Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 238 Shares99 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Was a Victorian Illustrator the Godfather of the Graphic Novel? A New Exhibition of Aubrey Beardsley Explores the Question

    Few skewered Victorian Britain’s social mores as relentlessly as Aubrey Beardsley. None did so more salaciously, as an exhibition at America’s oldest club for bibliophiles proves.
    In the confines of its second-floor gallery, the Grolier Club of New York presents an intimate snapshot of a man whose erotic and satirical illustrations challenged contemporary norms of sexuality and gender. With images of bare-chested women, phalluses, and flagellation, it’s unsurprising Beardsley continues to be a favorite of precocious and artsy teens.
    Marking the 150th anniversary of Beardsley’s birth, the exhibition showcases 69 works related to the artist. These include swirling and intricate ink-on-paper illustrations, provocative magazine cover designs, coquettish theater posters, and photographic portraits (including one he sent to a friend months before he died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis, a disease that had plagued him since boyhood).
    “This is a moment when new notions of gender and sexuality, beyond binaries, are all around us, including in art. Beardsley got there first,” Margaret D. Stetz, the exhibition’s cocurator, told Artnet News. “He changed the look of everything, from magazine publishing and book illustration to prints and posters.”
    As “Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young” makes clear, in both reach and inspiration, the Brighton-born artist was forward-looking and international. He was an early champion of photochemical reproduction and benefited from the development of phototelegraphy, or the electric transmission of pictures, a technology that allowed his images to printed in countries across the world. His use of vacant space in his monochromatic illustrations owe much to Japanese woodblock prints, and he was a devout reader of English, French, and American literature—with his cover illustrations for works by Alexander Pope and Edgar Allan Poe on display at the Grolier Club.
    Moreover, Beardsley’s distinctive sense of line and provocative spirit remain influential. “Certain genres, such as the graphic novel, would be inconceivable without the example of Beardsley’s style,” said Stetz, a professor of women’s studies at the University of Delaware. “We can trace a line from Beardsley’s outrageous street art to the idea of contemporary street graffiti as an artistic and political medium that assaults convention.”
    Aubrey Beardsley. Oscar Wilde at Work. [London: Stuart Mason, June 1914]. Photomechanical engraving on Japan vellum. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press.Beardsley’s most celebrated artistic connection, however, is with Oscar Wilde. In 1894, Beardsley provided the illustrations for Wilde’s translation of Salomé, including a grotesque one shown at the Grolier Club that depicts the dancer holding John the Baptist’s severed head aloft. The work displeased Wilde. He felt the illustrations overpowered the text, and when he criticized Beardsley publicly, a rift developed. Beardsley’s response, inevitably, was to pen a caricature. In Oscar Wilde at Work, the writer appears a lazy dandy who postures by surrounding himself with books. (On the subject of hard work, Beardsley stood on solid ground: born into a modest family, he’d been an insurance clerk until he got his break.)
    The association with Wilde, who went on trial for “gross indecency” in 1895, would cost Beardsley his position on The Yellow Book quarterly, for which he was the art editor. But it mattered little: Beardsley’s talents were in demand and widely recognized, as evidenced by the fact that between 1892 and his death in 1898, he produced more than 1,000 completed drawings. The works on display here continue to titillate and surprise even the modern viewer.
    Aubrey Beardsley, poster for the Avenue Theatre (1894). Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press.
    The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly. Volume I, April 1894. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press.
    “Aubrey Beardsley, 150 Years Young” is on view at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY, 10022, through November 12, 2022.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 213 Shares99 Views

    in Exhibitions

    In Pictures: A New Show in Paris Reveals the Surprising Connections Between Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell

