Latest news with #CourtauldGallery
Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The best exhibitions in London and the UK to book for May 2025
Below is a round-up of the best art our critics have seen in recent months across the UK. From Renaissance chalk sketches to rotting apples, miniatures and Picasso prints, it's a varied list. Which exhibitions have you enjoyed recently? Let us know in the comments. Courtauld Gallery, LondonThis is a tantalising exhibition of 25 works spanning the 19th century, the cream of an evidently rather delicious crop — and all but one (a Van Gogh from his time in the hospital at Arles, which was until a couple of weeks ago part of the National Gallery's blockbuster show) have never been seen in the UK before. To May 26, DurrantRead our review Turner Contemporary, Margate From the militant suffrage movement in
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain's richest woman plots £9bn sale of gambling empire
Britain's richest self-made woman is plotting a £9bn sale of her gambling empire amid booming demand in the United States. Denise Coates, the billionaire owner of Bet365, has reportedly held discussions with Wall Street banks and advisers over a potential deal. Options under discussion include listing all or part of the business on a US stock exchange. The Coates family could also sell a stake to a private equity investor while retaining a holding ahead of any listing, the Guardian reported. A full sale could land Ms Coates, who holds a 58pc stake in Bet365, a payday of more than £5bn. A transaction would cap off a remarkable journey for Ms Coates and Bet365, which she launched online from a portable cabin in Stoke-on-Trent in 2000. She took control of the Bet365 gambling empire from her father, Peter, who set up the business as a high street betting chain. The company was a pioneer of online gambling and has since grown into one of the world's largest betting businesses. It posted pre-tax profits of £627m last year on revenues of £3.7bn. The success has generated a vast fortune for Ms Coates, who is Britain's best-paid woman. The 57-year-old took a significant pay cut last year, but still took home about £158m in salary and bonuses. Bet365 last year transferred ownership to Ms Coates's brother, John, while her father remains on the board. Ms Coates and her family have an estimated personal wealth of £7.5bn. Ms Coates, a media-shy tycoon who lives in a £90m mansion in Cheshire, is a prominent patron of the arts and has a wing of the Courtauld Gallery in London named after her. The Coates family also owns Stoke City Football Club. Over the past two decades, Peter Coates and companies within the Bet365 group have also given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Labour. A sale of Bet365 would allow the Coates family to cash in on the fortune they have built over the past quarter of a century. It could also provide an opportunity for an American buyer to capitalise on the rapid growth of gambling in the US after a 2018 Supreme Court decision that relaxed decades-old laws banning sports betting. Rival Flutter, which owns Betfair and Paddy Power, last year shifted its primary listing from London to New York, saying the move would give it better access to US investors and a deeper pool of capital. Bet365 has been expanding in the US and has so far secured the right to operate in 13 states. It has also pulled out of China, a market that triggered controversy given gambling is outlawed everywhere in the country apart from in Macau and Hong Kong. The exit was seen by observers as laying the groundwork for a possible stock market listing.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain's richest woman plots £9bn sale of gambling empire
Britain's richest self-made woman is plotting a £9bn sale of her gambling empire amid booming demand in the United States. Denise Coates, the billionaire owner of Bet365, has reportedly held discussions with Wall Street banks and advisers over a potential deal. Options under discussion include listing all or part of the business on a US stock exchange. The Coates family could also sell a stake to a private equity investor while retaining a holding ahead of any listing, the Guardian reported. A full sale could land Ms Coates, who holds a 58pc stake in Bet365, a payday of more than £5bn. A transaction would cap off a remarkable journey for Ms Coates and Bet365, which she launched online from a portable cabin in Stoke-on-Trent in 2000. She took control of the Bet365 gambling empire from her father, Peter, who set up the business as a high street betting chain. The company was a pioneer of online gambling and has since grown into one of the world's largest betting businesses. It posted pre-tax profits of £627m last year on revenues of £3.7bn. The success has generated a vast fortune for Ms Coates, who is Britain's best-paid woman. The 57-year-old took a significant pay cut last year, but still took home about £158m in salary and bonuses. Bet365 last year transferred ownership to Ms Coates's