Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be hosting New York's first art museum survey of the Harlem Renaissance art movement since 1987. The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism will encompass 160 works of art across a range of mediums.  Spanning paintings, sculpture, and on-paper works, the pieces included in the forthcoming exhibit work together to explore the comprehensive ways in which Black artists depicted everyday life in the 1920s through the 1940s in the new Black cities that arose in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood as well as Chicago's South Side and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration.Opening on February 25 2024 at The Met, the exhibit is slated to feature works from Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Mo...

When trying to discern why music is often described as "vague", American jazz violinist Matt Glaser once noted: it's not music, which "expresses human experience so specifically", that is falling short, but of language itself. Although he works in a different creative field altogether, Canadian artist Geoff McFetridge has built much of his career centered around this very thought. Not in terms of music, per say, but in the idea of describing the ineffable through paint and sculpture. Housed at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, his latest solo exhibition The Organic Interface revolves around the following question — "How can images explain and communicate thoughts that are in between our understandings?" Displayed across a new series of paintings, drawings, and sculpture, McFetridge looks to bridge...

American artist R. Crumb revolutionized the medium of comic art in the '60s and '70s for his unapologetic reflection on society, often injecting his own fantasies and experiences through his signature cross-hatch aesthetic. While he never quite condoned some of the more grotesque depictions in his work, Crumb used his art to comment on the environment which he was raised in — or the "rotten core of America" as he's referred to it in the past. Much like his oeuvre, Crumb's latest release is deeply personal. Produced via David Zwirner's Platform art shop, Shape Up! Yoga Mat (2023) is a limited edition artwork dedicated to his late wife, Aline — a devout yogi — who passed away earlier this year. Originally made as a drawing, the artwork was translated into a yoga mat to advertise an exercise ...

Sotheby's is gearing up to host an auction filled with Renaissance art and books worth up to $25m USD. Commencing in October, the sale includes publications and bindings from the collection of acclaimed American scholar, T. Kimball Brooker, who spent 60 years putting together one of the finest rare-book libraries in the world. Highlights of the sale include an early manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatise on Painting, which was copied and compiled by the Italian polymath's lifelong assistant, Francesco Melzi, around 1638 to 1641. The auction also includes nearly 1,000 editions from Venetian publisher Aldine Press, which were all printed between the 15th and 16th century. “This constitutes the largest collection of Aldines to grace the market in the modern era,” said Sotheby's book and m...

KAWS is making its way to Canada this fall, marking the first time the work is debuted at a Canadian museum. Heading to Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), KAWS: FAMILY features artist Brian Donnelly's renowned larger-than-life sculptures and paintings of his iconic characters. The exhibition, which is curated by Julian Cox, AGO's Deputy Director and Chief Curator, features over 70 artworks from the artist's past two decades. The curation organizations the works in a series of encounters, with families of related pieces installed across the second level of the museum. Amongst these displayed will include the larger-than-life wood sculptures and augmented reality installations. Works in bronze, wood, on paper and canvas, plus toys and stainless steel will be exhibited. Adapting features...

Italy has faced multiple accounts of vandalism this year across some of its most hallowed sites. Back in June, a couple on holiday carved the words “Ivan + Hayley ‘23'” on one of the arches of the Roman Colosseum, while in that same month, an American tourist threw a e-scooter down the Spanish Steps, causing $26,000 USD in damage. Tourists are back at it again, as two German students defaced Florence's historic Vasari Corridor along the river Arno. The incident occurred earlier today at 5:20am (local time), when the two unnamed suspects, who were a part of 11 students staying in one of the city's Airbnb's, vandalized the 460-year-old corridor by spray-painting "DKS 1860" — which refers to the German football team, TSV 1860 Munich. While it is unclear, and highly unlikely, that the students...

US customs agents have returned around 281 Mexican artifacts, including Olmec figurines and ceramics dating back to 900 BCE, in a handover ceremony that took place in Memphis, Texas. This event was attended by officials from the US Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigation, and Mexico's Ambassador Carlos Giralt-Cabrales, as per a report by Artnews.According to a press release provided by customs officials, these items were sent from Mexico in nine shipments between 2016 and 2021, destined for locations in California, South Carolina, and Florida. Among the items seized were Olmec sculptures, various body adornments, ritual figurines, as well as clay and stone earmuffs. The customs release mentioned that officers suspected these items to be cultural artifacts and subsequ...

Craig Redman and Karl Maier, known simply as Craig & Karl, are an artist duo based in New York and London. Despite the nearly 3,500 miles that separates them, distance has never hampered their process of collaboration. In the past, this has translated into vibrant multi-floor installations at Siam Center in Bangkok, magazine covers for Billboard, and a portrait installation displayed at Manchester United's home stadium. Housed at K11 Art Foundation in Guangzhou, Inside Out is Craig & Karl's first solo exhibition in China and presents a series of thought-provoking works that expand on their cheerful vernacular. The title of the show alludes to the idea of the interiority and exteriority of our inner worlds and emotions. The artist duo approached this theme by creating a playground o...

MANJU Journal is a Ghana-based pan-African digital platform and creative studio founded by cultural creator, Richmond Orland Mensah. The platform celebrates contemporary Africa and its diaspora by engaging in various creative outlets touching on fashion, photography and art. Recently, MANJU Journal unveiled a new art book that empowers a range of Ghanaian visual artists. The book entitled VOICES, GHANA’S ARTISTS IN THEIR OWN WORDS is slated to be published in September. As artist Derek Fordjour explains: “we are witnessing a generation of Africans that are the most connected that we have ever been at any point in history and there is a cultural revolution afoot, not just in contemporary art, literature and music, but also in entrepreneurship and technology.”The book encompasses over 80 exc...

Banksy's Valentine’s Day Mascara mural is being sold back to the public. Not in an auction setting, however, but rather through a fractional ownership platform where potential bidders can pay $153 USD per share. The mural depicts a 1950s-style housewife who has a black eye and a missing tooth, as she sweeps up a man (only present by his shoes wailing in the air) into an open chest freezer, as a commentary on domestic violence. The freezer the artwork stood by has been removed twice since its creation. First, by the Thanet Council and the second time by London's Red Eight Galleries, who is now brokering the sale of the mural with the owner of the Margate townhouse which it is displayed on. “Realistically, we are looking to achieve between £1m GBP and £1.5m GBP,” said Red Eight Galleries CEO...

Rising Spanish artist Fátima de Juan has unveiled her latest series of paintings with frequent collaborator, L21. Housed at the gallery's Barcelona location, Don't Disturb Me, I'm Blooming casts visitors down a rabbit hole-themed exhibition, where surreal pop-induced humans and animals populate the largely blue and green walls of the space. Known by her artist alias, XENA, Fátima's spray-painted aesthetic is informed by her early days graffiting across the Balearic island of Mallorca. Female empowerment is central to her aesthetic, as the artist depicts women-warriors who are juxtaposed against ninja blades, alligators, dinosaurs and maces. In a past interview with Hypeart, Fátima told us she seeks to conflate "naivety, strength, fantasy, and sensuality with the rough, tender, and the exot...