COLCHESTER, ENGLAND -- The architect Rafael Vinoly laughed when he was asked about the gold cladding on his latest project, a gallery called Firstsite in the old Roman town of Colchester, about an hour northeast of London. ''Why not?'' he said. Mr. Vinoly was taking a small group of journalists around Firstsite just before its opening in late...
LONDON -- If the catastrophic fall of British art from the heights attained by Turner and Constable into the abyss of Pre-Raphaelite mediocrity is ever to be explained, scrutinizing John Martin's paintings might help one day. The oeuvre of this contemporary of Turner, whom Martin outlived by three years, is on view in a fascinating show at Tate...
LONDON -- Perhaps modern art would have followed a different course if it had not been for the 1848 Revolution that shook France to its foundations. The violent upheaval sent a political journalist, Pierre Guillaume Clovis Gauguin, and his wife fleeing Paris to Peru in August 1849. Clovis died of a heart attack during the voyage. The five years...