Podcast appearances and mentions of ben luke

A host of exhibitions and events this month and next celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, one of the godfathers of kinetic and auto-destructive art. Ben Luke speaks to Roland Wetzel, the director of the Tinguely Museum in Basel about the artist's life and work, and the events marking the centenary. In Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Fenix, a museum about migration, has just opened, featuring a dramatic stainless steel tornado form on its roof. We discuss the museum with its director, Anne Kremers. And this episode's Work of the Week is by an immigrant artist, Ben Shahn, who was born in modern-day Lithuania but travelled as a child to the US, where he became a leading painter associated with Social Realism. Among his greatest achievements was the mural The Meaning of Social Security, painted between 1940 and 1942 in Washington D.C. to reflect the benefits of the then-recent Social Security Act. Shahn is the subject of a major show that opened this week at the Jewish Museum in New York. We speak to Laura Katzman, the co-curator of the exhibition with the Jewish Museum's Stephen Brown, about Harvesting Wheat (1941), Shahn's study for one of the figures in the mural.The Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, has a permanent display of his work; Scream Machines–Art Ghost Train, by Rebecca Moss and Augustin Rebetez, Tinguely Museum, until 30 August; Mechanics and Humanity: Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, until 24 August; Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton, UK, until 1 February 2026; Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontus Hultén, Grand Palais, Paris, 20 June-4 January 2026.The Fenix museum is open now.Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity, Jewish Museum, New York, 23 May-12 October. The book accompanying it published on 3 June by Princeton University Press, priced $45.00/£38.00.The Meaning of Social Security murals:https://art.gsa.gov/artworks/637/the-meaning-of-social-security?ctx=3bc918796c456cc8fb8e3d3f033918d4249d0ce6&idx=6https://livingnewdeal.org/sites/wilbur-j-cohen-building-shahn-frescoes-washington-dc/#lg=1&slide=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Koyo Kouoh remembered, Queen Elizabeth II memorial, Jasper Johns by Robert StorrKoyo Kouoh, the Cameroon-born curator who was director of Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town and had been invited to curate next year's Venice Biennale died on 10 May. There has been an outpouring of moving tributes to Kouoh from artists, curators and gallerists across the world, and Ben Luke speaks to Nolan Oswald Dennis, the Johannesburg-based artist who has a current show at Zeitz, and Liza Essers, the owner and director of Goodman Gallery, about her life and work. A design competition for the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial in St James's Park in London has been launched, with five designs competing for the commission. We talk to Sandy Nairne, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, who is on the committee tasked with choosing the winning design. And this episode's Work of the Week is Regrets, a painting from the series of that name made by Jasper Johns in 2013. The work is discussed in a new book of writings on Johns by the former curator at the Museum of Modern Art and of the Venice Biennale in 2007, Robert Storr. We speak to Storr about the work.Nolan Oswald Dennis: Understudies, Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town, South Africa, until 27 July; Nolan Oswald Dennis: throwers, Gasworks, London, until 22 June.To see the five proposals for the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial and give feedback visit competitions.malcolmreading.com/queenelizabethmemorial#overview. The opportunity to give feedback on the designs will close on 19 May.Robert Storr, Focal Points: Jasper Johns, HENI publishing, £19.99 (hb). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: after a two-year closure, the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing reopens this week, revealing a major overhaul by the architect Annabelle Selldorf. The gallery has also rehung its entire collection and Ben Luke takes a tour of both the revamped building and the new displays with the National Gallery director, Gabriele Finaldi. Tate Modern celebrates its 25th anniversary this weekend, and Luke talks to The Art Newspaper's contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck and another of our regular contributors, Dale Berning Sawa, about its seismic impact in London and beyond over the past quarter of a century, its complex present circumstances and its future. And this episode's Work of the Week is the late German artist Inge Mahn's sculpture Balancing Towers (1989). It is a key work in an exhibition called “Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy at the Herrenchiemsee, the castle on an island in the Chiemsee lake, in southern Bavaria, Germany. Oliver Kase, the director of collections at the Pinakothek der Moderne, in Munich, and co-curator of the exhibition, joins Luke to discuss the sculpture.The Sainsbury Wing and CC Land: The Wonder of Art, National Gallery, London, from 10 May. You can hear a conversation with Annabelle Selldorf about the Frick Collection on the episode of this podcast from 28 March 2025. And our interview with the architectural critic Rowan Moore reflecting on the debate about Selldorf's alterations to the original Sainsbury Wing project is in the episode from 4 November 2022.Tate Modern's 25th Birthday Weekender, Tate Modern, London, 9-12 May.“Are we still up to it?” – Art & Democracy, Herrenchiemsee Palace, Chiemsee, Germany, 10 May-12 October Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During his lifetime, the late artist Frank Auerbach never had an exhibition in Berlin, the city of his birth, which he left for the UK in 1939 to escape the Nazis. This weekend, the first show of his work in the German capital opens at the Galerie Michael Werner. Our digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Berlin to talk to the artist's son, the filmmaker Jake Auerbach, about the exhibition. A new book by Dan Hicks, a curator at the Pitts River Museum in Oxford, UK, titled Every Monument Must Fall explores the origins of the fierce contemporary debates around colonialism, art, and heritage. It investigates in particular the acquisition of human remains and their ongoing place in museums and other historical institutions. Ben Luke spoke to him about the publication. And this week's Work of the Week is Republic (1995) by Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose centenary is being celebrated this year with a new publication and a series of exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Palma de Mallorca, Brescia, New York, Hamburg, Basel and Vienna. Luke spoke to Stephen Ban, a long-term specialist in Finley's work, about this sculptural installation.Frank Auerbach, Galerie Michael Werner, Berlin, 3 May-28 JuneDan Hicks, Every Monument Must Fall, is published by Hutchinson Heinemann. It is out now in the UK and priced £25. It will be published in the US in August and priced $47.99Fragments, an exhibition of Ian Hamilton Finlay's work, is showing at Victoria Miro, London, until 24 May. Further exhibitions are at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh, Kvenig Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, David Nolan Gallery in New York, the Svea Semmler Gallery in Hamburg, the Stamper Gallery in Basel and the Galleria Hubert Winter in ViennaThe book Fragments is published by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig. It is published on 8 May and priced £50 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, The Art Newspaper's managing editor, Louis Jebb, who has written an extensive obituary of the late pontiff, joins Ben Luke to talk about the late pope's engagement with art and with the Vatican art collections. Wednesday 23 April was the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, one of the greatest British artists. A host of exhibitions and events are marking this moment, and we speak to Amy Concannon, the senior curator of historic British art at Tate Britain, about Turner's enduring appeal. And this episode's Work of the Week is arguably John Singer Sargent's most famous—and in its time, his most infamous—painting, Madame X (1883-84). A portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, it features in a major show of Sargent's work that opens this week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, before travelling later in the year to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the picture with Stephanie L. Herdrich, a co-curator of the exhibition.You can explore the Turner Bequest at tate.org.uk—the full collection will be online later this year. Cataloguing Turner's Bequest: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, ongoing. Full list of the Turner 250 events: tate.org.uk/art/turner-250Sargent and Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 21 April-3 August; Sargent: The Paris Years, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 22 September 22-11 – January 2026.Last chance! Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Offer ends on 30 April. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Salman Toor talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, and lives and works in New York. His paintings capture everyday moments in the lives of fictional young, queer, Brown men. Set within private and public environments, these scenes speak of a wealth of feelings and experiences, ranging from touching domestic intimacy and love, to communal solidarity, to societal precarity and violence. While abundantly concerned with contemporary life and identity, Salman's paintings are informed by a deep passion for historic art, both in Western and South Asian traditions. The result is a body of work of immense technical sensitivity and beauty, shot through with poignancy and wit. He reflects on the growing complexity of his references to the Western tradition of painting in relation to his subject matter. He discusses how the “mist and gaseousness” of a particular shade of green has helped him create particular moods and atmospheres in his work. He talks about playing with conventions in the depictions of certain types of bodies, and exploring and subverting orientalist and racist tropes. Among many other references, he recalls the early influence of Paul Delaroche's The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) and Pablo Picasso's Blue Period, the enduring impact of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whose sweetness is like “a cup of tea with five teaspoons”, and suggests that he enjoys painters who embark on “slightly crazy” transformations of academic painting traditions. He expresses his ongoing admiration for Anton Chekhov's short stories and discusses how Whitney Houston's music was important to him and his “chosen family” in his early years in New York. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Salman Toor: Wish Maker, Luhring Augustine Chelsea and Tribeca, New York, 1 May-21 June. Please note that this episode contains a contextualised homophobic slur in the title of a group of Salman Toor's works. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ollowing on from opening her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which continues until August, the US-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim this week opened a show in London in collaboration with Thomas Mader. The exhibition, 1880 THAT, uses a notorious historic conference in Milan in 1880, which effectively outlawed sign language in Deaf education, as a springboard to explore languages and stigma in Deaf and hearing cultures today. Ben Luke discusses the show with Kim and Mader. In Abu Dhabi, the latest museum devoted to the interactive art of the Japanese collective teamLab opens this week in the Saadiyat Cultural District. The Art Newspaper's reporter in the Middle East, Melissa Gronlund, has visited the museum and tells us more about teamLab's newest immersive experience. And this episode's Work of the Week is Young Woman seated at a Virginal (1670-75), a painting by Jan Vermeer that may be the very last picture he ever made. Our special correspondent, Martin Bailey, tells us how new conservation of the picture has revealed that 17th-century pollution may hold the key to dating the painting.1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Wellcome Collection, London, until 16 November; Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 6 July.teamLab: Phenomena, Abu Dhabi, opens 18 April.From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, H'ART Museum, Amsterdam, until 24 August.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kent Monkman talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Monkman was born in 1965 in St Mary's, Ontario, and today lives and works between New York City and Toronto. He is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, in Manitoba, Canada, and uses the language of European and North American art to reflect on Indigenous experiences. He addresses colonisation and its legacies, loss and memory, resistance and protest, and the disparities between Native American and settler colonial attitudes to gender and sexuality, among many other subjects.Monkman is often present in his work through his gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a glamorous, supernatural, shapeshifting time-traveller. At once a witness, a trickster and an agent of change, Miss Chief is a key means for Monkman to subvert colonial perspectives, in challenging both the imagery of Old Master paintings and the construction of histories relating to Indigenous peoples. In the conversation, he describes Miss Chief's role—“living inside” his paintings—reflects on the reimagining of queer narratives of the American fur trade, and discusses the historical and present reverence for gender-fluid or two-spirit people in Indigenous communities. He reflects on the enduring impact of Eugène Delacroix's painting and writing, the influence of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith on his political conviction, and the dramatic impact of seeing Antonio Gisbert Pérez's painting The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga (1988) at the Prado in Madrid. He gives insight into the complex process of making his paintings and other aspects of his studio life. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors, Denver Art Museum, Colorado, US, 20 April-17 August; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 27 September-8 March 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In two-and-a-half months since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a series of executive orders and other initiatives have attempted systematically to eliminate and defund some of the federal agencies responsible for the distribution of federal money to museums, libraries and other organisations. The Art Newspaper's editor-in-chief in the Americas, Ben Sutton, joins Ben Luke to discuss what is being seen as an authoritarian and ideologically driven attempt to control cultural activities in taxpayer-funded institutions, restrict free speech and—to use the administration's own term—“rewrite history”. We also discuss the effect of the economic chaos caused by President Trump's seesawing on trade tariffs in the past week. That same topic is discussed by Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, the writer of the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025. The report's key finding is that global art sales declined by 12% in 2024 and McAndrew discusses this stark statistic and other aspects of the survey. And this episode's Works of the Week are by Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, the two artists in an exhibition subtitled The Art of Friendship at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Jellett and Hone were key figures in Irish Modernism, and we talk to one of the curators of the exhibition, Brendan Rooney, about Jellett's painting, Decoration (1923) and Hone's stained-glass image of a chalice (1948-52), a study for her most famous piece, the East Window of Eton College Chapel in Berkshire, UK.The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, theartmarket.artbasel.com.Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, until 10 August.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ed Atkins talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Atkins, born in Oxford, UK, in 1982, is best known for exploring the strange but endlessly rich space between the digital world and human experience and emotion. He has taken an unorthodox approach to software and hardware, “misusing” them, as he puts it, to produce videos and animations that reflect on technologies critically and poetically, testing their relationship with the messy world of physicality and feeling. A crucial factor in achieving this is his work in writing and drawing, which offers a counterweight to the digital textures of the video installations. Atkins himself is ever-present in the multiple manifestations of his practice, physically and emotionally, and the result is a body of work that, for all its deliberate complexities and confusions, has a profound core of tenderness. He reflects on the transformative experience of encountering the Czechian artist Jan Švankmajer's animated films on television, the emotional impact of Velázquez's Las Meninas, his collaborations with the Swiss composer and clarinettist Jürg Frey, and his ongoing engagement with the US literary critic Leo Bersani. Plus, he discusses life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Ed Atkins, Tate Britain, London, until 25 August; Ed Atkins, Flower, Fitzcarraldo Editions, published on 10 April, £12.99 (pb). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

he Art Newspaper's annual report on museum visitor figures is out and shows that the slow build-back after the Covid-19 closures is over, and museums are back at what we might consider their “natural level”. Host Ben Luke talks to the co-editor of our report, Lee Cheshire, about what that means, and who were last year's big winners and losers. A new exhibition at the museum in the former London home of the 19th-century designer, socialist activist and writer, William Morris, looks at his ubiquity in the 21st century. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, visits Morris Mania, as the show is called, and talks to the William Morris Gallery's director Hadrian Garrard. And this episode's Work of the Week is a painting made in the winter of 1906 to 1907 by Henri Matisse. It depicts his daughter, Marguerite, and is a highlight of a show at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, called Matisse and Marguerite: Through her Father's Eyes. Ben Luke discusses the painting and its subject with Charlotte Barat-Mabille, one of the curators of the exhibition.Morris Mania, William Morris Gallery, London, 5 April-21 SeptemberMatisse and Marguerite: Through Her Father's Eyes, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, until 24 August 2025Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of the new series of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to the painter Celia Paul about her influences—including writers as well as contemporary and historic artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Paul was born in 1959 in Trivandrum, India, and now lives in London. She makes intense yet ruminative paintings of people close to her, the spaces in which she lives and works, and landscapes of poignant significance. Her paintings are made from life but are pregnant with memory, poetry and emotion, which she imbues in her distinctive painterly language. Her art possesses a rare tranquillity in which one perceives deep feeling; Paul wrote in her memoir that her paintings are “so private and personal that there's almost a ‘Keep Out' sign in front of them”. At once a singular figure yet also connected to strands of recent and historic figurative painting in Britain, she has been admired widely throughout her career but only recently been recognised as a major figure in British art of the past 40 years. She discusses the fact that she began painting before she knew about art, but when she was introduced to Old and Modern Masters, she discovered El Greco and Paul Cezanne, who remain important to her today. She also reflects on the compassion in Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, the stillness and scale of Agnes Martin and the elementary power of the novels of the Brontë sisters. She also describes her response in painting to the artists of the School of London, including Lucian Freud, with whom she was once in a relationship, and Frank Auerbach.Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts, Victoria Miro, London, until 17 April 2025. Celia Paul: Works 1975–2025, published by MACK, £150 (hb) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a five-year closure, the Frick Collection in New York will reopen to the public on 17 April and this week opened its doors to the press. The Gilded Age mansion, created on Fifth Avenue for the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, has been restored and enhanced by Selldorf Architects, with the executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle. It is the biggest upgrade to the building since it first became a museum in 1935. Ben Luke talks to the architect Annabelle Selldorf. Then, Cabelle Ahn, a contributor to The Art Newspaper who is a specialist in 18th-century art, joins us to review the transformed museum. This episode's Work of the Week is A woman abalone diver wrestling with an octopus (around 1870), a woodblock print by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, discusses the work with James Russell, the curator of a new exhibition, Undersea, at Hastings Contemporary in the UK.The Frick Collection opens on 17 April.Undersea, Hastings Contemporary, 29 March-14 September.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here.https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The largest ever exhibition of the work of Jack Whitten opens this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Ben Luke speaks to Michelle Kuo, the curator of the show, about the political and experimental commitment that drove Whitten's remarkable body of work. In Paris, one of the final exhibitions to open at the Centre Pompidou before it closes for five years was unveiled this week. Paris Noir brings together more than 150 artists from across the African diaspora who were based in, or had notable stays in, the French capital between the 1950s and 2000. Ben went to Paris to speak to Alicia Knock, the lead curator on the show. And this episode's Work of the Week is Arpita Singh's Searching Sita Through Torn Papers, Paper Strips and Labels (2015). It features in a new exhibition of the Indian artist's work at the Serpentine North in London. The Art Newspaper's associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to the Serpentine Galleries' artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, about the painting.Jack Whitten: The Messenger, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 March-2 August. You can hear Jack Whitten talking about his life and work in the show's audioguide at moma.org.Paris Noir: Artistic Circulations and Anti-colonial Resistance, 1950-2000, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 30 June.Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine North, London, until 27 July.Subscription offer: enjoy a three-month digital subscription to The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3. Get unrestricted access to the website and app, including all digital monthly editions dating back to 2012. Subscribe here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a challenging year in which international galleries, auction houses and museums have been forced to scale back their operations and make redundancies on an alarming scale, a slower, more considered approach to business seems to be emerging. So are we into an era of longer, more in-depth exhibitions and bespoke events concerned more with authentic connection than flashy spectacle? Ben Luke talks to Anny Shaw, a contributing editor at The Art Newspaper. In the Netherlands, just as in the US, cuts by far-right politicians to international development seem likely to have a huge impact on arts projects. As Tefaf, the major international art fair opens in the Dutch city of Maastricht, we talk to Senay Boztas, our correspondent based in Amsterdam, about fears of a funding crisis. And this episode's Work of the Week is one of the greatest paintings ever made: The Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is part of an exhibition called Arcimboldo – Bassano – Bruegel: Nature's Time, which opened this week at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The museum's director, Jonathan Fine, tells us more.Arcimboldo–Bassano–Bruegel: Nature's Time, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, until 29 JuneSubscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Samira Ahmed and guest critics - the novelist and anthropologist Tahmima Anam and Ben Luke from the Art Newspaper - give their verdict on the week's cultural releases. They've been to see Cate Blanchett in Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull at the Barbican Centre. The classic drama still features characters from Russian nobility – but it's given a modern-day treatment including VR headsets and quad bikes. They have also watched Sister Midnight, a film about a young bride called Uma who joins her husband in Mumbai but struggles to adapt to her new life and connect with the man she knew as a childhood friend. She wanders the streets, drawn to the moon and becomes an accidental outlaw.Also under consideration are portraits in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery by Edvard Munch – an artist best known for his painting The Scream. Plus we pay tribute to Five Star's Stedman Pearson who's died at the age of 60.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Claire Bartleet

It seems absurd that more than a year ahead of the next Venice Biennale, one of the major pavilions in the Giardini might be empty for next year's event. But that is the dilemma facing Creative Australia, which is responsible for that country's Biennale presentation. Last month, it announced the team comprising the Lebanese-born Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi and the curator Michael Dagostino as its selection for the 2026 event—and then, within days, rescinded the invitation. An almighty row has engulfed the Australian art world to the extent that the pavilion has been thrown into doubt. So what happened? The Art Newspaper's Australian correspondent, Elizabeth Fortescue, tells Ben Luke about the debacle. A controversial auction of AI art concluded this week on Christie's website. It prompted an open letter signed by thousands of artists and creative people asking Christie's to cancel the sale and accusing the auction house of incentivising the “mass theft of human artists' work”. We talk to Louis Jebb, The Art Newspaper's managing editor, who oversees our technology coverage, about the sale and the latest developments in art and AI. And this episode's Work of the Week is Tired (1946), a terracotta sculpture made by the American-Mexican artist Elizabeth Catlett. It is part of the touring exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, which arrived this week at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, after premiering at the Brooklyn Museum in New York last year. We discuss the sculpture with Catherine Morris, a senior curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, who co-curated the exhibition, and Lynn Matheny, the National Gallery of Art's deputy head of interpretation and curator of special projects.Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist, National Gallery of Art, 9 March-6 July; Art Institute of Chicago, 30 August-4 January 2026.Subscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tate Modern this week opened a vast exhibition exploring the life and work of the maverick Australian-born performance artist, fashion designer and self-styled “club monster”, Leigh Bowery, as well as the variety of cultural figures in his orbit in London. It coincides with other related London shows: one analysing the fashion work of Bowery and his collaborators and peers at the Fashion and Textile Museum, and another at the National Portrait Gallery about the style and culture magazine The Face, which emerged around the same time as Bowery set foot in the UK capital in the early 1980s. Ben Luke reviews the shows with Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper's contemporary art correspondent. Three years on from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and amid fraught international diplomacy following the US's abrupt shift in approach to the war under President Trump, we speak to Sophia Kishkovsky, our international correspondent who has widely reported on Russia and Ukraine, about how Ukraine's art world is responding to this new era. And this episode's Work of the Week is actually a pair of works made more than 400 years apart called The Women's Bath. The first is a woodcut based on a drawing by Albrecht Dürer from around 1500; the second a painting responding to it, made by the German artist Max Beckmann in 1919. They feature in an exhibition opening this week at the National Museum in Oslo, Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light. Cynthia Osiecki, a curator at the museum, tells us more.Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, until 31 August; Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, Fashion and Textile Museum, London, until 9 March; The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 18 May.Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light, National Museum, Oslo, 28 February-15 June.Subscription offer: enjoy 3 issues of The Art Newspaper for just £3/$3/€3—subscribe before 21 March to start your subscription with the April bumper issue including our Visitor Figures 2024 report and an EXPO Chicago special. Subscribe here. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/subscriptions-3FOR3?utm_source=podcast&promocode=3FOR3 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Renée Green talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Green was born in 1959, in Cleveland, Ohio, and lives today between Somerville, Massachusetts, and New York. She brings together a wealth of cultural forms in complex and layered works that manifest as installations, video pieces and texts, among other media. Through what has been described as a “methodology of citation”, in which she overtly names and synthesises the language and forms of the disparate individuals she references, Renée reflects on the nature of ideas, on subjectivity and perception, on fiction and reality, and on memory—personal and collective. Just as she is generous in her allusions, so her art is an invitation to the viewer, to witness the connections she assembles, and help shape the works' meaning. She discusses how her work is concerned with “perception and sensation” and how drawing is a daily activity alongside reading and research. She reflects on her ongoing fascination with On Kawara and how her interest in particular artists “has to do with their physical location, the material aspects of what their existences might have been like, and then what kinds of questions emerge from those conditions”. She discusses the references in her work to the writing of Muriel Rukeyser and Laura Riding, and the friendship and dialogue she had with the film-maker Harun Farocki. