Alastair Sooke


Alastair Sooke is an English art critic, journalist and broadcaster, most notable for reporting and commenting on art for the 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.
Alastair is a deputy art critic at The Daily Telegraph, writing on art and art history, including on the Turner Prize and contemporary art. He is also a regular reporter on The Culture Show.

Biography

Sooke was born in west London in October 1981 and educated at Westminster School, an independent boarding school in Central London, where he was a Queen's Scholar, followed by a Westminster Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read English language and literature and won the university’s Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize. 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.
Sooke is known as a writer and presenter of documentaries on art and art history for BBC television and radio. His BBC documentaries include Modern Masters, exploring four artists who shaped modern art; the tripartite series Treasures of Ancient Rome in 2012 and Treasures of Ancient Greece, for BBC Four, in 2015, and How the Devil Got His Horns, a history of depictions of the Devil in Western art.
Sooke also serves as an art critic, and writes periodical-length pieces on art theory, history and criticism, as well as penning investigative pieces that have appeared in journals, and newspapers. These include The Telegraph, where he is a deputy art critic after joining the paper as a trainee journalist in 2003. Sooke is also regular reporter on The Culture Show. In addition, Sooke has written books, on both Henri Matisse and Roy Lichtenstein.
Sooke's work for the Daily Telegraph has included regular reporting and commentary on contemporary art, writing that has garnered attention beyond England. Sooke has reported and commented periodically on the Turner Prize for contemporary art. 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'?" Speaking on that same occasion, Sooke commented:
In his writing for the Daily Telegraph, Sooke has also reported periodically on the career of Tracey Emin, since she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 for her piece, My 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." Sooke categorized Emin's work between 2008 and 2014 as being "explicitly confessional," and in the "tradition of outsider art," and describes her as "one of only a handful of British artists who can also claim genuine celebrity," but at least some of her work as being "insufficiently stimulating," visually.
Reporting on Emin's widely covered five-week exhibition of gouache nudes, bronze sculptures, and textile and neon pieces in October–November 2014, 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 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."
Sooke lives in London with his wife and three children.

Filmography

;Television
YearWorkChannel
2010Modern MastersBBC One
2011Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British SculptureBBC Four
2011The Perfect SuitBBC Four
2011The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal AcademyBBC Two
2011The World's Most Expensive PaintingsBBC One
2012How the Devil Got His Horns: A Diabolical TaleBBC Four
2012Unfinished MasterpiecesBBC Two
2012The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal AcademyBBC Two
2012Treasures of Ancient RomeBBC Four
2013Pride and Prejudice: Having a BallBBC Two
2013The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal AcademyBBC Two
2013Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein at Tate ModernBBC Four
2014Constable: A Country RebelBBC Four
2014Pop Go the Women: The Other Story of Pop ArtBBC Two
2014The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal AcademyBBC Two
2014The World’s Most Expensive Stolen PaintingsBBC Two
2014Treasures of Ancient EgyptBBC Four
2015Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the WorldBBC Four
2015Treasures of Ancient GreeceBBC Four
2016Lichtenstein: A RetrospectiveBBC Two
2016Robert Rauschenberg: Pop Art Pioneer
2017An Art Lovers' GuideBBC Two
2017Trump on Culture: Brave New WorldBBC Two
2018An Art Lover's GuideBBC Two