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    in Street Art

    “Pensées du bouffon rouge” by Pboy in Paris, France

    French muralist Pascal Boyart, aka PBoy, has recently completed a new mural titled “Pensées du bouffon rouge” (Contemplation of the Red Jester) in Rue de Montmorency, Paris 3ème. This amazing 6mt wide acrylic painting depicts the famous “Stańczyk” Red Jester by Jan Matejko (1838-1893) plus some modern additions to reflect about the current problems that riddle the global economy. Stańczyk was the court jester when Poland was at the height of its political, economic and cultural power during the era of the Renaissance in the 16th century. He was a very popular figure, an eloquent man considered more than a mere entertainer, using satire to comment on the nation’s past, present, and future.

    Passionate about drawing since his youth, Pascal Boyart grew up in Paris near La Chapelle, the birthplace of European graffiti. During the last 15 years he covered the walls of Paris with his realistic figurative frescoes inspired by an evident fascination for monumental portraits. Pboy is notably the first mural painter to affix a Bitcoin QR code for donations, to support his future works with no intermediaries involved. The mural has been painted in two days on the facade of the Galerie W Landau, as part of the W-Art United Festival. Check out below for more images of the Red Jester.

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    ‘The World Is Ripe for Remaking’: Watch Artist Theaster Gates Revitalize Crumbling Buildings Into Bustling Community Centers

    Everything Chicago-born artist Theaster Gates sees, hears, touches, even imagines, is material just waiting to be transformed into art.
    In 2016, in an exclusive interview with Art21 as part of its “Art in the Twenty-first Century” series, Gates explained his circuitous career route.
    He began as an urban planner with an interest in religious studies, defecting along the way to try his hand at being a potter.
    “I stopped making pots and was looking for a thing to do, and remembered that I had good hands,” he says in the interview, recalling how his father, a roofer by profession, had taught him from an early age to build things.
    With this realization, the artist began to set his sights on large buildings as the raw materials for his work, transforming crumbling buildings into revitalized community-gathering spaces, balancing art with social responsibility.
    The structures, which Gates strips and transforms into sculptures, are sold as bonds or investments to benefit rehabilitation projects, which many banks declined to fund.
    Newly restored buildings are turned into repositories for Black culture, and there is even space for artists to live.
    “The world is ripe for a making, for a re-making, for a re-shaping,” he says in the Art21 interview.
    “Can art and culture change communities?” he asks. “It does all the time… I’m asking questions of what the Black world might look like if we invested in it, if we gave a damn.”
    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Art in the Twenty-First Century, below.
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    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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    The Venice Biennale Is Staging an Introspective Archival Exhibition This Summer About How Major Events in History Shaped Its Legacy

    While the Venice Biennale may be postponed until 2022, the organization that oversees it will celebrate its 125th anniversary this summer with an exhibition that, for the first time ever, brings together all six of its departments—art, architecture, cinema, dance, music, and theater.
    Each the departments’ six artistic directors are collaborating on the archival show, titled “The Disquieted Muses. When the Biennale Meets History,” which looks at La Biennale foundation’s winding and, at times, fraught history.
    “Interdisciplinary collaboration is something completely new for La Biennale,” Cecilia Alemani, who spearheaded the show and is set to curate the next Venice Biennale, tells Artnet News. “In particular, we will focus on when the institution clashed with different moments in Italian and world history, be it crisis and war, but also when it was faced with the introductions of new languages and transformations of the biennial itself.”
    The exhibition will be on view from August 29 to December 8 at the central pavilion of the Giardini, which usually hosts half of the central group art exhibition. Given the detailed-oriented nature of documents and other ephemera on view, there will be no attempt to bring the show online
    About 95 percent of the show will draw from the wealth of documents within the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts in Venice. There will also be items and works on view from a large group of Italian foundations, as well as a handful of loans from the Tate Modern and the Peggy Guggenheim collection. Alemani says the institution’s archive, which was was founded in 1928, is a “living history” that includes letters, contracts, video, and pictures, as well as artist sketches and even “gifts” that participating artists may have left behind.
    Police charging the student in St. Mark Square during the demonstration against the Biennale, Venice, 1968. A section of the exhibition will look at this historic moment. Photo by Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images.

