“The history of horror scores is a long, winding path (that leads to an old abandoned shed stocked with rusty hatchets), with legends of the form and shadowy figures that lurk around the edges of the frame.” Michael Andor Brodeur selects “the most killer composers in film history.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
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An all-female cabinet faces nuclear crisis. What do they do? Take their threatened country into confrontation, stick with their anti-war principles or give in to the Trumpian figure threatening to press the button?
These are some of the questions that audiences in the screening room of Greece’s national museum of contemporary art, EMST, are asked to contemplate by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana. Her anti-war film Two Minutes to Midnight is one of the highlights of the institution’s latest exhibition cycle What if Women Ruled the World?.
In a global first, EMST’s floors and halls were handed over in their entirety to an all-female cast of artists last month.
“The exhibition’s title is intentionally provocative,” said Katerina Gregos, the museum’s artistic director, who smiles at the prospect of visitors probing the “hypothetical question” of how different the world could be: “What we are asking visitors to do is try and take a leap of the imagination and think what it would be like if governance and decision-making were in the hands solely of women.”
In such a world, would there have been so much war and conflict, or less chest-beating, more compromise and considered discussion, she asks.
“In short, would the world be a better place? We’re not advocating for the establishment of a matriarchy. Rather, we’re inviting reflection on whether there is an alternative. Because, let’s face it, with wars raging and the senseless violence that we see – mostly generated by men almost every day – you can’t say we’re in the best of places.”
The exhibition has taken the art world by surprise in a nation where the feminist movement only began to emerge in the 1980s, three decades after Greek women won the right to vote. It wasn’t until the overhaul of family law by a socialist government in 1983 that the notion of equality in marriage was recognised and wedding dowries officially abolished.
Forty-three years after the Mediterranean country joined the EU, it remains one of the bloc’s most socially conservative members, as patriarchal in mindset as it is poor in gender equality index rankings.
For Gregos, the all-women programme is a corrective, culturally and politically. It is because female artists in Greece have been so systematically overlooked, she says, that the year-long project aims to both redress the imbalance and “radically reimagine what a museum would look like if, instead of a few token pieces, works by women artists were the majority”.
For supporters, it is long overdue; for critics, it’s wokery on steroids.
Shows about women by women are nothing new. But the works of female creatives are still noticeably fewer in art fairs – and solo shows by female artists are still rare, even in major museums. It wasn’t until 2020, nearly two centuries after its establishment, that the UK’s National Gallery held its first major exhibition of a female artist. Earlier this year, the Tasmania Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) made headlines by closing its exhibition space off to men (with some of its most famous works inside) and allowing in only women.
But in daring to tread where no other national museum has gone so far – often because of contractual obligations and a reluctance to remove well-known pieces from collections – EMST has broken new ground.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Gregos. “There’s been an incredibly diverse range of visitors of all ages and backgrounds.”
For Dr Vicki Kerr, a New Zealand artist and cultural theorist, the “boldness” is reason enough to visit Athens this summer. “For a publicly funded arts museum on what many see as the periphery of Europe, this is a brave and breathtaking move,” she said. “It’s curatorially thought-provoking.”
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The exhibition has resulted in a re-hang of an entire floor of the museum’s permanent collection, with 46 artists of all ages and ethnic backgrounds represented in what, by the end of the year, will have been 18 solo exhibitions. Among them are Phyllida Barlow, the British sculptor who died last year; the acclaimed American photographer Lola Flash; the Iranian-born American artist Tala Madani; Greece’s trailblazing Leda Papaconstantinou; and Penny Siopis, a South African regarded as one of the most significant artistic voices of her generation.
Previously just 37% of artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection were women.EMST has been on a mission to break boundaries since Gregos took over three years ago with a determination to use the institution’s public role to tackle issues “that matter”.
The question behind the exhibition’s title was inspired by Yael Bartana’s famous neon work of the same name, now illuminating the north and south facades of the former brewery that is the EMST building.
