Fashion personality who found fame in her 80s went from copywriter at Women’s Wear Daily to design authority whose projects included the White House
Iris Apfel, the interior designer and fashion tastemaker who found fame as an octogenarian, has died aged 102.
Apfel’s agent, Lori Sale, confirmed her death on Friday, and said “working alongside her was the honour of a lifetime”.
Continue reading...Project to run during Women’s History Month at institutions including Tate Britain and Met in New York
Five big museums, including Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are launching audio guides dedicated to underserved female artists in their collection during Women’s History Month.
Museums Without Men, devised by the Guardian art critic Katy Hessel, will showcase dozens of female and gender non-conforming artists who at present are often in the shadow of their male contemporaries.
Continue reading...From the Tate Britain to New York’s Met, some of the world’s mightiest galleries have signed up for my audio guides, which shift the spotlight onto female artists like Rosa Bonheur – who required a permit to wear trousers
‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” asked a 1989 artwork by the Guerrilla Girls, the all-female-identifying activist artist collective. A valid question considering, as the work went on to point out: “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” When the Guerrilla Girls went to revisit these statistics in 2012, they found that little had changed: “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.”
So what about today? In 2023, Marina Abramović made headlines, not for her performance art but, shockingly, as the first female artist to have a solo exhibition in all the main galleries of the Royal Academy in London. The same institution, founded 256 years ago, today opens its first ever solo exhibition dedicated to a female artist working prior to the 19th century: Angelica Kauffman.
Continue reading...Prayer room of Great Mosque of Algiers, beset by political wrangling and cost overruns, accommodates 120,000 people
Algeria has inaugurated a gigantic mosque on its Mediterranean coastline after years of political upheaval transformed the project from a symbol of state-sponsored strength and religiosity to one of delays and cost overruns.
Built by a Chinese construction firm throughout the 2010s, the Great Mosque of Algiers features the world’s tallest minaret, measuring 265 metres (869ft).
Continue reading...Artist chose study to appear in first big retrospective in 1971. Dyer was found dead in couple’s hotel room 36 hours before show’s opening
It is one of the most intimate and psychologically charged portraits that the artist Francis Bacon painted of his great love, George Dyer. So special was it to him that he personally selected it to appear at his first major retrospective at Paris’s Grand Palais in 1971.
But what should have been a monumental occasion celebrating Bacon’s stellar career was marred by tragedy when barely 36 hours before the opening, Dyer was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills, exacerbated by alcohol abuse, in the couple’s shared hotel room.
Continue reading...Florence museum boss compares process to cleaning a bathroom as media are granted privileged access
Michelangelo’s David is recognised as one of the most sublime works in the history of sculpture, but according to the director of Florence’s Accademia Gallery, dusting it is much like cleaning a bathroom.
“You know when you clean a bathroom, you clean and clean and think you’ve done a great job but then you spot some dust and wonder ‘where did that come from?’,” Cecilie Hollberg said on Monday. “This is what it’s like. Dust is everywhere.”
Continue reading...The Return of the Buffalo Herd, by teenage prodigies Edward and Charles Detmold, can be seen at Bateman’s after conservation
A rare watercolour depicting the aftermath of a climactic moment in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is to go on display at the author’s country home after conservation work.
The painting, The Return of the Buffalo Herd, is one of 16 created by twin brothers Edward and Charles Detmold, who were just 18 when they were commissioned to illustrate Kipling’s much-loved story. Only four of the paintings have survived.
Continue reading...Carved wooden figure at Venice Biennale aims to spark debate about colonial blindspots in the art world
A statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during a 1930s uprising in the Congo will go on display at the Dutch pavilion of this year’s Venice Biennale, seeking to spark a debate about colonial blindspots in the art world – and the Belgian pavilion next door.
The carved wooden figure of colonial administrator Maximilien Balot will not be physically present at the world’s largest art event: a screen will show a livestream from a gallery in Lusanga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the artefact will be on display for the six-month duration of the festival.
Continue reading...Rijksmuseum director general makes plea for artwork taken from Leerdam in August 2020 before new exhibition in Amsterdam
The director general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has appealed for the return of a stolen Frans Hals painting as he prepares to open a major exhibition devoted to the Dutch master without the “amazing” €15m artwork.
Two Laughing Boys With a Mug of Beer was stolen from the Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden in the Dutch town of Leerdam in August 2020. Unlike a Van Gogh painting believed to have been taken by the same gang and recovered last year, the Hals appears to have vanished into the criminal world.
Continue reading...Guinness World Records initially said 7.2-metre structure made from more than 700,000 matches broke rules
A man has been awarded the Guinness world record for creating the tallest structure using matchsticks, after his Eiffel Tower replica was initially rejected.
Richard Plaud, from France, said he had been on an “emotional rollercoaster” this week, after spending 4,200 hours building his model from more than 706,000 matches and 23kg of glue. “For eight years, I’ve always thought that I was building the tallest matchstick structure,” he said.
