It starts with a self-portrait from 1964 when Andy Warhol was in his mid-30′s and ends with another self-portrait from 1986, a year before his death at the relatively young age of 58, but how many artists achieved so much in this relatively short lifetime that still sets the 21st century world alight. Normally the […]
At the end of the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace stands the Victoria Memorial designed in 1901 by the English sculptor Sir Thomas Brock. Dedicated in 1911 and completed in 1924, the Memorial is a celebration of the British Empire and Britain’s naval prowess under Queen Victoria, including mermaids and mermen. Filling the immense […]
Dora Maar has perhaps not received the recognition she deserved due to her relationship with Pablo Picasso, one of whose many portraits of her is on show at Tate Modern’s extensive reappraisal of her work, from her change in direction and identity from the artist-painter Henrietta Theodora Markovitch to the photographer Dora Maar in 1932 […]
October was Nam June Paik’s month. Work by the Korean artist from the 1990’s bridging technology, art and human beings filled the stand of the Gallery Hyundai from Seoul at Frieze London in one of the best displays of the Fair, and then, later in the month, the major and extensive exhibition of his work […]
Tate Modern at its best – bursting with creativity. In addition to the main exhibitions of Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson‘s immersive installations and Greek artist Takis’s kinetic art, plus the permanent collections and a fascinating exhibition of the work of the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova, the two buildings that combine to create Tate Modern, including […]
The beauty of Classical Greek art and architecture is linked to perfect proportions, balance and mathematical lines – as you can see in the perfection of the classical columned temple facades of buildings such as the Parthenon where apparently straight lines are actually carefully curved. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Greek artist Panayiotis Vassilakis, […]
In some ways, it is the last room of this exhibition which is the most important. Coming after a selection from 20 years of Eliasson’s art installations, here in the Expanded Studio is an A to Z of his wider interests including climate change, immigration and architectural projects to make the world a better place, […]
This is Tate Modern at its best. The terrace at the south end is full of sculptures that visitors can play and interact with, as Franz West would have wished, Then, upstairs on the 2nd floor, his work spills out into the corridors around the lifts and staircases. The more Tate Modern can use these […]
Having been to see the exhibition at Gagosian in Grosvenor Hill, it was only natural to look for the self-portraits in the two exhibitions at Tate Modern on Dorothea Tanning and Pierre Bonnard. The one that grabs you most across the two exhibitions is Dorothea Tanning’s image from 1944 of a small lone woman surrounded […]
If you were to be allowed to freely explore the immense collections of the British Library, how many British authors would you find had in fact come from other countries – Joseph Conrad, for example, the author of ‘Heart of Darkness’ was Polish; Hanif Kureishi author of ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’ is of Pakistani and English […]
"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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