Beyond the Canvas
Lorna Simpson's fantastical hairscapes
"Black women’s heads of hair are galaxies unto themselves, solar systems, moonscapes, volcanic interiors. The hair she paints has a mind...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 27, 2020
- 2 min
Titus Kaphar's Shifting the Gaze, 2017
Painting is a visual language where everything in the painting is meaningful, is important, is coded. But sometimes, because of the...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 24, 2020
- 1 min
Amy Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor
It's been 176 days since Breonna Taylor was killed. Breonna was 26-year-old, she worked as an emergency room technician and was on the...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 23, 2020
- 2 min
Carrie Mae Weems' The Kitchen Table Series (1990)
"I think that most work that’s made by black artists is considered to be about blackness. [Laughs.] Unlike work that’s made by white...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 16, 2020
- 2 min
A few thoughts on Among the Trees - Hayward Gallery, London
Ever heard of that theory according to which trees are immortal? No? Then you clearly do not know me very well. Of course trees are not...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 9, 2020
- 1 min
A stifling heatwave and a bout of nostalgia
The British obsession with the weather runs deep. Anyone living in Blighty soon falls in line, there are no two ways about it. As for me,...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Aug 1, 2020
- 2 min
A heathen's pilgrimage to the National Gallery
Today I'm celebrating my first trip into central London after 5 months of mostly staying at home. The Titian: Love, Desire, Death...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jul 27, 2020
- 2 min
Dwelling: In This Space We Breathe, Khadija Saye (1992-2017)
‘The series was created from a personal need for spiritual grounding after experiencing trauma. The search for what gives meaning to our...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jul 25, 2020
- 2 min
Gordon Parks' chronicles of everyday segregation
"I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jul 16, 2020
- 1 min
Expanding the Canon: the Portraiture of Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks mostly painted portraits, a genre that flourished during the Renaissance becoming the symbol of the sitter's...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jul 5, 2020
- 2 min
Betye Saar's "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima"
The Black Lives Matter movement is having an extraordinary impact on the way brands communicate and behave. Whether it's just 'woke...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jul 4, 2020
- 1 min
An urgent appeal: Save the arts. Save our theatres.
An unusual post this week, but the cause is one that's very close to my heart. I grew up going to the theatre with my mother. Every week...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jun 27, 2020
- 1 min
Celebrating the female black queer gaze: Mickalene Thomas
The growing momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increased media focus on black culture have brought a multitude of...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jun 20, 2020
- 2 min
Die Neue Sachlichkeit: Christian Schad's "Agosta, the Pigeon-Chested Man, and Rasha, the Black Dove"
Art history is punctuated by a constant juxtaposition of departure from and alignment to tradition. At the same time as some artists are...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jun 10, 2020
- 2 min
The Unforgettables: Felice Casorati's "Portrait of Silvana Cenni"
Suspended between Piero della Francesca's spatial geometries and De Chirico's metaphysics, Casorati paints a portrait that looks like a...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jun 6, 2020
- 2 min
In Memoriam: Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935-2020)
Christo left us earlier this week, he died in his New York home at the age of 84. Together with his life and work partner Jeanne-Claude...
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Beyond the Canvas
- Jun 1, 2020
- 1 min
Museums are neutral. Or are they?
Defining what a museum is and does is no mean feat. We know museums do a lot more than just preserve and display valuable objects that...
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Beyond the Canvas
- May 26, 2020
- 2 min
Musings on (online) auctions and the timelessness of Morandi's still lives
I have been to a couple of auctions in London and I thought there was something uniquely intriguing about the whole process. The...
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Beyond the Canvas
- May 25, 2020
- 2 min
Is it curtains for the blockbuster exhibition?
The numbers are in. According to The Art Newspaper's yearly survey, Ai Weiwei is officially the world's most popular artist. His...
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Beyond the Canvas
- May 23, 2020
- 2 min
The Game Changers: Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin - Louvre, Paris
This is not just my favourite Caravaggio, this is the ultimate Caravaggio. For me, this is the painting that demonstrates the full extent...
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