What happens when male statues become fathers for a day? A creative campaign in Sweden is challenging traditional norms about parenting roles.
Imagine a bronze statue of a stoic leader, now wearing a bright pink baby sling with a doll nestled inside. On International Men’s Day, November 19th, male statues across Sweden were adorned with baby slings and carriers as part of a unique campaign to spotlight unequal parenting responsibilities.
Traditionally representing power, labor, or other masculine attributes, these statues were reimagined to symbolize fathers as caregivers. The campaign, organized by the think tank Arena Idé, is part of the #kvantitetstidspappan initiative, aimed at encouraging fathers to spend more time with their children and urging employers to play a larger role in enabling this.
Despite Sweden’s globally recognized parental leave policies, significant disparities remain. Swedish fathers take only 30.9% of parental leave days and 38% of sick leave to care for children.
A recent Novus survey, conducted in collaboration with Make Equal, further reveals that expectations around parental leave remain unequal in Swedish workplaces. Through this campaign, Arena Idé hopes to challenge these norms and has proposed an employer bonus for workplaces that encourage an equal division of parental leave.
The statues involved in the campaign—such as Standing Man in Umeå, Det svenska tungsinnet in Malmö, and Hjalmar Branting in Stockholm—were decorated with dolls in baby slings and carriers.
This created a contrast between the statues’ traditional symbolism and the modern role of engaged fathers.
The initiative draws inspiration from the UK-based group The Dad Shift, which earlier this year launched a similar campaign highlighting gaps in Britain’s parental leave policies.
Vilgot Österlund, a statistician at Arena Idé, emphasizes the importance of changing workplace norms: “When discussing gender equality in workplaces, the focus is often on women and the negative consequences of inequality for them. But here, we see that men are also losing out on something invaluable—time with their children. Through the statue campaign, the new statistics, and our proposals, we hope to make this clearer!”
Read more about the campaign and the proposed reforms in the original article by Arena Idé: Link to the original article.
How do you perceive the use of public art to challenge parenting norms? Can such initiatives drive societal change? We invite you to share your perspectives in the comments below.
If there is one thing we have learned this year it’s that the collector class still has money to spend, but will only spend it on choicest, most fresh-to-market works. Christie’s 20th century evening sale on Tuesday, which totaled $486 million with a sell through rate of 92 percent by value and 83 percent by lot, certainly proved that maxim true.
The evening opened with 19 lots from the collection of designer and philanthropist Mica Ertegun, which alone brought in $184 million. And while there were moments of drama throughout the sale, often those moments were like a premier league match slogged down by video-assisted referees, plagued by momentum-killing flukes like a dropped call or having to convert currency on the fly.
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(All figures reported here include buyer’s premium, unless noted otherwise noted.)
Like last night’s modern art sale at Sotheby’s, which also included a single owner estate sale—in that case, the collection of beauty industry titan Sydell Miller—Christie’s 20th century sale was uneven and slightly erratic, with its fair share of bidding wars and auction records but also an disappointing amount of bid-squeezing and awkward silences. More than 40 percent of the lots hammered at or below their low estimate and 12 lots failed to sell, four of which came in the last six lots of the sale. By that time, most of the people who came to watch had cleared the sales floor for the more inviting environs of their idling black cars or their reserved table at Mr. Chow.
“All this is really about desire,” art advisor Megan Fox Kelly told ARTnews ahead of the marquee sales week. Advisors, she said, try to be rational, provide information, statistics, background, and comparable. “But really it’s all about their desire. I think that’s what we’re going to see this week. People aren’t sitting on their hands right now. There’s confidence. But really it comes down to just a few things, quality of the object, provenance, and desire.”
Rene Magritte’s L’empire des lumières(1954). Christie’s Images Limited, 2024
There were highlights, of course, and that’s where the desire came in. The high watermark was the sale of Rene Magritte’s L’empire des lumières(1954) which brough in almost exactly a quarter of the evening’s total, $121 million, a world record for the artist at auction. The bidding, which bounced around the sales floor and both phone banks before ultimately being won by a collector on the phone with Alex Rotter, the chairman of 20th and 21st century art, lasted a full eleven minutes. You have to hand it to Christie’s for the embrace of spectacle. When auctioneer Adrian Meyer announced the work was open for bidding at $75 million, well below its $95 million estimate, the lights in the room went black. Then suddenly the walls of the sales floor were illuminated with a deep blue, much to the delight of the audience who “ooohd” and “aaahd” like they were at a magic show in the 1920s.
