For interest sake!
Watch, read, listen to art related news that is or has been of interest to us
and we hope will be of interest to you.
"I would compare paintings to music." | Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson
“People are drawn to music or not. It’s either-or.” Meet Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in this joy- and thoughtful interview, where he also reveals why the piano became his fate even before he was born.
“I think the way to differentiate between the good and the great, the fine and the outstanding, is really the same in all the art forms. It’s really that question of originality and whether you see and hear the world from your own perspective as opposed to copying other people’s sensations.”
Ólafsson argues that music should not be put into categories like classical or contemporary. Music, he says, is like any other art form a playground of ideas. “We must keep that freshness. If you read a book, you bring yourself into it eventually. I often feel that Johann Sebastian Bach is the most modern composer. This idea that we have to recreate the old as it was created 200 or 300 years ago is ridiculous. It’s a crazy idea, it’s a lazy idea. It’s creatively lazy and it lacks courage.”
Ólafsson tells that he identifies notes with specific colours. And that he sees a lot of similarities between different forms of art. “Maybe I would compare paintings to music. It’s this play with architecture, structure and fantasy, with colour, space and dimension. It’s the same subjects a painter is dealing with or an architect, a composer or an author. It’s more or less the same subjects in all the arts.”
Wim Wenders Interview: Painter, Filmmaker, Photographer
“The world was such a better world in paintings than in reality.” Growing up in post-war Düsseldorf, it was through paintings that German filmmaker Wim Wenders initially discovered the possibility of a different world. This would later come to define him not only
as a painter, but also as a filmmaker and photographer, as he shares with us in this personal interview.
Francis Bacon: Fragments Of A Portrait
Francis Bacon's paintings have been called sick and corrupt. He has also been hailed as the greatest British painter since Turner. This film study - Bacon's first appearance on BBC Television - shows his work and its sources, and critically assesses his paintings.
Miriam de Búrca interview
Through her work, Miriam de Búrca (b1972, Munich) seeks to draw attention to burial sites in Ireland known as cilliní, where, as recently as the 1980s, anyone deemed unworthy by the Catholic church of a burial in consecrated ground was laid to rest – or, rather, not to rest, since theology teaches that their unblessed souls remain for ever in limbo. These unfortunate and unknown strangers include stillborn or unbaptised babies, unmarried mothers, those who have taken their own lives, the mentally ill and excommunicates.
A growing number of agencies are popping up in the art market, providing an alternative to the traditional gallery model
Talent agencies are becoming increasingly common in the art world,
with some visual artists choosing to depart traditional galleries in favour of working with agencies whose focus is more on building partnerships with brands and institutions (alongside selling their work of course).
How social media visuals affect our mind?
Most of our social media feeds are filled with narcissistic content over meaningful visual content. This is drastically affecting our mental health. Technology has enabled us to access a diversity of content faster, but also to be a stronger form of expression for each of us. If we are choosing the content that we see, why not making it inspiring every single day? This talk will bring a new form of self awareness on our usage of visual content and offer a few useful tools for their online consumption.
The purpose of a museum
It is right and inevitable that museum buildings and displays should continuously reflect changes in public taste and perception, as Charles Saumarez Smith and others have suggested in your pages. Restitution of looted objects or at the very least full and open acknowledgement of their history is also fundamental in this day and age.
Art Dealer Rudolf Zwirner on What Starting a Family Empire in the 1960s Taught Him About How Dealers Can Survive the Pandemic Era
The father of David Zwirner is a pivotal figure in the history of the market.
Coco Fusco, The Woman by the Window, 2020
The Woman by the Window is a video essay about two Cuban writers who observe their world from their windows. One is the male protagonist of an award-winning film from the 1960s, the other is an award-winning female journalist in the present.
Coco Fusco is an artist and writer, and a professor at The Cooper Union School of Art.
In an Astounding New Book, a Neuroscientist Reveals the Profound and Science-Backed Benefits Art Has on Our Health.
