AMERICAN ARTIST LEO VILLAREAL'S "ILLUMINATED RIVER" IN LONDON IS THE WORLD'S LONGEST PUBLIC ART COMMISSION

Five more London bridges will soon be lit up as part of the Illuminated River project. 

Using LED lighting designed by American artist Leo Villareal, the project aims to visually connect the city’s iconic bridges through subtle lighting sequences and color schemes conceived to showcase the architecture and history of each bridge.

The latest bridges to be added are Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Bridge. From next month, Westminster Bridge’s latticework will be illuminated with soft green hues, evoking the green benches of the House of Commons’ debating chamber, while Lambeth Bridge’s red glow will reflect the red benches of the chamber in the nearby House of Lords. The lighting designs extend the theme in the paintwork of both bridges, which has long symbolised Britain’s two-chamber parliamentary system.

Lord Neil Mendoza, Chair of the Illuminated River Foundation said,

“The illumination of Westminster and Lambeth bridges [will bring] a fresh new spirit and atmosphere to the political center of London that will transform this part of the Thames as we begin, gradually, to ease out of the challenges of the last 12 months.”

The Blackfriars Road, Waterloo, and Golden Jubilee bridges will also be lit up next month, bringing the total number of bridges illuminated through the project to nine. The first four bridges—London, Cannon Street, Southwark, and Millennium were lit in 2019.

Fully funded by private philanthropists the project has the backing of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan,

“From the Fourth Plinth to Art on the Underground, our city has a rich heritage of showcasing public art, and I am delighted that Illuminated River is bringing more free and accessible artwork to Londoners.

The project will be up for 20 years at which point each bridge operator can decide if they want to continue into the future. You can read more about the project and each bridge by going here.

THE WORST MASS SHOOTING IN U.S. HISTORY IS THE SUBJECT OF NATE LOWMAN'S LATEST EXHIBIT

Artist, Nate Lowman is using one of the most devastating scenes in recent history, for his first show with mega-dealer David Zwirner. Two years ago today, a gunman opened fire in Las Vegas killing 58 people in the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

Hideous monster Stephen Paddock took a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hoteland targeted concertgoers from his window. (He turned the gun on himself.) Lowman opens the show in London one day after the two-year anniversary of the crime.

The Vegas-born artist has taken on gun violence before, creating sculptures of bank teller windows shattered by gunshots. Here, Lowman used photographs of the crime scene and, according to the gallery’s press release, 

“began translating the images, one by one, into paintings, in part as an attempt to grapple with the unanswerable questions posed by the shooting.” 

The images are rather generic, grainy crime-scene images that are nonetheless chilling. A hotel room door handle, was shot by Paddock to keep police from getting into his room is Picture 1 while Picture 4 is of a room service cart in the hallway.

Previously represented by Maccarone, Lowman signed with Zwirner this May and the dealer praised the artist in a statement, saying, 

“his critical engagement with contemporary culture as much as with art history is evident in his strikingly relevant works.”

Nate Lowman: October 1, 2017 is on view at David Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street, London, October 3–November 9, 2019.

(Images, Nate Lowman/David Zwirner; via Artnet News)

3 EMERGING ARTISTS SHOW THEIR "TRUE COLOURS" AT DAMIEN HIRST'S NEWPORT STREET GALLERY

The Newport Street Gallery‘s name might be a bit confusing. Nothing is for sale (outside of the gift shop.) It’s Damien Hirst‘s private London museum opened to showcase some of his 3,000-piece collection, nicknamed “Murderme”.

With the latest exhibition True Colours: Helen Beard/ Sadie Laska/ Boo Saville, the artist added another 21 works to his holdings as he commissioned three emerging artists to make new paintings for the occasion.

Working from found images Helen Beard uses a rainbow palette to create interlocking arrangements of bright primary colors which illustrate sexual encounters. New York-based artist Sadie Laska creates compositions using paint and collage incorporating recycled waste materials and found objects and Boo Saville’s colour field paintings are shown in the exhibition with her older figurative works.

Hirst invited both Saville and Beard to create larger works in his studios in England. Saville told The Art Newspaper,

“I’ve wanted to work bigger for ages but there are challenges with working at that scale. Lots of those challenges are practical ones and you need a certain level of infrastructure to make it possibl. Damien has been an amazingly kind mentor.”

The three artists are united by their use of color, from Saville’s color field canvases to Laska’s collages featuring found objects and Beard’s rainbow-colored canvases depicting sexual encounters from pornography.

Beard said in an interview for the exhibition catalogue,

“Sex in the media is full of shame right now, and it’s pretty much always from the perspective of the male gaze. So, we’re concentrating on men like Weinstein and their warped ideas about sex, the way it’s used, the power that men like that have had over women, and it ends up taking away from the beautiful thing that sex can be. I would like to celebrate sex from my point of view. There’s no shame in that, a woman who is centering her work on that.”

