issue 015: settling into faces & places
Last week in art news brought us powerful portraits, painterly bodies, photographic icons, and a man supposedly trapped inside The Bean.
Hi artsies,
Last week’s issue was about how travel lets us imagine (or confront) our different selves. This week, back home in NYC, I’m thinking about how those selves squeeze into (and sometimes reshape) our lived-in worlds. These art reads definitely echo that expansion and contraction. We’re learning new things about old classics, spotlighting icons and up-and-comers, unpacking the power in portraits, and getting up close with painted bodies.
Other than these art reads, my favorite art story of the week was a truly bizarre one: a coalition called “Man in Bean” is claiming that sculptor Anish Kapoor has kept a man trapped inside his famed Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”) for years. You really can’t make this shit up.
New Boundaries
These pieces spotlight artists pushing against limits, from record-setting sales and seismic gallery shifts to redefining show formats and how where we’re from doesn’t necessarily define who we are.
Old Classics
From Turner to Van Gogh to the Bayeux Tapestry, these stories remind us that old worlds keep reshaping themselves.
Stunning Portraits
From teenage bedrooms to Malian life, these portraits resonated this week, reminding us how faces in spaces have so many stories to tell.
Painterly Bodies
I’m a big sucker for figuration these days—the more intimate the better.
Icons x Photos
Bowie immortalized, McCartney behind the lens.
Reimagining Metal & Light
Mixed media artists Cerith Wyn Evans and Agnieszka Kurant fill space in their own ways.
This week, to wrap things up, I wanted to share my favorite image of the week from these reads:
The image from Booooooom’s spotlight on artist Yuwei Tu somehow captures the shifting, liminal mood I’m in as I settle back in at home after being in motion for so long.
‘til next week,
tld-art
P.S. It wasn’t a huge read week, but you can see all 50+ of my saves on Are.na.