January 2020 Art News

Set in the wake of the Cold War, in a decade of great hope and freedom ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the innovative installation celebrates the fearless designers, photographers, and video artists who made the 1990s iconic and worthy of its current revival.
As we begin the 2020s, let’s look back on what made the 1920s such a remarkable decade, and one worth learning from. Here are eight trends from the 1920s to inspire the 2020s.
January brings Americana Week to New York, including a slate of auctions that focus on a range of all-American antiques. Three strong results at Sotheby’s stand out.
One of the largest porcelains in the Sir Percival David Collection held at the British Museum, a beautiful glazed blue and white garden seat dating from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), is set to tour the UK in 2020.
Striking Power examines iconoclasm in Egypt, focusing on the legacies of kings Hatshesput and Akhenaten, as well as the late Antiquity.
Coming soon from Art & Object: The Art Buzz podcast! Art Buzz is your VIP pass to the art world.

Van Gogh peers out of the canvas with a sidelong, suspicious glance. With hollowed cheeks and a full beard, the painter is recognizable but also doesn’t look as composed and self-possessed as in his numerous other self-portraits. The painting’s surface is rough, with thick brushstrokes that are ragged and aggressive, less precise and controlled than in Van Gogh’s other works.

Storyworld, a new Dutch museum for comics, animation and games, opened its doors on January 11 with the aim to embody the crumbling division between fine art and visual storytelling.
Melding personal ephemera; used lingerie and designer footwear, costume jewelry, religious relics and Hanukkah decorations with old paint brushes, children’s toys, souvenirs and studio refuse, she creates prismatic, self-narrative vessels investigating nostalgia, ritual, memory, and the act of remembering.

 

The division between the personal and professional lives of New York-based artists Rakuko Naito and Tadaaki Kuwayama has long been blurred. For decades, the Japanese-born couple — who immigrated to Manhattan just after their marriage in 1958 — have shared a rambling mixed-use loft space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood with a common living space flanked by separate studios. ‘He’s over there and my studio is over here,’ explains the soft-spoken Naito.