The auctioneer clutched the Sotheby’s lectern, rocking his sharp-suited body to some silent beat. “And lot number four is the Flora Yukhnovich, I’ll Have What She’s Having, this wonderful painting,” he announced, “lot of interest in the picture, wonderful thing here.” The wonderful thing, a tousle of baby blue spiked with millennial pink, duly appeared … The millennial artist who struck art-market gold
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.comT&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information … Artist Abbas Zahedi: ‘I hijack galleries as spaces to grieve’
The perfect shot takes time. In 1976 – a few years after he’d left Tokyo for New York, by way of art school in LA – Hiroshi Sugimoto walked into a cinema in Manhattan’s East Village. The price of entry was a dollar; the place so ramshackle that nobody noticed him unfold an antiquated bellows … Hiroshi Sugimoto: it’s hard to look away from this staggeringly inventive show
In spite of a giant spam sandwich, burned-out Jag, and several plaster casts of the artist’s close friends in which cigarettes have been jammed up their orifices, Sarah Lucas’s Happy Gas is as funny as lead. In a corner of Tate Britain’s upper galleries, an animatronic hand jerks up and down, titled Wanker (1999). Across … Sarah Lucas: about as rebellious as paper doilies
What do you get when you combine a bust of the late Queen made of thumb tacks, a balloon dog wrapped in Tunnocks Teacake foil, and a toy-bright painting by the reliably silly Joe Lycett, titled I drink a crisp, cold beer in a pool in Los Angeles while Gary Lineker looks on in disgust … The RA Summer Exhibition is back – with the usual no-hopers and dearth of ideas
Smoke drifts through the September heat as I make my way towards Hong Kong’s border with the Chinese mainland. It is the evening of the mid-autumn festival, my destination the frontier village of Ping Che. This agricultural region in the city-state’s north-eastern territories has long been the site of creative resistance against the government over … Hong Kong and the art of dissent
Discussion with Director of Wysing Arts Centre Rosie Cooper responding to the Ai Weiwei: The Liberty of Doubt exhibition. Details here.
When Ai Weiwei went missing in 2011, an enterprising reporter visited the casinos of Atlantic City. “He showed me once those things he makes. I don’t get art, but he never talked much about anything but blackjack, card counting systems, girls and casinos”, Vinnie “Snake Eyes” reminisced about his former companion. “He is a good … Ai Weiwei’s artistic rebellion
It would happen something like this. First, Kawanabe Kyōsai gulped down a couple of litres of warmed sake — to get the artistic juices flowing — while his assistant prepared bowls of pigment and animal glue. Then, suitably drunk, the painter prostrated himself before a roll of rice paper. Loading a fat brush with ink, … Meet Japan’s drunken demon painter
What do you get when you mix up the stylings of Arabic illuminated manuscripts, Japanese woodblock prints, Renaissance figuration and Art Nouveau graphic design? In Hayv Kahraman’s diaphanous nudes — where pigments sometimes threaten to bleed, blot and drip like acid down the canvas — these traditions come to life to spook you once again. … Hayv Kahraman: the pain of forced migration
The Collaboration, a new play written by Anthony McCarten and directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, reimagines the real-life friendship of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. This is quite familiar artistic territory so, sure enough, graffitied crowns line the theatre walls; a DJ (Xana) in an orange blazer blasts scratchy vinyl sounds across the auditorium; grainy videos of the New … The duelling philosophies of Warhol and Basquiat
The idea that we might trust an artwork seems strange. But what if I were to tell you that your favourite piece — a Gauguin in a museum, or a performance of a Rachmaninov piano concerto, say — was a fake? That the painting was actually a forgery, or the recording was a hoax (indeed, … Ai Weiwei: a story of faith and fakes
In 1995, Horst Hoheisel responded to a competition to design a “Berlin Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe” with a provocation. Blow up the Brandenburg Gate, he said, and the scorched earth would become a new Holocaust monument. The artist surely thought it unlikely that the triumphal arch and emblem of Prussian power would … The public sculpture debate — 47 potential ways forward
The story of how dressing up relates to artistic practice is as old as art history. Consider the dramatic outfits Rembrandt assembled for his self-portraits: staged exercises in mythology and authenticity (he posed, variously, as the Prodigal Son, an Eastern potentate, even a painter). But these are not Charlie Porter’s subjects in What Artists Wear. … Why clothes matter in the art world
Discussing the powerful pull of the fantasy urban landscapes portrayed in video games and anime with TLS podcast hosts Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas. Details here.
