Category Archives: Art

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews

Art: ‘This Is New York – 100 Years Of The City In Art And Pop Culture’ (MCNY)

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Richard Estes. M Train on Route to Manhattan Approaches the Williamsburg Bridge. 1995.

Museum of the City of New York (May 10, 2023) – In honor of the centennial of the founding of the Museum of the City of New York as the city’s storyteller, This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture explores the many ways that the city has inspired storytelling.

This Is New York – 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture

OPENS MAY 26, 2023 – JUNE 21, 2024

It features both famous and lesser-known images of New York in film and television, song and poetry, literature, visual and performing arts, and fashion, painting a collective, moving and even funny version of a city that has captured the imagination of the world. 

The exhibition is organized around the types of places where the human-scale stories of New York are told.  It showcases the city’s bustling streets and subways, its iconic parks and waterfronts, its restaurants and nightspots, and its dense and vibrant neighborhoods. Covering the century since the Museum was founded, it illustrates both the massive changes and the enduring themes that have shaped the many stories we tell about New York. 

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews

Art: ‘Picasso Sculptor – Matter and Body’ In Spain

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Museo Picasso Málaga (May 9, 2023) –  is the first major exhibition in Spain devoted to this facet of Picasso’s work. The selection of pieces is intended to underline the central role played by the representation of the human body, taken as both a whole and as a fragment, in the Málaga-born artist’s œuvre.


Picasso Sculptor. Matter and Body

08/05/2023 to 09/09/2023

Picasso’s sculptures were seemingly overshadowed by his paintings and played a secondary role in his prolific artistic career. The first exhibition devoted chiefly to them did not take place until 1967, at the Tate Gallery in London, and until then his three-dimensional work had barely received any critical attention. However, sculpture was not a secondary concern for Picasso but a form of expression on a par with painting. According to Pierre Daix, ‘he was at least as great a sculptor as he was a painter, and for him these two aspects of his work were always complementary, for he had discovered very early on that the switching from one to the other enabled him to determine precisely what painting is and what sculpture is’.

Art, Arts & Literature, Magazines, Photography, Previews, Reviews

Arts & Culture: Art Review Magazine – May 2023 Issue

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ArtReview (May 2023 Issue) – Featuring Frida Orupabo, Isaac Julien, Sarah Pierce, Kahlil Robert Irving and Christina Quarles; columns on faltering art markets and questions of what art should do for a society; and much more

Aki Sasamoto wins Calder Prize 2023

Aki Sasamoto, Yield Point, 2017, installation view. Image: Jason Mandella

The winner receives $50k, a three-month residency at Atelier Calder, and the placement of works in a public collection

Have We Reached the Endpoint of Revivalism?

Cao Fei, MatryoshkaVerse, 2022. Double Channel HD video, 16:4.5, color with sound, 37min 38sec © Cao Fei, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers

Art has long looked to the recent past for inspiration, but might the return of post-Internet art just be too much, too soon?

Frida Orupabo, on the cover of ArtReview May 2023, mines images sourced from colonial archives, film, fashion and family albums to create collages that carve representation and empowerment from stereotype. Her visual references, ranging from clips of singers like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, to the art of Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker, are incorporated into multilayered works, some pinned with metal tacks to look like the kind of vintage paper doll whose appendages are manipulable. The sense of ‘reclaiming the power to choose how a woman’s body, and more specifically Black female sexuality, is presented and received’, writes Fi Churchman, ‘is a central theme of Orupabo’s work’. 

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Previews, Reviews, Views

May 2023 Exhibition Views: ‘Stephan Hostettler Solo’ In Bern, Switzerland

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VernissageTV (May 8, 2023) – The opening reception of the Swiss artist Stephan Hostettler. Stephan Hostettler was born in 1988 in Unterseen, Switzerland.

After training as a metalworker, he attended the preliminary design course in Bern and graduated from the specialist class for graphics in Biel. He presented his works for the first time in 2019 at the Jungkunst exhibition in Winterthur. Hostettler lives and works in Bern.

