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New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
8 Art Shows to See Before They Close
Through Aug. 2 at the Museum of Modern Art, Manhattan; Jack Whitten, who moved from Alabama to New York in 1960, was not just a painter but a sculptural painter. Swaths of acrylic paint are swooped and layered across canvas. Cubes of dried paint conjoin in a textured mosaic, resembling glimmering stars against a night sky. Look closer, and 'suddenly the glops and drips look sonic, like musical bursts and pings,' the critic Holland Cotter wrote in his review for The New York Times. The exhibition showcases 180 paintings, sculptures and works on paper, and scintillates through the Museum of Modern Art's galleries, Cotter writes, in a refreshing career retrospective of 'a radically inventive artist who ranks right at the top of abstraction's pantheon.' Read the review. Through Aug. 3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, The portrait painter John Singer Sargent lived and traveled across Europe, North Africa and the United States, but it was his work during a formative decade in 19th-century Paris that catapulted him to recognition. In a collaboration between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée d'Orsay, where the exhibition will appear in the fall, the show charts Sargent's success in his early career. 'We see just how he did it,' the critic Karen Rosenberg wrote in her review. 'With a lot of savoir-faire and a touch of the enfant terrible.' The exhibition builds to a climax around Sargent's scandalous 'Madame X,' in which the American expatriate Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, heavily powdered and daringly dressed in a cinched black gown, looks seductively over one shoulder. The close look at Sargent's cosmopolitan ascent as he found his footing adds up to, Rosenberg wrote, 'an evocative look at the belle epoque city where a young Sargent hit his stride.' Read the review. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Verge
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
AI residencies are trying to change the conversation around artificial art
At a recent exhibition in Copenhagen, visitors stepped into a dark room and were met by an unusual host: a jaguar that watched the crowd, selected individuals, and began to share stories about her daughter, her rainforest, and the fires that once threatened her home — the Bolivian Amazon. The live interaction with Huk, an AI-driven creature, is tailored to each visitor based on visual cues. Bolivian Australian artist Violeta Ayala created the piece during an arts residency at Mila, one of the world's leading AI research centers. These residencies, usually hosted by tech labs, museums, or academic centers, offer artists access to tools, compute, and collaborators to support creative experimentation with AI. 'My goal was to build a robot that could represent something more than human; something incorruptible,' Ayala says. Ayala's jaguar is a clever use of early AI, but it is also emblematic of a wider movement: a fast-growing crop of artist residencies that put AI tools directly in creators' hands while shaping how the technology is judged by audiences, lawmakers, and courts. Residencies like these have expanded rapidly in recent years, with new programs emerging across Europe, North America, and Asia — like the Max Planck Institute and the SETI Institute programs. Many technologists describe them as a form of soft power. Pieces by artists who have participated in AI art residencies have been featured in galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris. One of the newest programs was started by Villa Albertine, the French American cultural organization. In early 2025, the organization created a dedicated AI track, adding four new residents per year to the 60 artists, thinkers, and creators it hosts annually. The initiative was announced at an AI summit in Paris with French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati and backed by Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications. 'We're not choosing sides so much as opening space for inquiry,' says Mohamed Bouabdallah, Villa Albertine's director. 'Some residents may critique AI or explore its risks.' In 2024, Villa Albertine also hosted a summit called Arts in the Age of AI, drawing more than 500 attendees and participants from OpenAI, Mozilla, SAG-AFTRA, and both US and French copyright offices, according to Bouabdallah. Bouabdallah says these programs are designed to 'select the artist, not just their work.' They provide artists with the time and resources needed to explore art projects that use AI. 'Even if someone uses AI extensively, they must articulate their intent. It's not just about output—it's about authorship.' As he puts it, 'The tool must be behind the human.' This kind of cultural framing is meant to promote artistic production, but it can also influence how AI is viewed by the public, pushing back on the often negative perception around AI art. 'An AI developer might want to change minds about what's legitimate by packaging the use of AI in a form that resembles traditional artistic practice,' says Trystan Goetze, an ethicist and director at Cornell University. 'That could make it seem more acceptable.' 'The real value here is giving artists the space to grapple with that themselves.' Residencies may support specific artists, but they don't address the broader concerns around AI art. 'Changing the context from random users prompting models in Discord to formal residencies doesn't alter the core issues,' Goetze says. 'The labor is still being taken.' These legal questions around authorship and compensation remain unresolved. In the US, class-action lawsuits by artists against Stability AI, Midjourney, and others are testing whether generative models trained on copyrighted work constitute fair use. Courts will decide these questions, but public sentiment may shape the boundaries: if AI-generated art is culturally perceived as derivative or exploitative, it becomes harder to defend its legitimacy in policy or law, and vice versa. A similar dynamic played out over a century ago. In 1908, the US Supreme Court ruled that piano rolls, then a new format for reproducing music, were not subject to copyright, because they weren't readable by the human eye. Widespread backlash from musicians, publishers, and the public spurred Congress to pass the 1909 Copyright Act, introducing a compulsory licensing system that required payment for mechanical reproductions. 'These models do have a recognizable aesthetic,' Goetze says. 'The more we're exposed to these visuals, the more 'normal' they might seem.' That normalization, he speculates, might soften resistance not just to AI art but also to AI in other domains. 'There's always been debate around inspiration versus plagiarism,' Bouabdallah says. 'The real value here is giving artists the space to grapple with that themselves.' Ayala argues that 'the problem is not that AI copies — humans copy constantly — it's that the benefits are not distributed equally: the big companies benefit most.' Despite those challenges, Ayala sees residencies as important sites of experimentation. 'We can't just critique that AI was built by privileged men, we have to actively build alternatives,' she says. 'It's not about what I want AI to be: it already is what it is. We're transitioning as a species in how we relate, remember, and co-create.'
