As mentioned earlier on this blog, the Danish Comics Council organised a panel discussion on transgressive cartooning at the University of Copenhagen this past Tuesday, focusing in equal measures on the recent debate about legislation against drawn and animated child pornography and the Mohammad cartoons. It was a lively and well-attended event, despite the regrettable…
Primært til vore norske læsere: i denne uges udgave af Morgenbladet kan man finde min anmeldelse af den store Bronzino-udstilling i Firenze, som jeg besøgte for et par uger siden. Artiklen er endnu ikke tilgængelig online, men bliver det vanen tro på et tidspunkt. Køb og læs i mellemtiden avisen! Detalje fra Bronzinos Portræt af…
I was in Florence for a couple of days last week to see the two big art shows they have on at the moment — the Bronzino exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi and the Caravaggio and Carravaggeschi show, which covers three venues (Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Villa Bardini) and closes next Sunday. I’ll write…
The picks of the week from around the web. BBC’s “A History of the World in a Hundred Objects”. For those residing outside Britain, you might be unaware of this brilliant radio programme, in which British Museum director Neil McGregor pieces together a history of human civilisation from individual pieces in the museum’s collection, presented…
When I was in Denmark a few weeks ago, I got the chance to cross the sound to Malmö and see the Dearraindrop-curated Mutant Pop show at Gallery Loyal there. I took a number of photos, which you can see here. It was fun, but I’m somewhat sceptical of this contemporary iteration of post-pop art.…
If you’re in Copenhagen, I urge you to visit the grand retrospective on William Skotte Olsen opening today at Kastrupgårdsamlingen and running till 2 January. Skotte Olsen (1945-2005) is one of the great painters of his generation in Denmark, and anywhere really. While his oeuvre was plagued somewhat by overproduction, especially in the later years,…
The great Anke Feuchtenberger once again returns to Danmark for two related exhibitions. She will be present at the Scandianavian art fair Art Copenhagen in Forum, Copenhagen, 17-19 September, where she is part of a group show organised by Charlotte Fogh Contemporary (booth no. 5) that also includes the artists Ragnar Persson (S), Sam Kiyoumarsi…
The highly publicized child pornography conviction last month of a Swedish translator, for possessing manga which allegedly depicted sexualised minors or minors engaging in sexual acts, is but the latest manifestation of a debate concerning what constitutes child pornography that has been going for a number of years. The chairman of the Swedish Comics Society,…
For those in the Copenhagen-Malmö region, I recommend checking out the exhibition Mutant Pop, now open at the Loyal Gallery in Saltimporten, Malmö. It is curated by Joe Grillo (it’s his work above) and Laura Grant of Dearraindrop and includes work by a host of talented artists, amongst them Mat Brinkman, Brian Chippendale, Ron Regé…
Over at Hooded Utilitarian, my monthly column this time is an extended piece on the art historical antecedents of cartooning, with special focus on Robert Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis, and with reference to Bruegel and Rembrandt, plus a bonus discussion on the different meaning-making properties of text and image. I hope you’ll check it out,…
In the second edition of his great collection of artists’ biographies, Le vite dei piu eccelenti pitturi, scultori ed architettori (1568), the Tuscan painter and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) wrote the following about the significance of drawing: “Seeing that Design, the parent of our three arts, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, having its origin in the…
The picks of the week from around the web. The New Yorker: “The Mark of a Masterpiece”. David Grann talks to and examines the colourful career of Peter Paul Biro, the art forensics man who has participated in the authentication of the pretty, so-called Leonardo drawing that surfaced out of nowhere last year. Pretty amazing…
Last week, another of the pioneers of early hip hop culture, Rammellzee, passed away. A versatile multimedia artist and cultural theorist, he remained at the margins of hip hop culture as it evolved into a worldwide, commercially successful phenomenon, marching to the beat of his own drum. From hitting the A train in 1974 and…
The picks of the week from around the web. Rolling Stone: “The Runaway General”. Without question this week’s most exposed piece of journalism, Michael Hasting’s article on the now deposed Gen. Stanley McCrystal, is well-worth spending time with if you only read the summaries. It does much more than convey the disparaging one-liners that lost…
I haven’t talked much about my Ph. D. dissertation, “Colour in Line — Titian and Printmaking”, here at the Bunker, despite it having occupied my life more than any other intellectual project for the last five years or so. I guess because it is still very much a work in progress, but I figure it…