A banana duct-taped to a wall. Number 2 of the limited edition of 3 was sold for $6.2m in November 2024. Bought by Justin Sun, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, he ate the banana a few days after he purchased it.
If anyone has any idea what all this means, please leave a comment.
'The artist's job is to be a light in the darkness and a voice in the silence.' - Oscar Wilde
'I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.' - Georgia O'Keeffe
'I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, "He feels deeply, he feels tenderly."' - Vincent Van Gogh
'They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.' - Andy Warhol
Delaine Le Bas transforms her surroundings into monumental immersive environments filled with painted fabrics, theatrical costumes, and sculptures. Her art draws on the rich cultural history of the Roma people and mythologies, focusing on themes of death, loss, and renewal.
She was nominated for her presentation Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning at Secession, Vienna - This description is taken directly from the Tate Britain's introduction to Delaine Le Bas.
Within her work, Jasleen Kaur makes installations by gathering and remaking objects from everyday life to renegotiate tradition and agreed myths, exploring cultural memory and political belonging. Kaur questions how the narratives we inherit circulate in discreet ways and, in turn, shape us. While family and community are present in Kaur’s work, she is most interested in how these intimacies meet wider sociopolitical structures - This description is taken directly from the Tate Britain's introduction to Jasleen Kaur.
Artist Claudette Johnson uses painting and drawing as a means to explore representations of Black women (and sometimes men). Johnson's subjects are people she knows well, often drawn from life; a process which allows her to project the presence of the person she is drawing. Each large-scale artwork boasts a rich colour palette. Completed at the time of filming is her most vibrant yet, Kind of Blue, which features throughout the film - This description is taken directly from the Tate Britain's introduction to Claudette Johnson.
Through her art, Claudette Johnson reflects on what it means to be a black woman ( sometimes referencing black men's experiences too ) in Britain.
Pio Abad's art explores cultural loss and colonial histories, often reflecting on his upbringing in the Philippines. Featuring drawings, etchings and sculptures that depict and transform artifacts from British museums, Abad sheds light on their overlooked histories and connects them to our lives today. He was nominated for his solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford - This description is taken directly from the Tate Britain's introduction to Pio Abad.
Pio Abad is a Filipino. The USA first declared military rule in the Philippines in 1898, taking the place of the Spanish as colonisers.
This example of Abad's work is currently on display at the Tate Britain and is part of his entry for the Turner Prize. It is a grotesquely enlarged bracelet, which references a piece of jewellery owned by Imelda Marcos. Together with her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, she controlled the fate of the Philippines for over 20 years during the 1970s and 80s, plundering billions of dollars from her own people. After the Marcos' fall and criminal conviction the world became fully aware of her enormous collections of personal items of jewellery, and perhaps even more notoriously of her accumulation of literally thousands of pairs of shoes.
The winner of the 40th edition of the Turner Prize will be announced on the 3rd December.
Over the next 4 days we will briefly introduce the four artists who have been shortlisted for the 2024 prize: Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas. Their work is currently on display at the Tate Britain, London.
A hugely talented architect, with a singular vision.
Hadid set up her own architectural firm in 1979 in London, but it took her until 1993 to actually have one of her designs become a real building: the Vitra Fire Station in Weill am Rhein, Germany.
During her years as a 'Paper Architect', she had to overcome prejudice against both her sex and her Arab-Iraqi background.
Even though there was only a single example of her work built in England, towards the end of her lifetime - a few years before she died, an Observer newspaper article began, "The world's best female architect is sought-after everywhere - except Britain. Why?" - she met with great international success and acclaim.
Her extraordinary vision often led to buildings with curved rather than angular lines, which creates the sensation that her structures are actually moving or flowing, almost floating, defying gravity.
Zaha mastered her art. I remember you, I hope others will too.
A Welsh artist who lived and worked in Paris for most of her life. She is best known for her portraits of women, often in domestic interiors. Using a subdued and subtle palette, her portraits have extraordinary psychological and emotional power.
'The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.' - Francis Bacon
'The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.' - Alberto Giacometti.
Originally Indian yellow was produced from the dried urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves and water. The urine was collected and formed into lumps, which were used to create the pigment. The powdered pigment could then be mixed with oil, during which process a rather unfortunate pungent aroma was given off, but the result was a stunning, warm golden-yellow paint beloved by artists.
Fortunately, nowadays we can produce the same hue in synthetic form.
Two Mughal miniatures with Indian yellow.
"Sometimes Art is the means by which we express the unpalatable."
'Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.' - Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962
Is this art? Yes, in my opinion. For sure, it is not fine art. It is not even decorative art. It is provocative. It was meant as a challenge to the wider world.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that Muriel Latow - a gallery owner in Manhattan - suggested to Andy Warhol, in an apparently off-the-cuff manner, that he should paint something that was truly banal and commonplace and which he came across in his own everyday life - like a Campbell's soup can. Warhol was later to claim that he ate Campbell's soup every day for twenty years. Whether this is true or not, he did begin to 'paint' a series of 32 soup cans in late 1961 and early 1962. Almost identical, the only notable difference between the cans was the reference to their contents: PepperPot, Chicken, Consomme etc.
