Arts news

• Jack Vettriano’s ‘cheeseburger’ art and the matter of taste | Letters

  09-03-2025 19:11
  Ross McQueen says the Scottish painter democratised art and Neil Heydon-Dumbleton like his work, but Tamar Payne says it is misogynisticEddy Frankel’s article on Jack Vettriano (‘His paintings are like a double cheeseburger in a greasy wrapper’, 3 March) is full of the sort of backhanded compliments, grudging recognition and snobbish disdain that followed the Scottish painter throughout his career. For many art critics, Vettriano committed the ultimate sin of being popular with
  
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• Jack Vettriano put art in the hands of everyday people | Letters

  09-03-2025 19:11
  
  Ross McQueen says the Scottish painter democratised art and Neil Heydon-Dumbleton like his work, but Tamar Payne says it is misogynisticEddy Frankel’s article on Jack Vettriano (‘His paintings are like a double cheeseburger in a greasy wrapper’, 3 March) is full of the sort of backhanded compliments, grudging recognition and snobbish disdain that followed the Scottish painter throughout his career. For many art critics, Vettriano committed the ultimate sin of being popular with
  
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• Visitors flock to Paris’s Pompidou Centre before it closes for renovations

  09-03-2025 16:20
  
  Art lovers catch last glimpse of prestigious art collection before gallery shuts for five years for major revampVisitors from around the world have been flocking to the Pompidou Centre in Paris this weekend, seizing the last opportunity to enjoy Europe’s largest temple of modern and contemporary art before it closes its doors for a five-year overhaul.In one of the most complex closures of its kind, the task of removing the museum’s 2,000-strong permanent collection will start on Mond
  
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• Vincent Fantauzzo on childhood abuse, Heath Ledger and what’s wrong with the art world: ‘I was destined to fail’

  09-03-2025 15:00
  Now one of Australia’s most successful artists, Fantauzzo opens up on his traumatic childhood in his memoir – with stories not even his wife Asher Keddie knewAs Vincent Fantauzzo tells it, there were a “few forks in the road” that could have led him to become a criminal not an artist. There was the time he was arrested for assaulting two men outside a KFC, retribution for an attack on his little brother. His stint growing and dealing marijuana, during which he filled ever
  
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• Best seat in the house: writer Geoff Dyer on why sitting in a corner is so satisfying

  09-03-2025 15:00
  
  The author always sits in the corner of a room but doesn’t understand why. Do some people crave the solace of the corner more than others? He finds clues to the compulsion in his upbringing – and in artIt can take a surprisingly long time to become conscious of something that has been a feature of one’s life for as long as one can remember. I was 66 before I realised that I had always liked sitting in a corner. This revelation occurred in a restaurant while I was waiting for a
  
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• Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 review – saints and sinners come alive in art’s golden moment

  09-03-2025 10:00
  
  National Gallery, London
  From young Christ in a strop to Lazarus coming back from the dead, astonishingly relatable paintings by medieval Siena’s finest reach into the present in this dazzling showThe picture glows in the dark, small but incandescent. It shows three men by the shore. Two are in a boat, trawling the sea with a net, delicately visible beneath the surface. The other stands on a rock, inviting them to follow him in an atmosphere of glimmering gold air. Fish swim straight at yo
  
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• The big picture: Sebastián Bruno brings an outsider’s eye to a wedding in Cardiff

  09-03-2025 08:00
  
  The Argentine photographer ​spent more than a decade living in Wales and capturing community life there, including one bride’s big dayIsolate the three figures in the middle of this photograph by Sebastián Bruno and it could be the centre spread of a wedding magazine: the bride in a tiara clutching an effusion of white flowers, her veil extending out of shot; the two glamorous bridesmaids next to her in high heels, one resting a supportive hand on the bride’s left should
  
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