The human form has inspired artists for centuries for both its beauty and challenges. Now a Brazilian septuagenarian sculptor has won a surprise newfound notoriety for his celebrity waxworks. Six years after it was filmed, a local TV story on an exhibit by Arlindo Armacollo has gone viral for the distorted depictions and the gushing reporter's commentary. Armacollo's work is the latest in an increasingly long list of celebrity sculptures that have gained fame for not quite nailing the brief
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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...France’s highest court orders retrial of art-dealing Wildenstein family
Guy Wildenstein and others face new trial after court annuls 2018 tax fraud acquittal
France’s highest court has ordered a retrial of members of the art-dealing Wildenstein family who were acquitted of tax fraud in 2018.
Guy Wildenstein, a close friend of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and other family members, known in France as “les W”, were cleared of hiding an estimated €550m from the French tax authorities in offshore accounts in 2017 – a decision upheld on appeal.
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.
Continue reading...The vagina dialogues: 33-metre artwork draws far right’s ire in Brazil
Juliana Notari’s hillside sculpture sparks clash between Bolsonaro-supporting right and leftwing cultural community
A 33-metre reinforced concrete vagina has sparked a Bolsonarian backlash in Brazil, with supporters of the country’s far-right president clashing with leftwing art admirers over the installation.
The handmade sculpture, entitled Diva, was unveiled by visual artist Juliana Notari on Saturday at a rural art park on the grounds of a former sugar mill in Pernambuco, one of Brazil’s most culturally vibrant states.
Continue reading...Italy begins year of Dante anniversary events with virtual Uffizi exhibition
Gallery puts seldom-seen Divine Comedy sketches on display online to mark 700 years since poet’s death
Eighty-eight rarely seen drawings of Dante’s The Divine Comedy have been put on virtual display as Italy begins a year-long calendar of events to mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death.
The drawings, by the 16th-century Renaissance artist Federico Zuccari, are being exhibited online, for free, by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Continue reading...Patti Smith: ‘As a writer, you can be a pacifist or a murderer’
As she prepares to ring in 2021 with a performance on screens at Piccadilly Circus, the punk poet explains why she’s optimistic amid the ‘debris’ of Trump’s years in office
Patti Smith talks about her first poetry performance – in 1971 at St Mark’s Church in New York’s Bowery – as if it were yesterday. “I remember everything,” she says over the phone from her home in New York. Smith was in her early 20s, working at a bookshop and living in the Chelsea Hotel with her then lover, the playwright Sam Shepard. She had attended poetry readings before, most of which put her into a deep sleep. “I wanted to do something that wasn’t boring,” she recalls. “Sam said that since I sang to myself all the time, I should try singing a song, or maybe do something with a guitar.” And so she called on the musician Lenny Kaye to provide “interpretative” noises on guitar while she half-read, half-sang her poems.
The show was an instant hit. “It seemed to make a big impression on people – which I really didn’t understand,” she says. The producer Sandy Pearlman approached her afterwards and suggested she front a rock band. She eventually took his advice, making the landmark album Horses in 1975, and an icon of American punk was born.
Continue reading...Ephemeral edible: gingerbread monolith appears on San Francisco hilltop, then collapses
Christmas day sweet sighting in Corona Heights park attracted visitors who took pictures and even took a bite
Like the other monoliths that have mysteriously appeared across America and the world in the waning weeks of 2020, the one that popped up on a California hilltop on Christmas Day seemed to come out of nowhere.
Also like the others, it was tall, three-sided and it rapidly attracted crowds of curious visitors before an untimely destruction.
Continue reading...Amsterdam gallery owner recalls how sale of Banksy work saved staff jobs
Kim Logchies-Prins tells how employees gathered around canvas, sold for £1.5m, to give thanks
The owner of an art museum in Amsterdam who sold a prized Banksy painting for £1.5m to avoid laying off staff during the coronavirus pandemic has told how her employees gathered around the canvas to give thanks.
Kim Logchies-Prins, co-founder with her husband, Lionel, of the Moco museum of modern, contemporary and street art, said she joined 20 of the office staff to pay respects and say goodbye to Banksy’s Monkey Poison, following its sale to an anonymous US buyer at an auction in New York.
Continue reading...Myrrh mystery: how did Balthasar, one of the three kings, become black?
They are a Christmas card staple – the three kings who followed a star to the baby Jesus. But one of them caused a revolution in art. We unravel the mystery of the Magi
They came bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This description of the Magi, the three kings or wise men who followed a star to the newborn Jesus, has always given artists plenty of scope to depict ornate boxes, cups and vessels. Paintings show them followed by pages, servants, soldiers and pack animals – an entire royal retinue. Dressed in their finest, making their way across deserts and over mountains guided by a light, these pilgrims to the lowly stable always look magnificent.
