The city has has endured much through the years, but as cartoonist Tayo Fatunla grew up saying: ‘Eko oni baje’ or ‘Lagos cannot be destroyed’
Continue reading...Category Archives: Art and design
George Mendonsa, The Kissing Sailor in famous photograph, dies at 95
Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed sailor kissing Greta Friedman in Times Square at the end of the second world war
George Mendonsa, the sailor who was captured in a famous photograph kissing a woman in Times Square amidst celebrations of the end of the second world war, has died. He was 95.
His daughter, Sharon Molleur, told the Providence Journal her father fell and had a seizure early on Sunday at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years. He died two days before his 96th birthday.
Continue reading...Final days of the ‘Isis caliphate’ – photo essay
Photojournalist Achilleas Zavallis has been in Syria covering the collapse of Islamic State across the region and the resultant displacement of families
For the past week the Syrian Democratic Forces have been trying to defeat the last remnants of Islamic State that fortified themselves in the small town located on the banks of the Euphrates River, near the Iraqi border.
Continue reading...City of stairs: the interconnecting walkways of Hong Kong
Hans Leo Maes captures the bridges and stairways that link up the hilly, population-dense city
Hong Kong is known for its flashing lights, neon signs and high-rise skylines. But the architect and photographer Hans Leo Maes documents an alternative side – the city’s interconnecting staircases and bridges.
“The extreme population density in Hong Kong means [structures] are stacked and linked by stairs, often external and very visible,” Maes says.
Continue reading...Nan Goldin threatens London gallery boycott over £1m gift from Sackler fund
Artist brands planned donation from pharmaceutical family to National Portrait Gallery unethical over OxyContin link
The National Portrait Gallery will be forced to turn down a gift of £1m from members of the multibillionaire Sackler family if it goes ahead with a prestigious new exhibition of the work of US artist Nan Goldin.
The photographer and activist is threatening to boycott the gallery if it accepts the donation from the owners of the American pharmaceutical company that makes the addictive painkiller OxyContin, the Observer has learned.
Continue reading...On board Zimbabwe’s only commuter train – a photo essay
Chugging through townships, maize fields and scrubland as the sun rises, Zimbabwe’s only commuter train is cheap and reliable – two qualities its passengers cherish in a downwards-spiralling economy
Each morning sleepy travellers walk to the tracks and clamber aboard Zimbabwe’s only commuter train as it prepares to leave the Cowdray Park settlement at 6am and embark on its 12-mile (20km) journey into Bulawayo, the country’s second city.
Continue reading...Giant leap for art: Lichfield Cathedral to become ‘lunar landscape’
Installation will transform cathedral floor to mark 50 years since Apollo 11 moon landing
It’s hard to imagine anything less like a lunar landscape than the medieval glories of Lichfield Cathedral. But this summer, an artist will transform its magnificent tiled floor into a representation of the moon’s surface to mark half a century since Neil Armstrong took “one small step for [a] man and one giant leap for mankind”.
The three-spired cathedral in Staffordshire has commissioned the art installation as part of its annual summer show, which this year is called Space, God, the Universe and Everything. Peter Walker, the cathedral’s artist-in-residence, will also use light and sound installations inspired by space and the planets.
Continue reading...Joy of six: the buildings transformed by 3D hexagon murals
Street artist Mr June brings facades to life with his abstract, colourful designs
The Dutch artist David Louf, who goes by Mr June, is the person behind these striking 3D hexagon murals, which have appeared on walls from Berlin to the Bronx.
Louf grew up in Amsterdam immersed in hip-hop and graffiti, and turned to graphic design as an adult. Eight years ago he moved back to street art and now combines his skills to create vibrant, abstract murals on buildings across the world.
Continue reading...‘Each one has a story’: the mundane beauty of NYC’s doors
Instagrammer Jonathan shares his obsession with the city’s doors, from the grand to the graffiti-ridden
It is only natural to feel curious about what goes on behind the imposing, archaic or graffiti-ridden doors of our cities.
Instagrammer Jonathan knows this feeling all too well. For the past year and a half he has been photographing the doors of New York from the grand to the scruffy, presenting a unique view of this well-documented city.
Continue reading...‘I’m petrified’: 10 years on, Black Saturday trauma still haunts
Survivors of the Kinglake bushfire of 7 February 2009, which took 120 lives, talk about their struggle to move on
“Half the town is on medication, and the other half should be.”
That’s bushfire survivor Anne Dixon’s dark-humoured attempt to describe how people from the mountain-top hamlets around Kinglake are coping 10 years on from Black Saturday.
Continue reading...Almaty spills its secrets: lost Soviet art discovered behind wall
Thanks to the Kazakhstan city’s loss of capital status in the 90s, rare mosaics, sgraffiti and other artworks escaped destruction
When Jama Nurkalieva and a small group of colleagues conducted a site survey of a disused Soviet-era panoramic cinema in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, they had no idea what lay behind the internal plasterboard wall that faces out towards the street – until someone spotted a narrow gap.
