Tag: art

REVOLUTIONARY ART, BUT A MESS OF A SHOW

February 16, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The great works of Russian artists of the early 20th are among the most thrilling and inspiring in the history of art. But they are also so well known to have become almost a cliché. Any show of revolutionary Russian art has to balance a number of different issues. It has to reveal why the works of art are so thrilling. It has to accommodate many of the different schools and perspectives – from neo-realism to neo-primitivism, from rayonism to […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: alexander rodchenko, arkaidy shaiket, art, bolsheviks, boris ignatovich, kazimir malevich, modernism, russian revolution, russian revolutionary art, soviet union, stalin, vladimir tatlin

A PROFOUNDLY POETIC ANOMALY

December 4, 2016 by Kenan Malik

What is modernism? And what is modernist art? The images here look strikingly like 20th century modernism – Malevich, Miro, Kandinsky, Klee, El Lissitzky, or more recent artists such as Agnes Martin. In fact they come from seventeenth century Rajasthan, in India, and were created within the Hindu Tantric tradition. The images draw upon key symbols of Tantric cosmogony, such as the bindu, a dot symbolizing the undifferentiated absolute, to the negative space of the shunya, the absolute void of […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: abstract art, art, franck andre jamme, india, indian art, modernism, tantric art

THE DRAMA OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT GARDE

June 12, 2016 by Kenan Malik

In France, the emergence of modernism in art, from Impressionism to Cubism, spanned half a century. In Russia, the avant-garde emerged and disappeared in little more than a decade, from around 1910 to the early 1920s. French avant-garde movements, succeeded each other, in an orderly progress – Impressionism, Pointilism, Fauvism, Cubism. In Russia, a tumult of avant-garde movements – Neo-Realism, Neo-Primitivism, Rayonism, Suprematisism, Constructivism, Non-Objectivism, Futurism – tumbled forth almost simultaneously, their proponents often challenging each others’ perspectives. From the poetic […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: art, avant-garde, chagall, constructivism, malevich, russian avant-garde, russian revolution, socialist realism, stalin, suprematism

IN THE FORTRESS OF THE PILGRIMS

May 8, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Herengracht 401 lies at the heart of Amsterdam’s beautiful canal district. For more than 70 years it was home to the artist Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, known usually just as ‘Gisèle’. During the Second World War it was a place of safety for Jews and others fleeing the Nazis. Today it is home to Castrum Peregrini, originally set by Gisèle in the 1950s as a literary magazine, but which has evolved into a space for exhibitions, discussion and […]

Categories: History, International, Photos • Tags: art, castrum peregrini, freedom struggles, morality, netherlands, photography

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE VENUS AND THE COVER-UP

April 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Back in January, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made an official visit to Rome, something strange happened to the statues he might have seen. Giovanni Tiso, a New Zealand-based writer and translator, tells here the story. Rouhani’s visit, and the Venus cover-up, might have taken place three months ago, but it is worth retelling the story, and putting it into context, because this is the kind of casual censorship that in many ways defines our time. As Giovanni writes, ‘this kind […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: art, censorship, italy, nudity

DETROIT, DIEGO RIVERA AND THE WORTH OF ART

October 25, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Downtown Detroit looks almost like any other American city. Clusters of skyscrapers, huddles of cranes throwing up new high rises, expensive hotels with a dozens of valets lounging outside. Yet, look a bit closer, and you notice that in many of the blocks the windows are blacked over or broken, and bushes are growing on the ledges. Step outside the centre, and you find beautiful houses – standing in the middle of what appears like desolate fields. You spot kestrels […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: art, detroit, detroit industry murals, detroit institute of art, diego rivera, working class

PAINTING BY PIGMENT AND LIGHT

July 19, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I dislike photography that seeks self-consciously to be ‘painterly’; still less paintings that aspire to photorealism. A photographer is not a painter, and a painter is not a photographer, and to pretend otherwise is to diminish that which gives each form its meaning. But sometimes you take a photo that captures the spirit of a particular artist. You discover something in a scene, or evoke something within it, that brings to mind the way that he or she may also […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: albert bierstedt, art, bridget riley, cezanne, katsushika hokusai, klimt, monet, ohara koson, photos, rothko, turner, watanabe seiti

EAST, WEST AND THE RENAISSANCE

May 24, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Last week I published a talk that I had given at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels. The talk, ‘The many roots of Christian Europe, the many sources of to Islamic world’ was one in a series given to accompany an exhibition, ‘The Sultan’s World: The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art’, organized by Bozar, the Centre for Fine Arts. It is a groundbreaking exhibition that focuses on the period from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, the period […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History • Tags: art, christianity, europe, ottoman empire, renaissance, titian

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 6)

March 14, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is the final part of the series I have been running on Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration paintings. Lawrence was one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, and the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the South to the North that began at the start of the First World War, one of the defining features of American history. I wrote in the first post about the significance both of Lawrence and of […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (5)

February 15, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I have been running a series of posts about Jacob Lawrence and his depiction of the Great Migration. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters, and the Great Migration, the exodus of African Americans from the Southern states to the Northern cities from 1915 onwards, one of the pivotal events of American history. Lawrence portrayal of that exodus, an epic work of 60 panels, is his most famous work, a work as much of historical memory as […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, harlem renaissance, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

THE MISADVENTURES OF THE BLACK SQUARE

February 7, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Adventures of the Black Square. It is a brilliant title for an exhibition about twentieth century abstract geometric art. The black square is Kazimir Malevich’s Black Quadrilateral, first displayed in 1915 in the 0.10 The Last Futurist Exhibition in St Petersburg; its adventures, the artistic reworking of that seminal concept through the following century. ‘One of the greatest legacies of the black square’, writes Iwona Balzwick, curator of the exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, ‘was that it landed like a […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: abstract art, alexander rodchenko, art, dora maurer, el lissitzky, gaspar gasparian, geraldo de barros, helio oiticica, lyubov popova, modernism, nasreen mohamedi, postmodernism, vladimir malevich, werner mantz

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (4)

February 1, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my posts republishing the paintings from Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration series, I have reached panels 31-40. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters, though one who has rarely received great public recognition, and the Great Migration, the exodus of African Americans from the Southern states to the Northern cities from 1915 onwards, one of the pivotal events of American history, though again not often recognized as such. Lawrence’s portrayal of that event, and of its existential impact, […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 3)

January 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary by bringing together in an exhibition all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most famous work, a work as much […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, modernism, robert hughes, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 2)

January 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary with an exhibition that brings together all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION

December 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Beginning in 1915, some six million black African Americans from the South joined an exodus to the northern cities – Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and many others. This was the Great Migration. It was the result both of the conditions in which African Americans found themselves in the South and the labour needs of Northern employers. After post-Civil War Reconstruction, white supremacy had largely been restored across the South, enforced though the Jim Crow laws. It was a segregated […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, black culture, black identity, harlem renaissance, jacob lawrence, modernism, robert hughes, the great migration, usa