Across the US, artists have responded to the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests with impactful and urgent work. In New York, artworks have appeared supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and remembering the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Eric Garner
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Christie’s withdraws ‘looted’ Greek and Roman treasures
Four antiquities pulled from auction after claims they came from illicit excavations
Christie’s has quietly withdrawn four Greek and Roman antiquities from auction this month amid allegations that they had been looted from illicit excavations.
The items were in the original brochure catalogue but later removed from the online site with no explanation.
Continue reading...Bird figurine is earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, say experts
‘Refined’ 2cm carving found in Henan dates to palaeolithic period up to 13,000 years ago
A tiny figurine of a bird, carved from burnt bone and no bigger than a £1 coin, is the earliest Chinese artwork ever discovered, according to an international team of archaeologists.
The carving, less than 2cm in length, has been dated to the palaeolithic period, between 13,800 and 13,000 years ago, which pushes back the earliest known date of east Asian animal sculpture by more than eight millennia.
Continue reading...Toppling Edward Colston’s statue is unlikely to be enough to stop public anger
Few imperial icons, including Churchill, will escape the need to reappraise Britain’s past
The toppling of slaver Edward Colston’s statue has electrified a longer term – and already deeply polarised – debate among British historians and academics, with some celebrating a “moment of history” as others warned of dark consequences for society.
Inaction over figures such as Colston had bred anger that would be felt “all over Britain”, said Andrea Livesey, a historian specialising in the study of slavery and its legacies and who described the events in Bristol as “wholly justified”.
Continue reading...‘It’s a big turning point’: is this the end of racist monuments in America?
Protests across the country have led to the removal of many statues honouring racist figures – but hundreds still remain
Last week in Richmond, Virginia, protesters scrawled on a monument of the Confederate army commander Robert E Lee as an act of resistance against police brutality and racism. They wrote “Black Lives Matter”, “Blood On Your Hands” and “Stop White Supremacy” in spray paint, often in red.
At night, there was a projection of George Floyd’s face, bearing the words “No Justice, No Peace”.
Continue reading...Christo: ‘His gorgeous abstractions made you gawp with disbelief’
From a curtain across Colorado to the wrapping up of everything from the Sydney coast to the Berlin Reichstag, his grandiose art caused wonder all over the world
He changed cityscapes, landscapes, buildings, coastlines, lakes and islands, making us look afresh at our surroundings. At its most daring and spectacular, Christo’s work entered the collective consciousness, overturning our sense of scale and place in the world. At its best, his work was disruptive and transformative, leaving surprise and wonder in its wake.
Christo’s is the kind of art that persists in the imagination, however temporary his projects have been (some lasted only a few days) and however few people encountered his theatrical interventions for themselves. Wasn’t he the one who wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in a shroud, and a coastline near Sydney? His art became a kind of rumour, perhaps almost a myth.
Continue reading...Christo, artist who wrapped the Reichstag, dies aged 84
Bulgarian creator of large-scale public artworks worked in collaboration with wife Jeanne-Claude
The artist Christo, known for wrapping buildings including Berlin’s Reichstag, and also swathing areas of coast and entire islands in fabric, has died aged 84. The news was confirmed on his official Facebook page, which said that he died of natural causes at his home in New York.
Born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria, Christo studied in Sofia and then defected to the west in 1957, stowing away on a train from Prague to Vienna. Two years later he met Frenchwoman Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who would become his artistic partner and wife until her death in 2009.
Continue reading...Galleries in Europe open doors as lockdown lifts – in pictures
While museums and galleries across the UK remain closed, cultural institutions abroad are beginning to welcome visitors as lockdown eases
Continue reading...Berlin’s cultural capital in peril from exodus of billionaire art collectors
Thousands of works will disappear from galleries as rent rises and a stand-off with city government take their toll
Home to some 400 galleries and an estimated 8,000 artists, Berlin has long aspired to be what its politicians call the cultural capital of Europe.
Yet in the coming year, thousands of works by artists including Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman and Gerhard Richter are set to vanish from its galleries, as the city debates what lengths it should go to to protect art collectors from the sharp edge of a property boom.
Continue reading...Hockney invites budding artists to find joys of spring in lockdown
Artist provides inspiration for competition to lift spirits during the coronavirus crisis
Locked down in France, the British artist David Hockney has been sitting in the garden of his Normandy home drawing the blossoming of spring. The cherry and other fruit trees, the hawthorns and blackthorns, all feature in his works, famously created on his iPad.
Now Hockney, 82, is the inspiration for a competition to encourage young and old to create an image that captures the season and to lift coronavirus lockdown spirits.
Continue reading...‘Colour allows us to understand in a deeper sense’: Hitler, Churchill and others in a new light
The story of global conflict is all the more powerful when it isn’t seen in black and white. Artist Marina Amaral explains her latest work
On a stretcher lies a patient; his ashen face protrudes from under a green blanket, eyes closed. Two uniformed women carry the stretcher, wearing face masks. It looks as if it’s a lovely day: the sun is shining, the shadows dark, the sky blue. But this is not a happy picture. Is the casualty even alive, or has he already been taken by the killer virus that has wrapped itself around our planet like a python, squeezing the life from it?
The photograph was taken at an ambulance station in Washington DC. Within the past couple of months? It could have been, if it weren’t for the uniforms (I don’t think today’s nurses wear lace-up leather boots) and the stretcher. In fact, it was taken more than a century ago, in 1918, during the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed so many millions. The photographer is unknown, forgotten. But the black and white picture was recently “colourised” by Marina Amaral.