For the last year or so, Magritte has been the art world equivalent of Taylor Swift tickets. There seem to be plenty of popping up, but the price is high, and they are all desirable. Four of the top ten lots from the sale were by the whimsical Belgian surrealist, one of which happened to be another L’empire des lumières, though this example, which was from 1956, was smaller both in size and in price. It sold for $18.8 million against an estimate of $6 million to $8 million. Like many of the lots during the sale, the mini-Lumières went to a buyer on the phone with Christie’s deputy chairman, Asia Pacific, Xin Li-Cohen, hopefully signaling a reactivated Asian market. After this evening she deserves a shoulder massage after having had her arm up, either bidding or covering her mouth as she spoke to a collector, for what seemed like more than half the lots in the sale.
Ed Ruscha’s absolutely stunning 1964 Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, which also received the dramatic light show treatment, this time in a sci-fi-ish red, held the number two slot on the evening’s top ten list, bringing in more than $68 million on an estimate of around $50 million. (That was a new auction record for the artist.)
Works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney, and Willem de Kooning rounded out the top seller list. It’s notable that the two Mitchells, City Landscape and Untitled (both from 1955), hammered at below the low estimate while also counting among the most expensive works sold. Auction math is a funny thing.
Joan Mitchel, Untitled (1955). Christie’s Images Limited 2024.
Also notable are the works that were passed on, which included marquee names like Jasper Johns, Henri Rousseau, Georgia O’Keeffe, Wayne Thiebaud, and Gustave Caillebotte. Given the political environment during what I like to call the auction houses’ harvest season, it’s no surprise that there were some subpar works in the mix, along with the museum-worthy Magrittes and the Ruscha.
“Both sales were solid, while perhaps uneven in quality,” art advisor Mary Hoeveler told ARTnews after the sale, referencing Sotheby’s Monday night sale on Monday night and Tuesday’s at Christie’s. “Christie’s kept the estimates low to not only encourage bidding, but to see where the market is. There is steam behind the market again, and once people see that, more and better works will show up. Next season the consignments will start to flow again.”
At a press conference after the sale, Rotter said that Christie’s was operating under the “masterpiece approach” for this sale.
“In a market that is not so easy to maneuver, we thought that if we present the greatest works we can get, the Magritte, the Ruscha, these are the best examples. Now, there were things that didn’t sell. There were casualties. But I’m not worried about it,” he said. “The works that we put all the emphasis behind really proved us right. They had multiple bidders and showed that a market based on individual taste is on the rise.”
When Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta moved to the mainland US with his parents from their native Puerto Rico at age 10, he was thrilled when the white kids called him a word he’d never heard before. “They called me ‘spic’,’ he said. “I thought it was so cool that they’d given me this nickname! I only found out what it really meant when I told some Black kids at school and they said, ‘Yo, what are you talking about?’”
Meanwhile, several states away, his later bandmate, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, was experiencing his own brand of racism as a kid. Like his Mexican-born father, he has blue eyes and light skin, which drew suspicion from both the Latino and the white communities. “You have to prove yourself to each side,” Bixler-Zavala said. “It’s like being a double agent. You’re always on the outside.”
Experiences like those not only shaped the worldview of both musicians, it formed a bond between them so strong, it remains the longest, and in some ways, the deepest relationship of their lives. “For years, we lived together,” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “We were in two bands together. We shared shirts and pants. We even went to the bathroom together.”
The complex web of intimacies that created forms the core of an unusually personal new music documentary, titled Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird. “Most music documentaries just tell you, ‘They made this album and then they became famous and then tragedy struck,’” Bixler-Zavala said. “This documentary is about the humanity behind all of that. It shows people being honest about their insecurities and vulnerabilities and how that affected the way they treated each other.”
