Arts news

• Why the personal is political in China

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Many of today’s younger Chinese artists have turned their sights inward to consider how the nation’s social and economic issues impact their lives. But Chinese contemporary art is still probably best known abroad for its overt polemicists, not least Ai Weiwei or Wang Guangyi, who through the 1990s battled obscurity and repression. Now hotly collected, their works reflect an earlier time of upheaval and rapid change.Examples of Cynical Realism and Political Pop by this pioneer genera
  
  Read more

• Time was of the essence: on Impressionism versus Realism

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Michael Fried observes that Realism in the Western painting tradition has long involved “a tacit or implicit illusion of the passage of time, of sheer duration”. Absorbed in their labours, the peasants of Millet and Courbet seem to exclude the viewer. Indifferent to our presence as spectators, oblivious to the existence of the urban world of art whence we come, they go about the rituals of life with slow, unselfconscious determination. Such paintings “compel conviction”,
  
  Read more

• The world’s richest street: Roger Crowley on the cosmopolitan culture of Renaissance Lisbon

  23-03-2016 22:00
  In 1866 Dante Gabriel Rossetti purchased a late 16th-century oil painting of an animated street scene in an unknown city, which he believed to be fr om the school of Velázquez. Cut in two it adorned first his London home then Kelmscott Manor, wh ere it still hangs. It was not until 2009 that historian Kate Lowe and art historian Annemarie Jordan Gschwend positively identified the city as Lisbon and the subject as the Rua Nova dos Mercadores—the New Merchants’ Street—des
  
  Read more

• The Buck Stopped Here: Sarah Lucas’ powerful women light up John Soane’s yellow drawing room

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  On Tuesday night (22 March) Sarah Lucas revealed that it wasn't only egg yolks and custard that had inspired the brilliant yellow interior of her British pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, but also the yellow walls of the North drawing room at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where three of her nine plaster Muse figures from the Venice show are now currently residing under the collective title Power in Woman (until 21 May). Speaking with the curator James Putnam and the director of Som
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Singapore show adds Southeast Asia to the story of Modernism

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Curators fr om the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the new National Gallery Singapore have pulled apart, re-examined and revised assumptions about Modern art’s history to include the work of artists from Southeast Asia in a much-anticipated exhibition opening this month. Reframing Modernism, which is due to open in Singapore on 31 March (until 17 July), is the first international collaboration by the Singapore gallery, which opened last November—a highlight of the country’s 50th
  
  Read more

• Sharjah discusses meaning of art in the time of Isil and Hezbollah

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  “What does it mean to be talking about art when we have Daesh [Isil] and Hezbollah around us?” asked Christine Tohmé of Beirut’s Ashkal Alwan at last month’s March Meeting, posing a fundamental question not just for the art world of the Middle East.
  To a packed room, this founder of a very influential community centre that runs art seminars, workshops and scholarships in Beirut went on to say: “Here we have 20 museums, 15 foundations, collections—how d
  
  Read more

• Qatar would like to be one of the world’s leading arts destinations—but can that ever be achieved without freedom of expression?

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  We will probably never know exactly how or why it happened. On 15 March, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, issued a royal pardon for Muhammed Al-Ajami, a poet serving a 15-year sentence for reciting verses in support of the Arab Spring. Al-Ajami, who was freed and returned to his family, exhausted all legal appeals over three years ago and the emir had previously proved impervious to calls for clemency from the United Nations, human rights organisations and newspapers, includi
  
  Read more

• Oslo finally gives Munch Museum move the go-ahead

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  The long-stalled plan to build a new museum dedicated to Norway’s most famous painter is to become a reality. In February, Oslo’s city government gave the green light to the proposed new home for the Munch Museum on the city’s waterfront.
  The project has been in the works since 2008, but was repeatedly delayed by concerns over costs. The city ultimately decided that an alternative location would not be cheaper than the newly approved venue, designed by Herreros Arquitectos and
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Marina Abramovic to get first China show

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Marina Abramovic is due to have her first solo show in mainland China, the performance artist tells us. The Power Station of Art (PSA) in Shanghai will stage the show in 2017 as long as funding is available, confirms a curator for PSA. It remains to be seen whether the show will feature documentation of The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988/2008), Abramovic’s 90-day performance on the Great Wall of China with her former lover and collaborator Ulay. Photographs with unique drawings of the
  
