bosch will blow their tiny minds. My four-year-old lad, Luca, definitely not
Glasgow International Glasgow, until 25 April 2016 Kelvin Hall is a semi-derelict monument to the fag-end of Glasgow’s great art deco adventure. Built during the city’s industrial prime as an exhibition hall, it is now a building site, undergoing refurbishment. This has not stopped the Glasgow International art festival, the loose theme of which is the
Randolph Schwabe (b. 1885) was a measured man in art and in life. His drawings are meticulous, closely observed models of draughtsmanship and represent a school of art that has now largely been lost or dismissed as irrelevant. To some, though, Schwabe seemed old-fashioned even in 1930 when he ascended to the position of Principal
Finding St Peter’s is not straightforward. I approach the wrong way, driving up a pot-holed farm track between a golf club and a wood until a fly-tipped sofa blocks my way. Beyond the sofa, behind padlocked security fencing, stands an old stone bridge. Someone has sprayed ‘Go Home’ on the pillar. I prowl through the
The ten vignettes that punctuate the white walls of the Ingleby Gallery invite us to step into the many-chambered mind of Andrew Cranston. These densely textured and patterned figurative scenes of obscure meaning enthrall, drawing the viewer into a peculiar realm of fantasy where tortoises crawl for ever and infants abandon their toys to stare
‘Edvard Munch, I cannot abide,’ wrote Nikolai Astrup in a letter to his friend Arne Giverholt. ‘Everything that he does is supposed to be so brilliant that it doesn’t have to be more than merely sketched.’ Near contemporaries, Munch and Astrup were both innovative and admired painters but while Munch is today one of the
The Glasgow Effect is a term given by epidemiologists and sociologists to describe the disproportionate levels of ill health and early death in Scotland’s second city. Disproportionate, because even when the usual factors of poverty are accounted for, Glasgow exceeds expectation. People in Glasgow have the lowest life expectancy in Scotland but even the wretched
Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple into a sumptuous and thoroughly modern gallery. The space inside now channels the visitor from one gallery to another through split levels and along wide, glass-walled extensions. The great barrel-vaulted spaces at the gallery’s core
Modern Scottish Men, a new exhibition celebrating the achievements of male artists in the 20th century, opens next month in Edinburgh. Men only; no women. Bold! Only joking. That show would never happen today. How could it? Where would an exclusive, specifically male-only exhibition be tolerated these days? A women-only show, on the other hand,
Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling is the best thing in the Lake District. I lived near Wigton, just north of the fells, for two years and escaping the shadow of the clingfilm factory to witness generations of champions, all called Brocklebank, do writhy battle on the Cumbrian turf was a delight. Fools might think that the
Watch a child draw. See how she scrawls with abandon, jabs the felt tip at the paper, colours an eye so deeply the pen drives a hole through the paper. Look as she concentrates on the action of the subject, strips out unnecessary detail, toys with scale. This is pure drawing, instinctive, expressive and truthful.
Here are some fur coats reclaiming the design canon for the sisterhood. They are draped over the back of tubular steel chairs. In this daring arrangement, they subvert the established patriarchy by partially obscuring the ‘autograph design object’ of the chair, something that represents the historic subsuming of all female creativity under male dominance. While
Picture Gallery Paxton House, Berwick-upon-Tweed Curved Stream Traquair House, Innerleithen, until 31 October In the Regency picture gallery at Paxton House hangs a full-length portrait of a young man in striking yellow breeches. The horse at his side is rubbing its bridle on its knee, the way horses do, while the man looks out at
