Editor’s Note: The following text is a chapter titled "Lapis Lazuli" that has been excerpted with permission and adapted from A Natural History of the Studio (2026) by William Kentridge, published by Grove Press and available online and in bookstores. The book gathers the Slade Lectures delivered by Kentridge in 2024 at the University of Oxford.Some years ago, two friends gave me a block of watercolour, pure lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli is a precious pigment used sparingly in Renaissance painting, now more generally replaced by French ultramarine. But there is an intense blueness in lapis, a colour coming off the paper towards you that is unmatched by any synthetic colour. In projections and...

Betty Parsons, "Opposition" (1962) (© 2025 Betty Parsons and William P. Rayner Foundation, image courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York)It is a historic summer for New York. Not only because of the Knicks' electric NBA championship win, but also a recent primary victory for three Mamdani-backed candidates — including a painter — that has infused New York City and its environs with a sense of hope for a better future. This optimistic sentiment coincides with the start of Upstate Art Weekend, where regional artists reflect their own visions for the world.This year's lineup of 160 artists and organizations includes something for everyone, whether that's art hanging out of cars (college...

Malani layers mythology, war, and colonial history at the Magazzini del Sale during the Venice Biennale

Sure, we all want love, but what lengths would you go to find it? Swedish animator Anna Mantzaris once again captures the gamut of human emotion in a stop-motion film that plunges headfirst into the pitiful and cringy. As its title suggests, “PLEASE” is about wanting and attempting to find love through increasingly unhinged acts of desperation and neediness. Mantzaris’ signature felt characters light fires for marriage proposals, sob in the chip aisle, and hug puppies while waiting for the train. The writer and director tells Creative Boom that she got the idea for the short film during the early days of the pandemic, when most people were trapped at home. “We became more obsessed with our self-image...

The Casas del Turuñuelo archaeological site, in the municipality of Guareña, has turned up a remarkable specimen, an extraordinary bronze votive chariot, the likes of which has never been uncovered in the Iberian Peninsula. Its decorative and iconographic complexity are unparalleled, says Esther Rodríguez, one of the co-directors of the investigation. Along with her counterpart, Sebastián Celestino, she presented her findings in a press conference on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. The find consists of half of a ceremonial wagon, including two wheels and the main vessel. It brings together multiple bronze elements using iron components. The rich symbolic...

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced that the appointment of Courtenay Finn as the next chief curator of both institutions. Finn will start in her role on August 24. She will report to Austen Bailly, who was promoted from chief curator to deputy director of curatorial affairs in October. Finn is currently chief curator and director of programs at the Orange County Museum of Art, which merged with the University of California, Irvine last year. She has previously served as the chief curator at moCa Cleveland in Ohio, senior curator at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, and curator at Art in General in New York. During her tenure at OCMA, she worked on...

On what turned out to be a record-breaking night, Sotheby’s London achieved spectacular success with its Wednesday evening auction of treasures from the collection of billionaire Joe Lewis, ultimately bringing in £296.3 million ($392.6 million). 24 out of 25 lots sold, and big-ticket works from canonical artists made their mark: pieces from Degas, Monet, Modigliani […]

Art Movements, published every Thursday afternoon, is a roundup of must-know news, appointments, awards, and other happenings in today’s chaotic art world.Here We Go Again The US Department of State this week issued calls for proposals for the 2027 Venice Biennale of Architecture, and — surprise, surprise — said it will look for designs that “exemplify America’s exceptionalism.” The submission guidelines, reviewed by Hyperallergic, also require applying entities to certify that they do not operate any programs “promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” The language reeks of the Trump administration’s jingoistic rhetoric and echoes the application for this year’s Venice Biennale pavilion,...

British artist, printmaker, and educator Tess Jaray, known for her hard-edge abstractions, died on May 24 at age 88. The news was first reported by the Guardian in May. Jaray was born in 1937 in Vienna into a Jewish family with artistic connections: her father was an engineer and inventor, and her mother had studied fashion; her father’s aunt was collector and gallerist Lea Bondi Jaray, and his godfather was the noted Austrian art historian Ernst Gombrich, author of The Story of Art. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Jaray fled with her parents to Britain, where they settled in rural Worcestershire. Her uncle Richard Jaray, a furniture designer and architect, was sent to the Łódź ghetto, where...

