Category Archives: Exhibitions

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, 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, 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 Galleries, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Reviews, Tours, Videos

Hong Kong Art Exhibits: ‘Zhang Xiaogang – Lost’

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Pace Gallery (May 3, 2023) – In our new film, Zhang Xiaogang discusses his unique approach to representing light in his paintings, as seen in his solo exhibition, “Lost,” on view at our Hong Kong gallery through May 18.

Zhang Xiaogang: Lost

Mar 21 – May 18, 2023

Light No. 9 by Zhang Xiaogang

The artist has been refining his expressive depictions of light for some 30 years, since the 1980s and 1990s. As such, light has become a key subject in its own right in Zhang’s practice.

Zhang Xiaogang, Light No. 9, 2022

Zhang Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. Paintings in his Bloodline series are predominantly monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 1960s. 

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Previews, Reviews

Art Insider: A Review Of ‘Cobbs Barn, South Truro’ By Edward Hopper (1931)

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Sotheby’s (May 1, 2023) – Returning each season to live and paint in Truro elevated Hopper’s art, allowing him to concentrate on the simplification of forms and the depth of both light and color woven into the surrounding landscape.

Expert Voices: Edward Hopper's Cobbs Barn, South Truro and Three Water Colors | The New York Sales | Sotheby's

Both his technical approach to painting and his perception of the world from 1930 onwards are greatly informed by the Cape. Cobb’s Barns, South Truro derives its bright palette and topographical features from Hopper’s immediate environment, and is emblematic of the profound influence that life in South Truro had on his manner of painting.

Group of Houses, dated 1923-24, stems from a pivotal stage in the development of Edward Hopper’s career. Residential homes occupy much of Hopper’s subject matter in these early watercolors, and Group of Houses is no exception. These charming saltbox houses are typical for the Cape Ann region, whose architectural style reflects its coastal New England atmosphere.

The Battery, Charleston, S.C., dated 1929, is the result of Hopper’s three-week stay in the charming southern city, which is renowned for its Georgian-style architecture and cobblestone streets lined with lush palm trees. His Charlestown pictures possess an inherently tropical feeling, which sets them apart from his otherwise New England-focused oeuvre.

Red Barn in Autumn Landscape is among the limited number of watercolors that Hopper completed during the fall of 1927 in Vermont, and embodies the rustic quality of the New England scenery that drew Hopper to this region in the first place. Hopper routinely sketched his surroundings in coastal towns on the Cape or along the Maine shore, but Red Barn in Autumn Landscape is quite unique in that it captures a specific fall moment as the leaves gradually fade from green to burnt orange and red. The present work is emblematic of the simplicity and charm that characterize Hopper’s New England watercolors.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews, Tours, Videos

Exhibitions: ‘Jaune Quick-to-See Smith -Memory Map’

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Art Trip (April 30, 2023) – A tour of the new exhibition – ‘Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map’, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The first New York retrospective brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map

Apr 19–Aug 13, 2023

Light yellow background with red shapes in the foreground.

This exhibition is the first New York retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940, citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), an overdue but timely look at the work of a groundbreaking artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date. 

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.  

Art, Cartoons, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews, Videos

Museum Exhibition Tour: ‘Man Saves Comics’ In Ohio

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CBS Sunday Morning (April 30, 2023) – Bill Blackbeard was something of a superhero. During his lifetime, he collected and preserved 2.5 million ephemeral artifacts of comic strip art, including newspapers and Sunday color sections dating as far back as 1893.

MAN SAVES COMICS! BILL BLACKBEARD’S TREASURE OF 20TH CENTURY NEWSPAPERS

Treasures from his collection are now featured in a new exhibit, “Man Saves Comics,” at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University. Correspondent Luke Burbank reports.

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Art: ‘Ethel Schwabacher – Woman In Nature’ (NYC)

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BERRY CAMPBELL GALLERY (April 30, 2023): An exhibition of Abstract Expressionist Ethel Schwabacher (1903-1984). Schwabacher joins the gallery’s stable of women artists whose ambitious, independent, and insightful art is essential to a complete historical understanding of the ‘downtown’ art scene in the 1950s.

Many of the thirteen works have not been on view since they were shown at one of her five solo exhibitions at Betty Parsons Gallery, including the large-scale center piece to the show entitled,  Prometheus  (1959).  Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature(Paintings from the 1950s)  focuses on Schwabacher’s unique brand of abstraction, which is characterized by both automatic drawing and sweeping brushstrokes that swirl across the surface of the canvas and which explores themes of motherhood, landscape, and creativity.

As part of the resurgence of women artists, Ethel Schwabacher was one of the twelve women artists included in the landmark traveling exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum in 2016.  Concurrently with the Berry Campbell exhibition, Action! Gesture! Paint! is on view at the Whitechapel Gallery in London featuring 91 international women artists, including a major Ethel Schwabacher painting from the 1950s.

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Previews, Reviews, Videos

Art: ‘Must-See Museum Exhibitions’ – May 2023

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Sotheby’s (April 28, 2023) – Looking for some inspiration for your next museum visit? This month, we’re taking a tour of six of the world’s most exciting and innovative museum exhibitions with Tim Marlow, Director of the Design Museum, London.

Doris Salcedo – Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, 21 May–17 September 2023 – Salcedo is a Colombian-born artist, whose central subject is human trauma and tragedy. Though much of her work emanates from the violent conflict over the last three decades in her native land, its resonance is universal. Doris Salcedo presents eight major series of works from across her career – from untitled pieces of wooden furniture filled with concrete to the remarkable Palimpsest in which the names of over 300 refugees and migrants who died at sea quite literally weep before our eyes.

Vincent van Gogh 2023 marks the 170th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh. Three exhibitions opening this month look set to enhance our understanding of the great Dutch painter:

Van Gogh and the Avant Garde The Art Institute of Chicago 14 May–4 September 2023 – Van Gogh and the Avant Garde takes the modern landscape as its central subject and looks at how the artist – along with Seurat, Signac and others – turned his attention from urban Parisian life to wrestling with the surrounding countryside with a formal inventiveness that set the tone for the development of Modernism.

Van Gogh’s Cypresses The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 22 May–27 August 2023 – From the religious connotation of trees in graveyards to their role as the backdrop of his incarceration at the asylum in Saint-Remy, the artist’s flame-like evergreens will be presented with all their evocative resonance in Van Gogh’s Cypresses,

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam 12 May–3 September 2023 – The unsurpassable Van Gogh Museum will celebrate its own 50th anniversary with Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months – an exhibition delving into the tremendously productive final period of his life, in which he made several of his most renowned masterpieces.

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

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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The Art Newspaper April 27, 2023: This week: AI and art. We explore some of the key aspects relating to artificial intelligence and its use in the art world: the works being made using AI technologies and exploring their impact; anxieties about machines replacing humans; the idea of AIs being able to think and create independently; and whether we can truly grasp the significance and possible effects of the technologies and those who control it, and more.

Host Ben Luke talks to Noam Segal—an associate curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, whose focus is on technology-based art—about AI, its history in art, its social and environmental effects, and how artists are using it today. The Art Newspaper’s live editor, Aimee Dawson, talks to the artist and writer Gretchen Andrew about making art with AI and together they explore its wider application across the art world.

And this episode’s Work of the Week is Pseudomnesia: The Electrician, an image made using AI by the photographer Boris Eldagsen. The piece caused controversy earlier this month when it was awarded a prize at the Sony World Photography Awards, which Eldagsen refused to accept. The researcher and photographer Lewis Bush discusses the work, the controversy and wider questions around AI and photography.