  Read more

• Lighten the bureaucracy so India’s heritage can flourish

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Neil MacGregor, who recently retired as the director of the British Museum in London, has taken on a number of new advisory roles. In Mumbai he will work with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum on its displays and presentation of world cultures. The Indian institution and its director Sabyasachi Mukherjee will undoubtedly benefit fr om MacGregor’s insights. Every educated Indian who has been overseas has seen how well heritage is not only preserved abroad bu
  
  Read more

• It's alive: Philippe Parreno lights up Gladstone Gallery

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Last year, Philippe Parreno's installation at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, delivered on the promise of its title, drawing such crowds that visitors seemed to have wandered to the show without volition. Not far fr om there, Barbara Gladstone has now brought the French artist to her new uptown gallery with If This Then Else, a sprawling show that reaches its tentacles down to Gladstone's Chelsea space as well.
  Initiates to the townhouse space will be able to identify it
  
  Read more

• Interview: Cai Guo-Qiang takes stock of Chinese art now

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  The Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who has his studio in New York, has organised an exhibition in Doha, Qatar, of work by his countrymen. What About the Art? opened this month and includes work by 15 Chinese artists in a context celebrating craft and ideas above all else. For Cai, the show is a corrective to the standard framework in which Chinese art is presented, where politics or market considerations tend to hamper a close look at the work itself.
  The exhibition is the result of almost three
  
  Read more

• How London's V&A is helping to inspire Chinese design in Shenzhen

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  The Shekou Industrial Zone in Shenzhen, south China, is equal parts port and construction site. Along the coastal horizon, cranes appear to battle like enormous monsters. In spring 2017, this industrial zone is due to become home to a high-profile design complex, recently rebranded as Design Society. The project is being created in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.
  Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the Shekou Design Museu
  
  Read more

• Hemingway’s Forgotten Spanish Civil War Play

  23-03-2016 22:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Although not a great play, [The Fifth Column] is a fascinating one for what it tells us about Hemingway himself.” (Which ain’t pretty.)
  
  Read more

• Full of prim euphemism: Brian Dillon on Dave Hickey’s 25 Women

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  There are many reasons to be put off by Dave Hickey’s new book, 25 Women, which seems like the critical equivalent of the ill-judged Saatchi Gallery exhibition Champagne Life (13 January-6 March) that recently corralled 14 women artists together like—well, like the kind of creatures one rounds up.
  In Hickey’s case there’s the vague-to-vanishing rationale: “The women in this book asked me to write about their work and found me enthusiastic about the prospect.”
  
  Read more

• From pill-popping birds to awkward mannequins: Encounters at Art Basel Hong Kong

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Less is more in the Encounters section of Art Basel in Hong Kong this year. Alexie Glass-Kantor, the executive director of Artspace in Sydney and the returning curator of Encounters, has reduced the number of large-scale sculptures and installations fr om 20 to a spare 16. Eight of these are “premieres” developed by the artists and their galleries for the fair.
  From an amphitheatre of protest placards by the young Indonesian collective Tromarama to Richard Maloy’s hulking mass
  
  Read more

• Empire is a dirty word but Tate Britain is not afraid of it

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Empire is a dirty word. Walking around the exhibition Artist and Empire at Tate Britain one can’t help but think: what would the Palestinian literary critic Edward Said have said? Although I don’t think he would have approved (but when did he?), the museum’s non-celebratory approach to surveying Britain’s imperial legacy is an important step towards opening future discussions on a sensitive subject.It’s always difficult when a museum takes on a polemic subject like
  
  Read more

• Diary: Craig David rocks out, from Russia with Lego, and more gossip from Art Basel in Hong Kong

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Craig David is the flava of Hong Kong art weekCraig David, UK pop star and our guilty pleasure, rocked the crowd on Tuesday (and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday) at the Davidoff lounge in Art Basel Hong Kong—where visitors can also view a newly commissioned video by the Jamaican-French artist Olivia McGilchrist. Comeback musician Craig wowed the corporate partygoers, proving especially popular with 30-something British public relations executives who idolised the Fill Me In-croone
  
