Category Archives: Art

What is cryptoart, how much does it cost and can you hang it on your wall?

Posted on by

When is a meme worth $600,000? When technology has created a ‘unique’ version that can’t be owned by anyone else

Pat, I keep hearing references to cryptoart which are all very … cryptic. What is this thing?

Hey Lucy! So you might have heard of it in context of the $US600,000 Nyan Cat gif or the more recent Kings of Leon NFT Album, both of which are examples of cryptoart. Cryptoart is a way of making digital art unique, and therefore – according to some people – valuable. Normally, digital art is very easy to replicate due to the very nature of digital information. So cryptoart is a way of making digital files one-of-a-kind.

Continue reading...

Eye of the Storm review – moving film about Scottish painter in love with nature

Posted on by

James Morrison’s work was full of awe for the natural world, and this documentary does his landscape painting full justice

Scottish painter James Morrison died shortly before the completion of this affectionate documentary about his life and work, and it’s a fitting tribute to an articulate and self-effacing artist with an extraordinary affinity for Scotland’s everchanging land- and seascapes. It’s directed by Anthony Baxter, best known for highlighting the stubborn local resistance resistance to Donald Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire with his You’ve Been Trumped films; this is something of a change of pace, while offering a not-dissimilar celebration of a very Scottish style of quiet, unfussy determination.

Morrison’s story is interesting enough – born and raised in Glasgow, the son of ship’s fitter, who settled on the east coast and made epic trips to paint abroad, most notably to the Arctic – but it’s added to here by a plangent late-life twist: he is losing his sight, to the extent he can barely see what he is painting. True to form, Morrison accepted this as uncomplainingly as anything else – “irritating” is the strongest imprecation I can recall – and there’s something inexpressibly moving about the way he strokes a blank sheet of paper taped to his easel as if he can’t wait to get started.

Continue reading...

Gilbert and George on their epic Covid artworks: ‘This is an enormously sad time’

Posted on by

The artists have responded to the pandemic with comic, haunting works showing themselves being buffeted around a chaotic London. They talk about lines of coffins, illegal raves and ‘shameful’ statue-toppling

As they call themselves living sculptures, I can’t resist asking Gilbert and George what they think of all the statue-toppling that took place last year. When I ask for their verdict on the removal of public works that have been accused of celebrating slavery and colonialism, they are sceptical.

“We would call that shameful behaviour,” says George. “And it’s very odd – because normally those statues are totally invisible. Nobody ever looks at them. I remember, very near my home town, there’s a statue of Redvers Buller, the hero of the Boer war, surrounded by dying Zulus and things. And if you asked people in Exeter, ‘Where’s Buller’s statue?’, none of them knew. It’s a bit silly. Rewriting history is very silly.”

Continue reading...

Brexiters buy KGB artefacts for ‘museum of communist terror’

Posted on by

Portrait of Lenin and spy tools among items snapped up at auction by group planning UK exhibition

It depicts the Russian revolutionary leader in characteristically serious mood, staring across Red Square, perhaps, and rendered with more than a touch of kitsch.

But while a Soviet-era oil painting of Vladimir Lenin, which sold for nearly $2,000 at auction in the US, might capture the man as many know him, its buyers are not exactly Bolsheviks.

Continue reading...

‘It’s a funeral march’: French artist JR’s powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling

Posted on by

Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system

The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.

They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.

Continue reading...

Vincent van Gogh Paris painting from 1887 to make public debut

Posted on by

Scène de rue à Montmartre has been part of same French family’s private collection for more than a century

A major Paris work by Vincent van Gogh that has been part of the same French family’s private collection for more than a century is to go on public display for the first time since it was painted in the spring of 1887.

Scène de rue à Montmartre is part of a very rare series depicting the celebrated Moulin de la Galette, on the hilltop overlooking the capital, painted during the two years the Dutch artist spent sharing an apartment with his brother Theo on rue Lepic.

Continue reading...

‘Painted by a madman’: The Scream graffiti reveals Munch’s state of mind

Posted on by

Inscription on painting that has been subject of debate has been reattributed to the artist himself

It is an image that has intrigued the art world for more than a century and become synonymous with existential angst, and recently inspired its own emoji, but now some graffiti has added a new layer to the story of Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, The Scream.

