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I believe the way we look at visual arts has the potential to change our ideas about history and society, so this is my approach.
To quote the great Toni Morrison: "All good art is political. If it's not political, chances are that it's not that good."
Welcome to my blog (and thanks for reading).
Francesca
Beyond the Canvas
An art blog with opinions
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jul 16, 20201 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jul 5, 20202 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jul 4, 20201 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jun 27, 20201 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jun 20, 20202 min read
Njideka Akunyili Crosby's identity tales
A powerhouse. There is no other way to describe this extraordinary artist whose breakneck rise has seen her work displayed and celebrated...
Beyond the Canvas
Jun 14, 20202 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jun 10, 20202 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
Jun 6, 20202 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
May 26, 20202 min read
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...
Beyond the Canvas
May 25, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 9: teamLab at Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris (26 May 2018)
teamLab hail from Japan, they are an interdisciplinary collective of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and...
Beyond the Canvas
May 8, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 8: Aleksey Sundukov at Russian State Museum, Saint Petersburg (19 September 2018)
The museums I have visited in Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg this far) have made a lasting impression on me. If we exclude the...
Beyond the Canvas
May 2, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 7: The Giacometti Gallery at Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk (29 Jun 2016)
Even on a very dark day, there was something strangely uplifting in the light that pervaded these rooms of the Louisiana Museum of Modern...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 25, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 5: Joan Semmel at Jewish Museum, New York (26 August 2017)
We have all been there, we've all experienced that feeling when we step into a room and we feel a work of art is 'calling' us. And I, for...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 19, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 4: Egon Schiele's flowers at Leopold Museum, Vienna (27 January 2017)
The Leopold Museum in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier is one the many gems of the city's outstanding cultural offering, arguably among the...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 16, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 3: Robert Longo at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (19 October 2016)
Discovery no. 1: Gorky Park is a name I used to associate with a spy movie from the 80s. Now I know where it is, it took me well over an...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 13, 20202 min read
Flashback no. 2: Jaume Plensa, 56th Venice Biennale (11 October 2015)
With permanent installations across the globe, Barcelona-born Jaume Plensa is the one of the doyens of large scale artistic projects in...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 11, 20201 min read
Flashback no. 1: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (5 March 2017)
There are many reasons to visit the Getty Centre, which is nestled in the hills overlooking West Los Angeles. The first is probably its...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 8, 20201 min read
Spring in art part 8: the day van Gogh comes to Fulham
Today is the most awaited day of my year. The hopeful and feverish monitoring of the evolution of the buds on my beloved pear tree...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 5, 20201 min read
Spring in art part 7: Steichen does a van Gogh
Luxembourg-born Edward Steichen is one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. He was one of the founders of the...
Beyond the Canvas
Apr 2, 20201 min read
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