Arts news

• What a Renaissance artist taught Freud about memory

  09-05-2017 23:24
  
  In the small Italian town of Orvieto in 1897, Sigmund Freud had a revelation. In the towns cathedral, before a depiction of the Last Judgement by the Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli, the 41-year-old psychoanalyst felt he had found the greatest depiction of the theme he had ever seen. The intense and violent fresco, which carries an odd sexual energy, was seared into his mind. Yet upon his departure, to his immense frustration, Freud could not recall the name of the artist, writes Nicholas F
  
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• A Look at ‘Viva Arte Viva,’ the Hippie, Heal-the-World Venice Biennale

  09-05-2017 23:13 via artnews.com
  From the moment you walk into the main pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, it is apparent that the show there, “Viva Arte Viva,” is an extremely chill affair. It opens with a wall of photos of the Croatian artist … Read More
  
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• Puppies Puppies at T293, Rome

  09-05-2017 23:06 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday. Read More
  
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• What might have been: the Victoria and Albert Museum's never-built tower

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) once dreamed of building a landmark to dominate the London skyline. That was in 1868, when Henry Cole, the museums first director, personally designed a 250ft-high octagonal tower with an external spiral staircase.
  Coles watercolour plan is on show at the museum as part of a special display tracing the history of its buildings from the 1850s to the present (Designing the V&A, until 31 December). The image also appears in an accompanying boo
  
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• Vatican gives Venice Biennale a miss this year

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  Officials at the Vatican have confirmed that there will not be a Holy See pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, but that it may participate instead in the Venice Architecture Biennale next year.
  The Holy See participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale in 2013 with a pavilion inspired by the biblical narratives in the Book of Genesis. It also took part in 2015 when the artists Monika Bravo, Mario Macilau and Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva represented the Vatican; Macedonia-born Hadzi-Vasi
  
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• Steve McQueen gets up close and personal with Lady Liberty in MoMA and Milan

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  The Statue of Liberty typically looks smaller than expected when seen from afar. But in the British-born artist Steve McQueens seven-minute video Static (2009), the monumental sculpture dominates the screen. It is literally a close-up. You see every fold [of fabric] and rusty porthole. It becomes unfamiliar, says Stuart Comer, the chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, who has worked with the artist on an unusual presentation of the New York i
  
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• State of the nations: our pick of the Venice Biennale pavilions

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  US Mark Bradford, Tomorrow is Another Day
  The key to Bradfords long-awaited Biennale exhibition in is a poem written by the artist, which is set in stone on the exterior of the neo-classical US pavilion in the Giardini. It takes as its subject Hephaestus, god of the forge and of artists, who was born lame and expelled from Mount Olympus. This poem is an interpretive key [to Bradfords presentation]. Its about being cast out, says the pavilion's co-curator, Christopher Bedford, the
  
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• Sotheby's reports $11.3m loss but praises ‘non-auction growth’ in first quarter earnings call

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  On the company's first quarter earnings call Wednesday morning, Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith spun a chipper outlook for his company, despite a $11.3m loss in that time period.
  Smith noted that the shortfall was smaller than the $14.6m for the same period last year and emphasised the company's non-auction growthsuch as in its advisory wing, spearheaded by Art Agency, Partners, which the company purchased in 2016 for $50m, and in its in-house S|2 gallery. He also pointed to many good things comin
  
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• Russian billionaire’s V-A-C Foundation opens space in Venice

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  Another influential foreign patron is building an art empire in Venice, joining the ranks of the French luxury goods tycoon Franois Pinault and the Italian fashion giant Miuccia Prada. The Russian gas billionaire Leonid Mikhelson is launching a gallery in the 19th-century Palazzo delle Zattere with a show of Soviet and contemporary art during the opening week of the Venice Biennale (Space Force Construction, 13 May-25 August). Mikhelsons Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation will run the new space, whi
  
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• Loic Gouzer named co-chairman of Christie’s Americas post-war and contemporary art department

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  Christie's announced that it has named Loic Gouzer as the co-chairman of post-war and contemporary art in the Americas. Along with Alexander Rotter, the former worldwide head of Sothebys contemporary department, who joined the house in March, the two fill the void left by longtime chair Brett Gorvy, who announced a partnership with the dealer Dominique Lvy in November.The Swiss-born Gouzer, who has been with Christies since 2011, is known for befriending deep-pocketed collectors like Leonardo D
  
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• Get up close and personal with Lady Liberty in MoMA and Milan

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  The Statue of Liberty typically looks smaller than expected when seen from afar. But in the British-born artist Steve McQueens seven-minute video Static (2009), the monumental sculpture dominates the screen. It is literally a close-up. You see every fold [of fabric] and rusty porthole. It becomes unfamiliar, says Stuart Comer, the chief curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, who has worked with the artist on an unusual presentation of the New York i
  
