Tag Archives: The Art Newspaper

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Reviews: The Week In Art

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This week: our associate editor, Kabir Jhala, and editor-at-large, Jane Morris, have been in Kassel, Germany, to see Documenta, the quinquennial international art exhibition.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ywTATTJSsTvBVnPgFiaMB

They review the show and respond to the escalation of a long-running row over antisemitism and broader racism, which has resulted in a work being removed from the exhibition. Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and lawyer, discusses the dispute over Andy Warhol’s appropriation of a photograph by Lynn Goldsmith of the pop icon Prince. The case will be heard in the US Supreme Court this autumn and has potentially huge implications for artistic freedom. And this episode’s Work of the Week is An Outpost of Progress (1992), a drawing by the late Spanish artist Juan Muñoz, inspired by Joseph Conrad’s short story of the same name.

Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany, until 25 September.

Juan Muñoz: Drawings 1982-2000, Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, 25 June-16 October.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week: why is Tate rejecting an archive of material relating to Francis Bacon, 18 years after acquiring it?

Our London correspondent Martin Bailey tells us about his recent scoop that Tate is returning a thousand documents and sketches said to have come from the studio of Francis Bacon to Barry Joule, a close friend of the artist, who donated them to Tate in 2004. We then discuss the material with Martin Harrison, the pre-eminent Bacon scholar and editor of the catalogue raisonné of Francis Bacon’s work published in 2016, and to Sophie Pretorius, the archivist at the Estate of Francis Bacon, who went through the Barry Joule archive item by item. Victoria Munro, the director of the Alice Austen House Museum in New York, discusses this still too-little-known photographer, and her documentation of immigration to the United States and the lives of queer women in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Weißes Bild (1994), a painting by the late Luxembourg-born artist Michel Majerus, now on view at Art Basel—Aimee Dawson, acting digital editor, is at the fair and talks to Giovanni Carmine, curator of the Unlimited section, in which the painting appears.

Sophie Pretorius’s essay Work on the Barry Joule Archive is in the book Francis Bacon: Shadows published by the Estate of Francis Bacon and Thames and Hudson. 

For more on the Alice Austen House Museum, visit aliceausten.org. The podcast My Dear Alice is out in the autumn.

Art Basel, until 19 June.

Art, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews, Stories

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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We talk to the writer and critic Amy Castor about what effect the tumbling crypto markets might have on the until-now booming world of non-fungible tokens or NFTs. 

As Norway’s vast new National Museum opens, we speak to its director Karin Hindsbo. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Folding Screen with Indian Wedding, Mitote, and Flying Pole, made in Mexico in the late 17th century. It is one of the major pieces in a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. Ilona Katzew, the curator of the exhibition, talks in depth about the meanings and purpose of the work.

You can read Amy Castor’s thoughts on crypto and NFTs at amycastor.com.

The National Museum in Oslo opens on 11 June.

Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 12 June-30 October.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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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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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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Friday May 27, 2022: Are stolen Cambodian statues hidden in the world’s great public collections?

We discuss Cambodia’s looted heritage with Celia Hatton, Asia Pacific editor and presenter at the BBC World Service, whose documentary for BBC TV and radio Cambodia: Returning the Gods exposes the connections between looters, smugglers and, allegedly, some of the world’s most famous encyclopaedic museums. Plus, the dark truth behind the art and antiques assembled by the Marcos family in the Philippines as they return to power.

We talk to the Filipino artist Pio Abad—who’s made art about Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and their collections for more than a decade—about Bongbong Marcos’s presidential election victory in the Philippines and what that means for the country and the art and antiquities seized by its government after the Marcoses were deposed in the 1980s. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, we discuss a sculpture by Ruth Asawa—Untitled (S.266, Hanging Seven-Lobed, Multi-Layered Interlocking Continuous Form within a Form) (1961)—a highlight of a new exhibition at Modern Art Oxford in the UK, with Emma Ridgway, the show’s co-curator. Remarkably, the solo exhibition is the first in a European institution dedicated to the Japanese-American artist.

You can read Celia’s report on Cambodian antiquities online at bbc.co.uk. Cambodia: Returning the Gods (radio version) is on the BBC website and the BBC Sounds app—under The Documentary Podcast stream for the World Service and the Crossing Continents podcast stream in the UK—and on other podcast platforms.

Cambodia: Returning the Gods (television version) is on iPlayer in the UK and will be shown again on the BBC World news channel, broadcast date tbc—check listings.Pio Abad: Fear of Freedom Makes Us See Ghosts, Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University, until 30 July, pioabad.com.

Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe, Modern Art Oxford, UK, 28 May-21 August; Stavanger Art Museum, Norway, 1 October-22 January 2023.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week: is heritage in Ukraine being attacked and looted, and what can be done to protect it?

Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s museums and heritage editor, Tom Seymour, who has been to the Ukrainian-Polish border with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), to witness museum materials being sent into Ukraine to help institutions there. Then, Tom talks to Sophie Delepierre, the head of heritage protection at ICOM, about the organisation’s efforts in Ukraine and elsewhere.

As a major exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne opens at The Art Institute of Chicago, ahead of its journey to Tate Modern later in the year, Ben talks to Gloria Groom and Caitlin Haskell, the curators of the Chicago exhibition. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, asks Oliver Lanzenberg, the grandson of the artist Nicola L., about his grandmother’s work Gold Femme Commode (1969/1993). The piece is part of a show at Alison Jacques, one of a number of exhibitions opening to coincide with the second edition of London Gallery Weekend.

Tom’s full report into ICOM’s work for Ukraine is in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and online soon.

The organisation Sophie mentions is NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organisations, ne-mo.org.

Cezanne, The Art Institute of Chicago, 15 May-5 September; Tate Modern, London, 5 October-12 March 2023.

Nicola L., Alison Jacques, London, until 23 July.

London Gallery Weekend, 13-15 May.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week, Philip Guston Now is unveiled at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after its controversial postponement in 2020; Ben Luke talks to Kate Nesin and Megan Bernard, two of the four curators on the team assembled by the museum to revise the exhibition, which was postponed by four museums in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. 

We discuss how the show and its interpretation have changed in the last two years. As Queer Britain, the UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum opens its doors, Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor at The Art Newspaper, speaks to Matthew Storey, the curator of the museum’s inaugural exhibition, Welcome to Queer Britain. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, talks to Candida Lodovica de Angelis Corvi, global director at the Colnaghi gallery, about a rediscovered work by the 17th-century artist Caterina Angela Pierozzi, on display at Colnaghi in London.

Philip Guston Now, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, until 11 September; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 23 October-15 January 2023; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 26 February-27 August 2023; and Tate Modern, London, 3 October 2023-25 February 2024. To hear an in-depth discussion about Philip Guston with the curator Robert Storr, author of the book Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting, listen to the episode of this podcast from 18 September 2020.

Art, Arts & Literature, Podcasts, Reviews, Stories

Reviews: The Week In Art

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This week, now that the pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron has defeated the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, we speak to Anaël Pigeat, editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper France, about the Macron government’s cultural record so far and what we can expect from his second term. 

Tate Britain has opened an exhibition of work by the late 19th- and early 20th-century British painter Walter Sickert; we take a tour of the show with one of its curators, Thomas Kennedy. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, The Art Newspaper’s associate editor, Tom Seymour, talks to Dan Leers of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, US, about A workman lifts a drum from a boiling lye solution, March 1944, a photograph in the museum’s new exhibition, Gordon Parks in Pittsburgh, 1944/1946.

Walter Sickert, Tate Britain, London, until 18 September; Petit Palais, Paris, 14 October-29 January 2023.

Gordon Parks in Pittsburgh, 1944/1946, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 30 April-7 August.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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A Venice Biennale special: we give you a flavour of the 59th edition of the Biennale which, as ever, brings a deluge of contemporary art to the historic Italian city. 

We talk to four artists in the national pavilions – Francis Alÿs in the Belgian Pavilion, Sonia Boyce in the British pavilion, Shubigi Rao in the Singapore pavilion and Na Chainkua Reindorf in the Ghana pavilion – about their presentations and how, if at all, they relate to the idea of nationhood. Louisa Buck and Jane Morris join host Ben Luke to review the main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, and pick their highlights of the Biennale so far. And while most visitors to Venice this week are immersed in contemporary art, for this episode’s Work of the Week, we take a look at a masterpiece that remains exactly where it was intended to hang. The art historian Ben Street joins Ben Luke in San Giovanni Crisostomo, a church near Venice’s Rialto bridge, to look at Saints Christopher, Jerome and Louis of Toulouse, a late painting by the Venetian Renaissance artist Giovanni Bellini.

Venice Biennale, 23 April-27 November.

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Reviews: The Week In Art

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This week: Quiet as It’s Kept, the 80th edition of the Whitney Biennial, is now open to the public at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 

The Art Newspaper’s associate editor Tom Seymour, Americas editor Ben Sutton and staff reporter Gabriella Angeletti gather to discuss it. As the latest incarnation of the show Afro-Atlantic Histories is unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, we speak to its curator, Kanitra Fletcher, about the gallery’s approach to this complex subject. And the National Gallery in London’s long-planned Raphael blockbuster, postponed due to the pandemic, is finally open, so for this episode’s Work of the Week, we speak to Tom Henry, one of the curators of the show, about the Self-Portrait with Giulio Romano (1519-20), one of the Renaissance master’s final paintings.