We’ve just returned from a late-night viewing (9-10pm) of the David Hockney Exhibition at Tate Britain and were heavily impressed of this exhibition of one of the major contributors to the pop art movement, who is considered to be one of the most influential and maybe the best-known amongst British artists of the 20th century. Old Blightey owes Hockney (who declined a knighthood earlier in his life). In the 1960s, this man, with his peroxide hair, big glasses, and awkward Yorkshire manner, was the first British artist who used television extensively, communicating to a broad audience at a time when most people in this country were completely oblivious to contemporary art. “What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.” David Hockney The […]
RA Lates: New Soviet World
The Royal Academy of Arts hosted another great RA Lates event on Saturday night. It was themed on the “Revolution: Russian Art, 1917-1932” exhibition, which is on at the RA until 17 April 2017. There were actors, playing the role of Bolsheviks and Soviet Commissars, and the curious paying guests, like myself, eager to take part in the “immersive” experience. And it was an experience. The queuing, the stamping of coupons, the bureaucracy, the “Biomechanical” life drawing class, the rubbery sausages in the communal dining hall at Canteen No. 57. But we forgot all this as we were treated with a live balalaika performance… and of course, the telling art of the revolutionary new Soviet world. I look forward to the next RA Lates event, taking place on 22 April on the theme of America Dreaming. RA Lates: New Soviet World certainly was a blast. If we have whetted your appetite […]
Manhattan Swing at the Royal Academy
We love the Royal Academy of Art and we try to do as many RA Lates as we can, this one not being the first one. It was called “Manhattan Swing” and aimed to emulate the 1940s and 1950s Manhattan of “abstract artists and beatniks in downtown Manhattan, Peggy Guggenheim and her new gallery Art of this Century, cocktail parties on the Upper East Side, Pollock’s drip paintings, jazz, beat poetry, dancing the jitterbug and sipping Martinis at the Savoy as we celebrate the era when New York overtook Paris as the capital of the art world.” The programme reads absolutely fabulous, ranging from intellectual talks and discussions about relevant topics such as “The Bohemia Incubator: Greenwich Village & Manhattan Post-War Culture” to Beat Poetry readings, live jazz music, DJs, free face painting, dance classes and painting workshops. The lobby was turned into a dance floor, two bars, […]
Banksy’s Dismaland
We visited Banksy’s Dismaland in September 2015. We left London with the first outgoing Saturday train one weekend and spent the morning and most of the afternoon in Bath, then took the train from there to Weston-super-Mare. Dismaland is located next to the Seaquarium in the former Tropicana Park. Apparently Banksy got the idea of using the area for an exhibition when he peeked into the abandoned and derelict park through a broken fence in January 2015 and started preparations for the exhibition shortly thereafter. We thought the exhibition was great. Very political, not necessarily in line with our political views, but angry art is always good art, and angry this art was. The queues were very long and once we finally got to the front, we realised that the admission procedure was already part of the show. The doormen and women were incredibly rude and aggressive, pushing people […]