Morbid question one: if Damien Hirst fell into a vat of formaldehyde tomorrow, how would this affect the monetary value of his works? The ultimate art-businessman has, like most on Artlyst’s reel of richest artists, become so having found a brand-formula which happened to become recognised, sought-after, a sure-fire investment. Except the trouble with having […]
The Turner Prize nominated artist Roger Hiorns plans to bury a jumbo jet for a site-specific installation near Birmingham. Meanwhile the Swiss artist Christoph Büchel has a similar plan in progress. Great minds think alike, perhaps they should collaborate? No this is heading for the biggest aviation competition since the ‘Space Race’ Mr Hiorns decommissioned plane will be installed […]
Spot the difference (sorry.. actually not sorry) between Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin, the darling of minimalism, whose retrospective at Tate Modern opened this week. For each bears a method, a distinct style – or lack of, depending on how characterful you regard blobs and tiny lines – which is repeated with infinite variations, ad infinitum. Immediately, […]
2 June 2015
Modern Art Oxford is presenting ‘Origins of the Species (Part 2)’ an expansive exhibition of works by the acclaimed US artist Lynn Hershman Leeson. Surveying the artist’s large body of work from 1959 to the present, and exploring Hershman Leeson’s prophetic oeuvre which foresaw our obsession with technology and its effect on the nature of […]
1 June 2015
British painter Justin Mortimer’s latest works are currently on display at Parafin Gallery, London. The artist’s painting reflects upon a figurative world in a state of 21st century ‘Baconian’ disorder, often pushing the boundaries of figuration and landscape with a slight fetishistic overtone. The artist’s usual necrotic hues give way to the artificial colours of […]
Art in whatever form – painting, theatre, a child’s potato stamp – is the means by which we express externally an almost infinite range of internal emotions, goals, aspirations, complaints. When it gets it right, it is sublime, and touches many people in varying ways on so many levels; but most importantly it opens their […]
A decent studio space is hard enough to acquire in London but now it seems it’s also hard to hold on to it. Artists at the Cremer Street Studios have recently been told to sign letter in support for the destruction of their own working environment, yes you read that correctly. The group of over […]
The mysterious chat noir litters (a pun already? Awesome) art history like so much shed fur; the terribly unsubtle feline companion stealing the show in Manet’s ‘Olympia’, that ice cool white Percy out-cooling Mr and Mrs Clark in Hockney’s portrait. Their irresistible allure peppers art and music –check out Rossini’s ‘Duetto buffo di due gatti’; or, an […]
Writing about the increasingly obsolete Turner Prize is the very definition of shooting fish in a barrel. Waldemar Januszczak has already written the Turner Prize essay to end all essays: calling 2014’s effort nothing short of torturous, “plumbing the depths of portentous banality”. He posited himself as an unwitting guinea pig, sacrificing himself so that […]
14 May 2015
The Zabludowicz Collection is presenting a major exhibition featuring over 30 leading international artists, including eight Turner Prize winners, to celebrate 20 years of the collection. The show brings together significant works, many never before seen in the UK, and reflects the attitude of bold experimentation that defines the Zabludowicz Collection. The collection was founded […]
Does art add anything to places of natural beauty? It seems to be popular at the moment for site specific art to interact with the landscape. Many well known artists such as Richard Serra have tried their hand at enhancing beauty spots, but is it successful? The subject needs to be addressed and the public needs to ask the fundamental question […]
9 May 2015
The Zabludowicz Collection presents a major exhibition featuring over 30 leading international artists, including eight Turner Prize winners, to celebrate 20 years of the collection. Bringing together significant works, many never before seen in the UK. The exhibition reflects the attitude of bold experimentation that defines the Zabludowicz Collection. The collection was founded in 1994 […]
Does fine art still have political teeth? Remember, if you will, such historical examples as Delacroix’s ‘Victory Leading the People’, the cautionary tales of corruption by Hogarth, or the savage cartoons of James Gillray, to pluck from the vast array of politically charged fine art. Yet as a medium for change it has effectively died […]
The Turin Shroud, one of Christianity’s most celebrated and hotly-debated relics, is back on display to the public for the first time in half a decade.More than one million people have already booked their tickets to see the piece of linen that devotees believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Many devoted individuals […]
After the recent arrest of Marco Evaristti in Iceland, when local landowners accused him of vandalism after the Danish-Chilean artist dyed the Strokkur geyser pink, Artlyst questions the morality of the artist appropriating nature as a canvas. Was this act a harmless intervention? or is it a signifier of our ever-growing dislocation from the natural […]
Given the range of names appearing in Artlyst’s forged artists countdown, you would be forgiven for thinking that the measure of an artist who has finally ‘made it’ is one who has been copied, and copied by stealth and deceit for monetary gain. For the driving influence behind why forgeries are made exists outside the […]
1 May 2015