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Renée Green: The Equator Has Moved, Dia Beacon, from 7 March and will be on long term view. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shows opening in Washington and Dublin this month explore quiltmaking by African American women. Ben Luke talks to Raina Lampkins-Fielder, chief curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, and the organiser of the exhibition Kith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee's Bend at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), about the history of quiltmaking in this small part of Alabama, and the growing recognition of its artistic importance. The Musée Picasso in Paris this week unveiled its exhibition “Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, which looks back not just at the infamous 1937 exhibition in Munich but also the years-long campaign to attack modern art and artists in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. We speak to the exhibition's co-curator, Johan Popelard. And this episode's Work of the Week marks the death last week of Mel Bochner, a leading figure in the development of conceptual art. We speak to his gallerist, Peter Freeman, who knew and worked with Bochner for more than 50 years. We look in particular detail at the 1969 work, 48" Standards (#1).Last chance: The Art Newspaper's book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year's unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency, until Sunday, 23 February. Buy it here. https://account.theartnewspaper.com/subscribe?sourcecode=year_ahead&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=theyearaheadKith & Kin: The Quilts of Gee's Bend, IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 28 February-27 October; We Gather at the Edge: Black Women and Contemporary Quilts, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, 21 February-22 June; Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, US, 27 June-12 October“Degenerate” art: Modern art on trial under the Nazis, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 25 May. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somaya Critchlow talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Critchlow, born in London in 1993, makes paintings and drawings of Black women, often nude, that are rooted in the present and yet draw on a wealth of imagery from the recent and distant past. The women are fictional but can be informed by anything from self-portraits and other life studies to images from pop culture and depictions of women in the history of art. They engage frankly with what it means to represent the female body and with power relations: between the artist and her subject, between the subject and the viewer, and ultimately between Critchlow and us. Depending on your perspective, her art offers different degrees of delight and discomfort. But her balance of fine drawing, a time-honoured approach to paint and colour, and arresting imagery means that her work is endlessly intriguing. She discusses the breakthrough moment where she realised that she was her own first model, being “comfortable with feeling uncomfortable”, the influence on her of Angela Carter's response to the Marquis de Sade, her engagement with a wealth of visual artists, from Käthe Kollwitz to Francesca Woodman, Leonor Fini, Titian and Francesco de Goya, the power of David Lynch's films and the consistent importance to her of Japanese manga. She gives insight into her life in the studio and responds to our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Somaya Critchlow: The Chamber, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 20 July. Group shows: A Room Hung with Thoughts British Painting Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, US, until 11 May; Woman in a Rowboat, Olivia Foundation, Mexico City, until 28 September.This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app. The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where Somaya Critchlow is showing her work between February and July of 2025. If you download Bloomberg Connects you'll find that the guide to the gallery has a section on the exhibition, with pictures of Somaya's work in situ in the historic gallery spaces. There is also extensive content on the gallery's other exhibition, Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, the first major exhibition of the British artist. You can explore the works while listening to the actor Tamsin Greig reading excerpts from Garwood's autobiography. Elsewhere, the guide features an animated film telling the story of the gallery and a guided tour of the many masterpieces in its collection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next month, the German artist Anselm Kiefer will be 80, and the first of a number of shows internationally to mark this landmark moment opened this week at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK. It focuses on his early works, and Ben Luke visits Oxford to discuss this pivotal moment in his career with Lena Fritsch, the curator of the exhibition. The latest edition of the biennial in the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah opened earlier this month. The Art Newspaper's correspondent Dale Berning Sawa visited during opening week and spoke to Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the biennial, about this year's edition, her journey in art, and her role in establishing the biennial as a leading art world event. And this episode's Work of the Week is Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by Pablo Picasso, a painting from the artist's Blue Period. Conservators at The Courtauld Institute in London have discovered an image of a mystery woman hidden beneath this portrait of De Soto, Picasso's friend and fellow artist. We talk to Barnaby Wright, deputy head of The Courtauld Gallery, about the painting and the image beneath it. The work features in a new exhibition at the gallery, Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection.Anselm Kiefer: Early Works, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK, 14 February-15 June; Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 March-9 June; Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 28 June-26 October; Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Ocean, Saint Louis Art Museum, US, 18 October 2025-25 January 2026To carry, the 16th Sharjah Biennial, until 15 June 2025.The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 February-26 May.The Art Newspaper's book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year's unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Ruff talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, in what was then West Germany, and has, over five decades, extensively probed the forms and possibilities of photography. Though he is a key figure in the international generation of artists that emerged in the 1980s and experimented with the very nature of the photographic medium and discipline, Ruff has carved out a singular practice. He works in distinct series whose formal characteristics vary enormously, but are underpinned by experimental unorthodoxy, technical curiosity and conceptual rigour. Each new group contributes to a profound philosophical exploration of the photographic image and what it means to make a picture. But while the intellectual underpinning of his work is unwavering, Thomas makes prints that are remarkably beautiful objects. Operating in a medium that remains associated with the factual record and documentary, he has relentlessly made the case for a photographic practice in which imagination is a primary agent. He discusses his interest in “the puzzle of photography”, the distinctive geneses of his various series of work, and his conviction that while seeking an “intellectually high-end product… of course I want to have fun”. He reflects on the early influence of the photographer Ernst Haas, how Piero della Francesca influenced his early Portraits series, how he chose to study art over astronomy, yet outer space has remained a core concern in his work, and how the satirical television show Spitting Image proved an unlikely influence. Of course, he reflects on the work of numerous photographers, from Eugène Atget and Walker Evans to Lou Landauer and his teachers in Düsseldorf, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses, David Zwirner, London, until 22 March; his work features in Typologien, a survey of 20th-century German photography at Fondazione Prada, Milan, 3 April-14 July. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last weekend, the US President Donald Trump signed executive orders placing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which were due to take effect on Tuesday. But at the last minute, the tariffs were postponed, at least for a month. Inevitably, though, the talk of a trade war set nerves jangling at Zona Maco, the art fair in Mexico City, which opened on Wednesday. Ben Luke speaks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper's editor, Americas, who is in the Mexican capital, about the prevailing mood, and about the effect on the art world more generally of some of Trump's executive orders. It is also the India Art Fair in Delhi this week. Our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, is there and tells us more about the fair amid the wider social and political climate in India. And this episode's Work of the Week is Henry Fitz Jr's self-portrait, a daguerreotype, made in January or February 1840. It is thought to be the first photograph of a person made in the United States. It features in a major show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, American Photography. We speak to Mattie Boom, Rijksmuseum's curator of Photography, about the work, and the wider show.Zona Maco, Mexico City, until 9 February.The India Art Fair, Delhi, until 9 February.American Photography, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, until 9 June. Carrie Mae Weems's 2021 series Painting the Town, Rijksmuseum, until the same date.The Art Newspaper's book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year's unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordan and Egypt lead reactions to a seismic shift in US foreign policy in the Middle East. Then: why Taiwan is sending marines to its airport, why Austria can’t form a government and why Nissan and Honda won’t be doing business together. Plus: arts news with Ben Luke.