Amid debates about abolishing the holiday, Australia Day honours and whether protests should go ahead at all, people have rallied in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra to mark the day
Continue reading...Category Archives: Art and design
Mural in Madrid that celebrates women pitched into Spain’s culture wars
Far-right Vox party leads efforts to erase 60-metre artwork it claims contains ‘political message’
A mural in Madrid celebrating a diverse array of women from Nina Simone and Rosa Parks to Frida Kahlo and the Red Army sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko has become the latest front in Spain’s culture war after the far-right Vox party led efforts to have it removed because of its “political message”.
The 60-metre (197ft) mural, which bears the slogan “Your ability doesn’t depend on your gender”, was commissioned by the local council in the Ciudad Lineal neighbourhood and painted on the wall outside a sports centre in 2018.
Continue reading...‘I almost cracked’: 16-month artistic performance of mass extinction comes to a close
Since 2019, Lucienne Rickard has been drawing detailed sketches of lost species in a Hobart gallery. On Sunday she erased the final one
The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart is filled with people waiting for the swift parrot to disappear.
Hobart artist Lucienne Rickard has spent five weeks drawing a large-scale pencil sketch of the critically endangered bird. Picking up her eraser, she tells her audience, “If we don’t do something soon, this is what will happen.”
Continue reading...Urban clickbait? Why ‘iconic architecture’ is all the rage again
Weird and wonderful buildings are springing up in China and elsewhere, driven by cities’ desire to make a mark in a world full of eye-popping imagery
An image opens on my screen: a 2,000-seat theatre on the edge lands of Guangzhou, a territory of raw new towers and just-departed rural ghosts, designed to look like a swirl of red silk, imprinted with “tattoos” of phoenixes, cranes and other ornithology. It refers, goes the explanatory text, to Guangzhou’s historic role as “the birthplace of the silk road on the sea”. It is a declaration of something where there was formerly nothing, a three-dimensional advertisement for the colossal Sunac Wanda cultural tourism city of which it is part. I peer at the image – is it virtual or real? It’s real.
It enters a mental folder already bulging with such projects as a football stadium – reportedly the largest in the world – under construction in the same city in the shape of a giant lotus flower. Also the completed Zendai Himalayas centre in Nanjing, a 560,000 sq metre mixed-use development shaped like a mountain range, which is said to adapt “the traditional Chinese shanshui ethos of spiritual harmony between nature and humanity to the modern urban environment”. Other prodigies demand attention: a pair of super-tall skyscrapers in Shenzhen whose conjoined nether regions melt into tree-filled terraces and undulant glass, a quartet of twisting aluminium-clad towers in Qatar and apartment towers in Vancouver propped like tulip heads on narrow stalks.
Continue reading...Israel’s ibex make the most of lockdown – in pictures
Nubian ibex have been roaming the empty streets of Mitzpe Ramon as Israel’s coronavirus lockdown extends to the end of the month
Continue reading...‘His work is a testament’: the ever-relevant photography of Gordon Parks
The groundbreaking work of the acclaimed photographer is being celebrated at a new two-part exhibition showcasing black American life
“Gordon Parks’s photographs are timeless,” said Peter W Kunhardt Jr, executive director of the Gordon Parks Foundation. “As we reflect on what has happened in recent months, his photographs remind us to stand up, speak out and demand justice. This exhibition does just that, highlighting images that inspire resilience and empathy that the photographer made over many years.”
The two-part exhibition, on view at both Jack Shainman Gallery locations in New York, is called Gordon Parks: Half and the Whole and until 20 February, photos from Parks taken between 1942 and 1970 will be showcased.
Continue reading...Previously unseen dog painting by Manet to be sold at Paris auction
Artist painted pet as present for Marguerite Lathuille, whose family has owned picture for last 140 years
A previously unseen painting of a pet dog by Édouard Manet will be sold for the first time at an auction in Paris next month.
The French modernist artist dashed off the small work in 1879 as a present for Marguerite Lathuille, the daughter of a Paris innkeeper whose portrait he painted around the same time.
Continue reading...A building as big as the world: the anarchist architects who foresaw rampant expansion
Italy’s Superstudio collective warned against rampant development by imagining one continuous structure stretching around Earth. But did their warning actually inspire new Saudi plans for a 100-mile linear city?
