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      See 5 Riveting Manchester International Artworks, From a Celebration of Black Portraiture to a Reflection on Migration

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      As the Manchester International Arts Festival continues into its final weeks, we decided to take a look at some of the best contemporary art interventions happening around the city.
      From an installation by Forensic Architecture on the occasion of the group’s 10th anniversary, to the transformation of a Jewish synagogue into a meditation on community and history, here are five must-see works.

      The most Instagrammable artwork on display is Big Ben Lying Down with Political Books, an installation by Argentine artist Marta Minujín. The work is a 140-foot replica of London’s famous clock, seemingly fallen to the grounds of Piccadilly Gardens. The work is another in a series of book-covered monuments the artist has installed at art events over the decades. This one contains 20,000 copies of “books that have shaped British politics” in an effort to spark conversations about the state today, as Britain reckons with new coronavirus strains and the repercussions of Brexit.

      Claire Govender adds the 20,000th book to “Ben Ben Lying Down with Political Books” by Marta Minujin, Photo: Fabio De Paola/PA Wire.

      Cephas Williams, Portrait of Black Britain (2021)
      Yandass Ndlovu, a participant of “Portrait of Black Britain” at the installation. Photo Fabio De Paola/PA Wire.
      “Portrait of Black Britain is me taking control of my narrative, asking other Black people to join me in the reintroduction of our presence and stories in the 21st century,” Cephas Williams wrote of his Manchester art installation.
      In this massive undertaking, Williams has embarked on a mission to create the largest photographic trove of Black British people ever created. For the project, Williams asked ordinary individuals to share their stories, successful or not, and then presented the 116 portraits he took.
      Cephas Williams’s installation “Portrait of Black Britain” part of Manchester International Arts Festival. Photo: Fabio De Paola/PA Wire.

      Laure Prouvost, The long waited, weighted, gathering (2021). Photo: Michael Pollard.
      Turner Prize-winner Laure Prouvost has transformed the Ladies Gallery in the newly renovated 1874 synagogue that houses the Manchester Jewish Museum into a time machine. The installation features textiles and a film that pays homage to the Jewish women who helped build Manchester into a modern city, and found comfort and safety within the walls of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. Prouvost worked with contemporary members of the Women’s Textile Group to create objects within the installation that reference themes of migration, community, femininity, and religion.
      Laure Prouvost, The long waited, weighted, gathering (2021). Photo: Michael Pollard.

      Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies (2012–ongoing)
      Still from Forensic Architecture Cloud Studies (2012–ongoing), courtesy Forensic Architecture.
      Ten years ago, when the art and activist group Forensic Architecture was just forming, no one could predict the impact it would have on the art world. In an exhibition commemorating the group’s decade-long practice, a group of works from a variety of its past investigations come together in a wrenching exploration of how the air we breathe is co-opted to “suppress civilian protest, maintain and defend violent border regimes, and empower extractive industry.” The exhibition also features the first phase in Forensic Architecture’s new work exploring environmental racism in Louisiana, where an area deemed “Cancer Alley” has wreaked havoc on generations of Black residents.
      Forensic Architecture with Forensic Oceanography, The Seizure of the luventa (2017), courtesy Forensic Architecture.
      Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies (2008-21). Photo: Michael Pollard.
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      After Years of Heated Debate, an Exhibition Dedicated to Jewish Art Dealer Max Stern Is Moving Forward—and His Heirs Are Not Happy

