Category Archives: Art

Banksy show officially authorised by elusive street artist to open in Glasgow

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Show at Gallery of Modern Art inspired by city’s Duke of Wellington statue with traffic cone on its head, says artist

An exhibition of work by Banksy is to open in Glasgow this weekend. The solo, show Cut & Run, taking place at the city’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), has been officially authorised by the elusive street artist.

It spans 25 years and will feature many of the stencils he has used to create his work. Banksy told the Herald: “I’ve kept these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage.

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Art dealer sentenced to more than two years for fake Andy Warhol paintings

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A 69-year-old Florida dealer is set to go to federal prison after a scheme involving the sale of fake artwork

A south Florida art dealer was sentenced on Tuesday to two years and three months in federal prison in connection with a scheme involving the sale of fake Andy Warhol paintings.

Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, was sentenced in Fort Pierce federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in February to a single count of money laundering, while prosecutors agreed to drop 16 other counts related to fraud and embezzlement. Bouaziz was fined $15,000, and a restitution hearing is scheduled for 16 August.

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Rolf Harris, convicted sex offender and entertainer, dies aged 93

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Australian-born artist and musician was jailed for sexual assaults on children after a 50-year career as one of Britain’s best-known TV performers

The entertainer Rolf Harris, whose career as one of the best-loved performers on British TV ended in the disgrace of convictions for indecent assault on teenage girls, has died aged 93.

In October 2022, it was reported that Harris had neck cancer and was barely able to speak. His death was confirmed by a registrar at Maidenhead town hall, close to his family home in the Berkshire village of Bray.

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Fears looted Nazi art still hanging in Belgian and British galleries

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Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection

In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.

Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.

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Falklands war art installation given ‘fitting place’ in Portsmouth

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Standing With Giants, created for 40th anniversary, commemorates troops and islanders who died

Lifesize silhouetted figures representing the 255 British military personnel and three civilians who lost their lives in the Falklands war have been installed on the parade ground and ramparts at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth.

The art installation, Standing With Giants, was created to mark the 40th anniversary of the conflict and its arrival in the Hampshire port is regarded as particularly poignant as so many of the British ships left and returned there.

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UK imposes sanctions on art collector accused of financing Hezbollah

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Nazem Ahmad, who has owned works by Picasso and Warhol, suspected of laundering money for militant group

A high-profile art collector has been put on a Treasury sanctions list and charged in the US over claims that he uses his collection, which has included masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Antony Gormley and Andy Warhol, to launder money for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Nazem Ahmad, a diamond and art dealer who once posed in his Beirut penthouse for a glossy magazine and featured in a piece about the “world’s most beautiful homes and the fascinating people who live in them”, has been targeted in the UK under new counter-terrorism powers.

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Man admits to Basquiat forgery scheme which saw fakes displayed in museum

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Michael Barzman sold paintings created in ‘maximum of 30 minutes’ by accomplice, justice department says

To the admiring patrons of a special exhibition at the Orlando Museum of Art, they were among Jean-Michel Basquiat’s finest works, the angst of the troubled 1980s neo-expressionist rebel shining through the vivid colors of the compositions before them.

But what the paying public was really viewing were fakes, hastily slapped on offcuts of cardboard in 30 minutes or less by an unscrupulous auctioneer and an accomplice cashing in on the late artist’s famous name.

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John Olsen, celebrated Australian artist, dies aged 95

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In a career spanning seven decades best known for his landscapes, Olsen won the Archibald prize in 2005 for a self-portrait

John Olsen, one of Australia’s most celebrated artists best known for his landscapes, has died aged 95.

Olsen, who won the Archibald prize in 2005 for a self-portrait and was appointed to the Order of Australia in 2001, passed away on Tuesday evening surrounded by his family.

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Newcastle’s Side Gallery to close after funding cuts and energy bills rise

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Photography space that inspired Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall launches fundraising campaign with aim of reopening in 2024

A small and much-loved photography gallery that has punched well above its size for more than 45 years will close this weekend because of funding cuts and cost-of-living pressures.

The Side Gallery, near the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, was opened in 1977 by a collective championing positive images of working-class life.

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Indigenous tattooist becomes Vogue’s oldest ever cover star at 106

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Apo Whang-Od appears on front of Philippine edition and is credited with keeping batok form of art alive

An Indigenous tattooist in the Philippines credited with helping to keep alive a form of the art known as batok has become the oldest Vogue cover star after appearing in the Philippine edition of the magazine at the age of 106.

Apo Whang-Od, who is from Buscalan, a remote, mountainous village in the Kalinga province of the northern Philippines, began tattooing at 16. Once described as the last remaining mambabatok, or traditional Kalinga tattooist, she has since inspired a new generation to learn batok, said Vogue. Batok involves tapping the tattoo into the skin by hand, using a thorn, which is dipped in soot and natural dye, and is attached to a bamboo stick.

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Michel Houellebecq sex film to be released despite attempt to stop it

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Amsterdam court dismisses French author’s complaint against film that shows him having sex with young women

A Dutch art collective can release an experimental erotic film showing the French novelist Michel Houellebecq having sex with young women in spite of the author’s attempt to stop its circulation, an Amsterdam court has ruled.

Amsterdam’s district court on Tuesday afternoon dismissed a legal complaint by Houellebecq and his wife, Qianyun Lysis, that had aimed to curb the distribution of the film KIRAC 27 by Keeping It Real Art Critics, as well as a trailer that was uploaded on the art collective’s website last month but has since been taken down.

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Imaginary Friends: Barcelona art show aims to connect with our inner child

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Exhibition evoking childhood experiences brings together installations by nine artists

Nine leading contemporary artists have come together to create an interactive exhibition in Barcelona for kids – and anyone in touch with their inner child.

“Before the pandemic we had the idea of mounting an exhibition of contemporary art for people of all ages, something that children could relate to but also so that older people could relive the experience of being a child and participate as if they were children,” said Martina Millà, who jointly curated the show at the Fundació Joan Miró with Patrick Ronse, the artistic director of the Be-Part contemporary art platform in Belgium.

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Artists in UK public sector making far below minimum wage, survey finds

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Exclusive: report describes culture of low fees and exploitation as research finds median hourly rate of £2.60 an hour

Artists working in the public sector are struggling to stay afloat amid a culture of low fees, unpaid labour and systemic exploitation, research shows.

A survey of people engaged by everything from flagship galleries to smaller projects found an overall median hourly rate of £2.60 an hour, dramatically below the UK minimum wage of £9.50.

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Boris Johnson recites Oompa-Loompas song in defence of Roald Dahl’s books

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Ex-PM criticises sensitivity edit of author’s works – and also rejects sending Parthenon marbles to Greece

Boris Johnson has criticised a publisher’s rewriting of some language in Roald Dahl’s stories by reciting a song by the Oompa-Loompas.

The former prime minister expressed his “irritation at wokeness and political correctness” after Puffin made extensive changes to the author’s work to remove language it deemed offensive.

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‘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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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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Woman who defaced Frederick McCubbin painting in Woodside protest fined $2,637

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Joana Partyka admitted painting company logo on to the masterpiece Down on His Luck in protest at Burrup Peninsula development

A woman who defaced one of Australia’s most famous paintings in a protest against a gas company’s alleged destruction of Western Australia rock art has faced court.

Joana Veronika Partyka, 37, pleaded guilty on Friday to criminal damage after she spray-painted a Woodside Energy logo onto Frederick McCubbin’s work Down on His Luck at the Art Gallery of WA.

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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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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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