Did American painting exist before Abstract Expressionism? Not such a daft question if we don’t get to see any of it. Many will still argue that American painting before mid-century, with just a few exceptions, is really too derivative, too backward-looking to get excited about, and that it was photography that American artists really excelled […]
David Shrigley admits it’s ridiculous to claim that a 10-metre-high thumbs up in Trafalgar Square will improve society, the economy and the weather – but he has to believe it. “As an artist you have to feel your art makes the world a better place and you have to believe that quite sincerely, otherwise why […]
A study reveals troubling import/export anomalies between China and the US. Money-laundering, tax evasion and the illicit transfer of cultural heritage objects could be factors explaining large discrepancies that have emerged in an analysis of art shipments between China and the US. Read on …
We’ve been debating painting’s death for centuries now, and it seems we can’t quit. In 1839 the late French painter Paul Delaroche first dared to say those fateful words “painting is dead.” But even now nobody can agree if it’s dead; painting’s been reborn more times than we can count, thanks to critics who declare […]
The Sobey Art Award announced January 27 that it is expanding its purse by nearly 50 percent, solidifying the award’s position as Canada’s leading prize for contemporary artists. Formerly set at $70,000, the Sobey Foundation has increased its total sum to $100,000. The added capital will singularly affect the runners-up, which includes four short-listed artists (who formerly […]
Jemima Kirke of TV show Girls discusses how women have always made art, even if they’ve been absent from the history books (and gallery walls). This short film made by the Tate investigates the role of women as makers, not just muses – from Lee Miller to the Guerrilla Girls.
While Dasha Zhukova was all apologies yesterday concerning what some observers have dubbed the “Racist Chair” fiasco—in which Russian socialite and arts patron Zhukova was pictured on Russian fashion website Buro 24/7 sitting atop a Bjarne Melgaard sculpture of a black woman trussed up to form the shape of a chair—Melgaard and his dealer, Gavin Brown, are taking a different tack. In […]
As far as the art market is concerned, the phrase “economic crisis” doesn’t exist. Whilst it’s difficult to predict whether the exceptional sales figures realised by auction houses this year will be replicated – or even surpassed – in 2014, there is every reason to believe that the demand for prestigious lots will remain high. […]
“The Pictures Generation” is as elusive as any label attached to a group of contemporary artists. As it is often used, the phrase refers to a range of painters and photographers active during the 1970s and ‘80s whose work made use of images appropriated from mass culture. With that understanding, it’s easy to conjure up some […]
We begin 2014 with a resolution, and that is to leave all the unfinished business of 2013 behind—to be done with it, to turn our back on it and give it not another thought. After all, we don’t want to start the new year by getting distracted by all the unexplored themes and missed opportunities […]
“The National Gallery’s great advantage is that we are obliged to give prominence to works of art that are important in the collection but don’t mean much to people today,” he says cheerfully. Conceptual works by trendy names – notably installations by Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger alongside Titian in 2012 – have entered the […]
Can visual art offer solace, hope and reassurance as music can? The writer chooses the works that make him feel less alone. It comes naturally to most of us to think of music as therapeutic. Almost all of us are, without training, DJs of our own souls, deft at selecting pieces of music that will enhance or […]
This provocative, perhaps unanswerable question is worth asking for what it reveals about a cultural arena in which money and fame often seem to be the paramount obsessions. Surveying the results fromV.F.’s poll of top artists, academics, and curators, Mark Stevens creates a portrait of the art world today and identifies the values that really […]
Crotchless trousers, baths of excrement, John Cage, Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic … in the first of a series of exclusive films with the Tate, in which stars give potted histories of art movements, Frank Skinner opens up the wild world of performance art.
Since the invention of the printing press, artists have used it for a wide variety of reasons—to experiment with new forms, to exploit its unique strengths as an image-making tool, and to create more work than one person can execute by hand. Equally importantly, artists have made prints so that their artistic visions would be […]
Is bigger art always better art? Certainly in the age of Instagram, anything monumental is hard to discredit; people are easily impressed and love to obsess over questions like “How did it get here, how was it made and how much does it cost?” Somehow they forget the basic questions: “What is it and why is it?”
David Hockney recently touched off a controversywith a poster advertising his new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts that read: “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally.” When the BBC journalist Andrew Marr asked Hockney if the statement was a dig at Damien Hirst, who employs up to 100 craftsmen to […]
The art dealer talks about his rise from selling fire extinguishers to making household names of Britain’s YBAs. Standing on bohemian, buzzing Bermondsey Street in south London, outside Europe’s biggest commercial art gallery, its owner Jay Jopling gazes through a row of upright, painted steel fins that demarcates the courtyard. “I wanted a low wall, to be […]
In many ways the art world is a latecomer to the kinds of copyright tensions that have already played out in fields like music and movies, where extensive systems of policing, permission and licensing have evolved. But art lawyers say that legal challenges are now coming at a faster pace, perhaps in part because the […]
Here at GalleristNY we initially resisted the idea of creating a Power List (anyone who reads The Observer will know that they are treasured here), until we realized we could use one to make a point.