ART Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Liverpool

The capital will be in upheaval this coming year. It will be decamping to Liverpool which, after much fuss and fanfare, becomes the European Capital of Culture. A city that languished for decades in the doldrums has been given a facelift. No wonder the Beatles are scuttling back for a look.

Certainly the art world is pulling out a few stops. From the Walker Gallery’s celebration of Art in the Age of Steam through a vast new spider’s web sculpture to be spun over the docks to the public art project that will scatter dozens of idiosyncratic replicas of Liverpool’s iconic (if ridiculous) Superlam-banana around the streets, the city will be catering for all tastes from classical to modern. The biggest cultural coup is at the Tate. This will be offering us for the first time in Britain a show of the works of the glittering Austrian Gustav Klimt.

The East

A new Chinese year is beginning in Britain. As Beijing becomes the back-drop for the summer Olympics, contemporary Chinese art will continue to surge – like its recent auction-house prices – across our cultural consciousness. It’s more than just a fad. It’s a flood. China Now, the largest-ever festival of Chinese culture in the UK, launches in February, the GLA has its China in London festival all planned, the V&A’s huge spring exhibition looks at China Design Now and Charles Saatchi will be opening his swanky new Chelsea premises with an exhibition of works by Chinese contemporaries.

Will it be the sub-continent next? The Serpentine is about to stage India Calling and Saatchi, it has been noted, has started making a number of acquisitions of works by artists from the Near East.

Olympics

All eyes will be on the Olympics this summer. But even as the grand beano closes in Beijing, Britain will be picking up the baton. Our bash at the world’s biggest sporting event may feel a long way off. But actually, the cultural Olympiad officially begins this autumn. There are lots of big decisions to be made.

Competition will be cutthroat keen as artists jostle for a place in the global spotlight. A host of big public commissions will be coming up for grabs. So prepare for plenty of argument and lots of ideas. One plan currently being whispered about, for instance, is for a vast contemporary art show to take place in venues strung out right across the capital.

Francis Bacon

Who can resist a bit of Bacon? There is no great secret to this postwar artist’s success. He was the most extraordinary, powerful and compelling of painters. His images seem to short-circuit our normal appreciative processes. They cut straight to the nervous system and hijack the soul. Perhaps best of all, as far as we are concerned, he is British. (His family were actually of Anglo-Irish descent).

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