News
This year’s contenders include a violin-shaped church and a ‘welcome to hell’ glass bridge joining two mountains
A “hall of shame” listing of China’s top 10 “ugliest” buildings has kicked off with 87 bizarre designs in the running, including a violin-shaped church and an Inner Mongolia hotel in the form of a monstrous babushka doll.
Over the past 11 years a Chinese architecture website, archcy.com, has been inviting people to vote in the lighthearted annual contest that it hopes will encourage people to ponder the flexible notion of beauty.
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A surge of lava has destroyed about 100 homes on Spain’s Canary Islands a day after a volcano erupted, forcing 5,000 people to leave the area. Cumbre Vieja erupted on Sunday, sending vast plumes of thick black smoke into the sky and belching molten lava that oozed down the mountainside on the island of La Palma, one of the most westerly of the Atlantic archipelago off the coast of Morocco
Continue reading...Richard Batterham was one of the finest exponents of thrown stoneware pottery in what has come to be called the “Leach tradition”. His death at the age of 85 closes a chapter of a movement led by an elite interwar group including Norah Braden, Michael Cardew, Bernard Leach, Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie and William Staite Murray, who looked to the far east and to British medieval and vernacular pottery for inspiration.
By the early 1960s, when Batterham’s career began after a two-year apprenticeship at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, stoneware pottery had been to an extent democratised by the diploma in studio pottery set up in 1963 at Harrow School of Art, and had become part of the counterculture, promising alternative ways of living outside what was perceived as an overly technocratic society. Batterham, however, worked alone, resisting any inclusion in groups. If the way in which he lived might be seen as “alternative”, it was also resolutely industrious and disciplined. He made no distinction between his functional wares for everyday use and objects such as his majestic tall bottles: “They are all pots and some sing.” In a world freed of categories, Batterham would be recognised as one of the great artists of modern times.
Continue reading...Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Slow, determined and infinitely hard-won, the woodcut prints of the late American artist transcend their rigid medium with visions of radiant liberation
The show of the season, if not the year, is a sequence of 36 visions of such overwhelming beauty at the Dulwich Picture Gallery that the urge is to remain there all day. It is like being surrounded by some ever-changing song. Ostensibly abstract, each work nonetheless touches on nature’s infinite sublime – snow pines and green glades, early spring and deep autumn, the curlicued complexities of late crab apples suspended in volumes of pale morning light.
Their soaring radiance is an abiding characteristic of the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), one of the great pioneers of American postwar abstraction. Yet a further astonishment, at Dulwich, is that these are not paintings at all; not canvases stain-soaked with her trademark colour washes, but something else entirely – formidably large woodcuts.
Continue reading...Eight architects, 16 new buildings and one masterplan have converged in the shadow of London’s O2 to conjure up a neighbourhood for creative types that’s full of energy and charm
There once was an area in Singapore – Bugis – which, its trans nightlife being disturbing to the orderly minds of Singapore’s powers that be, was (in the 1980s) swept away. Belatedly realising that they had removed a major tourist attraction, they then constructed a faint and not-trans simulacrum of its bygone vibrancy, with an array of small restaurants offering a varied range of cuisines. The only thing was, those apparently individual and diverse outlets were served by a single giant kitchen that delivered their orders by conveyor belt.
The Design District at Greenwich Peninsula, east London, which opened to the public last week, is trying to do something similar with architecture. Here, a single developer, Knight Dragon, and a single contractor, Ardmore, are delivering a managed jumble of 16 buildings by eight different architects with a contract value of £56m. The idea, says the Design District’s director, Helen Arvanitakis, is “to build a community who can connect with each other … a totally fantastic ecosystem” where 1,800 “creatives” will work. They want to make a “piece of city”, based on examples in Tokyo, London’s Clerkenwell and “Moroccan souks”, that is intimate and intriguing. They want to make the kind of place that is usually the work of many hands over decades and centuries, all in one go. Amazingly, it shows every sign of working.
Continue reading...London-based designer Rui Ribeiro returns to his roots to create a pied-à-terre in the Portuguese capital
When the London-based interior designer Rui Ribeiro set about looking for a pied-à-terre in Lisbon, it took him five years to find the ideal place. “I wanted an apartment in an old building and it was imperative for me that it had a lift and a garage,” he says. He was also intent on buying in the historic Chiado district, where he had lived in his late-teens and early 20s. “It was so different back then,” he recalls, “there was a certain innocence about Lisbon 30 years ago that is not there any more. There were few foreigners and few restaurants. Design-wise, there was absolutely nothing.”
Things have changed significantly. Pre-Covid, Chiado had become a magnet for tourists, although a number of elderly inhabitants remain. “That helps to maintain some of its original character,” says Ribeiro, who was born in Angola, but brought up largely in Portugal. He moved to London in the early 90s and, since setting up his own practice in 2008, has become a regular fixture on House and Garden’s annual list of top 100 interior designers. His projects include an Arts and Crafts house in Chelsea, a 16th-century weekend retreat in West Sussex and residences in the Middle East.