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• Dissatisfactions and aspirations in pen and ink

  09-05-2017 23:00
  
  At the beginning of the present century, the artist, writer and curator Deanna Petherbridge took the very untypical decision to make a self-portrait. But in this drawing she is almost impossible to recognise. With a characteristically incisive attention to detail, Petherbridge shows her head packed with books, all clamouring to be read. She is also muffled with a bandage-like material covering her mouth, and her eyes gaze out through multiple lenses. As Gill Perrys essay points out in this illum
  
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• Philippe Parreno Has a Bad Cold and a Shot Voice at the Venice Biennale But Can Still Whisper About His Show at RAM in Shanghai

  09-05-2017 22:51 via artnews.com
  My phone died again Tuesday afternoon, this time while having a spritz at a spot near the Palazzo Nani Bernardo, where there was to be cocktails for Philippe Parreno, on occasion of his show in July at the Rockbund Art … Read More
  
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• Banksy paints first Brexit mural in Dover

  09-05-2017 22:17
  
  The British street artist Banksy has spoken out over Brexit for the first time since the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) last June with a mural painted in the port town of Dover. But within 24 hours, the work of art, reportedly valued at 1m, was defaced with the words the clash, together with what appears to be an anarchist symbol.  The Banksy mural, which shows a man in overalls chiselling away at one of the stars on the EU flag, first appeared overnight on an amusement arcade b
  
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• Here Is the Artist List for the 2017 Lyon Biennale

  09-05-2017 21:43 via artnews.com
  The Grand Tour has only just begun this week in Europe with the Venice Biennale, but already there are future art festivals to look forward to. One is the Lyon Biennale, which has quietly revealed the artist list for its … Read More
  
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• AR Penck’s expulsion to West Germany | Letters

  09-05-2017 20:14
  
  Richard Calvocoressi, who curated Penck’s 1984 Tate exhibition, sheds light on his journey from east to westYour obituary of AR Penck (6 May) offers a thoughtful account of the artist’s work. To say that he “escaped” to West Berlin in 1980, however, may give a misleading impression. As one who got to know Penck in London in the early 1980s, I was led to believe that he was sold to the West by the East German regime for foreign currency, under the notorious Freikauf system
  
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• Fiction/Non Fiction: ‘Recent Histories’ Presents Documentary-Based Photography from Africa

  09-05-2017 20:00 via artnews.com
  Walther Collection, New York, September 22 - December 17, 2016 Read More
  
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• The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains review – look, a flying pig!

  09-05-2017 19:50
  
  V&A, LondonThe refracting prism, the businessman ablaze, the giant inflatable pig: they may be pop’s most anonymous band, but Pink Floyd’s artwork is instantly recognisable – as this stunning V&A show provesVirtually the first thing the visitor to Their Mortal Remains sees is a quote from the late John Peel regarding Pink Floyd’s legendary anonymity: “They could have joined the audience at one of their own gigs without being recognised.” On the face of
  
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• Scenes from the Venice Biennale: Day 1

  09-05-2017 19:38 via artnews.com
  The 57th edition of the Venice Biennale opened to select members of the press today, with a preview that lasts until May 12. Below, a brief look at the main exhibition—”Viva Arte Viva,” curated by Christine Macel—and some of the action … Read More
  
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• Shandaken Project at Storm King Announces Residents for 2017 Season

  09-05-2017 19:09 via artnews.com
  The Shandaken Project has announced the artists selected for its 2017 residency program, hosted for the third year at Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. A total of 19 artists, the largest group selected for the program to … Read More
  
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• Rachel Maclean uses Pinocchio to reflect on post-truth politics in Venice

  09-05-2017 17:57
  When The Art Newspaper first spoke to Rachel Maclean about her Scotland + Venice commission for the 2017 Biennale, she anticipated that it might be an extension of her earlier films and photographs exploring fantastical, fairy-tale and clichd images of Scottish identity, The Lion and the Unicorn and IScotland. Presciently, the latter, made in 2013, included a Donald Trump-like figure. Back then he was merely symbolic of corporate greeda golf-club wielding, saltire-faced, frightwig-sporting ogre
  
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• Keep on Truckin’

  09-05-2017 17:20 via artnews.com
  At the last Venice Biennale, in 2015, Isa Genzken installed some very beautiful, towering orchids at the far edge of the Giardini, and I remember looking at them longingly, wishing it was possible to climb up their stems to enjoy the view from … Read More
  
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• Blow-Up: Exhibitions Around New York Erode the Boundary Between Film and Real Life

