19 February 2015
Artlyst’s Ilka Scobie talks to one of the worlds most influential artists about his upcoming London exhibition and other stuff! As we approach the Soho loft of Alex Katz, Ada, his beautiful wife (and his most documented portrait subject) is bustling out of the cast iron building into the winter cold for some local food […]
14 February 2015
Justin Hammond is an independent curator, publisher, and art dealer, The Catlin Art Prize is an annual showcase for outstanding new artists in the UK, which has been described by The Independent as the Turner Prize for recent graduates. The prize was devised by Hammond in 2007, the independent curator then went on to compile […]
In my best Sam the Eagle voice: “Sales is vanity, profit is sanity”. Splashed all over the art newspapers this week were the impressive sales figures of Christie’s Surrealism auction, where lots sold for a combined total of £147m, (Write it in full: £147,031,000.00 – oooh look how titillatingly long that is!), with Miró’s ‘Women, […]
Damien Hirst is celebrating Valentine’s Day in the form of a pop-up exhibition at Paul Stolper, presenting LOVE, an exhibition of prints and sculptural editions by the artist. The exhibition will run over Valentine’s Day, and focuses exclusively on the theme of love. The exhibition includes ‘LOVE Gold’, a portfolio of love-heart prints, each foil […]
With the recent destruction of the iconic Eduardo Paolozzi mosaic arches at Tottenham Court Road tube station, that Artlyst considers to be one of the worst acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory – having occurred despite public protests and a petition from groups and the 20th Century Society, which attracted nearly 8000 signatures, TFL […]
7 February 2015
Justin Hammond is an independent curator, publisher, and art dealer, The Catlin Art Prize is an annual showcase for outstanding new artists in the UK, described by The Independent as the Turner Prize for recent graduates, which was devised by Hammond in 2007. The independent curator later went on to compile The Catlin Guide, a […]
Why put on an exhibition? What’s the point? The term curator comes from the Latin ‘curare’, “to look after”, simply meaning to care for a group of items, including cataloguing, conservation, and by extension academic research and education. When an exhibition is planned, the curators are tasked with moulding themselves to whatever agenda the display […]
4 February 2015
The renowned Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has a new exhibtion at David Zwirner, which is presenting the artist’s latest paintings, on view at the London gallery, which Tuymans inaugurated in October 2012 with the exhibition ‘Allo!’. This new exhibition ‘The Shore’ includes work that the artist specifically made for David Zwirner’s space. The artist is […]
Transport for London has demolished the iconic Eduardo Paolozzi mosaic arches at Tottenham Court Road station in one of the biggest acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory. Despite public protests and a petition from groups and the 20th Century Society, which attracted nearly 8000 signatures, TFL has now confirmed that three of the four […]
1 February 2015
The young artist/curator Zavier Ellis runs the highly regarded CHARLIE SMITH London, the gallery has 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 schools is […]
29 January 2015
The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans who was recently found guilty of copyright infringement, after losing a legal battle in his home country over the alleged plagiarism concerning a portrait the artist created in 2011 has spoken to Artlyst about the case, its politics, and its wider implications to the art world and the fate of […]
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 […]