A tiny pencil inscription in the top left corner of one of the four versions of the painting, which reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman”, has been the subject of debate over who wrote it – it was originally thought to be by Munch, but was later attributed to a vandal – but new analysis by experts at the National Museum of Norway suggests it is indeed in the hand of the artist.

Continue reading...

John Malkovich as eerie identical twins: Sandro Miller’s best photograph

Posted on by

‘I wanted to pay homage to work that made my knees buckle. John looked nothing like Diane Arbus’s twins. But on set his spirit left and theirs came in’

Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer. The prognosis wasn’t 100% positive and there were days when I’d lay in bed wondering if I’d ever be able to shoot again. I’m self-taught, and I started thinking about the images that had changed the way I thought about photography – work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, work that made my knees buckle with emotion.

I thought: if I ever get better, I would love to pay homage to these greats, in a way nobody has done before.

Continue reading...

Kim Novak on Hitchcock, Sinatra and why she turned her back on Hollywood to paint

Posted on by

Kim Novak starred in Vertigo – voted the best film ever made – but knew she was too fragile for fame. She talks about her tough childhood, the sensitive side of Sinatra and starting again in her forties

Kim Novak apologises for the mess. And, to be fair, the studio at her Oregon home is fabulously messy. Behind her are a couple of canvases she has been working on; to the left and right, all sorts of all sorts. At the back of the room, her rescue dog, Patches, lies on a sofa, half snoozing, half listening. Occasionally, Sadie Ann, her husband’s pudelpointer, wanders in, sniffs around and leaves.

Novak, who turned 88 two days ago, is so much more than a Hollywood legend. The star of Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a wonderful artist, a mental health activist (she is proudly bipolar), an anti-bullying campaigner, a vet’s assistant and one of the greatest life forces I’ve spoken to.

Continue reading...

The edible art of sourdough faces – in pictures

Posted on by

Five years ago, Swedish designer and stylist Linda Ring experienced total burnout. After a few months doing nothing, she tried to adopt a slower lifestyle. “I started baking sourdough, but as it’s my nature to try to make everything beautiful, I began experimenting.”

Ring’s loaves became canvases for portraits and landscapes, scored into the raw dough. “You never know how the bread or the pattern will turn out, it’s enormously satisfying when I take it out of the oven and see.”

Continue reading...

‘We want our riches back’ – the African activist taking treasures from Europe’s museums

Posted on by

Mwazulu Diyabanza has been fined and jailed for entering museums and forcibly removing ‘pillaged’ African artefacts. He tells our writer why the British Museum is now in his sights

Mwazulu Diyabanza makes no secret of why he is in France. If coronavirus had not closed most of Europe’s museums, the Congolese activist would probably be inside one right now, wresting African objects from their displays to highlight what he sees as the mass pillaging of the continent by European colonialists.

And it’s not just the mighty museums. Diyabanza and his supporters also plan to include smaller galleries, private collections and auction houses in their campaign. “Wherever the riches of our heritage and culture have been stolen,” says the 42-year-old, “we will intervene.” As the leader of a pan-African movement called Yanka Nku (Unity, Dignity and Courage), Diyabanza is on a mission is to recover all works of art and culture taken from Africa to Europe. He calls his method “active diplomacy”.

Continue reading...

Edvard Munch works up for auction amid renewed interest in artist

Posted on by

Sotheby’s expert says pandemic has been good for the artist, lending his work ‘a whole new meaning’

Two works by Edvard Munch that the Nazis classified as degenerate before selling them for profit are to be offered at auction in London next month, at a time when interest in the Norwegian artist has never been bigger.

A self-portrait painted in 1926, the first formal portrait of Munch to come to auction for 15 years, and Embrace on the Beach, painted for a children’s nursery in 1904 and last on sale more than 80 years ago, are due to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s next month.

Continue reading...

