Visual Art
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me: The kiss in art
I think I have always wondered how the first kiss came about. A quick Google search produces a very provisional 2500BC as an answer but there’s something terribly factual...
Is art a form of political propaganda?
Art has been employed throughout history as a political tool to propagate ideas of...
Yevonde: The woman who revolutionised colour photography
“Portrait photography without women would be a sorry business.” (Yevonde Middleton, 1921)
I walked into...
A Summer as a Volunteer at the National Portrait Gallery
The ‘Long Vac’ is called ‘long’ for a reason and I did not want...
“A Must-See”: Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean
I did not know what to expect when I arrived at the Ashmolean to...
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me: The kiss in art
I think I have always wondered how the first kiss came about. A quick Google search produces a very provisional 2500BC as an answer...
Is art a form of political propaganda?
Art has been employed throughout history as a political tool to propagate ideas of power and ideology and challenge them. However, art is a...
Yevonde: The woman who revolutionised colour photography
“Portrait photography without women would be a sorry business.” (Yevonde Middleton, 1921)
I walked into the Yevonde: Life and Colour exhibition at the National Portrait...
A Summer as a Volunteer at the National Portrait Gallery
The ‘Long Vac’ is called ‘long’ for a reason and I did not want to waste a second of it. When I saw...
“A Must-See”: Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean
I did not know what to expect when I arrived at the Ashmolean to preview their newest exhibition, Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion &...
Warhol Island: Large-scale exhibition on a German island
At the meeting point of the Austrian, Swiss, and German borders lies the historic old German town of Lindau. The entirety of the old...
A Very Short Guide to Art Gallery Dates
There are a million better ways to spend an afternoon than moping around a largely windowless building with a complete stranger and an inability...
Paris Photo 2021: Getting All the Angles
Thursday, November 11, 2:00 pm, picture this: bustling isles, shuttering cameras, and sales of thousands of dollars happening on the spot. A promising opening...
A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me
"What you are, is complicated.
And I love you for that,
Because you are complicated,
Because you are raw, and soft, and broken."
Review: Troy: Myth and Reality
It would be hard to think of another set of myths that are so present in contemporary culture as those surrounding the fall of Troy and its aftermath, immortalised most notably by Homer and Virgil. Stories such as the judgment of Paris, which sets the war in motion, the deception of the ‘Trojan Horse’ and Odysseus’ encounter with the Cyclops during his decade-long journey home are many people’s first introduction to the classical past as children, and the past few years have seen a resurgence of the Trojan cycle in popular culture. Novels such as Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls have reconsidered the war and its characters from different angles, and the BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City adaptation brought the saga to a generation raised on Game of Thrones. Therefore, the British Museum chose an opportune time for this year’s BP exhibition, Troy: myth and reality, which aims ambitiously to exhibit artistic depictions of the well-known myths and their various post-classical reinterpretations alongside the archaeological evidence that Troy and the war actually existed.
The Raft of Medusa: 200 Years of a Masterpiece
Things on the raft turned horrific pretty quickly. Thirst, suicide, drowning, murders, cannibalism. By the time the raft was found on the 17th of July, just fifteen men were still alive.
The fractured mind, literature, and society.
“I felt the narrowing of my life to a very fine point. A hard triangle of a life over and me sprawled at its peak, hopeless and lost.” - Russell Brand, describing a mental breakdown.
Art in the Age of Technology
Imagine the future. You walk into a room expecting an art gallery. Instead, you come face to face with a baron white cubicle. A woman stands in the corner, holding a pair of VR glasses. She hands them to you. Puzzled, you put them on.
Flagrant Exhibitionism: The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition
Running since 1769, the Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open-submission art show. From film to photography and prints to paintings (and everything in between) the show brings together the world’s leading artists of all mediums, both household names and total unknowns.