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The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions review – beauty and violence from a lost and dangerous YBA
Flies crawl about in a triptych of glass-fronted cabinets, while in another installation you gradually realise the fragile bottles you're looking at are full of poisonous gas, lethal to humans. Does this remind you of anyone? Hamad Butt is the Damien Hirst who got away, the Young British Artist of the 1990s who didn't win the Turner prize, make millions or lose his youthful talent and turn into a bloated mediocrity. Now he is a cult figure precisely because he is none of those things and can instead be presented as if he was a complete unknown, whose art expresses his queer Pakistani identity rather than being part of a fin-de-siecle art movement of sensation and creepy science. I couldn't find any reference, even in the moving array of Butt's working documents on show, to the fact he studied at Goldsmiths alongside Hirst, Collishaw, Wearing and more. If we need to detach this brilliant artist from that generation to celebrate him, it's better than forgetting his work. But as soon as you walk into this convincing retrospective you're back in 1992. Occupying the whole of the Whitechapel's main ground floor gallery is Butt's three-part installation Familiars. Like a giant executive toy, spherical glass vessels are suspended from the ceiling by thin threads in a long row. Pull the first one back, as it is weirdly tempting to do, and you'd set them going by action and reaction. Except it would surely shatter these vessels and kill you, or at least make you very ill. The coloured gas inside each sphere is mustard-coloured, as in mustard gas. This is gaseous chlorine, first used as a chemical weapon by Germany in 1915 and in these static, sealed bottles it looks lovely, golden, glowing in the gallery lights. It's disturbing but, let's be honest, darkly thrilling to be only a thin glass wall away from a first world war soldier's death here in an art gallery. To put it another way it's sublime. One of the sculptures in this installation is actually entitled Substance Sublimation Unit, a play on chemistry and aesthetics. The other two elements of this epic sculpture look equally hazardous: a ladder with rungs that light up with blazing gas like a stairway to hell, and three curving, blood-red glowing spikes. To feel such beauty and violence in a gallery may strike you as shockingly new or oddly nostalgic. In the archives room there's a 1995 Jak cartoon from the Evening Standard, depicting a dodgy geezer selling gas masks outside the Tate – a reference to a leak from this installation when it was in a show called Rites of Passage, alongside Louise Bourgeois. Hamad Butt was not alive to laugh at Jak's cartoon. He died in September 1994, at the age of 32, from Aids-related complications. In a video interview, lying on a sofa at his family home in Ilford, he's still talking vividly about his future projects, months before his death. What a compelling presence he is, how deeply intelligent and imaginative. His gripping art makes you aware of how quickly and suddenly you can stray from civilised normality to mortal danger. His installation Transmission glows with gorgeous, if clinical, blue light – but look for too long, or without the protective glasses you are offered, at its ultra-violet bulbs and you risk damaging your eyesight. The bulbs rest on a circle of opened books made of glass, on which the monstrous people-eating, world-conquering flora from John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids are engraved. In another classic trope of Young British Art, that of appropriation, his design of a Triffid, with its fat vegetable body, long sucker and libidinous tongue, is borrowed wholesale from the cover of the original Penguin paperback of The Day of the Triffids. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion The labels prompt you to see Hamad Butt's art in relation to his tragic early death, so Transmission is about the Aids epidemic, and his Triffids – which also feature in a hilarious animated video – are images of the HIV crisis. However, in the video interview, he says 'transmission' refers in the first place to the transmission of light. He clearly did not want his art to be understood only one way. Today figurative painting is back in fashion, so this exhibition includes Butt's early canvases before he turned conceptual. On the sofa on screen he explains he had to stop because he was too in thrall to Picasso and Matisse. You can see Picasso's shadow over his paintings of sensual Minotaur-like men. This exhibition risks removing him from his wider context, but it can't go very wrong with such art. It's right to include his paintings, drawings and archives because we possess so little of such magnificent promise. Hamad Butt died so long before his time, yet his work is a living thrill. He is the Young British Artist who is for ever young, for ever lethal. Hamad Butt: Apprehensions is at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, from 4 June to 7 September
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Tate Modern at 25: a monumental success