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As teams compete for the World Cup across North America, football fan can show some spirit at New York’s leading museum of American art. The office of New York City Zohran Mamdani announced this week that New Yorkers who present their own World Cup-inspired poster to the Whitney will receive free admission (from July 11 through the end of the month). Rich Tu, the artist who created FIFA’s official poster for the New York and New Jersey chapter of the competition, designed the project. Interested parties can find a digital leaflet—available in English and Spanish—on the Whitney’s website.  The leaflet includes a blank canvas for the design, and loose instructions to convey “a powerful message“...

A federal judge has given the Trump administration until July 31 to explain why a tarp still obscures the facade of the Kennedy Center, days after the president’s name was removed from the building by court order. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the administration must report “the purpose and status of the tarp and scaffolding” currently obscuring the institution’s full name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Workers erected the scaffolding and tarp in the early hours of June 13 as they prepared to comply with a court order to remove Trump’s name from the building. The president added the words “The Donald J. Trump And” to the facade in December despite public...

In “Enormous Things: The Musical”, the beloved Pop artist confronts a creative block while Jeff Koons taunts him mercilessly and Calder, Kusama and Michelangelo offer advice

The museum has been praised for the ambitious way it has shared its collections and for its social outreach

Neanderthal femur fragment from the Goyet Caves in Belgium LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS—According to a statement released by Leiden University, Marie Soressi of Leiden University and her colleagues analyzed the genomes of 27 Neanderthals who lived shortly before the species went extinct. These remains were recovered in France and Belgium, and included the bones of a Neanderthal individual recently unearthed at Les Cottés in France. Analysis of this individual’s genome detected connections to Neanderthal populations living outside of Western Europe. It had been previously suggested that a lack of genetic diversity due to shrinking populations contributed to the demise of Neanderthals. The study determined,...

After an effort that was first announced 11 years ago, London Museum will open its new free, permanent galleries at Smithfield market on November 28th, 2026, the institution announced last week. The debut of the £437 million museum project is the result of a partnership between the City of London Corporation and Sadiq Khan, London’s […]

As Trump continues to threaten to seize Greenland, historian Andrew Holter considers the political implications of Rockwell Kent's 1930s paintings of the landscape and Indigenous communities of the island for the Nation:Kalaallit Nunaat, as the land is called in the Kalaallisut language, was no blank canvas or mere backdrop to exotic adventure. The longer Kent spent there, the more sincerely he sought to understand the place from the perspective of his neighbors. That effort was fraught and maybe futile, but their influence ensured that his paintings would amount to commentaries on the question of Greenland’s future—and that later paintings, like the WPA mural Mail Service in the Tropics, would carry...

The National Portrait Gallery in London has named Los Angeles–born artist Marc Dalessio the winner of the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2026. Dalessio was recognized for his 2025 canvas Jean-Denis, a portrait of his neighbor, which the artist painted in natural light over the course of six sittings in his studio in southwest […]

SØFTEN, DENMARK—A Viking textile production site dated to more than 1,000 years ago has been discovered in eastern Jutland, according to an Associated Press report. Archaeologist Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg of the Moesgaard Museum said that the site features an area where flax may have been processed and more than 80 pit houses where spindle whorls and loom weights have been uncovered. “We have a clear focus on textile production, which makes this settlement different from other kinds of settlements of this period,” she said. Silver coins, glass beads, and pottery have also been recovered. Pollen analysis and carbon dating will be used to date the site and possibly identify plants that were processed....