Continue reading...We talk to the man behind an extraordinary project in Turkey, where children, most of them refugees, have been given old analogue cameras and taught the art of photography
Serbest Salih studied photography at college in Aleppo, before fleeing Syria with his family in 2014 as Islamic State fighters advanced on his home town of Kobani. He is now one of an estimated 100,000 refugees living in the historic city of Mardin in south-eastern Turkey, just a few miles from the Syrian border. Having initially found work as a photographer for a German NGO, Salih’s life changed dramatically in 2017 when, while wandering with a friend through the city, he discovered a sprawling refugee community living in a group of abandoned government buildings in the working-class Kurdish district of Istayson.
“It was a place where Turkish Kurds and Syrian Kurds lived as neighbours, but did not communicate,” he says, “They were strangers who spoke the same language. It was at that moment that I thought to use analogue photography as a means to integrate the different communities.”
Continue reading...A lifelong passion for India and its people is evident in Mitch Epstein’s colourful new collection
The photographer Mitch Epstein fell in love with the idea of India long before he went there. As a young man from small-town New England, he watched Ravi Shankar play the sitar at the Woodstock festival and paid $35 to be initiated into transcendental meditation, inspired by clips of the Beatles at the maharishi’s ashram. It wasn’t until he was in his late 20s, having studied photography under the great American street photographer Garry Winogrand in New York, that he properly explored the subcontinent with his first wife, the Indian film-maker Mira Nair, and found the images to match his imagination.
Between 1978 and 1989, Epstein made eight extended trips to India and took tens of thousands of pictures, while collaborating on three of Nair’s films (So Far from India, India Cabaret and Salaam Bombay!). This picture was taken at the annual Republic Day parade through New Delhi in 1984, the year of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and is included in a new retrospective book of Epstein’s India work. The intimacy of his crowd scene is made by two relationships: the first is between his camera and the man with the exuberantly patterned shawl to match the balloons behind. The second is that loose embrace between the two young men on the left of the group, who appear to have wandered into this scene from a different film set.
Continue reading...Major exhibition will reveal how neon went from the staple of brash advertising to an art form
Across two galleries in Wakefield sit more than half a dozen tubes of light at least two metres tall, revolving on the spot and creating ethereal shapes in the air. These sculptures, created by the pioneering American neon artist Fred Tschida, make up a dramatic new exhibition in the city called Circlesphere, which will open later this month.
The artwork is a rare example of what is now a dying craft, with only a handful of neon makers left in the UK. Along with trades like ladder making, slating and straw working, neon making is considered endangered and likely to die out altogether if urgent steps are not taken to preserve it, according to the Heritage Crafts Association (HCA). Daniel Carpenter, HCA operations director, said neon-making skills are a “small but significant part of British culture” that, if lost, would be “nearly impossible” to bring back.
Continue reading...Lockdown was a productive time for Michael Craig-Martin: most of the works in his new show at Amsterdam’s Reflex gallery were created in its grip. He continued his longstanding project of painting everyday objects in minimal style, their clean lines and smooth surfaces reflecting the blandness at the heart of consumer culture. This time, among the Apple Watches, wheelie suitcases and noise-cancelling headphones, we find the true symbol of the Covid era: a face mask. “When we try to understand past civilisations – the stone age, ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Aztecs – we do so by examining the objects they created and used,” says Craig-Martin. “My work is like an archaeology of the present.”
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The newly discovered painting of Emily Treslove, the artist’s neighbour, was redone to lose her double chin
A previously unknown painting by John Constable has been discovered, to the excitement of art historians. A portrait of a Regency woman in all her finery has not only been identified for the first time, but it has survived with the sitter’s diaries in which she had written about it.
In various diary entries, Emily Treslove described receiving the portrait in 1826 from Constable and sitting for him again three years later so that he could make “the likeness stronger” – the artistic equivalent of a nip and tuck. Constable slimmed down her cheek and nose and painted out her double-chin, a technical study reveals.
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Since its creation in late 1988, the Guardian’s Saturday supplement has been lauded for front covers and features that have caught the eye and sparked joy or sometimes controversy. As its final edition is published, some of the team who worked on it explain how they brought the magazine to life
In 1988, Guardian editor Peter Preston was feeling jealous. The recently launched Independent had a new supplement on Saturday. Edited by the late Alexander Chancellor, it was shot artfully in black and white, and was receiving praise for its inventive use of photography. Meanwhile, the Guardian had barely any feature writers; interviews usually ended up buried in the middle of the paper.
“Saturday had traditionally been the weakest day of the week in terms of circulation,” says former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who was, at the time, the parliamentary sketch writer. “The Guardian had experimented with some not very successful newsprint sections – one called Friday had flopped. The Independent had broken the mould with their magazine and it had given them a massive boost in circulation. Something had to be done.”