It’s open to debate whether the question is answered, even if in Bartana’s Two Minutes to Midnight it’s clear what it would be: the all-female council ends up in a cemetery, symbolically dumping weapons in a grave.
For visitors and participants, what is more important is seeing artists who have been marginalised for so long take centre stage.
“We like to think that art is neutral,” said Siopis, whose multimedia work is among the centrepieces of the exhibition. “We assume it transcends gendered, racialised and sexualised cultural definitions – but it does not.”
At 70, Siopis is typical of her generation: while her extraordinary output is feted in South Africa, she has never received the international recognition of William Kentridge and other contemporaries, flummoxing critics who have been spellbound by her body of work at EMST, her first-ever museum retrospective in Europe. Even today, she said, history painting, which is regarded as art’s highest genre, remains the preserve of the male artist, while still life, “the lowest genre”, is seen as the domain of female artists.
“Yes, things have changed – but they haven’t changed enough,” she said. “We can safely say that there are still huge prejudices against women globally, which is why there is such room for an exhibition like this that so consciously speaks to the experiences of women.”
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L.A. Story is the name of a 1991 movie written by Steve Martin that the Los Angeles Times once voted the greatest Los Angeles–set film of the 20th century. It will also be the name of a Hauser & Wirth show co-organized by Martin with curator Ingrid Schaffner and senior director Mike Davis. The show will kick off the fall season in LA this year.
The show, due to open September 12 at the gallery giant’s West Hollywood location, will feature landscapes, abstractions, and more that all contain an Angeleno flavor, per the gallery. Although there will be representations of Los Angeles landmarks here, the gallery allows that some works will not explicitly depict the city, since the show’s approach is “far from literal.”
Certain works, such as paintings of rippling water by David Hockney and Calida Rawles, will allude to the backyards of many Los Angeles homes that have swimming pools. And a Vija Celmins painting of a hand firing a gun will be enlisted to speak to Hollywood genre filmmaking. Naturally, a number of famed LA-based artists, from Mark Bradford to Ed Ruscha, will figure in the exhibition.
Martin said in a statement, “I’m thrilled that ‘L.A. Story’ is the focus of so many wonderful artists and a wonderful gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which is just across the street from the Troubadour, where I first stepped foot on Santa Monica Blvd., which began my L.A. sojourn.”
Martin, who appeared several times on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list during the 1990s, has some prior curatorial experience: he helped organize the Hammer Museum’s Lawren Harris show in 2016.
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Our planet is a hot mess right now, but there are artists making powerful work for change, while it’s on fire. Rose McAdoo is one of these artists. Whether crafting a cake atop a glacier or whipping up treats onboard an Arctic ship, each of her tasty creations tell a story. Her goal is to communicate the heavy topic of climate change and execute her sweet artform out in the field. It’s clever. Through playful and hopeful desserts, she is helping introduce and explain the science behind bigger ideas to as many people she can reach.
For Rose McAdoo, the challenge lies not just in the logistical hurdles of baking in remote locations but also in translating dense scientific data into digestible narratives. Her projects range from Ice Core Lollipops that mirror glacial records to Ocean Acidification Eclairs, sparking conversations on climate impacts.
Crevasse Lollipops – Champagne extract and blue Pop Rocks (to mimic the flavor, feeling, and sound effects of bubbles that get trapped in glacier ice) Photo: Rose McAdoo
She is a dynamic, courageous, curious, and informative human, my favorite kind. Her close connection to the wild is one most of us will only experience through VR. She is the real deal.
The first time I spoke with Rose McAdoo about how she bakes cakes to raise awareness around global issues, she called me from the front seat of her (parked) car while adventuring in Coober Pedy. She was on a mission to bake a dessert in this magically weird little Australian town located underground an opal mine.
Rose McAdoo at Long Duration Balloon facility on the Ross Ice Shelf Photo: Laura Cass
Rose went from fours years of making glamorous wedding cakes in New York, to guiding other humans on glaciers in Alaska, to running a NASA research camp on Antarctica’s ice sheet. Rose makes desserts in the wild to connect her career skills with her artistic curiosity about our planet.
