KMSKA: The Finest Museum The Holy Family by Rubens. KMSKA Patrick De Rynck (ed.), KMSKA, 2022, hardback, 256pp, fully illus., €45 KMSKA: The Finest Hundred Patrick De Rynck (ed.),KMSKA,2022, hardback, 288pp, fully illus., €45 Bruegel and Beyond: Netherlandish Drawings in the Royal Library of Belgium, 1500-1800 Daan van Heesch, Sarah Van Ooteghem, Joris Van Grieken…
Photo: Ivan Radic. Wikimedia Commons Artivism – The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism Alexander Adams, Societas – Imprint Academic, pp 215, £14.95 GUY WALKER welcomes a spirited sortie onto the cultural battlefield One function of placing fine paintings in ornate gold frames or sculptures on marble plinths is to demonstrate the special…
Crowland Abbey. Photo: Derek Turner Edge of England: Landfall in Lincolnshire Derek Turner, Hurst & Co., 2022, hb., 446pps, 32 col. Illus. & map, £20 PAUL GARNER enjoys a survey of an oddly little-known county Edge of England is a rich tapestry woven of many threads—history, nature, industry, geography, religion and folklore—all intertwining to create…
Field Notes: Walking the Territory Maxim Peter Griffin, London: Unbound, 132pps, hb., £16.99 DEREK TURNER admires a unique landscape artist Several years ago, when I was thinking about writing a book about Lincolnshire, I found a strikingly original Twitter account. Almost every day, the seemingly tireless Maximpetergriff posted pictures painted during or after apparently endless…
Franz Kafka, Der Denker The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach (ed.), Shelley Frisch (trans.), Princeton University Press, 2022, hb, 230pp + XXII, 9 mono illus., £20/$24.95 Franz Kafka: The Drawings Pavel Schmidt, Andreas Kilcher (ed.), Kurt Beals (trans.), Yale University Press, 2022, hb, 368pp, 240 col. illus., £35/$50 ALEXANDER ADAMS sees different…
A gallery of Russian oligarchs. Wikimedia Commons LAURA GASCOIGNE casts an eye on oligarchs and their arts The Art Newspaper has published its annual museum attendance figures for 2021. The Louvre is top, 5% up on the year before, followed by the State Russian Museum at + 88%. Really? There are four Russian museums in…
DAVID LEE attempts to take an interest in a forty-year old artistic institution Not that it’s much fun remembering, but can it really have been more than 40 years ago that, like a new comet, the British Art Show (Arts Council prop.) first swam into our ken? It’s been coming back to haunt us every…
Francis Bacon, by Reginald Gray. Wikimedia Commons After/Après Francis Bacon Alexander Adams, Bristol: Golconda Fine Art Books, 2022, 60 pages, £10. English and French (French translation by Peggy Pancini) LIAM GUILAR follows an influential artist’s flamboyant trajectory through verse Some years ago, the Canadian critic, Hugh Kenner, in conversation with Charles Tomlinson, lamented the disappearance…
Ruskin Spear (1911-1990), Patients waiting outside a first aid post in a factory. Wikimedia Commons Humankind: Ruskin Spear Tanya Harrod, Studies in Art, The Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing and Thames & Hudson, 2022, £35 PHILIP WARD-JACKSON remembers an unpretentious but greatly gifted artist ‘This is not a full-scale biography’ apologizes Harrod, lamenting the dearth…
RICHARD GERSTL (1883–1908), Self-Portrait in front of a Stove, 1907. Oil on canvas on board. Neue Galerie New York Modern Worlds: Austrian and German Art, 1890-1940 Renée Price (ed.), Prestel/Neue Galerie, 2021, 656pp, $75/£55 ALEXANDER ADAMS is transported to a thrilling time of artistic experimentation The Neue Galerie in New York holds one of the world’s…