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      An exhibition dedicated to the life and legacy of persecuted Jewish art dealer Max Stern will go forward this fall in Düsseldorf—despite opposition from scholars and the dealer’s own heirs.
      The show, called “Disenfranchised and Deprived: The Art Dealer Max Stern,” will open at the Stadtmuseum in Düsseldorf on September 1 (until January 30, 2022), three years after it was initially canceled amid a dispute between local authorities and Stern’s heirs over how the German city was handling the project. The heirs, a group of international universities, were concerned that German authorities were not being transparent enough about the works linked to Stern that remain scattered around Germany and have yet to be returned.
      Düsseldorf mayor Stephan Keller plans to present an updated concept for the show next week. The exhibition will focus on Stern’s personal and professional life as an important art historian and art dealer based in Düsseldorf.
      Stern was running a successful gallery in Düsseldorf until 1937, when the Nazis forced him to dissolve his company. He fled Germany and eventually landed in Montreal, Canada, where he ran another successful gallery.
      The large-scale exhibition was originally called off in 2017 by the mayor at the time, Thomas Geisel, after the Canada-based Max Stern Art Restitution Project, run by heirs to his estate in both Canada and Israel, withdrew their support over concerns that the show was not being transparent about the potentially looted art that remains in German museums. Works once owned by Stern still hang in public museums in Düsseldorf.
      While city authorities did not provide an official explanation for the cancellation at the time, they obliquely attributed it to “current demands for information and restitution in German museums in connection with the Galerie Max Stern,” according to The Art Newspaper. (To the Art Restitution Project, this statement suggested they were more interested in securing the return of artworks than assisting with the show.)
      Max Stern in 1925.
      A letter to the mayor by Georgetown University professor Ori Z. Soltes stated that the German museum failed to “heal wounds that remain open more than seven decades after they were inflicted,” and instead “unilaterally cancelled the project” to protect its holdings, according to a 2017 report in the Globe and Mail.
      Instead of the exhibition, in 2018, Germany held an international symposium on Stern’s legacy in an effort to quell the disputes, before resurrecting plans for the show. (Its original rescheduled date, fall 2020, was called off due to the pandemic.)
      While the show now has a new date, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project and the Canadian curatorial team are no longer involved—nor are they happy about the new direction.
      “After the politically-controlled decision that prompted the cancellation of the original exhibition, Canadian scholars refuse to be associated with an administration that once questioned their academic legitimacy,” a spokesperson for the project told Artnet News in a statement. “They have dedicated a significant part of their careers to the study of Max Stern’s life. We prefer to focus on our current research collaboration on Max Stern with Munich’s Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. Without the expert contributions of these Canadian and German scholars, there is no reason for our project to be involved.”
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      The Medici Were History’s Greatest Patrons—and Also Tyrants. The Met’s New Show Tackles How Art Served Power

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      Portrait paintings are sometimes described as windows into the soul. The Renaissance likenesses presented in the Metropolitan Museum’s “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570” have other purposes. Their cold, opulent beauty is more akin to the calculated image curation typical of modern day influencers than to the revelation of character that permeates the paintings of the Met’s nearby Alice Neel exhibition. And that, it seems, is the point of this fascinating exhibition.
      This is not the High Renaissance of the celebrated Lorenzo de Medici whose patronage brought us masterpieces by Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. The exhibition focuses on the later 16th century rule of Florence by Cosimo I de’ Medici and introduces the cast of Mannerist painters who helped him craft his image as the city-state’s benevolent dictator.
      Organized by the Met’s Keith Christiansen and Florentine professor Carlo Falciani, the exhibition is laid out in thematic sections that tell the rollicking tale of Cosimo’s rise to power and consolidation of authority through the artworks that helped make it possible.
      Installation view of “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
      The Ruthless Medici
      The story begins with the machinations that brought the Medicis back to power in Florence after the reestablishment of Republican rule following their expulsion in 1494.
      For forty years, Florentine Republicans had mostly held off the onslaught of the Medician autocrats through periods of civil war, plague, and siege. A potent symbol of this struggle was Michelangelo’s David. Installed in 1504 outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of Florence’s civic government, the figure’s stern resolve and youthful vitality provided inspiration for the city’s anti-Medici partisans.
      The second coming of the Medici was aided by a pair of Medici Popes: Leo X, a hedonistic pontiff who bankrupted the Vatican with dynastic wars and personal luxuries, and the inept Clement VII who brought on the Sack of Rome and lost half the Church to the Reformation. However otherwise disastrous their reigns, they secured the return of the Medicis to Florence.
      Jacopo da Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (probably Francesco Guardi) (ca. 1528–30) with a display of arms in “The Medici” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, Courtesy of The Met
      A series of skirmishes between Republicans and Medici supporters culminated in the 1529 siege of Florence which was led by Clement’s ally the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Following the city’s capitulation, Clement installed Alessandro de’ Medici as Duke. The licentious Alessandro, who may have been Clement’s illegitimate son, did not last long. He riled the city’s Republican families and was assassinated by a distant cousin in 1537 in what was celebrated as an act of tyrannicide.
      Thanks to wars, murders, and early deaths of designated heirs, Florence was now running out of direct descendants of the original Medici family. As a result, the Dukedom passed to seventeen-year-old Cosimo de Medici, a descendent of a lesser branch of the family. Expected to be a weak leader destined for exile, assassination, or domination by stronger factions, he ruled Florence for over thirty years, established a Medici dynasty that lasted for two centuries and transformed Florence with art patronage and massive public works into the city we know today.