Rose initially took a job offer in Antarctica at the Long Duration Balloon facility on the Ross Ice Shelf, as the camp’s sous chef in 2019. After only a few years, she now manages this facility supporting NASA research and launches and is responsible for facility maintenance and operations; cargo, fuel, and water deliveries, not to mention the initial camp construction and end-of-season takedown.
Antarctica, picture the view… and now, the cold and the gear. Besides the admiration of just getting there, living there, and working a strenuous food service job, she makes the time to learn and create.
Sugar process Photo: Freddie Gluck
“As I learn, I’ve found that my brain explains topics to me by quickly visualizing new information as desserts. Making that intersection between food and science is really fulfilling to me – despite its dramatic challenges in the field.”
Sugar process – “I boiled sugar with a bit of water from Exit Glacier. Cooking that mixture to 300° F – six times that of Seward’s average summer temperature,” says McAdoo. Photo: Rose McAdoo
Glacier Crystals – Fresh water, elderflower, bergamot Photo: Rose McAdoo
Rose enjoys living in her community made up of the support teams and scientists. The knowledge she’s acquiring while living and working in Antarctica drives her art form further. While attending a lecture at LDB, she couldn’t help but make a comparison to tempering chocolate, the science of her wheelhouse. Or understanding biodiversity/extinction affects by imagining removing an ingredient, like flour or baking soda from a cake recipe.
She explains: “In the same way, if you move one species from an environment or if you remove one piece of the glacier formation equation, it doesn’t necessarily still work. Every ingredient must be present in nature to maintain homeostasis.”
“Sign made me damn popular on Denali as every pilot, climber, and rescue ranger asked ‘do you *really* have cake in there?'” Photo: Rachel Heckerman
Given the seriousness of the environments Rose works in, she appreciates the levity of cake, and how it allows people to let their guard down and be more receptive to scientific ideas.
Tiered cake Photo: Rose McAdoo
Rose had the guts to take her little cake sketches and ask “I wonder if I can pull this off? This is weird, and absurd, but I’m gonna make them anyway and see what happens.” Of course, while talking to her, I couldn’t take my catering hat off. I kept imaging all the improvisational problem-solving moments. There are no re-runs at that altitude. You must have multiple back up plans plus carry all the gear. “The rush from pulling something together in our planet’s wildest places makes me feel more alive than anything else,” McAdoo says.
Imagine how difficult it must be to execute that level of culinary muscle on an Antarctic ice shelf. Where are your prepping, assembling? What are you passing it on? Is the cake good at that temperature? But more importantly I wanted to know: “Who eats the cake? IS everyone eating the cake? Picture a climber hearing that someone just unveiled a 4-tiered salted juniper cake with evergreen buttercream made with glacier water. Brilliant!
Before onboarding a triple-masted ship for her recent Arctic Circle residency departing from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Rose and I discussed her latest edible art collection. Eating Away shows the relationship, loss, and change in the high Arctic and the resulting impacts on humans and wildlife in our polar regions. She addresses consumption of information, loss of habitat, and human destruction, while celebrating our environment and making data digestible.
Here is a glimpse into her process from cake and dessert sketches to photographs:
Photo: Edmée Van Rijn
Photo: Rose McAdoo
Photo: Rose McAdoo
Rose McAdoo making, assembling, and decorating the cake onboard the Antigua tall ship. Photo: Rose McAdoo
McAdoo and her dark rye malted cake with Norwegian brown cheese buttercream, a lingonberry soak, crispy stroopwafel crumble, and salted edible rocks made with charcoal, cardamom, poppy seeds, black sesame, and dark chocolate Wasa biscuit. Photo: Meg Roussos
Rose aims to expand her impact with upcoming exhibitions and a feature-length documentary. With help from grants and self-financing, her work continues to bridge the gap between art, science, and public awareness, aiming to make daunting topics like climate change more accessible through the universal language of food. The upcoming release of her Denali project documentary, Creative Approach, is making its way through the film festival submission world. Rose shared a sneak peek trailer with us here:
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLZ1Vbro-Y[/embed]
Creative Approach documents the two-week collaborative art residency at Denali Base Camp between McAdoo, painter Klara Maisch, and filmmaker Rachel Heckerman. Each pushing their creativity higher, bigger, and harder than ever before at 7,200 feet.
