Luc Tuymans is profiled in the Financial Times this week, as the artist prepares to open a new show of works at David Zwirner London. “Realism, modernism, postmodernism, post-postmodernism: that is a discourse for people who have no visual sense,” Tuymans says. “I mean, these people have to get by. I still indulge in the perversity of painting, which remains interesting.” (more…)
Peter Doig sits down with the Financial Times this week for the newspaper’s Lunch with the FT segment, and discusses his life as a painter, as well as his childhood split between Trinidad, Canada and the UK. “My thinking is always between places. Something I would like to achieve in my paintings is a place in between places.” (more…)
Larry Gagosian is featured in the Financial Times’ How to Spend It section this week, recounting his personal style inspirations, and his current reading list. “I tend to mix it up, so I might read a biography and then follow it up with a page-turner,” he says. “I used to read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, but now I stick to contemporary fiction and books related to current events.” (more…)
The Financial Times continues its ongoing “Breakfast with the FT” series with Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, talking about the challenges of public interest, his opinions on contemporary art, and the role he sees the National Gallery taking in education and advocacy. “I don’t believe art up to the present should be taught at university,” he says. “Because of consumer demand, the explosion of teaching of contemporary art now is colossal – and it is achieved at the expense of older art. We at the National Gallery should do more to become a magnet for scholarship.” (more…)
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman are the subject of the Financial Times’ ongoing “Lunch with the FT” series, talking about their early work, and response to criticism that their work has scarcely changed in the past years. “But it’s the same criticism you could level at Mark Rothko,” The brothers collectively ask. “Is it imperative for the artist to be novel?” (more…)
Renowned art historian Sir John Richardson is profiled in a long interview with the Financial Times this week, speaking about his life, his career, and his expansive biography of Pablo Picasso. “I used to bounce out of bed to write. In the old days I shinned up a ladder, got a book down, looked in the index – I can’t do that now. But the chance is that I won’t be able to get to the end of the Life [of Picasso], not because of my health or my eyes but because, well, I know too much. I know where the bodies are buried. I think I’ll stop in 1962, when Picasso and Jacqueline got married.” (more…)
English artist Damien Hirst has split with New York-based Gagosian Gallery after 17 years of representation. “Larry Gagosian and Damien have reached an amicable decision to part company,” said Damien Hirst’s company Science Ltd. With a net worth of more than $346 million according to The Sunday Times rich list, Hirst has been called the richest artist in the world. Likewise, Gagosian Gallery is the richest gallery in the world, valued at $925 million according to Forbes magazine. White Cube gallery in London will continue to represent Hirst.
The Financial Times sits down with Tate Modern director, Nicholas Serota, to discuss his perspective and vision for the most popular modern art museum in the world. “Only recently have I begun to understand what it felt like to be Picasso and Braque in 1907- absolutely determined to bury the previous century.”
‬The FT covers Michael Peppiatt’s new book featuring interviews with artists such as Francis Bacon, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Auerbach, “I [want] to pin experience down before it disappears,” stated Auerbach in an excerpt. A conjoint exhibition of his work and that of Peppiatt’s other subjects will open in London this June.
