As the blooms of spring emerge, so does a fresh wave of artistic brilliance in the heart of New York City. This season, the cultural landscape is filled with groundbreaking exhibitions that not only captivate the senses but also honor the remarkable contributions of female artists.
May 2023 Art News
The popular imagination often dismisses Byzantium’s aesthetic as a static, even regressive contrast to classical technique. Sumptuous and flattened, Byzantine methods abhorred naturalism, and designed art as they did their empire (330 to 1453 CE): as an earthly mirror of Christian heaven. However, this stylization endowed art from the Eastern Roman empire—particularly mosaics—with a politicizing contemporaneousness.
The monumental cemetery of Milan (Cimitero Monumentale) is among the famous and iconic monuments of Milan, such as the Duomo with its spectacular spires reaching up into the sky, or the imposing Castello Sforzesco with its majestic towers.
The National Gallery's Conservation Fellow, Kendall Francis takes a closer look at indigo, a blue dye and pigment extracted from the leaves of plants, and how it is used and represented in paintings in our collection. Kendall's research reveals histories that are not explicitly portrayed in the paintings and highlights the important contributions from a wider range of people, including the enslaved people who cultivated the crops and extracted the indigo against their will.
In the immortal words of The Doors frontman Jim Morrison: “People are strange.” It’s a song that George Condo happened to be listening to in his studio one day and it became the title of his latest show inaugurating Hauser & Wirth’s new West Hollywood location.
Since antiquity, fine jewels have been worn by royalty, to symbolize their power, opulence, and dignity as rulers of nations and empires.
What could be more charming and ridiculous than a show that situates itself at the intersection between opulence and buttocks? This inventive gathering pulls together unlikely paintings, sculptures, and even video to intermingle and invite visual and verbal puns.
Based in LA, Fallah makes detailed, collage-esque paintings with mirrored and patterned images.
Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous, recognizable, and copied artwork, has a storied history. Painted between 1503 and 1519, it was owned by French royalty for centuries. Liberated by Revolutionary forces, the painting briefly adorned Napoleon’s bedroom, then was installed in the Louvre.
Historical sites aren’t always what they seem. Many famous, seemingly well-preserved historic monuments, such as those on the Acropolis at Athens, are the product of anastylosis – the practice of restoring old buildings using the original material.