Mountaineering Knots – White chocolate and local snowmelt Photo: Rose McAdoo
Rose produced a bunch of desserts that communicated various aspects of glacier science in a Jet boil camp stove on top of the 44-mile-long glacier. Klara painted a 7-foot-tall oil landscape, and Rachel filmed and photographed the whole project while snow camping for the first time.
Elevating passed bites of Crevasse Candy Bars – Blue ginger caramel, macadamia nut nougat, Alaskan sea salt Photo: Rachel Heckerman
Rose McAdoo’s life journey is a testament to the power of creativity in facing global challenges. As she navigates between icy landscapes and pop-up kitchens, Rose exemplifies how art can inspire change – one delicious creation at a time.
To learn more, head to rosemcadoo.com.
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To understand this principle, it’s necessary to understand the basic structure of oil paints. Oil paints are simply pigment and oil. The oil is necessary as a “vehicle;” that is, a means of controlling the distribution of pigment and its binding to the painting’s surface. Over time, the oil dries, entrapping the pigment in a durable film. This provides the finished painting with a rich and luminous quality that viewers identify with oil painting.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqBrRcDsaqw[/embed]
Oil paint applied directly from the tube has a rather thick, buttery quality. For this reason, a painter might only be provided enough paint for a few thick brushstrokes. To cover a larger area, an artist needs to modulate the viscosity of the paint. This can be done in two ways. The first way is to improve the flow by adding more oil to the paint. The second way is to thin the oil by adding a solvent, degrading the structure of the oil binder. These two methods of modulating oil paint is where we get the terms “fat,” meaning paint that contains more oil, and “lean,” referring to paint that’s been thinned with solvent.
Why is this important? Remember, the pigment is suspended within a layer of oil, so the structural integrity of that layer becomes an important factor in the longevity of an oil painting. Lean layers of paint dry faster and shrink more quickly, while fat layers dry more slowly and remain flexible longer. If you apply a lean layer over a fat one, the lean paint will dry and shrink faster, leading to cracks in the more flexible, oily layer beneath it.
To put this into practice, you would want to use your “lean” layers — those thinned with mineral spirits or other solvents – to make up your initial layers. As you build your subsequent layers, reduce your solvent use and incorporate linseed oil or painting medium.
If you’re working wet-into-wet, this general rule can also help with layering of color. If your initial “lean” layers, are allowed some time to sit, your subsequent “fat” layers can be applied without too much mixing with the underlayer.
If you’re just learning to paint, pick up some solvent, grab a bottle of medium, and follow the “fat over lean” principle. To learn more about oil mediums, check out this article here.
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The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is giving $3.3m to 69 visual arts organisations across the US to help them make energy-efficient upgrades—such as adding solar panels and changing the lighting in their buildings, or auditing their overall energy use and creating plans for achieving carbon neutrality.
This is the foundation’s fourth round in as many years of the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI), and 2024 marks the first year of its Catalyst Grant—funding short-term projects at organisations “at earlier stages of their climate-action trajectory”, per an announcement.
This year’s grantees include large institutions like the New Museum in New York City (receiving $100,000), Seattle Art Museum ($100,000), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico ($50,000), MoMA PS1 ($25,000) and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art ($25,000), as well as smaller ones like The Kitchen ($50,000), The Chinati Foundation ($50,000), Storefront for Art and Architecture ($25,000) and the Steven Myron Holl Foundation ($15,000). Art schools are also among the grantees—including the Rhode Island School of Design ($50,000) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ($50,000).
At MacDowell, the fabled artist residency will use its almost $100,000 grant to renovate its studio spaces in order to reach carbon neutrality by 2045. Meanwhile, the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s $25,000 grant will go towards rehabilitating an old cigar factory into an all-electric building.
