Category Archives: Art

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper April 20, 2023: This week features a tour of Tate Modern’s exhibition that brings together the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint and the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.

Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian | Artists | Tate Shop | Tate

We hear about the two artists’ distinctive contributions to abstraction, their shared interest in esoteric belief systems and their deep engagement with the natural world, from one of the show’s curators, Bryony Fer. Our editor, Americas, Ben Sutton visited the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to talk to the Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, as her retrospective opens at the museum.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is a reconstruction of a Roman gateway that has just opened at Richborough Roman Fort in Kent, southern England. Andrew J. Roberts, a properties historian with English Heritage, the charity that looks after the historic site, explains what the gateway tells us about the Romans’ arrival in Britain in 43 CE.Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life, Tate Modern, London, until 3 September.

Additionally: Kunstmuseum den Haag, The Hague, 7 October-25 February 2024Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 13 August; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 15 October -7 January 2024; Seattle Art Museum, 15 February–12 May next year. The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 24 September-15 January 2024; New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, 18 April 2024-15 September 2024.The Roman gateway and rampart, Richborough Roman Fort and Amphitheatre, Kent, now open.

Design: ‘Re-Enchanting Villa Medici’ In Rome, Italy

india mahdavi's vivid play of geometries & colors takes over the historic rooms of villa medici

Villa Medicis, Rome (April 18, 2023) – The piano nobile of Villa Medici consists of the former rooms of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici with three rooms in a row – the Room of the Elements, the Room of the Muses and the Room of the Lovers of Jupiter – with 16th century frescoes by the Mannerist painter Jacopo Zucchi. These rooms, which are open to the public on guided tours throughout the year, are located next to two private rooms from the same period which complete the complex.

As part of the project Reenchanting Villa Medici, the interior refurbishment of these emblematic spaces of Villa Medici has been entrusted to India Mahdavi, an internationally renowned French architect, designer and scenographer, who will be responsible for the artistic direction of the project in association with craftsmen (more information to come). This transformation is being carried out with respect for the period décor and previous architectural interventions, in order to revisit the premises by adding a touch of colour and modernity. The rooms will be equipped by Maison Tréca, a French manufacturer of high quality bedding.

Art Exhibition: ‘Grace Wright – Deep Symmetry’ Yavuz Gallery, Singapore

Grace Wright, Night In The Old World, 2023, 

YUVUZ GALLERY, SingaporeDeep Symmetry is New Zealand-artist Grace Wright’s first solo exhibition in Asia.

Grace Wright – Deep Symmetry

15 April – 28 May 2023

Grace Wright’s atmospheric paintings are all-consuming, inviting the viewer into a baroque world of tangled gestures. Markings on the canvas twist and convulse about themselves to build an anarchic structure before unravelling to moments of repose. While Wright’s gestures may be abstract, she views her paintings as representational narratives, evoking the tempestuous rhythm of the natural world, while alluding to 17th-century religious paintings.

Grace Wright, World Receivers, 2023

Deep Symmetry explores a recent evolution of Wright’s practice as a result of her time in Europe in the latter half of 2022. Its title was inspired by the architectural geometries of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, France, and a quote by writer Karl Ove Knausgaard: “Life is irregularity, death is geometry”.

Wright has been long fascinated with the deeper, universal connections that exist beyond our normal comprehension. Marrying alluring, harmonious colour with visceral imagery to monumental standing, Wright’s paintings are a reflection of this deep connectedness; her coiling energetic brush marks echoing the universal ‘rhythmic, cyclical nature’ forms in our world, to emotion and the force of life itself.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

April 13, 2023: This week: Expo Chicago and the art scene in the Windy City. Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, and Carlie Porterfield, associate editor, art market, Americas, discuss the fair, and the wider market and gallery scene in Chicago. 

As the US president Joe Biden visits Northern Ireland to honour the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday or Belfast agreement, we talk to Hannah Crowdy, head of curatorial at National Museums Northern Ireland, a group of four museums. She tells us about how the museums are addressing the anniversary, representing Northern Ireland’s recent history and looking to the future.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Georges Clairin’s 1876 portrait of the celebrated French actor Sarah Bernhardt, who died 100 years ago. The work is part of a huge new exhibition about Bernhardt opening this week at the Petit Palais in Paris. The museum’s director, Annick Lemoine, tells us about the painting and the extraordinary fame of the woman it depicts.