Neuroscientist Pierre Lemarquis explains how we need "medicine that’s a little artistic."
‘We’re Always Looking for Different Perspectives’:
Audemars Piguet’s In-House Curators on the Watchmaker’s Art Commissions
Learn what it's like to run an art program at one of the world's top watchmaking houses.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Drawing Materials
In this short film, conservator Alan Donnithorne explores the materials that Leonardo da Vinci used to produce his magnificent drawings. Using examples from the holdings of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, the film looks at how Leonardo achieved the full range of effects, tailoring his materials to particular types of drawing.
The UK City of Coventry Will Convert a Massive Former IKEA Store Into One of the Biggest Cultural Hubs in the World
The center will host thousands of artworks from the national art collection that are currently in storage.
Populist Leaders in Central and Eastern Europe Have a New Target
in Their Fight Against Liberalism: Art Museum Directors
The Slovenian government is denies it is waging a campaign to oust left-wing museum leaders.
How to spot a perfect fake: the worlds top art forgery detective
Forgeries have got so good – and so costly – that Sotheby’s has brought in its own in-house fraud-busting expert
El sol del membrillo
A wonderful film featuring the great Spanish painter Antonio López García
and his attempt to paint the eponymous quince tree.
Giacometti in His Studio
The late artist and his original atelier through the lenses of Magnum photographers
Alberto Giacometti: What is a Head?
Documentary film of the artist that looks at the richness of the great artists work, paying special attention to the way he approached the human head.
Omnibus: Avigdor Arikha
Avigdor Arikha is one of the finest figurative painters of the 20th century. This profile was made when he was at the height of his powers. We are in New York with critic Robert Hughes, in Paris with Arikha's wife Anne, subject of over 30 portraits and in Israel, where Arikha was taken after being rescued from a Russian concentration camp in World War 2. Erudite, passionate, intense and brilliant on other artists, friend of Samuel Beckett and painter of the Queen Mother, Arikha died in 2010 but his work lives on. See his works on Instagram arikhaestate.
Holly Solomon
Being the subject of a portrait by Warhol is certainly a good way to cement oneself as a Pop art icon, but for Holly Solomon, a life as a muse simply wasn’t enough. Also the subject of paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, and Rauschenberg, in 1969, Solomon transformed her Greene Street loft into an exhibition and performance space, which laid the ground work for what would eventually become the Holly Solomon Gallery, which she formally launched in SoHo in 1975.
The Madness of Art
New York gallery owner Jim Kempner writes, directs, and stars in this satiric web series that asks, what's so funny about the art world? - The Madness of Art is an established comedy web series poking fun at the art world.
Lucian Freud the last genius of 20th century realist painting
Documentary film of the artist, one of the major figurative painters of the 20th century. Working in an uncompromisingly confrontational style, his portraits and nudes were rendered with a thickly laden brush. Often painting himself, as well as family and friends his works are imbued with a distinctive psychological space. Painted under intense direct observation, usually over the course of many sittings, Freud observed of his practice: “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes and, ironically, the more real.”
Watch: Conversation with a recluse (2008 Interview)
Fakes in the art world - The mystery conman | DW Documentary
Fake art sits unnoticed in galleries around the world. A talented fraudster has been playing the art market and ripping off collectors for years. Who is the mystery conman? Discover more in The Mystery Conman - The murky business of counterfeit antiques.
The Life of Andy Warhol
This documentary in two parts begins by delving deep into his impoverished upbringing in 1930s–’40s Pittsburgh, taking a rare look behind the façade of one of the most famous Pop Art celebrities in history. The second part of the film examines his prolific expansion into the art world.
Conversation with John Berger
John Berger in conversation with Michael Silverblatt at Berger's home, a working farm, in Quincy, Mieussy, France, October 2002. Silverblatt is the host of the radio interview program, Bookworm.
Gerhard Richter Interview: In Art We Find Beauty and Comfort
“I don’t really believe art has power. But it does have value. Those who take an interest in it find solace in art. It gives them huge comfort.” Gerhard Richter, one of the greatest painters of our time, discusses beauty in the era of the Internet in this rare interview.