Continue reading...Australian artist Archie Moore will draw from his personal history – and databases including Guardian Australia’s Deaths Inside – to create a ‘site for quiet reflection’
Queensland-based artist Archie Moore has unveiled his intention for Australia’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in April: to transform it into an examination of the impact of colonisation and incarceration on the country’s First Peoples and a celebration of their resilience.
Moore is only the second First Nations artist to make a solo presentation in the 25-year history of Venice’s Australian pavilion, following Tracey Moffatt in 2017. While key details of the exhibition were still being kept under wraps at the press briefing on Thursday, Moore said in a statement that his exhibition – titled kith and kin – would be a “site for quiet reflection and remembrance”. It will draw on his Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British and Scottish heritage and present his family story as a distillation of Australia’s 254-year colonial history.
Continue reading...Vittorio Sgarbi, who denies allegations over painting, cites separate antitrust investigation in resignation
An Italian art critic who was recently placed under investigation over allegations that a 17th-century painting in his possession was stolen from a castle more than a decade ago has resigned as a junior culture minister.
“I am resigning with immediate effect as undersecretary of the government and will inform [the prime minister, Giorgia] Meloni in the next few hours,” Vittorio Sgarbi said on the sidelines of a conference in Milan.
Continue reading...New Bond Street department store, which opened in 1890s, to close doors for final time this weekend
More than 130 years after it opened, the flagship Fenwick department store in central London, will close its doors for the last time on Saturday.
The historic four-storey shop in New Bond Street, Mayfair, is shutting after the retailer – which is owned by more than 40 descendants of John James Fenwick who founded the company with a single store in Newcastle in 1882 – sold the property to developers for £430m.
Continue reading...Organisers of Brisbane Portrait Prize back artificial intelligence stating art is not stagnant and ‘traditionalists’ once opposed photographs
A prestigious portrait competition has defended allowing entrants to submit artwork generated by artificial intelligence, arguing art is not stagnant and should reflect societal change.
The Brisbane Portrait Prize – with a top prize worth $50,0000 – has been described as Queensland’s answer to the Archibalds with selected entries displayed at the Brisbane Powerhouse later in the year.
Continue reading...Oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev had accused Sotheby’s of conspiring with dealer over pieces including Salvator Mundi, which later became the most expensive art sold at auction
A US federal jury has ruled in favour of Sotheby’s at a trial in which the Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev accused the auction house of defrauding him out of tens of millions of dollars in art sales.
Rybolovlev had accused Sotheby’s of conspiring with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier to trick him into paying inflated prices for four works including Salvator Mundi, a depiction of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that would become the most expensive artwork sold at auction.
Continue reading...Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
Continue reading...Famed and derided for his minimalist aesthetic, the artist’s career was overshadowed by suspicions about his role in the death of his wife Ana Mendieta
Carl Andre, the minimalist sculptor whose life’s work was overshadowed by accusations that he had murdered his third wife, has died aged 88.
The artist was a pioneer of minimalism, and famed for austere works such as 1966’s Equivalent VIII, an arrangement of 120 fire bricks on the gallery floor. But he was also notorious for being a suspect in the murder of Ana Mendieta, who fell from the couple’s apartment window after an argument in 1985. Despite being acquitted of second-degree murder in 1988, the accusations continued to follow Andre for the rest of his life, with supporters of Mendieta turning up to protest at his exhibitions.
Continue reading...Françoise Bornet’s embrace with then boyfriend in 1950 became one of the most famous images of the city
It was one of the most famous kisses of the 20th century – a postwar clinch that became a 1980s poster phenomenon, bringing fame and court battles.
Françoise Bornet, the young lover immortalised in the French photographer Robert Doisneau’s The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, has died aged 93.
Continue reading...Culture minister announces withdrawal of art project announced in dying weeks of Law and Justice party administration
Poland’s new government has scrapped the submission conceived under the previous nationalist-populist administration for the country’s Venice Biennale pavilion and replaced it with an interactive show by a Ukrainian art collective, provoking complaints of “censorship” from the artist originally tasked with the Polish entry.
The culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, who was appointed by centrist prime minister Donald Tusk on 13 December, announced the withdrawal of the project, Polish Exercises in the Tragedy of the World: Between Germany and Russia, on Friday. The project had been announced in the dying weeks of the Law and Justice party (PiS) government in what was perceived as an ideological parting shot.
Continue reading...Culture minister Lina Mendoni pledges to ‘fill the void’ at British Museum should ancient sculptures be returned to Athens
Greece is prepared to part with some of its greatest treasures to “fill the void” at the British Museum if the Parthenon marbles were reunited in Athens, the country’s culture minister has said.
Speaking to the Guardian at the end of a momentous year for the campaign to retrieve the fifth-century BC masterpieces, Lina Mendoni promised that the London institution’s revered Greek galleries would never go empty.
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