Michael Wolf 's solo exhibition here—the first since his death this past April—is a sampling from this prolific photographer's oeuvre. Wolf, who was born in Germany but spent much of his life in China, inflected his pictures with the grandness of nineteenth-century
The artist Alfred Leslie is 90, but he acts decades younger. A recent conversation in his East Village studio had to wait while he finished fiddling with an image on his computer for a new project.
Michael Wolf (1954-2019) was a chronicler of life in cities. Across a career of over 40 years, the photographer captured architecture from Paris to Hong Kong, recording the realities of metropolitan life in the 21st century.
In Production: Art and the Studio System, Yuz Museum, 7 November – 1 March Every week is art week somewhere, but not every week is art week in Shanghai. So you'll be wanting to be there during the first week of November, when the city's twin art fairs, Art021 and West Bund Art & Design are on view. But the fun of the fairs is not the only...
Susan Laxton's book Surrealism at Play passionately traces how a particular art movement envisioned and articulated its own transformative potential. As Laxton illustrates, the Surrealists agitated for exploding art into life, which meant engaging with their day-to-day reality, and taking a critical stance toward it. A professor of art history at...
The line between art and jewellery has become increasingly blurred since the 20th century, when modernist artists like Meret Oppenheim, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and Man Ray began exploring the possibilities of miniature metalwork. These exciting experiments with form challenged the art world's status quo, producing uniquely arresting jewels with...
Laura Weir Clarke and Fred Clarke moved from their native Texas to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, intoxicated by West Coast culture and in search of fine art. They wandered the city, knocking on studio doors of artists they respected seeking insight into the creative process, befriending artists Chris Burden and Larry Bell, gallery owner Margo...
L.A. master Ed Ruscha boasts Hollywood collectors including Leonardo DiCaprio, Owen Wilson and Jay-Z, but few can lay claim to as many of his works as architect Fred Clarke, partner of the late Cesar Pelli.
After moving on from a successful career in photojournalism in 2003 to pursue his personal work, the photographer Michael Wolf, who has died unexpectedly aged 64, devoted himself to exploring the complex nature of life in some of the world's largest cities. Michael was best known for his series Architecture of Density (2003-14), which focused on...
Moving from American suburbia to the brooding landscapes of northern Europe, Todd Hido sees a world facing an uncertain climatic future with 'the darkness that I see coming' To look through Todd Hido’s lens is to view the world darkly. The San Francisco-based photographer’s entire oeuvre of compelling visual narratives is shrouded in inky...
'I see myself as an anthropologist,' Michael Wolf tells me as he guides me around his show, Informal Arrangements (27 November 2015–9 January 2016), at Flowers Gallery in London's East End. The densely gridded façades of Hong Kong's high-rises dominate one wall but elsewhere the material on display has a more improvised, intimate air. As a...
One afternoon last spring, I rode shotgun with the artist Ed Ruscha as he guided his silver-gray Tesla along the streets of Culver City, California, where he works out of a 9,000-square-foot former prop warehouse. The overcast sky was gauzy, like one of his gunpowder drawings from the 1960s. As a driver, Ruscha is calm, collected, and—it's...
In the autumn of 1940, Man Ray met a travelling tie salesman at a party in New York. The American artist had arrived back in the US earlier that summer, having spent nearly two decades in Paris. The salesman said he was planning a cross-country trip to Los Angeles; Man Ray decided to catch a lift.
Celebrated for making the ordinary look extraordinary — whether a pepper, a seashell or a sand dune — the California-based photographer created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. 1. He was given his first camera on his 16th birthday Edward Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in 1886. His father, an...
Like the Baltimore Museum of Art's books, Louise B. Wheatley's textiles and Pendelton's mixed-media ventures pack a punch (actually, hers is more of a lingering touch). With her, you don't see it coming; with him, you can feel the vibrations down the block. Her mists/his missiles, resounding, both.
In 1959, photography was still struggling to be an art form. Bernd and Hilla Becher were a young couple living in Düsseldorf, making conceptual art together. Bernd had studied painting and typography, while Hilla had completed an apprenticeship as a photographer. They began to collaborate, systematically taking pictures on an 8 x 10 of things that...
Doug Aitken is an artist known for stretching the terms 'site-specific' and 'land art' to their fullest. He's made his name as one of the US's most prolific artists by submerging sculptures into the Pacific Ocean, sending a train across the country to display original art by several interdisciplinary artists, and drilling a hole 700-feet into the...
The entrance hall to the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery at the British Museum is blood-red, and covered in Andy Warhol's psychedelic screenprints of Marilyn Monroe's face. It's a punchy start to the exhibition, The American Dream: Pop to the Present.
More than two hundred artists, musicians, writers, and arts professionals from forty countries have pledged to take part in Hands Off Our Revolution, a global art project that will organize a series of exhibitions and other programming to confront the rise of right-wing populism around the world.
Redwood City, California A benevolent pirate ship is about to settle in Redwood City, thanks to the curator Lance Fung. Instead of looters, the artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s large-scale boat installation (with the word 'IMAGINE' nearby) will bring a new emphasis on public art to the area. Fung — who is best known for curating a show of...
It’s dark backstage as artists Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell and Billy Al Bengston get miked up to appear before a packed house at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. The glow of house lights seeps in from the stage wings and the audible bustle of audience members settling into their seats fills the tiny backstage nook. Pre-show suspense hangs in...
Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama has garnered near-cultic fascination since his images began to infiltrate the American consciousness in the late 1990s. At that time, his work rode to prominence on the wave of discovery surrounding Japanese photography—especially for book enthusiasts, who championed the strangely beautiful amalgam of poetic...
Over the course of his presidency, Barack Obama gifted Ed Ruscha’s Column with Speed Lines print multiple times to world leaders. The classical aesthetic of the architectural detail with the linear suggestions of movement seems to balance two aspects of American culture, the weight of the republic and the speed of the open road. The work is...
With Tokyo being the object of so many excellent photographers’ interest over the last 150 odd years, it’s entirely legitimate that the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum should be bringing it home. What’s on display in the first exhibition, displayed on the third floor, is a selection from the museum’s world-class permanent...