Iran built itself a lavish modern art museum in the late 1970s, only to end up stowing away a priceless collection after the Islamic revolution. Signs of reform could open up Iranians to Giacometti, Picasso, Warhol and Pollock.
Tag: art
After a work-related accident that progressively made him blind, Vladir da Silva discovered an unlikely skill and passion taking pictures that relies on other senses. He tells his story.
Several decades of reflection and study have led neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux to stake out a new field that shows how art influences the brain.
After Donald Trump’s surprise victory last month, the first serious question — both in the U.S. and around the globe — was: Will he actually do all that stuff? The answer appears to be tilting toward a, Well, Hell Yes, that is as surprising to some as the election itself. The most blatant example so […]
NANTES — In contemporary art, digital data is as much a medium as paint these days. One of the best works showcased during Scopitone, a festival centered on all things digital in the French city of Nantes, used scientific data to reflect how stars are born. An audio, tactile and visual work, called Unfold, is […]
For famed Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, sewing a vast sheet with the names of victims of the country’s civil conflict is a sprawling but humble attempt at some form of salvation.
Churches are besieged by a specific type of thief — those hired by art collectors to steal specific pieces. The intrinsic loss caused by these actions is often irreparable, but church communities in Germany are starting to fight back.
TIME, Aug. 22 Cuban illustrator Edel Rodriguez turned up the heat on Donald Trump in TIME magazine“s latest issue. In a cover story entitled “Inside Donald Trump’s Meltdown,” the New York-based magazine explores the Republican candidate’s disastrous summer, marred by public blunders and controversial remarks.
BUENOS AIRES — When Voluspa Jarpa got her hands on piles of court papers and declassified CIA documents linked to Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, she saw an opportunity to make art. The Chilean artist decided she’d use the material to create a vast, albeit austere, visual display that doubles as a discrete […]
An artist duo from Zurich is using sex-talk avatars to pose some burning questions about the future of human-computer relationships.
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Painting Glass — Video Quote Of The Day
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Honest Art — Video Quote Of The Day
Libération, March 11, 2016 To mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of the start of the civil war in Syria, French daily Libération renamed itself Friday in Arabic, featuring a striking front-page image of children spinning on swings around a bomb. Calling itself Tahrir (“Liberation” in Arabic) for the occasion of the March 15th anniversary next […]
The Seguso family’s passion for glasswork burns brightly, even after 23 generations dedicated to the same painstaking but breathtaking craft.
KABUL — Eyes are always described as a symbol of beauty in art and eastern literature, but the two eyes painted on a wall in Kabul’s Share New neighborhood have literally beautified an ugly security wall. And in this case, eyes are used as a symbol of monitoring corruption. These “we are watching” eyes were created by the ArtLords, a group of young creatives who paint war-torn walls across the city of Kabul. “We have been facing cultural and social problems in Afghanistan, and art has never been used to solve disputes,” says the group’s leader Kabir Mokamel. “Instead force […]
As Venice’s biennial art extravaganza reveals, sexual provocation is old hat, and anti-capitalism is the new means of selling expensive art to millionaires.
SAO PAULO — Cemeteries are rarely considered places of beauty and pleasure. The one in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Jardim Angela was also grim for another reason, considering that in 1996 the UN ranked it the most violent urban region in the world. But now a part of this graveyard is bringing some smiles […]
GAZA — Of the clamors of the world around her, she sees nothing. Neither the walls and watchtowers that enclose the Gaza Strip, nor the destruction brought by the bombs. She doesn’t even see the months-old rubble of the neighboring building. Her only window, barely wider than an arrow slit, looks onto an empty back […]
The leading Brazilian artist defies our expectations with photographed installations, challenging a society too apt to consume images rather than examine them.
Loathed and feared in the art world, Vladimir Medinsky has shown a clear willingness to quash what he believes casts Russia in a poor light.
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Across Siberia, Across Time
An online series of photographs brings the writer back to his first great journey, via the Trans-Siberia rail, from his native Yugoslavia to post-Mao China.
In the deafening Egyptian capital, a small group of independent artists quietly present an art relying on everything the performer has to give … except their voices.
There are countless precedents for acts of cultural vandalism like ISIS perpetrated against the Mosul museum. A society’s art and cultural history may be its very embodiement of power.
Art Week and the sumptuous events around its star show, Art Basel Miami Beach, was a perfect showcase not just for art, but also guiltless expenditure of vast amounts of cold hard cash.
Amid the mayhem of civil war, huge money is to be made from stealing and selling archeological treasures from Iraq and Syria. ISIS ambitions are fueling an already huge black market.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a new high-profile cultural offering for the city of lights, but art’s higher calling becomes just a tool of luxury promotion for the ultra-privileged.
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Climate Change Clues From The Ice Age
Studying artifacts from 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, scientists now understand more than before about how climate change affected human behavior.
A Syrian refugee living in a tent near the border with Turkey has lost his home, but he is preserving the family business of creating beautiful works of traditional mosaic art.
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Is Bigger Beautiful? The Rise Of XXL Art
Wider, higher, heavier: A taste for oversized art is spreading around the world, among artists, collectors and the public (at large).
BEIJING — Three years after his imprisonment, still deprived of his passport and shut off in a bubble of official Chinese silence, Ai Weiwei, 57, neverthless appears ubiquitous everywhere else on the planet. The Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall in Berlin devoted a huge retrospective entitled “Evidences” from April to July. His last documentary, Ai Weiwei’s Appeal […]
In serving the plundered art worth hundreds of millions, historical justice is being served. But it comes at the expense of legal rectitude.
Egyptian writer Haytham El Wardany’s latest work offers a novel approach to dealing with the capital’s overwhelming excess of aural stimulation.
HONG KONG — Rarely do Chinese names appear in news stories about people donating their art collections to museums. That is especially true in the realm of contemporary visual art. But prominent Chinese art collector Guan Yi recently made an exception by donating 37 pieces of his collection to Hong Kong’s M+ Museum, which is […]
-Commentary- BEIJING — Reports about rich Chinese men snapping up French chateaux for big bucks have been prolific lately. Many Chinese are astonished that these French cultural relics are available to private buyers at all, much less foreign ones. But I believe this represents not so much how open France is but rather how closed […]
-Commentary- For years, major sporting events have been hosted in the superbly wealthy Gulf States. Now, renowned Western cultural institutions are following suit. But these high-minded museums and cultural organizations are encountering a familiar problem. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the French Louvre, the American Guggenheim and other branches of […]
BERLIN — Purple is intense like no other color. It is opaque, disturbing and seductive. It is also the color of 2014. So says the Pantone Color Institute, which has named “Radiant Orchid” this year’s preeminent hue. Red and blue combine to make it: hot and cold, fire and water, the male and female elements […]
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The Israeli Man Who Collected Everything
TEL AVIV — For 40 years Arnie Druck has been a collector. He has built one of Israel’s largest and most impressive caches of Israeli and Jewish art, local photography, wines, books, artifacts linked to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and El Al airline memorablia. His four-decade foray into collecting sprouted from his Bar Mitzvah […]
-Op-Ed- BOGOTA — The urge to wander the streets and feel the adrenaline rush that comes when painting on a public wall or bridge is condemned in our society, which has demonized this colorful art form and freedom of expression. This is a fundamental right — to communicate through letters and images painted on surfaces […]
SETE – French poet Paul Valéry called it “the singular island” – an expression that the inhabitants of Sète have adopted as their own. How else to describe this quasi-archipelago at the foot of Mount Saint-Clair, bordered in the north by the string of lakes that make up the Etang de Thau, and in the […]