Along the way, the film covers a daunting amount of drama, including the deaths of no fewer than 16 of their friends, bandmates and relatives, many at a young age, as well as instances of sexual abuse, homophobia brought on by Rodriguez-Lopez’ fluid sexuality, as well as a nearly ruinous brush with Scientology for Bixler-Zavala. Providing a throughline for the film is the power of their cultural identity, underscoring its meaning at a time when the term “identity politics” has been used as a cudgel to silence any conversations about its importance. In fact, one of the primary reasons the friends formed the Mars Volta, which mixes Latin music with punk and prog-rock, was to honor the cultures that shaped them. “When my mother was alive, we weren’t allowed to speak English at home,” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “That was so we would remember where we came from.”
To stress the role memory has had in his life, Rodriquez-Lopez, now 49, has been filming himself and his surroundings since he was seven years old. “Omar has documented every nook and cranny of his life,” said Bixler-Zavala. “So we had all this amazing footage.”
The film’s director, Nicholas Jack Davies, said roughly “70 to 80% of the footage we used either came from Omar or from footage he got other people to shoot when his bands played live.”
Most of the footage was shot on old VHS cameras from the 80s and 90s, giving the film a hard-grained look that feels both vintage and surreal. To Bixler-Zavala, the film’s rough edge tells viewers, “there’s no filter, this is the real thing”.
The reality of the pair’s life as parallel outliers started in the border town where they met as teens: El Paso, Texas. Both came from highly educated homes. Rodriguez-Lopez’s dad is a psychiatrist; Bixler-Zavala’s father taught Chicano Studies at University of Texas, El Paso. Growing up, both boys were small and intellectual, making them an easy target for bullies. They found a place and a voice in the underground punk scene of El Paso in the 80s, where they bonded on their love of bands like Bad Brains and the Dead Kennedys. At the same time, that made them targets as well. “Being a punk rock fan was dangerous in the 80s,” said Bixler-Zavala. “We got our asses kicked.”
Rodriguez-Lopez, who played guitar, worked with a hardcore band for a while but when they imploded in the early 90s, he joined singer Bixler-Zavala in a promising band he was in called At the Drive In. The music they made had the force and speed of punk but without its cliches, creating a sound with its own textures and scope. From the start, however, the two butted heads with key member Jim Ward about musical direction and worldview. “He was conservative, and I was very, very liberal,” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “He knew Latin kids, but he didn’t hang out with them.”
As a result, he said Ward was insensitive to both the racism he experienced and the queer culture he began to relate to. Meanwhile, Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala were getting closer, in part through their mutual interest in the more explorative aspects of drugs. “They helped us not just creatively but also physiologically and philosophically,” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “There’s a certain positive thing that happens when you isolate yourself from external influences and get more internal.”
The music that resulted started to catch on, earning them hype as the next big thing after the release of Relationship of Command, their powerful album in 2000 . At the same time, they hated the aggressive groups they got lumped in with and the subsequent misunderstandings about their intent. “Coming up in the punk scene, there’s this promise of hope and joy, but we found the world we were in to be very sexist and homophobic,” said Rodriguez-Lopez. “Back at that time, Rolling Stone was promoting Limp Bizkit and Korn, two overtly misogynist bands.”
Photograph: Publicity image from music company
An especially tense scene in the film reflects their discomfort with the world they found themselves in. While playing for an audience far more interested in breaking things and slam-dancing than getting the message of the music, Bixler-Zavala reacted by calling them “robots” and “sheep”, eliciting a hellish waves of boos. “That happened all the time,” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “I found myself in a space with the kind of dumb jocks I tried my whole life to avoid.”
When At the Drive In played Australia’s Big Day Out Festival in 2001, a 16-year-old girl died from injuries inflicted by the crowd in a mosh pit. When the band stopped their show due to the escalating violence, the promoters threatened to sue. Yet, the next time they played that festival, years later, “the promoters had meetings with every band about how to safely handle the crowd,” Bixler-Zavala said. “We were saying, ‘You don’t need to tell us. We’re the ones who started this!’”
The pressures of the road, vividly evoked in the film, eventually drove the band to the brink, inspiring them to call a six-month break for their mental health. Today, mental health issues are openly talked about by major artists like Chappell Roan and Shawn Mendes, but in the 90s they weren’t discussed at all. “Back then, it wasn’t even understood by members of our own band!” Rodriguez-Lopez said.