      The Bronzino Touch
      Although “The Medici: Portraits and Politics” includes works by such luminaries as Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Benvenuto Cellini, Giorgio Vasari, and Francesco Salviati, the real stars of this exhibition are Cosimo and his favored artist Agnolo Bronzino.
      Bronzino was perfectly in tune with his patron. In numerous portraits he depicts Cosimo in a variety of guises: a young warrior in full armor whose hands caress his helmet; an older man of forty, now bearded and dressed in somber black as befitting the statesman he has become; and in an allegorical painting as Orpheus, naked from the back as he turns toward the viewer.
      Bronzino, Florence Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus (1537–39). Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Mrs. John Wintersteen, 1950. Image: Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
      In all these depictions, Cosimo offers the same gaze, mask-like in its impenetrability, presenting a picture of steadfast purpose and icy control. This essential message became part of Cosimo’s cultural diplomacy. The non-allegorical portrayals were repainted multiple times and distributed as gifts to friends and potential allies.
      Bronzino’s portraits offer a similar treatment of Cosimo’s family. His impressive wife Eleonora di Toledo was a granddaughter of Lorenzo de Medici and served as his frequent political advisor while bearing him eleven children. She is seen here as a gravely modest young wife and as an equally serene mother subtly pregnant as she pushes forward her equally composed young son Francesco.
      Bronzino, Eleonora di Toledo and Francesco de’ Medici (ca. 1550).Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale, Pisa. Image © Haltadefinizione® Image Bank by permission of the Ministry of Cultural Activities and Heritage—Polo Museale della Toscana.
      Francesco reappears elsewhere as a slightly older boy, holding a letter, and, in a 1570 painting by Bronzino’s protégé Alessandro Allori as a young man suited for battle. Francesco would succeed Cosimo as Duke of Florence in 1571, when his father went on to the more august position as the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

      Art as PR Push
      None of Bronzino’s depictions of Cosimo or his family match the fierceness of Cellini’s bust of the Duke. Two versions, one in bronze and one in marble, introduce the exhibition. They present Cosimo as a supremely confident military man swathed in armor ornamented with classical motifs.
      Two portrait busts by Cellini in “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, Courtesy of The Met
      This representation was meant to underscore the association of Florence’s 16th century ruler with Rome’s imperious Caesar Augustus. All these official portraits seem designed to smooth over the messy trajectory of Cosimo’s rise to power, his suppression of civil liberties, the political intrigues that marked his reign, and his brutal campaigns against other city-states.
      The exhibition includes portraits of other notable figures, both by Bronzino and by other artists. Among these are Francesco Salviati’s probing portrait of Bindo Altoviti, a leading banker and Republican sympathizer; Bronzino’s subtly sexualized depiction of naval commander Andrea Doria as a powerful, nearly naked Neptune; and his tribute to poet Laura Battiferri. The homosexual Bronzino carried on a long platonic relationship with this formidable woman and here depicts her in profile with features that deliberately echo those of a more allegorical painting of Dante he had created thirty years before.
      Francesco Salviati, Bindo Altoviti (ca. 1545). Private Collection.Photograph © Bruce M. White, 2020.
      There are as well portraits of some of the more dubious characters in this drama: The ill fated Alessandro de Medici appears in Pontormo’s portrait as a sober, cultured young man captured in the act of sketching the bust of a woman on a piece of paper. Pope Clement VII, painted by Sebastiano del Piombo just before the disastrous Sack of Rome, is a regal figure blissfully unaware of the debacle to come.
      The exhibition is dotted with various artifacts. These include rapiers, halberds, and ornamented axes of the sort used by both sides in the siege of Florence, original manuscripts, a red velvet dress that may have been worn by Eleonora di Toledo, and coins that celebrate Cosimo’s architectural projects. These public works were an equally important part of his cultural legacy, dedicated to cementing Florence’s place at the epicenter of Italian Renaissance.

