FREE 21 | HOT&COOL ART ENIGMA VARIATIONS KEITH COVENTRY The fine art of dystopia KEITH COVENTRY IN VYNER STREET EAST LONDON LONDON EAST STREET VYNER IN COVENTRY KEITH ED SYKES: SYKES: ED CURRENT EXHIBITION: FRANÇOIS MORELLET LES RÈGLES DU JEU UNTIL 27 MAY opens in London May 21, 2016, at 6 pm Installation view at The Mayor Gallery, 2016 R.S.V.P. if attending the opening FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION: LI HUASHENG THE MEDITATION ROOM 02 JUNE — 28 JULY 1364, 2013, ink on paper, 69 x 136.5 cm 41-43 Brook Street, Mayfair, London, W1K4HJ THE MAYOR GALLERY 21 CORK STREET, FIRST FLOOR, LONDON W1S 3LZ liquidartsystem.com • T. +44 20 38 416182 • [email protected] TEL: +44 (0) 20 7734 3558 FAX: +44 (0) 20 7494 1377 A4 HALL 2.0 [email protected] www.mayorgallery.com 1 2 17:18 ART16 Take your pick 20-22 MAY STEPHEN NEWTON at London’s OLYMPIA Abstract Realism First Night summer art fair 19 May Discover, love, buy artworks from over 30 countries Book Tickets artfairslondon.com Room With a yellow Vase 2014 “...an astonishing triumph of expressionism - a genuine tour de force ŽĨƉĞƌƐŽŶĂůǀŝƐŝŽŶĂŶĚƐĞůĨͲŽďũĞĐƟĮĐĂƟŽŶ͟Donald Kuspit Yoshiyuki Ooe Yoshiyuki 18 May - 26 June 2016 Train 2011 | mixed media 69 x 95 30cm Train Art Bermondsey Project Space 183-185 Bermondsey Street (adjacent to White Cube) London SE1 3UW A NOT-FOR-PROFIT PLATFORM SUPPORTING THE FUSION OF ART, PHOTOGRAPHY & CULTURE Telephone 0203 441 5152 [email protected] www.project-space.london ART 13 CAPTURED BY DAFYDD JONES [email protected] >> DIARY NOTES ISPY ............. COVER IMAGE WHOSE A PRETTY BOY? a pension and probably a health-care REGULAR READERS of newspapers scheme and playing with other people’s and colour supplements will be familiar money’. However, in March this year, with the nauseous trend for Fleet Deutsche Bank announced it would be Street’s finest to oppress the audience paying bonuses of 2.4 billion euros, with lurid tales of their own mental despite the German investment bank breakdowns, sex changes, terminal posting a 6.8 billion euro loss in its ED SYKES illnesses and bereavements. From the worst trading year since the global unfortunate, now paralysed, journalist financial crisis. Deutsche Bank would Keith Coventry 2015 MIKE & MARY VON JOEL who fell off her horse and writes a certainly lose face having to do a BP Vyner Street. E. London White Cube ELLIOTT MACDONALD weekly Times column on how she now style strategic withdrawal from art Pace London 3 A graduate of the Chelsea School of Art post-graduate course in has no life (basically the same text sponsorship, but can anything be read 1982, Keith Coventry (b1958) has enjoyed a stellar career based – each week) to celebrity scribblers – like into canny entrepreneur Matthew NORMAN unusually – on constant change and reinvention of his core discipline, Hunter Davies, who could not resist Slotover’s recent bromance with new GEORG BASELITZ JAY JOPLING ROSENTHAL painting. Creating work in clearly defined ‘series’, he seems to effortlessly “...why would SIMON DE PURY move from one interpretation of his key concerns to the next. A key to his the urge for some sort of public therapy Frieze investor and Hollywood supremo: White Cube White Cube White Cube commercial success lies in a 2013 series of brilliant reductions of common over the tragic loss of his author wife – a critic with an Ari Emanuel and his agency, WME- signage (maps) stationed at the entrance to sprawling council estates. the fashion is growing. In this respect, IMG (recently valued at $5.5 billion)? These minimal monochromatic paintings, reminiscent of Malevich and you would have thought the art world established media Art advisor, Alistair Hicks, the bank’s Russian Suprematism, will be judged by art historians as a notable stepping stone in the ongoing story of Abstract Expressionism. might be exempt – based on its being boyish schmoozer at Frieze, must be an intellectual arena populated, on the profile want to wondering if it is worth ironing his whole, by educated and clever people. Rupert Bear trousers this year. But never underestimate the power deviate into the of that beckoning finger of populist world of washed-up THIS IS SYRIAN TAT celebrity. TALKING OF art and entertainment. ‘soap stars’ with One of the greatest tragedies of modern HOT & COOL ART Who should leap up on the front page times – the wholesale destruction by GREGOR MUIR (terrorism, Brexit, instability in Libya their diet apps retarded fighters for ISIS of the ancient Tate Britain etc.) of The Sunday Times News architecture at Palmyra, and in particular PANDEMONIA EDITOR Lyle Owerko Review but our old shipmate Waldemar and slimming the 1,800-year-old Arch of Triumph – NICOLAS SMIRNOFF Mike von Joel NEW YORK Januszczak. A new major TV