A homage to the past and future of artisanal watchmaking
Beautifully written and sumptuously illustrated, Greubel Forsey: The Art of Invention is a book not only for fans of the brand, but for anyone who ever felt any curiosity about watches. In early 1992, Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey met at Renaud et Papi, a hothouse of new watchmaking ideas in Le Locle, amidst the beauty of the Swiss Jura Mountains. They teamed up and launched the firm in 2004. From the very beginning, Greubel Forsey distinguished itself for many inventions that have advanced watchmaking expertise in this century.
Refusing to accept that everything had already been done in horology – and going against the grain – from their first watch – the 30-degree Double Tourbillon – Greubel Forsey focused on invention and innovation, testing the limits of mechanical advances in their Experimental Watch Technology (EWT) workshop, as well as bringing back the kind of hand finishing not seen since the 18th- and 19th-century.
Founder Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey in the early ages of their horological adventure.
The book was commissioned to celebrate their two decades of pioneering excellence. The Art of Invention…
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces at The Courtauld Gallery
The Courtauld Gallery, located in the historic Somerset House, houses one of the UK’s greatest art collections. It is particularly known for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, as well as being at the forefront of the study of art and will now showcase a rich array of highlights from the Oskar Reinhart Collection for the […]
The artistry will be glittering at the second edition of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival, which runs in London from 12th March to 8th April at the Royal Ballet and Opera, Sadler’s Wells, South Bank Centre and Tate Modern. Following on from the hugely successful inaugural event in 2022, this iteration […]
A tribute to the work of one of the fundamental figures of French Modernist painting
After three years in the making, the Amar Gallery is bringing to London Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed, a unique exhibition featuring paintings and works on paper from the 1950s to 1980s by this French artist, crucial to the feminist movement.
Often overshadowed in the past by her older sister, Simone – the groundbreaking feminist writer and partner of Nobel Prize-winning Jean-Paul Sartre – de Beauvoir is now a highly regarded figure in her own right.
At the painter’s first solo exhibition in Paris in 1936 at the Galerie Jacques Bonjean, her work acquired a very distinguished admirer indeed: Pablo Picasso. He was drawn to the exquisite use of colour and shape in Hélène’s compelling paintings. Picasso instantly saw that her swirling brushstrokes possessed an undeniably mesmeric quality.
Now we can see for ourselves what so appealed to Picasso at The Woman Destroyed, de Beauvoir’s first solo exhibition in London, at the Amar Gallery.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is an extremely rare piece by de Beauvoir, who died in 2001 aged 91. In 1967, Gallimard published just 143 first-edition copies of Simone’s pioneering feminist book, The Woman Destroyed. It was illustrated with sixteen haunting etchings by her sister.
Gallimard refused to publish any more first-edition copies of The Woman Destroyed as they were feared that printing such “feminine” literature would be construed as an attempt to overthrow the social order. For that reason, first editions of this book are exceptionally hard to come by, but a copy will be on display at the Amar Gallery. A seminal work in feminist ideology, the book was the first and only time the de Beauvoir sisters worked together. It is a real coup for the gallery to have it on view.
In another coup, Claudine Monteil, the best friend of both siblings, and author of The Beauvoir Sisters, will be giving a presentation at the gallery on 25th January at 2pm.
The Woman Destroyed is a most welcome – and long overdue – celebration of the beauty of de Beauvoir.
Hélène de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed Amar Gallery, Kirkman House, 12-14 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 2RF 24th January – 2nd March, 2025 More information and tickets, HERE.
Despite being separated in time by nearly 200 years, Sigmar Polke felt a deep admiration for Francisco de Goya. The show at Museo del Prado, Sigmar Polke. Affinities Revealed, explores how the Spanish master influenced the work of the German painter, after he saw for the first time Goya’s Time and theOld Women in 1982.
From painting to photography, film installations and prints, Polke’s work revolutionised the international art scene. His use of innovative materials and techniques combined with his often-confrontational attitude towards political and social conventions labelled him as an anti-establishment artist.
Francisco de Goya, in his own way, was also an anti-establishment artist. He lived during the turbulent times of the Napoleonic invasion, a time when the Spanish monarchs were useless and the Church abused its power to criminal levels. His disgust was reflected in his art, which he used as a weapon to denounce the horrors and injustices he witnessed. At the same time, he could be humorous and acerbic, very much like Sigmar Polke.
