It’s a gesture of recognition from Egyptian authorities after French scientists saved the mummy of Ramses II from a devastating fungus in 1976. Our Culture Editor Eve Jackson went to check out the once-in-a-lifetime show, while Lyana Saleh of FRANCE 24’s Arabic channel spoke with renowned Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass about the fight to repatriate Egypt’s ancient artefacts.
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.
The gallery highlights the magic of the film and its legacy while providing a nuanced perspective on the historical and cultural context in which it was made. This gallery is part of the Significant Movies and Moviemakers section of Stories of Cinema.
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.
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 Light, curated by Ian Collins, friend and the biographer of the artist, brings together a diverse selection of works spanning the artist’s long career.
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.
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.
Galleria Borghese – From April 4 to June 11, 2023, the Galleria Borghese brings to fruition its research on landscape painting and the relationship between Art and Nature with Dosso Dossi. The Aeneas Frieze, a never-before-seen exhibition – the first dedicated to the great Ferrarese master’s pictorial cycle-curated by Marina Minozzi.
For the first time, five of the ten canvases that made up the frieze created by Dosso Dossi between 1518 and 1520 for the Camerino d’Alabastro of Duke Alfonso I d’Este in Ferrara are being brought together in a single location. The operation, also prompted by enthusiasm for the recent reappearance of some of these paintings, is the result of an ambitious collaboration with the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
The Frieze, of which only seven canvases have been found to date, was made by Dosso Dossi drawing inspiration from specific episodes of the Virgilian poem taken from the first, third, fifth and sixth books, leaving out, however, the part devoted to the hero’s love story with Dido, that of the wars in Italy and the founding of Rome.
The submarine base of Lorient has become an ideal location for manufacturing carbon masts for yachts. Further west, on the tip of Finistère, a bunker has been transformed into a museum on the war.
Finally, on the Crozon peninsula, a young entrepreneur has decided to transform a network of tunnels built by the Allies into a brewery.
In 2018, the Fondation featured the “Jean-Michel Basquiat” exhibition. It continues its exploration of the work of the artist, revealing, this time, his collaboration with Andy Warhol.
Between 1984 and 1985, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) created around 160 paintings together in tandem, “à quatre mains”, including some of the largest works produced during their respective careers. Keith Haring (1958-1990), who witnessed their friendship and collaboration production, would go on to speak of a “conversation occurring through painting, instead of words,” and of two minds merging to create a “third distinctive and unique mind.”
“Basquiat × Warhol. Painting four hands” is the most important exhibition ever dedicated to this extraordinary body of work and brings together more than three hundred works and documents including eighty canvases jointly signed by the two artists. Also featured are individual works by each as well as a set of works by other major artists (Michael Halsband, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf……) in order to evoke the energy of the New York downtown art scene of the 1980s.
Although they never met, af Klint and Mondrian both invented their own languages of abstract art rooted in nature. At the heart of both of their artistic journeys was a shared desire to understand the forces behind life on earth.
20 APRIL – 3 SEPTEMBER 2023
Best known for his abstract work, Mondrian in fact began his career – like af Klint – as a landscape painter. Alongside Mondrian’s iconic grids, you will see the rarely exhibited paintings of flowers he continued to create throughout his life. Also on display will be enigmatic works by af Klint in which natural forms become a pathway to abstraction.
Both artists shared an interest in new ideas in spirituality, scientific discovery and philosophy. Af Klint was also a medium, and this exhibition showcases the large-scale, otherworldly masterpieces she believed were commissioned by higher powers.
Largely known today as the subject of The Met’s iconic portrait by Diego Velázquez, Pareja—who was born in Antequera, Spain—was enslaved in Velázquez’s studio for over two decades before becoming an artist in his own right. This presentation is the first to tell his story and examine the ways in which enslaved artisanal labor and a multiracial society are inextricably linked with the art and material culture of Spain’s “Golden Age.”
Diego Velázquez’s portrait of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670) has long been a landmark of European art, but this provocative study focuses on its subject: an enslaved man who went on to build his own successful career as an artist. This catalogue—the first scholarly monograph on Pareja— discusses the painter’s ties to the Madrid School of the 1660s and revises our understanding of artistic production during Spain’s Golden Age, with a focus on enslaved artists and artisans.
The authors illuminate the highly skilled labor within Seville’s multiracial society; the role of Black saints and confraternities in the promotion of Catholicism among enslaved populations; and early twentieth-century scholar Arturo Schomburg’s project to recover Pareja’s legacy.
The book also includes the first illustrated and annotated list of known works attributed to Pareja. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
As the world whirled around him, he painted to meet the moment. He captured both simple pleasures of daily life (like eating or driving) and large-scale violence by “bearing witness” to the world with an unflinching look at war, racism, and his own inner demons.
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