Category Archives: Art and design

Pavement Picassos: the locked-down artists showing work in their windows

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Galleries are closed due to Covid – so a group of artists have taken to displaying their work from their houses for passersby. Our writer takes to the streets

It is not a good time for art lovers. The second lockdown has closed galleries once more – I’m imagining portraits waiting moodily in the National Gallery in London to be admired again; Van Gogh’s sunflowers wilting further – and so it is not a good time for artists.

Artists Walk is an initiative that aims to improve that state of affairs. It’s a simple idea for an art trail that began as a joint endeavour between printmaker and painter Rosha Nutt, and her art marketing consultant friend Holly Collier. Those who in normal times would be exhibiting in galleries or community spaces can now place their work in the windows or surroundings of their homes for passers-by to admire. Kind of like “how much is that doggy in the window?” Except that it might be that Picasso sketch of his dachshund.

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From Che Guevara to lockdown: photo book tells story of Madrid

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Work features images by some of the most famous photographers of the past century

One warm June weekend 61 years ago, a scruffily bearded Argentinian on his way from Cuba to Cairo stopped over in Madrid. With almost a day to kill between flights, he did what any tourist of the time would have done: explored the city, visited a bullring, had breakfast and did a little shopping.

He was, however, no ordinary tourist. A photograph taken very early that Sunday morning shows the unmistakable figure of Che Guevara standing in boots, beret and battle fatigues, one hand hooked over his belt and the other clutching a newspaper.

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‘Treasure trove’ of unseen Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney writing found

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Affectionate friendship between the two poets and artist Barrie Cooke, united by a love of fishing, revealed in a collection of correspondence that was believed lost

A “treasure trove” of unseen poems and letters by Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and the artist Barrie Cooke has revealed the depth of a close three-way friendship that one Cambridge academic has described as a “rough, wild equivalent of the Bloomsbury group”.

Cooke, who died in 2014, was a leading expressionist artist in Ireland, and a passionate fisherman. Fellow fishing enthusiast Mark Wormald, an English fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge, came across his name while reading Hughes’s unpublished fishing diaries at the British Library. He visited Cooke in Ireland, and discovered the close friendship between the three men.

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New museum in Nigeria raises hopes of resolution to Benin bronzes dispute

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Artefacts held by British Museum and other western institutions were looted by British forces in 1897

A new museum designed by Sir David Adjaye is to be built following the most extensive archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Benin City, Nigeria, raising hopes of a resolution to one of the world’s most controversial debates over looted museum artefacts.

The kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria and not to be confused with the modern-day country of Benin, was one of the most important and powerful pre-colonial states of west Africa.

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Madrid surrealism show offers escape from pandemic reality

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Exhibition explores how surrealist movement influenced culture and design in 20th century

Anyone tiring of the many mundane strictures of the new normality can, in Madrid at least, escape temporarily into a world where hands serve as chairs, tables spin on bicycle wheels and horses obligingly proffer lamps from their heads.

An exhibition in the Spanish capital examines the countless ways in which the surrealist movement has influenced culture and design over the past century, from the sofa Salvador Dalí modelled on Mae West’s lips, to the music videos of Björk.

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Treasure trove of Nasa photos including first selfie in space up for auction

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Sale by Christie’s in London of 2,400 vintage images ranges from the dawn of space age to the last men on the moon

Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind is on sale to the highest bidder after a private collector released a treasure trove of Nasa images from spaceflight’s golden era for auction, including the only photograph taken of the first human walking on the moon.

Related: Apollo 11: the fight for the first footprint on the moon

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Spanish statue bodge-up is a new rival to Borja’s Monkey Christ

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Trump-like visage grafted on to a carving in Palencia recalls earlier inept restoration

In the footsteps of the unintentionally iconic Monkey Christ, the Tintin St George, the near-fluorescent Virgin and Child– not to mention the less than sinlessly executed Immaculate Conception – comes … well, it’s hard to say.

The latest Spanish restoration effort to provoke anguished headlines and much social media snarking is, or rather, was, a carved figure adorning an ornate, early 20th-century building in the north-western city of Palencia.

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‘We have lost a limb’: Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home

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From helping photographers capture the Nigerian protests to exhibiting during a pandemic, the director of LagosPhoto festival has had his work cut out. Now he wants to fight ‘afro-pessimism’ and the posturing around Black Lives Matter

When I first spoke to Azu Nwagbogu, the recent protests against police brutality in his native Nigeria had just entered their second week. The curator was upbeat, describing them as “an incredible awakening”. A week later, when we made contact again, he sounded more sombre, but no less defiant, following the fatal police shootings of at least 12 protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, the main gathering point for the daily demonstrations.

“This protest is not about ‘the poor masses’,” he tells me. “My sister, who is a medical doctor and a consultant anaesthetist, was active in the protests. Everyone who isn’t in government has had enough. The genie has been let out of the bottle and it won’t go back in without the wishes of the people being fulfilled.”

