- 17 July: Humble peasants … or an odyssey of sex and death? The Millet masterpiece that electrified modern art - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Van Gogh saw compassion for the rural worker; Dalí saw phalluses and a child’s grave. As The Angelus comes to the UK, our critic celebrates a painting so deep it could even induce hallucinations
It was Salvador Dalí who turned a small, intense rural scene called The Angelus, painted by Jean-François Millet in 1857-59 and hugely popular in its day, into a totem of modern art.
In the original, a pious peasant couple have heard the Angelus bell from a distant church, the Catholic call to prayer, and paused their work digging potatoes to lower their heads and pray. But from Dalí’s writings, we know he saw far more in the painting, from obscene sex to family tragedy. In one of his many versions of it, Atavism at Twilight, the couple sprout agricultural implements from their bodies. In his surreal drawings these good country people become mouldering, mummified husks, or are transformed into fossils by time and sadness. Now that the original painting is being lent by the Musée d’Orsay to the National Gallery as the star of its forthcoming show Millet: Life on the Land, we will all get a chance to obsess over this innocent-seeming artwork.
Continue reading... - 15 July: ‘A rarefied world of privilege’: lives of the New England upper class – in pictures - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Tina Barney’s decades-long exploration of the bourgeois set her family belonged to reveals the strange rituals and claustrophobic banality of rich people’s everyday lives
Continue reading... - 13 July: Cyborgs, snapchat dysmorphia and AI-led surgery: has our digital age ruined beauty? - Exhibitions | The Guardian
From photo-editing apps to ‘Instagram face’, technology has radically altered the way we see ourselves. Ahead of a new exhibition at Somerset House, our critic considers the meaning of art in a digital age
It’s the artist Qualeasha Wood who tells me about Snapchat dysmorphia, “a term coined by plastic surgeons who noticed there was a shift in the mid 2010s when people started bringing in their AI-beautified portraits instead of a celebrity picture”. To resolve your Snapchat dysmorphia, you get your real face remodelled to look like the ideal version of you that artificial intelligence has perfected on your phone screen.
There is a fundamental problem with this, says Adam Lowe, whose Factum Foundation in Madrid is at the forefront of art and technology, digitally documenting artworks and cultural heritage sites around the world. When you have surgery to look like your best self as shown on a flat screen, the results in three-dimensional reality can be very odd indeed. You can feel Lowe’s sadness at the way plastic surgery botches human restoration in pursuit of screen perfection: “I have to look away,” he says.
Continue reading... - 11 July: Lubaina Himid has a chance encounter and Ai Weiwei takes to the streets – the week in art - Exhibitions | The Guardian
The Turner prize-winner collaborates with Magda Stawarska, Weiwei unveils a public sculpture and Hockney and Emin celebrate the power of drawing – all in your weekly dispatch
Lubaina Himid With Magda Stawarska: Another Chance Encounter
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An installation exploring the letters of early 20th-century modernist Sophie Brzeska, plus new paintings by Himid.
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, from 12 July to 2 November - 10 July: Heroic images: 20 years of France’s ‘punk’ photo agency – in pictures - Exhibitions | The Guardian
From tearful scenes in war-torn Ukraine to the photo diaries of immigrants making treacherous journeys, French agency MYOP have spent two decades taking the pulse of our era
Continue reading... - 10 July: Clash of cultures: exhibition tells story of when Vikings ruled the north of England - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Viking North at Yorkshire Museum features UK’s largest exhibition of Viking-age artefacts, including era’s ‘cheap’ jewellery and evidence of slave-owning
When Anglo-Saxons buried their jewellery in an attempt to keep it safe from marauding Vikings, it is unlikely they envisaged their treasures would be dug up a millennium later and studied by their descendants.
Nor would they have expected the items to sit alongside everyday objects owned by their Scandinavian oppressors as part of the largest exhibition of Viking-age artefacts in the UK, aiming to tell the story for the first time of the invaders’ power base in the north of England.
Continue reading... - 9 July: More than Human review – a utopia of self-weaving grass and psychedelic dolphins - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Design Museum, London
From 3D-printed coral reefs to fungal facades and living fabrics grown from roots, this show embraces a future of nature-centric design‘Even when humans get serious about wanting to talk to dolphins, will dolphins have anything to say to us?” So pondered an issue of Esquire magazine in 1975. “The only reliable way to find out,” it concluded, “will be to build a Dolphin Embassy and look for the response.”
The pages that followed were devoted to a fantastical vision, created by the avant-garde architecture collective, Ant Farm. They proposed a floating multi-species utopia where humans and dolphins could mingle in a watery fantasy, communicating through telepathy. The triangular vessel featured a land-water living room, with chutes enabling dolphins to swim between floors, as well as a shared navigation pod, where one day an “electronic-fluidic interface” would allow both humans and dolphins to steer the ship. The hope was that technological advances would make the project buildable by the 1990s. “Thus far,” the article noted, “no backers have come forward.”
Continue reading... - 9 July: Shelter from the storms: queer sanctuaries – in pictures - Exhibitions | The Guardian
In a world still hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, a new exhibition looks into the things that provide solace, from chosen families in Manila to a decrepit Parisian bar
Continue reading... - 8 July: Suck it up! The sinister side of holiday snaps – in pictures - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Kourtney Roy’s filmic photo series The Tourist exposes the loneliness and desperation behind even the most glamorous looking vacation snapshots
Continue reading... - 8 July: ‘Like an academic’: private papers reveal John le Carré’s attention to detail - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Exclusive: Oxford’s Bodleian libraries to put archive items on display for first time, celebrating spy author’s ‘tradecraft’
The extent of John le Carré’s meticulous research and attention to detail are among insights into his working methods that will be revealed when the master of spy thrillers’ private archive goes on display for the first time this autumn.