    We often hear about how the Impressionists’ break with tradition paved the way for Modern art. But since the works of each movement tend to be siphoned off into separate galleries, we rarely get a chance to connect the dots ourselves.
    This fall, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is presenting a unique dialogue between the works of Monet, one of the best known Impressionists from Paris, and Joan Mitchell, a leading light of Abstract Expressionism working many decades later in the U.S. The melting away of chronological distinctions has been heightened by taking the works by Monet out of their ormolu frames, creating a timeless effect and bringing attention to the works’ formal characteristics.
    The famous “Water Lilies” by Monet, who died just one year after Mitchell’s birth, in 1925, became widely known in America during the 1950s. They were clearly of interest to Mitchell, who took part in two exhibitions of so-called “abstract impressionist” work in 1957 and 1958.
    The connection between the two artists became particularly strong after 1968, when Mitchell moved to Vétheuil, the commune on the banks of the Seine where Monet lived and worked between 1878 and 1881. The region’s natural surroundings became a crucial source of inspiration for both artists, though each used real life only as a starting point to create highly moving and evocative studies reflective of their unique eye and experiences.
    The show presents 36 works by Monet side by side with 24 works by Mitchell. Those hoping to learn more about the latter’s life and work can also visit a special retrospective running simultaneously in the lower floor of the building.
    “Monet-Mitchell” is on display at Fondation Louis Vuitton until February 27, 2023. See some of the paintings included in the show below.
    Installation view of “Monet-Mitchell” at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Photo courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton.
    Claude Monet, The Garden at Giverny (1922-26). Photo courtesy of Musee Marmottan, Paris.
    Joan Mitchell La Grande Vallee (1983). Photo by © Primae / Louis Bourjac, courtesy of © The Estate of Joan Mitchell.
    Installation view of “Monet-Mitchell” at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Photo courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton.
    Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1916-1919). Photo courtesy of Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
    Joan Mitchell, Quatuor II for Betsy Jolas (1976). Photo courtesy of Joan Mitchell Foundation © The Estate of Joan Mitchell.
    Installation view of “Monet-Mitchell” at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Photo courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton.
    Claude Monet, Agapanthus (1916-1919). Photo courtesy of Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
    Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée XIV (For a Little While) (1983). Photo courtesy of Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée XIV (For a Little While) (1983). Photo: Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris © The Estate of Joan Mitchell.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 163 Shares109 Views

