‘Post-industrial sublime’ is a neat phrase coined to describe Burtinsky’s large format images of landscapes blighted by human activity. They often have an abstract beauty that, once the image is fully recognized, gives way to an “ominous documentary undertow.” Burtinsky admits “I’ve become hardened like a war photographer”. An interview with Burtinsky is here.
Eliasson hates the view that an artwork “must have a tangible quality in order to have validity”. His diverse output ranges from painting to installations, light shows and “public space” projects. With many of his projects staged in museums, he sees museums as part of the fabric of the “public space …they are essential vehicles for the health and identity of civic society.”
A remembrance by Nobel laureate Pamuk of the renowned Turkish photographer – and fellow resident of Istanbul – Ara Guler. “There is no end to beautiful cityscapes in Istanbul, but first, the individuals! The crucial, defining characteristic of an Ara Guler photograph is the emotional correlation he draws between cityscapes and individuals.”
Militant Islam grabs much of the attention given to the Islamic world. A new display of the British Museum’s collection of Islamic art tries for a broader perspective. One of the three great collections of Islamic art in the West, it shows an artistic achievement that is more international, diverse, “colourful and boisterous” than usually thought. More images are here and video here..
An art history anecdote. Goya enjoyed royal patronage in Spain but with that came exposure to its turbulent politics. After the French invasion, Goya painted a member of the new regime. Once the Bourbons returned, Goya had a most inconvenient portrait on his hands. His solution was recently discovered with x-ray analysis – overpaint it with yet another masterpiece.
Sergei Shchukin was perhaps the greatest art collector of the twentieth century. A Russian textiles magnate, he bought the best Impressionists, Picasso, Matisse, and more. His biography is reviewed here but the book excerpt better conveys the drama of the collection. One critic notes “snapping up the latest expensive trophy at Art Basel Miami Beach just doesn’t cut it.”
So many reviews, and so many complaints! The exhibition wants to debunk the cliché of the genius male artist attended by his muse. However, it is variously too big (40 couples!), poorly hung, or too coy about power imbalances (think Rodin). Still, as one critic notes “when a creative partnership was made up of equals, it tended to implode under its own intensity.”
In life Cy Twombly was enigmatic. Since his death in 2011, his Foundation has put up a “torrid” battle to stop a biography. The result is a worthy but incomplete book. In particular Twombly’s tangled personal life, a great influence on his art, is not fully disentangled. The reviewer’s conclusion – “Desire is not simple or safe. In life and in art, desire is the complication.”
We acclaim the “lissome goddesses” in Renaissance pictures but do we pick up on their embedded narratives? These works reflect the (misogynist) culture of their day. Beauty was ideally associated with submissiveness. Rape was thought to often involve female consent. And pictures of nudity were kept private and swapped between men – who were just being men.
Coverage of the shredding of a work by street artist Banksy has varied wildly – Banksy’s philosophical motivation, the value of the shredded work, Sotheby’s suspected collusion. Pragmatically, the linked piece thinks the prank was “an accomplishment”. Why? Because art auctions are “shopping” where there is a “growing displacement of connoisseurship by marketing”.
Ribera lived much of his life in violent Naples. This seems relevant to his art which is terrifyingly and repeatedly violent. Was Ribera himself violent? Probably not. There is a “gentleness” with which he painted his ghastly scenes, implying a witness, not a participant. Still, his imagination was, according to one critic, “one of art history’s darkest alleys”.
Picasso and Braque famously collaborated to produce cubism. A decade earlier two young German artists enjoyed a similar collaboration. Marc had been painting animals in vivid colours. Responding to his chaotic colourations, Macke joined in. Over just four years they became pioneering abstractionists. Then it all stopped with WW1; by 1916, both had been killed.
In a sign of things to come an “artwork” generated using AI has sold at auction. A furious debate is now raging over whether an algorithm can be creative, or artistic. Art critics are generally dismissive, one calling the piece “100 percent generic”. The algorithm’s developer, shocked by the art world’s ire, says “for sure, the machine did not want to put emotions into the pictures”.