The more satirical street murals are, the less they resemble great art

Posted on by

Street art that we share online tends to be inspiring – not strange, enigmatic or challenging

Whatever you think of street art, there’s no denying its pedigree. The paintings done on cave walls 30,000 years ago are today acknowledged as the first creative triumph of the human mind. But before their modern recognition as prehistoric wonders, these pictures of mammoths and bison were dismissed by Renaissance cavers who came across them as crude contemporary graffiti. That’s because graffiti were as universal 400 years ago as they are today, and just as disreputable.

Today we veer between seeing graffiti as visual noise and genius coming up from the streets. That’s the fascinating ambiguity of those marks and images. They can be dismissed as a public nuisance or hailed as works of witty artistic genius. Banksy in Britain and JR in France have followed in the footsteps of the 1980s New York street and subway art stars Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to become respected and marketable. Basquiat and Haring were proteges of Andy Warhol, whose embrace of high and pop art, the beautiful and mundane, set the stage for today’s street art. Warhol himself responded to the graffiti craze with a series of abstract paintings he made by covering the canvases with copper, then urinating on them to oxidise the pigment and produce lovely mineral blues and greens. It was literally the lowest of street activities, peeing against a wall, become Art.

Continue reading...

‘I document America’s strange beauty’: the photography of My Name Is Earl’s Jason Lee

Posted on by

He played a redemption-seeking redneck on TV, but lately the actor has found solace off-screen, travelling with his camera. He talks about slackers, the Mallrats sequel and breezing into one-horse towns

Jason Lee knew he was in trouble when he stepped on the set. The year was 1992, Sonic Youth were at their peak and he was starring as a doomed skateboarder in their latest video. As a music obsessed, pro skateboarder with acting aspirations, he felt he had a point to prove. To add more pressure, it was for the song 100% – the band’s classic ode to a murdered Black Flag roadie – and the video was being co-directed by one of his skateboarding friends (some guy called Spike Jonze).

“I was really trying my hardest to focus,” says Lee. “I was like pretending to be Robert De Niro on the set, really trying to get into it and make it count and make it real and believable.”

Continue reading...

‘Black resistance endured’: paying tribute to civil war soldiers of color

Posted on by

In a new book, the often under-appreciated contribution that black soldiers made during the civil war is brought to light with a trove of unseen photos

A classic tintype photo from the 19th century showing a civil war soldier, whose garments are hand-colored in gold paint. The soldier, crowned by a gold frame, looks forward, holding a gun over his chest.

But rather than just any war portrait, it’s part of the overlooked history of African American soldiers who fought during the period. This one and more are featured in a new book called The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship.

Continue reading...

Madrid feminist mural saved from removal attempt by far right

Posted on by

Artwork celebrating pioneering women saved after city councillors step in to stop Vox party motion

A Madrid mural honouring the lives and achievements of 15 pioneering women, including Nina Simone, Rosa Parks and Frida Kahlo, has been saved from destruction after city councillors stepped in to thwart far-right attempts to have it removed.

The 60-metre (197ft) mural, emblazoned with the slogan: “Your ability doesn’t depend on your gender”, was commissioned by the local council in the Ciudad Lineal neighbourhood and painted on a sports centre wall in 2018.

Continue reading...

‘Cancer made me pull my life together’: Zandra Rhodes on fun, fashion and Freddie Mercury

Posted on by

One of Britain’s greatest designers, she has dressed everyone from Princess Diana to Diana Ross. She discusses punk, pink hair and staying creative after serious illness

Zandra Rhodes was doing a yoga session with a friend in the early weeks of the pandemic when she realised that something was wrong. “It’s a funny story,” she says. “We were lying on our lilac mats in my rainbow penthouse, and I was breathing deeply – and my stomach felt full. And I thought, why is it full? I haven’t had a meal today.”

It turned out she had a tumour. “It was in the bile [duct] and going into whatever’s near it,” she says, vaguely. Treatment involved weeks travelling across a locked-down London for chemotherapy, followed by an immunotherapy regime that she is still on, even though she is happy to say that the tumour is in full remission. Her first thought after diagnosis was “to get my will in order with a power of attorney that included a do-not-resuscitate order. I was very lucky because I had no pain whatsoever. I just got very tired while I was having the chemo.”

Continue reading...

Mural in Madrid that celebrates women pitched into Spain’s culture wars

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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...