In northern Chile, Teófila Challapa learned to weave surrounded by the hills and sandy roads of the Atacama Desert. “Spin the threads, girl,” her grandmother told her a half a century ago. Aymara women like Challapa, now 59, become acquainted with wool threads under blue skies and air so thin that outsiders struggle to breathe....
Art & Style
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As Shipping Costs Rise, Galleries Get Creative
‘Shipping has become a nightmare,’ says Mihai Nicodim, owner of Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles and New York City). ‘It almost doubled. When the pandemic hit, we were getting quotes that quadrupled overnight.’ Talk to any dealer right now about shipping costs and you are likely to get the same reaction. Dealers responding to a survey for the Art...
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Nigeria’s Slick Netflix Epic, Jagun Jagun, Explores a Rich Past That Also Reflects the World Today
Netflix’s recently released film Jagun Jagun (The Warrior) is set in pre-colonial Nigeria and follows the story of a feared warlord named Ogunjimi. While playing out in the past, it is steeped in contemporary universal cultural, political and socio-economic realities. The first 15 minutes of the movie establishes that the story is centred on a...
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Stone Age Artists Carved Detailed Human and Animal Tracks in Rock Art in Namibia
During the Later Stone Age in what is now Namibia, rock artists imbued so much detail into their engravings of human and animal prints that current-day Indigenous trackers could identify which animals’ prints they were depicting, as well as the animals’ general age and sex. Andreas Pastoors of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and colleagues report these...
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Art and Gastronomy Meet in Copenhagen
A 17th-century castle covered in lush vines located on a quaint canal in Copenhagen, Kunsthal Charlottenborg has been home to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts since 1701. It has also been one of the country’s leading exhibition spaces for the past 140 years. Walking through its bright galleries, one can almost taste the...
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The Economics of “Girl Math” Makes Luxury Purchases Feel Reasonable, Says Expert
If you’ve been scrolling through social media lately or have a young adult in your household, you might have caught wind of the latest viral trend, “girl math.” According to Virginia Tech economist Jadrian Wooten this is a blend of creative rationalization and financial justifications that is turning the tables on how some people perceive...
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Has the Needle Moved for Women Artists in the Art Market?
There has been much lip service paid to gender equality in the art market, even if the data tells us that the struggle for equal pay among artists is almost at a standstill. However, hope comes from the Art Basel and UBS report A Survey of Global Collecting in 2022, which found that the needle has...
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At the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, Balthus’s Family Continues to Make Art
Built in the middle of the 18th century, the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, with its 113 windows and scenic surroundings, brings to mind at least two of Switzerland’s defining features: cheese production – for which it was built – and alpine charm. I had left early to take one of the trains that ride up into the region...
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The Folly of Making Art with Text-To-Image Generative AI
Making art using artificial intelligence isn’t new. It’s as old as AI itself. What’s new is that a wave of tools now let most people generate images by entering a text prompt. All you need to do is write “a landscape in the style of van Gogh” into a text box, and the AI can...
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Before the Deluge, Who Was Jean-Michel Basquiat?
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) was by most accounts a sweet kid. He had a baby face and a distinctive walk, one foot pigeon-toed, so he was easy to spot from a block away. He was a pussycat – at least the girls said so – soft-spoken and polite. And he liked to draw. My mother-in-law, an art...
