Aubrey Beardsley, born in 1872, had tuberculosis when he was 7 years old, so knew that he would not live into old age and had to make the most of his short life, sadly dying when he was only 25 years old. However, in his short life, he achieved an incredible amount, as the exhibition […]
London has been celebrating two different periods of British art at Tate Britain and the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace, covering the periods from the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 through to the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and the artistic patronage of George IV as Prince Regent and King (1762-1830). Tate Britain […]
The strange thing is that on two visits to Budapest, I don’t remember seeing much of the work of Dora Maurer, on of Hungary’s most renowned contemporary artists (born 1937) in the museums and galleries there. London has been fortunate in two exhibitions, one at Tate Modern and another at the White Cube in Bermondsey, […]
One of the great triumphs of post First-World War was the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 which aimed to transform and integrate post-war design and arts for the 20th century and a modern society. Sadly, this modernist, innovative, forward-thinking initiative was closed by the National Socialist regime in Germany only 14 […]
If you want to have an adventure, try and find your way around Tate Britain at the moment, while the full expanse of the Duveen Galleries at the centre of the building is closed for the installation of the next exhibition, the lift that connects the lower floor to the ground floor and the Members’ […]
The two works at the beginning and the end say much about what is in between. At the start is ‘Albion Rose’ (1793) which illustrates the complexities in Blake’s work where images have a multitude of meanings if you look for them and is said to be a symbol of ‘youthful rebellion, spiritual freedom and […]
Every inch of wall has been covered, from top to bottom, from wall to wall. Artist France Lise-McGurn born 1983, from Glasgow has taken over one the the rooms in Tate Britain with colourful romantically-intertwined couples and groups in ‘Sleepness’. France Lise-McGurn’s specially-commissioned work represents the closeness, intimacy, intertwining and sexual electricity of young people […]
You’ve probably not heard of Frank Bowling, though Hales Gallery in Shoreditch does exhibit his work quite frequently. Born in Guyana some 85 years ago, he still paints in his London studio every day, continuing his lifelong experimentation with paint. Somehow, he has failed to achieve the recognition that his cotemporaries such as David Hockney […]
‘How I love London’ (Vincent van Gogh, 1875). Vincent van Gogh spent nearly 3 years in England as a young man, leaving in 1876, enjoying literature by authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and George Eliot and art by artists including John Constable, John Everett Millais and James Whistler, while his letters and notebooks […]
In the 20th century galleries of Tate Britain the futuristic, sinister, powerful sculpture, ‘The Rock Drill’ suggests something from Star Wars, though Jacob Epstein created it over 60 years before Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo, Princess Leia and the Stormtroopers made their appearance in the cinema. Epstein originally meant the sculpture to be representative of a […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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