When the other members of the group insisted that they go back on the road well before the promised 6 month break was over, the two friends decided they’d had enough, leading to a decision to start a band of their own. For the new project, dubbed the Mars Volta, they vowed to make their culture a central part of both their sound and their philosophy. At the same time, the Latin music they drew on, including salsa, sounded wholly new in their hands.
In the film, the musicians liken the pure frenzy of the resultant music to an Aztec ritual sacrifice, with all of its blood and fury. At the same time, the new sound allowed for nuance, drawn from sophisticated prog groups like King Crimson and Magma. A key part of the alternate aural universe they created came from member Jeremy Ward (no relation to At the Drive-In Member Jim Ward). He didn’t play an instrument but his manipulations of the group’s vocals, along with his use of a made-up language for song and album titles, proved crucial to the group’s gestalt.
In the film, Rodriguez-Lopez likens what Ward did for the Mars Volta to what Eno did for Roxy Music. The relationship between Ward and the guitarist also turned romantic, though they made sure to hide their relationship from their audience, the press as well as from certain members of their own band. “Even in the underground we came from, the majority of places you went still felt threatening,” Rodriguez-Lopez said.
He calls his relationship with Ward “profoundly important. It was such a big part of my evolution.” At the same time, he doesn’t label his sexuality. “I fall in love with the person,” he said.
His closeness with Ward helped keep the latter in the band after he got into heroin, a habit he tried to break before it killed him in 2003 at the legendary rock star death age of 27. Ward’s passing is but one of many chronicled in the film. Yet, due to aspects of their Latin background, the friends say they’ve come to experience mortality as an enriching part of the life cycle. For them, remembering the dead and accepting their loss is inextricable from the desire to honor their culture, a concept taken from the indigenous Taino people of the Caribbean. “People say, ‘Oh my God, there was so much loss in your life when you were young. I’m so sorry,’” Rodriguez-Lopez said. “I say to them, ‘why sorry? I got to know these people, if only for a short time. And, from them, I got to know very early the value life has.”
Even so, Rodriguez-Lopez calls the death of his mother at 63, “mutilating”. To make things harder, at that time he and Bixler-Zavala were bitterly estranged, in part, due to the latter’s involvement with Scientology. The singer’s eventual break with that organization, as well as the duo’s subsequent reproachment, brings the film’s already operatic narrative to an emotional peak.
Along the way, we see the two friends say and do many things they now regret, yet today they say they’re proud to have it all represented on film so frankly. “In art, we’re always aiming for this high realm which at many times can make you an ogre,” Bixler-Zavala said. “My ultimate hope is that the film reminds people that we’re human and fragile just like you. It’s important to never forget that.”
steel veil: A Bold Expression of Minimalism in ukraine
The newly completed Steel Veil residence by architecture studio YOUSUPOVA in Ukraine exemplifies modern minimalism with a bold industrial aesthetic. Clad in slate and rusted steel, the house features clean lines and open spaces, with large glass panels that bring in natural light and provide sweeping views of the outdoors. The design prioritizes functionality over decoration, staying true to modern architectural trends. By using straightforward shapes and high-quality materials, the home achieves a sharp, graphic presence that complements its environment.
The landscape design enhances the building’s simplicity. Instead of adding terraces or extra structures, the architects emphasized the home’s bold design. Minimalist vegetation and subtle lighting were carefully chosen to accentuate the facade without distracting from its clean lines. ‘When I imagined this house, I envisioned something I would want to live in myself. This design felt perfect for me at the time,’ said the architect, reflecting on the project’s inspiration.
industrial materials for modern architecture by yousupova
The combination of slate and rusted metal by the architects at YOUSUPOVA gives the Steel Veil house its distinctive look. These materials highlight the minimalist design while creating an urban feel that looks forward to the future. Panoramic glass ceilings are a standout feature of the home. They brighten the interiors by increasing natural light and serve as a clean and bold visual element from the outside. This contrast between glass, stone, and metal adds depth and texture to the building’s design. Meanwhile, an outdoor courtyard complements the structure. Minimalist landscaping ensures the house remains the focal point, while pathway lighting subtly guides visitors to the entrance without overwhelming the view.