His classic cold war-era espionage novels have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and inspired acclaimed films and television adaptations.
Continue reading... - 4 July: Aussie dots, Tudor pots and nudist shots – the week in art - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Modern abstract painting from the Dreamtime, a ceramic deep dive into a Tudor power struggle and a celebration of body art – all in your weekly dispatch
Emily Kam Kngwarray
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A survey of this revered Australian painter who combined modern abstraction with maps of the Dreamtime.
• Tate Modern, London, 10 July until 11 January - 3 July: Immigrants, flying sheep and Brigitte Bardot: Britain through the lens of Picture Post - Exhibitions | The Guardian
From 1938 to 1957, the celebrated photo magazine captured tattooists, transgender women and topless men sinking pints – and changed the way the country saw itself
Continue reading... - 2 July: Lobster wars and superheroes! Get set for Arles photography festival – in pictures - Exhibitions | The Guardian
From moving family reunions to voguing drag stars, this year’s Recontres d’Arles is promising a host of ‘disobedient’ images
Continue reading... - 1 July: ‘Smoke and confusion’: exhibition points out Jane Austen’s true thoughts on Bath - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Georgian city is not shy of milking its links with the author, but actually she was not happy during her time there
The city of Bath does not fight shy of promoting its Jane Austen connections, tempting in visitors from around the world by organising tours, balls, afternoon teas and writing and embroidery workshops inspired by the author. If you have the inclination, you can buy souvenirs ranging from Jane Austen Top Trumps to a Mr Darcy rubber duck.
But in this, the 250th anniversary year of her birth, an exhibition is being launched daring to point out that in truth Austen wasn’t terribly happy during the five years she lived in the city.
Continue reading... - 1 July: Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo paired for the first time in blockbuster exhibition at the NGV - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Two iconoclasts of contemporary fashion will show side by side in the first major Australian exhibition since the London designer’s death two years ago
Two era-defining avant garde fashion designers, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo, will be brought together in a blockbuster summer exhibition announced on Tuesday by the National Gallery of Victoria.
It has been more than 20 years since Westwood’s work has been exhibited extensively in Australia, and the NGV show will be the first since the designer’s death in December 2023.
Continue reading... - 30 June: ‘People laughing in the galleries’: finding humor in photography - Exhibitions | The Guardian
At the Phoenix Arts Museum, a new exhibition displays different approaches to comedy within photography
Humor stands in a strange relationship to the art world. Often ranked as a lesser aspiration for the work of a true artist, when humor does find its way into the graphic arts, it’s as more of a condiment than the main dish.
How refreshing then to see the Phoenix Art Museum’s substantial new exhibition, Funny Business, which boldly and decisively leaps into the realm of comedic photography. Showcasing humor from a wealth of angles, including slapstick, whimsical, acid, surreal, ironic, parody and so many more, the show offers ample opportunity to consider just what purpose laughter serves – and to enjoy a hearty laugh or two on a summer’s day.
Continue reading... - 30 June: The Guardian view on the museum of the year: a history of the north-east in 3m objects | Editorial - Exhibitions | The Guardian
From teapots to trams, Beamish tells the everyday stories of generations in a way that is unique to the region
“Real museums are places where time is transformed into space,” Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel laureate, writes in his 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence. Pamuk created a small museum of everyday objects based on the novel in celebration of his home city of Istanbul. A long way from the Bosphorus, this is what Beamish, the Living Museum of the North sets out to do, recreating the 19th- and 20th-century working-class history of north-east England over 350 acres in County Durham. Last week it won the prestigious Art Fund museum of the year award.
The shortlist included museums from the UK’s four nations: Perth Museum, which opened last year; Chapter, a multi-arts space in Cardiff; Golden Thread, a contemporary arts hub in Belfast; and Compton Verney, an 18th-century Warwickshire mansion, whose sculpture park is home to Louise Bourgeois’s Spider.
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Continue reading... - 30 June: ‘It’s important to talk about these things’: exhibition highlights destroyed Middle Eastern heritage sites - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Dana Awartani says Bristol show inspired by ‘dichotomy’ of some Gulf countries booming while Palestine ‘obliterated’
The exhibition is bright, beautiful and melancholy: an exploration of the loss of cultural and heritage sites in the Middle East destroyed by conflict and unsympathetic development.
Standing by the Ruins, a show by the Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani includes a recreation of an ancient bathhouse floor in Gaza believed to have been destroyed in Israeli attacks.
Continue reading... - 27 June: Wonderstruck: an art exhibition that will make even weary adults feel like kids again - Exhibitions | The Guardian
With more than 100 works by the likes of Yayoi Kusama and Patricia Piccinini, this free Qagoma show is a bold visual feast of crowd-pleasers
A towering archway fashioned from humble cardboard boxes stands like a portal to another world; pass beneath it and the line between ordinary and extraordinary begins to blur in captivating and unexpected ways.
Wonderstruck, a major and free exhibition at Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art in Meanjin/Brisbane, is an exploration of wonder that traverses the human experience, the natural world and the intangible divine.
Continue reading... - 27 June: Thin Black Line legends return, William Kentridge dazzles and Van Gogh meets a modern – the week in art - Exhibitions | The Guardian
Lubaina Himid reincarnates a pioneering show, the South African artist re-energises sculpture and Vincent goes head to head with Anselm Kiefer – all in your weekly dispatch
Connecting Thin Black Lines: 1985-2025
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Claudette Johnson, Sonia Boyce and Ingrid Pollard are among the artists in this show that revisits their 1985 exhibition, The Thin Black Line - curated, like the original, by Lubaina Himid.
• ICA, London, until 7 September
Originally posted 2011-02-25 17:28:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
