With each year that passes the Turner Prize battles doggedly to justify its own existence. It appears to be suffering some kind of identity crisis stemming from the decreasing relevance its entrants have on capturing the actual zeitgeist of contemporary art. Art can be and is made from anything and by anyone – it has […]
2 October 2015
Artlyst recently attended the press view of the Royal Academy of Arts’ landmark exhibition of the Honorary Royal Academician, Ai Weiwei. Where the chief curators of this outstanding show, Tim Marlow, and Adrian Locke were kind enough to give Artlyst – and a host of other journalists – a tour of Ai Weiwei’s impressive retrospective. […]
I met Brian Sewell only once while a student at the Courtauld Institute. As a fellow alumnus, he was attending a special event for alumni aged eighty or more. Stitching on a pleasant smile and wishing him an excellent visit, he quipped in response that the event was for the few people “who aren’t already […]
What I admire about Thursday’s public march led by Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei eight miles across London is its resourcefulness and simplicity in its show of solidarity for the refugee crisis. Art in its usual form of protest is traditionally highly symbolic (think Guernica), provocative (that chap nailing his genitalia to Red Square), or […]
16 September 2015
Fatos Ustek, Art Fund Curator at fig-2, has spoken to Artlyst about the latest installation as part of fig-2’s structure of fifty successive exhibitions realised on a weekly basis operating as a catalyst to manifest the aesthetic and critical currency of our times. In this instance focusing on artist Melanie Manchot. fig-2 is a revival […]
Regular readers will know of the special reserve of bile I harbour for one Damien Hirst: the businessman peddling ‘art’ in a beyond-cynical way that would make Warhol choke on or at the very least regurgitate a little his oft quoted adage “good business is the best art”. It’s most worrying that the innumerable people […]
In his 1965 novel The Magus, John Fowles describes the way in which so many Greeks “wished to leave Greece never to return, yet never learnt to accept their exile”. This condition, Fowles ruminates, is “the cost of being born in the most beautiful and most cruel country in the world.” At the risk of […]
24 August 2015
Modern Art Oxford presents the first solo exhibition in the UK of acclaimed Austrian artist Kiki Kogelnik (1935-1997). Working in New York in the 1960s, Kogelnik was a well-known artist and contemporary of figures such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Despite her early popularity, Kogelnik’s work was often overlooked by institutions and slowly written […]
It emerged in July that Disneyland Paris is allegedly charging German and British tourists up to 15% more than French visitors to the park. Behind the sparkly wholesomeness is, as usual, a faceless corporate conglomerate hyper-capitalist agenda at work. It’s timely then that Banksy has created his own satire of the brand – if you’re […]
3 August 2015
American artist James Turrell is currently presenting a site-specific light work at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, the piece is the culmination to the exhibition “LightScape: James Turrell”. Artlyst visited the stunning grounds of one of England’s finest Palladian houses to see a preview of the acclaimed American artist’s latest project. The spectacular 45-minute light display, which […]
30 July 2015
American artist James Turrell is currently presenting a site-specific light work at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, as the culmination to the exhibition “LightScape: James Turrell”. Artlyst visited the stunning grounds of one of England’s finest Palladian houses to see a preview of the acclaimed American artist’s latest project. The spectacular 45-minute light display, which began at […]
So, I was about to launch into thoughtful musings on that inexplicable relationship between artist and muse and how the female body just happens to lend itself to being pored over to varying degrees of distraction. Egon Schiele is a classic example of an artist walking a very thin tightrope between viewing the female body […]
22 July 2015
During the preview week of the Venice Biennale Artlyst was privileged to attend a conversation between Peter Doig, the Turner Prize nominated artist and Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate. The talk took place in front of Doig’s new paintings at the beautiful historic rooms of the Palazzetto Tito (until October 4th 2015). The […]
Click Here to Read: Sexism In Art: And What We Perceive As Acceptable Body Depictions Tormented by lack of critical success? Hate how your art genius is never recognized? Want to cut off your ear but don’t have a razor/pair of scissors to hand? Do a Turner-Prize Winning Artist Douglas Gordon and hack a theatre wall […]
15 July 2015
Artlyst spoke to Calvin Winner, Head of Collections at Sainsbury Centre For Visual Arts, and co-curator of the exhibition ‘Francis Bacon and the Masters’, to give us his opinion of Bacon’s process in relation to the artist’s unfinished work ‘Three Figures’ – one of three incomplete paintings that were exhibited in the exhibition. It was […]
