Wednesday 14 October 2009

New! Pop Life at Tate Modern

It’s not cool to be depressed by the brazen commercialism of certain facets of the art world, yet you’d have to have a heart of stone not to leave Pop Life, the new exhibition of post-Warhol contemporary art at Tate Modern, without feeling that at least a little part of you had died. Not that it’s all bad, by any means, but the sheer glitzy glibness of it all did make the gurgling Thames, far below outside the cafĂ© windows, seem more inviting than ever.

Monday 12 October 2009

New! Robert Lang on Saatchi Online


In Fumble (2008, above), a figure bends inside a kite-shaped hole. Paint, applied in cautious little stabs, prescribes its own descriptive limits. It does what it can. In places it has the urgency and awkwardness of finger-painting. Something wants to be said, but can't. Lang's paintings deny themselves complete descriptive facility: they can't find the right words.