  Read more

• Brussels: ‘Life must win’

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  Days before they head home, European dealers and visitors at Art Basel in Hong Kong are reflecting on the terrorist attacks on Brussels, which claimed more than 30 lives earlier this week. The Belgian dealer Xavier Hufkens tells us that he “feels an overwhelming sadness for the victims. But I won’t live in fear; life must win.” He was speaking at his stand at the fair. The Ghent-based artist Michaël Borremans, who is in Hong Kong this week, says: “It’s a very
  
  Read more

• Biggest ever Giacometti survey show opens in Shanghai

  23-03-2016 22:00
  
  “This is the largest ever retrospective of Giacometti’s work,” exclaims Catherine Grenier, the director of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris. “And it’s a first for China!”She and Budi Tek, the founder and owner of the Yuz Museum in Shanghai, have toiled over the past year to mount this overview of the sculptor’s work. “Alberto Giacometti Retrospective”, which opened on 22 March, features 250 pieces, all lent by the found
  
  Read more

• Why Is It The Only Time I Hear From My Opera Company Is When They Want Money?

  23-03-2016 21:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “I don’t mind being solicited. It’s entirely appropriate for them to market themselves and ask for money. While I haven’t donated anything yet, that actually is on my agenda for this year. On the other hand, when all you do is solicit money, how does that build any sort of relationship with or loyalty to the organization?”
  
  Read more

• ‘You Don’t Know Who I Am, But You’ve Been Affected By Things I Did’ – Meet The Great Adventurer Of New York’s Avant-Garde

  23-03-2016 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Tony Conrad: “It appeared as if Schoenberg had destroyed music. Then it appeared as if Cage had destroyed Schoenberg. Our project was to destroy Cage. … Yeah! Of course we were high on drugs! But honestly, drug experiences are very private, and cultural experiences are very social. I think the social is better.”
  
  Read more

• What If Klemperer Had Become The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Music Director?

  23-03-2016 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “He stood before the Philadelphia Orchestra with the face of an anguished god, saying little with his partially paralyzed mouth, much through his hands, and more through his eyes – behind thick, sometimes askew glasses. In 1962, Otto Klemperer, one of the great conductors of the 20th century, returned to the Philadelphia Orchestra after an absence of more than 25 years, having suffered a brain tumor, a stroke, severe bipolar disorder, and third-degree burns from setting himself on fi
  
  Read more

• The Harvard Repository That Protects Rare Colors (Did You Know Rare Colors Needed Protecting?)

  23-03-2016 19:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Rewind to a few centuries ago and finding that one specific color might have meant trekking to a single mineral deposit in remote Afghanistan—as was the case with lapis lazuli, a rock prized for its brilliant blue hue, which made it more valuable than gold in medieval times.”
  
  Read more

• Should Governments Fund Cinemas The Way They Do Theatres And Concert Venues?

  23-03-2016 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In the world of contemporary art, policymakers use our taxes to fund galleries and museums. In the world of theatre, we build new spaces and new stages. In the world of music, we fund broadcasters … So why in the film world do we predominantly fund films but not the spaces to screen them in? Why isn’t Australia’s film policy angled more towards distribution, access and experience?”
  
  Read more

• Violin-Making Is An Old, Traditional Craft From A Long-Gone Century. Who Still Does This Work?

  23-03-2016 18:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It’s a slow, patient, calming craft that has largely remained unchanged since the 1800s – much like the wage, Richard Wilson jokes – but why are people still drawn to it? And do they make any money?
  
  Read more

• Clear History: Boris Groys Tackles Art in the Age of the Internet

  23-03-2016 18:16 via artnews.com
  Boris Groys’s latest book of essays, In the Flow (Verso Books), has been marketed as being about art on the Internet. This is deceptive. For one thing, Groys’s definition of “art on the Internet” refers not to net art, digital … Read More
  
  Read more

• Yo-Yo Ma and Ellsworth Kelly Awarded the 2016 J. Paul Getty Medal

  23-03-2016 18:06 via artnews.com
  The J. Paul Getty Trust has named Yo-Yo Ma and the late Ellsworth Kelly as this year’s recipients of the J. Paul Getty Medal, an award that was established in 2013 to “honor extraordinary contributions to the practice, understanding, and … Read More
  
  Read more

• Did ‘American Psycho’ Predict The Future?

