Arts news

• An aesthetic defence of the Edward Colston statue and its sculptor | Letter

  06-06-2021 19:18
  
  John Cassidy, the creator of the bronze memorial to Bristol slave trader, produced radical and evocative work, writes Simon Casimir WilsonIt is perhaps a little ironic that a professor of public history at the University of Manchester should dismiss, and in the Guardian moreover, the sculptor John Cassidy’s now notorious statue of Edward Colston as a “mediocre piece of late-Victorian public art” (‘A potent historical artefact’: the statue of Edward Colston’s n
  
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• Calls for Keith Haring mural to stay at Barcelona site being turned into care home

  06-06-2021 16:15
  
  Artwork in building slated for demolition faces uncertain future, though city has pledged to save it
  It all began one February night in 1989. Cesar de Melero was DJing in the Ars Studio club in Barcelona when someone told him that the artist Keith Haring was outside but the doorman wouldn’t let him in.“The place was packed, so I put on a record and pushed through the crowd,” De Melero told the Guardian. “And there he was with his saintly, innocent face and I told the door
  
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• Keith Haring’s Barcelona mural to be moved as former club faces demolition

  06-06-2021 14:46
  
  Ibiza DJ suggests impromptu 1989 artwork should feature in new building – a care home
  It all began one February night in 1989. César de Melero was DJing in the Ars Studio club in Barcelona when someone told him that the artist Keith Haring was outside but the doorman wouldn’t let him in.“The place was packed, so I put on a record and pushed through the crowd,” De Melero told the Guardian. “And there he was with his saintly, innocent face and I told the doorma
  
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• Nero: The Man Behind the Myth review – legend and truth

  06-06-2021 14:00
  
  British Museum, London
  This Roman blockbuster features relics from the great fire of AD64 and invites the visitor to judge the emperor’s true natureFiddling while Rome burns is a hard charge to dislodge. Nero did nothing, or he played the violin (so I was taught as a child), while the city went up in flames. Blaming Christians for the fire, he had them burned alive in pits, before building a giant golden palace on the ruins. He also murdered his mother, brother, two of his wives and much o
  
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• Artist asks Blackpool council to demolish his seafront sculpture over safety fears

  06-06-2021 12:07
  
  Liam Curtin says lack of maintenance has left Blackpool High Tide Organ in a poor conditionAn artist is calling on council officials to take down his most famous work after claiming that a lack of maintenance has left it in a poor state and a threat to public safety.Liam Curtin’s Blackpool High Tide Organ was constructed along the town’s new promenade in 2002. Commissioned by Blackpool council and designed by Curtin and John Gooding, the structure is primarily made of Corten steel &n
  
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• How a ghostly outline revealed the secret of Modigliani’s lost lover

  06-06-2021 11:00
  
  The Italian artist may have wanted to brush Beatrice Hastings out of his life, but artifical intelligence has thwarted him by enabling a re-creation of the workNo one wants to be reminded of a failed relationship by having the ex’s portrait hanging around. After Amedeo Modigliani and his lover, Beatrice Hastings, broke up, the Italian artist is thought to have obliterated her memory by painting another woman’s likeness over his portrait of her.So he might not be too happy to learn th
  
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• A year on, the battered and graffitied Colston is finally a potent memorial to our past | David Olusoga

  06-06-2021 11:00
  
  The slave trader’s statue is back on show in Bristol. There’s something electric about seeing it supine in a museumLast week, for the first time in months, the burning eye of the outrage industry pivoted westwards and came to rest upon the city of Bristol. On Friday, the statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, toppled last June during a Black Lives Matter protest, was put on display. To the fury of some, it was not returned triumphantly to its pedestal in the centre o
  
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• Adjusting to life After Covid means living on constant alert | Eva Wiseman

  06-06-2021 09:00
  
  Things are beginning to get back to normal, but in other ways everything has changedI’m gazing at the sea again. I don’t know when I started – when I pulled up that website with the photos of beaches, with the package deals and local attractions, and the pastry thing that you can only get in one particular village that must be reached by boat. I don’t know when I started, but in the time since I did, evening has come. When I think about holidays my brain splits neatly in
  
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