The novelist Ian McEwan tells a good story about the opening party for Tate Modern on 11 May 2000, when he was introduced to the then prime minister, Tony Blair, by the Tate director, Nicholas Serota. Mr Blair shook the author's hand and told him that he was a big fan of his work and had some of his paintings in Downing Street. Yoko Ono, Jarvis Cocker and Neil Tennant were also there, along with Queen Elizabeth II. As the gallery celebrates its 25th anniversary, it is hard to imagine such an extravaganza happening today. Back then, London was the only major European city not to boast a world-class gallery of modern art. This repurposed power station was set to become the UK's cultural powerhouse. Hulking on a once unloved stretch of the South Bank, its 99-metre tower signalled a message of regeneration and possibility to the rest of the world. And the world responded. They had prepared for 2 million visitors in its first year – 5 million came. Following Cool Britannia and the Young British Artists in the 90s, Tate Modern blasted away the last vestiges of British stuffiness about contemporary art. To disguise the gaps in the collection, Mr Serota replaced chronological hanging with a thematic one (to much critical dismay). Instead of imitating competitors like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern rewrote the rules and set the tone for 21st-century museums. From the momentous Matisse Picasso in 2002 to Cézanne 20 years later, it has delivered enough masterpieces to appease those sniffy about helter‑skelters and swings. But its greatest triumph is undoubtedly the 300 sq metre Turbine Hall. The cavernous space has encouraged artists to expand their imaginations to fit. Louise Bourgeois's giant spider, Maman, which first greeted visitors, returns for the anniversary celebrations. From its earliest event, held for London taxi drivers, Tate Modern's manifesto has been to make art accessible to all. Children draw on the floor, students hang out, families picnic. Mr Blair might have called it 'the people's palace'. It has also sought to expand the canon, adding more global and female artists to its collection, alongside major exhibitions of Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Yayoi Kusama, the last of which broke record numbers in 2023. A Tracey Emin retrospective is billed for next year. It hasn't all been champagne and blockbusters. As with most cultural institutions, Brexit, the pandemic and a funding crisis have taken their toll. The gallery's BP sponsorship, which ended in 2016, provoked a series of protests from climate activists. And its success hasn't done any favours for its less glamorous sister gallery, Tate Britain in Millbank. It is a very different picture in the world at large than when Tate Modern first opened its doors. Where once we were basking in the post-millennial glow of Olafur Eliasson's setting sun (The Weather Project) in 2003, now we seem to be flailing in the darkness of Mirosław Bałka's big black box, which transformed the Turbine Hall into an anxiety dream in 2009. The National Gallery also marks a big anniversary this year: on 10 May it turns 200. Tate Modern is still a whippersnapper by contrast. Over the first quarter of this century it has become part of the establishment without losing its edge – a hard act to keep up. But it is the job of modern art to evolve and challenge the status quo.
Euronews
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Tracey Emin's Sex and Solitude: An unmissable exhibition of love, loss and healing in Florence
ADVERTISEMENT Florence is a city that worships the body - smooth, perfect, immortalised in marble. But Tracey Emin has never been interested in perfection. In Sex and Solitude , her first major solo exhibition in Italy, she brings a different kind of body to Palazzo Strozzi - one that aches, bleeds, collapses, and survives. Wander into the courtyard of the Renaissance palace, built in 1489, and you'll find her colossal bronze sculpture I Followed You to the End (2024). The lower half of a fragmented female figure, two crumpled legs, dominates the space - a stark contrast to Florence's many triumphant bronzes, such as Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa , standing victorious in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Emin's sculpture, which was previously shown at London's White Cube Bermondsey last year, denies heroism. Instead, it is raw, broken, and heavy with vulnerability. Inside, Sex and Solitude unfolds as a non-chronological journey through more than 60 brilliant works spanning the 61-year-old artist's career - from early pieces that solidified her reputation as one of the most audacious voices in contemporary art to new works created in the wake of her battle with cancer. Paintings, drawings, film, photography, embroidery, sculpture, and neon come together across 10 thematically curated rooms. From personal pain to public view Emin first made waves in the 1990s alongside Damien Hirst , Sarah Lucas and Marc Quinn, as part of the Young British Artists (YBAs), embracing an unapologetically personal approach to art. She turned her own experiences - heartbreak, childhood trauma, desire, self-destruction - into installations, paintings, and neon declarations that blurred the line between art and autobiography. 