HONG KONG — You have to hand it to Richard Harris, whose collection is currently on view at London’s Wellcome Collection in an exhibition of some 300 works titled Death: A Self-Portrait. As far as collectors go, this is a show that gets right to the core of why a collector collects. It is an answer Robert Hughes skillfully extracted from Alberto Mugrabi in five minutes flat: Immortality.
Stephanie Bailey
Stephanie Bailey covers contemporary art and culture from around the world for publications including ART PAPERS, ARTnews, Artforum, LEAP, Modern Painters and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. She is the Managing Editor of Ibraaz, a consulting editor for Naked Punch, and an editorial correspondent for Ocula.com.
Posted inArt
Looking Back: What I Saw and What I Learned at Art Basel Miami Beach
Puzzled. That’s a good word to describe my state of being for my first Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB). One of the primary things I learned is that art fairs can be fun — when you’re standing on the right side of the velvet rope and you have all the right RSVPs and a prepared partinerary printed out.
Posted inOpinion
When Art as a Subversive Act Is too Subversive
LONDON — Cultural relativism is a problematic thing. If you don’t agree, ask Caveh Zahedi, whose new film, The Sheikh and I, is set to premiere at Brooklyn’s Factory 25 on December 7 after having been banned on the grounds of blasphemy by the biennial that commissioned it.
Posted inArt
From Action to Inaction: The Tate’s Exploration of Performative Painting
LONDON — It is with the pairing of two 20th-century giants in one room, Jackson Pollock and David Hockney, that the relationship between performance and painting is introduced in A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, an exhibition currently on view at the Tate Modern.
Posted inArt
Is the World’s Largest Permanent Sculpture a Monument to Our Times?
LONDON — What will the future think of the world when they look back on the marks we have left? Will it be with the same reverence with which we gaze on the Acropolis hill and the Parthenon that sits upon it as a symbol of civilization and democracy or something less forthcoming?
Posted inArt
Gender Warfare in Art, 1882 to 2012
LONDON — Who knew Max Klinger’s late 19th-century prints exploring that tempestuous schism dividing man and woman could be so evocative of Francisco Goya’s early 19th-century print series, Disasters of War? It’s gender warfare, as seen through visual art.