Art

By David Broder A recent exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Undercover Surrealism, conveyed the redundancy of surrealist art — why would we be “shocked” by works which have been ripped off and imitated by a million ad campaigns? In the wake of World War One, surrealists tried to attack the destructive logic of bourgeois rule, and instead idealised what lay within the human imagination. Nowadays, Surrealism might seem less of a cutting response to bourgeois culture than a rather quaint throwback to an age of pretentious artist-theorists. But there was a time when the leading lights of...

Mike Rowley reviews The impressionists (Channel 4) This programme made a refreshing change from Channel Four's usual. It showed that it is possible to talk about art accessibly for two hours without becoming tedious. The most "political" of the four major figures considered was Gustave Courbet, the great precursor of Impressionism. Born in 1819 in a rural area of France, Gustave Courbet moved to Paris in 1841, ostensibly to study law. Instead, he turned to painting and plunged into the bohemian revolutionary scene in Paris, which included many socialists and anarchists, including the anarchist...

Now showing at Tate Modern London, until 23 January 2005, is a very comprehensive exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Frank. His groundbreaking documentary work of the 50s came together in his book The Americans . For two years he travelled America taking pictures: they showed the diversity and the social divisions of the American people in a changing society. They also showed individuality. Above “New York City” 1955. Swiss-born Frank always retained the vision of an “outsider”. His later, more experimental, film work — he filmed a loose story about the beatniks — is perhaps less...

by David Rees, Serpents Tail Acerbic - like hydrochloric acid is acerbic. That is the only way to describe these cartoons. Rees started producing his cartoon strips shortly after 9/11 and puts them out via his website. Rees documents the anxieties of American society and savages the politics of the Bush administration. His strips are all set inside the office of a nameless corporation and feature stiffs in suits making personal phone-calls to each other. This is not satire for the squeamish, and the politics sometimes jarred with me. Still Rees's work is very much a reflection of the insecure...

The Passions, an exhibition by Bill Viola, National Gallery, London The Passions is not all about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but it does take some of its inspiration from the iconography of early Christian religious art. Its subject is the nature of human emotion. Viola started the work in 2000 when his father was dying of cancer and this, according to the artist, accounts for the grief and sorrow in the work. Viola is a video artist. He makes big and small screens, usually using simple images, mostly of human beings. He is something of a religion-inspired artist - eclectic, as you'd...

Lucy Clement asks, is the consumption of art elitist? And why? The headline said "Britons can't tell Rolf Harris from Monet". That was a little unfair: in the survey in question only seven per cent had thought Rolf painted Waterlilies. Mind you, almost half didn't know that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and only 15% knew the artist behind the Scream. But the survey - carried out by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, presumably for purposes of peddling their website subscriptions - was revealing in other ways. It found that forty-three per cent of the people questioned had never visited...

"Days like these", Tate Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary British Art 2003, at Tate Britain, London (Pimlico), until 26 May, Admission free. For me "contemporary" generally means at least "quite new", if not "current". My suspicions were confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary, which says "belonging to or occurring in the present". Perhaps someone should tell the curators at Tate Britain. Many of the pieces were at the Tate anyway, at least in the past. Is art that's already been hanging for 25 years or longer still "contemporary" - I'd say no. But that's not really the point, because if...

Has Freud lost it? Melissa White reviews the Lucian Freud exhibition at Tate Britain The Lucian Freud exhibition, running at the Tate Britain until 22 September [2002], is beautifully curated. It trumps the dreadful 'thematic grouping' that has emerged everywhere in galleries throughout the world (very noticeably at the Tate Modern, which, it must be said, apart from this giant boo-boo, is the most stupendous gallery space on the planet). Ideological judgement in aesthetic matters should emerge diachronically: over time. Ready-made synchronic comparisons - comparisons between practising...

Gerry Byrne reviews the Turner Prize 2002 exhibition, Tate Britain "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my Browning." Hitler’s Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering. "Cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit. If this is the best British artists can produce, then British art is lost. " Culture Minister Kim Howells on the Turner Prize 2002. Not that I’m saying Kim Howells is a fascist, or New Labour can be equated with the Nazi regime. It’s more subtle than simple philistinism. Goering, the founder of the Gestapo, was a witty man (as evidenced by the punning quote above: Browning referring...