    The large central pavilion will be broken into “rooms” with displays designed by the firm formafantasma. One section will look at the years of fascism between 1928 and 1945, focusing on the work of the Futurists as well as degenerate-labeled musicians during World War II and the film festival’s wartime awards to Leni Riefensthal’s fascist propaganda film Olympia.
    Other section focal points include the Cold War, highlighted by Peggy Guggenheim’s breakthrough show of her collection at the then-unused Greek pavilion, which introduced modern art to what was then a highly traditional biennial; then the show heads into the 1968 student protests, which were brought to Venice’s doorsteps. The show goes on to ebb and flow throughout the structural changes of the 1970s and into the introduction of postmodernism. It finally arrives at the 1990s with the beginning of globalization and the star-making historical pavilions such as Hans Haacke’s 1993 German pavilion and the 1999 exhibition curated by Harald Szeeman.
    “Each of [the artistic directors] has traced the historical arc they thought would best illustrate the key points of La Biennale throughout its history,” said La Biennale president Roberto Cicutto in a statement. “I would like to thank all of them, and their staff, for working on this despite the current difficulties and all their other duties.”
    When it comes to Alemani’s own upcoming show in 2022, she says it is still hard to imagine how the world will look then. “Since I was appointed in January, I have had to restart my plans for the show three times,” she says. “I am taking a deep breath and trying to listen and learn about the changes in the world, good and bad.”
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    in Street Art

    5th Anniversary Edition of The Crystal Ship in Ostend, Belgium

    Although the 5th anniversary edition of The Crystal Ship was cancelled last April due to the pandemic, sitting still is just not their thing. They recently have invited DFace, Case Maclaim and Elisa Capdevila to paint new murals in Ostend, Belgium. The new locations Zelliklaan, Duinhelmstraat, and Wetenschapspark were all outside the city centre to guarantee safe visiting of our artworks.
    This 2020, The Crystal Ship’s theme is Home Is Where the Heart Is. 
    The Crystal Ship is an annual art event that turns the coastal town of Ostend into Belgium’s leading open-air gallery, with over a dozen world-renowned street artists setting sail for it. They have covered Ostend with murals, sculptures, installations, and just about everything you don’t expect to see in a popular holiday spot.
    Scroll down below to see more images of this year’s artworks.

    Mural by Case Maclaim in Duinhelmstraat | Photo by Jules Cesure

    Mural by Case Maclaim in Duinhelmstraat | Photo by Jules Cesure

    “Mermaid’s Tale” by DFACE in Zelliklaan | Photo by Jules Cesure

    “Mermaid’s Tale” by DFACE in Zelliklaan | Photo by Jules Cesure

    Mural by Elisa Capdevila in Oostende Science Park, Wetenschapspar | Photo by Jules Cesure

    Mural by Elisa Capdevila in Oostende Science Park, Wetenschapspar | Photo by Jules Cesure

    Mural by Elisa Capdevila in Oostende Science Park, Wetenschapspar | Photo by Jules Cesure

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    ‘The Death of Marat’ Defined the French Revolution. Here Are 3 Things You Might Not Know About Jacques Louis David’s Masterpiece

    In 1793, Jacques Louis David, the official artist of the French Revolution, painted the Death of Marat as a tribute to his slain friend, the revolutionary propagandist Jean-Paul Marat, in the wake of his assassination. The painting, which is today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, remains one of the defining images of that era. Most museum goers are at least cursorily familiar with the image and the story behind it.
    So you probably know that the assassination in question took place during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, and that David’s depiction was used as Jacobin propaganda. You may know that Marat was killed by one Charlotte Corday, who gained entrance to his house by promising to give Marat dirt on enemies of the Revolution, then stabbed him. You may know that Marat is pictured in a bath tub because he had a skin condition that he was treating, and that the note shown gripped in his hand is meant as evidence of Corday’s trickery, showing a message from her asking for his help.
    Here are three facts about the painting that go a little deeper.  
    1) It May Be His Tribute to Another Revolutionary as Well: Caravaggio
    Caravaggio, Entombment of Christ (1603). Collection of the Vatican Museum.

    You may not think of austere Neoclassicism as connected to the bombastic Baroque. But scholars have called the Death of Marat David’s “most intense masterpiece of Caravaggism.”
    As a student, David was likely very inspired by Caravaggio, who was not the most fashionable reference in France at the time. With its draped arm and stigmata-like, bloodless wound, the figure in Death of Marat echoes Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ (1603). Marat’s dramatically lit, slack-jawed face also echoes Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (1610).
    Caravaggio, Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy (1610). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

    The French Revolution rebelled against the church, and thus made religious iconography forbidden during this period. But the reference to Caravaggio’s works helped David render Marat a Revolutionary martyr. Since Marat’s newspaper was called “The Voice of the People,” and Caravaggio was famous (or infamous) for inserting images of the common people into Biblical scenes, the influence really makes sense.