    in Exhibitions

    Simone Leigh’s Assembly of Black Feminist Creativity in Venice Left Me in Awe

    In what is sure to be remembered as a historic moment that honored Black womxn’s labor, creativity, and intellect, dozens of scholars, thought leaders, educators, writers, curators, authors, and artists from across the African diaspora communed in Venice last week for artist Simone Leigh’s symposium, “Loophole of Retreat.” The program included talks, film screenings, dance performances, music, panel discussions, and more. Over three emotional days, from the perch of my home office in New York—and at times, my local Soho House—I watched the livestream, engulfed in the feeling of being seen, heard, and perhaps finally understood in a way I’d never quite been before—in a way only a Black woman could understand.
    Taking its name from a section of Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the symposium was guided by five overarching themes, or “key directives:” “Maroonage,” “Manual,” “Magical Realism,” “Medicine,” and “Sovereignty.” It unearthed a long legacy of scholarship, free thought, wild imaginings, and the freedom Black women have continuously worked to build for themselves despite centuries of racialized and gendered oppression.
    “The labor of Black women is often made invisible,” author, social media star, and Pace gallery associate director Kimberly Drew told me, commenting afterwards on the remarkable experience of the weekend. “This obscuring of our rigor, scholarship, and dedication makes it seem like we haven’t been here. During these three days, I left feeling far from alone, inspired in every moment never to take for granted what happens when Black women come together.”
    Rashida Bumbray and Simone Leigh. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
    Curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray organized the event, with Saidiya Hartman and Tina Campt. And from the moment that Bumbray’s voice flowed through my computer screen, singing out “good morning everybody” to the audience, I knew this weekend would be filled with claiming strength through sisterhood, and finding empowerment in the ethos of “doing it ourselves” (as trail-blazing Black gallerist Linda Goode Bryant puts it in a text currently on view at MoMA for a show celebrating her Just Above Midtown gallery).
    The conference’s first theme, “Maroonage,” was informed by Jamaican artist Deborah Anzinger’s work. Anzinger herself was on hand with a presentation that offered a reevaluation of both Black labor and the extraction of natural resources. But many other inspired interventions into the past filled the event. One that sticks in my mind is professor, poet, and critic Canisia Lubrin’s presentation of a series of 59 fictional codes in response to King Louis XIV’s infamous Code Noir (The Black Code), the set of rules defining the conditions of enslaved Africans within the French empire.
    Las Nietas de Nonó perform during Loophole of Retreat: Venice, October 9, 2022. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
    The second theme, “Manual,” was inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s “Manual for General Housework” in her brilliantly moving book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. While some presentations contextualized a set of conditions Black women have been subjugated to through physical labor and egregious bodily harm, I came away with the sense that, infinitely more important than these crushing constraints are the ways in which they, us, and the collective ‘we’ have persisted, forged untrodden paths, and continued to envision new forms of freedom by revolutionizing personal intimacy and kinship. Watching the program, I truly felt that by holding space for Black women to congregate and share knowledge, “Loophole of Retreat” existed as a haven, a respite, a dwelling where community could flourish.
    The event’s other directives—”Magical Realism,” “Medicine,” and “Sovereignty”—guided conversations and performances that made visible the creative labor of poets, activists, authors, and academics from every part of the diaspora. Women who were also mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters came from Portugal and Berlin, from South Africa and Brazil, and from all over the United States to share knowledge and hold space for joy, creative freedom, and community through sisterhood. To take one example, the literary and artist collective Black Quantum Futurism incorporated spoken word and poetry with rhythmic music and the ancient sounds of maracas.
    Black Quantum Futurism performs at Loophole of Retreat: Venice, October 8, 2022. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
    “‘Loophole of Retreat’ beautifully captured the thoughtfulness, joy, sacrifice, and rigor that is often carried out in the Black feminist imagination,” said Taylor Renee Aldridge, curator at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, after the event. “One of the many memorable moments for me was witnessing deference on display between generations and peers: Simone’s reverence of Lorraine [O’Grady], Rashida’s reverence of Simone, and Simone expressing gratitude for her own daughter.”
    Elsewhere during the weekend, the phenomenal Legacy Russell spotlighted works by painters Naudline Pierre and Firelei Báez, and moderated a riveting conversation with artist Ja’Tovia Gary following a screening of her work. Russell inspired the audience by speaking powerfully of the collective purpose represented by the event. “In a moment in the world where the visibility of Black femmehood continues to rise yet where sustained equity and representation still requires constant vigilance, care, and strategic work, being ‘in the loophole’ perforates boundaries and breaks through the mythos of Black exceptionalism and Black alienation—a reminder of the power of collective congress and its dazzling capacity to transform the world by holding space for shared information.”
    Guests share a moment during Loophole of Retreat: Venice. Photo by Glorija Blazinsek.
    As I reflect on the exuberant and utterly transformative weekend of “Loophole of Retreat,” I find myself entranced by this surplus of Black feminine creativity, presented in a way I have never seen. Every friend I spoke with during the retreat and in the days following remarked that they were “still processing” and needed “time to unpack.” It took me days to come up for air.
    When I finally resurfaced, I recognized that through the scholarship, care, and the brilliance of Simone Leigh, Rashida Bumbray, Saidiya Hartman, Deborah Anzinger, Zara Julius, Ja’tovia Gary, Mabel O. Wilson, and so many others who touched me, I came through the symposium forever changed. Perhaps by some force of nature or deep ancestral ties, I felt protected, seen, and celebrated by every Black woman I have ever known or have yet to meet, privileged not only to bask in our glory, but also to be in service to so many Black women.
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Street Art