Although the Gospel of Matthew does not give individual names to this regal trio, we know them as Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior, thanks to a Greek manuscript from AD500. It was in the middle ages, too, that they were promoted from astronomers to kings. And a text attributed to the Venerable Bede, the historian monk from Northumbria, makes Balthasar black. Despite Bede’s assertion, there are very few images of a black Balthasar before 1400, possibly because medieval Europeans had so little concept of Africans. It was only with the dawning of the Renaissance that Balthasar’s colour began to be emphatically depicted. In fact, the trumpeting, joyous festive subject of “the adoration” inspired some of the richest portrayals of black people in European art.
Continue reading...Painting in Brussels hall turns out to be an original by Flemish master Jacob Jordaens
Experts say ‘incredible discovery’ is the earliest known version of the early 17th century artist’s Holy Family works
A painting that hung for decades in a municipal building in Brussels has been authenticated as the work of Flemish master Jacob Jordaens.
After analysis including dendrochronology – dating works from the wood panels they are painted on – experts determined that it is the oldest known version of The Holy Family by Jordaens, painted in the early 17th century.
Continue reading...Nazi art dispute goes to US supreme court in landmark case
Heirs of Jewish art dealers bring case over Guelph Treasure that defence lawyers say could open floodgates
A 12-year wrangle over a rare collection of medieval ecclesiastical art sold by Jewish art dealers to the Nazis in 1935 will arrive in front of the highest court in the US on Monday, in a landmark case defence lawyers say could open the floodgates for restitution battles from all over the world to be fought via the US.
The supreme court will hear oral arguments on whether the dealers’ heirs can sue in US courts to retrieve the church reliquaries, known as the Guelph Treasure or Welfenschatz, from Germany.
Continue reading...A Utah monolith enchanted millions and then it was gone, leaving mysteries behind
For many following the story of the monolith, crucial questions remain unanswered: who made it? What was it for?
In a year of uncertainty and peril, one three-sided mystery metal structure provided a glinting moment of distraction, or even hope – and then it was gone.
Before the public had moved on from the monolith, the monolith had moved on from us.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on Amazonian cave art: a story about the environment, too | Editorial
Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest
In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.
The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.
Continue reading...‘I guess this is a thing now, right?’: monolith appears on California mountain – video report
A new mysterious metal monolith has appeared atop a mountain in California, just a week after a similar structure captured the imagination of the world when it was discovered in the deserts of Utah – before disappearing. Amid mounting international attention of the mystery, a similar structure was reportedly found in the mountains of Romania - before it disappeared as well
Continue reading...New mystery metal monolith appears on a California mountaintop
Not long after a similar structure was discovered in a Utah desert, a silvery column has been found in Atascadero
A new mystery metal monolith has appeared atop a mountain in California, just a week after a similar structure captured the imagination of the world when it was discovered in the deserts of Utah – before being taken down and disappeared.
The local newspaper in the small town of Atascadero, on the central California coast, reported that the silvery column had been found atop Pine mountain where dozens of local hikers made the trip to view it – and post their pictures on the internet.
Continue reading...‘It can be uncomfortable’: how a New York farmhouse is facing its racist past
In a new exhibition, three artists reckon with the history of slavery at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum with a range of challenging pieces
When people think of buildings in Manhattan, chances are they think big and brash, cloud-piercing skyscrapers for tourists to marvel at.
But the borough is also home to the far more modest Dyckman Farmhouse, a white clapboard home built in 1765. It’s the oldest farmhouse in the city, and just off 204th Street in Inwood, once home to Dutch farmer William Dyckman, his family and their slaves.
Continue reading...Russian museum director who exposed Soviets to hidden masterpieces dies at 98
Irina Antonova, head of Pushkin Museum for 52 years, brought Mona Lisa to Moscow despite cold war
A longtime museum director dubbed the grande dame of the Russian art world has died at 98, prompting an outpouring of grief and admiration for the woman who brought the Mona Lisa to Moscow and returned masterpieces hidden for decades from the Soviet public to her museum’s exhibition halls.
Irina Antonova, whose work at the Pushkin Museum began under Joseph Stalin and ended under Vladimir Putin, died on Monday evening of complications from the coronavirus. Her death was confirmed by the press service of the museum, where she served as director for 52 years from 1961 to 2013.
Continue reading...‘The Aids epidemic is not yet over’: inside a project with a vital message
For World Aids Day, a new audio project will play important speeches and clips that catalogue the ongoing fight against HIV/Aids
“Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Homophobia has got to go!”
This was a chant from New York’s ACT-UP demonstration in 1989. Now the audio clip of this protest will echo throughout Greenwich Village in the coming month.
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