True Colours runs through September 9, 2018 at the Newport Street Gallery, Newport Street, London, SE11 8AJ.

(Photos, Prudence Cuming Associates, courtesy Newport Street Gallery; via Artnet News)

"THE MASTER OF COUTURE", BALENCIAGA, IS FASHION'S NEXT BLOCKBUSTER

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum will surely have another blockbuster this summer. Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion opens at the end of May, and gathers over 100 garments and 20 hats by Spanish designer, Cristóbal Balenciaga. Christian Dior once said of him, 

“Haute Couture is like an orchestra whose conductor is Balenciaga. We other couturiers are the musicians and we follow the direction he gives.”

In the 50s, when most designers were following the New Look, Balenciaga broke through boundaries, and experimenting with new shapes in ways. His influence is still be seen on runway today. Exhibition curator Cassie Davies-Strodder, says,

“Cristóbal Balenciaga was one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century. Revered by his contemporaries, including Coco Chanel and Hubert de Givenchy, his exquisite craftsmanship, pioneering use of fabric and innovative cutting set the tone for the modernity of the late 20th century fashion.

His lasting impact on fashion will be explored through the work of those who trained with him and through recent garments by designers including Molly Goddard, Demna Gvasalia, and J.W. Anderson, who reflect the legacy of his vision today.”

The show includes the V&A’s own collection, as well as a collaboration with x-ray artist Nick Veasey that reveals the hidden genius of the designer.

Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, on May 27, 2017 and runs through February 18, 2018.

(via Artnet)

INSIDE BENJAMIN BROUGHAM'S ADLER-FIED MINI-LOFT IN WILLIAMSBURG

Benjamin Brougham is the Director of Interiors for Jonathan Adler. For years now Jonathan Adler shops have sold my works on paper across the country, and Benjamin was once in charge of acquiring art, so we became friends. In 2013 he organized an exhibit of my work, called Pop Queen, in their London shop during the Queen’s Jubilee. His boyfriend at the time was in the House of Lords and commissioned a portrait of the Queen for the show, and for the opening he brought along Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York. He’s now Jonathan’s right hand with regard to interiors, so when he scored a new flat (he’s British) in Williamsburg, it was a cinch to make it look like THIS in just two months. 

It’s not all Adler that you see but the sensibility is, since our man is in charge. Lot’s of vintage pieces mixed-in along with velvet chairs, a guest-friendly sofa and Adler’s iconic ceramics sourced from the brand’s collection. Have a look around.

(Photos, Maura McEvoy; via Design Sponge)

PHOTOGRAPHER MAUDE SCHUYLER CLAY ON HER LEGENDARY COUSIN, WILLIAM EGGLESTON

William Eggleston is a pioneering American photographer known for his vivid, poetic and mysterious images. A new exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, of 100 works surveys his career from the 1960s to today. It’s the most comprehensive display of his portrait photography ever. Fred Maynard writes in The Economist, 

“Refusing to be pinned down to any viewpoint or agenda, Eggleston’s greatest strength is his almost enraging ambiguity. He is neither a sentimentalist nor a documentarian, neither subjective nor objective: he somehow captures that ephemeral moment we experience when we’re not quite sure why a memory sticks with us, why an otherwise mundane glance from a stranger seems to take on a greater significance.“

Highlights of the NPG exhibition will include monumental prints of photographs first seen forty years ago: the artist’s uncle Adyn Schuyler, Sr with his assistant Jasper Staples in Cassidy Bayou, Mississippi, and Devoe Money in Jackson, Mississippi. (First and second images of Eggleston’s, below)

Adyn Schuyler is my old friend Maude Schuyler Clay‘s father and William Eggleston is her cousin. We’ve know each other since we worked together in the Vanity Fair art department in the mid-80s – she as a photo editor and I, as a designer. We have many friends in common and have remained in touch over the years, but I’ve never really asked her about her legendary relative. An established photographer in her own right, I thought this show was as good excuse as any to mix business with pleasure…

So, tell me your direct family relation to Eggleston…
His mother and my mother were sisters who grew up in the house that I now live in, in Sumner, Mississippi –Grey Gardens South. So, that makes Bill and me first cousins.

Was he well-known photographer as you were growing up, or was it no big deal…?
…just the world’s coolest relative.

Did his work influence you? Or is it in your family’s DNA to document?
Our common grandfather who built the house was a planter, lawyer, and judge who was a fanatic photography ‘hobbiest’. All his work was done on glass plate. Bill’s influence on me was huge but I started out taking serious color pictures of people with my old Rolleiflex, mainly because I did not want to ‘copy’ his color photographs. His photos, until the National Portrait gallery show, was not about color portraits per se. He has been nothing but supportive of my work from the get-go.

