On the occasion of his major retrospective exhibition Declaration of Independence at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, critic and independent curator Terry R. Myers spoke with artist Lari Pittman in his studio in Los Angeles.Terry R. Myers (Rail): Let's start with your title: Declaration of Independence. Maybe it's the declaration of the...

It's easy to forget, when considering western painting, that no act of mimesis on a two-dimensional surface will equate reality. Linear perspective represents one of many ways to draw the world and all painting is reducible to pigments on a surface. Photography is no different. When the first cameras were developed, there was a conscious effort to...

For this exhibition, London-based artist and filmmaker Daria Martin took as a starting point the dream diaries kept by her Jewish grandmother Susi Stiassni, whose family fled Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1938, when Stiassni was sixteen, in response to the looming threat of Nazi occupation.

The dancing badger is nowhere to be seen. Missing too is the gold and white bird with the tie-dye socks. The install at Mayfair's Thomas Dane Gallery is well under the way. I tip-toe through wet paint and plastic sheeting. We speak over the metallic blast of drills. Maybe the animals of 'The Squash' will join us for the opening party.Anthea...

'I never look very excited,' Anthea Hamilton tells me, fixing me with a withering stare. 'I think that's quite well known. It's just how I am.' We're standing in the middle of Mayfair's Thomas Dane Gallery, mere days before her latest show is due to open.

Anthea Hamilton's first exhibition with Thomas Dane confirms that she has lost none of her powers of disquieting transformation since her Duveens project at the Tate Britain last year. This involved gourd-headed performers lolling and posing in a gridded white tiled terrain dotted with historical sculpture from Tate's collection.

Last week, during the Aperture Foundation's fall gala at a cavernous space in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, Marilyn Minter turned to Catherine Opie while the two artists stood onstage together, and said, "I wish you would adopt me." Opie, not missing a beat, deadpanned back, "Can I swaddle you, then?"

Three decades after Andy Warhol's death, he remains one of America's most provocative artists. His influence on popular culture is so pervasive that each emerging art movement after him has had to grapple with Warhol's focus on surface perfections and his singular celebrity. Despite their complicated feelings, many contemporary artists say they...

Art is more often a conversation than a monologue. Great and not-so-great artists have always wanted to surround themselves with paintings and objects that can speak to their own creative efforts. The most famous example of this desire perhaps is Henri Matisse, who as a young and struggling painter bought a small canvas by Paul Cézanne, Three...

There is something utterly majestic about block letters — even more so at a staggering height of 12 feet. Such is the case of the letters 'IM' in the painting "Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison)" (2008) by Tim Rollins & K.O.S.

Glenn Ligon, one of the US's most prominent and punchy artists, has taken his art in a new stylistic direction in his first solo show in Italy. The artist—who is best known for his text-based paintings that he began making in the 1980s—says his new silkscreen and ink marker paintings take text 'to a new level of abstraction'. The...

In celebration of its 250th birthday, London's Royal Academy Of Arts explores the historic practice of life drawing in a revolutionary way. Beginning with the Academy's 18th-century origins, From Life continues to the present and, most intriguingly, moves into the future. Historical paintings hang alongside works by Cai Guo-Qiang, Jenny Saville,...

There is an empty room on the top floor of Sperone Westwater Gallery— empty except for columns of words and numbers running up and down the walls. The columns make up an inventory of every single possession belonging to the artist Michael Landy, which he systematically destroyed over the course of two weeks in 2001, more than 7,000 items in...

When you meet an 83-yer-old sculptor, be prepared to shake an impressive hand. Tunisian-born British artist Phillip King's main artistic instruments are strong and slightly gnarled (owing to decades of heavy work and arthritis, which he combats with Flex It) and his grip is full of vigour.King has assisted Henry Moore, been taught by Anthony Caro,...

HULL, UK — Across the northeast industrial city of Hull, first-time host to this year's Turner Prize exhibition, a clever billboard marketing campaign declares, 'Whatever you think about Turner Prize 2017, you're right.' Nodding to the spectrum of critique the Prize attracts as an annual showcase for 'emerging' British talent, the Prize is...

American photographer Catherine Opie shot to prominence in the early 1990s with a spectacular body of studio portraits of gay, lesbian and transgender women and men drawn from her circle of fellow artists and intimates in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her practice, sometimes described as 'social portraiture', spans across portraits, seascapes,...

It was a Friday afternoon mid-fashion week, but within the calm surrounds of Lynda Benglis’ airy Prince Street loft, that chaos couldn’t have felt further away. Beneath one of the 76-year-old sculptor’s globular polyurethane wall pieces, the performance artist India Menuez, 24, sat on the floor stroking the elf-like ears of Benglis’ dopey...

This year's Turner Prize exhibition, which is taking place in Hull's Ferens Art Gallery, is a quieter affair than the showcase at Tate Britain in 2016. There are no headline-grabbing images to match Anthea Hamilton's giant buttocks or Michael Dean's sea of coins from last year. Instead, ideas about rootlessness and belonging, states of limbo and...

In 2011, after visiting a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at London's National Gallery, the American fine art photographer Catherine Opie conceived the idea of shooting a series of portraits and landscapes inspired by the Old Masters. Last night, for her first show with Thomas Dane Gallery in London, a new chapter in this series was unveiled. Opie...

A mysteriously hovering vantage point slowly rotates above muddy, languidly rippling waters. We grasp for context in these distorted reflections of land and sky, but little is offered. Our attention remains focused on a splash of gas centered in each frame. The conceptual link connecting these disparate bodies of waters (the Yangtze, Nile, Thames,...

Julia Stoschek opened her collection of time-based media art to the public ten years ago, and to celebrate the anniversary she has invited the British artist Ed Atkins to curate an exhibition from her holdings. Generation Loss: 10 Years of the Julia Stoschek Collection (until 10 July 2018) opened this week at Stoschek's Düsseldorf gallery.

On 10 January 1901, a ragged band of men in a blasted corner of southeast Texas changed the course of history. Following the hunch of a one-armed geologist – whose past included shooting dead a sheriff who interrupted his attempt to burn down a black Baptist church – prospectors dug an exploratory oil well near the Louisiana border. It was a risky...

A city associated with economic troubles and reverence for ancient culture, Athens isn’t known as an epicenter for contemporary art. And yet, during the opening of Documenta 14, the local art scene grabbed the opportunity to make an impression.

Over the course of her long career, Lynda Benglis has defied easy categorization. From her earliest days in New York, where she moved after graduating from Newcomb College in New Orleans in 1964, her buoyantly outspoken personality and boundless curiosity made her a familiar figure in Manhattan’s transformative 1960s art scene. Her early circle of...