I have done over ten hols there with my fam. Beaches are great. Mostly locals. Depends where you go
Telling stories about art within the bigger picture of soc, econ and pol. Last Leonardo, Art Bust, Art Safari – Books. Podcasts. Documentaries www.benlewisprojects.com #arthistory
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I have done over ten hols there with my fam. Beaches are great. Mostly locals. Depends where you go
You cannot beat Sicily as a holiday destination
Banana art remains popular. A banana vulva by Danish artist Thyra Hilden sold for (just) €12,000 at the Enter Art Fair in Copenhagen. Hilden (female) is making a humorous reference to (man) Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian (banana with duct tape), which once sold for €120,000 at auction in 2019.
I wish it was not so but the opinion and ‘argument’ is tendentious imho for the simple reason that it could as easily be argued the other way round that Lab’s past appeals to electorate about the virtues of immigration were as ineffective as the writer argues their rw positions are now.
I do not understand the appeal of tgis artist. Her work looks like giftwrap to me www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/02/f...
Fascinating but demandingly long article by the great Sam Knight (who broke the Bouvier-Rybo story in 2016) about how Drahi drahgged Sotheby's down - with interesting titbits on much more, eg Salvator Mundi underbidder Liu Yiqian's Long Museum www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The mug would say "Art critics never die, they just end up working for free." observer.com/2025/08/arts...
In another well-travelled Gucci suitcase, he found Egyptian artefacts dating back to 1500BC: everything from scarabs and burial masks to a mummified pet falcon. Bryan says his team contacted experts at Christie’s in New York, who sold the items for them. www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...
Very Joseph Cornell
Me too
Edward Hopper's picture shows a stretch of the Le Pont des Arts in Paris in 1907. He painted frequently outdoors and fell in love with the city and its culture, saying: 'I do not believe there is another city on earth so beautiful as Paris.'
Christopher Bramham is amongst the most important figurative artists working in Britain today. In a review of his work in 2002, the art critic Brian Sewell wrote: 'they offer reward for contemplation and have something too of Lucian Freud's peering intensity.'
The art bubble has gone the way of tulips. This interview says it all… But I don’t think it’s generational- the rich collectors finally realised how much money they were wasting buying art. That was gonna happen one day. news.artnet.com/market/galle...
news.artnet.com/market/galle...
I have often had that thought. Shouldn’t the BBC be writing insinuating negative storied about The Times, the same way and as often the T do it to them?
Roy de Maistre was a pioneer of abstraction in Australia and has been described as Francis Bacon’s ‘most important artistic contact in the 1930s.' They once occupied adjacent studios on King's Road, Chelsea - this work shows Bacon's studio, presumably when he had just moved in.
Harold Harvey's painting shows the Cornish village of Mousehole in 1922. On this clear day, it looks more like a village in a primitive painting, equivalent to a Tuscan hill town in a Florentine 15th Century fresco.
I really feel I should like AG, but I struggle with him
"FOR ALMOST EVERY REPORTING PROJECT, I make a timeline... thicken the chronology as I come across new material, tucking new items between those already in the list. It's the easiest way, I find, to illuminate the forces that propel people from one chess square in their lives to the next." Yes!!
Please enjoy this Klimt Eastwood
RIP Robert Wilson, a true visionary. www.artnews.com/art-news/new...
www.occrp.org/en/news/cryp...
www.cnbc.com/2025/06/09/c...
"“For decades, criminal enterprises have used America’s multibillion-dollar art industry as a personal piggy bank for money laundering schemes, terrorist financing and other nefarious activities." www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/07/25/a...
85. Jetzt wäre der richtige Zeitpunkt für eine grosse Etel Adnan-Retrospektive in DE. Die Münchner Ausstellung war toll, aber auch räumlich beschränkt. www.lenbachhaus.de/programm/aus...
I want to pause this uptick in the use of concerning new words and I want push back against it
Should I set up a ‘wordpolice’ account on tiktok?
Things are so bad, the planet is calling for Batman.
I am fascinated by the new terminology we come across these days and what it tells us about the world - suggested it as a podcast, but can't find any funders.... eg divisive... vulnerable... uptick... troubling... even man/woman. A lot of arguments r attempts to extend or redefine meanings of words
“Worth, Inventing Haute Couture,” a new exhibition at Petit Palais, showcases how the 19th-century designer Charles Frederick Worth set the template for many of the conventions and myths that still govern the creation of high fashion today.
You’re lucky they don’t call them train travel community support agents
Do you mean why mention feral social media when you can mention neoliberal meritocratic technocracy?
