From Bouguereau to Cattelan, here’s a baker’s dozen pieces on artists new and old thought worthy of my attention and yours.
First up a good article on the young artist Lee Bul and their work, The Four Mysterious Guardians. Also this Colossal piece on how Dabin Ahn Balances Hope and Melancholy in His Sculptural Paintings As for other newer (to me) artists, I think it’s good to remember that the art market giveth and the art market taketh, as this piece shows: Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust.
Some good exhibits that recently showed were:
- Tracey Emin at White Cube Bermondsey with her solo exhibition, ‘I followed you to the end’,
- these 2 Must-See Installations at Dia Beacon Now (including a work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, shown above)
- Louise Bonnet’s solo exhibition ‘Reversal of Fortune’ at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin with her falling figures depict an emotional narrative to be felt rather than told
- David Hockney: Perspective Should Be Reversed’ at the Palm Springs Art Museum
- and Galleria Borghese’s ‘Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories’ with their first exhibition dedicated to a contemporary female artist and the first devoted to Bourgeois in Rome (shown below)
As for older artists, this is a good introduction to Hans Haacke Why Are Museums So Afraid of This Artist? The great artist Frank Auerbach died not too long ago. The Guardian has a piece on him here: Frank auerbach a life in pictures. Sadly John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, recently died at 96 (one of his painting is at the end).
Some artists are good at getting attention. Even people who don’t know or follow art know about the conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, “Comedian,” which consists of a fruit-stand banana taped on the wall. In the end the art market did the very thing Cattelan was mocking, with 7 bidders biting before it went to …you might have guessed before hand…a crypto entrepreneur.
Another artist who gets lots of attention is David Shrigley. I admire what he is doing here: David Shrigley urges schools to prioritise arts with aid of giant mantis. Will it be successful? I don’t know.
Finally I went down a rabbit hole on 19th century painting after I came across someone ripping into Basquiat and Twombly and extolling the work of William Adolphe Bouguereau, and I dunno. I’d take the first two over the third any day.
Smart People I Know 