Category Archives: Arts & Literature

Artworks: Collection Loïc Malle (Sotheby’s)

Collection Loïc Malle (6 April 2022 | Paris) – Sotheby’s presents a collection which reads like an anthology of contemporary art, particularly artworks that deal with the act of experience. The experiences expressed through the collection are as diverse as the artists that it encompasses, which includes Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, Robert Smithson and Sol LeWitt.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

This week: the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2022 is out—is the market’s recovery as good as it sounds? 

We talk to Melanie Gerlis, art market columnist for The Art Newspaper and the Financial Times, about the sixth edition of the market report, what the headline figures tell us and what we can read between the lines.

As the exhibition Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival, opens at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw—focusing on the spaces in Poland and Ukraine used by Holocaust survivors to escape Nazi persecution—we talk to the artist behind it, Natalia Romik. Though long planned, the show has gained a troubling topicality as the Russian invasion and destruction of Ukraine continues.

And in this episode’s Work of the Week, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Piet Mondrian’s birth, we discuss his painting Victory Boogie Woogie (1942-44). Caro Verbeek, the co-curator of Mondrian Moves, an exhibition opening this week at the Kunstmuseum den Haag in the Hague, the Netherlands, tells us about the feverish creation and unfinished nature of the Dutch artist’s final work.

Natalia Romik’s exhibition, Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, until 17 July; TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland, 4 August-6 November

Mondrian Moves, Kunstmuseum den Haag, the Hague, Netherlands, 2 April-25 September. Mondrian Evolution, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, 5 June-9 October; K20, Düsseldorf, Germany, 29 October-10 February 2023

Exhibits: ‘Woody Guthrie – People Are The Song’ At The Morgan Library, NYC

The author of more than three thousand folk songs, Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) is one of the most influential songwriters and recording artists in American history. He is an icon of the Depression era and wrote the world’s most famous protest song, “This Land Is Your Land.”

But he was not only a songwriter, and his subject matter extended well beyond labor politics. The full corpus of his creativity—including lyrics, poetry, artwork, and largely unpublished prose writings—encompassed topics such as the environment, love, sex, spirituality, family, and racial justice. Guthrie created a personal philosophy that has impacted generations of Americans and inspired musician-activists from Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen to Ani DiFranco and Chuck D. As Bob Dylan noted of Guthrie, “You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live.”

Cover Preview: Lapham’s Quarterly – April/May 2022

Views: ‘Seeing The Samurai’ With Japanese Armour

This fascinating Japanese armour was part of the first diplomatic gift between Japan and Britain. It is over 400 years old and one of the first documented Japanese armours to have been seen on British soil.

Learn more about this amazing object in this short film. See the armour in our exhibition Japan: Courts and Culture at The Queen’s Gallery, London from 8 April 2022 – 26 February 2023.

Tours: ‘Marcel Proust’ – Carnavalet Museum, Paris

The Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust (1871–1922).

Dedicated to the relationship between Marcel Proust and Paris, where he spent most of his life, the exhibition Marcel Proust, a Parisian novel will investigate the city’s place in Proust’s novel.

The first section of the exhibition will explore the world Marcel Proust inhabited in Paris. Having been born and died in Paris, Proust’s life unfurled in the very restricted area encompassed by Parc Monceau, Place de la Concorde, Auteuil, Bois de Boulogne and l’Étoile. Paris was of immense importance in the development of Marcel Proust’s literary vocation, from the time of his earliest writings in the late 1890s with his fellow-pupils at the Lycée Condorcet, to his entry into the city’s high society and encounters with people who would be decisive to his life.

The second part of the exhibition opens on the fictional Paris created by Marcel Proust. Following the architecture of the novel In Search of Lost Time and evoking emblematic places in the city, it offers a journey through the novel and the history of the capital, focusing on the book’s central characters. The city of Paris, represented poetically in the novel, is the setting for the quest of the narrator, the author’s alter ego, until the revelation of his vocation as a writer.

Art History: Van Gogh’s ‘Irises’ (Getty Museum)

Behind this iconic painting by Vincent van Gogh is the artist’s inspiring story about healing, as he struggled with the challenges of a psychiatric disorder. Learn more about this period in his life in which he produced some of his most famed work.

Getty has joined forces with Smarthistory to bring you an in-depth look at select works within our collection, whether you’re looking to learn more at home or want to make art more accessible in your classroom. This six-part video series illuminates art history concepts through fun, unscripted conversations between art historians, curators, archaeologists, and artists, committed to a fresh take on the history of visual arts.

View the Getty Conversations series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi…

Learn more about “Irises” in Getty’s collection online: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/…

International Art: Apollo Magazine – April 2022

• What was really behind Surrealism?

• An interview with Cecilia Alemani, Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale

• Revealing the mystery of Bassano’s Quails

• The Venice Pavilions you must see

Plus: Beyond the Biennale, greenwashing in museums, what we’re losing with Bastion House

Read more

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

We talk to Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about the new plans for the museum’s wing of modern and contemporary art, including the appointment of the architect Frida Escobedo in place of David Chipperfield. 

As The Art Newspaper is about to publish its annual museum attendance survey, showing that visitors are beginning slowly to return to museums after the height of the pandemic, we ask Hollein how the vision for the museum has changed following the events of the past two years. Plus, Aimee Dawson talks to the curator Sam Bardaouil about the exhibition Beirut and the Golden Sixties: A Manifesto of Fragility at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, as the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, opens a major Meret Oppenheim survey, the show’s curator Natalie Dupecher discusses Oppenheim’s Surrealist object Ma gouvernante – My Nurse – Mein Kindermädchen (1936): a pair of white heels on a silver platter, trussed like a chicken.

The Art Newspaper’s visitor attendance survey is in the April print edition, and online next week at theartnewspaper.com, or on our app for iOS and Android, which you can get from the App Store or Google Play.

Beirut and the Golden Sixties: A Manifesto of Fragility, Gropius Bau, Berlin, until 12 June.

Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition, Menil Collection, Houston, until 18 September; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 30 October-4 March 2023