Art Newspaper

The artist Ragnar Kjartansson spent much of his childhood backstage at the Reykjavik City Theatre, where his father directed and his mother starred in many plays. Born in 1976, he claims to have been conceived after a steamy scene between his parents in a play called Mordsaga (Murder Story).

Ahead of his solo show at the Barbican Art Gallery, which opens today (14 July) he told us about why his first big exhibition in London makes perfect sense. "Ever since I was a kid we would go on trips to London and go to the Barbican and we would see the future," he said.

The exhibition (until 4 September) features the portraits Kjartannson made daily of fellow Icelandic artist Pall Haukur Bjornsson wearing black swimming trunks when Kjartansson represented Iceland a the 2009 Venice Biennale. The pair also made a point of smoking and drinking beer throughout the installation called The End (2009).


In the Barbican show are 144 paintings you made daily over six months in the Icelandic pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Is painting an important part of your practice?
I look at most of my works as paintings or sculpture in a way. Even though they come from a performative plan, the painterly idea is always with me and I always continue to work as an artist-painter. If the video works dont work as paintings, then I dont show them.

What criteria do you apply for a piece to work as a painting?
Just something that is there and can become more profound while you are staring at it. Thats a painting, basically.

Your daily paintings in Venice were made while you were living in a palazzo, copiously drinking and smokingliving the dream (and the nightmare) of the clichd Romantic painter.
It was acting out what it was like to be the classical macho 20th-century artist, trying to be [one of] these hard-drinking painters that I was always intrigued by in art school. They are such a very funny tribe. Making paintings is not so hardcore, but it was hardcore to be always drunk while doing it. The performance was that we were making these paintings and that we had to constantly drink beer and smokeit was really disgusting.
 
Much of your work has an often extreme durational and repetitive element. Why is it so important to test the limits of both the audience and the participants?
Its not really about testing strength. Basically thats just our lives. Human beings just repeat stuff; we are really good at it.

This is an edited version of an interview that appears in The Art Newspaper July/August edition
 

The Thin White Duke loved art (and loved making art) so its no surprise that a three-part sale of David Bowies collection, which goes under the hammer at Sothebys London in November, includes more than 400 works by major names such as Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach, and Jean-Michel Basquiat (as well as Outsider art and contemporary African art). Bowies eclectic taste is reflected in the three-part sale which is divided into Modern and contemporary art (evening auction, 10 November; day auction, 11 November) and post-modernist design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group (11 November).
 
Works consigned include Head of Gerda Boehm by Auerbach (1965; est 300,000-500,000), Basquiats Air Power (1984; est 2.5m-3.5m), the sculpture Alexandra by Romuald Hazoum (1995; est 5,000-7,000) and a rather unconventional record player by Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni (Brionvega Radiophonograph, model no RR 126, 1965, est 800-1,200). Though his family are keeping certain pieces of particular personal significance, it is now time to give others the opportunity to appreciate and acquire the art and objects he so admired, says a spokesperson for the estate of David Bowie (the rock star died in January). 
 
Bowie fans (and art lovers) will have plenty of opportunities to see the musicians holdings as the works go on show this summer at Sothebys in London (20 July-9 August). The collection then goes on a global tour, taking in Los Angeles (20 July-9 August), New York (26-29 September) and Hong Kong (12-15 October), before coming back to London for a final showing (1-10 November).

We all know that Ragnar Kjartansson likes to provoke. And when called upon to say a few words at the opening of his terrific Barbican show (until 4 September) the Icelandic artist certainly caused a few sharp intakes of breath when he jokily added the newly appointed Prime Minister Theresa May to his list of thank-yous. Quickly realising that most of the audience still found this too painful a subject to be a laughing matter, the perpetually genial artist then announced that he was going to perform a British song written by some lads in Manchester (delivered in a very convincing Mancunian accent.)