The Sainsbury Centre For Visual Arts presents ‘Francis Bacon and the Masters’, the latest exhibition bringing together over twenty-five major works by the great British painter Francis Bacon and juxtaposing them with old and modern masters, including Velázquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Michelangelo, Rodin, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Matisse. The exhibition forms the culmination of the celebrations […]
I remember viewing the exhibition ‘Francis Bacon: Working on Paper’, at Tate Britain in February 1999 with some scepticism. Bacon claimed that he never did preparatory work, didn’t draw, or make sketches before beginning work on one of his visceral creations. I really believed that these alleged snippets into Bacon’s apparently illicit practice of sketching […]
“Ars longa, vita brevis” should be uttered (and was, repeatedly, ad nauseum by my moustachioed diploma fine art tutor) with a heavy dose of irony. Yes, much art has a greater life span than the average puny human, yet even the Art Loss Register – a vast trove of seemingly endless recorded works gone, pinched, […]
In 2013 Van Buuren Museum, Brussels, suffered a robbery in which several works of art were stolen from its collection; including ‘The Thinker’ (1907) by Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, estimated at a replacement value of €1.2 million, or over £861,000. Other works stolen in this audacious and swift art heist included a painting by […]
22 April 2015
Francis Bacon and the Masters is the latest exhibition of works by the late-great British painter, bringing together over twenty-five major works by Bacon and juxtaposing them with old and modern masters, including Velázquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Michelangelo, Rodin, Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse. Francis Bacon and the Masters forms the culmination of the celebrations marking […]
20 April 2015
1) When did you begin drawing and painting, Lucas? My mother was an artist and so drawing and painting were always encouraged when I was young. It wasn’t until I was 20 years old that I began painting and drawing regularly. Martin Lubner was my first teacher and introduced me to a wide range of materials. We started with […]
Last week Madonna got up on the Tonight Show, hosted by Jimmy Fallon, in a staged and contrived act and performed not the best of her 80s music, in medley form, (judging by her get-up) but a cringable stand-up comedy routine. She dug out some of her mothballed desperately seeking susan gear from the back of […]
Artlyst recently created a list of the most offensive works of art; so what is the difference between this and its idea of hated art? Our good friend Marcel Duchamp may hold the answer. For the critical point in tipping the urinal over, marking it ‘R. Mutt’ and placing it in a gallery – launching […]
Artlyst is not normally one for conspiracy theories, but we have noticed an alarming trend with the seeming exodus of London’s leading museum directors. This includes the resignation of Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, Dr. Nicolas Penny retiring from the National Gallery, and Director Penelope Curtis resigning from Tate Britain – everyone […]
Do I detect a pattern here? There is an exodus afoot amongst the highest echelons of museum management; in the past twelve months the resignations have been announced of Nicholas Penny (National Gallery), Sandy Nairne (National Portrait Gallery), Penelope Curtis (Tate Britain), and now the biggest of the cheeses: Neil MacGregor of the British Museum. This is not a case of incompetency. Far […]
9 April 2015
Modern Art Oxford presents ‘Upward Mobility’ a major new site-specific installation by Debora Delmar Corp. This is the adopted name of Mexican artist Débora Delmar, a name that was chosen after reflecting on capitalist lifestyles and aspirational aesthetics. Working with sculpture, video and installation, Debora Delmar Corp. explores the way in which our global consumer […]
Religious or not, we are all familiar with the spirit of giving, new life and general goodwill associated with decorating and eating eggs at Easter. The practice in any case dates back to ancient times, Christianity only taking it up with later examples found from Mesopotamia; even later it was further established as a religious […]
Rembrandt, unlike Vermeer who made extraordinary universes out of small rooms in the provincial town of Delft, needed to leave his native Leiden for Amsterdam in order to drape his sitters in exotic costumes and enjoy the worldly benefits that his remarkable talent afforded him. Slowly, from clean, crisp portraits and history paintings, atmosphere crept […]
28 March 2015
In the second and final part of our featured discussion between Hans Haacke and Jon Bird at the ICA, we conclude that Mr Haacke’s work crosses boundaries of Conceptual, Minimal, Pop and site specific Land Art. His latest work unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square titled, ‘Gift Horse’ is no exception to the artist’s reputation […]
28 March 2015
Berloni Gallery presents ‘BUILD!’, a solo exhibition by English painter Edward Coyle, following the artist’s twelve month on-site residency at the gallery. Coyle creates a framework for his practice from various source materials, including photography and video, 3D modelling software, and data corruption processes, to form the basis of an empirical study into the conjectured […]
The term ‘offence’, in the context of ‘to take offence at’ (as opposed to, an illegal offence or act against the law) is defined as an “annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult to or disregard for oneself”. Thus if we look at artworks which have caused outrage over the centuries, we find […]