Dr James Fox has never really got conceptual art. And he’s not alone. Conceptual art has been treated with suspicion and incredulity by virtually everyone outside the art world for nearly a hundred years. Ever since Marcel Duchamp first displayed a signed urinal and claimed it was art in 1917. So was he taking the […]
There are beautiful, marvellous and terrifying things in the Royal Academy’s much-trumpeted survey of Abstract Expressionism. What more could one ask in a show including the explosive and tender Jackson Pollock; De Kooning swerving and jumbling and dismembering his frightening figures of women; Rothko’s tangy brightness and trembling, tremulous darkness;Barnett Newman’s zips and planes and […]
Sculpture has gone through a plethora of transformations in the modern era, from Rodin’s emotionally charged, erotic figures in the 1880s, to Judd’s geometric, stoic forms of the 1960s, to the current anything-goes approach of contemporary sculptors. Naturally, the best (or at least best-remembered) artists use their work to respond to the pressing political and […]
Maurizio Cattelan’s new, site-specific work opens to the public at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum today September 16, 2016. For “America”, the artist replaces a toilet in one of the museum’s public restrooms with a fully functional replica cast in solid gold. Cattelan is often described as the art world’s resident prankster and provocateur; this installation is the first artwork […]
What is clear is that Gander’s become a powerhouse, with his works intriguing and baffling people in major shows throughout the world, and all this has made him something of a lodestar to young artists in England, a group he also supports by setting up art schools around the country. Among Gander’s works is This Consequence (2005), where […]
WHETHER AS A CREATOR of ravishing bouquets and sumptuous textiles or as a curator of disparate but uniformly stunning objects, WILLEM DE ROOIJ has never shied away from beauty. But, as DANIEL BIRNBAUM argues in the pages that follow, de Rooij has been equally unflinching in his insistence on the political and historical dimensions of […]
With works spanning two decades that force us to pause, reflect, and see the world through fresh eyes, Martin Creed has challenged what it means to be an artist. Born in Wakefield, England in 1968, Creed grew up in Scotland where his father worked as a silversmith and lectured at Glasgow School of Art. Creed […]
“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” – Sir Winston Churchill Join Laing Brown, a noted art collector, Board Member and Chair of the Audain Art Museum Acquisitions Committee, for a public multi-media presentation where he will discuss his Top 10 Collecting Rules for contemporary […]
At Kukje Gallery, three formidable, twisted mirrored columns display warped visions. “It’s a stupid, simple idea, but it does something—it becomes something else,” said Kapoor, by way of introducing the latest additions to his “Non Objects” series, which are the centerpiece of the current show. He was referring to the 90-degree twist, which transforms mundane columns into strangely unknowable objects […]
In a multiyear project that has exploded beyond any one gallery space, New York’s Jill Magid has reactivated the legacy of Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán. Beyond a call for access to a one-of-a-kind archive, Magid’s work with Barragán is literary stagecraft that implicates a cast of characters involved in mysterious multinational negotiations, as well as legal and […]
What did the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism do so differently? And how is their work still relevant today? As the first survey of Abstract Expressionism for nearly 60 years is staged in Britain, co-curator David Anfam answers key questions. 1. How was Abstract Expressionism different to what came before? Crucially Abstract Expressionism, or ‘Ab […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Seattle Art Fair, started last year by Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, has a proud inner geek. But like Mr. Allen himself, who has fingerprints on much of the city’s explosion of growth, geekiness only touches the surface. Through a real estate development arm of his company, Vulcan Inc., he is building […]
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 […]
A conceptual artist devises an ingenious plan for negotiating access to a hidden archive. Last September, in Guadalajara, an American conceptual artist named Jill Magid and a pair of gravediggers convened at the Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres, a monument where the most celebrated citizens of the state of Jalisco are entombed. With them were two […]