“Over the last four years, FCI grantees have developed and implemented groundbreaking climate-focused initiatives, inspiring a surge in applications and more ambitious projects,” Elizabeth Smith, director of the Frankenthaler Foundation, said in a statement. “Extending the foundation’s full range of grantmaking activities, FCI upholds Helen Frankenthaler’s legacy and cultivates a future where our peer organisations in the visual arts lead the way in creating a more sustainable world.”
Launched in 2021, FCI was one of the first grant programmes in the US to fund energy efficiency and clean energy specifically for visual art organisations. Over the years, it has funded more than $14m in environmental improvement projects at over 200 institutions in 37 US states and Puerto Rico.
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Implicit in a visit to Versailles is the slightly macabre thrill of experiencing a culture so excessively decadent that it violently upended a nation. But the former seat of the French monarchy also catalyzed another, more progressive, revolution—a scientific one.
For evidence, look no further than the Palace’s surrounding gardens. The five-mile-squared grounds were mapped out by geometricians and astronomers; keeping the 14,000 fountains bubbling further required developing an unprecedented hydraulic engineering system. The star creation was the Marly Machine, a giant thing of 40-foot paddle wheels and hundreds of pumps that could deliver a million gallons a day (it still wasn’t enough).
Versailles’s era of science was ushered in by Louis XIV’s chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who convinced the king to create a National Academy of Science in 1666. The Academy was eventually installed in the Louvre and over the next 120 years (with varying degrees of interest and meddling from Louis), proved a feverish incubator that brought both prestige to the crown and everyday solutions to the masses.
Jean-Dominique Cassini’s Map of the Moon, engraved by Jean Patigny, 1679. Photo: courtesy Observatoire de Paris.
This lesser-known side of 17th- and 18th-century France is the focus of “Versailles: Science and Splendour,” a forthcoming exhibition at London’s Science Museum. It’s a reprise of an exhibition hosted nearly 15 years ago at the Palace with a quixotic array of artifacts carted across the channel for the occasion, many for the first time.
“Science was at the heart of the French royal court,” said Sir Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum Group, “from the engineering innovations needed to build the regal seat of power to the lavish scientific demonstrations staged for the kings.”
At its inception, the Academy was an informal institution and Louis XIV, who was much more taken by art and music, simply insisted that the work should be useful. One task deemed suitable was accurately mapping the territory over which he ruled. Jean Picard took on the challenge using wooden rods and a theodolite telescope to map first Paris and then France (Newton would later cite Picard’s data in his theory of gravitation). Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who headed the Paris Observatory, turned skyward, mapping the moon with a precision that wouldn’t be matched until the late 19th century.
Optical microscope by Claude-Siméon Passemant, Jacques Caffieri and Philippe Caffieri, 1750. Photo: Château de Versailles/ Christophe Fouin.
Louis XV proved a more committed patron of the sciences and set up a research space at Versailles where resident scholars could work. Astronomy and botany were of particular interest. A space at Versailles was dedicated to showing scientific instruments of the Academy, such as microscopes and clocks showing the phases of the moon, and dolled them out as diplomatic gifts.
Part of the Mannequin of Madame du Coudray to teach midwifery. Photo: Musée Flaubert and the History of Medicine.
In other instances, such investment ameliorated the lives of ordinary French citizens. The story of Madame du Coudray is one such case.
Born into a family of doctors, she developed a system for teaching midwifery and published Art of Delivery, a textbook on the subject. Keen to reduce perinatal mortality in the wake of the Seven Years War, 1754 to 1763, Louis XV commissioned Madame du Coudray to travel the country and instruct peasant women and surgeons alike. She is estimated to have taught 30,000 students in the course of her career with the only surviving model of the mannequin she used exhibited.
Ascent of a Montgolfier balloon, 1783. Photo: courtesy Science Museum Group.
Even amid France’s increasingly chaotic situation, science strode on under the reign of Louis XVI. Hundreds gathered in the courtyard of Versailles to watch the flight of a hot-air balloon, agronomists developed a hardier potato capable of feeding the masses, and an inoculation against smallpox was discovered (one Louis XVI himself submitted to).
