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Archives: Posts From February 2008

Contemporary Art Pulls in the Pounds at Sotheby's
By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 28 Feb 2008 at 9:20 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Last night's sale of Contemporary art at Sotheby's was a good indicator that this most volatile sector of the art market is in more robust health than ever. The auction raised $189,423,299, soundly beating the estimate of $102,855,000, making it the ...

A Blockbuster Ban at the National Gallery
By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 28 Feb 2008 at 5:51 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: An austere but blissfully refreshing message from the new director of the National Gallery, Nicholas Penny: Culture is not all about blockbuster exhibitions of superstar artists. And from now on, neither will be the National Gallery. Mr. Penny said on ...

A Lot of Banksy, Some Unseen
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 26 Feb 2008 at 9:48 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Sixty pieces by the beloved graffiti artist Banksy will go on show this Friday in what will be one of the biggest exhibitions of his works so far, and will include six pieces that have never been shown before. Among the offerings at the Andipa Gallery in ...

Kureishi Has Something To Tell Us
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 26 Feb 2008 at 9:35 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: London is basking in the pre-release droplets of what will surely be its biggest literary splash in months: Hanif Kureishi's "Something to Tell You" on March 6, a book which critics are calling his best since 1990's "The Buddha of Suburbia." The ...

'From Russia': Modernist Surprises at the Royal Academy
By Zoe Strimpel | Fri, 22 Feb 2008 at 3:38 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: When I saw the line outside the Royal Academy on Thursday morning for the "From Russia" exhibition, I nearly fainted. Well, that might be something of an exaggeration, but suffice it to say I was really, really glad I'd remembered my press ID. As a ...

The Wily Pinter Woman
By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 21 Feb 2008 at 1:47 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Maybe it was because it was the same night as the Brit Awards. But the Comedy Theatre was strangely empty last night, which was odd given the delectable nature of the show and London's voracious appetite for well-reviewed theater. We were there to see ...

Tate Modern Goes Dada
By Zoe Strimpel | Wed, 20 Feb 2008 at 2:03 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Today the curtain rose on the Tate Modern's big spring show: a Modernist extravaganza of works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia, the founding fathers of Dadaism. Critics have been delighted by the enormous show (more than 300 works), ...

A Sumptuous 'Sylvia' From the Royal Ballet
By Zoe Strimpel | Wed, 20 Feb 2008 at 1:35 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: And so to the Royal Opera House last night to see Torquato Tasso's "Sylvia," which the Royal Ballet is performing only sporadically this season. (It is competing with, among others, "La Traviata," "Die Zauberflöte," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the ...

Vanity Fair Icons Are Portrait Gallery's Delicious Pleasure
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 19 Feb 2008 at 1:07 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: It's the tastiest exhibit the National Portrait Gallery has hosted in some time. Who wouldn't get absorbed in a gallery of Vanity Fair's most iconic photographs? Annie Leibovitz's naked, pregnant Demi Moore here; Julianne Moore as an Ingres nude there — ...

Guarneri Violin Fetches Record Price, Sotheby's Says
By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 14 Feb 2008 at 5:13 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Sotheby's yesterday sold a Guarneri violin once owned by the composer Henri Vieuxtemps to a Russian businessman for the highest auction price ever paid for a musical instrument, the auction house said. Maxim Viktorov paid an undisclosed amount, "well in ...

A Louvre Painting Collection Visits Mayfair
By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 14 Feb 2008 at 4:37 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: My companion and I were about half a century below the average age at last night's private viewing of 18th-century paintings at the Wallace Collection in Mayfair. No matter — this was a momentous opening and deserved all the gravitas it got. We were ...

Chinese Art Could Fuel Sotheby's February Sales
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 12 Feb 2008 at 6:27 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Chinese art is back with a bang at Sotheby's Contemporary art sales on February 27. At the October Contemporary sales in London, the Chinese pieces caused the most notable fireworks, regularly going for many times their estimates. Yue Minjun's ...

Some Surprises at the Baftas
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 12 Feb 2008 at 12:09 AM | Permalink
Excerpt: Britain's more modest version of the Oscars — the Baftas (British Academy of Film and Television Awards) — took place Sunday night in the gorgeous, stately expanse of the Royal Opera House. Sienna Miller and Tilda Swinton in Dior, Keira Knightley in ...

For Christie's, a Sale Is Good, Not Great
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 5 Feb 2008 at 2:13 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: One of the art market's most anticipated sales took place last night at Christie's, where a strong selection of Impressionist and Modern art was auctioned off for a total of $207.4 million. This category, after all, has traditionally been the biggest ...

Saving the Earth, One Film Shoot at a Time
By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 5 Feb 2008 at 1:11 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Emma Thompson this morning joined fellow actor Alistair McGowan, Mayor Ken Livingstone, and the head of the Film London agency, Adrian Wootton, to launch a campaign, titled Green Screen London, to make filming in London greener. There was much guff ...

In Funding Drama, Arts Council Backtracks
By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 4 Feb 2008 at 7:36 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: The drama surrounding massive cuts in funding for arts groups in Britain continues apace. According to a friend who used to work for the Stage, a newspaper devoted to the theater industry in Britain, Arts Council funding announcements have always caused ...

Meerkat Plagiarism? Tracey Emin Accused of Echoing Ad
By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 4 Feb 2008 at 6:05 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Tracey Emin's interesting, if slightly smirk-raising, idea of meerkat models for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has caused a second ripple. The agency running the advertising campaign for E.on, the energy company, has hinted at similarities ...

At Diana's Home, Marlowe's 'Dido' Is the Queen
By Zoe Strimpel | Sun, 3 Feb 2008 at 8:29 PM | Permalink
Excerpt: Hooray! Performances of Christopher Marlowe's "Dido, Queen of Carthage" began Friday at Kensington Palace. This is the first time the palace, once Princess Diana's home, has been used as a theater. The show is staged by Angels in the Architecture, a ...