    “REMO and the Earthly Elements” NFT Drop by Joey Tadiar

    Joey Tadiar, a London-based Web 3 artist and creative director of Kapsule Studios, has announced the release of his first solo NFT art project.The announcement comes as NFTs and digital art are on the cusp of becoming mainstream, and as select NFTs enjoy skyrocketing values. Joey’s NFTs will be available for purchase on Nifty Gateway, an established, premium NFT marketplace used by the world’s biggest digital collectors. As this will be Joeys first NFT offering, these works are sure to be appreciated and become his most sought-after creations.As a digital artist and oil painter, Joey’s artwork is notable for its caricature references, innovative use of bold colours, and a fun, approachable style. His work, which is simultaneously inclusive and unique, has earned him a spot spearheading the creative direction with Warner Records and Bose on the Stickmen Toys NFT collection.Joey’s upcoming NFT drop ‘REMO and the Earthly Elements’ was inspired by his desire to reignite his childhood curiosities and bring his dream of creating a series of toys to life. The collection features four stunning digital artworks, which collectors will be able to use to unlock physical artworks, including access to Joey’s early ideation sketchbooks, oil paintings and custom made, hand-painting resin toys.Starting life as a sketchbook of scribbles, REMO has now been reimagined for the digital world as beautiful 3D character. Joey’s dream is to attract a familial community of collectors who want to be a part of his journey as an artist, helping to create the REMO brand by building a world revolving around stunning digital and physical artworks and a series of sought after toys suitable for serious art collectors and the next generation of art aficionados.“Since becoming a dad earlier this year, I’ve had this burning desire to reignite all those childhood curiosities and bring my “When I grow up” dreams to life. Maybe one day, my son will be able to tell his friends ‘My dad made that!’” – Joey Tadiar, creator of REMOWhile this is his first NFT offering, the London resident is hardly new to the art scene.Joey attended acting school as a child and studied English literature and creative writing before pursuing a master’s degree in acting and screenwriting in New York City. After moving back to London, he took up oil painting, a hobby that turned into a profession during the 2020 pandemic. From there, it was on to digital and 3D art.To read more about Joey Tadiar’s “REMO and the Earthly Elements” NFT drop, you can visit this link. More

  • 138 Shares139 Views

    in Street Art

    A Mural “We Will See” by Sebas Velasco in Ingolstadt, Germany

    Sebastián Velasco was born in Burgos, Spain in 1988. He got a Masters degree in Painting from the University of the Basque Country in 2016. Velasco started drawing when he was a child but it was only in 2004 that he began to paint in the street.Sebas started to paint with some classmates in his hometown when he was 15 or 16. Then he moved to Bilbao where he met some other graffiti artists and he continued painting and developing to become a muralist.“We will see” project was a collaboration with LANDMARKS project assisted by Jose Delou (photographer) in Ingolstadt, Germany.Sebas about the project: “It has been a pleasure sharing with Jose Delou the research process of the theme and previous context shots for this wall.”Take a look at more images below and check back with us soon for more updates. More