What is it from your knowledge of how he works, that makes his point of view –his eye– SO compelling. Two of my favorite photographs are the shot of the inside of a freezer and another of the inside of an oven. Those are comparable to Warhol’s soup can paintings. They are SO absurd they’re brilliant…
Mundane everyday prosaic things and places in lush color. His compositions look like The Golden Mean most of time.

What about you? Do you still shoot film or have you gone digital?
Half and half…

Do you like the prints you get with digital…? Or are you old school?
Yes, old school here but the world has gone digital. There is a new process: digitally scanning your film negative, then they take the scan and put through a ‘water like chemical bath’… the results not unlike the old C-prints which were all done in darkroom.

What does that water process do to the final print… there are so many filters now I can make a pic I took yesterday look like a 70s Eggleston…
It makes it look like an old C-print. Yes, you can get a digital filter to do similar.

I’m curious about his process. You must have seen his contact sheets… does he shoot a ton and then edit ruthlessly or is his eye so refined he gets what he wants in a few frames?
One shot usually.

When we were at VF, I found it fascinating to look at photographer’s contact sheets – Helmut, Penn, etc… it reveals a lot.
He uses mostly Leica but sometimes Fugi. Hasselblad gave him their latest fancy one when he won that Hasselblad award. Has used 5 x 7 and very limited 8 x 10 cameras. He does not ‘linger’ in any one picture, as far as I know. Usually one or two shots at most. This from looking at his contact sheets for 40 years!

…just talked to him this morning, he’s back in Memphis.

What do you think you’ve learned from him? Personally and professionally… did he give you any advice…?
Not really,just to go out and take pictures. As the ‘assistant’ I rode around with him in late afternoon light and observed his work; then would see results when contacts came back week or so later. One thing that made me focus (no pun) on my color portraits is I really did not want to be someone who took ‘Bill Eggleston color pics.’ Since he did not and still says, as of yesterday, that he doesn’t love the NPG show because his work was not about pictures of people, a minuscule part of his output. He says his whole oeuvre is color pictures that sometimes have a person in them…

You know NPG did mini-reproductions of the Falco shot of us (above) and my Bill portrait (below) in their gift shop for, I think, 5 or 6 pounds!

Yes, I saw and made a lame joke on your Facebook about that being really heavy for shipping… hey, did you go to the opening?
Alas, no. Trying to get to Germany for Lang’s (husband & fellow photographer, Langdon Clay) Cars at Night, book. Not sure of the date, but supposedly soon, it’s in current Steidl catalog –Luc Sante wrote the foreword. We will most likely hop over to London. The show is up ’til October...

Btw, today happens to be Maude’s birthday! Happy Birthday! William Eggleston Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery, London through October 23, 2016.

William Eggleston by Maude Schuyler Clay

William Eggleston by Maude Schuyler Clay

William Eggleston by Maude Schuyler Clay

William Eggleston and his daughter, Andra by Maude Schuyler Clay

All photographs below are by William Eggleston...

BANKSY MIGHT FINALLY REVEAL HIS HIDDEN IDENTITY TODAY IN LONDON

Yes, the real identity of elusive graffiti artist Banksy could finally be revealed at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards. The artist from Bristol, who keeps his true identity secret, is set to attend the ceremony at The Savoy Hotel this afternoon in London after being nominated for his theme park Dismaland in the visual arts category.

The controversial attraction, which we reported on here, opened in a derelict lido in in Somerset last August. It featured migrant boats, an anarchist training camp and a Cinderella paparazzi car crash installation. It was later moved to Calais to provide shelter for migrants.

Comedian Eddie Izzard will accept the already-announced outstanding achievement award for his lifetime contribution to arts. Previous winners include JK Rowling, Sir Richard Attenborough, The Who and artist Tracey Emin. The awards will be broadcast on Sky Arts in England on June 8.

(via Daily Mail)

SO, WHAT'S SUSPICIOUS ABOUT DAMIEN HIRST'S NEW $38 MILLION LONDON MUSEUM?

Damien Hirst‘s $38 million London museum, Newport Street Galleryhas been open to the public for a few months now. It will house his own 3,000+ piece art collection which is called “Murderme” in his entirely self-funded 37,000 square foot museum. But this is Damien Hirst so, it’s been received with suspicion. His market has been going downhill since ’08, when he broke all the rules, bypassed dealers and sold work directly through Sotheby’s, making a literal fortune. $177 million in one sale! Oliver Barker, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe said,

“None of us intended to devalue his market, but suddenly after that sale the luster of Damien Hirst was gone.”

Many people in the art world wonder whether this new venture might be Hirst’s strategy to revitalize his tarnished brand. It will surely up the value of his Murderme collection. Kate Davies, head of the collection, told artnet News that there’s no masterplan behind this project. 

