The arts on Wednesday: more VanGogh plus graphic design masters, Futurists and more

I’m always reading about artists in such places as the New Times, the Guardian, Wallpaper and more. These 2 dozen pieces below capture just some of the good things I’ve found in those publications since my last post on the arts in October.

First up, some good pieces from the Times. I highly recommend the first two, on Van Gogh and David.

• Van Gogh and the Meaning of Yellow – The New York Times – www.nytimes.com
• Face to Face With Jacques-Louis David, History’s Most Dangerous Painter – The New York Times – www.nytimes.com
• The Artist Whose Muse Is the Hardware Store B. Wurtz uses humble, everyday materials — plastic bags, aluminum pans — and turns them into something beautiful. Here, his life in five artworks.
• Letting the Squirrels Have Their Way With His Art Larry Bell, pioneer of West Coast Minimalism, installs his glass sculptures in a Manhattan park, letting passers-by see the city anew.
• Fallen Confederate Statues Take Center Stage in the Year’s Boldest Show “Monuments,” a group exhibition in Los Angeles, led by Kara Walker, places contemporary art face to face with statuary removed in the last decade.

Each Friday the Guardian posts a newsletter on the arts, and I have to say, it is consistently rich and full of good things to check out. We are lucky to have such art coverage in such a major publication. Here’s just a small sample of things I found there:

• David Hockney iPad drawings of Yorkshire Wolds to be sold at auction | David Hockney | The Guardian
• Artists given chance to use wood from felled Sycamore Gap tree | Conservation | The Guardian
• A Day with David Bowie: how a visit to a psychiatric clinic changed him – and his music | David Bowie | The Guardian – www.theguardian.com
• Ai Weiwei on AI, western censorship and returning home

Wallpaper also has good arts coverage. It tends to be contemporary artists, like these pieces:

• David Shrigley is selling a pile of old rope for £1 million | Wallpaper*
• Lexa Gates is a performance artist – but does she know it? | Wallpaper*
• Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works on paper reveal an artist’s technical mastery of his medium

 

While I love good painters and sculptures, I have a fondness for artists who work in collage and other forms that involve graphic design. Kalman, Heartfield and Kruger are just three examples found below, with some other artists mixed in:

• Artist of the day: Artist of the day, June 12: Tibor Kalman, American graphic designer of Hungarian origin – visualdiplomacyusa.blogspot.com
• John Heartfield, the German Visual Artist Who Pioneered the Use of Art as a Political Weapon ~ Vintage Everyday – www.vintag.es
• Barbara Kruger – Paste Up – London – Sprüth Magers – spruethmagers.com
• The Future Was Then: an Exhibition of Fascist Italian Posters
• Give it a Polish! Classic film posters with a twist – in pictures | Posters | The Guardian – www.theguardian.com
• Daniel Benneworth–Gray – www.danielgray.com

The following don’t have any particular idea tying them together: I just thought they were interesting and worth a look:

• Seth Rogen’s Ceramics Shouldn’t Be Scrutinized | Artsy – www.artsy.net
• n+1 | n+1 is a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics. – www.nplusonemag.com
• AI artwork in London axed after being misinterpreted – www.londoncentric.media
• Look inside ‘0-9,’ the radically experimental magazine that broke all the rules of language – www.documentjournal.com
• Nine to five John Baldessari
• The Most Influential Artists of 2025 | Artsy

(Top image from the piece on Van Gogh, middle image from the work Kalman did for the restaurant Florent in the 1980s).