The National Gallery found itself the centre of a large PR pickle this week as the dirty word ‘privatisation’ was bandied back and forth over its decision to outsource gallery invigilation to security firm CIS, to the mass dismay of unions. Indeed, anyone who visited ‘Rembrandt: the late works’ will have noticed for the first […]
Regulation is needed in the global art market because it is vulnerable to money laundering, tax evasion, trading on inside information and price manipulation – as reported by the Financial Times blog after an FT Weekend lunch in Davos. It is indeed not much of an exaggeration to state that the art world is the […]
25 January 2015
Young artist/curator Zavier Ellis runs the highly regarded CHARLIE SMITH London, which is renowned for identifying some of London’s best new art talent. Ellis has again curated ‘Young Gods’ at Griffin Gallery, and CHARLIE SMITH London, for the third year running. The artist/curator’s annual selection of graduates from London art schools is recognised as a […]
This spring twelve Jack Vettriano paintings are expected to fetch up to £1.2m when auctioned at Bonham’s. Previously the personal effects of this Scottish painter – such as his first easel – sold for a total of £21,000, and brand new paintings cost anything from £48,000 to £195,000. Factor in the estimated £500,000 he makes […]
18 January 2015
Zavier Ellis is a young artist/curator who runs the highly regarded CHARLIE SMITH London, a gallery with a history of identifying some of London’s best new art talent. Ellis has again curated ‘Young Gods’ at Griffin Gallery, and CHARLIE SMITH London, for the third year running. The artist/curator’s annual selection of graduates from London art […]
Labour has come under fire after a message was tweeted by the party confirming that it would uphold the £180m slashed from the Arts Council budget by the Tories. They stated that the party would not reverse Tory cuts to culture spending if it wins the general election. David Cameron’s government claimed on Monday that […]
Following last week’s musings on intellectual property, the Dulwich Picture Gallery has recently announced that as part of its exhibition programme for 2015 it would temporarily replace one of its current collection with a replica, commissioned from a Chinese workshop specialising in churning out high quality (if they can be called that) fakes. Apparently this […]
Warning: This Article Does Not contain An image Of The Prophet Muhammad. Some Of You May Find This Offensive. The BBC’s Newsnight which was broadcast after the 10 o’clock news last night, briefly showed a copy of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, which displays a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad on the cover. It […]
Jeff Koons is facing a second lawsuit over alleged plagiarism of intellectual property in two weeks; first regarding the sculpture ‘Naked’ supposedly copying the photography of Jean-François Bauret, and now the sculpture ‘Fait d’Hiver’, borrowing from a French clothing advert of 1985 by Franck Davidovici. They form part of his 1988 ‘Banality’ series, of which […]
It is truly astounding that not one noted British visual artist has been presented with an order of chivalry in this year’s New Year Honours List. An MBE however was awarded to the ceramicist Paul Cummins, along with Tom Piper a theatre designer for creating the Poppy Field, at the Tower of London, commemorating the […]
With the former US President George W. Bush admitting that he may not be “a great painter” – yet still exhibiting more than 24 portraits of world leaders that he met while president at his presidential library in Dallas, and continuing to make headlines for his new-found love of painting, even though – or perhaps […]
The highs and lows of art in 2014: early on the Whitechapel Gallery scored a big hit with deco-haired Hannah Höch’s impressively hard-hitting collages, an under-valued figure operating with relative independence alongside the Dadaists and a clear precursor to the celebrated current collage work of John Stezaker. A palpable hit for feminist art history. Aside […]
20 December 2014
In 1986 a young Jeremy Deller took up an invitation from Andy Warhol to hang out at the artist’s eponymous Factory. Deller was an art history graduate, bumping into Warhol at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, where The Turner Prize winning artist was approached by one of Warhol’s entourage. The visit remained entirely professional, and the result […]
It’s that time of year again, when a saccharine schmaltz descends in snowy suffocating blanket over us; Christmas is the most profitable time of year for many retailers and commerce, when persistent inane joy wrapped in sprinklings of jagged plastic and shiny film clutters our daily vision on the high street, on television, our insides […]
13 December 2014
Little did the Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller realise that a chance meeting with Andy Warhol would have a pivotal effect on his creative perspective, and future art career. At the tender age of 20, the artist took up an invitation from Warhol to hang out at the artist’s eponymous Factory. It was 1986 […]
If you thought the Frieze Art Fair was the pinnacle of superficiality in the contemporary art world, Art Basel which took place last week on Miami Beach is its attention grabbing, celebrity obsessed, glitter sprinkled sister: part art fair, part Spring Breakers! This is what Frieze would look like if frequented by the excessively moneyed, […]
The Elgin Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Marbles, which were scrubbed clean, whitened and preserved by the British Museum have created long standing international controversy. The question of whether or not the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon should now be given back to Greece, has been the subject of public discussion for decades. The […]
The New York art dealer Helly Nahmad has been released from prison after spending only five months of his one-year and one-day sentence. He was arrested and tried for operating an illegal gambling ring, with Russian gangsters, potentially worth millions, from his New York apartment, located in Trump Tower. In 2013, Nahmad, 36, pleaded guilty […]
6 December 2014
At the age of 20, the Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller took up an invitation from Andy Warhol to hang out at the artist’s eponymous Factory. It was 1986 and Deller was an art history graduate, bumping into Warhol at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, where he was approached by one of Warhol’s entourage. The visit […]
News emerged this week that Shia LaBeouf was ‘raped’ by a spectator at his collaborative show with the artists Luke Turner and Nastja Säde Rönkkö #IAMSORRY. Hold on a second, Shia LaBeouf has referenced Marina Abramovic’s famous ‘The Artist is Present’ performance?! That’s as depressing as similarly annoying youngish American actor James Franco pinching (and woefully […]
Art history generally lauds the arrival of democracy in Greece in the 5th Century BC, accompanied by a similarly noble pinnacle of super-naturalism in sculpture; that is, a form of art generally received as characteristically ‘pure’, or ‘above nature’. The arrival of the rule of law signified the backbone upon which democracy continues to structure […]
Welcome to the Establishment, Mr Jones, you may now safely wheel out your once risqué, now wince-inducing archaic women as furniture. Compare an artwork of the same era which borrowed the fetishistic imagery of Allen Jones’s women clad in bondage gear acting as domestic fittings; Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ approached him to dress the […]
The BBC have been criticised for not properly promoting a series of auctions of memorabilia, from Television Centre, the last of which raised only £100,000. The under publicised sale sold valuable Studio signs and backdrops in the auction, alongside large items such as industrial washing machines and a cherry-picker lorry. Television Centre was built in […]
My name is Charles Saatchi and I am an alcoholic: given the growing trend for sprinkling the magical commercial fairy dust that is “Art” onto consumable liquid, this would have been the perfect slogan for the market-defining marketer, if indeed he were still actually defining the market. For even David Beckham has cottoned on that […]
Each October during Frieze Week, Artlyst releases the Art PowerLyst, the alternative to ArtReview’s Power 100. Many think that AR’s list is erroneous and tired, with a criteria based on ‘sheer financial clout.’ It is dominated by commercial gallery owners, big-buck artists, and misguided auctioneers. The ArtLyst editorial staff believe that achievement should not be […]
25 February 2014
The emerging artist, Scarlett Lingwood, has a new show called, “Calasetta Calling,” on March 4th at the Stationer’s Hall in St. Paul’s. Since graduating from Goldsmiths in September, she has already achieved recognition through winning the Parasol unit Exposure 13 Award, which celebrates the work of recent graduates by inviting three winners to exhibit at […]