14 July 2015
Artlyst recently visited the Witworth Gallery in Manchester and attended the premiere of a collaboration between two of the world’s most influential and enduring cultural figures – artist Gerhard Richter and composer Arvo Pärt. This beautiful and solemn work was premièred at the gallery as part of MIF15, where Richter and Pärt were in attendance. […]
OK, so admittedly Damien Hirst is still very much with us… But what can you say about an artist’s life’s work when they have died penniless and relatively unknown? The best way to answer is to reverse the question: why does it matter a damn that a collective of individuals have over a certain period encountered an […]
It would seem with recent events, artistic freedom is being threatened on a near-daily basis; firstly with a copyright change that has art publishers deeply disturbed due to the new regulation making copyright breach in Britain a criminal, rather than a civil offence – suggesting that we will now send art editors, and publishers to […]
7 July 2015
A rare treat is on offer at 45 Park Lane in London – the first London solo show in over 50 years from Rotraut (b.1938). Presented by Swiss Galerie Gmurzynska, fourteen paintings and sculptures by the German-born artist Rotraut Klein-Moquay are on show and are for sale in the public spaces of the hotel. The sculptures, […]
7 July 2015
Nottingham Contemporary is currently presenting Pablo Bronstein and the Treasures of Chatsworth [House] for season one of The Grand Tour at Nottingham Contemporary, and a collaboration with Chatsworth House, from which the artist has chosen 62 works of fine and decorative art to bring to Nottingham Contemporary’s galleries to juxtapose with his own works and […]
5 July 2015
Artlyst travelled to Wrabness in Essex to meet Grayson Perry at the site of his latest project, ‘A House for Essex’. At once an architectural form and a particularly personal artwork for Perry, which has also created a new landmark for the village, close to the Essex coast. The building is a collaboration between FAT […]
What’s the real value of a humble Dollar/Pound? For those champagne swillers who braved a loud and angry protest outside Sotheby’s Contemporary Auction Wednesday night, Warhol’s One Dollar Bill, hand painted in 1962, sold for a whopping £20.9m (estimated at only £13-18m). The enormous disparity between the mob outside, revealed to be a cleaning service […]
2 July 2015
The Sainsbury Centre For Visual Arts presents ‘Francis Bacon and the Masters’, 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. The exhibition forms the culmination of the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage […]
26 June 2015
The influential artist Luc Tuymans was recently back at David Zwirner, which was presenting an exhibition of the artist’s latest paintings, on view at the London gallery, which Tuymans inaugurated in October 2012 with the exhibition ‘Allo!’. The exhibition ‘The Shore’ includes work that the artist specifically made for the space. Tuymans is known for […]
I should stand up for fellow art bitches and applaud this week’s lyst of the most wealthy female artists: were your gut feelings also instantly of “female artists are rich?”,or even, “female artists make money?”. What a happy event that we can congratulate ten women who’ve well and truly managed to quit the full time […]
25 June 2015
Hans Haacke is a leading figure in the contemporary art world. His work crosses boundaries of Conceptual, Minimal, Pop and site specific Land Art. He is best known for his investigations into hidden economies and politics including that of the art world and the suppressed histories of people and places. Mayor Boris Johnson along with […]
24 June 2015
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 […]
Gagosian Gallery Davies Street is currently showing Richard Prince: New Portraits, a collection of appropriated images pulled from unsuspecting Instagramers accounts, including provocative ‘selfies’ and pseudo-glamour shots that decorate the walls of the gallery. The artist has continued his long-standing practice of appropriating images without permission to create his art, in this instance selling the […]
20 June 2015
Parafin Gallery, London is currently displaying the latest works by British painter Justin Mortimer. 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. But with this latest series of works the artist’s usual necrotic hues […]
The famed American artist Richard Prince is in the news again for his particular practice of appropriation, and as usual questions of copyright infringement have dominated the dialogue surrounding the works on sites such as Business Insider. Prince pulls the photographs from the Instagram pages of his subjects, which is in fact the digital version […]
The genre ‘portraiture’ is as open ended as the limitless expanses of landscape, history painting, still lifes, and abstract: yet while on paper the BP award is as thematically open, and democratically open to everyone to enter, whether amateur or professional, the selection, style and favouritism remains curiously conservative and hideously prescriptive. I’ve been several […]