      The Problem of Michelangelo
      So as to underscore the cool sobriety of Bronzino’s approach, the show ends with a face-off between him and painter Francesco Salviati, a fellow Florentine with more cosmopolitan tastes who had lived in Rome and traveled throughout Italy. Salviati’s portraits, many of them dotted with now obscure mythological motifs, exhibit a warmth and naturalistic approach that make a striking contrast to the chilly perfection of Bronzino’s figures.
      Installation view of the “Florence and Rome: Bronzino and Salviati” gallery in “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo by Hyla Skopitz, Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
      But perhaps a more telling comparison would have been the works of Bronzino and Michelangelo, then and now Florence’s most famous artist. Michelangelo casts a long shadow over the exhibition even though he appears here only in a portrait by Daniele da Volterra. Even unfinished, the work captures its subject’s life force and craggy vitality in a way that seems a rebuke to the flattering elegance of Bronzino’s representations.
      Michelangelo posed a problem for Cosimo. Towering above other Florentine artists, he sided with the Republicans in Florence’s civil wars and fled the city forever when Cosimo came to power. Cosimo attempted unsuccessfully to lure him back and only succeeded after Michelangelo’s death, when the old master’s body was returned to Florence and given an extravagant state funeral. With this gesture, Cosimo hoped to tie himself to the revered artist and to obscure Michelangelo’s Republican sympathies. Cosimo had already brought artists of Florence under his patronage through the founding of Florence’s Accademia del Disegno. His embrace of the dead Michelangelo reveals his efforts to control the narrative of history as well.
      Benvenuto Cellini, Cosimo I de’ Medici (1545). Museo Nazionale del Bargello. By permission of Ministero della Cultura. Photo by Antonio Quattrone.
      But in the end, Michelangelo escaped Cosimo’s grasp. His David, now installed in Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, is one of the world’s most famous works of art. The generic blandness of Bronzino’s court portraits pale next to the giant slayer’s steely gaze and taut determination. David remains Michelangelo’s compelling monument to the resistance to tyranny.
      Is there a lesson here for our so-called Modern Medicis? The art world is currently engaged in an unprecedented inquiry into the political and economic entanglements of museum board members and the ethics of museum patronage. As history reveals, art often finds itself in service to power. But the saga of Cosimo de Medici also suggests there are limits to the control patrons have over the power of art.
      “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through October 11, 2021.
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      See How British Artist Bridget Riley’s Paintings ‘Caress and Soothe’ the Eye in Her New Show at David Zwirner London

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      It’s hard to think of an artist whose work is more visually pleasing than that of British artist Bridget Riley. The Op Art painter is known for her eye-catching canvases featuring geometric patterns, lines, and color arrangements that collectively pay homage to her favorite artist, the Pointillist Georges Seurat.
      “The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift,” she once said of her work. “One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.”
      Bianca Jagger at “Bridget Riley: Past Into Present” at David Zwirner. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      In one of summer’s boldest exhibitions, David Zwirner has presented “Past Into Present,” an exhibition of paintings by Riley that features works from the past two years. Together, they reference “the work of the past, both in her own practice and in the art of painting itself,” according to the gallery.
      The exhibition features, among other works, an an extension of Riley’s “Measure for Measure” series, which includes the addition of a fourth color (turquoise), as well as a series of new “Measure for Measure Dark” paintings, which emphasizes deeper tones. The artworks are intended to “enrich the viewer’s enjoyment,” notes the gallery, “giving them something more to look at.”
      The exhibition is on view now at David Zwirner’s Grafton Street gallery in London, and online here.
      Bridget Riley, Intervals 12 (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      A close up of Bridget Riley, Intervals 12 (2021). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      Installation view of Bridget Riley’s Measure for Measure Dark 2 and 3 (2019). Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
      An installation view of Riley’s exhibition “Past into Present” at David Zwirner in London. Photo courtesy David Zwirner.
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      The Baltic Triennial Has Brought Together Some of Europe’s Most Promising Emerging Talents—See Images Here

