It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
There seems to have been a point about 90 years ago when many of the features of modern life were starting to become if not commonplace, then at least a lot more familiar: the radio, the telephone, aeroplanes, talking pictures, electric trains. And yet amid all that technological progress, an art school in Pimlico was showing that a less sophisticated medium could also be revolutionary. At Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, they're celebrating the emergence of the linocut as a serious art form. Between the wars, a group of artists captured speed and movement in vibrantly coloured prints that tell a story of rapid change. Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking features names you may never have heard of, but it's art that's hugely appealing. The linocut was seen as a basic printmaking technique for children when Claude Flight set up his extremely informal Grosvenor School of Art in Pimlico in 1925. He regarded it as an egalitarian art form in keeping with...