'She's a forerunner of feminist artists for sure,' Arturo Galansino, the director of the Palazzo Strozzi and curator of the exhibition, tells Euronews Culture. 'She touches on themes that are really relevant for all kinds of people, all kinds of life experience. And why? Because she's very sincere, because of her openness. There is no filter, there is no structure. We can identify ourselves in her sorrow, her pain, her strength, her bravery." Love Poem for CF by Tracey Emin (2007), on display at the Palazzo Strozzi Credit: Ela Bialkowska Stepping into the first room of the exhibition visitors are greeted with Love Poem for CF (2007), a neon work dedicated to Emin's great love of the '90s, gallery owner Carl Freedman. The giant piece glows in soft pink, its flickering light illuminating the space as it displays the raw intensity of her words: "You put your hand / Across my mouth/ But still the noise / Continues / Every part of my body / is Screaming / Smashed into a thousand / Million Pieces / Each part / For Ever / Belonging to you". As Galansino explains: "Neon is one of the most famous languages used by the artist. Neon is related to her youth in Margate, which was full of neon, in the shops, in the bars, in the restaurants. It's a part of her autobiography. And her writings have become really iconic. The strength of these texts is undeniable, and Tracey proves herself as both a great writer and a great poet." Words are at the core of Emin's art - not just in her neon pieces or appliquéd blanket pieces such as I do not expect , but in the way she titles her works. They're declarations, accusations and raw confessions. Neon always has a seedy connection. But then I think it's sexy too. It's spangly, it's pulsating, it's out there, it's vibrant... For me it's always had a beautiful allure Tracey Emin Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), displayed at the Palazzo Strozzi Credit: Ela Bialkowska The photographic series, 'Naked Photos', displayed at the Palazzo Strozzi. Credit: Ela Bialkowska In the next room is one of the show's centrepieces Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), a notorious performance-installation in which Emin locked herself in a room at a Stockholm gallery, stripped naked, and painted continuously for three and a half weeks (the time between menstrual cycles) under the watchful eyes of the public. For Emin, it was an act of artistic rebirth - after years of not painting following an abortion, she reclaimed her creativity. The installation has been faithfully recreated for Sex and Solitude - complete with paintings that appropriate iconic works by male artists like Picasso , Munch and Rothko , along with empty beer cans, a bowl of oranges, and hanging underwear. A three-piece photographic series, Naked Photos , documenting Emin's time spent in the room, accompanies the installation. Displayed on the wall behind the installation, a quote from Emin reads: "I stopped painting when I was pregnant. The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn't paint. It's like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most. I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did." A wide view of the room titled "Coming Down From Love" inside Tracey Emin's 'Sex and Solitude' exhibition Credit: Ela Bialkowska 'I waited so Long' 2022 by Tracey Emin Credit: Tracey Emin/Palazzo Strozzi Elsewhere, themes of love, sexual desire, suffering, spirituality, the afterlife, motherhood, and healing run wild. Her figurative paintings - torn by energy, colour, and abstraction dominate the show and its two defining forces: sex and solitude . One particularly attention grabbing painting, scrawled with a frustrated urgency, declares: "I WANTED YOU TO FUCK ME SO MUCH I COULDN'T PAINT ANY MORE." In perhaps the show's most intimate room, Emin turns her focus to the isolation and indeed solitude experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic - a period of collective uncertainty that held a uniquely profound significance for her. In the summer of 2020, she received a life-altering cancer diagnosis. A haunting series of paintings from this period depict interiors and self-portraits in a melancholic blue-grey palette. They take on a quiet, ghost-like quality. After extensive surgery, including the removal of her bladder, uterus, cervix, part of her bowels, and half of her vagina, Emin is now cancer free. Every image has first entered my mind, travelled through my heart, my blood—arriving at the end of my hand. Everything has come through me. Tracey Emin Tracey Emin poses ahead of the opening of her show 'Sex and Solitude' at Florence's Palazzo Strozzi Credit: Palazzo Strozzi Wide view of the final room of Tracey Emin's 'Sex and Solitude' at the Palazzo Strozzi Credit: Ela Bialkowska For longtime admirers of Emin, the unmissable Sex and Solitude reaffirms her lifelong commitment to turning personal pain into raw, unflinching art. For newcomers, it's an introduction to an artist who has made vulnerability her greatest strength. But what seems like an intimate glimpse into her world is, in fact, an invitation to examine our own. As Emin has said before: "I want people to feel something when they look at my work. I want them to feel themselves. That's what matters most." Sex and Solitude runs until 20 July 2025 at Florence's Palazzo Strozzi.