The artist-musician then proceeded to sing (a capella, accompanied only by his own beatboxing) the inimitable lyrics of Art for Arts Sake by Stockport-born 1970s band 10cc. This carried considerable resonance for the somewhat mature art world audiencewhich included the artists US gallerists Lawrence Luring and Roland Augustineall of whom enthusiastically joined in the chorus: Art for arts sake, Money for Gods sake!

Especially enjoying the singalong was the artists 80-year-old mother Gurn smundsdttir who, when she left to leave after the dinner, also led her fellow diners in a spirited rendition of Vera Lynns wartime classic We'll Meet Again. Earlier on this redoubtable former singer and actress had confided that for the more recent iterations of Kjartanssons ongoing video series Me and My Mother, in which she repeatedly spits in the face of her son, she was assisted in performing this transgressive and upsetting act by thinking of the bankers who had brought about her countrys recent financial crisis. Perhaps a touch of cathartic spitting might also help to ease the UKs post-referendum trauma: watch out Theresa May

Found, The Foundling Museum, London (until 4 September)

One of my favourite museums, the Foundling builds on its early pioneering of artist collaborations with a dynamic and imaginative programme of exhibitions and events. All of which, one way or another, tie into the Foundling Hospitals history of caring for generations of abandoned babies. It was Hogarth and Handels 18th-century fundraising that helped the Foundling to become the first childrens charity. Now, integrated amongst the museums often heartrending exhibits, this wonderful show curated by Cornelia Parker invites more than 60 artists working across a range of disciplinesfrom Rachel Whiteread and Antony Gormley to Brian Eno, Marina Warner and Jarvis Cockerto respond to the theme of found.

Like all great ideas, Found is brilliantly simple and yields great riches. Look out for Rose Wylies cardboard box, bearing the portrait of the rescue cat in which it arrived; Ron Arads poignant string of pawn shop tickets; and Richard Deacons readymade sculptural tribute to his late friend, Juan Muoz.

Liverpool Biennial, various venues, Liverpool (until 16 October)

City-wide biennials are always sprawling, confusing beasts. But this years Liverpool Biennial seems almost perversely multifarious and multi-thematic. Im not sure it was such a great idea to hand it over to an 11-strong curatorial faculty, especially when what they have come up with is a gnomically-described story narrated in several episodes. These are comprised of the somewhat random line-up of Ancient Greece, Chinatown, Childrens Episode, Monuments from the Future, Software and Flashback. Works riff across this broad thematic terrain as well as the geographically scattered city: from a disused brewery, a boarded-up street and a derelict cinema, to a covered reservoir, a Chinese restaurant and three of the citys double-decker buses.  

It is back to the future with fragments of Greek statuary collected by 19th-century industrialist Henry Blundell that are arranged in Tate Liverpool on shiny pink prosthetic structures designed by the Belgian artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer. Their often clumsy restoration assumes a more ominous resonance in the face of a film depicting news footage of recent Isil artefact-smashing. The film is made all the more grotesque by being overlaid with watercolour animation, all courtesy of the Iranian artists Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian. This trio are a ubiquitous Liverpool presence, with many of their exuberantly assembled sculptural works also in the cavernous Cains Brewery and Open Eye Gallery. But the film is by far their best work.

Another pervasive presence is Betty Woodman, who is here best represented by a wall-mounted fountain of turquoise and bronze Egyptian-style reliefs. These are arrayed along one side of the very grand, 1930s Art Deco ventilation shaft building at Georges Dock.

I was sorry to miss Marvin Gaye Chetwynds Dogsy Ma Bone performance. But her ebullient collaborative presence endures at Cains Brewery in a wallpapered, prop-adorned space, displaying a film of her activities with Liverpools under 14s. Other works not to be missed are Mark Leckeys film Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD (2015), which combines internet-trawled images of comets, eclipses, gigs and the bleak terrain of Thatchers Liverpool; and Lara Favarettos immense block of granite, which stands in the middle of a boarded up Toxteth street and offers a small slit for donations. At the end of the biennial, the monument will be smashed and any money it contains will be donated to Asylum Link Merseyside, a local charity that supports refugees.

