Art Review
The Life-or-Death Art of Hamad Butt
A survey centers the threat of disease and the complex, often contradictory emotions stirred up by the risk of contagion.
London
Art Review
Giuseppe Penone Captures the Breath of the World
A show takes us inside the practice of an artist who has been meditating on the climate for more than 50 years.
Art Review
Leigh Bowery Was His Own Artwork
In a contemporary society made creatively bland by the homogenizing factor of social media, one yearns again for such an original artist.
Art Review
José María Velasco Lovingly Captured a Changing Mexico
He celebrated the physical entity of Mexico in its exactness, rather than appealing to ingrained nationalistic European sensibilities of history painting.
Feature
Stripper Collective’s Life Drawing Merges Sex Work and Art
The East London group sees their life drawing sessions “as a natural progression from the age-old practice of hiring professional harlots and hussies as models for art.”
News
Archaeologists Reconstruct Ancient Roman “Jigsaw Puzzle”
The thousands of fragments once formed an enormous fresco that decorated around 20 walls in a building in central London.
Art Review
The Sensual Irreverence of Milly Thompson
Throughout her work, we see women attempting to free themselves from the entanglements of patriarchy.
Art Review
Edvard Munch Was a Magician of Light
A show at London’s National Portrait Gallery reveals the artist’s astonishing technical skills, but the wall texts are laugh-out-loud amusing at best and art historically dangerous at worst.
Art Review
The Private Calligraphy of Henri Michaux
The poet turned to psychedelics to discover the nature of his own consciousness, producing inscrutable drawings that alternately vibrate until they blur, or wash gently to and fro.
News
A Giant Vulva Is Walking the Streets of Europe
Dressed in flowing pink robes, artist and activist Dee Mulrooney — or “Growler” — is urging the British Museum to return a Síle na Giġ statue back to Ireland.
Art Review
When Modernity Grabbed Poetry By Its Heels
Feeling, intuiting the swing, sway, and pressures of life, with all its tumult, its blare, its bounce, and its heave, were what really counted in modern poetry.
Art Review
The Courtauld’s Impressionism Show Is a Victim of Corporate Curating
It seems that the philanthropic funds that enable shows like this are at the expense of art historical depth and integrity, perhaps even curators’ jobs.