There was a sense of deja vu last week when Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, unveiled his plans for a futuristic 100-mile-long linear city, momentously titled The Line. The dramatic promotional video showed aerial views of a glowing urban ribbon cutting right across the country, forming a “belt of hyperconnected future communities” from sea to sea. It will be free from cars, he declared, powered by renewable energy and run by artificial intelligence, slicing straight through the Arabian desert in one continuous strip. As part of the country’s $500bn Neom development, the plan was trumpeted as a “civilisational revolution that puts humans first”; but it had inescapable echoes of another project with a very different purpose.
Three thousand miles away, in a gallery in Brussels, hangs a 1960s photomontage of an eerily similar vision, part of a new exhibition about the radical Italian architecture collective Superstudio. A great white oblong is depicted cutting through a desert, slicing through sand dunes and marching past palm trees in an unbroken urban block, its surface inscribed with an endless square grid.
Continue reading...The migrants Trump forced Mexico to stop: Ada Trillo’s best photograph
‘Trump had threatened Mexico with tariffs if it let in this caravan from Honduras. Two hours after crossing this river, many were teargassed then deported’
I had been following a migrant caravan north from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for around 10 days. It was 23 January 2020, and this was the moment the group crossed the Suchiate river, which divides Guatemala from Mexico.
The Mexican authorities had deployed the national guard to stop the caravan entering their country because Trump had threatened to increase tariffs on Mexican goods coming into the United States if they let migrants in. Previously, migrants had been allowed to traverse the length of Mexico with no problem.
Continue reading...Raw, brave, wild and honest: why Germany is Europe’s greatest artistic nation
Germany became a unified state 150 years ago this week – and no other country has produced such original, provocative and powerful art since, from Richter to Klee, from Dix to Höch
Situated on the edge of the Alps, Neuschwanstein Castle may not look like the birthplace of modern art. Best seen from a perilously crowded footbridge across a vertiginous gorge, it floats in misty rains, a cloudy dream of white spires and battlements. Yet this 19th-century colossus is an architectural homage to one man: a composer who inspired the avant garde to make the leap to modernism.
Richard Wagner’s music so enflamed King Ludwig II of Bavaria, he built this magnificent medieval vision in honour of the composer. But, in artists across Europe, Wagner’s musical might released much more futuristic impulses. The abstract leitmotifs and unearthly symbolism of his operas fascinated artists from Aubrey Beardsley to Paul Cézanne. The impressionists, too, were entranced: Renoir travelled to Palermo, Sicily, to portray Wagner when he was composing Parsifal.
Continue reading...Police find stolen Leonardo copy museum did not know was missing
Museum shut due to coronavirus was unaware that 500-year-old Salvator Mundi had been missing
Italian police has found a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in a Naples flat and returned it to a museum that had no idea it had been stolen.
Officers said late Monday they had arrested the 36-year-old owner of the flat on suspicion of receiving stolen goods, after the painting was discovered in his bedroom cupboard.
Continue reading...Pink seesaws across US-Mexico border named Design of the Year 2020
Creators say they hope the work encourages people to build bridges between communities
A collection of bright pink seesaws that allowed people to interact over the US-Mexico border has won the prestigious Design of the Year award, with its creators saying they hoped the work encourages people to build bridges between communities.
The Teeter Totter Wall, which bridged across El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico during a 40-minute session, was described as not only feeling “symbolically important” but also highlighting “the possibility of things” by the judging panel.
Continue reading...No true ‘city of culture’ should dishonour the bold ideals of its postwar rebirth
Plans for the centre of Coventry claim to offer a sense of place, but ignore its pioneering mid-century reconstruction
Coventry is UK City of Culture 2021, a title that focuses attention on its contribution to the cultural life of the nation: 1980s two-tone music, the legend of Lady Godiva, and its role in the development of the bicycle and car industries. And, high on this list, the fact that it was the pre-eminent example of reconstruction after wartime bombing.
Among the most devastated cities, Coventry was also one of the most determined and thoughtful in its reconstruction. This was partly expressed by its new cathedral, which brought together leading art and architecture, and connected movingly with the ruins of its predecessor. It was also expressed by the city centre, rebuilt as a series of human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly precincts. Here, too, the idea was for art and architecture to work together.
