Search results for: first look

By royal arrangement: Queen Mary’s compulsive collecting

Many British royals have been keen on acquiring works of art, but few have been as diligent about looking after them as Queen Mary

27 Mar 2021

The stonecutter who gave life to letters

Ralph Beyer’s idiosyncratic letter-cutting isn’t to everyone’s taste but there’s no denying its power

26 Mar 2021
Art attack: Sacha Jafri painting his record- (and potentially back-) breaking artwork.

The world’s largest painting – a backbreaking endeavour, basically

Sacha Jafri’s vast canvas may have fetched $62m, but it also landed him in hospital – and he’s not the first artist to have suffered a work-related injury

24 Mar 2021
Broadcasting legend? Cellini’s Perseus plus boombox

Art really does work on the radio – especially if it’s cast as true crime

A new series on BBC Radio 3 delves into the notorious life of Benvenuto Cellini – and it’s a binge-worthy Renaissance thriller, Christina Faraday writes

22 Mar 2021
Book end? The National Art Library at the V&A, London, photographed in 2016.

For the future of scholarship, the National Art Library must be protected

The V&A says it’s protecting the jobs of librarians (for now), but the fate of the greatest art library in the UK remains uncertain

19 Mar 2021
Congo Woman (detail; 1942), Irma Stern.

In search of Irma Stern, whose paintings still embody the contradictions of South Africa

Irma Stern’s idylls of African life have too often been read at face value – but they mask a more troubled history

19 Mar 2021

Art is all about human touch – and right now that’s more disturbing than it sounds

With human contact all but banned, an exhibition about touch was always going to provoke mixed feelings

18 Mar 2021
Brooch (1963), Andrew Grima.

Pinpoint perfection: how the brooch became an experimental art form

Since the 1960s, artists and designers have regarded the brooch as a miniature sculpture – and an opportunity to try out new materials and techniques

13 Mar 2021
National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, Dhaka (1962–83), designed by Louis Kahn (1901–74).

Keep cool: the concrete castles of Louis Kahn

The architect wreathed his buildings in mystical language – but his modern citadels are clearly among the great achievements of 20th-century architecture

Self-portrait under Trees (detail; 1921), Walter Gramatté.

Walter Gramatté and Hamburg

The German painter moved freely between Surrealism, Expressionism and Symbolism, as this display in Hamburg reveals

12 Mar 2021
Screen printing (money). Courtesy Christie’s

NFT mania has swept the art world – and yes, that’s the scent of tulipomania.jpeg

Christie’s just sold a Jpeg file for a staggering $69.3 million. There’ll be a saving on shipping costs, if nothing else…

12 Mar 2021
Bird’s eye – Lear’s macaw in its natural habitat.

How a parrot named after Edward Lear is taking flight again in Brazil

A pair of Lear’s macaws, named after the poet, painter and parrot-lover, have been released into the wild in Brazil

12 Mar 2021
Detail from maquette for We Are Building (Stroim) (1928), Valentina Kulagina. Museum of Modern Art, New York

The avant-garde artists who sold a vision of the future

A display of interwar posters is a reminder of that utopian moment when artists believed they could invent a new world

10 Mar 2021

How to turn your home into a DIY art gallery

Will Martin steps away from his screen and takes his cues from some of the world’s leading contemporary artists

9 Mar 2021

The poetry of Polaroids, chez François Halard

Locked down in Arles, the celebrated interiors photographer François Halard made a series of dreamlike Polaroids that emerge as an enigmatic self-portrait

8 Mar 2021
Untitled (lockdown portrait) (detail; 2020), Gillian Wearing.

Behind the mask? An interview with Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing is in an unusually candid mode in her lockdown paintings, writes Martin Herbert – if you take them at face value, that is

6 Mar 2021
Rembrandt looking shifty – courtesy of My Heritage’s Deep Nostalgia™

Bring your favourite paintings to life – with exceptionally creepy results

Thanks to deepfake technology you can make Rembrandt roll his eyes – and be creeped out by the results

5 Mar 2021
Hands on decks: Kemistry and Storm at Metalheadz (1995), Eddie Otchere

An elegy for sweaty nights of drum & bass

With nightclubs in crisis, photographs of clubbers leave Peter Scott feeling nostalgic for the ’90s rave scene

5 Mar 2021
The Queen's Theatre at Versailles, built 1779–79 by Richard Mique for Marie Antoinette.

Drama queen: a peek inside Marie Antoinette’s private theatre

When Marie Antoinette had a theatre built at Versailles, her play-acting took to a stage of its own – and now this splendid interior has been meticulously restored

4 Mar 2021
Market crash: does anybody mourn the death of VHS?

Video in demand? The nostalgic appeal of VHS

Videos have become relics of a bygone era – but they are attracting a new following, glitches and all

27 Feb 2021
Art Is . . . (Girl Pointing)

Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And

Since the early ’80s, the American artist has blurred the lines between performance, politics and conceptualism. A survey at the Brooklyn Museum

26 Feb 2021
Gloomy forecast: at a protest against job cuts in the culture sector in summer 2020.

Has the UK government abandoned the arts?

Former arts minister Ed Vaizey and leading culture writer Charlotte Higgins on whether the government should be doing more for the hard-hit arts sector

26 Feb 2021
Fiddlesticks! The art of bead-stringing in the 21st century.

For the women of Venice, the fiddly art of bead-stringing is worth fighting for

Stringing glass beads was once the main work available to Venetian women – but it’s now a protected craft pursued by only a handful of skilled artists

25 Feb 2021
Portrait of the Collector of Modern Russian and French Paintings, Ivan Abramovich Morozov (detail; 1910), Valentin Serov. Courtesy Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The merchant from Moscow who fell for the Parisian avant-garde

Ivan Morozov built one of the greatest modern art collections in the world – but only a century after his death is his legacy being recognised

24 Feb 2021