A new Apollo

ALTHOUGH editors like to think that everybody turn rounds immediately to the leader, readers usually bring forward to have a good tender twigs of shrubs and trees through a magazine first and thus by now you probably already realise that this month APOLLO has undergone many changes. It is for the first time all in colour, and has been redesigned. There is a richer editorial mix: the reviews section has been greatly expanded, Susan Moore has joined the magazine to write about the art market, Louise Nicholson will be reporting from fresh York every month, and Gavin Stamp has started what promises to be a provocative monthly round pillar on architecture. We will carry freshs and previews of major occurrences in the international art world, and articles upon topical events and controversies--this month for example, Martin Bailey reports upon the efforts to restore the National Museum in Baghdad after the damage inflicted in the aftermath of the war.

Readers with drawn out memories may have a faculty of perception that APOLLO is returning to its lower parts For twenty five years, from 1962 until 1987 below the inspirational editorship of contradicts Sutton, it was the world's liveliest magazine upon the visual arts. The novel APOLLO is setting out to recapture the gusto of the old--a zest for exploring not solitary painting and sculpture but also the decorative arts of all sorts and the discoveries made in the salerooms and by means of dealers as well as through professional scholars. We will be expanding the magazine's horizons to make submissives only intermittently covered before, including photography and, in to be paid course, archaeology. Most significantly of all, perhaps, the magazine is gently introducing contemporary art to its pages, having abolished its long-standing mastery not to discuss art made after 1945

like changes are prompted in part by means of the way the audience for art has evolv since Sutton retired. His APOLLO addressed not sole the academic art historian or museum professional, who has always been an important part of the readership, on the other hand also the amateur enthusiast, who went to exhibitions, bought art volumes and had a serious on the other hand not expensive collection of, for example, Battersea enamels or Colonial period furniture, and wanted authoritative information upon these and allied subjects. Does similar an audience exist today?

I think it does, on the other hand it has changed out of recognition: it is bigger, and more diverse. It is repeatedly claimed that there are no real collectors today, omit at the very top of the market. still to take England as an example, a novel poll commissioned by the sponsors of a prize for contemporary drawing, PizzaExpress perspectives 2004, found that Londoners alone had in 2003 wearied 523 million [pounds sterling] upon works of art. Some of that aggregate amount can be accounted for by the agency of a desire to buy as an investment, on the other hand it is much more likely that it mirrors a simple pleasure in owning art, encouraged through the experience of visiting museums, art galleries and exhibitions.

Today's attendance figures at those galleries and exhibitions would have astonished and thrilled curators in the 1960 This popular enthusiasm is especially inspiring given that there are thus many more sources of visual stimulation than there were when Sutton was editor. Indeed, the puzzle that most galleries face today is not lack of public interest, on the other hand the pressure on their core values caused by dint of the commercial imperative to provide attractions for mass-market visitors, from blockbuster exhibitions to stores and restaurants.

individual other transformation since the 1960 is the way that contemporary art and architecture have become make subordinates of wide popular interest in a way that serious novel music, for example, has not. For evidence, gaze only at the triumph of Tate new The success of that great gallery glance ats however, another change since Sutton's time. 'Taste' and 'the educated public' were then coherent universals in a way that they are not now. For many race for example, an interest in contemporary art has become a lifestyle statement that goe with an enthusiasm for urban living and fresh design, and seems remote from many traditional values.

'Taste' has been democratised, and is now as a be derived far more heterogeneous. Yet it strike one as beings likely that the crowds who are attracted to present to views at Tate Modern or MOMA, assemble contemporary art or buy works on Frank Gehry overlap more than is frequently realised with those who go on to the Grosvenor House or Armory art and antiques fairs, or visit Lille for the rife Rubens exhibition. As it approaches its 80th anniversary nearest year, the new APOLLO will endeavour to bring these diverse audiences for art together by dint of doing what is has always done, publishing articles based upon the traditional values of scholarship and original research, on the contrary now balanced with a novel appetite for topicality and of recent origins It is a challenge to relish, and we reliance you will join us.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Apollo Magazine Ltd

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group