  • 238 Shares159 Views

    in Exhibitions

    6 Things the Whitney’s New Edward Hopper Show Teaches Us About the Artist’s Tortured Love Affair With New York

    The Whitney Museum’s newly opened show “Edward Hopper’s New York” is sure to be a blockbuster in the fall art calendar, both for veteran New Yorkers and for the throngs of international tourists who flock to the museum’s eye-catching building at the base of the High Line elevated park.
    With over 3,100 Hopper pieces, including more than 220 paintings, the Whitney is the largest holder of the artist’s work. And while the museum has held many exhibitions devoted to the artist over the years, this is the first to focus exclusively on his relationship to New York City, where he lived and worked for more than six decades.
    “There is truly no better place to experience this group of works that were largely created only blocks south of where the museum is today and that connects us in often-unexpected ways with the past and present of our city,” said lead curator Kim Conaty during a press preview. Its last major Hopper show, which concentrated on the artist’s drawings, took place in 2013, when the Whitney was still at its former, longtime home in the Marcel Breuer-designed building on the Upper East Side.
    The current exhibition is a dynamic mix of artworks and archival materials that tell the story of Hopper’s life and work in New York City—from visits made during his youth from his hometown just north in Nyack on the Hudson River and later during his art-student days to commuting into the city while working as a commercial illustrator and eventually as a fine artist and master of shadow and light, who continuously explored themes of alienation and loneliness against the backdrop of the rapidly developing metropolis.
    Along with famous paintings and sketches from the museum’s own collection, there are dozens of major institutional loans as well as archival materials, including letters, postcards, theater tickets, and notebooks, that carefully record both earlier advertising commissions as well as later painting sales.
    As museum director Adam Weinberg pointed out at the preview, the show is sure to be a learning experience for even the most seasoned Hopper experts, including himself. “It’s rich in materials, there is so much to see. I learned so much in the process.”
    Here are six key takeaways on Hopper’s relationship to, and life in, New York City.
    Edward Hopper, Blackwell’s Island, (1928). Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy Art Resource, New York. Photograph by Edward C. Robison III
    The Whitney Is Truly Hopper’s Home
    Hopper was a touchstone for the Whitney even before the museum was officially founded, said Weinberg. In 1920, the artist was 37 years old when he had his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club—an association formed by Gerturde Vanderbilt Whitney that was the forerunner of the museum.
    Hopper had eight exhibitions at the Studio Club before it closed to make way for the Whitney Museum, which, at the time was on 8th Street and which is now the studio school. It’s also not far from Washington Square North, where the artist lived and had his studio for about 63 years.
    In May of 1930, the Whitney became one of the first museums to acquire one of Hopper’s works when Vanderbilt Whitney bought Early Sunday Morning (1930). The artist participated in 29 annuals and biennials at the museum, “which is I think probably the record,” Weinberg said, adding: “Hopper’s painting Room in New York (1932) was included in the first Whitney Biennial in 1932 and it’s back here 90 years later in the museum show.” He noted that the 3,100 Hopper works owned by the Whitney represent “roughly ten percent of the total holdings,” of the museum. “The Whitney is truly Hopper’s home.”
    The Horizontal City
    “The Horizontal City” is one of eight thematic sections that make up the show. As Conaty pointed out, it is “not a retrospective since it doesn’t include works from Maine or Cape Cod or Hopper’s other locations of interest. But it does cover Hopper’s entire career, since New York had been a part of his life since he was a child.”
    The artist “famously detested skyscrapers and the increasing verticality of the city,” said Conaty. With respect to Early Sunday Morning, she said she is fascinated by the fact that it was painted in 1930, the same year that the Chrysler building became the world’s tallest building only to lose the title a few months later to the Empire State Building. “Yet the vertical dynamics of the growing city were of little interest to Hopper. And there is a certain irreverence here in the idea of painting compositions like Early Sunday Morning in that year and a constant tension between longing for the past and yet an embrace of the modern city. And there is, of course, a hint of what is to come by the looming gray rectangle,” in the upper right hand corner of the work.
    Edward Hopper, Manhattan Bridge (1925–26). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1098 © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
