A brush with...

Ben Luke talks to Kehinde Wiley about his influences, including artists, writers, composers, musicians and filmmakers, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Perhaps more than any other contemporary artist, Wiley has situated himself within the history of Western portrait painting. He makes direct reference to the art of the past, quoting from artists like Holbein, Titian, Rubens, Gainsborough and David, but replacing the royal, noble and ecclesiastical figures depicted by the Old Masters with ordinary people he has encountered on the street. These “moments of impact” happen mostly in New York, where he lives much of the time, but also—in his grand ongoing project The World’s Stage—in cities in Jamaica, India, Haiti, Nigeria, Brazil and beyond.As well as his project at the National Gallery in London, Wiley discusses the early influence of John Singer Sargent, his latest works relating to Caspar David Friedrich, the influence of museums like The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens and a formative visit to the Soviet Union. Plus he tells us what work of art he would most like to live with and ponders the ultimate question: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Kehinde Wiley, The Prelude, National Gallery, London, until 18 April 2022; The Obama Portraits Tour is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until 2 Jan 2022. He features in 30 Americans, Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, until 17 January 2022. And his work is in Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, at Victoria and Albert museum, London, from 19 March 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Isaac Julien talks to Ben Luke about his influences, from art to literature, music and film, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Julien's films and video installations are often swooningly beautiful, and always deeply engaged in diverse cultural histories, reflecting on, among other things, diaspora and Blackness, queer identity and the movement of people. His work actively involves other art forms, and is often produced from collaborations with choreographers and actors. He responds repeatedly to the art, literature and cinema of the past, but is also pushing video installation into new territory, using multiple screens—sometimes as many as ten—to create fractured narratives which envelop the viewer, encouraging distinctive readings of the complex stories he tells, and constantly expanding the frames through which we see his subject matter.He discusses the epiphany of seeing Max Beckmann at the Whitechapel Gallery, his admiration for Peter Doig, Stan Douglas and Glenn Ligon, the influence of poets including Aimé Césaire and Derek Walcott, the architect Lina Bo Bardi, the cultural scene in London when he began his film-making journey in the 1980s, and discovering, in his archive, his student photographs of early 1980s protests against police brutality—images that he had forgotten he had even taken. Plus, he answers our familiar questions, including the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pablo Bronstein talks to Ben Luke about the art, literature, music, film and much more that have influenced him and inspire him today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Bronstein was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1977, but came to the UK as a child and grew up in suburban London. He makes beautifully executed drawings, performances and video works. They reflect on the architecture, design and cultural traditions of mostly pre-20th-century eras and what they tell us about the role of aesthetic taste both when they were made and as we see them today. Pablo’s work is often funny, though with a sardonic edge, but its impact is heightened by the fact that it is also deeply learned—his knowledge of the intricacies, pretensions, quirks and excesses of art, design and architectural history are crucial to the effectiveness and precision of his work. He discusses his early fascination with drawing buildings, his love of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, his admiration of Mark Leckey, the power of Emile Zola’s The Beast in Man and JG Ballard’s Crash and much more. He answers our usual questions about his working life in the studio and has perhaps the most unexpected response to our final question—What is art for?—to date. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

South African artist Candice Breitz talks to Ben Luke about the artists, writers, musicians, film-makers and other figures that have influenced her and inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have defined her life and work. Breitz is a film-maker whose work, mostly in the form of video installations, explores selfhood and identity, community, race and gender, and reflects on how mass media like television, cinema and music shape our response to them. Among much else, she discusses her recent work Digest, and how it was influenced by the Middle Eastern folk tales One Thousand and One Nights and On Kawara’s Today series, or date paintings. She reflects on the power of Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction and her complex response to the South African novelist JM Coetzee. She talks about her video works telling the stories of refugees and sex workers. And she discusses growing up in Apartheid South Africa and its bearing on her choice of subjects and media. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Billie Zangewa talks to Ben Luke about the art, literature, music and film that have influenced her and inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Zangewa hand-stitches images, often featuring herself, using raw silk, in highly coloured, intricate compositions, and hopes to challenge existing representations of Black women. Born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, she grew up in Botswana and then studied at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in the 1990s. She now lives and works in Johannesburg. Zangewa’s imagery is both highly personal and universal—in recent years, particularly since the birth of her son, Mika, she has focused increasingly on depictions of herself at home, as a woman and a mother in domestic space, engaging in humdrum activities. By training her eye on the mundane moments of daily existence, she says she wants to explore the overlooked aspects of women’s lives—she refers to this as “daily feminism”. She discusses her use of silk and how she began working with it out of necessity rather than by design. She recalls her early love of Vincent van Gogh, her response to the films of Jane Campion. She reflects on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on her life and practice, and how she still works at her kitchen table, even despite the fact she has a dedicated studio. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas J Price talks to Ben Luke about the art, books and music that have influenced him and continue to inspire them today, and the cultural epiphanies that have defined his life and work. For two decades, Price has been making work about a subject that has now become a major cultural issue across the world: how power is transmitted through statuary and public sculpture and how diverse people in society are represented, or mostly not represented, in our streets and squares. Price was born in London in 1981, and studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, and his works ask questions of the nature and history of his medium and of the perceptions and biases of the viewer. He talks about his early shift away from performance art, his long journey into the history of classical statuary, his passion for Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi, his early love of opera and his conflicted engagement with the British Museum. Plus, he ponders the questions we ask all our guests, about his studio rituals and the one work of art he’d choose to live with, and answers the ultimate one: what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Thomas J Price: Thoughts Unseen, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK, until 3 January 2022. Witness, for the Studio Museum in Harlem’s inHarlem series, Marcus Garvey Park, New York, until 1 October 2022. Reaching Out has just been permanently installed at the Donum Estate, Sonoma, California. Price’s work for the Hackney Windrush Art Commission, will be unveiled in June 2022. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Sze talks to Ben Luke about ​​the art, literature, music and film that have influenced her and continue to inspire her today, and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Sze, who was born in 1969 in Boston and studied at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts, New York, takes objects and images and gathers them into intricate, uncanny assemblages which often envelop and overwhelm the viewer. Her works are often categorised as sculptural installations but exist on the boundary between many different disciplines, with painting, printmaking, drawing and video alongside found and made sculptural elements. A first encounter with Sze’s work is never forgotten: she has an extraordinary knack of making her works directly embody a gallery space, seeming to grow from it and extend into it in surprising, even magical ways. In the podcast she talks about the remarkable sense of scale, light and space in Vermeer, about the prints of Hokusai, Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death, the profound effect of seeing Chris Marker’s La Jetée and her transformative experiences of historic Indian architecture. And, of course, she answers our regular questions about what images she has around her in the studio, the rituals of her working life, and what, ultimately, art is for. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Luke talks to Tacita Dean, whose 16mm and 35mm films, drawings on blackboard, photogravures, collages, sound works and found object pieces form one of the most poetic bodies of work in contemporary art. Dean was born in 1965 in Canterbury in the UK, but for most of her life as an artist has lived outside of Britain, first in Berlin, which has provided the location for some of her most compelling works, and now between the German capital and Los Angeles. As the three-venue group of museum shows she had in London in 2018 proved, Dean has a deep engagement with the traditional genres of art, making numerous moving portraits on film, as well as stirring and lyrical works exploring landscape, seascape and cityscape. Although film is her primary medium, her works are intimately connected in form and content. Her films regularly have a distinctive painterly quality, evoke the process of collage, and relate directly to her drawings. In this podcast she talks about her love of film as a medium, the pioneering techniques she uses, her encounters with the work of Giotto, with Cy Twombly and Julie Mehretu, and the influence of writers including WG Sebald and JG Ballard. She also discusses her work for The Dante Project, a new production at the Royal Opera House in London with choreography by Wayne McGregor and music by Thomas Adès, for which she has provided the costumes and set designs. Plus, she responds to the ultimate questions we ask all our guests: if you could live with just one work of art what would it be? And what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philippe Parreno talks to Ben Luke in depth about his cultural experiences and influences. A master of exhibition-making, Parreno was born in 1964 in Oran, Algeria, but grew up Grenoble in France. Ever since he emerged in the 1990s, he has used the spaces he shows in and the immediate environment around them as an active presence in his work. Architectural elements in the gallery might be animated at certain moments, lighting might flicker according to scores we don’t see, screens might descend to show examples of Philippe’s diverse video