brother, John, while her father remains on the board. Ms Coates and her family have an estimated personal wealth of £7.5bn. Ms Coates, a media-shy tycoon who lives in a £90m mansion in Cheshire, is a prominent patron of the arts and has a wing of the Courtauld Gallery in London named after her. The Coates family also owns Stoke City Football Club. Over the past two decades, Peter Coates and companies within the Bet365 group have also given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Labour. A sale of Bet365 would allow the Coates family to cash in on the fortune they have built over the past quarter of a century. It could also provide an opportunity for an American buyer to capitalise on the rapid growth of gambling in the US after a 2018 Supreme Court decision that relaxed decades-old laws banning sports betting. Rival Flutter, which owns Betfair and Paddy Power, last year shifted its primary listing from London to New York, saying the move would give it better access to US investors and a deeper pool of capital. Bet365 has been expanding in the US and has so far secured the right to operate in 13 states. It has also pulled out of China, a market that triggered controversy given gambling is outlawed everywhere in the country apart from in Macau and Hong Kong. The exit was seen by observers as laying the groundwork for a possible stock market listing. Bet365 was contacted for comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Paper tigers: how Kandinsky, Kokoscha and Klee sparked an artistic revolution
German expressionism has rarely gone out of fashion since its emergence in the early years of the 20th century, but something about it feels particularly of the moment today. Perhaps that's not so surprising for a movement that sought to define, graphically represent and challenge a time fraught with the threat of war, economic uncertainty and cultural conflict that often shaded into misogyny. A large exhibition of work by the Blue Rider group occupied Tate Modern in London for much of last year and is now followed by a more focused show at the Courtauld Gallery. With Graphic Intent seeks to examine expressionism's engagement with some of these heightened themes through one characteristic aspect of activity. 'Their work on paper was central to the project,' says Niccola Shearman who, along with co-curator Emily Christensen, has brought together work from the Courtauld's own collection and some prestigious loans. 'Whether through pencil drawing or ink brush, work in colour or monochrome, woodcuts and prints, there is a visceral immediacy that matches the subject matter.' In a break with established practice, these works on paper weren't intended as preliminary sketches or mass-market alternatives to 'fine art'; they were designed as completed artworks fit to match the task in hand. 'You can see the sense of attack in pencil marks indenting the paper or in the jaggedness of woodcuts,' Christensen explains. 'Expressionism brought the artist's own emotional sensibilities, physically as well as by representation, directly into the art. The broken surfaces and jagged forms came from within to show what was outside.' The works on show run from Austrian artist and playwright Oskar Kokoschka's subversively sexual fairytale lithographs and illustrations from before the first world war up to a disturbingly grotesque distortion of a female form by Georg Baselitz in 1966, demonstrating the lingering potency of expressionist subjects and approach. Along the way are works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and others, all wrestling with both the artistic world as much as the material and political worlds in which they lived. 'The subject of the battle of the sexes, as it was called, continually returns,' says Shearman. 'At a time of expanding female emancipation, the worlds of art and culture – in line with wider politics and society – developed something of an obsession with sex and gender. And it was no coincidence that this sense of insecure masculinity accompanied more general societal fragility up to and including the collapse of empires.' While it is unlikely that Kokoschka had read Freud when he began his career, operating in Vienna cafe society at the same time meant he was certainly subject to similar ideas. And though expressionism was a radical and progressive force in many ways, it also embodied the misogyny of its time and place and history, an era in which the writer Karl Kraus, influential on Kokoschka and others, could claim that an 'effeminate' society was a sign of cultural degeneracy and bemoan his assessment of a living through a 'vaginal era'. But from this maelstrom of contradictions, with radicalism and new thinking still inexorably linked to tradition and conventions, came an approach to art and life that explicitly sought to make the world a better and fairer place in the face of seemingly overwhelming catastrophes. 'A simple thing like artwork on paper was part of this,' says Shearman. 