    Eschewing The ‘Post Card’ Pics
    Noting that the Manhattan Bridge, built in 1901, was a site that Hopper returned to many times, and of which there are numerous depictions in the show, Conaty said: “I love his focus on the Manhattan Bridge, because on the one hand it’s not the Brooklyn Bridge.” Hopper was “skeptical of landmarks and popular, ‘postcard’ New York sites.”
    There are also paintings of the Queensborough Bridge (Hopper lived nearby on 59th Street in his early years in the city) as well as views of Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island, the Williamsburg Bridge and the lesser known Macombs Dam Bridge near 155th Street. The double-truss construction and Gothic Revival abutments of the Macombs bridge caught Hopper’s eye.
    Edward Hopper, Roofs, Washington Square, (1926). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. James H. Beal. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
    Washington Square Park
    Historic Washington Square Park, which has its own thematic section, plays something of a starring role in the exhibition. Hopper and his wife Josephine, who was also an artist and the model for nearly all of her husband’s female characters, lived and worked there at their respective studios at No. 3 Washington Square North. Included in this section of the show are their own depictions of the surrounding area, such as the Judson Memorial Church, and portraits of the artists by photographers such as Bernard Hoffman and George Platt Lynes.
    The couple were also fiercely protective of the area, with Hopper even penning letters to various civic officials and to developer Robert Moses when he thought his home was at risk of destruction due to encroaching development. Through the letters, said Conaty, Hopper “is trying to really fight off gentrification,” which certainly resonates in a place like New York.
    According to the wall label text:  “The Hoppers witnessed the incessant cycles of demolition and construction as 19th-century buildings like their own were torn down to make way for new structures. During their many decades in Greenwich Village they advocated for the preservation of the neighborhood as a haven for artists and as one of the city’s cultural landmarks.”
    Edward Hopper, The Sheridan Theatre, (1937). Newark Museum of Art, NJ; Felix Fuld Bequest Fund. © 2022 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy Art Resource
    Love of the Theatre
    A thematic section focused on the theatre is fascinating on two fronts. While paintings like The Sheridan Theatre (1937), which sat on 12th Street, speak for themselves, archival materials help to provide a window into the couple’s love of the theatre. Included in this section is a large collection of their ticket stubs on which Hopper meticulously recorded each production they attended. The fact that their seats were mostly in the balcony points to the couple’s frugality, said Conaty. Further, the materials are part of the Sanborn Hopper archive acquired by the museum in 2017. A lengthy New York Times profile delved into how the Rev. Arthayer R. Sanborn, who lived close to Hopper’s childhood home in Nyack, came to possess the huge collection of letters, photos, news clippings, and notebooks documenting Hopper’s life.
    Edward Hopper, Drug Store (1927). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding.
    Blending Fantasy With Reality 
    While many of Hopper’s paintings depict discernible New York sites and locations, others show facades and structures that are ultimately more “composites” of a streetscape, such as Drug Store (1927) which Hopper endows with a name “but not an address,” according to the label text. Said Conaty: Hopper “is showing us this old view of New York, this nostalgic view of New York.. this almost jewel box atmosphere that was created to capture people’s attention and their imagination as they strolled the city at night. 
    “You would be hard-pressed to find a pharmacy so decorated today. I think our CVSs haven’t really taken that cue,” she joked.
    “Despite his private, solitary, hermit-like nature, Edward Hopper was a man of the city, of New York City,” said Weinberg. “While capturing the soul and soullessness of modern life, he simultaneously shunned it and sought to find those moments of beauty and quietude, despite the changes that he detested. He painted the world that he saw, the world he knew, the world he invented, and the world he wished.”
    Conaty summed up her remarks by recapping an exchange between a journalist and the couple during an interview at their home. When the reporter asked what they liked to do for fun, Jo, who was known to be the more outgoing one, said: “We’re not spectacular, and we’re very private, and we don’t drink, and we hardly ever smoke.” After a pause, Hopper said: “I get most of my pleasure out of the city itself.”
    “Edward Hopper’s New York” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, October 19, 2022—March 5, 2023. 

