Ursula (Winter 2023) is the art magazine of Hauser & Wirth, featuring essays, profiles, films, interviews, original portfolios, and photography by some of the most thought-provoking writers and artists in the world.
Henry Taylor in conversation with Sheree Hovsepian about depiction and the depicted
For our first film in a new series focusing on some of the world’s best emerging and established artist-makers, we take you inside the studio of Akiko Hirai
A 40-year timeline of disability art and moments that make up a movement.
THE EXCHANGE: SCIENCE FICTIONS
by American Artist with Lou Cornum
An artist and a sci-fi scholar share their esteem for novelist Octavia Butler, who extrapolated future worlds from troubled times.
HARD TRUTHS: MIC DROP
by Chen & Lampert
Artist-curators Howie Chen and Andrew Lampert offer advice on karaoke and other forms of art world hobnobbing.
There have been very few issues of art magazines devoted to disability. There ought to be more. As Art in America associate editor Emily Watlington, who took the lead on this issue, writes in her essay “Our Work Is Working,” disabled artists have been crucial to progress in disability justice and the art world in general, whether through storytelling, empathy-building, or outright activism. These artists place disability where it belongs: at the heart of creativity itself.
Hilma af Klint dreamt of a spiral-shaped building to house her most important works. According to her notebooks, she wanted it to be built on an island in Sweden but the idea never materialized, and the temple remained an imaginary creation – until now.
More than a century later, af Klint’s vision has been translated into an immersive VR experience. It takes you on a cosmic journey from the Milky Way, through spirals in nature and into a few of the artist’s most important paintings, some of them even coming alive.
Hilma af Klint sometimes referred to her temple as a church for a new era and at other times called it a museum. The exact meaning remains open to interpretation. At the same time, her paintings were clearly intended to lead the viewer to levels of awareness beyond that of everyday life. Was it really a physical building she had in mind? Or was it a spiritual site – something existing in another dimension?
Perhaps her temple, simultaneously spiritual and physical, could not be realised because she did not have access to the right medium. She had no knowledge about the technological possibilities that were to come, and the idea remained on paper. Today things are different. Hilma af Klint’s temple, inspired by the teachings of Christian Rosenkreutz, has arrived with the help of VR. You are invited to enter another world.
Hilma af Klint The Temple was conceived by Daniel Birnbaum and Kurt Almqvist and directed by Marika Stolpe. The experience was produced by Acute Art and published by Stolpe Publishing. Creative Director – Rodrigo Marques. Music – Andrew Sheriff.
Watch video below for more on Hilma af Klint:
October 2022
Affirmative action & the law a symposium
The American affirmative-action regime by Frank Resartus
An agenda for Congress by Gail Heriot
The Voting Rights Act after six decades by James Piereson
Facially neutral, racially biased by Wen Fa & John Yoo
Democracy & the Supreme Court by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
New poems by William Logan, Jessica Hornik & Peter Vertacnik
| FeaturesReal Light and Real Angles: A Conversation with Larry Bell Between Two Knowns: A Conversation with Nathaniel Rackowe Cracks in the System: A Conversation with Agustina Woodgate Gregor Schneider: A Sense of Distance Thinking Through Place: A Conversation with Anina Major |
Nathaniel Rackowe’s large-scale, futuristic works are fundamentally influenced by modern urban architecture. Spanning sculpture, installation, and public art, his practice is concerned with abstracting the metropolis into units of form. Scaffolding poles, cement blocks, corrugated sheets, Perspex, glass, and fluorescent tubing are the building blocks of his sculptural vocabulary. The British artist has created cuboids of light that seem to hover eerily in the air (“Spin” series, 2006–ongoing), upturned sheds that appear frozen in mid-explosion (“Black Shed Expanded” series, 2008–ongoing), and flanks of moving mechanical doors edged with fluorescent lights that close in claustrophobically on visitors (Sixty Eight Doors, 2005). It’s no surprise that he is an admirer of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Iain M. Banks and films like Brazil (1985) and Blade Runner (1982).
• Jil Sander refashions the English garden in Hamburg
• Annette Messager on the art of making the strange familiar
• A dazzling Medici table-top in focus
• On Jeju Island, the Hawaii of South Korea
Plus: the restored Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House, Joseph Wright of Derby’s brush with the divine, and reviews of Cézanne in Chicago, Milton Avery in London and a history of fancy dress
For the 2022 season, Belmond has launched a partnership with internationally acclaimed art gallery – Galleria Continua – entitled MITICO, which celebrates the talents of four prominent artists, as they take the spotlight in some of Belmond’s captivating landmark gardens across Italy.
Evoking a feeling of inclusivity and community, MITICO embodies a new art philosophy: it is the reinterpretation of universal customs shared amongst different societies, such as cooking, painting, observing, and appreciating, and how these are consumed in their environments.
MITICO is a moment in time and history where cultures interact – ultimately it is a celebration of art de vivre. Deepening its long-standing connection to the arts, through MITICO, Galleria Continua and Belmond invite guests to see cultures through a different lens, tapping into each individual destination’s essence and beauty.
One of the best ways to get a sense of the retro-urban city of Asheville, North Carolina is to visit with the designers and artists who call it home.
This week, Picasso and the Old Masters: as shows pairing the Spaniard with Ingres and El Greco open in London and Basel respectively.
Ben Luke talks to Christopher Riopelle (curator of Picasso Ingres: Face to Face at the National Gallery) and Carmen Giménez (curator of Picasso-El Greco at the Kunstmuseum in Basel) about the profound influence of historic artists on Picasso’s rupturing of tradition. In this episode’s Work of the Week, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent, Louisa Buck, talks to Chris Levine, the creator of Lightness of Being, one of the best known recent portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, as the British monarch celebrates 70 years on the throne. And as the Polish government replaces yet another museum director, what can be done about political interference in museum governance? Ben talks to Goranka Horjan, director of Intercom, the International Committee for Museum Management, and Bart De Baere, chair of the Museum Watch programme at the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (Cimam).
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face, National Gallery, London, until 9 October. Picasso-El Greco, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 11 June-25 September.
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