Grizedale launches campaign to turn historic Lake District pub
into rural arts centre
Over the past two decades Grizedale Arts in the Lake District has established a reputation as a community arts organisation with a difference. Embedded in the heart of Cumbria but with a long global reach, Grizedale generates cultural activity of all kinds at local, national and international levels—with an ethos summed up by its director Adam Sutherland as “all about art being useful”.
Virtual Art Fairs Were Seen as a Lifeline in the Lockdown Era.
A New Study Shows They Are Failing New York’s Art Market
Collectors say they are absolutely exhausted with the "onslaught of art" being sold online.
'Instagram makes you feel part of the art world—but it's a lie'
artist Rachel de Joode on art and the digital
Berlin-based multimedia artist talks about her new works on show at London's Annka Kultys Gallery
Antoni Tàpies documentary
Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist, who became one of the most famous European artists of his generation.
Cy Twombly at the Pompidou
The exhibition, curated by Jonas Storsve, is organised around three cycles - Nine Discourse on Commodus (1963), Fifty Days at Iliam (1978) and Coronation of Sesostris (2000). Some of Twombly’s iconic paintings and drawings are shown alongside his sculptures and photographs, many for the first time in France.
Glass House
Having featured work in Harper's Bazaar, Life, French Vogue, and French Elle, British photographer David McCabe steps back in time to one of his most memorable commissions—photographing a year in the life of Andy Warhol.
In this Matthew Placek-directed film, McCabe traveled to Connecticut to revisit the iconic modernist glass house of American architect Philip Johnson, an escapist home for Andy Warhol and other visionary twentieth-century artists taking a break from the hubbub of New York City.
Edward Hopper and the Blank Canvas
Documentary about Edward Hopper, widely acknowledged as the most important realist painter of twentieth-century America.
Photographers at the BBC
Using the BBC archive this programme reveals the working practices, lives and opinions of some of the 20th Century’s most distinguished photographers. From Norman Parkinson to David Bailey, Eve Arnold to Jane Bown, for decades the BBC has drawn the nation’s attention to the creators of what has become the most ubiquitous contemporary art form. Pioneering BBC programmes like Arena, Monitor and Omnibus provide unique and rarely seen insights into the careers of photography’s leading practitioners.
Watch
100 Years of Bauhaus / Walter Gropius
In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever.
It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today.
Egon Schiele
Documentary about the great Austrian artist who's career was short, intense, and amazingly productive. Before succumbing to influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight, he created over three hundred oil paintings and several thousand works on paper. The human figure provided Schiele with his most potent subject matter for both paintings and drawings.
Marlene Dumas: About Her Work and the Show at Fondation Beyeler
Marlene Dumas About Her Work and the Show at Fondation Beyeler 2015.
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Robert Hughes - Art Critic
Documentary about arguably the greatest art critic our time. He made criticism look like literature. He also made it look morally worthwhile. He lent a nobility to what can often seem a petty way to spend your life. Hughes could be savage, but he was never petty. There was purpose to his lightning bolts of condemnation.
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Bonnard
On the occasion of the great exhibition dedicated to the painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Alain Cavalier makes a short and beautiful film, an intimate approach to the very spirit of the work. In this film, available on DVD, there is an exciting, complex, funny and a little disturbing scene: it is the restoration of a painting by Bonnard, "Nu au bain" (1938) by two specialists, Monsieur and Madame Le Dantec. Alain Cavalier kindly entrusted artsciencefactory with the rushes of this sequence. They allow you to enter simultaneously into three “kitchens”, three places that are both very personal and dedicated to manufacturing: the kitchen of the artist Bonnard, the kitchen of the artist Cavalier, the kitchen of the craftsmen and scholars of Le Dantec.
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Watch also: Pierre Bonnard: A Love Exposed
A documentary produced to coincide with the 1998 exhibition of Pierre Bonnard's work at the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.