    More Trending Stories:
    A French Auction House Fired the Employee Responsible for Pricing a $7.5 Million Qianlong Vase at Just $1,900
    Archaeologists Have Found the Fabled Temple to Poseidon Recorded in the Greek Historian Strabo’s Ancient Encyclopedia
    Has the Figuration Bubble Burst? Abstract Painting Dominates the Booths at Frieze London
    For Its 30th Anniversary Gala, Robert Wilson’s Fabled Watermill Center Borrowed a Theme from H.G. Wells and Took a ‘Stand’
    Jameson Green Won’t Apologize for His Confrontational Paintings. Collectors Love Him for It
     
    Auctions Live Now:
    21st Century Photographs
    Buy Now: Robert Lazzarini
    40 Under 10
    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 213 Shares169 Views

    in Exhibitions

    A Woman Claiming to Be Bansky’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Debuting Six Never-Before-Seen Early Works Attributed to the Artist

    An anonymous woman who says she is Banksy’s ex-girlfriend has loaned six never-before-seen early works purportedly by the street artist to the latest installment of a traveling exhibition titled “The Art of Banksy,” on view at MediaCity in Salford, England, from tomorrow through January 8.
    According to Independent, the relics include “handmade birthday cards, flyers, and an A-board for her corset shop in Bristol, which she claims the anonymous graffiti artist painted for her while they were together from 1994 to 1998.”
    “The Art of Banksy” is one of numerous “unauthorized” shows of Banksy’s work that have taken place over the years, often capitalizing on the artist’s mysterious reputation. Some are are backed by entertainment corporations and charge admission.
    “Banksy has NOTHING to do with any of the current or recent exhibitions and they are nothing like a genuine Banksy show,” reads a statement on the website of Pest Control, the group authorized to authenticate Banksy works. These shows, they added, “might be crap so please don’t come to us for a refund.”

    Ex-girlfriend’ of Banksy offers previously unseen artworks to Media… (www.independent.c…)
    A woman who claims to be the former girlfriend of Banksy has loaned a collection of previous…
    Add your highlights:https://t.co/G9oTOobJbA#UK #news
    — UK News Briefly (@UK_News_b) October 19, 2022

    Michel Boersma, founder and CEO of GTP Entertainment, curated and produced the Salford stop of “The Art of Banksy” U.K. tour, which previously appeared in London.
    The show’s FAQ page says that Pest Control has verified all the artworks that appear in “The Art of Banksy,” adding that private collectors purchased them directly from the artist. In total, the nearly 13,000-square-foot event in Salford will include 145 prints and canvases from 2002 to 2017, featuring iconic images like Girl With Balloon (2002) and Brace Yourself (2010).
    “I could not believe what I was reading when the email suddenly appeared in my inbox two weeks ago,” Boersma told the Independent of the six intimate additions to his exhibit at MediaCity. “If true, these were completely unknown and highly personal works by Banksy.”
    “We then established the authenticity of the owner and the works she was offering,” Boersma continued. “Speaking with her, a lot of details of the early life of the now world-famous artist were shared,” he said, including “Exciting little anecdotes, about her and their life at the time.”
    Exhibition organizers did not immediately respond to questions about how they verified the woman’s identity and the works’ authenticity.
    Another show, titled “The Art of Banksy Without Limits,” came under fire last summer following runs in Seoul and Warsaw where attendees noticed that out of 150 works, only 27 were originals. Organizers issued refunds.
    Pest control did not respond to a request for comment.

    More Trending Stories:
    A French Auction House Fired the Employee Responsible for Pricing a $7.5 Million Qianlong Vase at Just $1,900
    Archaeologists Have Found the Fabled Temple to Poseidon Recorded in the Greek Historian Strabo’s Ancient Encyclopedia
    Has the Figuration Bubble Burst? Abstract Painting Dominates the Booths at Frieze London
    For Its 30th Anniversary Gala, Robert Wilson’s Fabled Watermill Center Borrowed a Theme from H.G. Wells and Took a ‘Stand’
    Jameson Green Won’t Apologize for His Confrontational Paintings. Collectors Love Him for It
     
    Auctions Live Now:
    21st Century Photographs
    Buy Now: Robert Lazzarini
    40 Under 10

    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

  • 163 Shares199 Views

    in Exhibitions

    The 2022 Turner Prize Exhibition at Tate Liverpool Is Remarkably Cohesive—See Images Here