Continue reading...Sex and sensibility: the photographers capturing a new American youth
Peyton Fulford shot LGBTQ+ teenagers in the deep south; Sabine Ostinvil explores nascent black masculinity in pictures that cast a new light on US youth culture
When Peyton Fulford looks at her photograph Backbend, she sees gender fluidity in motion. A body arches over a bag of pink grapefruit, the white underwear and bare legs curving across the golden landscape in a defiant pose that is both playful and strong – yet also ambiguous.
“I wanted to tell a story and for people to question the figure in the image,” the 25-year-old photographer says from Atlanta, Georgia. “Whether it’s a man or a woman or a non-binary person.”
Continue reading...The bittersweet story of Marina Abramović’s epic walk on the Great Wall of China
In 1988 Abramović and Ulay trekked from opposite ends of the wall to meet in the middle, but this act of love and performance art was doomed from the start
From the moment in 1976 that Serbian and German performance artists Marina Abramović and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, who died last month aged 76) clapped eyes on each other they were inseparable. Ulay found Abramović witchy and otherworldly; she found him wild and exciting. Even their initial encounter was propitious: they met in Amsterdam on their shared birthday of 30 November.
The pair began to perform together, describing themselves as a “two-headed body”. For years they lived a nomadic lifestyle, travelling across Europe in a corrugated iron van and performing in villages and towns. Their artistic collaborations matched their personalities: they focused on performances that put them in precarious and physically demanding situations, to see how they and their audience would respond. In one, called Relation in Time, they remained tied together by their hair for 17 hours. They explored conflict, taking their ideas to extremes: running full pelt into each other, naked, and slapping each other’s faces until they could take no more.
Continue reading...‘Beginning of a new era’: how culture went virtual in the face of crisis
The rise of Covid-19 has forced cultural institutions to explore alternative digital spaces with online exhibitions and a rise in virtual reality
It’s a terrible time for going out. Since the emergence of Covid-19 and resulting self-quarantine, thousands of museums, cultural institutions, festivals and global happenings have temporarily shuttered operations, leaving behind empty streets and a restless public. In a sector that thrives on in-person connection, the loss of an audience is disastrous, yet resilient performers, institutions, galleries, even entire art fairs, are moving to the digital arena, using streaming services and virtual reality, manifesting live concerts on the gaming app Twitch, organizing Instagram dance parties and launching online-only spaces.
During his popular 2015 Ted Talk, the immersive artist, entrepreneur and director Chris Milk suggested that virtual reality could someday become the “ultimate empathy machine” but despite an initial burst of interest in 2015 during the launch of the Oculus Rift headset, immersive media have primarily remained niche. Now, with social distancing, the technology is experiencing something of a renaissance.
Continue reading...Coronavirus street art – in pictures
Covid-19 is the subject of topical, colourful and attention-grabbing street art, whether it is for artistic, educational or political ends
Continue reading...Van Gogh painting stolen from Dutch museum
Thieves have stolen the £5m Parsonage Garden at Neunen in Spring by the famous artist from the Singer Laren museum
A painting by Vincent van Gogh with an estimated value of up to £5m has been stolen from a Dutch museum currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The thieves took Van Gogh’s Parsonage Garden at Neunen in Spring after smashing through the front glass door of the Singer Laren museum, in Laren, at around 3.15am on Sunday morning. No other art is believed to be missing.
Continue reading...Smile-ing Boys Project – in pictures
Kay Rufai’s portraits of smiling black boys from south London came out of an initiative that investigated the lack of mental health provisions for black teenagers. The photographs will be on display at Brixton Village
Continue reading...Covid-19 prompts all major British theatres to close doors
Fifty London theatres and 250 throughout UK to close, says industry body
- Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
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All major British theatre will cease and several cultural institutions will close or postpone shows as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK’s arts and culture sector grows following the government’s call for “drastic action” to halt its spread.
The Society of London Theatre (Solt) and UK Theatre, the industry body that represents nearly every British theatre, announced that, as of Monday night, all its members would close their doors. The groups represent about 50 London theatres and almost 250 others throughout the UK.
Continue reading...‘It almost destroyed me’: behind New York’s greatest nightclub, Studio 54
In a new exhibition, Studio 54 co-founder Ian Schrager goes back to the late 70s to explore the highs and lows of the celebrity-packed hotspot
Ian Schrager has seen many things in his life, but nothing quite like this. The 73-year-old Studio 54 co-founder is freaking out on the phone.
“It’s funny after 40 years! Forty years!” he exclaims. “Doing an exhibition on Studio 54? In a world-class museum? I don’t think anyone would have believed that – but they were too busy dancing.”
Continue reading...Famous for 15 minutes! My week living as Andy Warhol
As an artist and a celebrity, Warhol changed the world. But what really went on behind those shades? Ahead of Tate’s epic show, our writer unleashes his inner Andy
I am in agony. I’m sitting at home wearing a Breton top and a pair of shades, my hair freshly bleached, my belly swollen and sore. Perhaps that’s because I have just eaten five tins of Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup. Why would anyone do that? Well, I’m trying to live like Andy Warhol, the pop artist who died in the 1980s but is still a household name. And it’s not going smoothly.
Like the cafes of Paris or the skyscrapers of New York, Warhol is is so omnipresent in popular culture, the average person could probably draw a good likeness of him, despite knowing little about him. It’s the same with his work. Every framed tin of Campbell’s soup or colour-saturated portrait of Marilyn Monroe screams Warhol. And most people are familiar with his most famous quote: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
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