Inside, the Steel Veil balances openness and privacy. The ground floor features an open-plan kitchen-living room, which can also double as a home office. This flexibility makes the space ideal for both work and relaxation. The second floor is dedicated to bedrooms, creating a private retreat away from the more social areas below. Outdoors, the courtyard includes a swimming pool and a gazebo with a guest room, offering additional comfort and convenience.
the Steel Veil by YOUSUPOVA is a minimalist home in Ukraine
the house features slate and rusted metal cladding for an industrial language
large glass panels bring natural light and connect the interior with the outdoors
the design prioritizes functionality with clean lines and no unnecessary ornamentation
One of the dishes at Sherlock Holmes: The Great Murder Mystery. Photo: Anett Posalaki
Immersive dining has exploded in popularity in recent years. Some of the sector’s key players talk to Anya Ryan about the complexities of running these events, their processes and the future of gastro-theatre
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As one quarter of the Swedish underground-ish rap collective Drain Gang, Bladee (pronounced Blade) spent his 20s on the frontlines of a hyper-online youth culture. But as his 30th birthday loomed, the musician born Benjamin Reichwald started to sweat. His anxiety about ageing, a serious depressive spell, and the mixed reception to his latest album, spiralled into a crisis: were he and his Drain Gang peers “permanently frozen as 20-year-olds because we came up at a certain time of our lives”, he wondered. Was he already past it at 29?
“I got so old, I got embarrassed to be even here,” Reichwald sings on his newest album, Cold Visions. Older readers may roll their eyes, but given Reichwald has built up one of the most ardent young fanbases in music, this was a valid worry. “I had a lot to get off my chest,” he says now. “I was thinking a lot about my position and I felt stuck – do I have to be perceived as an artist to feel fulfilled? I’m chasing that and it doesn’t give me anything. So why am I doing this?”
Reichwald has a reputation for being elusive (this is one of the very few solo interviews he has ever done) and frequently obscures his face. Lately he has favoured corpse paint, blood-red grills for his teeth and a chaotic assemblage of bandanas, sunglasses and Oakley hats. But during a two-hour conversation in a Brooklyn hotel room, in Gucci sneakers and a T-shirt with the logo of Norwegian black metal band Satyricon, he is thoughtful and forthcoming.
Despite his worries, being 30 has treated Reichwald well. In Marchhe released Psykos, a rock-leaning collaboration with his fellow Swedish rapper and long-term friend and collaborator Yung Lean, who also featured on Cold Visions, which was released the following month. In October, they both appeared on Charli xcx’s Brat remix album, with Bladee reworking the song Rewind. “It’s a Bladee verse, I did my thing,” is how he modestly describes his contribution, but he speaks more effusively of Charli: “I have eternal respect for her. She put me in this context with all these other people” – Ariana Grande, Lorde and Billie Eilish all appear on the remix record – “and I’m very grateful to be involved.”
It caps a big year for Reichwald. Released a decade after his debut mixtape, Cold Visions is his most fully realised project yet. Made in two weeks in his house in Stockholm, the album is, he says, “really honest, more like a diary”. In the course of 30 songs, he purges his demons over raging, blown-out trap beats. Brain cells fried into oblivion, he navigates panic attacks and self-loathing, calls himself “the king of nothing matters” and raps about “violently drug abusing weed”. In one line he’s working out and getting tanned in LA, the next “I’m crashing down some like a wave over castles made of sand.”
Cold Visions was self-released after Reichwald split from Year0001, Drain Gang’s longtime label and management company.“I don’t really care any more about being a bigger artist,” he says. “The only thing that’s important is that I’m doing something that’s true to me.”
The Drain Gang collective – Bladee, Ecco2K, Thaiboy Digital, and Whitearmor – have been best friends since their teens, playing around with Auto-Tune, and freestyling in the vein of idiosyncratic US rappers such as Lil B and Chief Keef. Early Bladee tracks – overcastcloud rap about crushed hearts, pills and dreams – were so digitally processed that they passed through the uncanny valley and ended up somewhere strangely melodic and emotive.“I hated to hear my voice without the Auto-Tune,” Reichwald says. “It’s how we found our sound. Without it we wouldn’t have committed to doing it – it sounded too bad.”