Continue reading...Philippines’ Taal volcano, one year on – in pictures
When Taal volcano, a popular tourist site in Batangas, erupted a year ago 5,000 people fled the island. It’s still considered dangerous. The government bans former residents from returning but some still live there in tents
Continue reading...Want to understand the Capitol rioters? Look at the inflamed hate-drunk mobs painted by Goya
The horrific visions of the Spanish painter are about to go on display at New York’s Met. Americans should flock to this timely show – because no artist better captured collective delusion and mass fanaticism
The macabre art of Francisco Goya, the first truly modern artist, is due to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York next month and there could hardly be a more urgent moment for Americans to look at his images. For, over 200 years ago, this Spanish artist perfectly captured the kind of collective delusion and mass fanaticism that swarmed the US Capitol last week. The mob of Trump supporters who assaulted the home of American democracy were as inflamed as the crowd who march with crazed eyes behind a manic musician in The Pilgrimage to San Isidoro, as dangerous as the hate-drunk crowd in The Second of May 1808, spellbound by their goat-headed charismatic idol.
And then there’s The Burial of the Sardine, in which a delirious crowd cavort around a huge banner of a madly grinning face. At first glance, it seems to be a joyous carnival scene, but look closer and the intensity of their rite becomes unsettling as you notice that face on the banner, their vacant lord of the dance. It has a definitive Trumpian air.
Continue reading...Western Sahara’s diplomatic opening – in pictures
US plans to open a consulate in Western Sahara mark a turning point for the disputed territory. US recognition of Morocco’s authority over the land frustrates indigenous Sahrawis seeking independence but others see the future US consulate as a boost for Western Sahara cities like Dakhla
Continue reading...The Wodge: can London’s tallest new skyscraper survive the Covid era?
Nicknamed The Wodge because of its girth, the capital’s tallest ever office has just muscled onto the skyline. But in the age of coronavirus, who wants to jostle for 60 lifts with 12,000 others?
With the City of London deserted once more, its streets only populated by the occasional Deliveroo driver or tumbleweed-seeking photographer, it seems a strange time to be completing the largest office building the capital has ever seen, not least because the very future of the workplace is now in question.
But, rising far above the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, dwarfing the now fun-sized Gherkin and boasting the floor area of almost all three combined, 22 Bishopsgate stands as the mother of all office towers. It is the City’s menacing final boss, a glacial hulk that fills its plot to the very edges and rises directly up until it hits the flight path of passing jets. The building muscles into every panorama of London, its broad girth dominating the centre of the skyline and congealing the Square Mile’s distinctive individual silhouettes into one great, grey lump.
Continue reading...Maradona lifts the World Cup: David Yarrow’s best photograph
‘I bribed a stadium guard with whisky and got dead close just as he was lifted on to another player’s shoulders. It was like a biblical scene. He looked magnificent’
On the final day of exams at Edinburgh University in the summer of 1986, most students partied, but I flew directly to Mexico City. I was 20 years old and studying business and economics while taking photos on the side. I’d never been to the Americas before, and I wasn’t at all a good photographer; in fact, I was incredibly average.
I arrived at the 1986 World Cup under the guise of being a freelance photojournalist, but I was a Scotland fan first and foremost – they always used to say that Scottish journalists are just fans with typewriters. I did have a press pass that I’d managed to blag off the Times, which granted me access to the media pen, but I was much more interested in watching football than taking photographs of it. There was a moment in the first round of a match with Uruguay when Scotland missed an open goal. Back at the Times they were watching the TV coverage of the game and could see the striker with his head in his hands, and in the background me with my head in my hands and with my camera nowhere near the moment. And they thought: “Well this guy, Yarrow, he’s not focused on the task at all.”
Continue reading...The lives of others: Ute Mahler’s images of the real East Germany – in pictures
In 1974, the German photographer set out to convey the truth about how people really lived in the communist GDR – depicting her fellow citizens with a ‘timeless coolness’
Continue reading...Beirut’s wounds on show in display of art damaged by port blast
Exhibition presents torn paintings and grazed sculptures in a museum itself hit by explosion
Through the entrance is a version of Guido Reni’s 17th-century portrait of St John the Baptist, blown to shreds. Nearby, a chandelier lies splattered on the ground where it fell. Mirrors are cracked, paintings ruptured, and roofs in some rooms half-caved in.
Beirut is slowly rebuilding from the explosion on 4 August that destroyed much of its eastern seafront neighbourhoods and tore through galleries and hotel lobbies where some of Lebanon’s most renowned art was on display.
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