“It’s been a long ambition of Damien’s to share his collection with the public. He is an avid collector and curator and has been building Murderme since the late 1980s, around the time he curated Freeze in 1988.”

He’s said that he was really inspired by Charles Saatchi‘s Boundary Road gallery, which he went to many times as a young artist.”

Admission is free and Hirst says he hopes to be able to offer a new generation the possibility of returning many times to really get to know Hoyland’s work.

What’s the museum like inside? Look for yourself, but in terms of architecture at least, artnet News says…

“…the museum is certainly a triumph. Perhaps one of the best contemporary art exhibition spaces that London has welcomed since the launch of Raven Row in 2009. Designed by the architects Caruso St John, Newport Street Gallery is indeed a successfully designed temple dedicated to art. Its impossibly tall ceilings with skylights, white walls, sleek polished concrete floors, and three stunning oval staircases make it into a space that invites the viewer to stay, and to contemplate.

It’s also massive; an ambitious complex that also hosts a shop selling books and editions and, launching next year, a restaurant: Pharmacy2, marking Hirst’s return to the hospitality business (the first Pharmacy was an award winning restaurant and celebrity hotspot in Notting Hill, which Hirst operated in London between 1998 and 2003).”

The first solo exhibition is dedicated to the British abstract painter John Hoyland(1934-2011), who was, according to Hirst, an artist’s artist and 

“one of the greatest British abstract painters.”

Many critics disagree. The Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones, rather bluntly says Hoyland’s paintings are

“art studentish attempts to knock out a [Mark] Rothko, a [Jackson] Pollock, or a Barnett Newman.”

Hirst started collecting Hoyland’s work in 2009. The two artists became friends two years before Hoyland’s death. But it hadn’t always been so chummy between the two. In 1999, Hoyland said that Hirst was 

“becoming an entrepreneur. Artists should not farm their work out” and that he didn’t think that “you make great art unless you paint it yourself.” 

Ouch. These Brits are bitchy!

Murderme also has a good selection of works by name-brand artists like Picasso, Warhol, Bacon, Koons, and Prince, as well as artwork by Hirst’s peers.

If Hirst manages to resuscitate his devalued art career it will be yet another coup for an artist who seems to always know how to make things happen. His legacy certainly isn’t his sole concern, but a pressing issue for a number of A-list collectors, like Jose Mugrabi who has over 120 works by Damien and who just bought $33 million worth of art by Hirst three months ago. Mugrabi told the WSJ.

“Damien Hirst is in the same situation as Warhol was in the 1990s. I love Damien at $10,000, and I love him at $10 million. The price is secondary because I know people love him, and in the end they will pay for him.”

It’s not a popular opinion but, honestly, me too. This is the world we live in. An artist opens a museum, free to the public and it's considered suspect. John Holland: Power Station Paintings, 1964-1982 runs through April 3, 2016. For more info, you can go here.

(via ArtNet News)

A WITTY YEAR-LONG STREET ART BATTLE HAD LONDON AUTHORITIES SEEING RED

A graffiti artist tagged the same London wall over one year in a bizarre and hilarious battle with authorities. He started last summer on July 17th, 2014 and finished nearly a year later. The street artist that goes by Mobstr, has undertaken similar progressive projects before and he explains how this cat-and-mouse game began:

“I cycled past this wall on the way to work for years. I noticed that graffiti painted within the red area was ‘buffed’ with red paint. However, graffiti outside of the red area would be removed via pressure washing. This prompted the start of an experiment. Unlike other works, I was very uncertain as to what results it would yield. Below is what transpired over the course of a year.”

You can see more of Mobstr’s work here. Scroll down for the full progression and punchline.

(via Bored Panda)

SOHO FARMHOUSE IS 100 ACRES OF BRITISH BLISS

You know about SoHo House, right? It was started as a private club in London, where there are multiple clubs, over a decade ago. There are now houses in New York, Miami, Chicago, LA, Toronto, Istanbul, Berlin and the latest is Soho Farmhouse. It is set on a 100-acre estate in the Oxfordshire countryside with 40 cabins in different sizes plus a four bedroom cottage and a seven bedroom Farmhouse. I’m an “Everyhouse” member and when the club sent out a huge illustrated map of the grounds (below) and it was LOVE at first sight. This is my kind of scene and looks like the perfect civilized getaway. It’s just two hours outside of London and whether you go with a group of friends or just your sweetie, there looks like so much to do. Canoeing, boating, swimming, horseback riding, tennis and the Brits fave pastime, drinking. Why am I telling you about an exclusive private club? Well, you are in luck, non-members are allowed to book too (but you have to make a request, and it’s not cheap.) But if you’ve got the dough, can you imagine a wedding here?! Or your big 4-0? I hear it’s been booked like crazy, so request WAY in advance and start saving, kids. For more info and enticing photos, you can go here.