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      The Baltic, a region typically seen as encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, has always boasted a dynamic art scene in Europe. One of its foremost contemporary art exhibitions, the Baltic Triennial, taps into that landscape of talent every three years—its 14th edition just opened this June in Vilnius, Lithuania.
      Since 1979, the Baltic Triennial has brought together these nations’ diverse yet overlapping art scenes, which were then still a part of the former Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. As such, the exhibition has long straddled a shifting notion of East and West, offering a unique perspective on Europe.
      Appropriately then, this year’s exhibition, which has brought together more than 60 artists from the region and from Central and Western Europe has been organized under the title, “The Endless Frontier.”
      Zsofia Keresztes at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Helmed by Valentinas Klimašauskas, curator of the Latvian pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and Portugese curator João Laia, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the show is anchored at the Contemporary Arts Center in the historic center of Vilnius, but spirals outward across various project spaces through the city. Each invited space developed their own autonomously curated projects that overlapped in some way with the core exhibition of the Contemporary Arts Center.
      “The Endless Frontier” offers a compelling survey of young and emerging artistic talents, featuring works by Flo Kasearu, Zuzanna Czebatul, and Klara Hosnedlova in the main concourses of the Contemporary Arts Center. Dreamy surrealist paintings and small sculptures from Polish painter Tomasz Kowalski takes over the project space Swallow.
      At Rupert, Lithuania’s prominent international artist residency, a group show curated byAdomas Narkevičius features new works by Kosovo-born artist Flaka Haliti, Karol Radziszewski from Poland, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo alongside two historically overlooked artists from Lithuanian’s postwar art scene, photographer Virgilijus Šonta and abstract painter Juta Čeičytė.
      The Baltic Triennial 14: The Endless Frontier is on view until August 15, 2021. See images below.
      Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Exhibition performance “Who are you?”, Žygimantas Kudirka and felicita at Atletika. Photo: Andrej Vasilenko.
      Natalia LL at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Klara Hosnedlova at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Karol Radziszewski at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Flo Kasearu at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Works by Zuzanna Czebatul, Jura Shust, and Dominika Trapp at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Works by Flaka Haliti, Zsofia Keresztes, Czebatul, and Danutė-Kvietkevičiūtė at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Works by Agnieszka Polska and Voitech Kovarik at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Works by Emilija Skarnulyte Polska and Voitech Kovarik at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Alex Baczynski Jenkins at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Aleksandra Domanović at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, for the Baltic Triennial 14 “The Endless Frontier.” Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Tomasz Kowalski at Swallow, as a part of the Baltic Triennial 14. Photo: Ugnius Gelguda
      Tomasz Kowalski at Swallow, as a part of the Baltic Triennial 14. Photo: Ugnius Gelguda
      Exhibition view, ‘Authority Incorporeal’, Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies and Education, 2021. Photo: Ugnius Gelguda
      Jaakko Pallasvuo, Miša Skalskis, Rachel McIntosh, Stephen Webb Angels Instead (2020). Photo: Evgenia Levin
      Žilvinas Dobilas, Jonas Zagorskas I was bored, (2000). Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Anni Puolakka “Feed” at Editorial, as a part of the Baltic Triennial 14. Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
      Anni Puolakka “Feed” at Editorial, as a part of the Baltic Triennial 14. Photo: Ugnius Gelguda.
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      The Immersive Van Gogh Installation Has Found Its Hit Demographic: Moms. We Asked One of Our Own for Her Review

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      As immersive Van Gogh light experiences have opened all across the country this summer, our staff noticed a distinct tread: Our moms were contacting us about them. Whether it was the magic of Van Gogh in family lore or the magic of Facebook’s targeted marketing, the phenomenon was real. But should we actually recommend the experience to our moms? Did it hold up?
      Last month, we invited Seija Goldstein—mother of Artnet News editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein—onto the Art Angle podcast to get to the heart of its appeal. After that podcast was recorded, our distinguished guest finally got a chance to visit the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in downtown New York—and so of course we wanted to share her review. Here it is.