    2) Corday, Not Marat, Would be Celebrated in Art for Decades After ‘The Death of Marat’ 
    Jean-Jacques Hauer, Charlotte Corday (1793). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    Charlotte Corday, the assassin, is not depicted in David’s picture, which is part of what gives Marat’s figure its beautified, otherwordly status. During her trial, an unrepentant Corday stated she had acted to stop Marat from further fueling the Reign of Terror, saying, “I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand,” before being sent to the guillotine.
    Corday’s dying wish was that her portrait be taken. National Guard officer Jean-Jacques Hauer, who had already taken some sketches of the prisoner, created her likeness in the hours just before her execution.
    In the decades that followed, opinion on the Revolution turned, and so did opinions on the Death of Marat. David had to have the painting hidden away when he was exiled to Brussels. Meanwhile, Corday continued to be the subject of paintings and poetry that pictured her as a heroine, earring the nickname the “Angel of Assassination” by the mid-19th century.
    Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry, Charlotte Corday, posthumous (1860). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    Paul Baudry’s 1860 image of the same scene, made during the Second Empire, paints Corday into the image, as if flipping David’s image by 90 degrees to open up the view on the event.
    But Jean-Joseph Weerts’s The Assassination of Marat (1880), featuring a steely Corday faced by a musical theater style explosion of angry French revolutionaries, has to take the cake for alternative renditions of of the scene.
    Jean-Joseph Weerts, The Assassination of Marat (1880). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

    3) Charles Baudelaire Brought ‘Marat’ Back to Life
    The painting lingered in relative obscurity well after David’s death in 1825. The family even tried to sell it, unsuccessfully.
    Charles Baudelaire, considered one of the first art critics as well as a modernist poet, gets credit for reinvigorating public enthusiasm for the painting. In 1846, upon seeing it in a small exhibition of works of David and Ingres in Paris, he penned an ode to the work that specifically placed its emotional truth above the politics of the day, and so set the stage for it to be revered beyond its immediate Revolutionary context:

    There is something at once both tender and poignant about this work; in the icy air of that room, on those chilly walls, about that cold and funereal bath, hovers a soul. May we have your leave, you politicians of all parties, and you too, wild liberals of 1845, to give way to emotion before David’s masterpiece? This painting was a gift to a weeping country, and there is nothing dangerous about our tears.

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    Rashid Johnson, Anicka Yi, and Other Art Stars Twist Reality and Truth in This East Hampton Show—See Images Here

    As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.

    “Friend of Ours”at Rental Gallery, East Hamptonthrough July 30

    What the gallery says: “‘Friend of Ours’ presents leading contemporary artists who bend reality in such a way as to make the viewer question their own lying eyes. Who even knows what is real anymore? Beyond any pedestrian sense of ‘fake news,’ we drift in an epoch wherein no one seems to agree on any basic premise. Everything we look at is presumed to have always already been face-tuned and photoshopped, and when our brains attempt to decode art objects they are filtered through our presumption that they have been ‘fixed in post.’
    Using a variety of strategies, all of the artists included in ‘Friend of Ours’ complicate the reading of reality. Many of the artists in the exhibition make objects that seem to have been digitally altered when in fact they are what they are. Others use form and scale to confuse our ability to read what is before our eyes in subtler ways. The line where craft and After Effects meet is blurred and rendered moot. As a whole, the works in the exhibition operate as a new form of trompe-l’oeil, confusing our digitally native brains’ perceptive abilities.”
    Why it’s worth a look: If you’re lucky enough to be out east this summer, there’s no shortage of gallery shows offering (socially distanced) viewing experiences. At Rental Gallery—which set up shop on Newton Lane long before it was pandemic trendy—a group show of quirky, thoughtful, and timely works is the perfect re-entry into IRL art exploration.
    Some of the works are clearly reflections on the current state of the world, including Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing (2020), a frenetic red canvas produced during quarantine, and Sayre Gomez’s Untitled (2020), a gray canvas painted with “BLM” and “I can’t breathe” and accompanied by an illustration of the grim reaper. Other works are more ambiguous, though it seems like everything these days has new meaning, such as Mungo Thompson’s Snowman, a bronze-cast sculpture of three Amazon delivery boxes, the new omnipresent accessories of life in lockdown.
    The show is curated by Joel Mesler, who owns the gallery, and Benjamin Godsill of the art advisory Curatorial Services. It features artists Farah Al Qasimi, Sayre Gomez, Henry Gunderson, Hugh Hayden, Alex Israel, Matt Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Josh Kline, Fredrick Kunath, Robert Longo, Tony Matelli, Borna Sammak, Mungo Thomson, Austyn Weiner, Jonas Wood, and Anicka Yi.
    The gallery is donating a portion of proceeds from exhibition sales to Black Lives Matter and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Healthcare Heroes Fund for COVID-19.‍
    What it looks like:

    Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.

    Josh Kline, Keep the Change (Texas Roadhouse Waiter’s Head with Cap) [detail] (2018). Courtesy of the artist.

    Friedrich Kunath, For the Last Time, Hello (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Matt Johnson, 3 Intersecting Books (Henry Moore, Michelangelo, and Bonsai) (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.

    Jonas Wood, Shelf Still Life (2015). Courtesy of the artist.

    Alex Israel, Casting (2015). Courtesy of the artist.