Homo naledi fossil mandible in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Live Science reports that proteomic analysis of 20 Homo naledi teeth determined that all of the individuals to whom they belonged were female, since they each lacked a gene variant found only in biological males. The 300,000-year-old hominin fossils were discovered in 2013 in a remote chamber in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and his colleagues. Study of the bones suggests that they represent nearly two dozen individuals who had small brains and upper bodies, but faces, hands, and lower limbs that were more like those of modern humans. Berger and his colleagues...

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans supports immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate study in the United States — including visual artists, designers, architects, and filmmakers. Each year, 30 Fellows receive up to $90,000 in funding (up to $25,000/year stipend; up to $20,000/year tuition support) for up to two years of full-time study at any accredited institution in the US.The Fellowship community spans every creative discipline — painting, printmaking, sculpture, architecture, design, film, and beyond — alongside scientists, lawyers, physicians, and public policy leaders. Fellows join a lifelong community of nearly 900 New Americans with family origins in over 100...

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, has named Courtenay Finn as its new chief curator. Finn was most recently chief curator and director of programs at California’s Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA; now the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art). She will begin her new job—which additionally encompasses […]

From a tea garden to a basketball court to art installations, the 16th edition of the nomadic biennial transforms disused churches in Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Bochum

The Irish culture minister has said he will put forward a plan to implement recommendations from the Advisory Committee on the Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage

Known for his painstakingly intricate mixed-media sculptures, Canadian artist Chris Millar continues to test the bounds of scale and detail. Two recent works epitomize his ongoing explorations: “A Prize Every Time” and “Loom Beneath the Loam,” the latter of which contains eight tiny paintings, two relief sculptures, and numerous sculptural elements attached to a brass frame. Cartoonish pendants, vignettes with faces, branch-like tendrils and more lend the piece an enigmatic contraption-like quality, as if the pull of a hidden lever will send the entire thing into motion. In a departure from his multimedia pieces, “A Prize Every Time” is a meticulously rendered acrylic painting containing some 90...

Personal injuries happen more frequently than most people realize, especially in bustling urban environments. In Boston, drivers face a particularly... Read More

Texas is a state where growth, commerce, and daily activity move at a remarkable pace. From its major metropolitan areas... Read More

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Criminal allegations are alarmingly prevalent in Georgia. In 2024 alone, over 205,000 index crimes were reported across the state, with... Read More

Made in collaboration with local students, Ruth Ewan's sculpture will mark the beginning of a heritage trail at the redeveloped Dagenham Green site

John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, leading the Met Orchestra, and Joyce DiDonato continue their exploration of Mahler at Carnegie Hall.

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Ai Weiwei will reenact his 81-day detention in China in his first-ever durational performance as part of Button Up! at Aviva Studios.

Some Bizzare founder Stevo Pearce brings his instinctive painting practice to Farsight Gallery with Chaos, a new exhibition of abstract works in London.

Subtlety is for cowards, say the blazing Anita Cerquetti and the blaring Ebe Stignani.

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Approda a Spazio Piera a Trento, dove sarà esposto e attivato dal pubblico fino al 3 luglio 2026, il Lessicogramma dell’abitare del progetto Corrispondenze. Cogliamo quest’occasione per raccontare un lavoro che le artiste, Paola Boscaini e Cristina Materassi, avevano già presentato di recente a Torino e che mette in luce aspetti rilevanti del fare arte delle generazioni più giovani. E giovani lo sono davvero, Boscaini e Materassi, entrambe 29 anni, diplomate all’accademia di Firenze, poi specializzatesi presso l’Albertina a Torino. Nel 2021 hanno avviato Corrispondenze, progetto artistico ed editoriale che definiscono “un duo mobile dislocato in città diverse, che pone al centro della propria...

In Alexis Trice’s dreamy worlds, ethereal looking fish, hounds, shells, and clouds mingle and sparkle like jewels in a crepuscular haze. It’s in a hypnogogic state (where dreams and reality interweave) that they really spring to life: swimming, prancing, basking, and even weeping. Like sand passed through our fingers, though, their seemingly solid forms vanish […]
The post Alexis Trice Paints a Wild-Eye and Feral Chosen Family first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Across an expansive lawn at Minneapolis’ Boom Island Park earlier this month, Franco-Swiss artist Saype painted a monumental public artwork directly onto the grass. Part of his Beyond Walls series, which has so far seen 22 iterations around the world, the piece marked the first time the project appeared in the U.S. Minneapolis found itself in the global spotlight earlier this year when ICE descended on the city and spurred several weeks of turmoil, protests, and violence. Especially tragic were the killings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during interactions with agents. The city is no stranger to the ripple effects of police brutality, especially in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the...