In conversation with artist Chris Zhongtian Yuan – part of the Courtauld lecture series ‘Asian Art after Quarantine’. Details here.
Video games exert a powerful pull in this age of the pandemic. Their fantasy urban landscapes provide us with a stage for travel; their mechanics exploit action and emotion to weave intricate stories that no other artform is capable of telling. They allow us to go deeper, to be cast adrift, to dive into texture. … Urban architecture in video games and anime
What is, or was, the art world? In A Year in the Art World, the curator and historian Matthew Israel promises an insider account of the studios, art schools, museums, fairs and biennials, as well as the armies of curators, critics, collectors, estate managers and “advisors” who keep the show on the road. At the … Art as a one-stop shop
In conversation with photographer Laurel Chor. Details here.
A decade ago, I was sitting in my university bedroom listening to James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. I still recall the music’s luminescent textures filling the room — expansive and seductive, stripping away the walls. It was just me, the sound and the space. In … Why do we give music a human face?
For decades, Tsang Tsou Choi — shirtless, a towel around his neck, supported by crutches — roamed the streets of Hong Kong armed with bottles of black ink and a calligraphy brush. From the 1950s to the 2000s, he turned everything from lampposts to phoneboxes into rippling vistas of Chinese characters. His scuzzy, calligraphic graffiti … ‘The King of Kowloon’
Panel with former British Museum director Neil MacGregor and FT arts editor Jan Dalley discussing the repatriation of artefacts held by western museums.
It’s the air: the twisting movement as two archers on horseback face each other down beneath a tortured sky. In Saito Takao’s manga Muyonosuke (1967), the eponymous one-eyed bounty hunter watches as a fight breaks out between the warriors. The gouache on paper infuses a sense of melancholy into the wash of grass, the clouds … The world of Japanese graphic novels
We have been warned. As I write, another report heralds catastrophe: this time, a UN global assessment reveals the threat to humanity, as one million species are now at risk of extinction. And yet the experience of climate change stretches so far across time and space; the eco-philosopher Timothy Morton describes it as a ‘hyper-object’, … The 58th Venice Biennale’s beach opera
In David Foster Wallace’s short story “Good Old Neon”, from 2001, the narrator cannot shake the feeling that everything he does is fraudulent. He tries meditation and therapy sessions, even speaking in tongues in a church. Unable to cope, he commits suicide. There is a faint echo of Wallace’s “fraudulence paradox” in Jaron Lanier’s latest … How social media erodes happiness
If you think that the visibility of minorities in Hollywood blockbusters is inherently good, then Jon M. Chu’s romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians is a moment. If, as the director has claimed, “it’s not a movie, it’s a movement”, then is this the victory for screen diversity we wanted? Adapted from Kevin Kwan’s satirical society … Asian representation in film
One afternoon in April, I visited the apartment of György Lukács in Budapest, where the Hungarian-Jewish philosopher lived from 1945 until his death in 1971. The Marxist theorist’s rooms, which look over the Danube and the city’s Liberty Bridge, now serve as the Lukács Archívum, preserving his books, manuscripts and correspondence for posterity. Or at … What is the Art World’s Responsibility in Europe’s Culture Wars?
Developed and delivered a week-long writing workshop at the 2018 Kampala Biennale for young Ugandan art critics – in partnership with the British Council. Details here.