As the caretaker shined a light into the darkness behind, the group caught a glimpse of a man’s head. Out came the toolbox and the rest of the artwork was slowly revealed: a Soviet-era sgraffito by the graphic artist Eugeny Sidorkin that had been lost and forgotten for decades.
Continue reading...Mauni Amavasya at the Kumbh Mela – in pictures
Monday was Mauni Amavasya, the new moon day and most significant bathing day, particularly if it falls on a Monday. At the Hindu festival pilgrims bathe in the confluence of three sacred rivers to cleanse them of sin and liberate them from the cycle of life, death and rebirth
Continue reading...Slavery in Britain: the photographer documenting the streets where people have been held
About 13,000 people are kept in slavery in the UK. Amy Romer’s book The Dark Figure* reveals the terrifying ordinariness of the sites of their captivity
In 2013, a 22-year-old Hungarian woman responded to an online ad for a babysitting job in London and, after a telephone interview, was offered the post. When she arrived in Budapest to travel to London, she was met by three men who confiscated her mobile, drove her to Slovakia and forced her on to a coach bound for Manchester.
There was no babysitting job. Instead, the woman had been “bought” for £3,500 by a Pakistani man and was told to prepare for marriage. After being held captive at various Manchester addresses, she finally alerted the police from a house in Cunliffe Street, Chorley, where she was rescued and later repatriated home.
Continue reading...Leonardo da Vinci dragged into Salvini’s spat with Macron
Louvre blockbuster marking 500 years since artist’s death may end up a casualty
He was a Renaissance master – painter, scientist, engineer and inventor – who was hailed as one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
But as Europe stages a year-long frenzy of events to mark 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Italy and France are engaged in a diplomatic tussle over him that threatens a blockbuster exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
Continue reading...New York state security: Manhattan’s KGB Spy Museum – in pictures
A museum in New York claims to be the only collection focusing on the KGB’s espionage operations in the world. The newly opened exhibition hall, housed in a former warehouse on 14th Street, is home to 3,500 original period objects, which the designer of the museum, Julius Urbaitis, has gathered after 30 years of research around the world
Continue reading...Thieves drive off with Banksy mural on Bataclan fire door
Artwork thought to be homage to the 90 people who died in an Islamist attack on Paris venue
A mural by British street artist Banksy on a fire-exit door at Paris’ Bataclan theatre, where Islamist militants killed 90 people three years ago, has been stolen, the venue has said.
The work, one of a series of murals painted last June in the French capital and attributed to Banksy, showed a veiled female figure in a mournful pose.
Continue reading...Thai film-maker wins UK contemporary art prize Artes Mundi
Apichatpong Weerasethakul to receive £40,000 for his political artwork Invisibility
The Palme d’Or winning film director and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul has won one of the UK’s most important and lucrative contemporary art prizes.
On Thursday evening, Weerasethakul was named winner of the eighth edition of the Artes Mundi prize, a biennial competition rewarding political art from across the world. It comes with a prize of £40,000, the largest visual art prize in Britain.
Continue reading...Hong Kong from the skies – in pictures
An urban photo essay of the Chinese territory made between October and December 2018
Continue reading...Vintage ski posters – in pictures
A collection of vintage ski and winter sports posters up to a century old – some worth thousands of dollars – is about to be auctioned in New York. The resorts advertised range from Europe’s Alpine jewels to the mountains of Canada, and all offer fun in the outdoors
Continue reading...Bauhaus at 100: the revolutionary movement’s enduring appeal
Sleek, pared-back, industrial elegance – that’s how most of us think of Bauhaus, the modernist design group born in Germany in 1919. But that was only one side of this short-lived but longlasting movement…
• Norman Foster, Margaret Howell, Michael Craig-Martin and others on Bauhaus’s rich legacy
The Bauhaus, simply put, was a German school of art and design that opened in 1919 and closed in 1933. It was also very much more than that. It was the most influential and famous design school that has ever existed. It defined an epoch. It became the pre-eminent emblem of modern architecture and design. The name has become an adjective as well as a noun – Bauhaus style, Bauhaus look. And now it is coming up for the centenary of its founding, which shows both that what was called the “modern movement” is now part of history and that its influence is very much still around us.
It is nowadays usually clear what the word “Bauhaus” means – design stripped down to its essentials, the rational and elegant use of modern materials and industrial techniques, clarity, simplicity, cool minimalism. The device on which I am writing this and the one on which you might be reading it follow these principles. So (with greater or lesser degrees of bastardisation) do buildings without number around the world, countless domestic objects, road signs, the lettering on a tube of toothpaste or the design of a car. The Bauhaus brand is consistent, coherent and universal. Its best-known creations, the tubular steel chairs of Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer or the steel-and-glass building built to house the school, reinforce its image.
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