News
The Guardian
Feb 20 2021
Harry Smith, American artist, anthropologist and esoteric spiritualist, was an important figure in the beat generation. Remembered today for his experimental films and landmark six-album compilation Anthology of American Folk Music, Smith was also an avid collector, with interests ranging from the occult to Easter eggs. One of his obsessions was paper aeroplanes, which he mostly found on New York’s streets between 1961 and 1983.
Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith, edited by artist Andrew Lampert and archivist John Klacsmann (J&L Books and Anthology Film Archives), catalogues these creations. “As caretakers of Smith’s legacy we wanted to share these planes with committed fans. We also hope to introduce others to his work through these strange and beautiful objects that Smith imbued with meaning,” says Lampert.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Feb 19 2021
artforum.com
Feb 19 2021
The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
Severe temperatures in Texas, a swarm of locusts in Kenya, the first images of Mars from Nasa’s Perseverance rover, a blue dog in Russia and the enduring impact of Covid-19: the most striking images from around the world this week
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Feb 19 2021
The New York Times
Feb 19 2021

The New York Times
Feb 19 2021
The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
The Royal Festival Hall, London, is an enduring legacy of the cultural optimism of the Festival of Britain, seven decades ago. In 1948, a hand-picked team of architects was brought in by London county council (LCC) to design the concert hall on the South Bank in which the festival would hold its main show. Among them were eight members selected by their former tutor, Peter Moro, at Regent Street Polytechnic, who, along with Leslie Martin, led the project. Trevor Dannatt, the last survivor of the group, has died aged 101.
Dannatt detailed the staircases and glazed screens of the foyers, along with some of the external windows and last-minute furnishings. He explained how each balustrade has a notch running up its centre for one’s thumb; how the main foyer stopped short of the riverfront for a double-height restaurant with its own spiral stair; that the columns on the main floor were lined in timber and how each element has a flash gap, creating a shadow that defined and separated it from the rest.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
Notre Dame | Dogs | Cats | Big mistakes | Royal award
A thousand ancient trees are to be felled to replace la forêt in the roof of Notre Dame (Report, 16 February). Why use pristine oak? No one will ever see these timbers. Surely this is an excellent opportunity to use glulam beams, which are stronger, highly sustainable, and do not require the felling of ancient trees. The cathedral’s original builders used the best and latest technologies. Why don’t we?
Robin Prior
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• There’s no need for a robotic dog if you’re not keen on picking up their waste (Mindfulness, laughter and robot dogs may relieve lockdown loneliness – study, 17 February). Just get yourself a dog like Dilyn, as I’ve never seen either of his owners swinging a full poo bag around.
Ian Grieve
Gordon Bennett, Llangollen canal
The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
Frida Kahlo is laid bare and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg saves bees, while Lindsey Mendick is one to watch – all in your weekly dispatch
Lindsey Mendick
You don’t know what to expect from this beguiling artist – it could be lovely ceramic sculpture of food or a violent installation about power and abuse. Mendick has talent and imagination to spare and is, as they say, one to watch. She will be in a show at Carl Freedman Gallery curated by Russell Tovey when lockdown ends – meanwhile the gallery website has a fine spread of her work.
• Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate
The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
From a treadmill and a puppy to 19th-century curtains, here are the purchases that have helped cheer people up in the past year
Not only has my new treadmill seen me through lockdown, it’s also keeping me on an even keel, as I live in a crowded area and don’t really enjoy running outside any more. I use it almost every day, along with an app called Zombies, run! or while listening to podcasts. It has become a comfort. The only downside is that I need to put it back under my bed after each use. Mar, journalist, Barcelona, Spain
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
Few places have seen such turbocharged luxury development as Nine Elms on the London riverside. So why are prices tumbling, investors melting away and promises turning to dust? By Oliver Wainwright
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Feb 19 2021
The Guardian
Feb 19 2021
The scrapping of ambitious plans for the Centre for Music lays bare the place of the arts in austerity-torn Brexit Britain
There always was an artistic case for London to have a 21st-century concert hall. Both the Royal Festival Hall (built in the late 1940s) and the Barbican Hall (1960s-70s) have fundamental problems in matching the best halls in the world. London is – or was – one of the world’s cultural capitals. It could undoubtedly have made rich use of a better venue – a venue that was in the works until ambitious plans for the £288m Centre for Music were scrapped on Thursday.
In a perfect world – in which money was no object, the arts were more celebrated and politicians felt under pressure to treat cultural value seriously – the Centre for Music would have been a marked improvement. Simon Rattle’s 2017 appointment as head of the London Symphony Orchestra, based in the Barbican, gave the project a star power it otherwise lacked.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Feb 18 2021

The Guardian
Feb 18 2021
With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Cambridge’s Stoneware Vase of Flowers by Jan Brueghel the Elder
There are tulips, roses, irises, forget-me-nots, daffodils and snake’s head fritillaries among the vast array of colourful flowers on display here. Their elongated stems overlap as if they are still growing and competing for prime place in the arrangement.
Nicknamed “Velvet” Brueghel for his ability to paint with enviable precision and delicacy, Jan Brueghel was one of the leading flower and landscape painters of his time. He was one of the sons of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the famous painter of peasant scenes who died when Jan was young. Jan and his siblings lived with their maternal grandmother, Mayken Verhulst, a watercolour artist who most likely taught her grandchildren to paint.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Feb 18 2021