WALĪLA, MOROCCO—According to a Phys.org report, a possible game board has been identified at a medieval hammam, or public bathhouse, in Morocco by Tim Penn of the University of Reading and his colleagues. The hammam is thought to have been built in the late eighth or early ninth century and abandoned by the tenth or eleventh century. The game board measures more than 13 inches long by about four inches wide, and was found on the top step leading into a cold plunge pool. It features three rows of at least 13 small holes. “The board’s design suggests it was used for playing tāb/sig, making it the earliest known evidence of this game in North Africa,” Penn said. Board games were popular in the medieval...

Monolithic sculpture at the Campo Viejo site, Veracruz, Mexico VERACRUZ, MEXICO—Excavations at the Campo Viejo site in eastern Mexico have uncovered a circular stone platform and a monolithic sculpture bearing potential Maya features, according to an Agence France-Presse report. The objects have been dated to the Early Classic period, between A.D. 200 and 600. Lino Espinoza García of Mexico’s National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH) said that the platform was made with circular stones and decorated with squared lines or figures. “We don’t have any records so far of a correlation with other [ancient] sites,” said INAH archaeologist Alberto Vázquez. The monolith stands more than six feet...

Alternating between felted wool, crochet, and embroidery, Holly Guertin summons moments of peace and reflection through nature. Lifelike lambs serenely nod off or stand in front of ornate backgrounds, while vignettes of foliage and flourishes incorporate colorful fiber. In her practice, the artist seeks connections between patterns and adornments and flora and fauna. “The brilliant color work in a hummingbird’s feathers, the spots on a pufferfish, even the stripes in a blade of grass are all ordinary moments of spectacular ornament,” she says. Some of these pieces will be on view in the artist’s solo exhibition Hand in Hand at Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, North Carolina, which runs from...

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Parterre Box shines a light on Liparit Avetisyan, who made his Met debut as Alfredo earlier this spring.

Tra i meriti di Josef Albers, uno è forse il più sottile: aver costruito opere che restituiscono allo sguardo pigro esattamente il nulla che merita, e allo sguardo paziente qualcosa di completamente diverso. La critica tende a descrivere il lavoro di Albers come «variazioni sul tema»: lo studio dello spettro cromatico declinato nella geometria del quadrato. È una formula che, pur non mentendo, tradisce per difetto. Registra il cosa – la ripetizione della forma, la modulazione del colore – ma lascia nell’ombra il perché: il fatto che quella forma non sia mai fine a sé stessa, ma il dispositivo attraverso cui Albers mette in tensione la materia pittorica e la percezione di chi la guarda. Ed è...

Albert Einstein once said that “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” For Dr. Elliot McGucken, the sublime enigmas of nature form the basis of his explorations of landscape and light. McGucken traverses North America’s most beautiful and striking terrain, including Death Valley where he captured a wildflower superbloom earlier this year. He revels in all kinds of natural phenomena, from the vicissitudes of the Rocky Mountains to brown bears fishing in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve to the ghostly, flood-carved walls of Antelope Canyon. He also happens to be a physicist whose...

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis does its best to give magic in its summer productions of Roméo et Juliette and A Streetcar Named Desired. 