      Date of Visit: June 30, 2021
      Seija Goldstein. Photo by Andrew Goldstein.
      Travel to Location: I ventured to take the subway for the first time since early March 2020. It was not too crowded at midday, and almost everyone was wearing a mask. I took two trains, with a change at 34th Street station, from Upper East Side, then a longish walk in 90 Fahrenheit-plus heat to Pier 36. There were no taxis to take anywhere near the East Broadway subway stop. Use your Google Maps for walking directions; nobody I asked had any idea where the pier was.
      Once I got to the pier, there was no waiting in line to get in, and I walked straight through to the third and the largest room. I could not find a seat in the largest open area and ended up in a side section.
      Exterior of Immersive Van Gogh at Pier 26. Photo by Ben Davis.
      The Show Itself: The show started almost immediately and I discovered that it runs for 30 minutes in a loop, with the next showing starting right away.
      Inside the main chamber of Immersive Van Gogh, with the mirrored partitions at left. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Images of Van Gogh’s art are projected onto the walls and, at times, on the floor. Some wall sections in the middle of the space were mirrored, so you could see the show everywhere. There were a few short benches, some chairs, and you could rent small cushions to sit on the floor.
      I watched the show in the side section, on three smaller walls, and was not all that impressed. However, as I was leaving, the next show started and I found a seat in the largest open area with a huge wall, and decided to stay for a second run.
      I’m happy I did, because the experience was so much better, more immersive. (Hint: If you go, sit in the back of the large third room, facing the huge wall on the right.)
      Visitors contemplate a projection of a Van Gogh landscape along a large wall in Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Van Gogh’s pictures appeared massive all around you. To me, the most impressive images were his flowers and landscapes. I wished that some of them would have stayed up longer on the screens—by the time I got my phone out to take a picture, they were gone. Overall, the colors were stunning and you really got to see Van Gogh’s signature heavy brush strokes.
      Upside-down projections of Van Gogh within Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      Unfortunately, the portraits worked less well. In order to show movement, some faces twisted and distorted. A series of self-portraits at the end of show first came up upside down and then turned around, which was just weird.
      Another disappointment was Van Gogh’s bedroom, where the pieces of furniture moved and turned across the screen and never seemed to find their place.
      An animation builds up furniture from Van Gogh’s studio in Immersive Van Gogh. Photo by Ben Davis.
      The projections were accompanied by loud music. I recognized Edith Piaf and some beautiful cello music, but most of it was not very memorable. Perhaps there was a connection to the paintings that I did not get.
      The Verdict: My premium flex peak ticket cost about $70, including all fees. Was it worth it? After the first show I’d have said no way, but after the second it became a closer call.
      Tickets are timed and it did not feel overcrowded, so let’s call it COVID pricing: They need to make their profit with fewer visitors and are employing quite a few people. At the same time I got a little shot of culture after a long drought. A bit pricy for 30 minute show, but under the circumstances, who’s complaining!
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      Documenta Will Forge Ahead With the Show’s 15th Edition in the Summer of 2022 as Planned

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      Documenta has decided that its 15th edition will take place next summer as planned, despite ongoing uncertainty due to the pandemic.
      The supervisory board and shareholders of the exhibition met this morning to decide whether it should maintain its original schedule of June 18 to September 25, 2022. Christian Geselle, chair of the supervisory board and the mayor of Kassel, said that during an hours-long discussion, the various actors weighed a range of complications, including staff organizational issues and travel plans for the artists and cultural workers who come to Kassel from all over the world for the exhibition.
      After considering the possibility of holding an event with restrictions on travel, the board ultimately decided to proceed largely as planned, even if it means scaling down exhibition expectations and visitor numbers.
      One of the world’s most prestigious art exhibitions, Documenta takes place every five years in Kassel, an otherwise quiet city in Germany. Ruangrupa, an artist-collective based in Jakarta is curating the 15th edition, making it the first collective to do so.
      Ade Darmawan, a member of Ruangrupa, said at a press conference that most of their preparations so far have taken place on Zoom. “This has also been great to expand our horizons,” he said. The collective has already selected around 53 artists, who will be announced in September.
      “The idea of postponing means that we are envisioning a time when things can go back to normal, but this likely won’t happen,” said Darmawan. “We need to live with these new normalities.”
      Darmawan said that groups of artists have been able to travel to site visits in Kassel since June.
      For the next edition, Ruangrupa is focusing on the concept lumbung, a collectively governed rice barn in rural Indonesia where food is stored for the benefit of the community.
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      Salvador Dalí… Introvert? A New Show Looks at the Quieter Side of the Debaucherous Surrealist’s Life