Karen Chernick on early modern women painters you should know about
'Portrait of Roy Gentry,' was made in 1949 when the sitter and Euan Uglow were both aged 18 and Uglow was studying under William Coldstream at the Slade; precise measurements are still visible in this work and can be seen as the scaffolding of his pictures.
Okay then Rosalind Kraus’ Originality of the Avant-Garde
Deleuze on Francis Bacon (if that’s not too pretentious a suggestion)
The latest sign of the end of the era of the contemporary art booms - zombie museums artreview.com/a-eulogy-to-...
Why does it matter if someone who opposes Israel’s brutality in Gaza is “privately educated”? Is it relevant if someone who criticises Hamas’ brutality went to private school? Was the journo Tom Ball here himself privately educated? Or his editor? @arusbridger www.thetimes.com/article/55e5...
Yet another massive scoop from Katya Kazakina. I interviewed Abigail Asher in my Great Contemporary Art Bubble film
Wolfgang Tillmans at the Pompidou is the best show of his career” says JW, perhaps offering the kind of compliment Mozart paid Salieri in Amadeus. on.ft.com/3GLY7FI
Mistbound Lines of Trees - Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. #photography #landscape #nz #foggymorning
Because they were in the TV series The Bise-Xfiles?
2/2 "...It was the quality of the book, the canny distribution of advance reading copies and marketing materials by publishers, and the work's ability to speak to a moment that made the difference."
"Books mostly weren't gaining momentum on TikTok because their authors were making top notch viral videos, but because readers and bookish influencers were recommending them to each other and posting about their experiences.... 1/2 www.carolinecrampton.com/im-done-with...
Free Lucy Letby www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Gameshows, Cliff Richard and Stalin’s most hated play: the British culture sent behind the iron curtain
Miguel Covarrubias's chilling & unflinching c. 1942 caricature of Adolf Hitler, from fascinating, wide-ranging Covarrubias exhibition now up through late September at Banamex Fomento Cultural in downtown Mexico City fomentoculturalbanamex.org/exposiciones...
i dno, maybe time to let it go
Perhaps now but not in the 80s. You may be too young to recall the important differences between Western social democracy and Soviet communism, and in my view the forgetfulness of the older generation and ignorance of the younger partly explains rise of authoritarianism
True - but what did it contain? We don’t know. For all we know it might have reiterated a two-state solution probably with removal of Hamas while begging for a few billion petrodollars. I am trying to see this scoop the way others do, but….!
I must say I have read this article 5 times and I struggle to see how TBI did much more than find out what was going on. I don’t see evidence they helped shaped a proposal of any kind. The story seems imho to be stretching it - like journos who like photos of people standing next to each other?
Happy July 4th 🎆 Washington Dulles (opened 1962), by Eero Saarinen. 📷 Balthazar Korab/Library of Congress. #airportarchitecture www.instagram.com/p/DLr-Y6xsDn...
I don't think your impressive academic credentials invalidate my previous point.
Yes the past was terrible. I hate the past and I want to punish it
As far as I am aware, no Ancient Egyptian ever expressed an opinion whether they’d accept their remains, or the stunning historical and artistic objects in wch they were contained, being exhibited 1000s of yrs after their death in museums dedicated to the understanding of their magnificent culture
There’s nothing wrong with a bit of humour on here. I for one would be thrilled if my body or whatever it was placed within, would be used - after an appropriate intervening period of mourning of, say, a millenium or two - to communicate the beauty, or merely the practices of an ancient civilisation
Oh dear it only took you three tweets to attack me for being a man! I left twitter to avoid this stuff
I think you’ve forgotten to complain that mummies are privileged and their exhibition makes the non-mummified community feel unseen
This is a non-issue. A mummy that’s almost 3000 years old is not the same as the human remains of 19thC indigenous peoples taken by their colonisers. Why do people these days push the reasonable into the ridiculous so often? www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/07/02/s...
"We are in the midst of a paradigmatic shift, and to not acknowledge this is to peddle an outdated narrative,” says Blum Translation - "Collectors have realised they have been paying far too much for Takashi Murakami's art market manga" www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/07/02/t...
Yes - action good, dialogue bad
“They’re Nihilists, Donny. They don’t believe in anything.”
The new book by Dan Hicks, the Jeremy Corbyn of archaeology, gets a no-nonsense and fair-minded review here www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/03/a...
Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban
Seriously, I do wonder how much this cover—obviously bought and paid for by Bezos—had to do with Wintour stepping down as EIC.
So the same reasons the voters turned against the Conservatives … at some point you gotta ask the question whether the voters are asking for the impossible
‘Everyone is digging for gold now’: Desperate Syrians resort to scouring ancient sites
5 top dealers club together to form a 'supergroup' art advisory service. In times past they were competitors. What an unmistakeable sign of the retrenchment in the art market. The top guys know that the boom years are over www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/27/a...