In Sigmar Polke. Affinities Revealed, visitors will discover motifs, techniques and elements of composition that Polke took from Goya. The Museo del Prado identifies Goya’s influence on Polke in three different ways: first, the man himself and the socio-political surrounding context; second: the objectual and anthropomorphic iconography found both in Time and the Old Women (1810-12) and in the X-radiographs that Polke took of the painting in 1982; and third, the specific execution of the picture.
The show examines in detail Polke’s exploration of the painting. His X-radiographs revealed an earlier composition featuring a Resurrection of Christ ascending to heaven, surrounded by souls. This composition instigated an interest in the artist for the magical and the paranormal, which is reflected in many of his works, such as Untitled (Triptych), where ghostly faces peep out between layers of resin, amidst an intentionally ambiguous composition. The figure of Saturn, who appears behind the two old women holding a broom in a menacing manner, together with The Colossus (attributed to Goya, c. 1808) inspired the theme of gigantic figures that we see in works by Polke such as Black Man (1982), Large Man (1986-92) and the gigantic figures developed in 1997, which most powerful execution is possibly Fear (Black Man).
Curated by Gloria Moure, Sigmar Polke. Affinities Revealed is an intriguing exhibition – the first solo of the artist in Madrid – that will certainly take visitors into a journey of discovery of the German artist’s work, often described as a dialogue between the viewer and the artist. In doing so, visitors may find themselves invited to raise their own questions about aesthetic, political, and social conventions. The synergies with Goya’s paintings provide a further invitation to reflection, since the work of the Spanish master, back in the early 19th century, seem to indicate that he felt the Age of Enlightenment would end up in socio-political chaos and disorder.
Sigmar Polke. Affinities Revealed Until 16th March 2025 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Free access More information,HERE.
It has been six years since we last had the chance to admire Murakami’s work in London. Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami presents an exceptional opportunity to explore the artist’s interpretation of Japanese historical paintings.
Murakami’s work plays with blending commercial imagery, manga and of traditional art. In fact, he himself has several times bridged the gap between commercial work and art through his collaborations with luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Hublot, among others.
Trained in traditional Japanese art, Murakami brings together the flat compositions of classic Japanese painting and anime and manga aesthetics. His technique, coined as “super flat” emphasises the use of flat planes of colour, derived from the two-dimensional imagery from Japanese art that we see in manga and anime. At the same time, Murakami uses this “flatness” to reflect the lack of distinction in Japanese society and the otaku subculture. Otaku is the term used to describe obsessive fandom related to Japanese popular culture (anime, manga, video games…).
While participating in the PS1 International Studio Program in New York City in 1994, Murakami became heavily influenced by the monumental work of Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons’s simulationism, down to the practice of using a whole team to help him produce his large canvases. In his effort to show “a Kyoto that is not that beautiful”, Murakami combines elements of high art and mass culture, mirroring the work of Koons. He is also trying to emulate Willem de Kooning’s freedom of expression as Alzheimer’s progresses.
“In the process of preparation for these complex paintings, I try to go in my mind into the emptiness, like Kooning.”
– Takashi Murakami
The latest of Murakami’s influence is Disney’s show, Shogun. At the opening of this exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in London, the artist admitted being fascinated by this Western chronicle of the 17th century in Japan (dawn of the Edo period), when the country was immersed in internal conflict.
Murakami felt particularly inspired by seppuku (or hara-kiri), an honourable death conducted by ritualistic suicide in Japan, as the antagonism of dementia, which took his father’s life. Before killing themselves, the samurai would read a poem of their own creation. Murakami sees his epic paintings as his poem, “It got me thinking that if I could make my own poem before I die, maybe my soul will be in peace.” In his canvases, like in Shogun, beauty and death go hand in hand, as a way to process the trauma that is inherent to contemporary otaku subculture.
Detail of Rakuchu ̄-Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24), where one can observe Murakami’s singular iconography and characters among the traditional figures and motifs from the original 17th-century artwork.
With this motivation in mind, Murakami recreated these historic paintings, populating them with his iconic characters and motifs. From gold-leaf clouds embossed with skulls (a reference to the Toribeno burial ground) and smiling flowers to different versions of Mr D.O.B, some of which are far from its original kawaii (cute) aesthetic. A prime example is Rakuchu ̄-Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu: Iwasa Matabei RIP (2023–24), modelled on the 17th-century depiction of Kyoto by Iwasa Matabei’s Rakuchu ̄- Rakugai-zu Byo ̄bu(Scenes in and around Kyoto) (Funaki Version).
