Arts news

• ‘Utterly abolished, eradicated and erased out’—but never forgotten

  30-05-2016 23:00
  
  Broken Idols of the English Reformation is the much anticipated companion volume to the late Margaret Aston’s England’s Iconoclasts (1988). Decades in the writing, and weighing in at more than a thousand pages, it is a suitably magisterial culmination of the work of a scholar who has done much to illuminate the complex, fascinating history of early English Protestantism’s obsession with idolatry and its eradication. It charts the principles behind, the implementation of, and i
  
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• Tate Modern and the London art scene

  30-05-2016 23:00
  
  Behind the Tate’s £260m extension: the people, the art, the architecture and the city that made it happen
  
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• Painting outclassed by bricks and mortar: on the arts in Rome under Clement VIII

  30-05-2016 23:00
  
  Unlike Europe’s political history, which is dotted by milestones attached to seemingly random years—1648, 1789, 1914 and so forth—the history of its art seems to organise itself more neatly, by century. Quite distinct images are evoked by references to the quattrocento or to the 18th century. It is equally remarkable that the basic round numbers are often associated with a particular place—1500 with Florence, 1900 with Paris—and it is in this spirit that Clare Robe
  
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• Isil rampage: a threat to cultural heritage that belongs to all

  30-05-2016 23:00
  
  Warfare has always put cultural heritage in harm’s way, but the threat of today’s armed conflicts is without precedent in the modern era. The breakup of Syria into separate enclaves of influence and governance has put at risk the United Nations’s (UN) regime for protecting cultural heritage. The systematic and planned destruction of millennia-old antiquities by the Isil has made the task of the UN more difficult. It is time to consider concrete measures as to how to safeguard
  
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• Education and the arts are right to stand up for European ideals | Editorial

  30-05-2016 19:54
  
  Too much of the EU referendum debate is at best pragmatic. But the need to defend ties of scholarship, research and culture speaks to Europe’s bigger values and widened horizonsThough noble ideals animate the European Union, you often struggle to find them articulated in the referendum campaign. The rhetoric on both sides has focused on the pragmatic at best – look at David Cameron’s five-point pledge with Sadiq Khan yesterday – and the parochial at worst – the farm
  
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• Rijksmuseum promotes Taco Dibbits to be new director general

  30-05-2016 13:44
  
  Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum's longstanding head of collections, has been promoted to become the director general of the Dutch national museum of art and history. He takes over from Wim Pijbes in July, having worked closely with the outgoing director to modernise and redisplay the Amsterdam museum as well as expand its collection, best known for works of the Dutch Golden Age.Under Dibbits, who is an expert in 17th century painting, the Rijksmuseum has built up a substantial photography collect
  
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• Moscow exhibition celebrates Soviet cinema's grand designs

  30-05-2016 10:00
  
  Poster display highlights ideology and escapism of mass-produced publicity tools that spawned an artistic genre, The Moscow Times reportsThe cultural heritage of Soviet cinema is being celebrated in a landmark exhibition, which brings together some of the most innovative film artworks of the past century.With none of the romanticism of the Hollywood silver screen, these bold experiments in graphic design and ideology demonstrate how a mass-produced publicity tool became its own artistic genre. R
  
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• Cindy Sherman review – high-society selfies by quintessential postmodernist

  30-05-2016 09:11
  
  The grotesqueness of haute couture and high society come alive in the self-portraits of one the most influential photo artists of the late 20th centuryCindy Sherman: clowning around and socialite selfies – in picturesIn the catalogue for the Cindy Sherman exhibition that just opened at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, there is a self-portrait of the artist. This is Sherman out of character, posing without the props, costumes or elaborate backdrops that make up so much of h
  
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• Cindy Sherman: clowning around and socialite selfies – in pictures

  30-05-2016 09:09
  
  Highly influential New York artist Cindy Sherman made taking selfies an art form before the word even existed. Throughout her career she has experimented with costume, prosthetics, makeup and digital photography to create highly exaggerated and ofttimes grotesque character studies. A new exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane includes more than 50 large-scale works by Sherman. The images draw from her series Clowns (2003–04), made in the aftermath of the 2001 US ter
  
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