  09-05-2017 16:48 via artnews.com
  On ‘Dreamlands,’ Pipilotti Rist, Mark Leckey, Arthur Jafa, and Sondra Perry. Read More
  
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• The Korean Pavilion: Come for the Neon, Stay for the Pepto-Bismol

  09-05-2017 15:52 via artnews.com
  The outside of the Korean Pavilion, which is showing work by the artist Cody Choi, is covered in a neon work called Venetian Rhapsody, The Power of Bluff (2017) that beckons visitors to the Biennale by intimating that this is … Read More
  
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• There She Blows: Geoffrey Farmer Builds a Geyser in the Canadian Pavilion

  09-05-2017 15:29 via artnews.com
  Geoffrey Farmer’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale, “A way out of the mirror,” runs in, through, above, and around the Canadian pavilion. It is moving, strange, and a little frightening, and it is one of the best shows being presented in the … Read More
  
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• Morning Links: Sometimes a Pineapple Is a Cigar Edition

  09-05-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• This Carol Bove Sculpture Deserves Its Own Post

  09-05-2017 14:51 via artnews.com
  As you read in the space earlier, the Swiss pavilion is called “Women of Venice.” That title derives from a series of work that Alberto Giacometti made for the French Pavilion in 1956. He refused to ever display work in … Read More
  
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• Anne Imhof’s Bargain Pays Off With ‘Faust’ at the German Pavilion

  09-05-2017 14:44 via artnews.com
  An early take on the German Pavilion came from a fellow writer who had just walked out: “It’s terrifying, you have to go see it now.”Indeed, the hit of the Giardini may be Anne Imhof’s Faust, a black metal dance played out … Read More
  
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• The Story of Giacometti’s Flora

  09-05-2017 14:40 via artnews.com
  Sculptor Carol Bove may have taken an abstract approach to “Women of Venice” in the Swiss Pavilion–a show dedicated to the absence of Alberto Giacometti in the Swiss pavilion–but the filmmaking team of Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler have taken … Read More
  
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• ‘Love Is a Rebellious Bird That No One Can Tame!’: Aria On Offer at Xavier Veilhan’s French Pavilion

  09-05-2017 14:35 via artnews.com
  You just never know what’s going to happen when you enter a pavilion at the Venice Biennale! One minute you’re wandering into Xavier Veilhan’s show in the French Pavilion, expecting to see a few of the artist’s tech-y, angular sculptures, the … Read More
  
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• Phyllida Barlow review – Venice invaded by loo rolls and brilliant buffoonery

  09-05-2017 14:13
  
  British Pavilion, Venice BiennaleThe 73-year-old sculptor’s most significant show yet is a crowded game of associations, where skeletal megaphones spar with concrete clods. But is there space for us to play too?Baubles greet the visitor to the British Pavilion at Venice. These misshapen lumps of concrete and cardboard around the steps of the building are like a very stupid horticultural border, or boulders wearing makeup. Phyllida Barlow’s decorative clods, both jolly and somehow gha
  
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• Crowdfunding campaign gets you dinner with an Icelandic troll in Venice

  09-05-2017 13:20
  
  The Venice Biennale is in full swing, but if you're still waiting for an invite to one of the many prestigious dinners you might be in luck. Egill Sbjrnsson, the artist representing Iceland, has started a crowdfunding campaign that allows you to buy an "invitation to an exclusive dinner with Egill Sbjrnsson, Geza Schn, collectors and museum directors at the preview days of the Venice Biennale," for the princely sum of 1000. The money is used towards funding the production of a perfume
  
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• German artist to light up Venice church with images of Martin Luther

  09-05-2017 12:49
  
  After projecting his work onto Cologne Cathedral, the German artist Philipp Geist is again illuminating a church. During the Venice Biennale this year the artist is projecting words and pictures onto the German Lutheran church on Campo SS. Apostoli. As part of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Geist is projecting portraits of the reformist Martin Luther (1483-1546) as well as words that represent his role for the church and society onto the facade of the building loc
  
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• Imhof Let the Dogs Out . . .

