7 d. ago The Jewish dealer who bought art hated by the Nazis – and created one of the greatest collections ever seen

A new National Gallery of Australia show draws on Heinz Berggruen’s collection to celebrate the spread of modernism around the world, despite the Nazis’ best effortsWhen Heinz Berggruen left Germany for America in 1936, he was not allowed more than 10 marks in his pocket. As a young journalist in Berlin, Berggruen had been forced to publish under the pseudonym “h.b.” in order to hide his Jewish heritage and evade the Nazi party’s antisemitism.In the decades that would follow, he became an art dealer, regularly rubbing shoulders with the most important artists of the 20th century, and amassing one of the most impressive private collections of modern art ever to exist. On the day he left Berlin for Berkeley, however, such a future would have seemed impossible. Continue reading...

Economics

7 d. ago 'They're artists!' Furious father of British pole dancer who was arrested with four others for 'degrading' a World Heritage site insist they were creating art

A video of the racy performance went viral as onlookers watched the half-naked women outside the Old Palace of St. Michael and St. George in the early hours of the morning.

Events

8 d. ago Leonardo Drew review – are these towers of debris the ruins of America?

South London GalleryFloating on walls, strewn across the floor and rising in heaps, the detritus here feels less like an echo of Jackson Pollock and more like, well, random rubbishThis place looks like a storm hit it. The winds have ripped up houses, shops, factories and art studios, whirled the pieces in a mighty twister and smashed them to earth in pulverised fragments. Now they scatter South London Gallery, towering over you in two random heaps, with other pieces gathered in clusters, floating on the walls, thrown all over the floor. Crunch, crunch – you can walk on broken bits of wood carpeting the ground, negotiating your way around bigger debris, as you inspect the ruins of America – and, sadly, of American art.Seven decades ago, Jackson Pollock put America at the forefront of abstract art with looping and spiralling vortices of energy that he created by pouring and flicking paint on to a horizontal canvas. Leonardo Drew grew up in a housing project in Bridgeport, Connecticut,...

Politics

1 week ago Fingerprint made by Neanderthal 43,000 years ago could be world’s oldest portrait

Ochre mark is thought to be oldest complete fingerprint ever found and may suggest Neanderthals were capable of abstract thought

Politics

1 week ago World’s oldest fingerprint may be a clue that Neanderthals created art

A man 43,000 years ago dipped a finger in red pigment and made a nose on a face-like pebble in Spain, scientists sayOne day around 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man in what is now central Spain came across a large granite pebble whose pleasing contours and indentations snagged his eye.Something in the shape of that quartz-rich stone – perhaps its odd resemblance to an elongated face – may have compelled him to pick it up, study it and, eventually, to dip one of his fingers in red pigment and press it against the pebble’s edge, exactly where the nose on that face would have been. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Mastermind review – Josh O’Connor is world’s worst art thief in Kelly Reichardt’s unlikely heist movie

Cannes film festival Reichardt’s quietist, observational style is unexpectedly successful at creating a super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robberyIt needs hardly be said that the title is ironic. The abject non-hero of Kelly Reichardt’s engrossingly downbeat heist movie, set in 1970s Massachusetts, is weak, vain and utterly clueless. By the end, he’s a weirdly Updikean figure, though without the self-awareness: going on the run with no money and without a change of clothes, to escape from the grotesque mess he has made for himself and his family.This is James, played with hangdog near-charm by Josh O’Connor; he is an art school dropout and would-be architectural designer with two young sons, married to Terri (a minor complaint is that the excellent Alana Haim is not given enough to do). James depends on the social standing of his father Bill, a judge, formidably played by Bill Camp, and is borrowing large sums of money from his patrician mother Sarah (Hope Davis), ostens...

Politics