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Antonia Caicedo Holguín photographed by Imogen Forte. Antonia Caicedo Holguín (b. 1997 in Colombia) is deeply influenced by her hometown of Cali, Colombia, from the people who inhabit the city to the vibrant salsa music and dance culture of the region. By exploring everyday life, memory, and imagination, Caicedo Holguín chronicles her life, friends, and family. “A key component of my practice is the playfulness of writing narratives. The characters I build hold the charm, depth, and presence of literary protagonists.” Drawing inspiration from contemporary painters like Paula Rego and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, as well as old masters like Degas and Manet, her work often depicts fleeting moments of intimacy and moments of solitude. Often the subjects of Caicedo Holguín's paintings seem to be in a state of introspection, or lost in reverie. She works with a variety of materials, including oil paint and unconventional materials like coffee grounds, coffee dyes, natural Latin American pigments, and found objects. Caicedo Holguín received her Master of Arts in 2023 from the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art, at University College London in London, England. She has exhibited internationally, and has received the following awards and grants: The Olive Award, in recognition of art process experimentation, The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, 2023, The Sarabande Foundation, Emerging Artist Fund, 2023, The Chelsea Arts Club Trust MA Materials and Research Award, 2022, and The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, 2021. She was a featured guest on the 250th episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast, The Week in Art, hosted by Ben Luke in 2023. She was featured in The Art Newspaper, in an article titled “Art stars of tomorrow? Four of my favourite artists from the Slade School degree show in London” by Dr. Chibundu Onuzo in 2023, and again in 2024 in the article “I commissioned an artist for the first time: here's what it taught me about what it really means to be a ‘collector'.” The artist lives and works in London, England. Antonia Caicedo Holguín, My Friend Hannah Uzor - Portrait in the Studio 2024 Oil and oil pastels on canvas 47 x 43 in (119.38 x 109.22 cm) Antonia Caicedo Holguín, Her Heart Sets the Beat, 2024 Acrylic, oil, and pastels on canvas 67.25 x 66.50 in (170.82 x 168.91 cm) Antonia Caicedo Holguín, Sunkissed 2024, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 47 x 43 in (119.38 x 109.22 cm)

This week: the Los Angeles wildfires. The Art Newspaper's West Coast contributing editor in LA, Jori Finkel, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the devastation in Southern California, and its effect on artists and institutions. The World Monuments Fund (WMF), the independent organisation devoted to safeguarding global heritage has released its biennial World Monuments Watch, a list of 25 sites that are potentially threatened. The aim of the list is, according to the WMF to “mobilise action, build public awareness, and demonstrate how heritage can help communities confront the crucial issues of our time”. Ben Luke talks to John Darlington, the director of projects for WMF Britain, who also reflects on the future of the organisation's project to train Syrian refugees in stonemasonry skills, in the wake of the change in government in Syria. And this episode's Work of the Week is All About Painting in Colour: An Illustrated Book, a portfolio in two volumes made by the leading artist of the late Edo period in Japan, Katsushika Hokusai. The last of his drawing manuals, made by the artist at the very end of his life, it features in a new book, Hokusai's Method. We talk to Ryoko Matsuba, one of the authors of the new book.Hokusai's Method, with texts by Kyoko Wada and Ryoko Matsuba, is published by Thames and Hudson. It is out on 23 January in the UK, and priced £35, and on 4 February in the US, priced $45.The Art Newspaper's book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year's unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A 2025 preview: Georgina Adam, our editor-at-large, tells host Ben Luke what might lie ahead for the market. And Ben is joined by Jane Morris, editor-at-large, and Gareth Harris, chief contributing editor, to select the big museum openings, biennials and exhibitions.All shows discussed are in The Art Newspaper's The Year Ahead 2025, priced £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.Exhibitions: Site Santa Fe International, Santa Fe, US, 28 Jun-13 Jan 2026; Liverpool Biennial, 7 Jun-14 Sep; Folkestone Triennial, 19 Jul-19 Oct; Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 5 Apr-2 Sep; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 19 Oct-7 Feb 2026; Gabriele Münter, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 7 Nov-26 Apr 2026; Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, 4 Apr-24 Aug; Elizabeth Catlett: a Black Revolutionary Artist, Brooklyn Museum, New York, until 19 Jan; National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington DC, 9 Mar-6 Jul; Art Institute of Chicago, US, 30 Aug-4 Jan 2026; Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain, London, 13 Jun-19 Oct; Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Alice Adams, Courtauld Gallery, London, 20 Jun-14 Sep; Michaelina Wautier, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 30 Sep-25 Jan 2026; Radical! Women Artists and Modernism, Belvedere, Vienna, 18 Jun-12 Oct; Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 24 May-7 Sep; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 Oct-1 Feb 2026; Lorna Simpson: Source Notes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 19 May-2 Nov; Amy Sherald: American Sublime, SFMOMA, to 9 Mar; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 9 Apr-Aug; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, 19 Sep-22 Feb 2026; Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior, Cincinnati Art Museum, 14 Feb-4 May; Cleveland Museum of Art, US, 14 Feb-8 Jun; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, US, 1 Oct-25 Jan 2026; Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting, National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 Jun-7 Sep; Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, 11 Feb-5 May; Arpita Singh, Serpentine Galleries, London, 13 Mar-27 Jul; Vija Celmins, Beyeler Collection, Basel, 15 Jun-21 Sep; An Indigenous Present, ICA/Boston, US, 9 Oct-8 Mar 2026; The Stars We Do Not See, NGA, Washington, DC, 18 Oct-1 Mar 2026; Duane Linklater, Dia Chelsea, 12 Sep-24 Jan 2026; Camden Art Centre, London, 4 Jul-21 Sep; Vienna Secession, 29 Nov-22 Feb 2026; Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern, London, 10 Jul-13 Jan 2026; Archie Moore, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, 30 Aug-23 Aug 2026; Histories of Ecology, MASP, Sao Paulo, 5 Sep-1 Feb 2026; Jack Whitten, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 Mar-2 Aug; Wifredo Lam, Museum of Modern Art, Rashid Johnson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 18 Apr-18 Jan 2026; Adam Pendleton, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 4 Apr-3 Jan 2027; Marie Antoinette Style, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 20 Sep-22 Mar 2026; Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, 27 Feb- 31 Aug; Blitz: the Club That Shaped the 80s, Design Museum, London, 19 Sep-29 Mar 2026; Do Ho Suh, Tate Modern, 1 May-26 Oct; Picasso: the Three Dancers, Tate Modern, 25 Sep-1 Apr 2026; Ed Atkins, Tate Britain, London, 2 Apr-25 Aug; Turner and Constable, Tate Britain, 27 Nov-12 Apr 2026; British Museum: Hiroshige, 1 May-7 Sep; Watteau and Circle, 15 May-14 Sep; Ancient India, 22 May-12 Oct; Kerry James Marshall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 20 Sep-18 Jan 2026; Kiefer/Van Gogh, Royal Academy, 28 Jun-26 Oct; Anselm Kiefer, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 14 Feb-15 Jun; Anselm Kiefer, Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 7 Mar-9 Jun; Cimabue, Louvre, Paris, 22 Jan-12 May; Black Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 19 Mar-30 Jun; Machine Love, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 13 Feb-8 Jun Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, three artist interviews: Carsten Höller on his book of games, Takashi Murakami on his new work, and Valeria Luiselli and Leo Heiblum on their Dia sound installation. Höller is the author of a book featuring 336 games that can be played alone, in pairs or in groups, without any props. He tells Ben Luke about art and play and his perennial quest for unpredictability. Takashi Murakami has been in London this week for the opening of his exhibition, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, at Gagosian. We speak to him about the show and his fascination with the television series Shōgun. And this episode's Work of the Week is Echoes from the Borderlands, a sound installation created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum, which was unveiled at Dia Chelsea in New York this week. Valeria and Leo join us to tell us more about the project.Book of Games by Carsten Höller, edited by Stefanie Hessler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Taschen, 760 pp, £40 or $50 (hb)Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 8 March 2025.Echoes from the Borderlands: Study Two, Dia Chelsea, New York, until 1 March 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset talk to Ben Luke about their influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work. This is the first episode of A brush with featuring an artist duo. Over the past 30 years Elmgreen and Dragset have consistently created unexpected scenarios within and outside of the museum and gallery structure. Playful, even mischievous at times, and yet shot-through with searing critique and sincere expression, their sculptures and environments are fundamentally concerned with space, both private and public, and the people and communities that occupy it. Elmgreen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen and Dragset in 1969 in Trondheim, Norway. They now live and work in Berlin. They discuss the influence of Hannah Ryggen and Vilhelm Hammershøi, Michael's meeting with Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his effect on their work, and how they feel their work relates to Samuel Beckett's writing, and the final, moving scene of Wim Wenders' film Paris Texas. Plus, they give insight into their lives in the studio and answer our usual questions, including: what is art for?Elmgreen & Dragset: L'Addition, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, until 2 February 2025; Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces, Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, 23 February 2025; K-BAR is open now at Khao Yai Art Forest, Thailand; Nurture Gaia, Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand, until 25 February 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Art Newspaper's editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach. On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode's Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome. The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show's co-curator.Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025Gift subscription: why not give a friend, colleague or family member a subscription to The Art Newspaper this holiday season? Choose between a digital-only and print and digital subscription package. Purchase the print and digital subscription before 13 December to get the January issue, which includes our essential magazine, The Year Ahead. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hank Willis Thomas talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Thomas, born in 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey, is a conceptual artist whose works in various media address identity, collectivity and subjectivity, particularly in relation to race, and how these subjects shape—and are shaped by—broad phenomena, from sports, advertising and brands to art history. Thomas trained as a photographer and a search for a singular powerful image underpins much of his work. But however impactful it might be at first sight, that instant appeal is always a gateway to greater cultural and historical complexity. He discusses his latest exhibition, Kinship of the Soul and its fusion of the paintings of Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas and Henri Matisse, the early influence of Roy DeCarava's photographs, the importance of the Gee's Bend quilters, the writing of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, and his surprising response to the Dukes of Hazzard television show. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Hank Willis Thomas: Kinship of the Soul, Pace, London, unil 21 December; Irving Penn: Kinship, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas, Pace, New York, until 21 December. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two exhibitions have just opened that look at art and tech: in London, Tate Modern's Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet celebrates the pioneers of kinetic, programmed and digital art, and offers a kind of origin story of contemporary immersive installation. Ben Luke speaks to Val Ravaglia, the co-curator of the show, amid the blinking lights and bleeping sound. In California, meanwhile, Digital Witness at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) looks at how new software and hardware shaped the worlds of design, photography, and film between the 1980s and now. We speak to the exhibition's curators, Britt Salvesen, the department head and curator of prints and drawings at Lacma, and Staci Steinberger, the curator of decorative arts and design at the museum. And this episode's Work of the Week is the Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661) by Andreas Cellarius, a celestial atlas made in the Netherlands. Rebecca Feakes, the librarian at the Blickling Estate, a 17-century mansion in Norfolk, UK, run by the National Trust, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the book.Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern, London, until 1 June 2025.Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, until 13 July.The Harmonia Macrocosmica is the centrepiece of Journey Through the Stars, Blickling Estate, UK, until 5 January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Wall talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Wall—who was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he still lives, though he also works in Los Angeles—makes photographs but aspires to approach his medium with the freedom, range and openness taken for granted by other artforms. Presented on a large scale, his images are enormously varied, from those that are close to reportage; to what he calls “near-documentary” images—tableaux, where he recreates a scene he has witnessed in reality with actors; to elaborately staged environments responding to art or literature; and even what he calls “hallucinations”. Crucially, he has used the term “cinematographic” to describe his approach, in that his pictures use different degrees of preparation and processing before he presses the shutter and afterwards, thereby applying what Jeff has called “aspects of the arts of dramatisation” to the pictorial practice of still photography. Because of this, his work has long had a fascinating philosophical relationship with truth and reality—two key cornerstones of orthodox claims for his medium's potency—and what Wall has called “blatant artifice”. Initially famous for the technique he pioneered in the art world of presenting vast transparencies on lightboxes, he now mostly works with prints, on a similar scale, in both colour and black and white. As he has engaged closely with the history of art, books and film, Jeff has used the term “prose poems” to describe his photographs: that form's complex structures and language and ability to conjure broad constellations of meanings, perfectly describe his art and how we experience it. He discusses how comics and Bruegel were his earliest visual inspirations, talks about his responses to historic works by Katsushika Hokusai and Albrecht Dürer, reflects on the “accidents while reading” that have led him to make images responding to literary works by Franz Kafka and Yukio Mishima, among others. Plus he answers some of our usual questions, including the ultimate, “what is art for?”Jeff Wall: Life in Pictures, White Cube Bermondsey, London until 12 January 2025; Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal, April-August 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian (2019), the work featuring a banana stuck to a wall with grey duct tape, sold at Sotheby's in New York, on Wednesday for $5m or $6.2m with fees. But how did other works fare at this week's auctions in New York? Ben Luke talks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper's editor, Americas, about the sales. Frank Auerbach, the painter who escaped the Holocaust and dedicated more than 70 years to creating portraits and cityscapes in London in raw, thick paint and expressive charcoal, has died. We speak to the curator of three of his most important exhibitions—and a model for Auerbach for more than 40 years—Catherine Lampert, about his work. And this episode's Work of the Week is Mzwandile at home after coming from the rehab center (2018), a photograph from Nyaope, a series by the South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa. In the series he explored the devastating effect on his local community of a heroin-based drug, called nyaope. The work is part of the exhibition Heroin Falls, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, UK, and I spoke to Lindo about the work.Heroin Falls, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK, 23 November-27 April 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Goshka Macuga talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Macuga was born in 1967 in Warsaw, Poland. Her deep research into multifarious subjects manifests in the form of installations, sculpture, tapestry, photography, video and more. As well as making objects, she occupies a role that relates closely to that of a curator and historian, often weaving together her creations with existing materials, including artworks and archival documents. Place has enormous significance in her practice, whether it is the museum or gallery, the city or the country in which she is presenting her ideas. After exploring her site and engaging in lengthy research, she fuses her own subjective interest with objective material, to produce absorbing and often complex environments that provoke broad meanings and reactions. She discusses the transformative impact of seeing the work of Christo in an art magazine; her interest in Paul Nash and Eileen Agar—and the personal importance to her of a work by Agar that is in her studio; how the subversive strategies used by Stanisław Lem when he was writing science fiction in Communist Poland have influenced her practice; and how, during Covid, she created a club for dancing in her studio. Plus, she gives insight into her rituals and disciplines and answers our usual questions, including, “what is art for?”Goshka Macuga: Born from Stone, London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, until 18 January 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UK museums are at a moment of transformation with a new generation of directors taking the helm at several of the major national institutions in London. So for this landmark 300th episode, we felt it was a good moment to look at the challenges and opportunities for museums now and in the future. We invited Gus Casely-Hayford of V&A East, Nicholas Cullinan of the British Museum and Karin Hindsbo of Tate Modern to join our host Ben Luke for a wide-ranging discussion.LAST CHANCE subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Offer ends on 17 November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: two exhibitions in London are showing remarkable works made during the Renaissance. At the King's Gallery, the museum that is part of Buckingham Palace, Drawing the Italian Renaissance offers a thematic journey through 160 works on paper made across Italy between 1450 and 1600. Ben Luke talks to Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, about the show. At the Royal Academy, meanwhile, the timescale is much tighter: a single year, 1504 to be precise, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were all in Florence. We talk to Julien Domercq, a curator at the Academy, about this remarkable crucible of creativity. And this episode's Work of the Week is a magnum opus of Renaissance textiles: the Battle of Pavia Tapestries, made in Brussels to designs by Bernard van Orley, and currently