The National
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
New Supreme x Damien Hirst collection earns its place among the greatest fashion collaborations of all time
Bringing together two entities famous in their own right, fashion tie-ups are a tool for introducing brands to new audiences. Think Louis Vuitton and the artist Takashi Murakami, H&M and Karl Lagerfeld, or Dior and Air Jordan, which all broke old boundaries with new ideas. But what if both parties are not only famous, but famous for creating hype and stirring up a frenzy? This is the case with the new collaboration between the US skate streetwear brand Supreme and the British artist Damien Hirst, which has quickly earned its place among the greatest collaborations of all time. Part of its new spring summer 2025 collection, Supreme has unveiled a hooded jacket decorated with arguably Hirst's most famous artwork, a tiger shark preserved in formaldehyde. Overprinted across the front, back, the sleeves and even the hood of the white jacket, the artwork called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living has been re-birthed for a new generation who may not have even been born when it was first released in 1992. First shown at the Saatchi Gallery's Young British Artists show, it caused uproar and made Hirst a household name. He followed this two years later with another preserved animal, a sheep sliced in half called Away From The Flock. Hirst is skilled at creating noise around his work, perhaps best seen in 2022 when, to boost sale of his NFTs, he burnt roughly £10 million (Dh46 million) worth of his own paintings Likewise, Supreme is adept at getting its audience where it wants them. Having single-handedly invented the concept of the drop, releasing new products online at seemingly random times to keep clients hyper-vigilant to its every move, it has worked with an impressive roster of artists, including Roy Lichtenstein (2006), the Chapman Brothers (2012), Cindy Sherman (2017), Keith Herring (1998) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (2013). This is not the first time Hirst and Supreme have worked together. In 2009 a trio of skateboard decks went on sale, decorated with Hirst's multicoloured spin paintings and are now sought after by Supreme collectors and art galleries alike. It is not just artworks that spur Supreme on. It has also announced a collaboration with Knoll to rework the Barcelona Chair, the 1929 masterpiece by the Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe. Originally made in black leather, the new version is made in faded denim. With a new collaboration seemingly announced now every day – many of which will, unfortunately, slip past unnoticed – a few have stood out. Amid the hundreds of fashion alliances, here are some of the most skilful and imaginative. Showing how ahead of her time she was, designer Elsa Schiaparelli called on her friend, Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, to create the Lobster Dress in 1937. In what must be the earliest known collaboration between fashion and art, the dress was made of pale cream silk organza and had a vast lobster hand-painted across the skirt. A one-off gown, it was worn by Wallis Simpson (the woman for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne) and with so much history Schiaparelli later donated it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Louis Vuitton's ex-creative director Marc Jacobs can be credited with sparking high-end fashion collaborations. In 2001 – long before such ventures became the norm – he invited American artist Stephen Sprouse to update the Vuitton logo, resulting in a series of bags covered in scrawling Sprouse calligraphy. With lettering that felt urgent, as if written quickly, it merged art, fashion and street graffiti, often in bold black and white or vibrant, neon tones. Snapped up by a new, younger customer, it marked a turning point when fashion began to look for collaborations outside of its universe. During his time at Vuitton, Jacobs commissioned many other collaborations, including with American artist Richard Prince, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons. The original high-low combination, high street brand H & gned Karl Lagerfeld to create a one-off collection in 2004. Eager to get their hands on an affordable piece by the creative director of Fendi, Chanel and his namesake label, hundreds camped out on pavements outside H & beat the queues that would later encompass entire city blocks. With thousands looking to nab the sharp, black-and-white pieces that riffed on Lagerfeld's famous high collars, it sold out almost instantly. In 2007, Moss was the queen of all models and TopShop was the high-street shop for fashion-forward looks, making this collaboration destined for greatness even before it launched. Known for her style, Moss created a capsule for the high street that leaned heavily on her own, much sought-after wardrobe. On launch day, she appeared in the store window on Oxford Street wearing one of the dresses she designed. It is now regarded as cult classic. Every subsequent collection sold out almost as fast and, when TopShop went bust in 2020, it made this one for the archives. Two years after taking over at Alexander McQueen, then-creative director Sarah Burton turned to British artist Damien Hirst to mark the 10th anniversary of the McQueen skull scarf. In return, Hirst created 30 limited-edition designs, inspired by McQueen imagery and the artist's own Entomology art series, using bugs, beetles, spiders and butterflies to fashion his ideas. Tapping into a shared fascination for the macabre, it was a mix made in heaven. There was a collective intake of breath when Scottish designer