Georgia OKeeffe, Tate Modern, London (until 30 October)

Georgia OKeeffes first major UK show in more than 20 years aims to dispel what its curators consider to be the enduring clichs surrounding one of Americas best-known 20th-century artists: most notably, the sexual connotations of much of her work. It is certainly understandable why OKeeffe also eschewed such readingsespecially when they so often emphatically, and patronizingly, branded her paintings as quintessentially female. But theres still no denying that many of OKeeffes subjects and her handling of themthe softly-shaded labial flowers, the bodily clefts and swelling contours of her New Mexican landscapesmake it almost impossible not to view much of her work in corporal terms. Even her near-monochrome early abstractsas well as her later bleached bone studieshave a curled, curvaceous sensuousness.

However, their evidently psycho-sexual charge is just one facet. What also emerges from his comprehensive show, is the important and constant influence of the latest developments in photography: the angles, the cropping and the enlarging of her images, as well as their smooth modelling in light. Furthermore, we are repeatedly reminded of OKeeffes fascination with distilling and honing an image to its minimal essence: from her earliest charcoal and ink lines to the dark squares of her later and lesser-known doors series. Over more than six decades, OKeeffes painterly language may have changed very little, but it was always strikingly and distinctively her own. And she wanted it viewed on her own terms.  

Rita Parniczky: Weaving with Light, Contemporary Applied Arts, London (until 30 July)

Every year, the Perrier-Jout Arts Salonof which, full disclosure, I am a memberawards a prize to an emerging maker from the British craft sector whose work seems to provide the most interesting contemporary expression of the Art Nouveau spirit. This years clear winner was Rita Parniczky, whose hand-woven creations are made on a Leclerc loom from the clear plastic monofilament generally used for fishing lines. They do not easily conform to any conventional category, being part textile, part sculpture and part drawing in air. True to the original ethos of Art Nouveau, these shimmering, magical presences manage to be both organic and radical, carrying multiple resonances ranging from plant skeletons, human veins, insect wings, Gothic tracery and Islamic patterning. But at the same time they are utterly original and speak with a distinctive and highly unusual voice. A worthy winner.   

Superwoman: Work, Build and Dont Whine, Grad, London (until 17 September)

One of the all-time best exhibition titlestaken from a sternly propagandist Stalinist poster of 1930aptly sets the tone for this fascinating exhibition. The show explores the shifting roles, and presentation, of the Soviet woman in state propaganda, from the October Revolution of 1917 through to the end of perestroika in 1991. Films, posters, works of art, ceramics, photographs and ephemera trace the crucial role played by women in the creation of the new Soviet society, beginning with the female workers instigation of the first revolution and their early achievement of rights: Russia was the first major power to grant women the vote, to legalise abortion and to give generous maternity leave. All of which expanded their role from citizens, mothers and full-time workers into soldiers, scientists, athletes, dancers, cosmonautsand more.

But for many the reality soon became not quite so utopian, as under Stalin the focus shifted to industrialisation and womens rights became increasingly marginalised. Abortion was again outlawed and the status of the mother elevated to heroic heights. Contrary to the official view, this dual role of Soviet Madonna and athletic comrade became increasingly incompatible, and the chasm between liberation and emancipation ever widera dichotomy that remains an issue for women beyond Russia. As many of us are all too aware, the notion of superwoman can be a very poisoned chalice.  

The artist Mike Nelson, who represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2011, has created an off-site installation for the Nouveau Muse National de Monaco (NMNM), in the UBS bank building on the Avenue de Grande-Bretagne, in Monaco.

  The installation, called Cloak 2016 (until 15 September; viewings by appointment), is curated by Suad Garayeva-Maleki, the chief curator and collection director of the Baku-based Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, and Cristiano Raimondi, the head of development and international projects at the NMNM.