Other works in the show, such as Murakami’s paintings of the mythical guardians of Kyoto (the Four Symbols, one per cardinal point), are the result of a complex process that involves the combination of the artist’s own sketches with AI-generated images as well as fragments of his earlier works in a process that parallels the inventiveness of earlier artists in depicting unfamiliar or imaginary creatures.
Among the other works in the exhibition is Murakami’s version of a set of Daigo Hanami-zu screens that depicts a cherry blossom viewing event on the grounds of Kyoto’s Daigoji Temple.
To me, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami represents everything that Takashi Murakami stands for in art, condensed into an 18-painting show. Given Murakami’s popularity among international art collectors, it is likely that many of these pieces will end up in private collections, so don’t miss the opportunity to see this unique exhibition at Gagosian Gallery London.
Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami Gagosian, London 20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD 10th December, 2024 – 8th March, 2025
This extended festive season, make it your mission to visit the Old Royal Naval College to see Luke Jerram’s astronomical installation, Mars. The latest planet on display follows on from the success of the artist’s other works Gaia and Museum of the Moon and will complete the trilogy of installations at Greenwich.
Mars, our nearest planetary neighbour, has fascinated humans since the earliest times. Visible with the naked eye, it was Babylonian astronomers who named the planet after Nergal, the deity of war and destruction. Our current name follows the Roman version, Mars.
The depiction of Mars in fiction has been stimulated by its red colour and by 19th-century scientific speculations that its surface conditions might support intelligent life. The idea that the red planet was populated by sentient beings gave rise to the term Martians. Author Percival Lowell’s writings put forward the idea of a planet that was a drying, cooling, dying world in which ancient civilisations had constructed irrigation works (Schiaparelli’s “Canali” observations, along with maps of the canal system, further endorsed the concept.)
In 1938 in the USA, Orson Welles broadcast in the radio his version of the 19th-century novel The War of the Worlds, causing mass hysteria across the country. In the book, Martians invade Earth escaping their dying planet. Another outstanding fictional account of Mars is Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, in which the first human explorers accidentally destroy a Martian civilisation.
Once the Mariner (1965) and Viking (1976) spacecraft returned images of the planet as a lifeless and canal-less world, science-fiction authors used it as a source of inspiration for works concerning environmental problems on Earth. Cosmos author Carl Sagan summed up humankind’s fascination as: “Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.”
Mars, the god of war, indicated with the red arrow, looks down, from the central oval in the Painted Hall, on the planet named after him.
Luke Jerram’s Mars is displayed in Sir James Thornhill’s Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval Hospital Greenwich, a place originally intended for naval war heroes. The installation fuses the planet’s imagery, lighting, and a surround-sound composition. Thornhill’s fresco in the ceiling of the Lower Hall depicts Mars as the god of war. Visitors need to look at the northwestern corner of the central oval to find the deity in full armour and helmet, ready for battle.
Playfully, in the southeastern part, Galileo Galilei peers through a telescope at Mars, immortalising his first observations of the red planet in 1610.
See by yourself here:
Measuring seven metres in diameter, and internally lit, the artwork is a composition of detailed NASA imagery of the Martian surface so that the scale is about one million times smaller than the actual planet. Mars features a soundtrack by BAFTA-winning composer Dan Jones, including clips from NASA missions to Mars, totally immersing visitors in the experience. Maybe you can look for Schiaparelli’s “canali” yourself!
Over its lifetime, Mars will be presented in different ways both indoors and outdoors, so altering the experience and interpretation of the artwork. Alongside this awe-inspiring installation is an exciting programme of wellbeing events including yoga and sound baths under the red planet. Please see the website for details.
Mars at the Old Royal Naval College Old Royal Naval College, King William Walk, Greenwich, SE10 9NN. 23rd November 2024 – 20th January 2025 More information and tickets, HERE.
The scientific endeavours of the French monarchy in the 17th and 18th centuries
A thirst for scientific knowledge is probably not the first thing that comes to anyone’s mind when they think of Versailles, but the exhibition Versailles: Science and Splendour at the Science Museum in London proves how interested the French monarchy of the 17th and 18th centuries was in this topic.
The French kings realised that technology and scientific leadership were allies of power and prestige. From Louis XIV’s creation of the Academy of Sciences in 1666 to Louis XVI’s ordering of La Pérouse’s expedition to the Pacific in 1785, Versailles: Science and Splendour explores the scientific spirit of these monarchs and their courts.
Particular attention is given to the role of women in science, such as the pioneering midwife Madame du Coudray and Emilie du Châtelet, the eminent physicist and mathematician who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia.