Principled and Revolutionary: Northern Ireland’s Peace Women by Hannah Starkey, Ulster Museum, Belfast, until 10 September; Array Collective: The Druthaib’s Ball, Ulster Museum, until 3 September.Sarah Bernhardt: and the woman created the star, Petit Palais, Paris, until 27 August. 

Art: ‘Le Souffle Moderne’ Collection Features Miró, Picasso, Léger And Braque

Sotheby’s (April 11, 2023) – This collection was put together by a couple of passionate collectors who favored avant-garde works from the 1930s and 1940s, thus creating an extremely harmonious whole that perfectly reflects the taste of an era and the artistic revolutions that went through it.

The works have remained preserved in a Parisian apartment for almost sixty years, and their appearance on the market constitutes an unprecedented opportunity for collectors today”. Says Aurélie Vandevoorde, Director of the Impressionist and Modern Art Department.

Unveiling an unprecedented group of 12 works by some of the greatest masters of the 20th century, which include artists such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Nicolas de Staël & Georges Braque, “Le Souffle Moderne” Collections presents an exceptional ensemble embodying the artistic avant-gardes of the 1930s and 1940s.

Art Exhibitions: ‘Georgia O’Keeffe -To See Takes Time’

Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No. III. 1917. Watercolor on paper on board: 8 7/8 x 11 7/8" (22.7 x 30.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Straus Fund

The Museum of Modern Art (April 10, 2023) – “To see takes time,”  Georgia O’Keeffe once wrote. Best known for her flower paintings, O’Keeffe (1887-1986) also made extraordinary series of works in charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and pastel.

Georgia O’Keeffe – To See Takes Time

April 9 to August 12, 2023

Reuniting works on paper that are often seen individually, along with key paintings, this exhibition offers a rare glimpse of the artist’s working methods and invites us to take time to look.

Best Photos of the Day
Installation view of Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from April 9 through August 12, 2023. Photo by Jonathan Dorado.

Over her long career, O’Keeffe revisited and reworked the same subjects, developing, repeating, and transforming motifs that lie between observation and abstraction. Between 1915 and 1918, a breakthrough period of experimentation, she made as many works on paper as she would during the next four decades, producing progressions of bold lines, organic landscapes, and frank nudes, as well as the radically abstract charcoals she called “specials.”

Even as she turned increasingly to painting, important series—including flowers in the 1930s, portraits in the ’40s, and aerial views in the ’50s—reaffirmed her commitment to working on paper. Drawing in this way enabled O’Keeffe to capture not only nature’s forms but its rhythms: tracing the sun’s spiraling descent in vividly hued pigment, or committing to velvety black the shifting perspective as seen from an airplane window.

Discover the important role working on paper played in Georgia O’Keeffe’s life and career.

Exhibits: ‘Sarah Bernhardt – And The Woman Created The Star’, Petit Palais, Paris

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Sarah Bernhardt, (1844-1923), was an emblematic figure who spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. The “Divine Sarah”, who was an artist as well as an actress, takes center stage at the Petit Palais in an exceptional exhibition to mark the centenary of her death. 

Sarah Bernhardt

And the woman created the star

14 April 2023 to 27 August 2023

The museum holds important collections of works linked to the actress, including the spectacular portrait of her that was painted in 1876 by her friend Georges Clairin and donated by her son Maurice.

Sarah Bernhardt, Actress, Cocotte and Fashion Icon - ICON-ICON

 With over four hundred works, the exhibition traces the life and theatrical career of this “sacred monster”, as Jean Cocteau dubbed her. A legendary performer of the greatest roles from Racine, Shakespeare, Edmond Rostand and Alexandre Dumas fils, among others, Sarah Bernhardt went from triumph to triumph in theaters all over the world.

The exhibition evokes her greatest roles through the costumes she wore on stage, photographs, paintings, posters and other memorabilia. Her “golden voice” and her tall, slender figure – unusual in those days – held the public in thrall, as well as the artistic and literary world, who simply venerated her. She was the friend of painters such as Gustave Doré, Georges Clairin, Louise Abbéma, and Alphonse Mucha, but also of writers like Victor Hugo, Victorien Sardou and Sacha Guitry, as well as musicians and composers like Reynaldo Hahn. She was an artist herself, and an entire section of the exhibition focuses on this lesser-known aspect of her life.

