We are delighted to announce Spectrum’s competition, The Spectrum Art Prize. This is a new national award which celebrates the exciting work produced by artists on the autistic spectrum.
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Michael Bartholomew-Biggs dips into a collection of ‘lost’ ekphrastic poems by R S Thomas
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) were both sons of artists, both mastered realism at an early age, both left their native countries and both turned up in Paris, where they met for the first time in 1931 and enjoyed a working friendship that flourished until the 1950s.
Anyone seeking to be reminded of how we used to work not so very long ago should take the 10-minute tram journey from Birmingham’s newly revamped Grand Central Station to the city’s Jewellery Quarter, where every other shop is a jeweller and the close-knit atmosphere of a neighbourhood once closed to the wider city lingers on.
Established in 2007, the Aimia AGO photography prize, Canada’s optimum award for contemporary photography, was the first major art accolade to hand the general public the responsibility of choosing the winner – although an expert panel has already drawn up the list of contenders.
D A Prince is intrigued by the methods and the outcome of a poet-artist collaboration between Judith Wilkinson and Ditty Doornbos
Wendy French is pleased to find that a themed anthology from Emma Press successfully does what it sets out to do
Born to a well-to-do Antwerp businessman and his aristocratic wife, Fritz Mayer was groomed to become a diplomat, but instead threw himself into collecting with a particular passion for Dutch art of the 14th-16th centuries.
Displayed are elaborate composites, built up from paintings and photographs that eventually result in portraits at once convincingly human, alien and heartless.
Bicycles are as close as it gets to the perfect blend of form and function — but that doesn’t stop designers seeking to make them sleeker, faster and funkier. As such, they are ideal subject-matter for the Design Museum in the Belgian city of Ghent, whose Bike to the Future, despite the corny title, is a wide and even subtle exploration of cycling design and its enormous impact.
Between 1560 and 1630, Europe experienced the worst of a Little Ice Age characterised by long, cold winters. The cruel weather coincided with the most intensive period of witch hunts in history. Bruegel the elder, is credited with leading the way as Flemish and Dutch artists developed what is now the popular image of a witch, flying on a broomstick with her ragged hair streaming in the wind.
Emma Lee reviews a handsome anthology of poems inspired by the South Lookout on Aldeburgh Beach
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • art, books, poetry reviews, year 2017 • Tags: art, books, Emma Lee, poetry