on view in an exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Thomas Campbell, the director of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, talks to The Art Newspaper's associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the series.Drawing the Italian Renaissance, King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until 9 March 2025Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c.1504, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 9 November-16 February 2025Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries, de Young Museum, San Francisco, US, until 12 January; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, spring 2025Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shortly after the US election on 5 November, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington opens The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, a radical new perspective on the history of the discipline from 1792 to now. Ahead of its opening, Ben Luke speaks to Karen Lemmey, a curator of sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and co-curator of the exhibition. In Warsaw, the Museum of Modern Art—a project 20 years in the making—has partially opened. We speak to its director, Joanna Mytkowska, about the long road to the unveiling and the upheavals in Polish politics along the way. And this episode's Work of the Week is The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (early 1620s) by Jusepe de Ribera. It features in the first survey of the Spanish-born Baroque artist ever staged in France, at the Petit Palais in Paris. The museum's director, Annick Lemoine, tells us more.The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 8 November-14 September 2025.The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw is open now; its full programme will be unveiled in February 2025.Ribera: Shadows and Light, Petit Palais, Paris, until 23 February 2025.The Art Newspaper subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: with less than two weeks before the US goes to the polls, and with early voting underway, Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper's editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, about what we might expect depending on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the presidential election on 5 November. The exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and will open at the National Gallery in London next March. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, travelled to the Tuscan city to look at the work of some of the Sienese artists who light up the show, in the context of the city itself. He was guided by the co-curator of the exhibition, Caroline Campbell, the director of the National Gallery of Ireland. And this episode's Work of the Week is Personal Accounts, an ongoing series of video installations exploring patriarchal violence by the South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. The latest cycle in the series, called Mango Blossoms, opens at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh this weekend and we speak to Gabrielle about the work.Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300‒1350, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 26 January 2025; National Gallery, London, 8 March-22 June 2025.Gabrielle Goliath's Personal Accounts: Mango Blossoms is shown alongside a number of other cycles from the series at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 26 October-15 February 2025. The series also features in Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, Venice Biennale, until 24 November.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After descending on London last week, the art world arrived in Paris this week, with the main attraction being the Art Basel Paris art fair—now staged in the renovated Belle Epoque masterpiece, the Grand Palais. An editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, Jane Morris, was at the VIP opening and tells us more. As always, alongside the fair are a number of eye-catching museum shows and projects. Among them is Chapelle, a new in-situ work for the Musée Picasso by the Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca. Ben Luke talks to Kuitca about the piece. And this episode's Work of the Week is June (2022) by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a work from a series in which the Polish-born Romani artist reimagines astrologically themed frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara in order to explore the history and contemporary life of the Roma people. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, talks to Mirga-Tas about the work, as it goes on display at Tate St Ives in the UK.Art Basel Paris, Grand Palais, until Sunday, 20 October.Chapelle by Guillermo Kuitca, Musée Picasso, Paris, until 31 December 2027.Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Tate St Ives, UK, 19 October-5 January 2025Subscription offer: you can get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Frieze London art fair has a new look for 2024 as it looks to keep its freshness amid increased competition with the new kid on the art fair block, next week's Art Basel Paris. So how effective is the re-design? Ben Luke talks to Kabir Jhala, the art market editor at The Art Newspaper, about this year's fair and about the auctions which have also taken place in London this week. The duo The White Pube who, since 2015, have shaken-up the world of art criticism in the UK, have just published a new book, called Poor Artists. We speak to the duo, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, about it. And this episode's Work of the Week is a vital contribution to the history of the Italian Arte Povera group. Giuseppe Penone's Alpi Marittime (1968) has just gone on display in a new survey of Arte Povera at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. The exhibition is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and we talk to her about Penone's work.Frieze London and Frieze Masters, until 13 October, Regent's Park, London.Poor Artists by The White Pube, Particular Books (UK), £20 (hb), Prestel (US) published 12 November, $24.99; thewhitepube.com.Arte Povera, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, until 20 January.Subscription offer: get three months for just £1/$1/€1. Choose between our print and digital or digital-only subscriptions. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sonia Boyce talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Boyce, a recent Golden Lion-winner at the Venice Biennale, was born in London in 1962 and first made an impact through her figurative drawings before shifting to what she calls a “multi-sensory” practice. Over the past three decades, her art has been a social experience, as she has worked with individual and collective collaborators to create performances, video pieces and installations. They reflect on a wealth of subjects, from personal and collective memory, to sound as a conveyor of subjective feeling and cultural experience, to the dynamics and meanings of space and environment, and to questions of value and power and who bestows and holds them. Sonia's art is about people but also formed by them—people are her raw materials. She talks about her interest in power and authorship and the shift in her career, away from drawing to relational and social practice. She discusses the transformative experiences of seeing work by the Fenix feminist art collective, Frida Kahlo and visiting the 1981 exhibition in Wolverhampton, Black Art an' Done. She reflects on William Morris's wallpaper designs and the different ways in which they have manifested in her work. She discusses the connections between Dada and jazz music, and the influence of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and much more. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation and Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 12 January; Sonia Boyce: Feeling Her Way, Toronto Biennial, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, until 6 April 2025; AMONG THE INVISIBLE JOINS: Works from the Enea Righi Collection, MUSEION—Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, until 2 March 2025.Listen to Sonia Boyce talking about Feeling Her Way, in the episode of The Week in Art podcast from 22 April 2022, Venice Biennale Special. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 100: A brush with… Marlene DumasIn this, the 100th episode of A brush with…, Marlene Dumas talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953 and lives and works in Amsterdam. She is a painter whose intensity is unrivalled. Using found images and responding to memory, she has the ability to seduce and repel, to lull and to shock, often all in a single image or group of works. She is endlessly daring in her questioning of her medium and what it can do, in the unorthodox formats and scale she chooses for her imagery, in the way she reflects on historic art and ideas, movies and literature, and in her unflinching confrontation of her own life. Her paintings and drawings are a means of responding to external events and internal feelings in ways that can be absurd, confounding, funny and profoundly affecting. And while her themes and language are consistent, she is always pushing herself to new territory and breaking boundaries. She discusses the early influence of comic illustration, the enduring effect on her of Francisco Goya's work, how she grew to love the work of Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres after first dismissing them, and her admiration for Nicole Eisenman and Diane Arbus, among others. She also gives insight in her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including, “What is art for?”Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas, Frith Street Gallery, London, until 16 November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, three major international shows: Claude Monet's Thames views in London, the Henri Matisse retrospective in Basel and Helen Frankenthaler in Florence. An exhibition that Claude Monet hoped to see in his lifetime but which never happened has at last become a reality. A gathering of Monet's views of the Thames—looking from his hotel room at the Savoy and from across the river on a private terrace of St Thomas's hospital—has just opened at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Monet had hoped to stage such an event in London soon after the paintings were exhibited to acclaim in Paris in 1904, but so quickly had they dispersed, he was unable to do so. I spoke to the curator of the show, Karen Serres, first in the very room at the Savoy Hotel where he made many of the paintings, and then in the exhibition itself. Meanwhile, a rare European retrospective of Henri Matisse's work has opened at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. Matisse: Invitation to the Voyage focuses on the artist's travels, in the world and also in his imagination, through paintings, sculptures and cut-outs made over more than 50 years. Ben Luke went to Basel and spoke to Raphaël Bouvier, the curator. And this episode's Work of the Week is Mediterranean Thoughts (1960) one of the paintings in Helen Frankenthaler: Painting without Rules, a new exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The Art Newspaper's associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, spoke to Douglas Dreishpoon, who organised the show.Monet and London: Views of the Thames, Courtauld Gallery, London, until 19 January 2025.Matisse – Invitation to the Voyage, Beyeler Foundation, Basel, Switzerland, until 26 January 2025.Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, until 26 January 2025.Subscription offer: get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that's £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Longo talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, Longo was a key figure in what was called the Pictures generation of artists, which emerged in New York in the late 1970s. After that initial burst of attention he has since met with wide acclaim with his translations of everything from reportage photographs to historic paintings into vast charcoal drawings. By rendering the images in this way, he reinforces the impact of the original sources and yet prompts questions about the meaning and the power structures within and around them. By expanding their scale, he also transforms them. Up close—as we are overwhelmed by the analogue artisanship involved in the drawing—these dramatic images are abstracted. He talks about why he favours the term “collision” over “collage” and reflects on the concern with violence in his work. He discusses being, as he puts it, “an abstract artist working representationally”. He explains the process behind his responses to major works of art by everyone from Jackson Pollock to Rembrandt and Manet, and talks about the influence of Gretchen Bender on his newest Combine pieces. And he details the breadth of inspirations for his 1980s Men in the Cities series, from James Chance, frontman of the Contortions, to Rainer Werner Fassbender's An American Soldier. Plus, he gives insight into studio habits and rituals and answers our usual questions, including, “What is art for?”Robert Longo: Searchers, Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 8 October-20 November; Pace, London, 9 October-9 November; Robert Longo, Albertina Museum, Vienna, until 26 January; Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, 25 October-23 February 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, has invited the US artist Glenn Ligon to explore its history and collections, and his interventions are revealed this week. Ben Luke goes to Cambridge to talk to Ligon about the project. Few artists' lives prompt as much discussion as that of Paul Gauguin, and a new biography of the French artist by Sue Prideaux has just been published. We talk to Sue about the book. And this episode's Work of the Week is the piece that has just been unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Mil Veces un Instante or (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles is made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Ekow Eshun, the chair of the group that commissions the projects for the Fourth Plinth, speaks to our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the work.Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, until 2 March 2025. Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews by Glenn Ligon, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, £32 or $38. Untitled (America/Me), High Line, New York, until November 2024. Listen to our in-depth interview, A brush with… Glenn Ligon from 18 August 2021.Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin, by Sue Prideaux, Faber, £30; published in the US next year, by WW Norton, $39.99.Teresa Margolles: Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, until 2026.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that's £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rana Begum talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Begum was born in Bangladesh in 1977, came to the UK when she was eight years old and now lives and works in London. She distils everything she does into three essential elements—light, colour and form. From them, she conjures a distinctive array of works that often sit between sculpture, painting and architecture. She draws on influences that vary from canonic Modernist sculptors and painters to historic designs in the Qur'an and Islamic architecture. And she reflects on lived experiences, including growing up in rural Bangladesh and negotiating the London cityscape. Though they may take simple, tangible shape on first impressions, her creations engage the space around them and the senses of her audience in often surprising ways, creating a profound and finely balanced connection between object, environment and viewer.She discusses how her early experiences of reading the Qur'an and the illuminations within it continue to affect her work today. She explains her newfound fascination with J.M.W. Turner, particularly his late paintings. She reflects on how she discovered Anni Albers later than her husband Josef, but how she has since influenced her work. She gives insight into life in the studio and rituals she adheres to, and answers our usual questions, including “What is art for?”Rana Begum, Kate MacGarry, London, until 26 October; No.1367 Mesh, Pallant House, Chichester, UK; No. 1387 Fence, The Verbier 3-D Foundation, Verbier, Switzerland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week: the Van Gogh blockbuster in London, a new book on the birth of Impressionism, and Juan Pablo Echeverri's performative self-portraits. As the exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers opens at the National Gallery in London as part of its bicentenary celebrations, The Art Newspaper's special correspondent and resident expert in the Dutch painter, Martin Bailey, takes a tour of the exhibition with our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, meanwhile, has just opened the exhibition Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, its iteration of the show marking 150 years since the first Impressionist exhibition, which began earlier this year at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Coinciding with the show is the publication of the book Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, by the Washington Post art critic, Sebastian Smee. Ben Luke speaks to Sebastian about the book. And this episode's Work of the Week is MUTIlady (2003) by Juan Pablo Echeverri. The photographic piece features nine photographs in which the late Colombian artist pictures himself with an apparently flayed body and wildly different haircuts seemingly reflecting a multitude of identities. The work is part of the exhibition GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, which opened this week at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. The show's curator, Miriam Bettin, tells Ben more about the artist and the work.Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, The National Gallery, London, 14 September-19 January 2025; The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece and Van Gogh's Finale: Auvers and the Artist's Rise to Fame by Martin Bailey, Frances Lincoln, each £10.99/$14.99 (pb), from 17 October, but available now at the National Gallery.Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism is published by W. W. Norton & Company in US and out now, priced $35. In the UK it's published by Oneworld, out on 17 October and priced £25; Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment, National Gallery of Art, Washington, until 19 January 2025.GROW IT, SHOW IT! A look at hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, until 12 January 2025.Subscription offer: you can get the perfect start to the new academic year with 50% off a student subscription to The Art Newspaper—that's £28, or the equivalent in your currency, for one year. Visit theartnewspaper.com to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Week in Art is back. In this first episode of the season: on Tuesday it was reported in the Financial Times that Sotheby's core earnings are down 88% in the first half of this year. This is the latest evidence to suggest that the art market may be in a far more serious economic rut than its major players have previously indicated, after disappointing sales and job cuts at the major auction houses, as well as closures and layoffs in the world of commercial galleries. In the September issue of The Art Newspaper, Scott Reyburn suggests that the art market could be entering a new era, and he joins our host Ben Luke to explain why. We then talk to Sasha Skochilenko, the artist who was freed in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the US in August, about her activism, arrest and incarceration as well as her experience of the swap and the art she has made since. And this episode's Work of the Week is The Angel of Hearth and Home, made by Max Ernst in 1937, and later renamed by the artist as The Triumph of Surrealism. The painting is part of the major travelling show marking the 100th anniversary of the first Surrealist manifesto, which makes its stop from this week at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris. Our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, went to Paris to talk to Didier Ottinger, the co-curator of the exhibition.Sasha Skochilenko: skochilenko.ru.Surrealism, Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 13 January 2025; Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain; 4 February-11 May 2025; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 12 June-12 October 2025; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, US, end of 2025-beginning of 2026. You can hear our discussion about the centenary of the first Surrealist manifesto with the Surrealism expert Alyce Mahon on the episode of this podcast from 23 February this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.