The New York Times
Feb 18 2021

The New York Times
Feb 18 2021

The New York Times
Feb 18 2021
The New York Times
Feb 18 2021

artforum.com
Feb 18 2021
artforum.com
Feb 18 2021
artforum.com
Feb 18 2021
artforum.com
Feb 18 2021
The Guardian
Feb 18 2021
The Guardian’s picture editors bring you the best in news photography from across the globe
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 18 2021
Famed Bristol music fan Jeff Johns is staging a virtual exhibition of his paintings inspired by his love of live shows
At the outset of the first lockdown, Big Jeff developed a new habit. He would time his daily outing to coincide with a livestream gig, and as he walked through the empty streets of Bristol, he would watch the birds “reacting” to the music playing through his phone. One evening it would be the soothing folk rock of This Is the Kit, the next, Moor Mother’s confrontational spoken-word poetry. The type of music didn’t matter, as long as it was live. “If you can’t be at the show, that’s the next best thing,” he says.
If you’ve been to a gig or music festival over the past three decades, you may have noticed Big Jeff. Pre-pandemic, he would often fit several shows into one night, making him better known locally than many of the acts he goes to see. At six foot four, with his distinctive head of blond curls, Jeffrey Johns has become a figurehead for the UK’s independent music scene. “A one-man mosh pit with matching amounts of enthusiasm and festival wristbands” is how the Charlatans’ Tim Burgess describes him, referring to the strips of multicoloured fabric layered up Johns’s wrists (and sometimes embroidered on his jacket), a testament to a prolific gig-going career.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 18 2021
Photographer Antonio Olmos takes his daily exercise along the 3km beachfront in Brighton and Hove documenting 423 of the beach huts
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
As a survey of his work opens amid the snow of St Moritz, the artist talks about his obsession with blood, his disconnection from the art world, and why he misses banter with his army of assistants
If anyone should have been ready for this it was Damien Hirst. Thirty years before the pandemic that has made the modern world feel mortal, a young artist from Leeds was putting dead animals in glass tanks and arranging drugs in medicine cabinets to ram home the fragility of life.
Now Hirst is in lockdown like all of us, and as he chats via Zoom from what must be the least impressive room in his house, a small, spartan space with a blue and white cloth over a tiny window, he agrees that that early work suddenly feels very current.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
Robert Darch spent much of his 20s recovering from a stroke. His beautiful rural landscapes could be escapism … or something more sinister
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Feb 17 2021
With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights and hidden gems from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Blackburn’s Barbouyo by Rosa Bonheur
Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux, France, in 1822. Her early education was disrupted – she was expelled from a number of schools – until her father, a landscape and portrait painter, intervened to begin formally training her as an artist. Her work was first exhibited in the Paris Salon when she was 19, at a time when women were often excluded from the art profession.
Barbouyo illustrates the skilled style of realism Bonheur was capable of and celebrated for. Finished in 1879, it is a similar piece to her earlier depiction of an otterhound Brizo, A Shepherd’s Dog, now in London’s Wallace Collection. She studied the anatomy and osteology of animals in abattoirs and in the École nationale vétérinaire d’Alfort in Paris. For her painting The Horse Fair (in the National Gallery), she was granted official police permission to wear men’s clothing, which allowed her to attend horse markets, sketching and studying the animals’ movements without drawing attention to herself.
Continue reading...artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
The body of the celebrated painter, best known for his Archibald Packing Room prize portrait of Bill Hunter, was found in western NSW this week
Australian painter Jason Benjamin has died at the age of 50.
The landscape artist and Archibald prize multi-finalist, who took out the Packing Room prize for his portrait of actor Bill Hunter in 2005, went missing from Carrathool in NSW’s western Riverina region over the weekend.
Continue reading...The New York Times
Feb 17 2021

artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
The New York Times
Feb 17 2021

The New York Times
Feb 17 2021
The New York Times
Feb 17 2021

The New York Times
Feb 17 2021

artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
The New York Times
Feb 17 2021

artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
The New York Times
Feb 17 2021
The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
Local people disappointed as artwork of girl hula-hooping with bicycle tyre is bought for six-figure sum
A Banksy mural in Nottingham has been removed and sold to an Essex art gallery, disappointing local people who had hoped it would stay in the city.
The artwork showing a girl hula-hooping with a bicycle tyre appeared on the side of a building in Rothesay Avenue in October and was claimed by Banksy via his Instagram page.
Continue reading...The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
‘I wanted to pay homage to work that made my knees buckle. John looked nothing like Diane Arbus’s twins. But on set his spirit left and theirs came in’
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer. The prognosis wasn’t 100% positive and there were days when I’d lay in bed wondering if I’d ever be able to shoot again. I’m self-taught, and I started thinking about the images that had changed the way I thought about photography – work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, work that made my knees buckle with emotion.
I thought: if I ever get better, I would love to pay homage to these greats, in a way nobody has done before.
Continue reading...artforum.com
Feb 17 2021
The Guardian
Feb 17 2021
Aldeburgh locals are complaining that Quartet (Sleeping) wouldn’t look out of place in Ann Summers. But it’s far from the first artwork to raise eyebrows
Name: Antony Gormley’s beach sculptures.
Age: 20.
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