...In the face of a cacophony of disaster, works of art can have an appealing quality - they are their own contained universes, created from, but often unaffected by, our own. The finite edges of a painting, the constancy of a sculpture, or the familiar reproduction of symphonic notes, offer a fixed point against which to observe and contextualise our own moment of flux...
★★★★★: Belgium, land of beer, chocolate, charming medieval towns and cosy city breaks. If this is your idea of the diminutive Benelux nation then Léon Spilliaert is here to make you think again. Prepare to be drawn into an intoxicating world of insomniac melancholy that will forever change the way you see the home of Tintin and waffles.
★★★★☆: Works on paper can often be seen as room-filler when a gallery can’t quite muster enough ‘proper works’, paintings and sculptures, to fill their space. They are normally objects that exist primarily in the realm of art historians, tools for them to unlock the secrets of an artist’s grander works. However, in the eternal struggle to find an original angle on that godfather of modernism, Pablo Picasso, the RA have dedicated an enormous show just for his works on and using paper.
The final part of the guide, featuring St Paul's Cathedral and Blenheim Palace.
Part 2 of the guide, featuring Greenwich and works of the English baroque in Oxford
The first part of a guide to the architecture of the Baroque period in Britain including: The Banqueting Hall, City Churches, and Royal Hospital Chelsea.
The latest development in the ongoing campaign to squeeze every last penny out of each square foot of our urban space, Façadism is on the rise across London. This now highly fashionable practice is doing nothing more than placing a mask of faux respectability over the continued butchering of our city’s architectural heritage.
Morgan Haigh 