'It was cheap, easily produced and accessible to a large public. It challenged class and art historical hierarchies. And it allowed for bold and emotionally direct statements. It was the art of the moment and still fulfils its function of provoking a sense of immediacy in all who see it.' With Graphic Intent is at the Courtauld Gallery, London, to 22 June. The Dreaming Youths, 1907, Oskar KokoschkaCommissioned to produce a fairytale book for the children of a wealthy patron, Kokoschka subverted the genre and presented a darkly violent autobiographical saga of sexual awakening. The story culminates with the young lovers as pale and attenuated figures isolated from the lush garden paradise around them. The book was a succès de scandale and helped launch his career. Children and Crows, 1932, Paul KleeThis playful scene of children and birds in a tangle of angular graphic codes captures how the expressionists saw youth as a pure state, untainted by modern society's materialistic values. It also echoes Klee's influential art teaching philosophy that students should attempt to throw off conventional learning and bring to their art a naive eye and a sense of fun. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion Drawing for Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women) from Der Sturm, 1910 Oskar KokoschkaKokoschka's scandalous play about the battle of the sexes, using characters from classical Greek mythology, was largely made up of grunts and screams as he distilled Freud's death or sex drive into violent drama. Untitled, from the Whip Woman series, 1964, Georg BaselitzAfter the second world war and the partition of Germany, Baselitz revisited expressionist social and sexual anxieties as revealed through the female form. This was a statement that rendered the notion of idealising the body untenable. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, from the portfolio Nine Woodcuts, 1918, Karl Schmidt-RottluffWoodcuts appealed to the expressionists as organic structures that could be directly transferred to printed paper in a way that looked to the past as well as the future. Here, Schmidt-Rottluff employs traditional African masks and Christian imagery in an attempt to simplify life immediately after the untold technological horrors of the first world war.
The Guardian
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Titanic talents, fabulous florals and a river of black stone – the week in art
Emii Alrai: River of Black Stone Sculptures and installations that respond to Compton Verney's collection of paintings of Vesuvius, the volcano that buried Pompeii. Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 15 February to 15 June Goya to ImpressionismFine paintings by titanic talents such as Cézanne and Manet but this show has no energy or purpose. Read the review here. Courtauld Gallery, London, until 26 May Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & CultureA huge bouquet of floral imagery in contemporary art, from Elizabeth Blackadder to Yayoi Kusama. Saatchi Gallery, London, until 5 May Artists' BookmarketWeekend festival of the artist's book, featuring Lydia Davies, David Faithfull and more. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 15-16 February Salt CosmologiesInstallation and exhibition by artist duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser) about the political economy of salt. Somerset House, London, 20 February to 27 April In 1977, the punk band Buzzcocks released a single called Orgasm Addict, with a record sleeve as jolting as the song's title. Linder Sterling, Manchester's punk and dada genius, created the collage which depicted a lean and muscular, oiled-up naked woman with an iron for a head and smiling, lipsticked mouths for nipples. It was scary, sexy and shocking. Read more here. Surrealism's ignored female artists are having a late boom in recognition JMW Turner believed in the redemptive power of landscape art Henri Matisse's favourite model was his illegitimate daughter, Marguerite Thousands of artists have called for an AI art auction to be cancelled A beautiful retrospective of LA painter Noah Davis is a revelation Henri Michaux produced addictive wonders of abstract art Mervyn Street's show Stolen Wages chronicles the lives of artists like his father, who were paid in rocks Overlooked artist Linder thinks flowers are 'nature's pornography' Dr Forlenze by Jacques-Antoine Vallin, 1807 A Paris-based surgeon shows off his Neapolitan roots in this flamboyant portrait from the age of Napoleon. Dr Forlenze was a living embodiment of Napoleon's belief in the 'career open to the talents': his pioneering work in eye surgery, including on French soldiers with illnesses they got during Napoleon's Egypt campaign, won him recognition by the Emperor. Here he wears his recently awarded Légion d'honneur. But the aloof figure before us is even prouder of his origins in southern Italy, as he expresses by standing in the harbour of Naples with the terrific, smoking, sublime volcano Vesuvius behind him. National Gallery, London If you don't already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