The entire interior of the building, which is currently closed for renovation, has been coloured in ultramarine blue. The uniform spread of colour throughout the banks eight floors is intended to create an almost hypnotic or hallucinogenic experience for visitors, who have to make their way through maze-like rooms and corridors before eventually reaching the buildings roof terrace, from where they can admire the Mediterranean Sea.

Every single wall and surface of the abandoned building, which still contains some furniture and discarded items belonging to former employees, had to be primed before being painted and glazed, in order to achieve a uniform colour, from the underground vaults and IT server rooms these floors feel the most disorientating, Garayeva-Maleki says, as if the blue space is about to close in on the viewerto the Baroque staircase and spacious rooms on the upper floors.

However, the show is not just intended to be a sensory experience, but carries studied art-historical references too. The curators are keen to highlight the historical and financial importance of ultramarine blue, the pigment of which was traditionally derived from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone found only in the mines of Afghanistan. 


Lapis lazuli was a valuable commodity, at one point more expensive than gold. Its a fixture in some of the most expensive commissions throughout art history and it was also one of the first goods traded with the East, Garayeva-Maleki says. Banks are now symbols of the contemporary commodity trade, and ultramarine blue evokes that history and the problems associated with it. It is also a reference to Yves Kleins blue, who was himself from the Cote dAzur.


Monaco, meanwhile, is commonly associated with finance and luxury goods; a show of this kind not only makes use of a great space pre-renovation, but also puts the small Principality on the cultural map. The project is funded by NMNM and supported by UBS, and was logistically supported by the Turin-based Galleria Franco Noero.

In early June, the major real-estate developer Thor Equities announced that it plans to build a four-story complex in Red Hook, Brooklyn, complete with 600,000 sq. ft of office space and 23,000 sq. ft of retail and restaurant space, designed by Foster + Partners. The design is aimed, the statement says, at suitability for a TAMI (technology, advertising, media and information) tenant or other appropriate user of the space.

The news came as a surprise for some. Though Red Hook has grown in popularity in recent years, it remains a sleepy former freight port at the southernmost outskirts of Brooklyn, known mainly for its artists studios, of which there are around 150, according to a 2012 Crains report.

Artists tend to pave the way
I do feel that artist studios are an important factor for this gentrification, says the artist Bosco Sodi, who has lived and worked in Red Hook since 2009. Certainly this is very bad news for Red Hook. Artists tend to pave the way for restaurants and hip businesses, which then attract developers, he says. This is a big problem in many New York neighbourhoods and in many cities all around the world. I have experienced this in Barcelona, Berlin, Mexico City and now New York.

Isaac Brest, a member of the Still House group, which is in the process of moving out of the Red Hook space that it has used since 2011 (for unrelated reasons), says he has noticed the neighbourhood becoming more crowded in the past six months.

I wouldnt say its disappointing but its the responsibility of the landlords in the area to realise that one of the main reasons that these neighbourhoods are attractive to tenants are their artists, Brest says. They have a responsibility to keep the neighbourhood attractive to artists.

Patty LaRocco, an associate real estate broker with Douglas Elliman, who does a lot of business in Red Hook, says that residential rent prices have increased by 30%, while retail rents have likely doubled, since Superstorm Sandy flooded the whole area in 2012. She says that the storm put Red Hook on the map in the same way 9/11 put Tribeca on the map.

LaRocco adds that artists were also likely to be a factor, citing Dustin Yellins Pioneer Works art space as a major landmark and attraction, while the OConnell Organization (which could not be reached for comment) has in the past actively sought artist tenants for its developments in Red Hook.

However, height zoning means that Red Hook will never become over-developed. And, LaRocco adds, artists like Rob Pruitt and Urs Fischer have only moved to the neighbourhood relatively recently. Moreover, she herself has recently placed Dan Colen and Tony Shafrazi in Red Hook studios, and is currently looking for something for David Salle.