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Exhibits: ‘Art Deco Glass’ – Fort Wayne Art Museum

Fort Wayne Museum of Art (April 6, 2023) – Curators take you on a new gallery tour each month, offering unique perspectives on all FWMoA exhibits. For April 2023, we explore the exhibit Art Deco Glass from the David Huchthausen Collection, on view from April 1 – August 6, 2023.

Art Deco Glass from the David Huchthausen Collection

April 01, 2023 – August 06, 2023

Art Deco Glass: The David Huchthausen Collection – Museum of Glass

The Art Deco period (c. 1910-1940), with its focus on simplified forms and captivating repeating surface treatments, was revolutionary. Inspired by other burgeoning modern art movements of the time including Cubism and Fauvism, the philosophy behind this style aimed to introduce high quality design to a broader market.

The lasting influence of this period can still be seen in today’s Studio Glass movement in style and technique. For many decades, glass artist and collector David Huchthausen has collected with a keen and practiced eye. The quality and depth of his collection would be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate. His collecting history begins with the first pieces acquired while working as a graduate assistant to Harvey Littleton and continues today.

The FWMoA is proud to display his remarkable collection of over 120 Art Deco glass works, which includes many major studios and artists of the period (René Lalique, Steuben Glass Works, Daum Nancy, and Pierre D’Avesn) concurrent with our permanent collection of contemporary glass. This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

April 6, 2023: This week: Ben Luke talks to Melanie Gerlis about the recent turbulence in the banking sector, as US banks go under, an ailing Credit Suisse is acquired by UBS and Deutsche Bank shares fall at one point by 14%.

What are the implications for the art world? Melanie also explains the figures in the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. The Baltimore Museum of Art in the US this week opens the exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century.

We speak to Asma Naeem, the director of the BMA and co-curator of the show, about what she’s called “the second pop art movement”. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Calling of Saint Matthew by the 17th-century Afro-Hispanic artist Juan de Pareja. He is best known as the subject of one of the greatest ever portraits, by Diego Velázquez, the artist who enslaved Pareja for two decades before his manumission in Rome in 1650.

David Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés, the curators of a new exhibition about Juan de Pareja at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, tell us about the painting.The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Baltimore Museum of Art, until 16 July; St Louis Art Museum, 26 August-1 January 2024.Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 16 July. 

New Art Exhibitions: ‘John Craxton – Drawn To Light’, Meşher Studio In Istanbul

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Meşher, Istanbul’s leading multidisciplinary art space, is to celebrate the life and work of the painter and designer John Craxton (1922–2009). The late British artist’s first solo exhibition in Türkiye will run April 5–July 23, 2023.

John Craxton: Drawn To Light

5 April – 23 July 2023

Meşher will have the honour of exhibiting the biggest and the most comprehensive display of Craxton’s artworks ever to be showcased. John Craxton: Drawn to Lightcurated by Ian Collins, friend and the biographer of the artist, brings together a diverse selection of works spanning the artist’s long career.

John Craxton: Drawn to Light - Announcements - e-flux

Featuring nearly 200 works, the exhibition offers a wide-ranging presentation of Craxton’s artworks including a monumental tapestry, paintings, drawings, prints, book designs and personal effects. The exhibition charts a joyful creative life moving from war-time darkness into light and from monochrome to brilliant colour. The window display features an example of the vintage motorbikes the artist loved to ride.

John Craxton: Drawn to Light - Announcements - e-flux

In addition to loaned works, Meşher’s John Craxton: Drawn to Light exhibition features 44 artworks from the Ömer Koç Collection, whose holding of Craxton works is second only to the John Craxton Estate. Photographs by the American photographer Robert McCabe and the London-born painter Nicholas Moore also enrich the John Craxton: Drawn to Light exhibition. First travelling to Aegean in 1954, McCabe’s photography focuses on its landscape and people, providing a close parallel with the art of John Craxton. Nicholas Moore’s photographs show scenes from his 1985 trip to Istanbul with John Craxton. A frequent visitor and an admirer of Istanbul, Craxton’s revelatory exhibition invites art lovers to explore his art and life in the lands he loved best.

READ MORE at e-flux