Alastair Sooke
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Alastair Sooke | |
---|---|
Born | 1981 (age 43–44) |
Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford Courtauld Institute of Art (MA) |
Occupation | Journalist, broadcaster |
Awards | Queen's Scholar |
Alastair Sooke (/suːk/) is an art critic and broadcaster, most notably, reporting and commenting on art for British media, and writing and presenting documentaries on art and art history for BBC television and radio. His BBC documentaries include Modern Masters for BBC One, and two three-part series, the Treasures of Ancient Rome and the Treasures of Ancient Greece for BBC Four.[not verified in body]. He is also a deputy art critic at the The Daily Telegraph, writing regularly on art and art history, including on the Turner prize and contemporary art. He is a regular reporter on The Culture Show.[clarification needed][not verified in body]
Contents
Education
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Sooke was educated at Westminster School,[1] a boarding independent school in the Westminster area of Central London,[citation needed] where he was a Queen's Scholar,[citation needed] followed by a Westminster Scholarship to Christ Church at the University of Oxford,[1] where he read English language and literature and won the university’s Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize.[citation needed] After graduating with a First, he studied for an M.A. at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, specialising in ancient Greek and Roman art.[citation needed]
Film works
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Overview
Sooke is known as a writer and presenter of documentaries on art and art history for BBC television and radio.[2] BBC documentaries include Modern Masters (for BBC One), exploring four artists who shaped modern art;[citation needed] the tripartite series Treasures of Ancient Rome and Treasures of Ancient Greece (for BBC Four);[when?][citation needed] and How the Devil got his Horns, a history of depictions of the Devil in Western art (also for BBC Four).[citation needed]
Filmography
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- Television
Year | Work | Channel |
---|---|---|
2010 | Modern Masters | BBC One |
2011 | Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture | BBC Four |
2011 | The Perfect Suit | BBC Four |
2011 | The World's Most Expensive Paintings | BBC One |
2012 | Unfinished | BBC Two |
2012 | Treasures of Ancient Rome | BBC Four |
2012 | How the Devil Got His Horns: A Diabolical Tale | BBC Four |
2013 | Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern | BBC Four |
2013 | Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball | BBC Two |
2014 | Treasures of Ancient Egypt | BBC Four |
2014 | The World’s Most Expensive Stolen Paintings | BBC Two |
2014 | Pop go the women: The Other Story of Pop Art | BBC Two |
2014 | The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal Academy | BBC Two |
2014 | Constable: A Country Rebel | BBC Four |
2015 | Treasures of Ancient Greece | BBC Four |
Publications
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Sooke also serves as an art critic, and writes periodical-length pieces on art theory, history, and criticism,[citation needed] as well as penning investigative pieces that have appeared in journals,[clarification needed][citation needed] and newspapers[citation needed] (including The Telegraph, where is a deputy art critic as of this date,[when?][3] after joining them as a trainee journalist in 2003.[citation needed]). As of this date,[when?] Sooke is also regular reporter on The Culture Show.[clarification needed][citation needed] In addition, Sooke has written books, including on Henri Matisse[full citation needed] and Roy Lichtenstein.[full citation needed]
Sooke's work for The Telegraph has included regular reporting and commentary on contemporary art, writing that has garnered attention beyond audiences in England. Into the new millennium, Sooke has reported and commented periodically on the English prize for contemporary art, the Turner Prize. For instance, responding to the release of the names of those shortlisted for the Turner in 2010, Sooke wrote, "The great triumph of the Turner Prize was that, during the 1990s, it won a large audience for contemporary art in this country. But, now that this battle has been won, it faces a tricky problem: how can it sustain widespread interest when it no longer feels appropriate to describe the work that is shortlisted each year as 'shocking' or 'controversial'?"[4][5] Speaking on that same occasion, Sooke commented:<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
[In the past] many British artists made brash, splashy and provocative work that knowingly incited the media, and made for great television. Newspapers and broadcasters loved reporting their provocations, and artists loved dreaming up ever more outrageous antics to provide fodder for newspapers and broadcasters. It was a potent symbiosis. More recently, however, things have quietened down: last year's winner, for instance, was Richard Wright, who makes gentle, exquisite wall paintings that are a world away from the headline-grabbing work of the YBAs [Young British Artists] who, championed by Charles Saatchi, dominated the 1990s. It's as if collectively our attitude to contemporary art has mellowed and matured.
and this perspective was quoted at length in The American Spectator.[5]
In his writing for The Telegraph, Sooke has also reported periodically on the career of Tracey Emin, a "Stuckist" artist,[5][6] since she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 for her piece, The Bed, where she "notoriously showed her unmade bed, surrounded by squalid mementoes of life on the edge, including empty vodka bottles, pill packets and used condoms."[7] (The Bed did not receive the Turner that year, but sold at auction for £2.2 million (US$3.1M) in 2014, after which it appeared on loan to the Tate Gallery.[6]) In 2008-2014, Sooke categorized Emin's work as being "explicitly confessional,"[6] and in the "tradition of outsider art,"[7] and describes her as "one of only a handful of British artists who can also claim genuine celebrity,"[6] but at least some of her work as being "insufficiently stimulating," visually.[7] Reporting on Emin's widely covered five-week exhibition of gouache nudes, bronze sculptures, and textile and neon pieces in October–November 2014 (at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, South London),[8][9] Sooke broke the story that Emin, artist and professor of drawing at the Royal Academy since 2011, had composed the nudes during "life-drawing classes [that] she has been attending in New York," and that the "sculptures are the results of lessons in how to cast bronze over the past three years."[6]
Personal life
Sooke is married and lives in London.[citation needed]
References
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External links
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- Pages with reference errors
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- Articles with unsourced statements from January 2016
- Wikipedia articles needing clarification from January 2016
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- 1981 births
- Living people
- English television personalities
- People educated at Westminster School, London
- Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
- Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art
- English art critics
- British art critics
- English writers
- British writers
- English male journalists
- British television personalities
- Daily Telegraph journalists