    The Turner prize has returned Liverpool for first time in 15 years. Though the four shortlisted installations are like mini-retrospectives, the exhibitions this year share several themes that address pressing contemporary issues.
    The showcase of Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan, and Sin Wai Kin—four U.K.-based artists nominated for the coveted prize which opens to the public at Tate Liverpool on Thursday, October 20—could give the audience the impression of “an exhibition of exhibitions,” said the museum’s senior curator Sarah James. It was “a beautiful coincidence,” the curator said, that the artists’ presentations shared common ground despite their vastly different practices.
    The winner will be selected by a jury on December 7, and be awarded £25,000 ($28,143)—the three runner-up artists will each receive £10,000 ($11,257). In the meantime, audiences are also asked to participate by casting their vote for their favorite artist on-site.
    Turner Prize 2022: Heather Phillipson, Rupture No 6: biting the blowtorched peach. Installation view at Tate Liverpool 2022. Photo: © Tate Photography (Matt Greenwood)
    James said the thematic overlaps may “the product of this massive, collective, shared experience of the pandemic and lockdown, and the fact that maybe we’re sort of feeling slightly more solidarity than we might normally be.”
    The presentation of each of the shortlisted artists—three women and one non-binary artist of diverse age ranges and cultural backgrounds—begins with the striking, mixed-media installation RUPTURE NO 6: biting the blowtorched peach (2022) by the London-born, 44-year-old Phillipson.
    Turner Prize 2022: Veronica Ryan. Installation View at Tate Liverpool 2022. Photo: © Tate Photography (Sonal Bakarina)
    The work is a re-imagination of her Tate Britain solo exhibition that closed in January this year, the same show that earned her the current nomination. It invites the audience into an exhibition space transformed into an otherworldly setting of sumptuous colors conjured by a series of moving image projections and installations repurposing motorized ship anchors into wind turbines and gas canisters into wind chimes. Phillipson’s imaginary world is known as a “mutated habitat” in organizers’ words, but it evokes an apocalyptic feeling.
    This is juxtaposed with a serene, yellow room created by the 68-year-old Ryan. The subtle repurposing of everyday materials, from fruit to takeaway food containers, feathers, paper, or even pillows and bandages, is not just about “psychological resonance” and the “extended self,” in the artist’s words. The resulting plant-like sculptures and installation pieces relate childhood memories with distant histories of global trade, while commenting on environmental and ecological issues.
    Turner Prize 2022: Ingrid Pollard. Installation view at Tate Liverpool. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
    Viewers then step onto green floor, which hosts Sin’s iconic mixed-media installation work It’s Always You. Here, the 31-year-old non-binary Canadian-born artist reconstructs a boy band fantasy featuring four characters invented and played by Sin, who utilizes drag as their artistic expression.
    There’s a karaoke screen, boy band dance choreography, and even autographed posters, but beneath the fantasy and the symbolic, colorful painted faces of Sin’s characters is the questioning of identity, body politics, and queer coding. Sin’s lyrical video work A Dream of Wholeness in Parts (2021), draws inspirations from Chuang Tzu’s ancient Taoist classic Dream of the Butterfly, which is also on show.
    The study of body and identity politics is differently approached in the 68-year-old Pollard’s thoughtful presentation that revolves around racism within the context of British history. The show features the powerful Bow Down and Very Low – 123 (2021), which includes a set of three kinetic sculptures made with everyday objects referencing to the gesture of a young Black girl from a 1944 colonial propaganda film. Was girl bowing down or sinking into a deep curtsy? The uneasy movements of the kinetic sculptures offer interpretation from multiple perspectives.
    The Turner Prize shortlist exhibition is on view at the Tate Liverpool until March 19, 2023. A winner will be chosen on December 7, 2022.

    More Trending Stories:
    A French Auction House Fired the Employee Responsible for Pricing a $7.5 Million Qianlong Vase at Just $1,900
    Archaeologists Have Found the Fabled Temple to Poseidon Recorded in the Greek Historian Strabo’s Ancient Encyclopedia
    Has the Figuration Bubble Burst? Abstract Painting Dominates the Booths at Frieze London
    For Its 30th Anniversary Gala, Robert Wilson’s Fabled Watermill Center Borrowed a Theme from H.G. Wells and Took a ‘Stand’
    Jameson Green Won’t Apologize for His Confrontational Paintings. Collectors Love Him for It
     
    Auctions Live Now:
    21st Century Photographs
    Buy Now: Robert Lazzarini
    40 Under 10

    Follow Artnet News on Facebook: Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More