Art Photos mixed

“Galleries often literally look away from the world in order to protect these precious items. I don’t want to create work in some weird, separate environment. So I am trying to turn the whole building inside out,” the British artist Martin Creed told us ahead of his take-over of the Park Avenue Armory, which opens to the public on Wednesday 8 June.

“The view of the street through the back door is the main piece in the show, which is titled The Back Door. The door is going to open and close.” It may sounds simple, but the installation also includes a retrospective of “all the films I’ve ever made”, Creed said, around 30 works in total, and a new film screened in the cavernous main space.


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The first show of works by the self-taught artist Thornton Dial since his death in January focuses on the artist’s later years. Adrian Turner, who organised We All Live Under the Same Old Flag at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York (until 18 June), says the works represent the “overarching American-ness of this artist, and his artistic transition later in life”.




The gallery began working with Dial in October last year, and now represents his estate. The show takes the name of an abstract work Dial created in 2008 comprised of cloth, metal, enamel, and canvas on wood, spray-painted to resemble a mutilated American flag. “The title implies that we’re all here together,” says Turner. “So how do we work together, and how do we all prosper together within the chaos?”The title also evokes other works in the show that employ the Stars and Stripes as a subject, such as the enamel-on-wood work The Raggly Flag (1989) that symbolises the contradictory unity the American flag represents.



Another construction on wood, Suspects (1989), depicts two African American men who appear to be standing against a wall, surrounded by faces that stare back at the viewer from the canvas. “The titles of the works illustrate the themes that Dial conveyed throughout his career, and a piece from the 1980s can still be interpreted in a current context—either with the Black Lives Matter movement, or in a myriad of different ways,” Turner says. “The show presents an overall theme, but at the same time provides an overview of how these themes expanded throughout the years.”Before his work was discovered by the Atlanta-based art collector Bill Arnett in the mid-1980s, the Alabama-born artist originally created representational sculptures and assemblage from materials that he salvaged from the railway boxcar factory where he worked. Dial transformed commonplace materials such as tyres and chains into works intended to build dialogue around the historical social injustices suffered by African Americans in the rural South. Later in his career, and especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dial shifted his focus to take on a “more national view, with a more pluralistic aesthetic,” Turner says.


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Medicine on a rainy day
Photo by Reinhard Mittermaier

I enjoy many art fairs, especially the Art Basels (Basel, Miami and Hong Kong) and, considering its owners, MCH Group, announced a major expansion into the market for regional fairs [the group is to buy stakes in existing fairs], there are soon to be plenty more. In the face of such unprecedented economic uncertainty, that says an awful lot about overall business—I can’t be the only satisfied customer. The draws of convention-centre art are accessibility, convenience and the sheer volume of information to take in; the fairs shrink the world at the same time as fear of travel outside comfort zones has become more of an issue. Mainly, in the age of the post-attention span, fairs are about seeing as much as possible in the most compressed timeframe, so here are some tips to help you tackle them more effectively.
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Two marble mourners from the tomb of Jean de France, duc de Berry. Photo: courtesy of Christie’s Two marble mourners from the tomb of Jean de France, duc de Berry (1396-1416)

European Sculpture and Works of Art, Christie’s, Paris, 15 June

Estimate €4.5m-€5.5mArguably the most important Medieval works to come to market in recent memory, the last two mourners in private hands from the tomb of Jean de France (1340-1416), duc de Berry, will be offered this week at Christie’s in Paris. The alabaster figures formed part of a procession of 40 mourners around the base of the tomb, made by Jean de Cambrai between 1396 and 1416 in Bourges, France. During the French Revolution, the tomb was vandalised and the mourners destroyed or scattered. Today 29 have been identified, with most in institutions including the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. These mourners have been in a French family’s collection since 1807.



Ben Nicholson, Painted Relief (1941). Courtesy of Bonhams Ben Nicholson, Painted Relief (1941)


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One of the first cat photos 1880-1890

Sunsets

Life stairs
Photo by Sandra Štimac

Lost Paradise
Photo by Carlos Santero

Life is beautiful
Photo by Gürkan Gündoğdu