Category Archives: Art and design

‘When we rotated it 90 degrees it was obvious’: mystery sketch is rare Michelangelo draft for Sistine Chapel

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Image of man battling serpents is confirmed as preparation for renaissance artist’s masterpiece

A 16th-century drawing of a nude man, seen from behind, has been identified as a study by Michelangelo for his monumental masterpiece, the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

The red chalk drawing has been linked to one of the figures battling serpents on the Worship of the Brazen Serpent painting. It is thought to date from 1512, shortly before Michelangelo painted that final section of one of the world’s most famous works of art, which he had started in 1508.

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Birmingham’s singing station clock – a platform for ‘ordinary’ voices

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Aural clock, designed by Turner prize winner Susan Philipz for Curzon Street HS2 station, features sounds made by 1,092 city folk

“I think your voice would suit an F sharp. So that will be six o’clock,” said composer Andy Ingamells as he listened to my feeble attempts to sing Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, my go-to karaoke song.

He is in the process of recording the voices of 1,092 ordinary people from across Birmingham and Solihull so they can be immortalised in the chimes of a singing station clock, which will be placed in the centre of the HS2 railway station being built in the city.

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Tintin drawing by Hergé sells at auction for record £1.9m

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Belgian cartoonist’s black and white artwork from 1942 was used for the cover of Tintin in America

An artwork by Tintin creator Hergé has set the world record for the most valuable original black and white drawing by the artist after selling at auction for more than €2m.

The drawing, Tintin in America – created in 1942 – was used for the colour edition of the Belgian cartoonist’s 1946 book of the same name.

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Frida Kahlo’s husband may have helped her die, reveals Diego Rivera’s grandson

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The revered Mexican artist’s suffering was so great, she ‘probably’ asked her soulmate to assist in ending her life, documentary is told

People’s love of Frida Kahlo’s vibrant art is matched by fascination with her colourful private life. Now the battle to win greater attention for her talent – above and beyond her extraordinary, painful personal story – faces another potential knock.

A documentary about the Mexican artist is to reveal a secret suspicion that endures within the family of her husband and great love, the renowned muralist Diego Rivera.

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The other Monet: impressionist’s brother is star of new exhibition

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A Paris show will focus on Claude’s little-known elder sibling Léon Monet and his impressionist collection

The name Monet conjures up pictures of water lilies, Rouen Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and French haystacks, some of European art’s best known works.

Now a Paris exhibition will focus on another, lesser known, Monet: Léon Monet, the artist Claude Monet’s long overlooked elder brother who supported him when he was poor and struggling to make his name.

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‘I’ve given up getting paid’: global tech platform accused of exploiting artists

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Talenthouse claims to ‘democratise creativity’, but designers who have completed commissions for top brands are out of pocket

It is a global technology platform that claims to “democratise creativity” by allowing up-and-coming artists to submit work to the world’s biggest brands.

But Talenthouse, which boasts clients including Netflix, Sony, Coca-Cola and the United Nations, has been accused of exploiting artists and failing to pay them, in some cases leaving them thousands of pounds out of pocket.

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‘Chance of a lifetime’ Vermeer exhibition to open in Amsterdam

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Rare exhibition assembles 28 paintings by enigmatic Dutch master in one place

For once, say its curators, “the chance of a lifetime” may be right: never before have so many works by Johannes Vermeer, the luminous 17th-century Dutch master, been assembled in the same place – and it is highly unlikely they will be again.

Of the fewer than 40 paintings most experts attribute to the artist, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has obtained 28. Opening next week, its first Vermeer retrospective has sold more advance tickets than any show in the museum’s history.

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Ukrainian man goes on trial in France over theft of £1.3m painting found in Kyiv

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Paul Signac’s Le Port de La Rochelle was lifted from a museum in 2018 and found a year later by Kviv police in an unconnected raid

A Ukrainian man has gone on trial in France accused of masterminding the theft of a €1.5m (£1.3m) painting discovered in a house in Kyiv a year after it disappeared from a museum in Nancy.

The work by Paul Signac, Le Port de La Rochelle, went missing from the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Nancy, north-east France, in 2018.

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Rare Giacometti chandelier bought for £250 in London set to sell for £7m

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Piece acquired by English painter in antiques shop in 1960s has been confirmed as lost work by Italian sculptor

Sometimes a hunch pays off, and when the English painter John Craxton recognised a work of genius for sale in a London antiques shop, he made very much the right call.

Craxton parted with £250 for an unusual chandelier he suspected was by the great sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Now that chandelier, made in the late 1940s, may sell at Christie’s in a few weeks’ time for as much as £7m. Pieces by the revered Swiss artist are the most expensive sculptures to buy at auction, and his work regularly breaks saleroom records.

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‘Astonishing’ Pompeii home of men freed from slavery reopens to public

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House of the Vettii features ornate and erotic friezes – and a fresco of the god Priapus with a huge phallus

An ornate house – containing a fresco featuring a huge phallus – that was owned by two freed men freed from slavery in the ancient city of Pompeii has reopened to the public.

The House of the Vettii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD74 before being rediscovered in a largely preserved state during excavations in the late 19th century.