Dona tell me that’s a Donatello www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/26/r...
Admired the phantasmagorical libidinous installation by Lea Gocht at Staatliche Galerien Karlsruhe. The artist made soft toy cats covered in a fabric on which her own skin and body parts were printed, while riffing on a Caspar David Friedrich painting with foam mattresses. Fearless!
Januscak does an excellent demolition job on the RA’s Kiefer-Van Gogh nonsense show, and is brave enough to call out Kiefer’s. Y now tiring and repetitive bombastic work Van Gogh/Kiefer review— everything about this exhibition is wrong www.thetimes.com/article/f08d...
Red alert! Afrofuturism has been culturally appropriated
Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, for one night only, I am live on stage at the Karlsruhe Kunstakademie www.kunstakademie-karlsruhe.de/aktuelles/in...
This classic British comedy sketch from the 80s may be relevant here: vm.tiktok.com/ZNdUtU2XF/
Yes it’s Matthew ‘Great Realignment’ Godwin who’s never looked worse and who is deteriorating by the week
“This bold and brazen heist took no more than five-and-a-half minutes to complete. America has never been seen again.” Maurizio Cattelan's works acquire new meanings as time goes by - a sign of their quality. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/16/t...
BBC now also apparently happy to pay for and broadcast docos whose subject is also an exec producer and therefore controls editorial “It would be too strong to call it hagiographic, but it is a full-blooded celebration of her achievements” 🤣🤪 www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
I used to write for Goodhart when he edited Prospect (the art column). He’s like a different person now but my problem with what he writes these days is that his ship has sailed, hasn’t it? Decades ago?
I remember years ago when I first looked at the photographs of Edward Burtynsky, I thought he was a watered-down version of Andreas Gursky, but these days his oeuvre looks much more substantial - the photographer of climate change, if you like. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/19/e...
Street in Amsterdam: butchered pig, dog drinking blood, kids inflating bladder, woman suggesting vegetarian alternative. Wonderful if odd scene from 1668 by Michiel van Musscher whose day is today.
My problem with Goodhart is that his ship has already sailed, has it not?
This decision by the BBC is shameful. Rumita is a very brave reporter who’s won Emmys for inter alia a film on Afghanistan (an incredibly dangerous film to make). If BBC bcast a film about Oct 7, they can bcast this film abt Gaza. The horror is perpetrated by both sides @bendepear.bsky.social
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I reposted
The unusual choice of this colour might be related the similarly attired X in Giotto's Stefano Altarpiece in Rome, or to the blue clothing of Christ in the Duc Du Berry and other French Books of Hours
This exhibition will be amazing. I got to go. One of the most unusual features of the Saudi Ex-Cook Salvator Mundi is that Christ is wearing blue clothing, whereas usually it is blue and red. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/09/m...
The unusual choice of this colour might be related the similarly attired X in Giotto's Stefano Altarpiece in Rome, or to the blue clothing of Christ in the Duc Du Berry and other French Books of Hours
Is that your website guys? www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/09/m...
The unusual choice of this colour might be related the similarly attired X in Giotto's Stefano Altarpiece in Rome, or to the blue clothing of Christ in the Duc Du Berry and other Frenchs Books of Hours
I have often had this thought but the answer is… Very few or none because they’d be sh1**ing in their own nest. It would end their career because other prospective media employers would worry they’d do the same to them, right?
Just advertising my next gig
BBC, C5 TV presenter jailed for selling art to sanctioned Lebanese financier, suspected of funding Hezbollah Rare anecdotal evidence here that the EU's extension of their AML directives to art market is having a direct effect reducing money laundering through art. 1/4 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
From my undergraduate lecture notes on the Weimar Republic's collapse
2/2 One of the amazing site drawings by Pieter Saenredam of the cathedral in Utrecht.
Nave & Choir of the Mariakerk in Utrecht. Complete with dogs, graffiti, and a group of people admiring a painting of the Utrecht Bull. By Pieter Saenredam, on his day.
4/4 Later Alexandra Bergman wrote something for Airmail
In happier times the Lebanese financier Mr Ahmad and his art collection was the subject of this flattering profile in an interior design museum. I am not sure if the profile is still online
2/4 The prosecution "explained how Ojiri's arrest came after people working in the art market were brought into the regulated sector in 2020, meaning they were bound by anti-money laundering and terrorist financing measures to report suspicious transactions or face prosecution."
BBC, C5 TV presenter jailed for selling art to sanctioned Lebanese financier, suspected of funding Hezbollah Rare anecdotal evidence here that the EU's extension of their AML directives to art market is having a direct effect reducing money laundering through art. 1/4 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...