The group cycled through a number of names before landing on Drain Gang, inspired by a nihilistically gothic sentiment later articulated in Bladee’s song Be Nice 2 Me: “Take a knife and drain your life.” They quickly found kindred spirits in Sad Boys, a local crew featuring Yung Lean. In 2014, Lean’s melancholic and memeable hip-hop was taking the internet by storm, and Reichwald quit his job at a kindergarten to join him on tour.
By April 2015, barely out of his teens, Reichwald was living with Lean in Miami, where working on music came second to partying and drug use. One evening, Lean suffered drug-induced psychosis; Reichwald called the ambulance which probably saved his life. Hours later, Barron Machat, Lean’s 27-year-old manager, died in a car accident on his way to the hospital; Xanax was found in his system. “Things were building to a point where something was going to happen because of how we were living,” Reichwald says. “We didn’t think that anything could go wrong, we were so in this drugs and rock star lifestyle. Someone was probably always gonna die with how we were moving. It was very reckless, but we were so young, we just didn’t know.”
Reichwald returned to Sweden and worked at a shampoo factory while suffering from PTSD and struggling to process Machat’s death and Lean’s deteriorating mental health. “I was not really OK,” he says. Reichwald says it took him a long time to understand that he and his friends had autonomy over their surreal new lives as successful rappers. “I sometimes felt like, ‘I shouldn’t be here, so I have to do what everyone says.’ I didn’t understand that I had any value in the situation. I didn’t understand why people would like my music. I thought there must be some kind of misunderstanding. But now, I’ve done it for so long and I actually know what I’m doing. I believe more in my ability.”
His music remained dark and dissociative for a good while, but the clouds began to part around 2020. While Reichwald’s persona had long swung between mall rat and mystic, his spiritual side became more pronounced as his music grew brighter. Fans started to wonder if he had experienced some sort of transformative near-death experience because, in 2019, he had mentioned that he’d been struck by lightning in Thailand. Or at least he thinks that’s what happened. “Either I had a random seizure from seeing the lightning or I got struck by it.” Whatever it was, “something definitely changed around that time”.
Drain Gang’s angst once enticed a considerable number of nihilistic, male online edgelords, but their fanbase has evolved as their music has become more euphoric, frequently going viral on TikTok during the pandemic. Most of the crowd at a recent show were dressed in distressed black clothes like Reichwald; they were mainly so young that fans older than 26 were given their own fast-track queue as if they needed elderly care.
Reichwald says that he is uncomfortable with being idolised, but understands the way that belonging to a subculture can be life-affirming. Even before his teens, he formed a punk band with Ecco2K after seeing someone with a studded leather jacket and thinking: “I want to be like that. But,” he adds, “you need to find yourself within all that.”
Bladee with Drain Gang member Ecco2K. Photograph: Joshua Gordon
He allows himself a little pride in the way Drain Gang have built and maintained their singular corner of music. “We still don’t feel like someone is doing what we’re doing, better,” he says. “I would love to hear someone take it to the next level with a new perspective, someone young. I feel like that’s the point of it – you can keep the idea going.”
He’s now looking beyond Cold Visions to his own future. “I want to become a better person,” he says with a sweetly earnest laugh. “I want to have a brighter outlook and work on liking myself more. I’m sick of thinking about myself; I would like to be more outside my head.” After several years spent getting “sick all the time”, he is “trying to be sober and healthy”. Lately he’s been experimenting with songwriting in Swedish, and working on abstract paintings in his art studio. Ultimately, he finds solace in the act of creating. “Even in my sadder music,” he says, “I’m striving for joy.”
The ballet world is mourning the death of Vladimir Shklyarov, one of its leading male dancers.
Shklyarov, a principal with the prestigious Mariinsky Theatre, was an "extraordinary artist" who inspired fans worldwide, one tribute said.
His death, announced by the St Petersburg company on Saturday, is being investigated by federal authorities, according to Russian media reports.
Mariinsky representatives told media he had fallen from the fifth floor of a St Petersburg building while on painkillers.
"This is a huge loss not only for the theatre's staff but for all of contemporary ballet," the company said in a statement on Saturday.
