News
Comment | We are living in an age of bad painting—the medium must be challenged to stay interesting
22+ hour, 22+ min ago (334+ words) Ben Luke, our Contributing Editor and podcast host, weighs in on the pressing issues facing the UK art world and beyond It is dangerous to use art fairs as a barometer of making and meaning in contemporary art. But walking…...
First-ever oil painting depicting an artist at work to star in female Old Master exhibition
22+ hour, 49+ min ago (1129+ words) Catharina van Hemessen's Self-portrait at the Easel (1548) was painted when she was 20. It is the earliest known self-portrait and signed panel painting by a female artist, and the first depiction of an artist at work Courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel The…...
Kathleen Goncharov, influential curator who helped many artists ‘realise their dreams’, has died aged 73
23+ hour, 26+ min ago (244+ words) Kathleen Goncharov, an artist and curator who worked at influential US organisations including the pioneering New York gallery Just Above Midtown and the public art non-profit Creative Time, died on 31 December at age 73. Goncharov was born in 1952 in Monroe, Michigan,…...
More US artists forced to pay for their own shows as museum and culture budgets shrink
1+ day, 6+ hour ago (1110+ words) I would never profit from this work'that's not the point," Hierro says. But it shocked me that even with a confirmed institutional commitment, there was simply no path for the project to happen unless I found the funds myself." Her…...
A taster of the British Museum's Hawaii show in three objects
1+ day, 16+ hour ago (240+ words) Research suggests that this "ahu "ula is likely one gifted by the High Chief Kahekili of Maui island to the British captain Charles Clerke when the two met off the coast of Maui on 26 November 1778, during the third voyage of…...
An expert’s guide to the Gothic: five must-read books on the art and architecture style
1+ day, 20+ hour ago (312+ words) Mathieu Lours, an architectural historian, pays tribute to the rebuilding of Notre-Dame after the devastating fire of 2019. He retraces the monument's history, the extraordinary achievement of its original construction, and highlights the wide range of crafts and professions that contributed…...
Five new art books to look out for this spring, from a Michaelina Wautier biography to Francis Bacon's reading list
1+ day, 21+ hour ago (173+ words) Michaelina Wautier, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Lund Humphries, 152pp, 63 col. illus., "35 (hb), 28 April The Illuminating Women Artists series goes from strength to strength, with this volume on the Brussels-based 17th century painter, and another on the 18th-century French still-life artist Anne Vallayer-Coster,…...
Comment | The dissolution of Antwerp's museum of contemporary art should serve as a warning to all
1+ day, 22+ hour ago (125+ words) Charles Esche is a curator, writer and professor of contemporary art and curating at Central Saint Martins in London. He is the former director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands The time is ripe for artists and curators…...
New book tells the tale of David's ‘Death of Marat’ through the eyes of a lifelong admirer
1+ day, 22+ hour ago (199+ words) Jacques-Louis David's evocative 1793 painting of a French revolutionary figure dead in his bath, The Death of Marat, is forensically examined in Thomas E. Crow's book What can a deep reading of a specific work of art reveal? In the right hands,…...
In a ‘K-shaped’ economy, the art market's recovery could rely on the super-rich
2+ day, 2+ hour ago (476+ words) From 2022 until now, we've been in a period of decline. Big collections don't need to come to market when the market is in a dip. People will look at these sales and say the market has hit firm ground and…...