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Legacy of Japan’s Nakagin Capsule Tower lives on in restored pods

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One of Tokyo’s most famous buildings was dismantled in April due to asbestos fears. Now 23 of the capsules have been saved for posterity

Tatsuyuki Maeda had more reason than most to feel a pang of regret as he joined admirers and passing office workers to watch Nakagin Capsule Tower being dismantled.

The building was not just one of Tokyo’s most famous structures; for more than a decade it had been Maeda’s occasional home – a pied-à-terre in the heart of the city he had coveted since he first set eyes on it from his nearby workplace.

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New year honours 2023: Mary Quant and Lionesses among those recognised

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Brian May and Grayson Perry are knighted, Denise Lewis is made a dame and Frank Skinner becomes MBE

The fashion designer Mary Quant, the Lionesses and the Queen guitarist Brian May are among those recognised in the first new year honours of the king’s reign.

Quant, 92, who as one of the most influential fashion figures in the swinging 60s popularised the miniskirt and hot pants, becomes a Companion of Honour, one of the top honours.

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Ukrainian who walked 140 miles to safety to feature in London exhibition

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Story of Igor Pedin’s escape from Mariupol is one of about a dozen in an exhibition entitled What Would You Take?

The secret to Igor Pedin’s survival had been his invisibility, the 61-year-old had said.

With his dog, Zhu-Zhu, the former ship’s cook banked on being ignored by the trigger-happy Russian soldiers and their killing machines when he took the first step of a 140-mile journey from his home in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on 23 April, before stealing out into the badlands of Russian-occupied territories towards the relative safety in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

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Flavour of the month: the Spanish hamlet (population: 16) that created a hit nude calendar

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Even oldest resident, aged 100, strips off in venture aimed at revitalising village in Murcia

For decades they’ve grappled with a steady exodus as residents set their sights on jobs and opportunities beyond the southern Spanish hamlet. But the dwindling population of Peña Zafra de Abajo may have found a singular strategy to fight back – in essence stripping down to save their town.

“When I suggested the idea of a nude calendar, people said, ‘Are you crazy?’” said Lucía Nicolás, who leads the hamlet’s residents’ association. “But I saw it as a way to put ourselves on the map and show off our hamlet of 16 residents.”

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Africa’s biggest photography library opens in Ghana

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Ghanaian photographer’s crowdfunded project won support of Humans of New York author and boasts more than 30,000 books

The largest photography library in Africa has opened in Ghana’s capital, Accra, showcasing the work of the continent and diaspora’s forgotten, established and emerging talent.

Founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson, the Dikan Center houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. The first of its kind in Ghana, a photo studio and classrooms provide space for workshops while a fellowship programme is aimed at African documentarians and visual artists. An exhibition space will host regular shows, the first of which is Ahennie, a series by the late Ghanaian documentary photographer Emmanuel Bobbie (also known as Bob Pixel), who died in 2021.

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Pope Francis orders Parthenon marbles held by Vatican be returned to Greece

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Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain

Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.

The Vatican said in a brief statement that the pope was giving them to Archbishop Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and Greece’s spiritual leader, as a “donation” and “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”.

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Nosferatu at 100: Berlin exhibition examines vampire classic’s enduring appeal

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Show takes a deep dive into story of 1922 film that spawned an entire genre – with free entry for blood donors

It was a nightmare born out of a pandemic: a silent killer that arrived from a faraway land, rapidly spreading a delirious fever across the domestic population and leaving its hosts in an anaemic stupor.

By channelling contemporary fears around infectious diseases in the wake of the 1918-20 influenza pandemic, the 1922 expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu founded an entire genre of vampire horror movies and inspired claw-fingered monsters that would spook generations to come, from Freddy Krueger to the Babadook.

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Front room of prolific pub-scene painter recreated for Mayfair exhibition

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Eric Tucker, self-taught and virtually unknown until his death in 2018, has since been compared to LS Lowry

It is the cluttered front room of a Warrington council house: gas fire set into a tiled surround, glass-fronted cabinet housing treasured knick-knacks; shoes tucked under a chair; magazines and books piled up. And in the middle, an easel, surrounded by tubes of paint and jars of brushes.

The room is where Eric Tucker, an artist virtually unknown until his death in 2018 but since compared to LS Lowry, painted people in the pub and on the street, gossiping, reading, smoking, playing cards.

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Ukraine authorities detain eight people over theft of Banksy mural outside Kyiv

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Stencil image, which shows figure in nightgown and gas mask holding a fire extinguisher, was removed in Hostomel on Friday

Eight people have been detained over the theft of a mural painted by the elusive British street artist Banksy from a wall on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said.

The stencil image of a person in a nightgown and gas mask holding a fire extinguisher, next to the charred remains of a window in the town of Hostomel, went missing on Friday, they said.

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People try to steal Banksy mural in Ukraine

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Police make arrests and secure image of gas-masked woman in dressing gown sprayed on Hostomel wall

A group of people have tried to take a mural in Ukraine by the graffiti artist Banksy, by cutting away a section of war-damaged wall where it was sprayed.

The group managed to slice off a section of board and plaster bearing the image of a woman in a gas mask and dressing gown holding a fire extinguisher on the side of a scorched building.

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