"Our condolences to the artist’s family, loved ones, friends and all the numerous admirers of his work and talent."
Shklyarov was married to fellow company dancer Maria Shklyarov, with whom he had two children.
Born in Leningrad, he studied at the famed Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet, graduating in 2003.
He joined the Mariinsky Theatre the same year, becoming a principal in 2011.
Over 20 years with the company, he danced leads across several productions, including Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.
He performed at prestigious venues around the world, including the Royal Opera House in London and Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In 2014 and 2015, he featured as a guest artist at the American Ballet Theatre. The company issued a statement on Sunday mourning his "tragic loss."
"We mourn the tragic loss of Vladimir Shklyarov, an extraordinary artist whose grace and passion inspired audiences worldwide.
"Your light will continue to shine through the beauty you brought to this world," the company wrote on Instagram.
Shklyarov received several accolades during his lifetime, including the Léonide Massine International Prize in 2008. He was also appointed an Honoured Artist of Russia in 2020.
"He forever inscribed his name in the history of world ballet," the Mariinsky Theatre said.
In the historic quarters of Rome’s Villa Fiorelli, where the architectural language speaks of bygone decades, Casa Polly emerges as a unique blend of brutalist austerity and pop exuberance. Spearheaded by 02A Studio, this innovative project transforms a 1960s apartment into a vibrant, family-friendly home that tells a story of contrasts and continuity.
Once the creative domain of designer Valerio Ciampicacigli, the apartment bore the hallmarks of mid-century brutalism – raw concrete, open spaces, and an uncompromising focus on materiality. Today, 02A Studio architects Marco Rulli and Thomas Grossi reinterpret these features, infusing them with the lively palette and whimsical forms of pop art. The result is a home that dances between the stark and the playful, the rigid and the fluid.
According to Rulli, the aim was to “celebrate the home’s rich heritage while infusing it with the quirky, joyful aesthetic of its new owners, actress Martina Pinto and director Alessandro Poggi.” The project preserves the apartment’s robust character, yet softens its edges, creating an environment that is as functional as it is expressive.
Spanning 1,292 square feet, Casa Polly’s layout was thoughtfully reimagined to cater to the evolving needs of its occupants. The centerpiece of the home is an open-plan living area, defined by its eclectic mix of materials. Here, an exposed concrete pillar takes center stage, grounding the space with brutalist integrity. Surrounding it, a terrazzo floor shows through a delicate resin finish, while glossy tiles in the kitchen and wooden accents on a raised dining platform offer softer counterpoints.
Each room introduces a new layer of personality. In the hallway, lilac stripes cloak hidden storage, transforming utility into art. Meanwhile, the primary bedroom embraces a cartoonish charm, with flowing lines, plush furnishings, and a dreamy light blue carpet. The ensuite bathroom further explores this theme, where pastel tones and undulating forms meet sleek, industrial partitions. “This project embodies a perfect fusion of two worlds,” says Marco Rulli, co-founder of the studio with Thomas Grossi. “I love homes with a story to tell, and this one – with its layered patterns and eccentric furnishings – brings together different identities in a way that feels both unexpected and harmonious.”
The bathroom’s doorway is framed with a light green wavy border that leads into the light pink tiled space. A matching pink fluted vanity with a countertop wrapped in the same green as the doorway becomes the focal point seen from the bedroom. A contrasting pale yellow mirror introduces an unexpected new color that’s a welcome addition.
Though visually striking, Casa Polly is designed with family life at its core. The reconfiguration includes a child’s bedroom, a walk-in closet, and a dedicated laundry area – all integrated into the home’s playful aesthetic. Every corner of the apartment speaks to a careful balance between form and function, ensuring it remains both practical and delightful.
At the heart of Casa Polly’s transformation lies 02A Studio’s commitment to crafting homes that resonate deeply with their inhabitants. Founded a decade ago, the studio approaches each project as an intricate puzzle, where client aspirations, architectural constraints, and artistic vision converge. For Rulli and Grossi, architecture is more than the sum of its parts; it’s a medium for storytelling and a means to foster joy.
Caroline Williamson is Editor-in-Chief of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and can usually be found searching for vintage wares, doing New York Times crossword puzzles in pen, or reworking playlists on Spotify.
