Arts news

• Electrician Stumbles Across Hidden 17th-Century Frescoes

  23-04-2025 21:02 via nytimes.com
  Davide Renzoni was inspecting cables in the Pompeian Hall of Rome’s Villa Farnesina when he opened two trap doors in the ceiling and happened on a set of perfectly preserved frescoes, likely by Carlo Maratta, one of the last masters of Baroque classicism, and two of his students. – The New York Times
  
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• Letter Reveals Shakespeare Did Not Abandon His Wife

  23-04-2025 20:31 via bbc.com
  For more than 200 years it has been believed that Shakespeare left his wife in Stratford-upon-Avon when he travelled to London and that a decision to leave her almost nothing in his will meant he probably felt bitterness towards her. – BBC
  
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• Five Months In, How’s America’s First TKTS Booth Outside New York Doing?

  23-04-2025 20:05 via msn.com
  “Based on recent ticket sales and Visitor Center website traffic, … the formula has proven to work in Philadelphia. … While Philly tourism and theater attendance have been down compared to 2019, Amy Murphy, Arden Theatre’s managing director, said TKTS is already paying dividends.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
  
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• An irrelevant bourgeois ritual: this year’s Turner prize shortlist is the soppiest ever

  23-04-2025 15:16
  
  Holy balls of wool! From pointless paintings to emotionless snapshots, the once-controversial award tiptoes too earnestly across the minefield of today’s culture warsRemember when controversy was fun? If not, that’s because you’re too young. But back in the 1990s, my child, Britain got itself in hilarious knots about conceptual art, the readymade and whether a pickled shark or elephant dung can be art, with the Turner prize as battleground. It was a culture war but with laughs,
  
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• Spat at, skint and splattered with sludge: the fearless artistic life of Gustaf Broms

  23-04-2025 14:10
  
  In 1993, the Swedish artist had reached a dead end – so he burned all his work. Seeing the ashes inspired him to embark on an epic journey through the Indian wilderness, a Swedish cave – and now BritainDrive north of Stockholm for an hour or so and, buried within woodland near the village of Vendel, you will come across the 200-year-old house where Gustaf Broms lives. There are no shops or even neighbours here – just trees, wild animals and a man making beguiling performance ar
  
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• Raphael’s School of Athens review – rewarding study of Renaissance fresco

  23-04-2025 14:00
  
  During the latest in Howard Burton’s Masterpiece series, the art historian turns his low-tech but scholarly attention to Raphael’s interior decoration in the Vatican palaceHere is the latest in the series of high-minded, low-tech studies of Renaissance art history from Howard Burton, a theoretical physicist turned art historian, who has launched a series of films called, with admirable Ronseal-ness, Renaissance Masterpieces. Having already looked over Botticelli’s Primavera, Bu
  
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• ‘I like pushing boundaries’: Yinka Shonibare on his landmark art show in Madagascar

  23-04-2025 13:40
  
  The British-Nigerian artist explores colonialism and connection in his first major solo exhibition in Africa. Plus, a grime MC goes oyster farmingHello and welcome to The Long Wave. Earlier this month I was in Antananarivo, Madagascar, where I checked out the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s first major solo exhibition in Africa. For this week’s newsletter I caught up with him about the landmark show, and learned a lot about the growing Malagasy art scene.Madagascar is not a
  
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• Videotape sculptures and war trauma paintings make Turner prize shortlist

  23-04-2025 12:38
  
  Nnena Kalu, Mohammed Sami, Rene Matić and Zadie Xa nominated for £25,000 contemporary art prizeAn artist who creates swirling sculptures out of fabric and old videocassette tape, and another who installed huge paintings evoking wartime trauma in the genteel rooms of Blenheim Palace, have been shortlisted for this year’s Turner prize.Nnena Kalu, a Scottish-born, London-based artist, and Mohammed Sami, who fled his native Iraq as a refugee, have been chosen alongside Rene Mati
  
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• ‘Filling in these gaps’: Paul McCartney’s recently rediscovered photographs

  23-04-2025 11:16
  
  A new exhibition at the Los Angeles Gagosian showcases previously unseen pictures taken by the musician during the rise of BeatlemaniaHe is not drowning but waving. John Lennon’s arms stretch at angles like the sails of a windmill. His face wears a toothy, incandescent smile. Beads of water dance around him like an upside-down waterfall as he swims off Miami Beach.“He’s so carefree,” says Joshua Chuang, director of photography at the Gagosian art gallery. “It’
  
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• ‘It’s almost like Vaseline’: artists including Antony Gormley swap paint for seaweed ink in art challenge

  23-04-2025 06:00
  
  Ocean-inspired artworks created using kelp-based pigment will be sold to raise funds for conservationLast year in early summer, Alex Glasgow could be seen hauling up a long string of orangey-black seaweed on to the barge of his water farm, located off the west coast of Scotland near Skye. Growing on the farm was what Glasgow described as “perhaps the quickest-growing biomass on the planet”: seaweed.The weed from Glasgow’s farm, KelpCrofters, is used in everything from soil fert
  
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