When the bloody end came in 1793, it took the Academy with it. Within two years, the revolutionaries realized they need scientists after all and resurrected an organization that continues to this day.
“Versailles: Science and Splendour” will be on view at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, December 12, 2024–April, 21, 2025.
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The historic studios hosted The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Bride. And then, “Ridley Scott built and shot the miniatures for his Academy Award winning sci-fi thriller, Alien, at the studios in 1978.” – BBC
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Brazil’s government has nearly completed its restoration of hundreds of artworks and objects that were vandalized during the 2023 insurrection, the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) announced earlier this month.
The collection, which includes contemporary and historical artworks, design objects, and artifacts, was targeted on January 8, 2023, when riots erupted in Brasília following the defeat of then-president Jair Bolsonaro by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the general election. Some 4,000 Bolsonaro supporters stormed several federal buildings with the intention of inciting a military coup d’état, causing $4 million worth of damage. Around 1,300 people have since been prosecuted for their involvement.
The $400,000 restoration project is led by the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), with support from Iphan and the curatorial director of the presidential palaces, among other organizations. The final stage of the project involves 11 paintings, six of which have already been repaired. Experts are currently focused on As Mulatas (1962) by the painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti, which is valued at $1.5 million and was stabbed seven times during the riots. As Mulatas is expected to be fully restored by September. Nine other works, variably made of wood, iron, and paper, are also nearing the final stages of their respective restoration processes.
“Each of them is missing some details, such as the final varnish, for example,” the project’s coordinator, Andrea Bachettini, said in a statement. “We also still need to complete the scientific documentation of each piece.”
The majority of the conservation and restoration work is underway in a lab installed on the premises of the Palácio da Alvorada, the official residence of the president of Brazil. One work, a 1973 tapestry by Roberto Burle Marx, which rioters tore and urinated upon, is being restored offsite.
In addition to the repairs, Iphan and UFPel are developing public programming that illuminates their nearly two-year-long process, with the aim of bettering preservation efforts in Brazil. The series will include technical lectures, a photography exhibition, and the launch of an art book and documentary. On the first anniversary of the insurrection, a group of artworks and objects recovered from the government buildings were displayed in the Palácio do Congresso Nacional, some still bearing signs of the damage inflicted.
“Heritage Education actions like this one, an exhibition and the launch of an art book and documentary will be the results of all the work carried out in the restoration laboratory, important for us to raise awareness among the public about the preservation of Brazilian heritage,” Bachettini said.
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.
Jon Stewart went live hosting “The Daily Show” on Thursday, recapping the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump. Stewart wasn’t in the best of spirits.
Things started out strong: “Both men are ambulatory. They are both upright. Level one cleared,” Stewart joked over a clip of the candidates taking the stage. But it wasn’t long before the host said he needed “to call a real estate agent in New Zealand.”
One rambling Biden answer — ending with the non sequitur “We finally beat Medicare” — had Stewart staring into the camera in horror.
“OK, a high-pressure situation. A lot of times, you can confuse saving Medicare with beating it. I’m sure it’s not something that repeated throughout the debate, causing Democrats across the country to either jump out of windows or vomit silently into the nearest recycling bin. Anybody can [expletive] up talking.” — JON STEWART
“I’m not a political expert, but while Biden was preparing at Camp David — for a week — did anyone mention he would also be on camera?” — JON STEWART
“A lot of people have resting 25th Amendment face.” — JON STEWART
Stewart also called out Trump for his many falsehoods.
“Just so we’re all clear, everything that Donald Trump said in that clip is a lie,” he said after one montage. “Blatant and full. And we were tight on time putting this [expletive] together. There’s plenty more. Really makes you wonder: What’s R.F.K. Jr. doing tonight?”
