Arts news

• Volkswagen: the motor of a global arts network

  30-04-2016 23:00
  The unsettling fireball that bleeds red all over August Kopisch’s 1848 painting, The Pontine Marshes at Sunset, first caught Udo Kittelmann’s eye in a museum store in Berlin seven years ago. “I only knew him as an author until then,” says the director of Germany’s National Gallery. “The painting was extraordinary.” Kopisch’s play of colour and light spurred Kittelmann to look into the life of the all but forgotten Prussian artist. Kopisch, he disc
  
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• The fine art of craft

  30-04-2016 23:00
  In just two years, London Craft Week (3-7 May) is on its way to becoming an unmissable date in the art and design diary—putting an emphasis on the array of craftsmanship that lies behind a wide range of items, from clothes to knives, from ceramics to candles.
  Last year, there were 70 events staged across London. This year, there will be 129, featuring workshops, open studios and special displays. Crafts that visitors will be able to experience include perfume-making, diamond-cutting, porc
  
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• Spencer Finch has his head in the clouds for London’s Crossrail

  30-04-2016 23:00
  The New York-based artist Spencer Finch was in London in April for meetings about A Cloud Index, a 120m-long glazed canopy that will span the ticket hall of the new Crossrail station currently under construction at Paddington. The piece, which will feature different types of clouds printed on to its glazed panels, is due to be the first completed work of art for the new £14.8bn train line, which will traverse London from east to west when it opens in late 2018.Several large-scale pieces of
  
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• Celebrate our 25th anniversary at MoMA

  30-04-2016 23:00
  
  To celebrate its 25th anniversary, The Art Newspaper is conducting a series of investigations called What is Art For? The first two took place in London, at the British Museum, and in St Petersburg, at the State Hermitage Museum, with the museums’ respective directors adjudicating. On 12 May (6.30pm), it is the turn of New York, with Glenn Lowry doing the summing-up at the Museum of Modern Art. The cross-questioner is Kate Levin, Bloomberg Associates’ principal, cultural assets mana
  
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• Ai Weiwei's first feature-length film to focus on refugees

  30-04-2016 23:00
  
  Lesbos. The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is making his first feature-length film, a documentary about refugees. Ai first visited the Greek island of Lesbos on Christmas day in 2015 and has since moved his studio there. For the past few months he has been documenting the plight of refugees on the island, photographing and recording videos of people arriving from Turkey by boat or already at the Idomeni refugee camp.The artist has also hired a professional film crew for the first time an
  
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• Golden arches: spot the famous fast food logo in art – in pictures

  30-04-2016 09:00
  
  Keith Coventry’s white monochromatic paintings of smoothly sloping forms derive from a global burger brand – in his new work, the former YBA employs the same geometry in bronze and gold sculpturesContinue reading...
  
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• Sweatshop art: Berlin artists join production line in capitalist protest

  30-04-2016 08:00
  
  Three years after the Rana Plaza disaster, artists have signed up to paint under ‘sweatshop conditions’ for three days – but not all of Berlin is buying itBerlin street artist Emess walks into the Schau Fenster project space in Kreuzberg with a box of water-soluble spray paint and stencils. Taking off his puffer jacket, he puts on a white T-shirt with a number two printed on its back before starting his shift at Sweat Shop. Related: Bangladesh factory collapse leaves trail of s
  
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