Visual Research

Cv/VAR series 52 features an interview with American artist James Turrell recorded at Michael Hue Williams London in June 1996.

The Anatomy Series of 2001 was made in a quantity of eighty panels, taking three weeks to complete. The set considered the landscape of the human physical system. The panels were worked on flat, painting twelve at a time in rotation. They were laid out on an old framed work which also served as a container for the pool of colour washed over the textured surface. Two inch square wooden cubes were used to stack the panels in small towers to dry out.

A study of Giacometti portraits at the National Portrait Gallery London and Frank Auerbach at Tate Britain.

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photo-realist. He developed his own highly resolved heads (his preferred term to portraits), which were worked on a massive scale. Despite suffering a disabling spinal aneurysm in 1988, the artist has continued to forge a monumental body of work in a variety of media: paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, of potent and original effect.

One of the commonest and most loosely used terms in any discussion of contemporary art is the word avant-garde. Indeed it often seems to be taken for granted that valid contemporary art and avant-garde art are synonymous.

Listen as descriptions of human physiology are illustrated in the eBook edition with 80 panel paintings by Philip James ROI. A viscous surface of pulped and washed colour interprets the intricate framework of muscles, arteries, bone and soft tissue, all infused with an internal dynamic of potent nervous energy. First published in 2001, the volume carried 80 colour plates of art works with descriptions of the location and function of portrayed parts.

The Titian Show at the National Gallery here in London has just opened to the public again. It was available for just three days before the big lockdown. Now, it is with us once more, though on rather different terms from what was the case previously. You have to book a time. You have to be wearing a mask. You have to maintain distance between yourself and other visitors booked in for the same slot. Is it worth the hassle? Yes, of course it is. Titian is one of the greatest figures in the history of Western art.

A recorded visit to an exhibition by Anish Kapoor at the Lisson Gallery, London continued to 22nd June, 2019. Includes descriptions of works and bio-dara of the artist.

Viewing the exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford by American Artist Jeff Koons (born 1955). Considers sculptures such as Silvered Ballerinas, a Magenta Balloon Venus, and GPS System. Also the artist's re-constitution of classic works by Titiam, Rubens, and Gericault with the inclusion of a blue glass sphere.

Explores the structure and development of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid-19th century and works that figure among the most enduring and generally popular in British art. Renowned writer and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith contributes a study of the brotherhood of seven artists and their interconnection and intricate links with the social establishment of the time. James Cahill has a special interest in the movement, having studied Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt. He reviews a major exhibition of 150 works at Tate Britain launched in September 2012.

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith explores aspects of the mysterious and private character of the renowned American society artist John Singer Sargent.

Marina Vaizey and Anne Blood consider the historical impact of photography on the fine and interpretive arts, from pioneers such as Hill and Adamson, Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to Edward Steichen and Man Ray. The documentary power and graphic clarity of the medium challenged and persuaded artists such as Degas, Sickert, Warhol, and innumerable creative voices. In their essays Marina and Anne explore the conjunctions and variations where document and dream intermingle.

A collection of reviews and studies of photographers published since 2001. Includes David Bailey, Horst, Cecil Beaton, Don McCullin, Lee Miller, Francesca Woofman, E.O.Hoppe, and others.

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith considers the Andy Warhol exhibition re-opening at Tate Modern on July 27. He puts forward a provocative view of the relevance of the art in an time of turbulent disruption. When the Warhol show returns to Tate Modern on July 27, almost the first thing you’ll meet if you go to see it will be a large painting, on two paired canvases, entitled Marilyn Diptych. It features repeated images the film star Marilyn Monroe.

An anthology of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover a broad span, from the Italian Renaissance of Giotto and Antonello da Messina, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, progressing to Rubens, Velázquez, and Ingres, with essays on William Hogarth, John Constable, and John Everett Millais for British art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, which remain in print, the author sweeps the listener on a fabulous journey of perception.

Eco-art exhibitions are part of the trend of our times. Radical Nature, the show at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, demonstrated some of the possibilities and paradoxes of enterprises of this sort. Basically what the organizers had to do is to move the outside indoors. This set them both practical and, in their own terms at least, moral problems.

Edward Lucie-Smith examines Hans Holbein's famous series of prints, The Dance of Death, together with associated works, such as various artistic variations on the theme of Death and the Maiden. In addition, Lucie-Smith looks at some famous images made on the theme of war, notably the prints of Jacques Callot and the bitter social studies of Goya y Lucientes.

Cv/VAR no.103 publishes an interview recorded 2010 with American artist John Dugger (b.California 1948) in which he gives an account of his art and development. He recounts 1960s America and arriving in London 1967: pioneering The Exploding Galaxy with David Medalla; 1970-2, their travels in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, then the China Journey of 1972 into Mao's Republic. The monograph documents the artists work for Banner Arts and other projects to date.

Daniel Graves is a man of many talents. He juggles his responsibilities of being a painter, a teacher, the director of The Florence Academy of Art, a husband, and a father remarkably well. He knew from the age of three or four who he wanted to be. His career launched when he was 11 years old. He studied with many artists including Richard Lack, Richard Serrin, and Signorina Simi, and received regular critiques from Pietro Annigoni.

In a set of essays entitled "Doubles" author, critic, curator, and traveller, Marina Vaizey explores pairings of artists drawn from the canonical cycle of Western art. She considers themes of engagement such as the portrait or figure, treated as stories of wider implication for society, that draw on the artist’s perception of the seen, combined with personal visions of dreams and imagination.