Visual Art

Visual Arts

"What do you think an artist is? He’s a political being, constantly alive to heartrending, fiery, or happy events, to which he responds in every way. No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war, for attack and defense against the enemy."

Pablo Picasso

Wednesday, 04 January 2017 17:06

John Berger: an appreciation

Written by David Betteridge

in Visual Arts

David Betteridge offers an appreciation of the late, great John Berger. There are some authors whose way with words not only reflects a way of living, but also excites it. It has a moral force as well as an aesthetic sense. John Berger, who died on 2 January, was an…

John Berger

Tuesday, 03 January 2017 20:57

A smuggling operation: John Berger's theory of art

Written by Robert Minto

in Visual Arts

For the late John Berger, art criticism was a revolutionary practice. The following article by Robert Minto, outlining Berger's theory of art, is republished with the kind permission of the Los Angeles Review of Books, lareviewofbooks.org Early in his career, John Berger’s weekly art criticism for the New Statesman provoked outraged…

John Berger

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 12 December 2016 16:00

Cuimhneachain nan Gaisgeach - Remembering the Heroes

in Visual Arts

Written by Matt Bruce

The dire accommodation situation in London may seem a long way from the situation in Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, 150 years ago. Not so, explains Matt Bruce, whose wife's grandfather took part in the Pairc Deer Raid of 1886. He writes in response to our request in summer for more…

13C Gold Rhino, hidden by the racist apartheid regime of South Africa because it contradicted their ideology of an empty land

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Monday, 12 December 2016 14:52

South Africa: The Art of a Nation

in Visual Arts

Written by Nick Wright

Nick Wright reviews South Africa: The Artof a Nation Filmgoers of a certain age will remember the 1964 film Zulu, which shows a group of British soldiers holding out against the massed warrior formations of the Zulu nation. A relatively minor 1879 episode in this country’s bloody colonial history, it originally…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Thursday, 10 November 2016 15:43

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: Heretical, Subversive and Revolutionary

in Visual Arts

Written by Mike Quille

A radical cultural struggle against the established order: Mike Quille reviews the Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery. Curators sometimes overuse the word revolutionary when promoting exhibitions but it is an apt description of the six paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio which hang alongside those of his admirers, rivals…

Caravaggio Supper at Ammaus The Taking of Christ National Gallery

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 05 October 2016 14:39

You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels at the V and A

in Visual Arts

Written by Phil Brett

Phil Brett finds an intoxicatingly high level of class struggle in the latest V and A exhibition. Rock music is ageing and whilst not dead, does appear to be becoming a museum piece with a growing a number of major exhibitions of rock musicians and bands. Elvis, The Stones and…

Wednesday, 28 September 2016 14:22

Tracey Emin meets William Blake

Written by Darren Pih

in Visual Arts

Darren Pih, Exhibitions & Displays Curator, Tate Liverpool writes about Tracey Emin & William Blake in Focus at Tate Liverpool: 16 September 2016 to 3 September 2017. Tracey Emin was born in 1963, around 200 years after the Romantic artist and poet William Blake. While perhaps it seems counterintuitive to…

Wednesday, 31 August 2016 14:00

'Increasingly more political': the art of Cornelia Parker

Written by Phil Brett

in Visual Arts

Phil Brett introduces the art of Cornelia Parker. I was only vaguely familiar with the artist Cornelia Parker, when in 1998, Steve, a good friend of mine, suggested that we visit the London Serpentine Gallery for an exhibition of hers. At the time, I wasn’t in…

A picket mounted by the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common, 1982.

Monday, 01 August 2016 16:06

The persistence of protest: the preventative photography of Edward Barber

Written by Mike Quille

in Visual Arts

A woman sits on a fold-up chair, with a sign – 'Hello, can you stop for a talk?' – inviting passersby to stop for a chat about nuclear proliferation. An elderly woman stands on her own with a sign 'No to nuclear war' round her neck. A sandalled foot sticks…

Edward barber Greenham Common CND