  23-03-2016 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Its detractors loathed it, and even its fans would agree that its anti-hero, Patrick Bateman, is one of the most unsavoury creations in literary history. So what does it say about us that we’re now willing to whistle along to his depravity? Have we inched closer to Bateman’s way of thinking over the past 25 years? Or has the story told in Ellis’s novel been diluted with each subsequent retelling? The answer is somewhere in between.”
  
  Read more

• Nathaniel Mellors at the Box, Los Angeles

  23-03-2016 17:57 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
  Read more

• ‘I Work Purely Out of Desire’: Karla Black Conjures Ethereal Beauty at David Zwirner

  23-03-2016 17:44 via artnews.com
  One afternoon a few weeks ago, the artist Karla Black was telling me all about toilet paper. “In the ’70s and ’80s there was a fashion for colored toilet paper when people had colored bathroom suites,” Black said, as we … Read More
  
  Read more

• Here’s What’s Difficult When We Try To Talk About Intelligence In An Intelligent Way

  23-03-2016 17:21 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “We might be getting stupider, we cannot predict our future path, and we have no idea what kinds of intelligent beings (if any) exist in the cosmos beyond. But I maintain that there is a silver lining, because this very act of self-examination forces us to confront some harsh, but fascinating, realities about our culture and our technology.”
  
  Read more

• Where Citizen Budgeting Meets Community Arts Groups

  23-03-2016 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “In the North Shores Collinwood area of Cleveland, ‘Ohio’s first experiment with participatory budgeting’ has just resulted in four arts-based community development projects being chosen – by local residents – to share in $120,000 in funding from ArtPlace America.”
  
  Read more

• Cuban artist offers free wifi to Havana locals, with backing from Google

  23-03-2016 16:58
  
  Google will partner with the Cuban sculptor Alexis Leiva Machado, known as Kcho, to bring free high-speed wifi to his studio, as part of the company’s broader efforts improve internet access in the country. The announcement was made during President Barack Obama’s visit to Havana.
  Kcho has offered free wifi to the public from his studio since 2013. Internet access in Cuba is generally rare, expensive and controlled by the government, doled out in one-hour increments by the state-run
  
  Read more

• How Science Profoundly Influenced Modern Art

  23-03-2016 16:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Scientists further confirmed that the laws of nature, such as the force of gravity and the speed of light, are symmetrical in the sense that they apply equally throughout the Universe. These discoveries found widespread application, even inspiring some artists to create iconic expressions of nature’s symmetry in their art.”
  
  Read more

• How Western Theatre Has Historically Engaged With Islam

  23-03-2016 16:20 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “There is still a long history of playwrights attempting to engage with Islam in ways that might make us uncomfortable today.”
  
  Read more

• 2016 Moscow International Biennale for Young Art Announces Artist List and Curators for ‘Strategic Projects’

  23-03-2016 16:03 via artnews.com
  The Moscow International Biennale for Young Art announced the artist list for this year’s edition, the biennial’s fifth, today. It includes 87 artists from 36 countries, all of whom are in the emerging category. (This show is not to be … Read More
  
  Read more

• You’ve Seen Pseudoscience, Now Have A Look At Pseudolaw

  23-03-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “These days, we are distressingly familiar with alternative, conspiracy-theory versions of science and medicine. Less well-known is the legal version of this phenomenon, not as visible as creationism or anti-vaccine activism but in many ways as destructive.”
  
  Read more

• New Canadian Government To Make Huge Investment In Arts And Culture

  23-03-2016 15:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The Canada Council, whose budget will double by 2021, called it an unprecedented, once-in-a-generation investment, while the performers union ACTRA expressed the hope this marked the beginning of a new relationship between government and creators.”
  
