Tag: contemporary art
2013: The Best & Worst of the Visual Arts
Monday, January 6th, 2014 Art Essays, Blog,My best art experience of the year happened on the other side of the planet, in a retrospective celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch. The show, divided between the National Gallery and the Munch Museum in Olso, revealed an unrelenting intensity of vision. It featured the most complete collection of paintings […]
Singapore Biennale
Saturday, December 7th, 2013 Art Column,This year’s Singapore Biennale goes by the theme: If the World Changed. But where does the “if” come into the equation? The world is changing all the time with increasing rapidity. There is the forward movement of technological progress and the looming entropy of climate change. Every country in the world is locked into a […]
White Rabbit: 'Serve the People' & Li Jin
Saturday, October 19th, 2013 Art Column,Serve the People was the theme of a speech given by Mao Zedong in September 1944, while the Red Army was still engaged in combat with the Japanese. One year later the invader was defeated and the Communist forces would be renamed “the People’s Liberation Army”. In the years that followed, the PLA would battle […]
Moscow Biennale 2013
Saturday, October 5th, 2013 Art Column,Moscow will never be a contender for the title of ‘World’s Most Liveable City’. It is a place where puny human beings are overshadowed by the architectural juggernauts of Church and State. Even the famous Metro – each station an aesthetic marvel – is so deeply embedded in the earth that every train trip feels […]
The Red Queen
Saturday, July 6th, 2013 Art Column,It’s becoming difficult to remember what Hobart was like before David Walsh started his Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Within two-and-a-half years this Gothic fortress of sex and death has eaten up the city more effectively than any movie monster ever ate Detroit. Every day a steady procession of tourists from all over […]
Venice Biennale 2013: The Encylopaedic Palace
Saturday, June 8th, 2013 Art Column,Every Venice Biennale is a talk fest – a place for the beautiful people of the art world to exchange opinions and business cards at endless parties. Unfortunately most of the talk is of a very tawdry nature: “I just loved the Ruritanian pavilion!” “Oh yeah, I loved it too!” And so on, ad infinitum. […]
Art Basel in Hong Kong 2013
Saturday, June 1st, 2013 Art Column,Hong Kong is said to have got its name from the smell of incense stored in warehouses by the waterfront. Nowadays in “the fragrant harbour” the dominant smell is that of money, and it’s a perfume most residents find highly agreeable. There was a certain tang in the air last week, as the increasingly successful […]
Lars & the big poo
Tuesday, May 28th, 2013 Blog,At the end of another Hong Kong Art Fair – now rebranded as Art Basel in Hong Kong – one image stays in my mind. On an elevated platform stands Lars Nittve, executive director of the much-heralded M+ Museum, due to open in 2017. He is wearing a brown suit and giving a speech, in […]
5th Auckland Triennial: If You Were to LIve Here…
Saturday, May 25th, 2013 Art Column,After studying the recently announced theme for next year’s Sydney Biennale – “You Imagine what You Desire” – I’d like to suggest an alternative title, borrowed from a video by Singaporean artist, Ho Tzu Nyen – The Cloud of Unknowing. I know this was the name of a mystical tract from the late Middle Ages, […]
Jeff Wall
Saturday, May 11th, 2013 Art Column,Even in this age of digital revolution most people will accept that a painting or a sculpture demands to be seen at first hand. Photographs, however, are a different matter. Not only are the works of every great photographer viewable on-line, they often look better in a large-format book than on the gallery wall. Not […]