    Farah Al Qasimi, Curtain Shop (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

    Anicka Yi, Cascade of Failure (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Austyn Weiner, Working Through Not Knowing a Damn Thing About Any Thing (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Sayre Gomez, Untitled (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.

    Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.

    Installation view, “Friends of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.

    Rashid Johnson, Untitled Anxious Red Drawing (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

    Robert Longo, Study of Rio Cops, Baltimore (2016). Courtesy of the artist.

    Henry Gunderson, Henry Sux #3 (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

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    Egypt May Have Broken Its Own Antiquities Laws by Lending Dozens of King Tut Artifacts to a Touring Blockbuster Show

    A traveling blockbuster exhibition featuring the treasures of King Tutankhamun, the famed boy pharaoh, may have breached Egyptian laws meant to protect antiquities.
    In a new documentary, BBC News Arabic investigates the legality of the show, billed as the largest collection of King Tut’s treasures ever to leave Egypt. It was organized with the help of Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, formerly Egypt’s minister for antiquities, and a controversial figure in the field of archaeology.
    “Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” is the work of Exhibitions International, an events company that specializes in sports, entertainment, and fashion. The show, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, debuted at the California Science Center in Los Angeles in March 2018 as part of a 10-city tour. Following a stop in Paris, it was most recently on view at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
    When the show was planned, Egypt’s Antiquities Protection Law permitted the international exhibition of ancient artifacts provided they were “not unique” and were “exchanged with states, museums, and scientific institutions”—but not commercial companies.
    Tutankhamun’s Wishing Cup in the Form of an Open Lotus. Image courtesy Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo, Italy.

    The law was amended in 2018, allowing Egypt’s council of antiquities to approve international artifact loans without restrictions. But Exhibitions International signed its contract with the government in September 2017, before the legal amendment.
    An Egyptian lawyer, Sayed Said, has filed a lawsuit against the country’s ministry of antiquities over the exhibition, arguing that the show contains unique artifacts that have been unlawfully lent to a commercial business.
    IMG, the parent company of Exhibitions International (and Frieze Art Fair), told the BBC that the artifacts in the King Tut show were not unique, but part of a series. Hawass says that “these touring artifacts aren’t of any importance,” a claim that directly contradicts a promotional quote he offered for the show in 2017, in which he claimed that “each object is unique.”
    Gilded Wooden Bed (Reign of Tutankhamun 1336-1326 B.C.E.)© Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo/Italy

    There is precedent for shutting down international exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts. In 2011, a court in Cairo found that Cleopatra exhibition in Ohio, also organized by Exhibitions International, was unlawful, and demanded the artifacts’ return. (The Cleopatra show took place prior to IMG’s purchase of Exhibitions International in 2018.)
    The London show, originally scheduled to run through May 3, 2020, has been closed indefinitely since March. It will not reopen, according to the Art Newspaper, and subsequent stops on the tour have been suspended indefinitely.
    The show attracted 1.4 million visitors in Paris and 580,000 in London, and brought in approximately $57 million. Los Angeles attendance figures were not available. Admission ran as high as £37.50 ($46) at Saatchi, which is normally free.
    Colossal Statue. Image courtesy of Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo,  Italy.

    At the tour’s end in 2024, the 150 artifacts are slated to return to Egypt, where they will go on permanent display at the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum near the Pyramids of Giza, where construction underway. The museum, which has struggled financially, is slated for completion in 2021—which means it will debut without the works in the international exhibition.
    The touring show is supporting the $1 billion new museum, with contractual earnings of at least $5 million in each city, and bonuses to be paid out after 400,000 visitors at each stop. IMG has reportedly paid the Egyptian government $20 million to date.
    Mostafa Waziry, the secretary general of Egypt’s antiquities ministry who approved the current show, told the BBC that “holding exhibitions abroad yields huge results, not just economic, but political and touristic results.”
    As head of the council of antiquities, Hawass previously coordinated Exhibitions International’s 17-city blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” on tour between 2004 and 2011 and featuring 50 artifacts. (Venues included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Chicago’s Field Museum, and Discovery Times Square in New York.)
    Gold Inlaid Canopic Coffinette of Tutankhamun Dedicated to Imseti and Isis(Reign of Tutankhamun 1336-1326 B.C.E) ©Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo, Italy

    King Tut’s first international outing was the famed “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibition that ran from 1972 to 1981, fueling an Egyptomania craze. The show, which contained 55 pieces from Tut’s tomb, became an international sensation, including stops in seven US cities.
    The current exhibition includes 60 works that have never before left Egyptian soil. King Tut’s tomb, the only pharaoh’s burial site found intact, had over 5,000 objects.
    John Norman, the head Exhibitions International, told the BBC he was not concerned about a legal challenge to the show.
    “We have legal documents that were done by the government,” he said.

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