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Tracey Emin on her cancer: ‘I will find love. I will have exhibitions. I will enjoy life’

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As she recovers from a brutal summer of cancer treatment, Tracey Emin takes us round her new show – and imagines spending the next 30 years painting in her pyjamas to the sound of birdsong

‘I am so lucky,” says Tracey Emin as we stand in the grand galleries of the Royal Academy. I can tell, from her brown eyes, that she’s smiling beneath her face mask. As we roam rooms painted moody blue for her new exhibition, in which her paintings, bronzes and neons are juxtaposed with the oils and watercolours of Edvard Munch, Emin adjusts her stoma bag occasionally and laughs a lot. “I’m in love with Munch,” she says. “Not with the art, but with the man. I have been since I was 18.”

This is not what I expected. Minutes earlier, walking through this London gallery’s courtyard, I felt darkness descending everywhere. England was re-entering lockdown, Biden hadn’t yet won Michigan and the last visitors to the Royal Academy for a month were heading out into the night. I expected the 57-year-old artist to be at death’s door, defeated by disease and circumstance. She is, after all, putting on an exhibition hardly anyone will see: “They sold 16,000 advance tickets but when Boris announced the second lockdown, we knew we couldn’t open.” All she can hope is that the gallery will open in December, but that is uncertain.

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Art as resistance: exiled Kurdish artist’s daring Istanbul show

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Zehra Doğan spent nearly three years in Turkish jails and smuggled out her works as dirty laundry

An exiled artist who spent almost three years in jail in Turkey is shining a light on Kurdish feminism with a daring exhibition of works she created while behind bars.

Zehra Doğan was among the thousands of people who have been caught up in arrests and detentions in Turkey since the 2016 attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. Those detained are accused of either supporting the Gülenist movement, blamed for the failed putsch, or the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a militant group, both of which are outlawed.

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Vatican enlists bots to protect library from onslaught of hackers

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Apostolic Library, facing 100 threats a month, wants to ensure readers can trust digitised records of its historical treasures

Ancient intellects are now being guarded by artificial intelligence following moves to protect one of the most extraordinary collections of historical manuscripts and documents in the world from cyber-attacks.

The Vatican Apostolic Library, which holds 80,000 documents of immense importance and immeasurable value, including the oldest surviving copy of the Bible and drawings and writings from Michelangelo and Galileo, has partnered with a cyber-security firm to defend its ambitious digitisation project against criminals.

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Daphne Guinness: ‘Making music is the most fun I’ve had’

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The designer and singer, 52, reflects on living next door to Salvador Dali as a child, her brush with death and why she never looks in the mirror

I’m told that I had a difficult childhood. I had a lot of freedom, but there was a lot of drama. It was a childhood of extremes.

I was bullied by my history teacher. He’d say, “Well, your grandmother is a fascist [Diana Mitford, wife of Oswald Mosley], so you’re getting a D in this essay,” and I was like, “What does that have to do with it?” I didn’t retrench into just thinking, “Oh gosh, they’re just being mean to me.” I went to Auschwitz. I went to the Holocaust camps. I did a lot of deep research, which was pretty heavy in my teens. But it was something I needed to resolve to understand why I was being bullied. It took me a long time to realise that I didn’t have to be defined by the place that I came from.

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George Condo: ‘Change can’t just be an idea or a slogan – it has to get real’

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The artist, who worked with Warhol, befriended Basquiat and painted for Kanye, talks about making art during a tumultuous year and why he left New York City

The New York City artist George Condo has become New York state artist George Condo, a surprising move for someone so intensely intertwined with the city’s culture. The Hamptons is his new normal, after he ditched Manhattan in March.

Not that he is keeping track of time. “The month of May soon turned into August, which then turned into November,” Condo says to the Guardian from his studio later that day. “2020 is just the framing of the time lapse.”

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The New East photo prize 2020 shortlist – in pictures

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Calvert 22 Foundation and The Calvert Journal have announced the finalists of the New East photo prize 2020. This year marks the third edition of the competition, which celebrates contemporary photography from eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, and central Asia. The shortlist includes 11 photographers from Albania, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

The winners will be announced to the public on 10 November.

The biennial prize received over 700 entries this year from 26 New East countries.

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Jasper Johns Flags I print worth at least $1m donated to British Museum

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Acquisition is one of the most valuable modern prints ever donated to the museum

An American flag artwork worth at least $1m (£770,000) and made by one of the world’s most celebrated living artists has been donated to the British Museum.

With just days to go before the US presidential election, the museum announced that an edition of Jasper Johns’s Flags I (1973) had been gifted to them by New York-based collectors Johanna and Leslie Garfield.

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A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on

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A British art historian’s painstaking study of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela uncovered a medieval prank

He is a medieval in-joke, a male figure carved in the early 12th century for one of the world’s greatest cathedrals, but no one has known of his existence until now. The figure has gone unnoticed by millions of worshippers who have made the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, north-western Spain over the centuries. He has looked down on them from the top of one of the many pillars that soar upwards, each decorated with carved foliage, among which he is concealed.

Now he has been discovered by a British art scholar who believes that he was actually never meant to be seen because he is a self-portrait of a stonemason who worked on the cathedral in the 12th century.

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Banksy’s Show me the Monet painting sells for £7.5m at auction

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Reimagining of Claude Monet’s Impressionist water lilies easily surpassed expectations at Sotheby’s event

Banksy’s reimagining of Claude Monet’s impressionist water lilies has fetched more than £7.5m at auction, easily surpassing expectations.

Show Me The Monet was created in 2005 and adds abandoned shopping trolleys and a traffic cone to the famous garden scene.

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