Arts news

• Turner: Art, Industry and Nostalgia review – Fighting Temeraire sets Tyneside ablaze

  09-05-2024 18:09 via theguardian.com
  
  Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
  How do you make Turner’s most famous painting cool? Take it to Tyneside, where it’s end-of-an-era magnificence takes on a whole new ghostly meaningJMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire might be the most famous painting in London’s National Gallery and in 2005 was voted The Greatest Painting in Britain, but it’s hardly cool. Its heady atmosphere of patriotic pride and supercharged sentiment is the quintessence of the traditional i
  
  Read more

• Keep Oxford University alumni out of politics please | Brief letters

  09-05-2024 18:04 via theguardian.com
  
  Plea to rescue Britain | Exhibition guides | Gallery selfie-takers | Garrick Club diversity | Renaming the Swiss army knifeThe five Tory faces featured in Labour’s new digital campaign with the heading “Chaos & decline” (Starmer may be bland – but that passes the taste test in a country sick of spicy politics, 8 May) have one thing in common – attendance at Oxford University. Could we ask this august institution, on humanitarian grounds, to call a ceasefire in i
  
  Read more

• Bryan Illsley obituary

  09-05-2024 17:57 via theguardian.com
  
  Artist whose diverse and distinctive work included sculptures from found materials, jewellery, paintings and handmade booksBryan Illsley, who has died aged 86, challenged categorisation. A largely self-taught painter, sculptor, jeweller, printmaker, potter and poet, he was also the creator of informal and of limited-edition books, the latter in collaboration with the poet Christopher Reid. Illsley wanted above all to be seen as a painter, but to disregard his other activities would do him a grav
  
  Read more

• ‘Destruction of the human experience’: Apple iPad ad prompts online backlash

  09-05-2024 17:17 via theguardian.com
  
  Ad featuring massive hydraulic press crushing cultural objects strikes wrong note with some – including Hugh GrantApple has faced an online backlash over an advert for its new iPad that features an industrial-sized hydraulic press crushing a collection of objects and gadgets including musical instruments and books.The ad, launched by Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, on Tuesday, shows the machine squashing an array of items – ranging from a piano and a metronome to tins of pai
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘I did not know the life I have now was a possibility’: Gemma Rolls-Bentley on her history of queer art

  09-05-2024 13:53 via theguardian.com
  
  After two decades creating pioneering exhibitions, the curator decided to publish a ‘sexy coffee table book’ bringing together work made for clubs and protests as much as galleriesGemma Rolls-Bentley still remembers the first time she saw work by a queer artist. She was in her early 20s and had just moved to London when she came across an exhibition of Catherine Opie’s black and white photographs at the Stephen Friedman Gallery. By this point, she had two art history degrees un
  
  Read more

• Bottoms up! The joyfully lewd art of Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland

  09-05-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Once dismissed as bawdy kitsch, the two artists’ work has found a new generation of fans. A new exhibition celebrates their embrace of sexual liberation – and some ‘amazing bums’The ways in which artists become accepted by the art world are many and complicated. Take the reputations of Beryl Cook (1926-2008) and Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland (1920-1991). Both spent most of their careers having their work either ignored or actively disdained by the establ
  
  Read more

• Reinventing The Meaning Of Work In Europe

  09-05-2024 00:01 via eurozine.com
  
   Data suggest that something is amiss: across Europe, the average proportion of 15-29-year-olds not in work nor education or training exceeds the EU’s 9% target. Last year in France, the figure peaked at 12.5%. Yet a Europe-wide study has found that young people value work just as much as older generations. – Eurozine
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!