“Let me just say after watching tonight’s debate, both of these men should be using performance-enhancing drugs, as much of it as they can get, as many times a day as their bodies will allow. If performance-enhancing drugs will improve their lucidity, their ability to solve problems, and in one of the candidate’s cases, improve their truthfulness, morality and malignant narcissism, then suppository away.” — JON STEWART
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Mr. Cobbs was not a household Hollywood name, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize.
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A government order centered on a mural in Singapore‘s Chinatown has sparked concerns about the censorship of street art.
The large mural by Singapore-based multidisciplinary artist Sean Dunston, 50, depicts a Samsui woman holding a lit cigarette. The image is a reference to the young Chinese women who immigrated to the country in the 1920s and the 1940s for industrial jobs. The mural was completed in April.
On May 8, Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) told the building’s landlord that the mural was “not aligned with Singapore’s anti-smoking policy stance.” A later email from the URA on June 18 included comments from an unnamed member of the public that said the woman depicted on the mural “looks more like a prostitute than a hard-working samsui woman” and was “offensive.”
The government agency requested a “revised proposal” of the artwork by July 3 and said a failure to comply “would be taken into consideration for any application for the renewal” of the building’s temporary restaurant permit, which expires on July 27.
News of the URA’s emails about the mural were first reported by the Straits Times.
Dunston, an American citizen who has lived in Singapore since 2009, posted about the URA’s emails and the request to remove the cigarette on Instagram on June 19.
“To the member of the public that leveled this criticism,” he wrote, “I’d like to say that sex workers are very hard working people, and should be treated with as much respect as anyone else. You should ask your Mom about it. Also, if I offended you with this depiction of a Samsui woman, trying to enjoy herself for 2 little minutes between grind after grind, then I couldn’t be more pleased about it. You’re literally my target demographic.”
Dunston said he specifically chose to depict the Samsui woman as young instead of old. “I thought it would be nice to change it up to show a younger woman and catch them in a situation when they were not working,” he told the Straits Times, calling the order from the URA “suppressing the potential of Singapore’s art” and “a bummer.”
According to the South China Morning Post, Samsui women smoked cigarettes after work and even stored them in their signature red headscarves. Many of them lived in the area where Dunston’s mural is now located.
ARTnews reached out to Dunston on Instagram for comment.
On Tuesday, the artist posted about the impact of the URA order going viral online. “Now I’m in a critique session with a couple hundred thousand people or a million people or something, analyzing my work, praising it, shitting on it, and it’s become surreal and absurd. All this dopamine and cortisol pulsing through my brain at the same time is taking its toll.”
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It was just a few years ago that we reported on the Argentinian-Spanish artist Felipe Pantone using a swimming pool as a canvas, applying his distinctive chromatic art pieces one tile at a time across the bottom to dazzling effect. Now, he’s taken that same colorful pinwheel aesthetic and reinterpreted it for a limited release inflatable pool lounger that will certainly make a splash with color lovers.
The CDM30 Inflatable Pool Lounger is immediately identifiable as an extension of Pantone’s other chromatic works, most notably the artist’s recent circularly-themed SUBTRACTIVE VARIABILITY series. Visually the CDM30 treads the same water as work the artist creates for gallery shows, delving into the intersection of fine art and technological tools with colorful precision.
Pantone’s pool lounger could be considered a slow moving counterpart to his kinetic spinning sculptures, rotating across pools at a leisurely pace with references to color wheels and chip-style resources, the works of Alexander Calder and George Rickey, and the transient nature of our perception of color in various realms.
Designed in collaboration with Los Angeles-based art gallery BEYOND THE STREETS, it’s hard to categorize Pantone’s CDM30 Inflatable Pool Lounger. On one hand, it’s literally an inflatable pool accessory – a 5-foot-wide PVC flotation device – but on the other, a novel collectible. Considering the limited 200-piece run and exclusivity surrounding the Spanish artist’s striking kinetic aesthetic, it’s easy to imagine there will be just as many of the 200 buyers opting to display their CDM30 like wall art or sculpture as there will be those who choose to bask in the sun atop it.
To preorder the pool lounger for $185, visit beyondthestreets.com.
Photography provided by BEYOND THE STREETS.
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