Contained in the billet books of London’s Foundling Hospital is an extraordinary archive of emotion. The Hospital was founded in 1739 by the philanthropist Captain Thomas Coram for “exposed and deserted young children”. Those who passed through its doors had all traces of their former lives removed: they were given new names, new clothing, a … Scraps of emotion at the Foundling Hospital
In the autumn of 1993, the British-born landscape architect Nicholas Bonner was persuaded by a friend to join a tour of Pyongyang, just as the reclusive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was beginning to take its first steps towards accepting western tourists. Boarding a plane from Beijing, Bonner imagined that it would be nothing more … North Korean design
Long before its inaugural biennial opened last October, the Sichuanese town of Anren – on the outskirts of Chengdu, China – was the site of a very different kind of theatre. The town had been home to one of China’s early 20th-century landlords, Liu Wencai, who then became a pantomime villain in Mao-era historiography (validating … Fake It Till You Make It: the 1st Anren Biennale
In Middlesbrough, to the north-east of England, people are quick to remind me that it’s always been a town of migrants. ‘Everyone here came from somewhere else’, local artist Annie O’Donnell says. At the turn of the 19th century, Middlesbrough was still a farming community of 25 inhabitants. From the 1830s, coal and iron ore … In ‘Late Great Britain’, what use is art?
A phantom mountainscape floats into view, flanked by monochrome peaks, grey skies and a strangely quiet waterfall. There is no one else, only sweeping black and white vistas and my own disembodied presence. But, when I lift off the virtual-reality headset, I am back in the studio of artist Yang Yongliang, nestled in the packed … The art of mountains and water
In May this year, the amazing lightscape of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour – emanating from its endless traffic, luxury shopping malls and skyscrapers – received a strange addition. A series of projected numeric sequences and Chinese and English phrases began to run on a nine-minute loop across the facade of the city-state’s tallest building, the … The art of Hong Kong’s future
Discussion at the Liverpool Biennial with CFCCA curator Ying Tan exploring the concept of ‘Chineseness’, in relation to Chinese contemporary artists and their perceptions of identity. Details here.
In London recently, I sat through a public panel discussion between a mainland-born Chinese artist and a British curator, held for the benefit of those interested in investing in the Chinese art market. The curator repeatedly urged the artist to recount his childhood growing up during the Cultural Revolution, ignoring his increasingly apparent reluctance to … What does ‘Chinese’ mean in Britain today?
It was a late November evening last year, during the pro-democracy protests’ final phase, when I arrived in Hong Kong. As dusk set in, I headed straight from the airport to Admiralty district. Here was the core of the movement, where protesters had built a vast tent city across a multi-lane highway, cutting through the … Hong Kong’s battle for digital rights
Yet another white pop star has wandered into the thorny world of racial drag. Taylor Swift, in case you missed her, is an American musician who began her career in a calculated blend of country crossover, the manic articulation of teenage romance and the sheen of bubblegum pop. Lately, the sugary anthems have been winning … Adventures in cultural appropriation
Beijing’s identity is always a mirage, its landscape perpetually enveloped by the vapour of its smog-filled air. In this city – the very existence of the smog a symbol of China’s dynamism and its determination to be modern – dangerous reminders of the past are reduced to ghosts and ruins, haunting the city but powerless … Heritage Inc.
In October 2012, U.K. producer Terror Danjah, the so-called Godfather of Grime, made his first tour of China. Grime emerged as an East London phenomenon at the turn of the millennium, heavily propagated by a pirate-radio underground that was broadcasting increasingly aggressive strains of bass music. At first glance, Terror Danjah’s arrival in China seemed … China’s power pop
Hipsterdom, rooted in the contempt for consumerism of Nineties indie culture, has created an aesthetic predicated on the perfection and superiority of taste. Hipsters have recently displayed a knack for picking up on all kinds of “retromania” trends – from lo-fi photography to collecting vintage typewriters. In his damning critique of indie music for the … The pernicious rise of “indie-classical”
This Saturday I will be joining 100 musicians in Peckham Rye Multi-Storey Car Park to perform the American composer John Adams’s 20th-century minimalist masterpiece, Harmonielehre. The TROSP (The Rite of Spring Project) Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Stark, is a collective drawn from the UK’s music colleges, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities, while the performance itself … The death of the concert hall