How even the young Pablo Picasso was already foreshadowing cubism
At the end of the 19th century, long before starting to speak, Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) was already drawing – and he grew up “capturing” everything he saw with a pencil. Through several of the drawings and sketches in pencil…
Friday essay: reclaiming artist-musician Anita Lane from the ‘despised’ label of muse
When I heard Anita Lane had died aged 61 in April 2021, a memory flashed up: I’m sitting beside her at the foot of a bed in the mid-1980s, and she turns to me to say how much my hair…
AI art is everywhere right now. Even experts don’t know what it will mean
An art prize at the Colorado State Fair was awarded last month to a work that – unbeknown to the judges – was generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. Social media have also seen an explosion of weird images…
Three Impressionist paintings that give an insight into the complicated history of breastfeeding in the 19th century
The history of breastfeeding reveals uncomfortable truths about women, work and money. An unlikely place where the history of nursing is clearly visible is in Impressionist paintings. Although the art of Manet and his followers is best known for its…
Grenfell: Steve McQueen’s film is a silent, unflinching reminder of lives devastated by fire
Oscar-winning artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen’s new work, Grenfell, is on show at London’s Serpentine Gallery. The 24-minute film – which the artist captured by helicopter in December 2017, six months after the fire – rotates around the Grenfell Tower…
Contemporary Muslim artists continue to adapt Islamic patterns to challenge ideas about fixed culture
What is culture? In today’s globalized world, we are familiar with seeing various cultural objects and ornamentation outside of their original location or context. If culture is not fixed and bound to a particular location, how does culture move and…
The fascinating Cameroonian art of spider divination is on display at London exhibition
Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life, which opened at London’s Serpentine South Gallery in June, explores how humans relate to spiders. It features installations of spider webs displayed and lit to be viewed as sculptures. There are also films:…
NFT art: the bizarre world where burning a Banksy can make it more valuable
A blockchain company has bought a piece of Banksy artwork and burnt it. But instead of destroying the value of the art, they claim to have made it more valuable, because it was sold as a piece of blockchain art….
AI is exciting – and an ethical minefield: 4 essential reads on the risks and concerns about this technology
If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to figure out what this AI thing is all about. Large-language models, generative AI, algorithmic bias – it’s a lot for the less tech-savvy…
How the James Webb deep field images reminded me the divide between science and art is artificial
The first task I give photography students is to create a starscape. To do this, I ask them to sweep the floor beneath them, collect the dust and dirt in a paper bag and then sprinkle it onto a sheet…
