French retrospective celebrates work of German artist Anselm Kiefer

Paris – France’s Centre Pompidou opened a retrospective of the works of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer on Tuesday with more than 150 works documenting his career from the late 1960’s to the present. Visitors to the exhibition, the first of its kind in France for more than three decades, can stroll through 10 […]

Raw meat, live sex and snakes: the dangerous art of Carolee Schneemann

“Don’t bring your underaged children or grandchildren. Don’t bring your grandmother or other relatives. Don’t bring your out-of-town guests. The current exhibit is awful. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t art.” A new book about Carolee Schneemann begins with this warning from a visitor to one of her exhibitions. This review may […]

Rodney Graham | Studio Visit | TateShots

Rodney Graham works across various disciplines including photography, film, performance and sculpture and is often associated with the Vancouver School. The diversity of the mediums he uses is also reflected in the multiple cultural, historical, literary and philosophic references he layers within his work. Watch the TateShots Video.

Ulay v Marina: how art’s power couple went to war

If you do nothing else on this site, watch this Video! A bearded old man with a weathered face stands in pink knickers. As part of his performance A Skeleton in the Closet, he is writing numbers on the wall of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum: 252, 253, 288, 289. The lucky spectators who made it in to […]

Paddle8, Online Auction House Aims to Give Big Houses a Run for Their Money

Think of an auction house, and centuries-old institutions like Sotheby’s and Christie’s probably spring to mind.  But a four-year-old start-up believes that it can become something of an online equivalent to those companies — and it has drawn big-name backers from the art world along the way. The venture, Paddle8, plans to announce on Wednesday […]

10 Gallery Shows You Need to Pay Attention to This Fall

There have been persistent murmurs in the art world about the imminent (market) demise of the so-called Zombie Formalism movement, a kind of colorful, undemanding type of abstract painting that’s commanded astronomical prices for the past few years. Dire predictions and a few disappointing auction results aside, the evidence is hardly overwhelming. And yet, looking ahead to the fall’s most […]

From Duchamp to Demand: 10 Masterpieces That Show the Evolution of Conceptual Art

In a 1967 Artforum article titled “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” the artist Sol LeWitt gave a simple definition for what would soon become one of the crucial facets of contemporary art in the 20th century and beyond. “In conceptual art,” he writes, “the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work….The idea […]

Wael Shawky’s Epic Films Will Completely Change How You See the Crusades

Egypt-born and -based Wael Shawky inhabits the epic’s structure impeccably, and in the most unexpected way possible: with puppets. In a lush, labyrinthine trilogy of films being exhibited at MoMA PS1, he uses sublimely designed, marvelously costumed ensembles of marionettes and puppets — some made centuries ago, others fashioned by the artist of Murano glass. […]

Philippe Parreno’s Hypnotism at the Park Avenue Armory

“The architecture becomes semi-conscious,” said Philippe Parreno during a morning press conference debuting his new installation for the Park Avenue Armory, which opens today and is on view through August 2. I believe he followed up this building-coming-alive statement with a comparison to the work of Philip K. Dick — the artist’s thick French accent […]

HERE AND NOW: PHILIPPE PARRENO’S ‘H{N)YPN(Y}OSIS’ TAKES OVER THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY

Philippe Parreno’s H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS (pronounced “hypnosis,” just to confuse us all) is bewildering. Staged in the Park Avenue Armory’s massive drill hall, it’s an installation that involves film, sculpture, music, and performance. It takes at least two hours to get through, and feels as slow and frustrating as the traffic on Broadway during […]

Christoph Büchel: The Mosque. Icelandic Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 2015

Swiss artist Christoph Büchel was selected to represent Iceland at the 56th Art Biennale in Venice, Italy. His idea was to transform a church, Santa Maria della Misericordia at Campo de L’Abazia, into a mosque. Accordingly, the show is called The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice and has been realized […]

Anselm Kiefer in Conversation with Tim Marlow – Video

Anselm Kiefer in Conversation before Kiefer’s major retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, with the new Director of the RA, Tim Marlow. This is only the third time that one artist has taken over the whole of the Royal Academy, the other two being David Hockney and Anish Kapoor – we can’t wait to […]

The Mona Lisa Curse – Robert Hughes – Video

With his trademark style, Robert Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way we experience it have radically changed in the last 50 years, telling the story of the rise of contemporary art and looking back over a life spent talking and writing about the art he loves, and loathes. The video […]

Scanner Room – the Video

“Scanner Room” – an installation designed specifically for the gallery space that engulfs this space completely, creating an environment constructed by light and filled with it. The form is minimalist, its most important element is a constant, monochrome flow of light that materializes and diffuses itself subsequently. The space has been created for people to […]

Douglas Coupland: The future is everything (with video)

Douglas Coupland’s new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery crackles with creativity, invention and insight. Coupland’s work in “everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything” combines an incredible pop art sensibility that delights in combining colour, shape and form with a surprising and subtle mix of ideas. In the first major survey of his work […]

Hallelujah! Why Bill Viola’s Martyrs altarpiece at St Paul’s is to die for

Forget the bloody martyrdoms and hot pincers … Viola’s glorious new video installation is a hi-tech Caravaggio that redefines religious art. Bill Viola has created a powerful modern altarpiece for St Paul’s Cathedral that perfectly suits the restrained spirituality of this most English of churches. Coming into Christopher Wren’s great building on a weekday morning when crowded buses […]