The exhibition at the Science Museum is divided into three main topics. The first, Harnessing Science, focuses on the exploration of time and space. It is here that visitors can also discover the monumental gardens of Versailles in a new light. Louis XIV built spectacular fountains and water features, which required significant hydraulic engineering and mathematic expertise.
The second is Understanding Nature. Often spurred by the luxurious and demanding taste of the kings, botanists and engineers would work together to grow exotic fruits and zoologists would look after probably the most pampered menagerie in the world, which at the time of Louis XV included a rhinoceros.
More importantly, though, the support of these kings was crucial to the development of medical advances. For example, Louis XVI got himself and his whole family vaccinated against smallpox and Louis XV supported the training of midwives across France to reduce infant mortality and grow a populous and strong kingdom.
The final topic, Embracing Knowledge, shows how royal families were educated in physics, mathematics and chemistry. Their example was followed by the aristocracy and even the bourgeoisie, always aspiring to rub shoulders with their “betters”.
Versailles: Science and Splendour also reflects the court’s taste for spectacle. The palace provided an influential platform for scientific figures to present their work, as well as for the kings to display their power through extraordinary demonstrations, such as the flight of Etienne Montgolfier’s hot-air balloon at Versailles in 1783.
Versailles: Science and Splendour The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD 12th December 2024 – 21st April 2025 Further information and tickets, HERE.
The past 50 years have seen the incorporation of new disciplines, new technologies and new platforms of expression by artists from all fields. The Living End exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago focuses on painting, examining the questions presented by these innovations, countering the recycled discourse that “painting is dead”.
Cutting across geographies, histories and contexts, The Living End explores the different methods artists have used to challenge or intervene in the practice of painting and the role of painters over the past 50 years. The suggestion is that painting is a living art, in a constant state of renewal and rebirth.
From the experiments with computer-assisted graphics in the mid-1960s to the prevalence of screens and artists mining online digital and social media culture today, the show considers the impact of various representational technologies and production methods, such as the use of video and still cameras; computers, the internet and screens; automation; and the performing body. Comprising paintings, performances, videos and installations, The Living End explores the ways artists working across media have challenged the mythologies of painting, ultimately changing our understanding of what art constitutes.
The curators – Jamillah James and Jack Schneider – have emphasised the critical reading of the painting, its tropes, its prominence in the Western canon, and its historical associations with privilege. As technology increases access to the means of production, the model of the painter as a singular “genius” is being decentralised, opening abstract and representational painting to new perspectives.
Particularly interesting is the study of the cyclical relationship between still photography and painting, as well as how video has allowed artists working in performance the possibility of critiquing the trajectory and status of painting. Lastly, The Living End exhibition looks at the automation of painting, where the artist’s hand is largely absent, complicating the role of the artist as producer and the market’s enduring interest in painting as a commodity.
Author: Lavinia Dickson-Robinson
The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020 Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611 9th November 2024 – 23th March 2025 More information and ticketsHERE.
Opening image: Tala Madani, Solitaire (still), 2023.Single-channel color animation; 5 minutes, 58 seconds. Courtesy the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; and Pilar Corrias, London.
Nurturing creativity through art, education and nature
The Duke of Richmond and Gordon has announced a new creative endeavour to the rich palette of the Goodwood Estate: The Goodwood Art Foundation, which will open in May 2025.
Covering 11,000 acres of ravishing West Sussex countryside, the Goodwood Estate is already world-famous for hosting some of the biggest and most prestigious events in the British social calendar: Festival of Speed, Qatar Goodwood Festival, Goodwood Revival and Goodwoof.
The Foundation will exhibit works by internationally renowned artists. The canvas will be the gorgeous natural landscape of the Goodwood Estate.
The not-for-profit Goodwood Art Foundation will concentrate on the three pillars of Art, Environment, and Education. It will curate exceptional experiences and nurture creativity and life-long learning for people of all ages through a deep connection with art, education, and nature.
Left: Canaletto, Whitehall and the Privy Garden from Richmond House, Goodwood Estate. Right: Stubbs, Racehorses Exercising, Goodwood Estate.
The Duke of Richmond and Gordon say the initiative ties in with Goodwood’s centuries-long relationship with art. “Over the last three hundred years, the Dukes of Richmond at Goodwood have collected masterpieces by Canaletto, Reynolds, Romney, Stubbs and Van Dyck. The creation of the Goodwood Art Foundation signals the next chapter in this long and pioneering history of engagement with art.”
