Tag Archives: London Museums

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

Art Exhibitions: ‘HILMA AF KLINT & PIET MONDRIAN – FORMS OF LIFE’ At The Tate

Tate Modern – Explore the powerful work of two groundbreaking modern artists, a unique chance to discover the visionary work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint and experience Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s influential art in a new light.

Hilma af Klint The Ten Largest, Group IV No.2, Childhood 1907 Hilma af Klint Foundation

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.

HILMA AF KLINT & PIET MONDRIANFORMS OF LIFE

20 APRIL – 3 SEPTEMBER 2023

Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life by Nabila Abdel Nabi |  Goodreads

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.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

March 31, 2023: The Art Newspaper’s annual report on museum visitor figures around the world has been published.

We talk to Lee Cheshire, who co-edited the report, and to Charles Saumarez Smith, a former director or chief executive of three London museums and galleries—the National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts—about how important the figures are to museums and whether they are a valid gauge of institutions’ success.

The exhibition Manet/Degas opened at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris this week, before travelling later in the year to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Ben Luke visits the show in Paris and speaks to Laurence des Cars, the former director of the Musée d’Orsay and now president-director of the Musée du Louvre, and Stéphane Guégan, the co-curator of the exhibition.

And in London, a show of the paintings of Berthe Morisot, the pioneering Impressionist with artistic and familial connections to Manet and Degas, has opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

This episode’s Work of the Week is Morisot’s Woman at Her Toilette (1875-80). Lois Oliver, the curator of the exhibition in Dulwich, tells us about this pivotal picture.Manet/Degas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, until 23 July; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 24 September-7 January 2024Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 10 September, Musée Marmottan Monet later in 2023 (dates to be announced). 

Museum Exhibits: ‘Objects Of Desire – Surrealism And Design 1924 – Today’ (2022)

Dezeen – Curator Kathryn Johnson explains the story behind surrealism and its impact on design in this video Dezeen produced for the Design Museum about its latest exhibition.

Titled Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today, the exhibition features almost 350 surrealist objects spanning fashion, furniture and film. The exhibition, which was curated by Johnson, explores the conception of the surrealist movement in the 1920s and the impact it has had on the design world ever since. It features some of the most recognised surrealist paintings and sculptures, including pieces by Salvador Dalí, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington, as well as work from contemporary artists and designers such as Dior and Björk.

the Design Museum – “Surrealism was born out of the horrors of the first world war, in a period of conflict and uncertainty, and it was a creative response to that chaos,” Johnson said in the video.

Arts & History: ‘Winslow Homer – Force Of Nature’

Why is Winslow Homer a household name in the USA? And what makes his art so important? Follow Homer’s journey, at a time of great upheaval in American history, from magazine illustrator to sought-after artist in oil and watercolour.

Winslow Homer: Force of Nature Ground Floor Galleries Until 8 January 2023