Christopher Kane sent Crocs down the runway of his spring-summer 2017 show. In swirled shades of blues or khaki and studded with rocks, Kane was the first big name to join with the world's most divisive shoe. While critics lined up to heap abuse on the collaboration, Kane opened the doors to what has become an continuing series of tie-ups for the plastic shoe company, with the likes of Simone Rocha and Justin Bieber all lending their names to new decorations. In 2017, Balenciaga created bubblegum pink, platform versions, that despite the $800 price tag, sold out before they even hit the shops. In one of fashion's most unexpected duets, Italian designers Dolce & Gabbana worked with the kitchenware company Smeg to decorate 100 fridges with the bright, bold Sicilian patterning normally seen across its clothes and accessories. Entirely hand-painted, the initial launch has since been followed by kettles, toasters and coffee makers all decorated in the same joyful manner for those craving a slice of Italiana in their homes. In a case of art imitating life, the Supreme and Louis Vuitton collaboration in 2017 followed a fractious history between the two brands. In 2000, Vuitton sued Supreme for copyright infringement, inadvertently propelling the disputed clothes to the top of the 'most coveted' wish list. Fast forward to Kim Jones heading Louis Vuitton menswear, and with his intuitive grasp of a high-low mix, he invited Supreme to join him on a collection shown on the Louis Vuitton autumn-winter 2017 runway. The tie-up had the fashion and streetwear worlds lose their minds. Made available for one day only, the clothes, bags and even skateboards sold out in minutes. The first-ever pairing between the Jordan brand and the French fashion house Dior created a viral moment when five million people signed up for a ballot to buy just 8,500 pairs of the shoe. Individually numbered, each pair of the white and grey trainers had the distinctive Dior monogram on the Swoosh, a Wingman logo reworded to read 'Air Dior' and a translucent blue sole and were priced at $2,000 (Dh7,3450). Just four years later, Dior x Air Jordon 1 High can be found on resale sites for more than Dh100,000. Following two wildly successful collaborations between Gucci and North Face, and with Kering stable mate Balenciaga, then-Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele next chose to team up with sportswear brand adidas on a collection that perfectly merged the worlds of sports and fashion. With the sporting three stripes appearing in all manner of unexpected ways across clothes, bags, accessories and shoes (think clogs and HorseBit loafers) it was light-hearted and bursting with energy, and embodied Michele's ideology that fashion should be fun. Spanish leather house of Loewe and Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli came together to splash the beloved characters across bags, clothes and accessories. The animated films My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle served as inspiration for the three capsule collections, with the first release so oversubscribed it crashed the Loewe website, as fans rushed to grab pieces covered with their favourite characters. Milan Fashion Week in September 2021 had a remarkable fashion fusion when rivals Fendi and Versace swapped creative directors. Kim Jones of Fendi took over Versace, while Donatella Versace was handed the reins at Fendi. The resulting fashion collection broke norms and rivalry as fans scrambled to see Versace's Medusa and rococo swirls mixed with Fendi's famous Double F logo.
Observer
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Anna Wintour vows to keep working as receives latest UK honour
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour revealed Tuesday she has no intention of retiring, as the fashion legend accepted her latest prestigious UK honour from King Charles III at Buckingham Palace. Wintour, 75 -- already made a dame in 2017 -- was this time made a companion of honour, joining a select group never numbering more than 65 recognised for major contributions in their field. Renowned British artist Tracey Emin was also at the palace Tuesday to formally receive her damehood, after both women were named in Charles' first birthday honours list in 2023. "It's wonderful to be back at Buckingham Palace and I was completely surprised and overwhelmed to be given this great honour," said Wintour, who removed her trademark sunglasses to receive it. British-born Wintour -- who has helmed American Vogue for more than three decades -- noted that when she was last honoured, by Queen Elizabeth II, "we both agreed that we had been doing our job a very long time". "Then this morning His Majesty asked me if this meant I was going to stop working and I said firmly, no," she added, wearing an Alexander McQueen outfit. "It makes me even more convinced that I have so much more to achieve." The Order of the Companions of Honour, founded in 1917 by King George V, is limited to 65 members at any one time. Those who have made a long-standing contribution to arts, science, medicine or government can be appointed, with Judi Dench, Elton John, David Hockney current honourees. Wintour, who was raised in the UK to a British father and an American mother, has edited Vogue in the United States since 1988. Over the ensuing decades she has earned a reputation as one of the most influential and formidable figures in fashion. Emin, 61, one of Britain's best-known living artists, was made a dame for her services to art. A leading figure in the provocative Young British Artists movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, she has battled cancer and has undergone major surgery in recent years. —AFP
