10 h. ago Humble peasants or an odyssey of sex and death? The Millet masterpiece that electrified modern art

Van Gogh saw compassion for the rural worker; Dalí saw phalluses and a child’s grave. As The Angelus comes to the UK, our critic celebrates a painting so deep it could even induce hallucinationsIt was Salvador Dalí who turned a small, intense rural scene called The Angelus, painted by Jean-François Millet in 1857-59 and hugely popular in its day, into a totem of modern art.In the original, a pious peasant couple have heard the Angelus bell from a distant church, the Catholic call to prayer, and paused their work digging potatoes to lower their heads and pray. But from Dalí’s writings, we know he saw far more in the painting, from obscene sex to family tragedy. In one of his many versions of it, Atavism at Twilight, the couple sprout agricultural implements from their bodies. In his surreal drawings these good country people become mouldering, mummified husks, or are transformed into fossils by time and sadness. Now that the original painting is being lent by the Musée d’Orsay to the...

Events

1 week ago My cultural awakening: a Marina Abramović show helped me to stop hating my abusive father

At an Abramović art takeover I discovered the quiet strength of a political protester from Myanmar. It gave me a new father figure – and unblocked my creativityOn an unseasonably warm day in October 2023, I arrived, ahead of the queues, at London’s Southbank Centre for a conceptual art takeover by the world-famous Marina Abramović Institute.I had recently read Marina’s memoir Walk Through Walls, which had resonated. So, when I’d seen the event advertised – hours-long performances by artists she’d invited, curated and introduced by Marina – I bought a £60 ticket and waited for my time slot to enter the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I hadn’t seen performance art before, and this was due to include her well-known work The Artist Is Present with an artist sitting, static and silent, in a chair all day, as Marina once did for an accumulated 736 hours and 30 minutes at the Museum of Modern Art. I felt certain that it would affect me, I just wasn’t sure how. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago ‘A young fella like me doesn’t want to make traditional paintings’: how Indigenous art swept the UK

From distinctive dot paintings to ‘unflattering’ portraits of billionaires, via bloodstained reindeer skulls piled up outside parliament, the diverse work of Indigenous artists is thrilling the art world Seemingly out of nowhere, Indigenous art is everywhere. We’ve gone decades – centuries, really – in this country with barely any exhibitions dedicated to the work of Indigenous artists, but recently, everything’s changed. Galleries, museums and institutions across the UK are hosting shows by artists from communities in South America, Australia, the US and Europe at an unprecedented rate.Tate Modern in London is putting on its first-ever major solo show by a First Nation Australian artist in July, with a Sámi artist from Norway taking over the Turbine Hall in October. There are shows by Native American artists at Camden Art Centre in London and Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, while painters and weavers from the Amazon and Argentina are coming to Manchester’s Whitworth and Bexhill-o...

Politics

2 w. ago Modern marvel or concrete ‘blob’? Inside LA’s divisive $700m art gallery

Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new building has been a decade in the making and has long vexed critics, but its CEO hopes to turn things aroundAs Los Angeles county’s new $720m art museum building nears completion, it’s still haunted by a single, vexing question: how do you hang art in a gallery where every single wall is made of massive slabs of concrete?Designed by Peter Zumthor, a prizewinning Swiss architect, the new building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) has sparked controversy in the art world since its initial designs were made public in 2013. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘No plans ever to retire’: why Steven Spielberg and the movie brat generation just won’t quit

Spielberg, 78, has announced he’ll keep making films till he dies – and he’s a spring chicken next to Coppola, Scorsese, Werner Herzog and Ridley Scott, all still working in their 80s. What makes directing a job for life?If life behaved in the same way as movies, then The Fabelmans would have been Steven Spielberg’s last film. He spent the previous five decades writing the rulebook of modern cinema, and then The Fabelmans was the rare work of art that wrapped everything up with a neat little bow. Part autobiography and part tutorial, it was like the work of a man looking back on his life with a sense of satisfied completion.But real life doesn’t behave like that, and Spielberg has just announced that he is never going to retire. In fact, he announced it twice. In a speech he gave during a star-studded event unveiling a new Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal lot last night, the 78-year-old said: “I’m making a lot of movies and I have no plans ever to retire.” And then, talking...

Politics

2 w. ago Lessons for Young Artists by David Gentleman review – secrets from the studio

The much-loved painter, designer of stamps and creator of anti-war posters shares tips from a 90-year careerYou know the art of David Gentleman even if you don’t know you know it. Anyone who’s passed through London’s Charing Cross tube station has seen his life-filled black-and-white mural of medieval people, enlarged from his woodcuts, digging, hammering, chiselling to construct the Eleanor Cross that once stood nearby. His graphic art has graced everything from stamps to book covers to Stop the War posters in a career spanning seven decades. He says he’s been making art for 90 years, since he was five.His parents were also artists, and in his latest book he reproduces a Shell poster by his father to show he follows in a modern British tradition of well-drawn, well-observed popular art. Perhaps it is because he learned from his parents as naturally as learning to speak – “Seeing them drawing tempted me to draw” – that Gentleman dislikes pedagogy. He’s proud that...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘If there’s a rule, he tries to break it’: the explosively colourful textiles of Sam Gilliam

A new exhibition explores the late artist’s unexpected sojourn in Ireland, where practical constrictions and the wild scenery inspired a burst of fierce creativitySam Gilliam’s artistic life was bookended by success against the odds. In 1972, he became the first Black artist to represent the US at the world’s most prestigious art festival, the Venice Biennale. He had overcome poverty and prejudice in the south to study art at one of the first desegregated universities, and, after settling in Washington, was hailed as a radical innovator within the group of abstract painters dubbed the Color School.Pushing his medium in new sculptural directions, he broke convention by taking his canvases off their wooden stretchers. His best-known colour-drenched works have an improvisatory quality, never installed the same way twice, whether they’re draped on the wall or hung tent-like from the ceiling. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago ‘If there’s a rule, he tries to break it’: the explosively colourful works of Sam Gilliam

A new exhibition explores the late artist’s unexpected sojourn in Ireland, where practical constrictions and the wild scenery inspired a burst of fierce creativitySam Gilliam’s artistic life was bookended by success against the odds. In 1972, he became the first Black artist to represent the US at the world’s most prestigious art festival, the Venice Biennale. He had overcome poverty and prejudice in the south to study art at one of the first desegregated universities, and, after settling in Washington, was hailed as a radical innovator within the group of abstract painters dubbed the Color School.Pushing his medium in new sculptural directions, he broke convention by taking his canvases off their wooden stretchers. His best-known colour-drenched works have an improvisatory quality, never installed the same way twice, whether they’re draped on the wall or hung tent-like from the ceiling. Continue reading...

Events