The National
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Christie's to spotlight Marwan and his rippling art of exile in summer exhibition in London
For Marwan Kassab-Bachi, better known as Marwan, the human face was a landscape of emotion and existential depth. His haunting, contorted visages were his signature – a rippling representation of the disquiet of living abroad. This summer, the third annual Arab Art Exhibition at Christie's will spotlight the late Syrian painter, presenting works that chart his remarkable career, from the figurative works of the 1960s, a few years after he moved to Germany, to the enigmatic Marionette series and his idiosyncratic facial terrains. Marwan: Soul in Exile will take place between July 16 and August 22 at Christie's global headquarters in London. It brings together close to 200 works loaned by several top institutions from the Arab world, Europe and the US. 'We wanted to highlight one of the most fascinating artists coming from the Arab world,' says Ridha Moumni, chairman of Christie's Middle East and Africa. 'Marwan's work is in several major institutions in the Middle East, but he is also one of the most sought-after Arab artists in the West. His works are held by several prestigious institutions, including the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and recently the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.' This global recognition mirrors Marwan's own life, which was marked by a constant dialogue between the Arab world and the West, deeply influencing his style and thematic concerns. While Marwan left his native Syria in 1957, travelling to Germany where he would live most of his life, he was inextricable from the Arab world. His works are often perceived as representations of life in exile, a yearning for wholeness as well as a devotion to a homeland rife with struggle. 'The idea is to really show the legacy of this artist who was living and working in Germany, but who was very important to the Arab world,' Moumni says. 'His paintings describe the political situation of the Middle East, which touch upon his exile and life in Berlin. At the same time, he was able to display his work and voice to the region. He was an important mentor for a generation of artists, affecting their lives and their art. Among them are Said Baalbaki, Ayman Baalbaki and Serwan Baran, to name a few.' Marwan sustained a steady artistic output until his death in 2016. He was the first artist from the Middle East to be accepted to the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, graduating from its department of painting in 1963. He worked with a quiet determination for years after, despite measured success. His practice was unencumbered even during the time he worked in a fur factory in Berlin between 1962 and 1970, painting some of his most recognisable works during this period, including The Husband (1966). 'We will be exhibiting the earliest works of Marwan,' Moumni says. 'We will follow his career, showing works from key periods of his career. We will show the works he produced when he arrived in Germany and became an abstract painter. We will show the shift in his work during the 1960s and 1970s, when he became recognised as one of the greatest figures from a new generation of figurative painters in Germany. We will also be presenting works that he created in the 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s, until his death.' Highlights will include works from Face Landscape, showing how the series – most of which was rendered in monochrome or with a restrained use of colour – went on to inform his famous Heads portraits of faces contorting vividly across a wide palette of hues. 'We will also exhibit important still life, lithographs and works on paper that were inspired by the collaborations he did with writers from the Arab world,' adds Moumni. Marwan: Soul in Exile is the third iteration of Christie's annual exhibition of Arab art in London. The inaugural Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World was held in 2023. The exhibition marked London's largest presentation of Arab art. It was divided into two segments. The first, Kawkaba – Arabic for constellation – brought 100 artworks from the Barjeel Art Foundation's collection, including luminaries such as Mohamed Melehi, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Inji Efflatoun, Simone Fattal, Menhat Helmy, Samia Osseiran Joumblatt and Mona Saudi. The second section of the exhibition, Emirati Art Reimagined: Hassan Sharif and the Contemporary Voices, highlights the contributions of one UAE artist who was pivotal in establishing the contemporary and conceptual art scene of the country and wider region. Last year, Christie's held a mid-career retrospective of Ahmed Mater's work. Entitled Ahmed Mater: Chronicles, the exhibition featured more than 100 works including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video and installation – giving a comprehensive overview of the diversity of the Saudi artist's practice. While the previous two exhibitions demanded a deft curatorial touch – particularly as they served as many Londoners' first in-depth encounter with Arab art – that's less the case with Marwan: Soul in Exile, Moumni says. 'Marwan's works are extremely evocative,' Moumni adds. 'They speak for themselves. They create a dialogue with the viewer that is strong. Simply seeing the work in person showcases the mastery of the artist. His art speaks to viewers no matter where they come from. 'Marwan remains one of the most fascinating artists of the 20th century,' Moumni adds. 'He didn't get what he deserved during his life. This exhibition brings some of the most important works by Marwan in one place to give an opportunity for visitors to reconsider the career of an artist who struggled all his life to find his place in the West. He developed an artistic career in Europe but remained intellectually and emotionally connected to the Middle East. Marwan's art represents an encounter of these two different cultures.'
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Tate Modern Is the Museum of the Century (Like It or Not)
When the Museum of Modern Art debuted in a Manhattan townhouse in 1929, it faced incomprehension from audiences still uncomfortable with abstract art. When the Centre Georges Pompidou inaugurated its inside-out home in Paris in 1977, philosophers denounced the multidisciplinary museum as a shopping center. But something else happened with Tate Modern, bigger than either of them, when it opened in London in 2000: immediate success. In a country with an above-average suspicion of modernism, in a city that had never had a full-scale museum of modern and contemporary art, Tate Modern arrived on a bank of the River Thames at just the right time. The European Union was six years old and easyJet was five. Tony Blair was in his first term as prime minister. A newly confident, outward-facing London decided it needed a place to marvel. This week, Tate Modern turns 25. Its success was, from the beginning, not just a British but an international story. (Four of its five directors have been foreigners.) Its legacy extends far past the South Bank, into the deep structure of the art industry, where it transformed, for better and worse, audience expectations at museums worldwide.