  Read more

• Tamara Rojo Dances Frida Kahlo

  23-03-2016 15:36 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and theatre director Nancy Meckler talk about creating She Said, a piece about Kahlo that Tamara Rojo commissioned for English National Ballet. (Rojo had not, at first, expected to take the title role.)
  
  Read more

• What, Exactly, *Is* A Robot? (It’s Not That Simple A Question)

  23-03-2016 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The truth is, we’re surrounded by robotics all the time. Your washing machine is a robot. Your dishwasher is a robot. You don’t need to have a very broad definition to draw that conclusion … Robotics will continue to be ubiquitous and fairly invisible. Systems will just be smarter and people will accept that. It’s occurring around us all the time now.”
  
  Read more

• Belgian art fair to be held in Jewish Museum

  23-03-2016 15:00
  
  The 2016 edition of Brussels’ Accessible Art Fair (22-25 September) will be in the country’s Jewish Museum that was the site of a terrorist shooting in 2014. Four people died when a gunman opened fire at the Brussels museum, which closed for four months straight after and has not been fully open to the public since.
   
  Stephanie Manasseh, the director of the artist-led fair, says that this week’s terrorist massacre in the city will not deter her. “I believe that desp
  
  Read more

• 'Erase and I will draw again': the struggle behind Cairo's revolutionary graffiti wall

  23-03-2016 14:30
  
  The graffiti murals that sprang up on the walls of Cairo were a spontaneous reaction to Egypt’s revolution. But, despite their cultural importance, they’re being demolished in an attempt to clean up the city ... or is it to erase the past?Ammar Abo Bakr came for the revolution, and stayed for the graffiti. On 25 January 2011, the fine art professor was sitting at home in Luxor when he saw YouTube videos of protests gathering in Tahrir Square. Two hours later, he was on the train to C
  
  Read more

• Are These The Ten Most Beautiful Ceilings On Earth?

  23-03-2016 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Some of the world’s most glorious sights can only be experienced if you crane your neck. Jonathan Glancey looks up.” (And the Sistine Chapel didn’t even make the cut.)
  
  Read more

• Hundreds Of Looted Antiquities From Disgraced London Dealer Returned To Italy

  23-03-2016 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The artifacts – dating from the seventh century B.C. to the second century A.D. – were found two years ago in a storage unit at the Geneva Freeport that investigators traced to [dealer Robin] Symes.” Said one consultant to Italy’s culture ministry, “The Geneva Freeport is the largest undiscovered archaeological site in the world.”
  
  Read more

• Morning Links: Chinese Museums Edition

  23-03-2016 14:05 via artnews.com
  MUSEUMS Chinese billionaires are constructing museums in China right and left, but are they buildings to be marveled at or just the results of vanity projects? [CNN] Unsurprisingly, museums in Brussels have shut down after the terrorist attack. [Artforum] Here’s … Read More
  
  Read more

• Solidarity with Brussels, out of Saudi Arabia

  23-03-2016 14:04
  
  The artist and former lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army, Abdulnasser Gharem, has released a photomontage in solidarity with the people of Brussels following yesterday’s (22 March) terrorist attack in the Belgian capital. Gharem tweeted the image accompanied by a short text speaking out against violence in the name of religion. The image shows the Belgium flag superimposed onto the Masmak fort in the centre of Riyadh, where the artist lives and works.
  
  Read more

• Books For People Who Don’t Like To Read Books – James Patterson’s Next Big Plan

  23-03-2016 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “People already read James Patterson’s books – and in staggering numbers. … But Mr. Patterson is after an even bigger audience. He wants to sell books to people who have abandoned reading for television, video games, movies and social media. So how do you sell books to somebody who doesn’t normally read?”
  
  Read more

• An Entire Festival Of Plays That Pass The Bechdel Test

  23-03-2016 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Bechdel Theatre Festival has been created by Beth Watson, the founder of Bechdel Theatre, which began life as a Twitter campaign last year. It promotes and celebrates plays that pass the Bechdel Test – which asks whether a play has at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something other than a man.”
  
  Read more

• English National Opera’s Music Director Quits Over Cuts

  23-03-2016 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Mark Wigglesworth said in his resignation letter, “The plan for the future is one that the Board and Chief Executive have always known I cannot support. I made this clear to them last year.”
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!