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      Salvador Dalí painted an outlandish and dream-like universe. On occasion, he and his wife, Gala, brought those visions to dazzling life with outlandish parties hosted at their home in Portlligat, Spain. 
      The Surrealist couple’s soirees are the stuff of legend. Elaborately staged costumes were a must, with guests and hosts decked out in all manner of concoctions.
      Wild animals were often on the guest list, too, and could be found roaming freely through the Dalí’s fascinating home.
      At one such fête, Gala Dalí spent much of the evening reclining in a broad, velvet-covered bed, with a costume horse’s head crowning her head. Waiters served her food in a golden slipper, as a lion cub on a lease on the bed beside her (the party was, believe it or not, a benefit for refugees). 
      Despite (or because of) how extravagant the parties were, rumors swirled that the couple was involved with something more illicit. Orgies or satanical cabals were not infrequent accusations.
      Salvador Dalí, Les Dîners de Gala (pp. 16-17). Courtesy of Taschen.
      Though that was more the stuff of gossip, the Dalís’ culinary predilections were no more puritanical, as evidenced in the artist’s 1973 Surrealist cookbook Les Dîners de Gala (the dazzlingly illustrated book was reissued by Taschen in 2016).
      On the menu, one finds Frog Pasties, Toffee with Pine Cones, and, yes, a Peacock à l’Impériale dressed and surrounded by its court, which features a taxidermied peacock presented on a platter. Dalí described the recipes not as healthy (never!), but “devoted to the pleasure of taste.” 
      Those pleasures of taste came, of course, at great material expense—financial burdens which the artist and Gala, who was also his manager, funded through commercial endorsements including advertisements for Lanvin chocolates, which further played up the mustached caricature of Dalí’s persona. Such enterprises earned the couple derision in many circles; André Breton nicknamed Dalí “Avida Dollars,” an anagram of the artist’s name meaning “eager for dollars.” 
      But now a new exhibition, “Dalí at Home,” at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, presents a softer look at the artist’s years in Portlligat. While photographs of Dalí in flamboyant poses drew wonder and disdain from the public alike, there were, as the exhibition shows, a few photographers who formed intimate friendships with the artist, gaining access to the personal and very private world he kept in Cadaqués, Portlligat, and nearby Figueres, the town where he was born.
      Horst P. Horst, Salvador and Gala Dalí (1950/2016). Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. Courtesy of Condé Nast and the Horst Estate.
      In nearly 40 portraits by the photographers Horst P. Horst, Ricardo Sans, Melitó Casals, Lies Wiegman, and Robert Descharnes, the artist is presented informally, at times even tenderly, as he works, relaxes, and chats with friends at his home.
      Primarily taken in the 1950s and early 1960s, one sees a different Dalí—an artist who (even momentarily) appears unaware of himself. One photograph by Horst shows Dalí and Gala walking along the rocks of Costa Brava, chatting. In another, Dalí is snapping a simple photograph of Gala in an olive orchard. 
      The home in Portlligat (today the Salvador Dalí House-Museum) held deep sentimental value for the artist, which may explain the unaffected ease of these images. He lived and worked in the house for most of his life: it was his primary residence from 1930 to 1982, aside from his years spent in the United States.
      Impoverished and financially cut off from his family, Dalí first set up a home in a small fisherman’s hut in the town, drawn to the isolated landscape and the light (many of his paintings are based on its landscape), and spent some 40 years building it out. (In 1968, Dalí purchased a castle in Púbol, Spain, as a retreat for Gala. With their relationship growing increasingly rancorous, Gala moved to the castle full time soon after. Dalí was apparently only able to visit her by invitation). 
      “Portlligat is the place of production, the ideal place for my work,” the artist once said. “Everything fits to make it so: time goes more slowly and each hour has its proper dimension. There is a geological peacefulness: it is a unique planetary case.”  The home, he explained, had a biographical element to it.
      Ricardo Sans, Dalí in Fireplace (1950) Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL. Courtesy of Ricardo Sans, © Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020.
      Over the decades, this wholly unique home became—rather than a place of pure spectacle—something quite cozy, filled with mementos, carpets, and velvet pillows, gatherings of dried flowers, and antique furniture. In one photograph the artist is crouching inside a fireplace writing or drawing, almost like a small child hiding at home. 
      “There is only one difference between a madman and me,” Dalí famously quipped. “The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.”
      What these pictures seem to say is that even madness can sometimes look quite ordinary.  
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