Marco Mazzucconi è un punto fermo della storia degli anni Novanta in Italia. La sua serie di “Informale visto dall’uomo e visto dal cane” è qualcosa di incredibile: porta in superficie la pittura e allo stesso tempo ci fa pensare. Ci lega alla realtà e al modo di percepirla, ci rimanda alla verità e all’interpretazione della stessa, ci parla della forma e dei pensieri che su questa si possono ricamare. Inoltre, si tratta di opere ineccepibili, eseguite con cura maniacale e di grande professionalità. Altro ciclo, declinato in varie maniere, ma sempre di grande forza espressiva e di grande intuizione, è quello che s’intitola “Chance di un capolavoro”. Questo ciclo, declinato nelle sagome di...

Ryan Heshka has a longtime love of science fiction, four-color printed comics from the 1950s and ‘60s and mid-twentieth-century mutant movie characters. In his comic Frog Wife, he taps into these influences while adding in a dose of contemporary themes, drawing upon not just the “anxiety of nuclear annihilation” that inspired so much twentieth-century pop […]
The post The Radioactive Surrealism of Ryan Heshka Glows with Nostalgia first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Melanie Chapman There is much to appreciate about the new pop-up exhibition Hospital of Emotions, currently on view at St. Vincent Medical Center (2131 W. Third Street, Los Angeles) until July 31. But if you want to maximize the benefits of your visit, avoid the bombardment of images now flooding the internet and even consider not reading this review. Like seeing all the best parts of a movie by watching the trailer, it is better to just go, and go soon, with as little advanced exposure as...

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Miriam Cahn propone una visione e la impone come dato. La retrospettiva al MACRO di Roma, la prima in Italia di questa ampiezza, è un campo di attrito in cui cinquant’anni di opere costringono il corpo a misurarsi con la propria esposizione all’abuso. Guardare, qui, indica essere guardati. Il titolo, Ciò che mi guarda, ribalta la direzionalità dello scrupolo con una minuzia tutt’altro che retorica. Lo spettatore smarrisce qualunque ubicazione esterna: viene convocato in una relazione che esclude neutralità e divario gestibile. Il visivo funziona da contatto diretto, pressione, più che raffigurazione. Curata da Cristiana Perrella e allestita da Didier Fiúza Faustino // Bureau des Mésarchitectures,...

Dallo Studio Tommaseo a una rete internazionale di curatori e artisti: Giuliana Carbi Jesurun racconta il percorso e la visione di un centro culturale che ha deciso di guardare oltre, rivolgendosi a Est, in un progetto che parte negli anni ‘70 e che continua ancora oggi a evolversi.
“Dialoghi Lituani”, 1997, mostra alla Stazione Marittima di Trieste, in primo piano le sculture imbottite di Darius Bastys, foto Tiziano Neppi, courtesy Trieste Contemporanea
Veronica Rinaldi: Ci potrebbe raccontare com’è nata Trieste Contemporanea?
Giuliana Carbi Jesurun: Trieste Contemporanea è nata perché in una Trieste che voleva essere contemporanea era doveroso guardare a Est. I nostri Dialoghi con l’arte...

Calligraphy is an ancient art with roots across the globe, dating back to early Chinese dynasties and Greek civilization, all through the Italian Renaissance. But one glance at a work by San Francisco-based artist Hunter Saxony III, and your understanding of calligraphy will be turned on its head. In an approach that is varied, yet […]
The post Hunter Saxony III Is Pushing the Boundaries of Calligrapghy first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The City Series by Shutter Hub is an ongoing publishing project exploring the people, places, cultures, and contradictions that shape cities around the world. Rather than documenting a location as a fixed subject, the series invites photographers to respond to a city as an idea: something experienced, observed, imagined, and interpreted through the photographic eye.
For its second edition, we turn our attention to London in partnership with Battersea Power Supplies, a new museum and gift shop celebrating Battersea Power Station. We invite photographers from across the globe to contribute to a major publication celebrating one of the world’s most photographed, complex, and ever-changing cities. We want to see...

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In the popular imagination, artists are often thought to create for the sake of creating, unfettered by the demands of the market-driven world outside their studios. Though many well-known artists have muddled the boundaries between art and commerce (Jeff Koons comes to mind), the two realms have a contentious relationship. Business savvy artists are often […]
The post Changing the Subject: The Art of Tristan Eaton first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.