  09-05-2017 12:31 via artnews.com
  . . . or, more accurately, she’s keeping them in.One aspect of Anne Imhof’s installation, called Faust, in the German Pavilion is the metal cage, attached to the front of the pavilion, that contains four energetic Dobermans. (If this sounds … Read More
  
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• Imhof Let the Dogs Out…

  09-05-2017 12:31 via artnews.com
  …or, more accurately, she’s keeping them in.One aspect of Anne Imhof’s installation, called “Faust,” in the German pavilion is the metal cage, attached to the front of the pavilion, that contains four energetic Dobermans. (If this sounds like it has … Read More
  
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• Dawn Kasper Will Be Staying in the Giardini’s Central Pavilion for Six Months

  09-05-2017 12:29 via artnews.com
  The first press preview day of the 57th biennale has just started to get cooking, as a first spin through the Central Pavilion in the Giardini shows. Right up front you have Sam Gilliam’s Yves Klein Blue (2015), an explosively colorful … Read More
  
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• The Pope gives us hope: climate change graffiti unveiled in Venice

  09-05-2017 12:11
  
  As all the eyes of the art world turn to Venice for the 57th Biennale (13 May-26 November) its the perfect opportunity for artists to make a statement. The street artist Bambi has done just that, revealing a work that highlights the climate change crisis in Venice. The Pope Gives Us Hope, which can be found on one of the doors of Ospizio Foscolo Santa Lucia, Fondamenta SantAnna in the Castello district, shows Pope Francis reaching out to a polar bear in a capsizing boat, and refle
  
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• Mark Bradford U.S. Pavilion Press Conference To Feature Anita Hill

  09-05-2017 11:17 via artnews.com
  This just in: If you were on the fence about attending the official press conference for the U.S. Pavilion tomorrow at 11am, get off that fence. The press conference, ARTnews has learned, will feature a conversation between Bradford and attorney … Read More
  
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• U.S. Pavilion Features Mark Bradford’s First Poem

  09-05-2017 11:01 via artnews.com
  Engraved on stone plaques flanking the entrance to the U.S. Pavilion is the first poem by Mark Bradford, the artist chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. The poem, I am told by a representative of the … Read More
  
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• Bish-bash-bosh: how Phyllida Barlow conquered the art world at 73

  09-05-2017 10:00
  
  After overlooking her for decades, the art world has woken up to Phyllida Barlow’s audacious, gargantuan sculptures. Now she is representing Britain at the Venice Biennale – but why did it take so long for her to be “discovered”?
  The story of Phyllida Barlow’s precipitous rise to art-world fame is irresistible, and it has been told and retold so many times that it has taken on the quality of myth. It goes something like this. Once upon a time, in the middle of the l
  
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• Only in Venice: A Familiar-Looking Video Installation Saves Me When Lost in the Venice Labyrinth

  09-05-2017 09:52 via artnews.com
  And here I was thinking I was being responsible leaving the Bauer Hotel at a decent hour, despite the fact that the art world’s itinerant martini-swilling faction had most emphatically sidled up to the bar, with no apparent interest in calling … Read More
  
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• Behold, the Golden Tower of James Lee Byars

  09-05-2017 09:42 via artnews.com
  James Lee Byars’s grandest work, The Golden Tower, has landed in Venice and it is glorious. Byars first dreamed up the gilded piece, which is more than 65 feet tall, in 1976 and showed it in various iterations, but never before … Read More
  
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• Hauser & Wirth Has Full-On Shacked Up in a 15th-Century Palazzo in Venice

  09-05-2017 09:18 via artnews.com
  The Palazzo Barbaro on the Grand Canal in Venice has played host to Henry James, who used it as the setting of The Wings of the Dove; to Isabella Stewart Gardner, who designed her museum in Boston to mimic the … Read More
  
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• National Gallery of Canada receives major gift of contemporary art from collector Bob Rennie

  09-05-2017 09:17
  
  The Vancouver-based real estate magnate and collector Bob Rennie has given a collection of contemporary art worth more than C$12m to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, in honour of Canadas 150th anniversary. The donation by is by volume and value, the largest single gift of contemporary art in the history of the gallery, the museums director Marc Mayer says.
  The Rennie Collection is known for its focus on works tackling issues of identity, social commentary and injustice. Most of the 197
  
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• Wendy Whiteley on art, gentrification and Brett: 'I felt a bit Whiteleyed-out'

  09-05-2017 05:29
  
  A visually splashy documentary on two-time Archibald winner Brett Whiteley works, says his wife, because it lets Brett speak for himselfCountless words have been expended over the years exploring the genius of Brett Whiteley. In the 1960s the artist, who would arguably go on to lead the avant-garde movement in Australia, mulled over the meaning of that word himself: genius. He asked the noted poet and art critic Robert Gray what he thought it meant in the context of a great painter. Gray’s
  
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• Those Amazing Wildlife Pictures You Love? Many Of Them Are Staged

  09-05-2017 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "A well-executed game farm photograph can be nearly indistinguishable from a real wildlife photo, one reason critics consider such images problematic. Traditional wildlife photographers can spend days researching conditions of the field environment before heading out to shoot. They may camp out for weeks, or return to the same spot many times over the years looking for the same animal before getting the shot of a lifetime. But game farms allow both pros and hobbyists to produce in a few hours wh
  
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