“At its core, my work is about how we humans live or could live in this world. It offers a humorous but critical perspective on our actions as a society and aims to trigger discussions that contribute to a positive development. I wish for a world in which we treat each other with respect, we live with nature, take care of it and in which no one has to live in fear.”

Stephan Hostettler Solo Exhibition in Bern (Switzerland). Vernissage, May 6, 2023.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Profiles, Videos

Artists: French-American Artist Louise Bourgeois’ Iconic “Spider” Sculpture

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Sotheby’s (May 6, 2023) – Fraught with chilling grandeur, Spider from 1996 is the ultimate embodiment of Louise Bourgeois’ singular contribution to the history of Modern Art.

Among the earliest monumental iterations of Bourgeois’ Spiders, the present work represents the absolute zenith of her artistic practice and the most ambitious embodiment of her signature motif; decades later, her towering Spiders stand among the most iconic sculptures of the twentieth century.

In its elegant yet otherworldly presence, Bourgeois’ spellbinding Spider speaks to the conceptual concerns at the very heart of her oeuvre: an unflinching confrontation of her own emotions and psyche, translated into sculptural form.

Architecture, Art, Home Design, Homes, Tours, Videos, Views

Design Tour: Daylesford Longhouse In Australia

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The Local Project – (May 5, 2023) – A bold interpretation of an architectural farm house, Daylesford Longhouse seeks to rediscover how to live with the land. Recentering on the fundamental nature of our existence and self-sustained living, Partners Hill expertly imagines a beautiful home that sets the tone for a revived way of living that may be crucial for a sustainable future.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the Architectural Farmhouse 00:37 – The Architect and Design Custodian 01:25 – A Walkthrough of the Home 02:30 – Research of the Agricultural Model 03:12 – The Concept of the Space 03:44 – Living and Working in the Space 04:04 – Establishing a Greenhouse 04:30 – The Extraordinary Kitchen 05:02 – The Unfolding of the Multifaceted Home 05:44 – Leaving the Location A Changed Person 06:02 – A Collection of Small Ideas 06:41 – The Architects Proud Moments

Located in a charming country town near Melbourne, Daylesford Longhouse sits on an elevated ridge, accommodating the sweeping views of the Australian landscape that the house sits so well within. The challenge was to uncover how an architectural farm house could flourish in a place where the land is deeply exposed to vast populations of ravenous grazing wildlife, extreme temperature variations, strong winds and a lack of water.

The concept for the architectural farm house was about having a community hub to hone skills of self-sufficiency, exchange knowledge and run programs where other people can learn. The home’s façade blends into the landscape in a way that doesn’t dominate, echoing the ethos of the residence. The multi-functional estate includes a large shed that houses a domestic dwelling at the eastern end, a garden kitchen and an intimate Airbnb and sleeping quarters.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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The Art Newspaper May 4, 2023: Featuring the coronation in the UK. As Charles III is crowned at Westminster Abbey this weekend, Anna Somers Cocks, founder of The Art Newspaper and a former assistant keeper of metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, tells us about the objects involved in the coronation and the monarchical history they convey.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this week opens Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, the latest in the hugely successful Costume Institute exhibitions. The German designer, who died in 2019, was also the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala, the museum’s star-studded fundraiser.

We talk to Stephanie Sporn, a fashion historian and arts and culture writer, about the exhibition, the gala and the controversy around Lagerfeld’s offensive comments about a range of issues. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Good Housekeeping III (1985/2023) by the British artist Marlene Smith. She was part of the Blk Art Group, a collective of young Black British artists active in the late 1970s and 1980s, which is the subject of The more things change…, an exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery in the UK.