The Pop Art movement had begun in the mid-1950s in Britain and reached America very soon afterwards. Inspired by popular and commercial culture, Pop Art concerned itself with 'Popular, Transient, Expendable, Low Cost, Mass produced...' (Richard Hamilton, 1957) subject matter.
There are countless books and essays on the subject of Pop Art and Andy Warhol and I am not going to attempt to offer any real or comprehensive explanation of his Soup Cans or of their meaning or significance, or indeed to comment on Warhol's fascination with consumerism and celebrity, as well as contemporary social and political issues,
Instead, I am going to concentrate on a single aspect of the pattern of my thinking as a response to Warhol's Soup Can series - the idea of 'choice'.
At first glance all the soup cans seem the same. On closer inspection, we realise that each can contains a different flavour. It seems as if we each have the freedom to choose the flavour that we want. In fact, Warhol is asking us to consider the idea of proscription. Giant corporations have already largely decided where the cans can be bought, in supermarkets for example. The brands are restricted, Campbell or Heinz for instance. We can 'choose' Pepper Pot, but only because they have decided to offer it.
Warhol is inviting us to consider the world we live in and the constant restrictions imposed on us in almost every area of life.
Art has to be based on honesty, or it isn't true Art.
Amongst the various travelling 'entertainments' that journeyed the length and breadth of Britain during the age of Enlightenment (c1685 - c1815) were various science based 'shows'. For the price of a few pennies the public could go and observe new science in a semi-theatrical setting, where journeyman - scientists would set up 'experiments' to reproduce and prove science's 'latest' discoveries in a way that the uninitiated could most easily understand but be amazed by.
Joseph Wright of Derby famously captured two of these 'entertainments' on canvas. Above is his 'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump'. A bird is placed in a bell jar and the air is slowly pumped out of it, which provides a vacuum. Without oxygen the bird is asphyxiated. Although a laboratory vacuum had first been produced in the previous century, the phenomenon of vacuums and the idea of air containing oxygen was poorly understood. This demonstration was a graphic illustration of the properties of 'air' and what happens when it is absent. The two girls to the right of the demonstrator seem naturally upset by the sight of the bird being choked for lack of oxygen. Others in the audience react in a variety of different ways. At the top right of the painting there is a small window which lets in light, moonlight in this case . This symbolises the light that scientific rationale brought to a world still largely dependent on religious beliefs and explanations.
Below is Wright's 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery', painted in 1766. The mechanical model of the solar system clearly shows the sun at the centre of our planetary system, in opposition to the Church's teachings which insisted that the Earth - created by God - was the literal centre of all things.
A blue pigment, which was once more precious than gold, was ground into a powder from stones mined in Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan. During the Middle Ages this single source provided the greatest European artists with the vibrant ultra marine demanded by the richest patrons, in order to demonstrate their wealth.
'February' from 'Les Tres Riches Heures' painted by the Limbourg brothers . Illuminated manuscript with lapis lazuli. 1413 - 16.
'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' by Johannes Vermeer. Oil with lapis lazuli. c1665.
"All artists and art lovers are voyeurs."
I lived in Beijing from 2009 to 2014, and returned in 2024.
Wang Ximeng’s masterpiece ‘A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains’ can be seen in the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum in Beijing. Painted in ink and colour on a twelve metre long scroll, it represents an idealised world, perfectly ordered, full of rhythm and harmony. A protege, taught by Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song himself, he finished this painting in 1113, aged only eighteen. His single extant work, it is thought that Wang Ximeng died five years later since there were no references to him in imperial records after 1118.
Ai Weiwei isn't a Chinese artist
Ai Weiwei is a quintessentially Chinese artist.
'A painting is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience.' - Rothko
I'm only interested in expressing basic human emotions.' - Rothko
Like most celebrated artists Rothko could draw and paint well in a traditional sense, but again like most great painters of the 20th and 21st centuries he found his own path towards a unique and highly personal expression of what he thought most important, the portrayal of emotional experience, from the tragic to the ecstatic.
Rothko loved Mozart.
As I do.
Press play to listen to Lacrimosa while viewing Rothko's work.
Mozart composed the unfinished 'Lacrimosa' (which is Latin for weeping/tears) as part of a 'Requiem' he was writing in 1791, the year he died. Only 35 years old, his early death was brought about by dissolution, anxiety and destitution.
Rothko committed suicide after a long struggle with bouts of depression, his health and his insecurities. It was as if he was swallowed up by his own art. His canvases became darker, both literally (see 'Black and Gray', 1970) and figuratively, towards 1970. And perhaps his habit of looking for hours and hours at his own work and of wanting his audience - which tragically and obviously included himself - to become overwhelmed by the emotion emanating from his work, in the end meant he became lost in his most negative canvases.
Rothko's early works such as 'Orange and Yellow' (1956) had a happiness and lightness to them. Blocks of colour - known as Fields of Colour - seem to float above contrasting or complimentary bases. Often stripes of colour separate the blocks. Sometimes a sense of 'light' seems to emanate from the bands. The structure gives a feel of harmony and balance, while the surface appears to move. The observer should allow themselves to become immersed in the 'primal' emotions transmitted by the colours. In a sense, Rothko's art is pre-language
Please watch the slideshow again and listen to 'Lacrimosa' at the same time. Hopefully this will begin to enable you to 'feel' Rothko's work.