The Foundation will present a headline exhibition by an illustrious artist every season. It will open with a show focused on Dame Rachel Whiteread, one of the most highly regarded sculptors of her time and the first female artist to win the Turner Prize.
“I am thrilled to be launching this great new venture, which will form a vital part of Goodwood’s 21st century legacy.”
– The Duke of Richmond and Gordon
The exhibition will feature not only her compelling sculptures, set against the backdrop of the splendid Goodwood countryside but also her photography, a rarely seen but very impressive string to her bow, in the restored Pavilion Gallery.
Whiteread says, “I am delighted to be the first artist profiled in the inaugural exhibition within the beautifully refurbished Pavilion Gallery and landscape of the new Goodwood Art Foundation.
“The ethos of providing audiences with the opportunity to experience contemporary art integrated into a carefully designed natural environment is something I particularly respond to. It has been an honour to work with the curatorial and exhibition team from the outset, alongside the journey of discovery within the landscape.”
Left: Rachel Whiteread, Detached 2, 2012 (Photo by Mike Bruce). Right: Portrait of Dame Rachel Whiteread (Photo courtesy of the artist and Gagosian).
That’s not all. A major landscape development programme at the Foundation, generously backed by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Foundation, is also scheduled. It is being overseen by the award-winning horticulturalist and landscape architect Dan Pearson.
The entire project is an enormously exciting and inspirational artistic enterprise.
How would we sum up the prospect of the Goodwood Art Foundation, then? Glorious.
Author: James Rampton
Opening image: Goodwood House. Photo by James Fennell. Photo of The Duke of Richmond and Gordon by Uli Weber.
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 explores the rivalry between the Renaissance titans Michelangelo and Leonardo and their influence on the young Raphael. In 1504, the three masters briefly coincided in Florence, seeking the attention of the city’s most influential patrons.
In this must-see exhibition, the Royal Academy presents more than 40 works, including Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo, Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon, with new research regarding the original context of the drawing, and Raphael’s Bridgewater Madonna, which was heavily influenced by Taddei Tondo, together with some of the finest drawings from the Italian Renaissance.
Left: Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John the Baptist (“The Burlington House Cartoon”) c.1506-08 (*). Right: Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist(“The Esterhazy Madonna”), c. 1508 (**).
The exhibition culminates in the encounter between Leonardo and Michelangelo. In 1503, the Government of Florence had commissioned Leonardo to paint a monumental mural, the Battle of Anghiari, in its newly constructed council hall. At the end of the summer of 1504, around the time Michelangelo’s David was installed on the ringhiera in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, that artist was asked to paint the accompanying Battle of Cascina. Neither project was ever completed, but the exhibition brings together Leonardo and Michelangelo’s much-admired preparatory drawings from various collections across Europe, providing a fascinating insight into the approach of both artists as they developed their compositions. Visitors can also examine a drawing by Raphael, c. 1505-06 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), in which he painstakingly copies the central scene of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari.
Royal Academy of Arts, London W1J 0BD The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries | Burlington Gardens 9th November 2024 – 16th February 2025 For more information and tickets, HERE.
Other must-see exhibitions currently on show in London: Mapping the Tube, and Wes Lang: The Black Paintings among others. Visit our Culture section for more curated recommendations and reviews, and to stay updated on the art world’s elite events.
Author: Lavinia Dickson-Robinson
Opening image: Bastiano da Sangallo, after Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Battle of Cascina (“The Bathers”), c. 1542. Oil on panel. Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Collection of the Earl of Leicester. By kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of Holkham Estate.
(*) Charcoal with white chalk on paper, mounted on canvas, 141.5 x 104.6 cm. The National Gallery, London. Purchased with a special grant and contributions from the Art Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, and through a public appeal organised by the Art Fund, 1962.
(**) Tempera and oil on panel, 28.5 x 21.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
It has been a long journey for Wes Lang to this nirvana-esque state as an artist. As I sit with him in a quiet corner of a hotel bar, he reflects on how he arrived at this time and place in his life. Explaining how his latest works, The Black Paintings, came to be, he credits the Taoist approach that has been his guiding principle, “I just show up and the things that need to happen just happen. I don’t try anymore; I’m just the vessel to let this stuff [the artworks] exist because it needs to exist. That’s very much the Taoist type philosophy: the universe will move through you.”