Smith has re-created the work, first made in 1985, for the show, and tells us more about its making, its context, and the history of the Blk Art Group. Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 16 July.The more things change…, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK, until 9 July.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Profiles, Reviews, Videos

Art: Vincent Became “Van Gogh” With ‘Jardin Devant le Mas Debray’ In 1887

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Sotheby’s (May 3, 2023) – ‘Jardin devant le Mas Debray’ captures this pivotal moment in summer of 1887 where color, subject and paint handling crystallized into Van Gogh’s mature style, one that would flourish in the three years remaining of his life in Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and Auvers-sur-Oise.

Jardin devant le Mas Debray | Modern Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby's
Jardin devant le Mas Debray by Vincent Van Gogh

It was during this period of time, from 1887 to 1890, that Van Gogh’s greatest masterpieces were created, forever changing in the history of modern art. Surrounded by artists, dancers, musicians, actors and writers in Montmartre, Van Gogh abandoned the dark palette that dominated many of his early paintings in Holland and replaced it with a newfound love of color.

Art, Arts & Literature, History, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Fine Art: The Burlington Magazine – May 2023 Issue

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The Burlington Magazine – May 2023: Anxiety about the future of the two great photographic libraries housed in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, can be traced back at least thirty years. In October 1992 we published an Editorial, ‘The Witt and Conway libraries under threat’, which was prompted by a demand from the University of London that the Courtauld – not yet a self-governing and self-financing entity – produce a business plan that would show how the libraries could develop commercial opportunities to offset a threatened reduction in university funding. 

Mey Rahola (1897–1959): The new photographer

Mey Rahola: Desire for Horizons

Although Mey Rahola (1897–1959) was one of the first women to become renowned for art photography in Spain, she remains a little-known figure today. Two linked exhibitions with a single catalogue dedicated to the Catalan photographer set out to rectify this and liberate an overlooked artist from the shadow of anonymity. Working with Rahola’s family, the curators, Lluís Bertran Xirau and Roser Martínez Garcia, have assembled 550 items from her collection, including 250 negatives and a number of photograph albums. That this material had been handed down and divided between the artist’s friends and family is testimony to her interest in her posterity. The fact that, nonetheless, Rahola has remained largely unknown, one is reminded in the exhibition catalogue, is a result partly of her status as a female photographer operating in the early twentieth century and partly of the events of the Spanish Civil War, which ruptured her burgeoning career.

Glass-plate negative of a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry photographed

Architecture, Art, Home Design, Homes, Tours, Videos, Views

Design Tour: Forest House In Truckee, California

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The Local Project – (May 2, 2023) – Tucked into an alpine environment, Forest House by Faulkner Architects is a cabin in the woods surrounded by thick pine trees, Fir trees and basalt rock.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction to the Cabin in the Woods 00:22 – The Site and Surrounding Landscape 00:38 – Saving the Landscape Around the Home 00:55 – The Clients and the Initial Brief 01:44 – A Concealed Entry 02:00 – A Walkthrough of the Home 02:38 – An Experience Space 02:58 – Working with the Sun 03:25 – A Focus on Sustainability 03:49 – The Materials Used 04:09 – A Reflection of the Surrounding Landscape 04:35 – The Most Exciting Space and its Successes

Desiring to save and protect the landscape, the architects saved 95 per cent of the trees on the property by leaving the front land largely untouched. As the clients delivered a simple brief with an open mindset, the architects were able to create a cabin in the woods that respected its surrounds and did not fall to the arbitrary aesthetics of larger homes in the area. Due to its nature-rich location, the home remains neutral and respective by allowing the landscape to breathe and embrace its structure.

As the house tour moves inside, the front of the home opens into the living, dining and kitchen areas. Tucked behind the kitchen is a small family room, while an addition of a hidden office allows for further separation of spaces where the clients can find a place to work, study and rest. Additionally, the master suite has been left on the main level, while the three ensuite guest rooms are positioned upstairs for increased separation of private and public spaces. Described as a cabin in the woods that is an atmospheric exercise in form and light, the architects began the process of designing Forest House by looking to the sun.