Bruce Nauman is considered a towering and influential figure in postwar American art. His reputation as a master of minimalist and conceptual art was cemented more than four decades ago when he was first showing with Leo Castelli in New York and in important European shows like “When Attitudes Become Form,” at the Kunsthalle Bern […]
Are you a newly-minted tech millionaire with cash to burn and an urge to start an art collection? If so, you’re the unicorn that every art dealer in America is hoping to take for a ride. Why else would mega-galleries like Gagosian, Pace, and David Zwirner be making it out to the Seattle Art Fair this summer? They’re looking to […]
Marc Quinn’s last London show, five years ago, featured figurative sculptures of defiantly non-Classical subjects including pregnant men, women with penises and a lady called Chelsea Charms who apparently has the dubious honor of possessing the largest breasts on planet earth (although the fickle nature of this kind of fame means she may no longer […]
LONDON — Marc Quinn led the way through his East London studio late last month, past a marble sculpture of a fetus, a photorealist painting of raw meat and a bronze statue of Kate Moss in a yoga position. Entering his workroom, he casually walked over distorted three-dimensional canvases of seascapes strewn across the floor. […]
Global companies with an eye on the bigger picture invest in contemporary creations. Just beyond the turnstiles of Deutsche Bank’s London reception sits a large object resembling several huge dollops of creamy Plasticine. As the viewer comes close, it turns out to be a sculpture made entirely of dice. “Secretions” (1998) by British artist Tony […]
The common refrain, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” could make a perfect catchphrase for Process Art. A movement that arose in the 1960s and ’70s and has since expanded in definition to describe a general philosophical approach to making art, Process Art places its emphasis on the process and act of artistic creation rather than the […]
Brunelleschi’s Dome, the architectural marvel that is in Florence’s Piazza del Duomo, may be one of the most breathtaking sights you’ll ever encounter. Staging an art exhibition that can successfully compete with a view of that iconic building is a tall order, but Antony Gormley‘s current show, “Human” is up to the challenge. Perched on a hill overlooking […]
When you’ve spent 30 years wearing a gorilla mask, as the women known by the aliases Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz have, certain behavior becomes second nature. So there were Kahlo and Kollwitz, two of the pseudonymous founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, the activist, feminist art collective, preening and posing at their 30th anniversary […]
Richard Wilson’s 20:50 work will leave the Saatchi Gallery in London, and head for David Walsh’s museum in Tasmania—but may go on a world tour first. The Australian collector David Walsh has bought the oil installation 20:50 by the UK sculptor Richard Wilson, one of the most talked about art interventions of the past 25 […]
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. […]
He kickstarted German punk, went on a mission to rescue Joseph Beuys and escaped the eastern bloc pursued by guard dogs. In a rare interview, one of Germany’s leading artists relives his extraordinary adventures. Imi Knoebel is surrounded by so many colours he has lost count. “I have 600, maybe 700,” he says. They hang […]
Ms. Hatoum has a solo show of 110 works at the Pompidou, her biggest and most prominent exhibition yet. (It runs through Sept. 28 and travels to the Tate Modern in London in May 2016. A smaller, unrelated show opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston on Aug. 26.) The nonchronological display includes […]
The hundreds of gallery owners who apply each year to secure a coveted booth at Art Basel, the Swiss art fair, spend weeks on their admission applications. They describe the evolution of their galleries, track the history of their exhibitions and list the biographies of their artists. Then there is the matter of the “mock […]
The artist’s new project at Chateau de Versailles, in France, has already led to controversy. The exhibition runs from 9 June to 1 November.
Paris might be the world’s most romantic city, but when it comes to talking about sex, Parisians are proving a little prudish (see Paul McCarthy Beaten Up over Butt Plug Sculpture and Artist Enacts Origin of the World at Musée d’Orsay—And, Yes, That Means What You Think). One of Anish Kapoor‘s sculptures at his newly-opened solo show at Versailles […]
When he was young, the French artist Philippe Parreno had a fantasy in which he would open his mouth and a beam of projector light would shoot out, casting his thoughts onto whatever was in front of him, medium and message in one human head. “My imagination would just be easy and available,” he once […]
On June 7, Anish Kapoor‘s newest sculptural interventions will be unveiled at the Palace of Versailles (see Anish Kapoor Tapped for 2015 Solo Show at Versailles). Kapoor’s installation is part of a series of contemporary art exhibitions at Versailles that began in 2008 with a controversial Jeff Koons show, and has since included artists Xavier […]
Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum are artists, journalists, dissidents, polymaths — and targets. Their respective governments, China and the United States, monitor their every move. They have been detained and interrogated. Ai cannot leave China, and Appelbaum is advised not to return to the United States. They are separated from their families. Ai has been […]
Situated on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the ‘glass tea house mondrian’ by japanese artist hiroshi sugimoto unites wood, glass and water as a pavilion, holding the traditional japanese tea ceremony within its transparent walls. the temporary structure, presented at the venice architecture biennale 2014 as part of the activities of le stanze […]
In the summer of 1967, Martin left New York and went off-grid before reappearing in New Mexico. The art she made there – with its buoyant bands of colour – offer no clues to the turbulent life of an artist who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Ahead of a major retrospective, Olivia Laing celebrates her […]