Alienation in his school years and the gift of Ram Dass’s book, Be Here Now, saw the young Lang take to the Taoist philosophy as a means to understand life and control the anxiety he felt. Looking back, he now realises that “I would lose my way with Taoism at times, and then come back and understand it. If I hadn’t been diligently practising what I need to practise, I would then implement it back into my life, and instantly feel better.”
I have known Wes Lang for the past few years. We have spent many an hour at his home or in his studio in Los Angeles “chewing the fat” about life, art and everything in between. For him, it is all on one continuum. There is no separation between who he is, what captures his attention and the artistic representation of it all. His work is a commentary on the world we live in, the daily routines through which we navigate ourselves and what the outcome of that may be.
Wes Lang in his studio in Los Angeles.
The Black Paintings are currently being exhibited at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in London. Lang caught Hirst’s attention when the American artist transitioned from working in New York to his current studio in Los Angeles at the end of 2012, after realising he needed a change of scene for his work to progress. Over several years and for different lengths of time, he would stay at the legendary Chateau Marmont, where he turned his sojourns into an artistic residency with a series of drawings that formed the basis of an exhibition at the hotel at the end of his stay.
The City of Angels provided new sources of inspiration and, once he found the right studio, Lang’s art progressed to working on larger canvases, with a different colour palette and aesthetic. Along with Kanye West asking him to do the imagery for the Yeezus tour, the move west propelled his renown onto the global scene.
“I wanted to capture an alternative view to the divisiveness in the world right now and show people that what we are being fed is fostering a world that is becoming more divided.”
– Wes Lang
A predominant theme in Lang’s art is visual iconography. To Native Americans, totems are a graphical reference to a spirit being, sacred object or symbol of an individual or tribe. For Lang, totems are childhood reference materials that he hoarded as a kid, as he explains. “I just collected visual information in a way that I never saw anybody else doing. Not to pin on my walls though, I kept it very private, and then I would just sit and copy it.”
For Lang, the American West and Native American culture were symbols of freedom. “I had a lot of issues at school with other kids,” he comments, “and I was chastised for it and picked on for being different. We rented a little house in the Hamptons and there was a Native American reservation there. Getting away from my town and going to this place, putting on war paint, making headdresses and riding around, I felt free to be me.”
There had long been an association between the Native American people and the expression of a harmonious society in Lang’s mindset. One of the perennial characters in his large canvases are skeletal-faced braves and chiefs – the latter often in full headdress, where the totems symbolise familiar legends or lineages. Dee Brown’s book Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee recounts how the American expansion westwards impacted the Indigenous society. While the artist sees the world as potentially at a tipping point now, with “false news and made-up facts”, he admits that to some extent he is removed from it, following the Tao and living the life of a quasi-hermit in his home and studio.
This isolation, he reckons, has seen everything come together, with a progression in his abilities as an artist. “For the last five years what I have seen and been striving to do with my art has been a breakthrough that feels amazing. I’m just so fucking excited to pick up paintbrushes, and my mind is just overflowing with ideas.”
Created between 2022 and 2024,The Black Paintings are the result of this journey, a time of a sustained “laser-focused” work stream that narrates a certain dismay with the world and the direction in which all of us are being corralled. “I wanted to capture an alternative view to the divisiveness in the world right now and show people that what we are being fed is fostering a world that is becoming more divided. I found that I don’t want to live that way.” So, the solution through his art is to “show that we are actually born as vessels of love, and we are all one gigantic soul in which we are all interconnected”.
The narrative for the paintings revolves around “heroes forced into scenarios where evil keeps popping up in different forms. It’s where we are in society today as we cannot escape the different faces of evil that harass us every day. It’s the perpetuation of the propaganda of people needing to take drugs to feel better.” Echoing his experience from his school days, he adds, “We are told there’s something wrong with everybody and we’re supposed to accept it. I did this work to show that these characters, when faced with evil, instead of being split apart by it, they became stronger and closer, and defeated it. It might be very basic and simple, but most things are pretty basic and simple when you break them down.”
There is now a sense of peace and equilibrium in Lang’s life. A monograph of his works to date entitled Everything was published in 2022. He is now a husband and father, creating work and simply “being”. Every day starts with the same routine, consulting the Tao, which the artist describes as “always saying exactly what I’m thinking about when I wake up, or what I need to know to get through the day. As you finish a cycle, you start again. One verse each morning, and I just think on it, and it sets me up for the day.” Unknowingly, one day his morning read of the Tao determined the completion of The Black Paintings. “As I read the last line in that morning’s verse, I realised I was going to finish this body of work.”
More about The Black Paintings exhibition at Newport Gallery in London, HERE.