works, at unexpected times. Often these actions are triggered by hidden environmental forces that Philippe harnesses as data to orchestrate his shows. He talks about his close network of collaborators, the group shows they put on early in their careers, his interest in science fiction, his new work about Francisco de Goya's Black Paintings, his aim to make a film about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from the monster's point of view, and the unlikely experience of getting Angus Young from AC/DC to contribute to one of his works. Plus, he responds to the ultimate questions we ask on each podcast: if he could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And, what is art for? This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.Links for this episode:Philippe Parreno at Pilar CorriasDanny/No More Reality at LUMA ArlesJaron Lanier, computer scientist, composer, artist and author Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, artist, at Esther SchipperGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of PhilosophyPier Paolo Pasolini biography on BFI websiteDaniel Buren, artistPeter Plagens on Michael Asher in Artforum in 1972 Goya's Black Paintings in the Museo del PradoSchatten/Le Montreur d'Ombres/Warning Shadows at IMDbFiona Sampson on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at 200The Year Without a Summer on the In Our Time podcastAdam Thirlwell at Granta, and his book Conversation: A Script with Philippe ParrenoPierre Huygh, artist, at Marian Goodman GalleryDanny the Street at DC ComicsNathalie Heinich on Les Immatériaux, exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1985 in Tate PapersAuthor Kenric MacDowell’s Pharmako-AIPhilippe Parreno’s Federico, initially made for the Lorca’s family home, the Huerta de San Vicente in GranadaNeal Stephenson, authorMarko Nikodijević, composer, at sikorski.deAngus Young on SpotifyDmitri Shostakovich, Fugue no24 in D MinorRobert Filliou, artist, at Peter Freeman, Inc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Glenn Ligon talks to Ben Luke about the artists, writers, musicians and other cultural figures who inspire and intrigue him, and the pivotal cultural moments in his life. Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960, Ligon works across various media, from painting to film and neon, and primarily uses text and found images to produce powerful ruminations on contemporary politics, culture and African American identity. Despite the array of media he uses, Ligon’s work is hugely consistent in its language and subject matter, with an economy and directness of form allied to a capacity for rich ambiguity and diverse meaning. Ligon joins us as he prepares to show the epic conclusion to his series Stranger, which he started in 1997, featuring excerpts from James Baldwin’s 1953 essay, Stranger in the Village, in which the American writer uses his experiences in a remote Swiss village to reflect on the nature of Blackness and the embeddedness of white supremacy, among much else. In this conversation, he discusses Baldwin and the Stranger series, along with other writers, from Gertrude Stein and Charles Dickens to Toni Morrison. He talks about his visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to draw Cézanne as a teenager, the depth and enduring power of Andy Warhol’s work and the abiding influence of David Hammons. He reflects on his musical references, from Steve Reich to Stevie Wonder, and on his interest in Korean ceramics. And, of course, he answers the questions we ask all our guests, about his daily rituals, the cultural experience that changed his view of the world and, ultimately, what art is for. This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.Glenn Ligon: First Contact is at Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, 17 September-23 December and a big show of his work opens at Hauser & Wirth in New York on 10 November. A new publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers is out this autumn. A show at the Carré d’Art in Nîmes, France, opens in 2022.Links for this episode:Glenn Ligon StudioGlenn Ligon: First Contact at Hauser & Wirth, ZurichJames Baldwin interview in the Paris Review and Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, including the collection Notes of a Native Son, in which Stranger in the Village featuresCézanne at the Metropolitan Museum of ArtCézanne Drawing at the Museum of Modern ArtAndy Warhol's Shadows at Dia BeaconCalvin Tomkins on David Hammons in the New Yorker and Glenn Ligon’s text on Hammons, Black Light: David Hammons’s Poetics of EmptinessLite Brite NeonThree Lives by Gertrude SteinWillem de Kooning's Pirate (Untitled II) (1981) at the Museum of Modern ArtRobert Mapplethorpe at the Mapplethorpe Foundation and Glenn Ligon's Notes on the Margin of the Black Book at the Guggenheim MuseumStudio Museum, HarlemWhitney Museum of American ArtWhite porcelain “moon jar” at the British MuseumRaku MuseumExtract from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at penguin.co.ukZora Neale Hurston official siteToni Morrison Society and audiobooks narrated by Toni Morrison at AudibleÉdouard Glissant at Global Social TheoryStuart Hall FoundationCharles Dickens's Tale of Two CitiesDeForrest Brown Jr as Speaker Music at bandcampWNYC New York public radioDon Cherry on SpotifySonny Sharrock on SpotifyAphex Twin on SpotifyChrissie Hynde on the Pretenders’ I’ll Stand by You Jessye Norman on Spotify and Jessye Norman singing Richard Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder/Four Last SongsSteve Reich’s Come Out on Spotify and a Pitchfork article on the piece and the Harlem SixStevie Wonder on Spotify and a link Music of My Mind, which came out when Glenn Ligon was 11 years oldUncle Tom's Cabin by Thomas Edison and Edwin Porter at the University of Virginia’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin multimedia archive, Death of Tom by Glenn LigonJason Moran official site Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.