The dazzling, haunting ‘combines’ at the heart of Tate Modern’s forthcoming retrospective were part of a private game between Rauschenberg and his peers and sometime lovers, Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns. Robert Rauschenberg’s 1954 work Untitled is an upright wooden box supported by a white, colonial-era table leg over an open stage-like enclosure in which […]
The Museum of Modern Art has wisely advertised its Bruce Conner retrospectivewith an image of Bombhead, a 1989/2002 print in which an army general’s head is replaced with a mushroom cloud. This is a show that promises to blow your mind, and it lives up to that threat. Trippy, disturbing, entertaining, and whimsical all at […]
Among radical 20th century art movements (of which there are more than a few), Surrealism is one of the few that’s been able to establish a hold on the popular as well as avant-garde imaginary, in no small part due to the outlandish public persona of its self-proclaimed ringleader Salvador Dalí. What’s sometimes forgotten, however, […]
Ai Weiwei’s Tree (2009–10) stands a towering five metres in height, and spans the same distance at its upper reaches. A commanding yet enchanting presence in Gallery B105, Tree is flanked to the west by the late Sol LeWitt’s experiment with colour and asymmetry, Wall Drawing No. 623 Double asymmetrical pyramids with colour ink washes […]
Despite its status as one of the most widely cited and recognizable art movements to come out of the early 20th century,Surrealism remains (perhaps appropriately) something of an enigma to contemporary art viewers. In some ways, it’s simply too strange—the paintings, sculptures, and writing that the loosely defined philosophy has produced appear to have little […]
Tate Modern’s retrospective of Mona Hatoum spans the artist’s 35-year career, and she has made a lot of art. Hatoum’s works mine geopolitics, gender, art history, and her own past to reveal a world that is frightening and complex. Hatoum’s practice is layered and asks for contemplation. By abstracting the everyday, objects are made distressing, […]
“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada,” proclaimed the poet, musician, and theater producer Hugo Ball in the summer of 1916, as World War I raged on. “How does one become famous? By saying dada…How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, Europeanized, enervated? By […]
In former sex clubs, churches, and East German watering holes. When the Berlin collector Karen Boros first visited the place she now calls home, in the late 1990s, she was “catapulted into a different world,” she recently told me. “People were running around in leather outfits and strange masks, and fog machines made it impossible […]
If Martin Creed had been alive in Medieval Europe, it is easy to imagine him as an admired court jester, entertaining the royals with dashes of absurdity while at the same time speaking truth to power, gingerly prodding the monarch. Creed delights in tweaking, and even flouting, convention. He hatches harebrained schemes—usually just single, simple […]
New York art show The Keeper celebrates our poetic obsession with objects, but how many of us simply surround ourselves with familiar, reassuring rubbish? The exhibition and these reactions suggest a new chapter in the history of collecting. The psychology of the collector seems more traumatised, anxious and defensive. The type of collecting the New […]
Susan Philipsz and John Cage have shown that the genre has claims to greatness, but two works in Edinburgh betray the emptiness of much sound art. Let’s get this straight, sound art buffs: of course art can be made with sound. It can be made with anything. The first masterpiece of sound art is Marcel […]
Has much changed since Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain? The art world is no stranger to the gasp-inducing project or performance: in fact, it seems at times to thrive on it. In these dog days of summer, when the art world slows down and the tumbleweeds approach Chelsea, we’re excited to hear that provocative exhibitions are still […]
Anish Kapoor has the exclusive rights to paint using Vantablack, the blackest black that has ever existed – but other artists are keen to use it. Colour is precious. Colour can drive you mad – especially if you are an artist. The colours that artists use can be as expensive as gold – which installationist […]
Fluxus was a loose confederation of international artists in the 1960s working in performance, painting, sculpture, poetry, experimental music, and even correspondence art (art sent through the postal service). It was often, though not exclusively, political in tone. Fluxus works shared similarities with the “Happenings” of Allan Kaprow, particularly in the way they blurred distinctions […]
While the lone wolf artist has long been romanticized for its singular (if not god-given) genius, the creative duo has also, many times over, recast the shape of art. Below, we explore seven of art history’s game-changing partnerships during the 20th century. For these pioneering artists—from Christo and Jeanne-Claude to Marina Abramovic & Ulay—collaboration was […]
When I first saw the vid of the reunion of the two artists Marina Ambramovic and Frank Uwe Laysiepen aka ‘Ulay’ after 33 years of being apart, I was so touched by how they look at each other eyes and you can tell that true love never dies. 🙂 Watch the Video – Click Here. […]
David Bowie in his final, magnificent performance, Lazarus. WATCH the VIDEO – click here. Make it BIG and turn up the sound …
For his first show at Hauser & Wirth, which opened Wednesday, June 29, Mexico City- and London-based artist Stefan Brüggemann covered the walls of the first floor of the gallery’s Upper-East-Side outpost with spray-painted scareheads ripped from recent news stories and quotes culled from classic films. Part of his ongoing “Headlines and Last Line in […]
The Floating Piers on Lake Iseo in Sulzano, Italy The first work by Bulgarian artist Christo in more than a decade is seemingly miraculous; three kilometres of shimmering marigold walkways floating atop Italy’s Lake Iseo, giving visitors the power to walk on water. First conceived in 1970 by Christo and Jeanne-Claude – his partner in life and […]
The haunting work titled CHILD goes on show in New York after two decades away from the public eye. Conservators at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York have done the seemingly impossible: they have brought Bruce Conner’s CHILD (1959-60), a haunting sculpture of a gas chamber execution, back from the dead ahead […]