For more than fifty years, Mexican artists toiled in the shadow of revolution. So, too, does the Met with “Mexican Prints at the Vanguard,” through January 5.
The Mexican Revolution took ten long years, starting in 1910, but artists before it could see it coming in all its violence. Well after, it served as a model and a call for change. To the left, and there were many on the left, it served as a cry to support for other revolutions, in Russia and Spain. Later still, it served as a bitter memory, as a government dedicated to remaking the country and the world gave way to yet another dictator. Could, though, the cries put Mexico at the vanguard of twentieth-century art? Perhaps, but only by remaining in the trenches.
“Mexican Prints” is thoroughly out of fashion, which is to say seriously modern. These days, a proper Mexican revolution would be a cultural revolution, with women in the vanguard, like Amalia Mesa-Bains recently at El Museo del Barrio, and Mexican tradition their passion. The Met ends in 1955 as if to avoid all that. References to Pre-Colombian art do appear in square-jawed heads, but not often, and figures costumed for a carnival come only at the end, with Carlos Mérida, as one of the few spots of color. But then Mérida also produced an abstract composition, give or take a bird. Frida Kahlo, in native costume as a woman’s act of defiance, does not appear at all.
The curator, Mark McDonald, starts in the 1700s, but not with native tradition. He looks instead to Europe, much like a past show of “Painted in Mexico.” Later, Tina Modotti will depict soldiers with a debt to Baroque paintings of a Madonna rising. In between, artists turned to the satire of Honoré Daumier. But this was always art as illustration, in service to a cause. Text can overwhelm images. Tracts and newsletters precede starker lithographs by David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Of course, Siqueiros was also a muralist, and the show runs in parallel with Mexican murals. Diego Rivera, turns up a print after one of his most famous. Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary, stands beside his horse. Rivera came to New York as well, for a show of his work at MoMA. José Clemente Orozco came as well, too, with a print of a vaudeville act in Harlem. Here or in Mexico, change was in the air.
Mexican prints first entered the museum’s collection at the instigation of a French artist, Jean Charlot, who moved to New York in 1928. He contributes a woodcut of Rich People in Hell. Others, too, adopted woodcuts for their jagged edges, with praise for Lenin and Stalin as the bombs fall. Siqueiros himself depicts a Trinity of Scoundrels. This is art and ideology in black and white. After the revolution, the new regime sponsored arts education. As that became a tool for state propaganda, Taller de Gráfica Popular (or Graphics Workshop for the People), took up the slack.
Still, something sets Mexican prints apart from Europe and America—and from their own easy answers: revolution comes at a cost, and death enters even in triumph. Zapata looks humble and heroic enough, but he stands astride a dead body. Rufino Tamayo pictures a native couple as heros, but they might be confronting hills on fire. Alfredo Zalce sees the Yucatan, a target of agrarian reform, as a paradise. Yet his figures struggle with the overgrowth.
Death enters even before the revolution. Celebrated in his time, José Guadalupe Posada continued the tradition of pages dense with text. Couples embrace, but “death is inexorable,” and wooers, bikers, and angels alike are skeletons. So is the “people’s editor.” Less well known, Emilio Amero stands apart in 1930 with a clock and telephone in Surrealism’s ghostly light. This is modernity, and art is in the vanguard, but it might end in darkness.
Where: MANA Wynwood Convention Center (318 NW 23rd St., Miami, FL 33127)
Head on over to the MANA Wynwood Convention Center, where Spectrum Miami and Red Dot Miami will host highly curated exhibitions spanning 150,000 square feet of indoor space.
Spectrum Miami will feature special programs that showcase exhibitors, art industry professionals, and select nonprofits and institutions. One of their featured programs, The Discoveries Collection, will spotlight highly collectible works from around the world and showcase some of their favorite affordable pieces ($3,000 or less).
Running alongside its sister fair, Red Dot Miami will offer the unique opportunity to connect with blue-chip galleries and emerging artists under one roof. Their featured programming includes SPOTLIGHT Galleries, which will provide collectors with a focused look at several cutting-edge galleries and their artists, who are recognized for their skill and achievement in the visual arts.
