The answer must be that art motivates me. Here I am testing ideas and prejudices about the supposed rivalries between great artists! This might be the reason that I am here anticipating a trip to London today (20th August 2025) to look again at Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery and to see a … More Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.
It is almost compulsory to describe the effect of art as achieved ‘beauty’. We use ‘beauty’ too often in this respect. The words that come to me as I reflect on an attempt to reconnect with the art of Andy Goldsworthy are precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility and ephemerality, so how has his lasted … More Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.
The Electra suite of the Tyneside cinema at 1.10 p.m. on Friday 25th July The events of Friday 25th July are a fitting image of an ‘alternate universe’, so I’ll describe those. I had planned to see a new film, one just released in the UK at least,Sam Sahid’s biographical and art documentary of the … More An alternate universe is, for me, sitting in a cinema that is entirely empty but for your presence, waiting to see the end of a film that keeps freezing at the same place. Getting to see ‘The Hidden Master: George Platt Lynes’ less alternatively at home on DVD.
Félix Vallotton Le Coup de Vent 1894 A coup in French is literally a ‘blow’ or ‘gust’ but, of course, we know it best in the term ‘Le Coup d’État‘, such as that event on 18 Brumaire where Napoleon took control of French revolutionary forces and thus the state. it has been forever after the … More Today was a typical day: a gust of wind sort of upset everything.
If we assume that ‘work’ is something we can do whilst our attention is divided in listening to something quite unrelated to it, what really is the value of our work? This blog reflects on the exhibition ‘With These Hands’ at the Laing Gallery Newcastle seen on 15th July 2025. Raing at the Laing yesterday … More If we assume that ‘work’ is something we can do whilst our attention is divided in listening to something quite unrelated to it, what really is the value of our work? This blog reflects on the exhibition ‘With These Hands’ at the Laing Gallery Newcastle seen on 15th July 2025.
Future plans are a kind of ‘bridging project’ for possible migrations. This blog is about naming the space we travel through in the art of Do Ho Suh. It reflects on visiting the exemplary exhibition at Tate Modern, London Bankside, on 9th July 2025. “But what exactly do you mean by space?” I remember the … More Future plans are a kind of ‘bridging project’ for possible migrations. It reflects on visiting the exemplary exhibition at Tate Modern, London Bankside, on 9th July 2025.
Retrospecting on Edward Burra: This blog reflects on visiting the wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, London Millbank, on 9th July 2025. I am building a large Edward Burra library. Though some items are rather shabby reading copies such as the Andrew Causey Edward Burra: Complete Catalogue and the Jane Stevenson biography of the artist, the content … More Retrospecting on Edward Burra: This blog reflects on visiting the wonderful exhibition at Tate Britain, London Millbank, on 9th July 2025.
Unexpected pleasures on my London trip: I find Louise at home in the Turbine Hall inviting me to see her Maman – being the second day of my London trip (July 2 2025) This is the first of three accounts of my second day of my two days away referenced in the blog at this … More Unexpected pleasures on my London trip: I find Louise at home in the Turbine Hall inviting me to see her ‘Maman’.
“It’s a poetic way of thinking about history, where materials themselves tell the story of power, fragility, and change”. Ali Cherri speaks of his art as ‘speaking through materiality’ in order to ‘reclaim the space of storytelling’. [1] Losing ‘track of time’ is really a phrase we use when we track time not by the … More “It’s a poetic way of thinking about history, where materials themselves tell the story of power, fragility, and change”. Ali Cherri speaks of his art as ‘speaking through materiality’ in order to ‘reclaim the space of storytelling’. Losing ‘track of time’ is really a phrase we use when we track time not by the clock but by the qualitative meaure of its process in the way we tell stories, even hi-story.
When I visited the wonderful John Bellany self-portraiture exhibition at City Art Gallery in Edinburgh on Friday 4th June, there was also another exhibition (on Modern Scottish Art) containing one other Bellany painting, that painting known as Obsession. Photography was banned so I rely on internet photographs to mark or note memories not my own. … More The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?
Dis/Placed: meanings in the art of Anselm Keifer metamorphose in association with the variant contexts contingent on the ‘placement’ in space and time This blog post is a sequel to one on Part One of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition in Amsterdam at this link. Just a glance at the new work at the top of … More Dis/Placed: meanings in the art metamorphose, and the variant contexts are at base space and time
Anselm Kiefer said in a lecture in Tate Britain in 2019 (abridged for the new Van Gogh exhibition in Amsterdam in 2025 as an introduction to the catalogue): ‘Van Gogh’s composition is minimalist. There is no shimmering light dissolving the material world into pointillistic touches of colour. Van Gogh builds the landscape like a bricklayer, … More Anselm Kiefer sees Van Gogh in Amsterdam, and the confrontation is world-changing.
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