Remembering Robert De Niro, one of the “Strange Great Secret Painters of America”

In chapter five of Jack Kerouac’s timeless 1960 travelogue, Lonesome Traveller, the great American novelist takes us to New York to meet the inner circle of bohemian artists and beatniks in Greenwich Village: “Let’s go see the strange great secret painters of America and discuss their paintings and their visions with them — Iris Brodie…

From the Brothel to Beaux-Arts: She Should Have been China’s Own Matisse

Some people paint by numbers. Formality. Then there are those who paint with something else entirely. A kind of electric, lived experience. A place of intimacy with their subject matter that makes a portrait sing, and a still life tremble. Pan Yuliang was one of those people, albeit one who might’ve been left out of…

The Art of Love, by a Time Travelling Impressionist Painter

“Wait, is that a Degas? A Cassatt?” is probably something Ron Hicks gets a lot. As a contemporary artist, Hicks’ talent for blending Impressionist and abstract techniques will make you do a double take, as his languid, cafe lovers could just as easily be mid-embrace circa 1870 or 2017. And the same goes for his…

Where Is Surrealism Going in These Strange-and-Uncertain Times?

Traditionally, Surrealism is born from confrontation. Confrontation of war, gender norms, existentialism – you name it, Salvador Dali probably addressed it with a melting clock. Given that the 20th century movement emerged from this unflinching dive into the human experience as psyche, we started wondering: where has Surrealism taken us in 2020? In the midst…

Death Row Inmates Are Making Art. Would You Buy It?

Nicola White didn’t leave her heart in San Francisco, she left it in the San Quentin State Prison, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. “It’s funny,” she tells us by phone from her native England, “I never set out thinking, ‘I’m going to Death Row and I’m going to start a project with these prisoners…

Why Not Tattoo Your Walls like the French?

At this very moment, a drunken Dionysus naps in the doorway of a villa overlooking the French Riviera. In another room, the head of Apollo keeps guard of a marble fireplace, and Diana the Huntress rounds up her nymphs in scenes of cosmic mischief dreamt up by the artist Jean Cocteau, and immortalised – tattooed,…

Meet the Anti-Bob Ross of Korea

When we stumbled upon a work by contemporary artist Kim Beom, we couldn’t believe our eyes, or our eardrums: the Korean artist mixes the two “mediums” together in his 2012 video work, Yellow Scream, imbuing his brushstrokes with every shriek on the human spectrum. Ever wonder what shape agony makes? How pain is measured on…

Vintage Muse du Jour: Peggy Guggenheim, Patron Saint of Art & Sex

You probably know Guggenheim– the name, the museums, the collections– but do you know the woman behind legendary the name (and sunglasses)? Peggy Guggenheim didn’t live the domesticated life that was expected of an heiress. She was her own kind of bohemian, impossible to define, mysterious and in many ways, tragic in her loneliness. But…

The Secret Art of Marbling

It’s the DIY to rule them all: marbling. As in, those hypnotic patterns you find inside antique books, posh stationary, and packaging where it seems as if the whole of the colour spectrum has been syphoned through a kaleidoscope and poured onto a piece of paper. So what’s the story behind the painstaking craft? That…

She Was India’s ‘Frida Kahlo’

The bold red lip. The dark, enigmatic brows. Leaning up against the wall with her hair braided tight, the young woman looked every bit like Frida Kahlo, posing for a shot with her photographer-lover. She was also an artist – albeit, comparatively unsung – in her own right. Meet Amrita Sher-Gil, India’s answer to Frida’s…