series on was turned into a photo-op for DUGGIE FIELDS [email protected] Anne Chabrol Surrealism? Art in war torn Syria? Sadly videos?” London’s mayor, Alexander Boris de Pace London PUBLISHERS PARIS not. Our hero gets two whole pages to Pfeffell Johnson. Archaeology at the JOHN PAWSON RON ARAD David Tidball explain that he was once so fat he nearly eclipsed the actual quality of his work Syrian site, which dates back to Design Museum Benefit Karl Skogland BERLIN exploded in an eat-all-you-can Chinese and savvy collectors are only really Neolithic times, was dominated by truly [email protected] restaurant. Now, Januszczak is a serious interested in his very early ceramic unique architectural remains. A likeness Elizabeth Crompton man, an accomplished art historian pieces. But it cannot have gone of the striking Temple of Bel arch was MELBOURNE Jeremy Levison turned credible TV pundit. Who unnoticed by Perry that his art is hardly cut from donated Egyptian marble [email protected] remembers his truly stimulating TV ever discussed seriously by critics and sculpted in 30 days by computer 1 DEPUTY EDITOR ADMINISTRATION series on Van Gogh and Gauguin – anymore, overshadowed as it is by his programmed, robotic arms at a work- HARRY BLAIN KEITH COVENTRY Anna McNay Julie Milne both artists who had already been prancing alter-ego, Claire. As the desire shop in the famous quarries of Carrara, Pace London [email protected] [email protected] ‘explained’ to death – where Januszczak for transvestite experience is very much Italy. This microscopically detailed GUSTAV METZGER Tate Britain managed to dredge up factoids not a natural part of Perry’s psyche, he is process is in itself miraculous and opens EDITORIAL PUBLISHED BY readily brought to mind even by those obviously not straight-jacketed in the up endless possibilities for inserting ASSISTANT State Media Ltd. Alice Cox in the business of art? Certainly no same way – say – Barry Humphries is accurate repairs into the most complex LONDON [email protected] one could ignore the presenter (62) – by the self-created monster of Edna of historic carved buildings. But rather [email protected] dressed in his It-Ain’t-Half-Hot-Mum Everidge. But Perry must have deduced than rising up nearly 50-feet and hand- CORRESPONDENTS shorts – halting in some nondescript how what once shone a light on his carved from limestone, this version Clare Henry PRINTED BY country lane in Auvers to point out career as a serious artist has at the stands just 20 feet tall (and cost around NEIL TENNANT Ian McKay Garnett Dickinson that this was the exact spot where same time scuppered it. The move into $143,000). As preening dignitaries stood BAL KALIRAI RAQUEL VAN HAVER William Varley Rotherham S63 5DL Vincent ate his sandwiches on that broadcast media, for which Perry is in front of it for the cameras and hordes Tate Britain Jack Bell Gallery fateful last day of en plein air painting somewhat of a natural, is an astute one. of gullible rubber-neckers seethed VANESSA VIE in 1890. So why would a critic with As the contemporary art world today behind the steel barriers, it was hard not MICHAEL HOROVITZ STATE MAGAZINE is available through selected an established media profile want to embraces its role as part of the to think of the infamous scene in This Is Art Bermondsey NATALIA SOUZA INES DE LA ROCHE BISHI deviate into the world of washed-up entertainment industry, Perry would do Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner’s brilliant 1984 Project Space Liberatum galleries, libraries, art schools, museums and ‘soap stars’ with their diet apps and well to mind the mores of that business piss take of rock star pretentiousness) TERRY O'NEILL other art venues across the UK. slimming videos? It is clearly one of – where gimmick, novelty and cheap when a three-foot-high replica of Fiat Chrysler Motor Village life’s mysteries – as is the ever evolving sensation dominate. After all, who could Stonehenge descends onto the stage – Totally free, STATE is about new media career of Grayson Perry. ever forget the trilling nun – Sister the props department had confused manoeuvres in painting and the Wendy Beckett – and her great insights millimetres and inches. After only three visual arts – combined with f22, Barely a fortnight after Januszczak’s into the flesh pots of Renaissance ateliers. PR laden days in Trafalgar Square, this a supplement on developments in mea culpa, the front cover of The Times conscience-raising arch travelled on the fusion of art & photography. supplement portrays a slick, vaguely WHAT A BANKER to Dubai (then to New York City in handsome, Hoxton restaurant maitre’d. THINGS COULD be worse – you September) before finding a permanent It is not a review magazine – it No it doesn’t.