Continue reading...The Taliban in Kabul, Emma Raducanu winning the US Open, wildfires in California and the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks – the most striking images from around the world this week
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An image of a pensive young girl in the back of a dimly lit car has taken top honours in the annual Australian Life photography competition. The image was captured by the competition’s youngest ever entrant and winner of the $10,000 cash prize, 19 year-old Georgia Brogan from Sydney. Georgia, who is studying a media arts and production degree at the University of Technology Sydney, took the image of her 11-year old sister during Sydney’s 2020 lockdown
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Hals dazzles London, Shonibare devises a Royal revamp and Liverpool gets a lesson in sex and death – all in your weekly dispatch
Frans Hals
A constellation of engrossing portraits by this great Dutch artist focuses attention on the Wallace Collection’s most charismatic treasure, his masterpiece The Laughing Cavalier.
• Wallace Collection, London, 22 September to 30 January.
2021 has marked the second year of the Covid pandemic and the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. Accordingly, the theme of this year’s Kyoto international photography festival is Echo
Continue reading...Drawing on Style is an exhibition celebrating rare and unseen fashion illustrations from the 1930s to the present day. Highlights of the exhibition, many of which have never gone on public view before, include works by contemporary master David Downton, the glamour of fifties couture drawn by René Gruau, work by René Bouché, known for his illustrations for Vogue, and the contemporary works of both Jason Brooks and artist-in-residence for Dior, Bill Donovan.
• Drawing on Style: Gray MCA, Cromwell Place, London, SW7, from 15-26 September
Continue reading...The Northern Territory mine, opened in 1954 to help supply the UK and US atomic weapons programs, has left a huge pollution problem
On 17 September 1954 the Rum Jungle uranium mine, then the largest in Australia, was officially opened.
The mine, just over 100km south of Darwin along the eastern branch of the Finniss River, would operate for 17 years until it was deemed to be no longer economically viable and closed down, leaving a toxic environmental legacy that is still to be resolved.
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Drawing has been in private hands since around 1910 and is now going on display in Amsterdam
A pencil drawing of a broken old man, head in hands looking utterly exhausted, has been identified as a work by Vincent van Gogh.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said on Thursday that it had authenticated the drawing as being the work of the man himself. Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the museum, said it was a “spectacular” discovery shining light on Van Gogh’s early career as an artist living in The Hague, a time less well known than his years in Paris or the south of France.
Continue reading...Why did Van Gogh, Manet and Cezanne worship this incendiary painter of everyday people? Because, as a new show reveals, his range and compassion were staggering
Not many of the world’s greatest works of art can be called funny. Yet The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals has an undeniable cocky humour. A painting of this unknown man has hung in London’s Wallace Collection since the 19th century, his flamboyant upward turned moustache and tiny point of a beard setting off the confident brightness of his eyes above a huge frilly ruff and a sleeve laced with gold. Now the gallery is about to celebrate its most famous painting in an exhibition offering a chance to look closer at other male portraits by Hals.
So what has his cavalier got to laugh about? Maybe what’s tickling him is the fact that a Dutch artist who died poor in 1666 would help inspire the birth of modern art. We’re conditioned to think of this as something that suddenly happened in 1900, but the Paris avant garde had already kicked away the foundations of the past. From Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet to Paul Cézanne, these 19th-century rebels pulverised convention and forced art into their brutal, ironic modern world of railways, brothels and absinthe. And the incendiary creator of The Laughing Cavalier was their hero.
Continue reading...The genre, which some find tasteless and others empowering, is being explored at a new exhibition with a focus on poster designs
“Don’t mess roun’ with Foxy Brown,” warns a poster, depicting a sitting Pam Grier, legs crossed in a green dress, scenes of her violent escapades laid out at her feet. The design, lurid and suggestive, is instantly recognizable as a Blaxploitation film poster, a distinctive and enduring style.
Related: Blaxploitation salvation: film directors’ children on rescuing their fathers’ lost movies
Continue reading...Royal Academy, London
What – where is all the mediocre art? Yinka Shonibare has turned this annual event into a thrilling, thoughtful showcase boasting giant fruit and Colston in chains
The statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy, is usually garlanded with flowers when the Summer Exhibition is on. This year the bronze figure in the courtyard wears instead a sash of Dutch wax print, the fabric of complex colonial histories that British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has made his trademark. As coordinator of this year’s show, Shonibare starts as he means to go on – not so much denouncing the establishment as tricking it, getting it to see things his way and leaving it more radically transformed than if he’d actually toppled Sir Joshua.
Let’s not sentimentalise history. The RA was founded in 1768, bang in the middle of Britain’s most profitable engagement in the transatlantic slave trade, by artists happy to portray slavers. So there’s historical justice in the revolution Shonibare enacts in the grand salons of Burlington House. He exacts retribution with a smile and blows up ingrained inequality with the kindest of explosives. Everyone will leave happy – and changed.
Continue reading...Tyler Mitchell visited his hometown of Atlanta to create images of solace, intimacy and tenderness
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