14 September 2019
Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous solid 18-carat gold sculpture of a toilet has been stolen from his exhibition at Blenheim Palace. Thames Valley Police said that a gang broke into the palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire at about 4:50 BST and stole the artwork.
One of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century, Robert Frank, (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) has died at the age of 94. He never crossed over into celebrity. He’s famous because he made a mark. He collected the world – Nan Goldin Frank was born in Switzerland but emigrated to the United States […]
10 September 2019
Matt’s Gallery is a London institution which in many ways has been responsible for the vibrant emerging art scene that London represents on the global stage. It opened in the capital on September 16th 1979 in the studio space of Robin Klassnik. The Gallery will mark its 40th Anniversary with a fundraising dinner and an […]
10 September 2019
The HIX Award, the annual art prize set up by the restaurateur and author Mark Hix, have joined up with Hauser & Wirth as this year’s main sponsor.
6 September 2019
A painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, stolen from a UK stately home in 1984, has been discovered in the collection of a Japanese museum.
5 September 2019
A new exhibition at the Holburne Museum reunites ceramics from Grayson Perry’s earliest forays into the art world. It will re-introduce the explosive and creative works he made between 1982 and 1994
The British Museum has acquired an important painting by the English painter, poet and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founder, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).
31 August 2019
Banksy’s 17-ton truck, covered in graffiti by his own hand, will be going under the hammer at Bonhams on Saturday 14 September, at its motor car auction, the Goodwood Revival sale.
The American photographer Nan Goldin was arrested yesterday and charged with disorderly conduct. She and a group of protesters were stopped outside the Manhattan office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The P.A.I.N activists founded by Goldin are protesting the Sackler family’s involvement in the opioid crisis which has killed over 400,000 people in the […]
The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has decided to take up residence in the UK. By swapping Berlin for Britain, Mr Ai is giving the UK his seal of approval as a vibrant art scene.
A popular Brexit mural, in the English port of Dover by the elusive Street Artist Banksy has been covered over by scaffolding and netting with white paint blocking out the artwork. The mural depicts a star being chiselled from the EU flag. It appeared near the Dover ferry terminal in May 2017 at the height […]
A temporary export bar on Millais’ ‘Ferdinand Lured by Ariel’ has been put in place by Arts Minister Rebecca Pow
Jeremy Deller, the Turner Prize-winning artist, has unveiled his £1m monument marking the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Peterloo massacre.
10 August 2019
An outstanding painting by Claude Monet ‘Le Palais Ducal’ 1908 is at risk of going abroad unless a UK buyer can be found . The picture valued at more than £28 million is one of a number of the artist’s works depicting Venice.
Post-script: This piece was initially intended as a review of the exhibition ‘Takis’Tate Modern. Sadly, since the time of writing the artist has passed away, on the morning of the 9th of August. This piece has subsequently been revised as something of a tribute to a singular figure of contemporary art.
8 August 2019
Following the collision between the MSC Opera, a 275m (900ft) long ocean liner, and a small tourist boat, during the opening weeks of the Venice Biennale, ships weighing more than 1,000 tonnes will be banned and rerouted away from the waterways in Venice’s historic quarter, from September.
8 August 2019
When someone attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta with a hammer in the 1970s, the sculpture was severely damaged. It was restored and put back on display at the Vatican. A few years later a paranoid schizophrenic slashed Rembrandt’s masterpiece ‘The Night Watch’ putting a gaping hole in the canvas with a bread knife, at the Rijksmuseum.
The gallerist Karsten Schubert, who died last week has generously bequeathed his collection of Cezanne drawings and prints to the Nation. The works will be on long term loan to the Whitworth in an exhibition celebrating his extraordinary collection and life.
4 August 2019
Tate Modern was shut and declared a crime scene on Sunday after a six-year-old French boy was thrown five floors from the 10th-floor viewing platform. The child crashed onto the fifth-floor roof above the new member’s room and was airlifted to hospital by air ambulance where he is in critical condition.
2 August 2019
A filing to the Supreme Court, in the U.S. State of Arizona, has alleged that the Sackler family “siphoned” billions from the family-owned company, Purdue Pharma to deplete it in order to avoid paying claims connected to the prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin.”
La Biennale Paris, in partnership with La Patinoire Royale – Galerie Valérie Bach, will present “Transchromie”, a significant work by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz Diez.
The Franco-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, born Caracas, 1923 has died in Paris where he lived and worked since 1960. Cruz-Diez was a major protagonist in the field of Kinetic and Optical art, a movement that encouraged “an awareness of the instability of reality.” His body of work established him as one of the critical twentieth-century thinkers in the realm of colour.
28 July 2019
The V&A has acquired a series of work exploring the design identity of Extinction Rebellion (XR) – a global activist group calling for urgent action on climate change through acts of non-violent civil disobedience and disruption.
Marisa Merz (born 1931, Turin, Italy) the only woman artist closely associated with the Arte Povera movement has died age 93.
22 July 2019
A temporary export bar on a painting depicting the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinksy by the English artist Glyn Philpot has been placed by Arts Minister Rebecca Pow, in a bid to keep it in the country.
21 July 2019
An elderly New York art collector has taken his Philadelphia attorney to court for cheating him out of millions.
In 2017, SMC a Volkswagen dealership in Copenhagen shot a photo of a new Volkswagen Polo parked in front of an installation by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. The photograph was subsequently used to promote a new model of the Polo car on its website and inhouse magazine.
17 July 2019
Musée du Louvre has removed or taped over all references to the Sackler Family in response to protests from organisations including Nan Goldin’s PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now group.
17 July 2019
The directors of Tate have come out emphatically declaring a climate emergency. In a letter dated today, the organisation hopes to spread the word that our fragile planet has reached a breaking point.
16 July 2019
The V&A has had a terrific year with a London gate of over 4.2m visitors and the successful launch of their first outpost in Dundee.
As already stated on this site, Leon Kossoff’s death on July 4 marked pretty much the end of an epoch. Of the for artists who led the so-called School of London – Bacon, Freud, Kossoff and Auerbach – only Auerbach now survives.