The Week in Art

This week: following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we talk to Svitlana Biedarieva, a Ukrainian art historian, artist and curator, about the community of artists in her home country, their work since the Maidan, or Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and how they are responding to the events of recent days. Also on Ukraine, Tom Seymour talks to the photographer Mark Neville, who has been based in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv for the past 18 months and left the city last week, about a photojournalistic series he made in Ukraine, about ethical approaches to reportage and about the effects of documenting war-torn countries. As a book is published featuring Chris Burden’s unrealised projects, we talk to Jori Finkel about the American performance and installation artist’s extraordinary imagination. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Jane Alison, curator of Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, discusses one of the key works in the show: the Goa-born artist F.N. Souza’s Mr Sebastian (1955).The Art Newspaper’s reporting on the Russian invasion of UkraineSvitlana Biedarieva, art historian, artist and curatorThe artists mentioned by Svitlana:Piotr ArmianovskiYevgenia BelorusetsAlevtina Kakhidze, instagram: @truealevtinaRazom for UkraineMark Neville’s Stop Tanks With Books, published by Nazraeli Press, £50 /$60Eight photographers you need to follow in Ukraine by Tom SeymourPoetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden, published by Gagosian, $120Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 26 June Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As an exhibition opens at the Whitechapel Gallery in London focusing on artists’ studios over the last century, we take an in-depth look at the subject. The artist, critic and activist William Powhida discusses the Artist Studio Affordability Project in New York and how developers and gentrification have forced artists’ communities to breaking point. We take a tour of the Whitechapel exhibition with the gallery’s director Iwona Blazwick, and explore works by Kerry James Marshall, Paul McCarthy, Laboratoire Agit’Art, Alina Szapocznikow, Tehching Hsieh and Egon Schiele, among others. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the photographer Eamonn McCabe, who has made a series of photographs of artists in their studios, talks about his visit to Paula Rego’s space in Camden Town, London, in 2004. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: The Collaboration, a new play dramatising the relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat has opened at the Young Vic theatre in London. It looks at the period between 1983 and 1985 in which they worked together on a group of paintings, many of which were shown to critical derision and commercial failure at the Tony Shafrazi gallery in New York in 1985. Ben Luke talks to the playwright Anthony McCarten and the director Kwame Kwei-Armah about bringing these complex characters to life, and the issues, including race and class, that their relationship brings into focus. In today’s New York, a Faith Ringgold retrospective has opened at the New Museum; Ben talks to Massimiliano Gioni, the exhibition’s curator, about the astonishing breadth of the now 91-year-old artist’s work. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Helen Stoilas is at the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles, where she talks to Julie Roberts, the co-founder of the gallery Roberts Projects, about Betye Saar’s mural LA Energy—created and quickly destroyed in 1983, and now repainted for Roberts Projects’ stand at the fair. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a show looking at Louise Bourgeois’s late-career obsession with textiles opens at the Hayward Gallery in London—ahead of other exhibitions of her work in Basel and New York—we look at the French-American artist’s fabric-related creations with Jerry Gorovoy, who worked with Bourgeois for 30 years and is now President of the foundation that manages her legacy. A host of contemporary art shows have just opened in Saudi Arabia. But does this, as some commentators have said, mark a new era in the country’s approach to culture, or is it “artwashing” the country’s record on human rights abuses? We ask The Art Newspaper’s chief contributing editor, Gareth Harris, who has travelled to the Middle Eastern country to find out. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Dietmar Elger, the curator of the Gerhard Richter Archive in Dresden, Germany, discusses Fels, a three-metre-tall abstract painting from 1989, which is at the heart of a new show curated by Richter at the Albertinum in the eastern German city. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we talk to Cecilia Alemani, the artistic director of the Venice Biennale for art, which opens in April, about her show, The Milk of Dreams. She discusses the story by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that gives the Biennale its title, the “time capsules” of historic art that punctuate the exhibition, the thematic structure, and the fact that it is the first Venice Biennale featuring a majority of women artists. For this episode’s Work of the Week, Martin Bailey visits the Courtauld Gallery, where 15 of Vincent van Gogh’s self-portrait paintings have been gathered for a once-in-a-generation show. He talks to the curator Karen Serres about Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889). And at the Belvedere in Vienna, a new exhibition explores the relationship between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud—Ben Luke talks to Stephanie Auer from the museum about Dalí’s obsession with the father of psychoanalysis, his attempts to meet Freud in Vienna, and what happened when they finally encountered each other in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we visit the Royal Academy in London, where a new show looking at Francis Bacon’s use of animal imagery, Man and Beast, is about to open. The RA’s director, Axel Rüger sheds light on Bacon’s means of transposing the animal into the human figure. We talk to our editor-at-large, Georgina Adam, about The Man of Sorrows, the Botticelli painting sold at auction this week—and we find out if it went beyond its guaranteed sale price of $40m. We also talk about the big art market news of the week: that MCH Group, the owner of the Art Basel fairs, is to take over Fiac's slot at the Grand Palais in Paris to host a new contemporary art fair in October. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, Aimee Dawson talks to Megan Merritt of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, about a pair of works in Seeing Gender, a new exhibition that explores the museum’s collection through the lens of gender for the first time: a contemporary piece on paper by the Chinese artist Wilson Shieh and a 20th-century carved sculpture by the Indonesian artist Ida Bagus Putu Taman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, our contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck visits the exhibition Testament at Goldsmiths CCA in London, where 47 artists have been invited to make proposals that ponder the idea of tearing down and erecting monuments and what it might mean to rethink them. Louisa talks to Sarah McCrory, the director of Goldsmiths CCA, and to Adham Faramawy, one of the artists in the show. In Rome, a villa with ceiling paintings by Caravaggio and Guercino with a price tag of €471m failed to attract any bids. The Art Newspaper’s founder Anna Somers Cocks, who’s based in Turin, tells us why. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the artist Michael Armitage tells us about Sane Wadu’s painting Black Moses (1993), a work in Wadu’s retrospective at the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute in Kenya, co-founded by Armitage, which opened last week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of 2022, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck and the novelist and columnist at The Art Newspaper Chibundu Onuzo preview the year’s biennials, exhibitions and art fairs and our editor-at-large Georgina Adam has a stab at predicting the art market’s fortunes. Events discussed: Venice BiennaleDocumenta 15Biennale of SydneyBerlin Biennale Whitney Biennial 2022Carnegie InternationalDonatello: the RenaissanceSteve McQueenCharles Ray: Sculpture FictionWorlds of NetworksThe World of StonehengeTestamentHew Locke: Tate Britain Commission 2022Cornelia ParkerSurrealism Beyond BordersIn the Black FantasticAnthea HamiltonFaith Ringgold: American PeoplePhilip Guston: NowCézanne50 Monuments in 50 VoicesMatisse: The Red Studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the final episode of 2021 and so, as always, it’s our review of the year. Joining Ben Luke to look at 2021’s biggest stories are three members of The Art Newspaper team: Martin Bailey, a correspondent in London, Anna Brady, art market editor, and Jane Morris, editor-at-large. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the French decorative art that inspired Walt Disney, Henri Matisse’s collaboration over 40 years with the Baltimore art collector Etta Cone, and Josef Albers’s prints.The Art Newspaper’s deputy digital editor, Aimee Dawson speaks to Wolf Burchard, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, which opens today, 10 December and travels next year to the Wallace Collection, London. As the Baltimore Museum of Art opens its new Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, with around 2,500-square-feet of space dedicated to the research and display of the art of Henri Matisse, on 12 December, Ben Luke discusses the French artist’s special relationship with the Baltimore-based collector Etta Cone, which is the foundation of the museum’s huge collection of Matisse’s works in all media. And in this episode’s Work of the Week, the gallerist Alan Cristea talks about Josef Albers’s Graphic Tectonic lithographs, and their relationship to his wider printmaking activity and his celebrated Homage to the Square series, as a show of Albers’s early- and mid-career prints opens at Cristea Roberts in London.Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 December-6 March 2022; Wallace Collection, London, 6 April-16 October 2022. Our Work of the Week featuring The Swing by Fragonard, from 5 November.The Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies opens on 12 December. A Modern Influence: Henri Matisse, Etta Cone, and Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, until 2 January 2022. Josef Albers: Discovery and Invention, The Early Graphic Works, Cristea Roberts, London 10 December-22 January (gallery closed 20 December-3 January). Anni and Josef Albers: Art and Life, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM), Paris, until 9 January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.