As for the Thor office project? Thats the least cool part of the neighbourhood, anyway, LaRocco says.

An Amsterdam exhibition on Vincent van Goghs medical problems will include the revolver which he used to kill himself in 1890. Teio Meedendorp, a researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, believes it is highly probable that the corroded Lefaucheux revolver found in a field was the suicide weapon.

Although the pocket revolver was unearthed by a farmer in around 1960, the facts were only revealed four years ago, in a little-publicised booklet by the researcher Alain Rohan. The unidentified owner of the gun has now lent it to the exhibition, On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness, which opens on Friday (15 July-25 September).

Meedendorp cites several reasons for believing the weapon was the one used by Van Gogh. It was discovered behind the chteau of Auvers-sur-Oise, where the artist is said to have shot himself. Experts believe that its corroded condition suggests it had lain buried for over 50 years, making it pre-1910. The gun had been in production until 1893. Tellingly, the trigger had corroded in the unlocked position, which means it was probably fired just before it being lost or abandoned.

Identifying the gun helps explain why Van Gogh was not immediately killed after the shooting. The Lefaucheux revolver has limited firepower, explaining why the bullet ricocheted off his ribs and became embedded in his chest, rather than going through his heart. On 29 July 1890, two days after the shooting, the artist died of his wound.

The ear
The exhibition also reveals new evidence discovered by the writer Bernadette Murphy, as revealed in her book Van Goghs Ear: The True Story (Chatto & Windus). Murphy found a note and diagram from Dr Flix Rey, who had treated Van Gogh in Arles after he had mutilated his ear. This note was written on 18 August 1930 for the American novelist Irving Stone, author of Lust for Life (the document has been lent to the Amsterdam museum by the Bancroft Library at the University of California).

Reys diagram shows that virtually the entire ear was cut off, with a caption stating it showed what remained of the lobe. However, another document in the exhibition tells a slightly different story. Gustave Coquiot, a Van Gogh specialist, wrote after meeting Rey on 4 May 1922 that the doctor had told him the ear had been removed leaving only the tragus (part of the central area of the outer ear).

The evidence of exactly what was left of Van Goghs ear is therefore unclear, but Rey clearly believed that most of it had been lost. This suggests that Van Gogh mutilated himself with ruthless determination.

The exhibition presents key documents from the municipal archive of Arles, including the 1889 petition by local residents asking Van Gogh to be required to leave his home, the Yellow House. This petition has never been displayed before. Also included in the show are 25 paintings and drawings from the last year or so of the artists life. The star loan is the Portrait of Dr Rey from Moscows Pushkin Museum, which is being shown for the first time in Amsterdam.

Nienke Bakker, a curator of the exhibition, stresses that Van Goghs art should not be viewed as a product of his illness, but rather he painted in spite of his condition. The show proposes a number of possible medical diagnoses, although it does not reach a conclusion. Medical experts will discuss the diagnoses at a symposium in Amsterdam on 14-15 September.

Murphys book
Murphys major contribution to Van Gogh scholarship has been her meticulous research in the archives of Arles, where Van Gogh lived from March 1888 until he retreated to the asylum in St-Rmy de Provence fifteen months later. Over many years she built up a database of the citizens of Arles, uncovering links between the people whom Van Gogh encountered.

This has enabled her to name two of the previously unidentified sitters in Van Goghs portraits. She says the young girl in an Arles portrait was probably 12-year-old Thrse Catherine Mistral, who lived five minutes walk from the Yellow House. Murphy identifies the peasant painted twice by Van Gogh as Franois Casimir Escalier, who died a few months after the artists departure (Van Gogh named him as Patience, but Murphy believes that this was a nickname, describing his character).

Most importantly, Murphy says she has identified the young woman at the brothel to whom Van Gogh presented his ear, who has long been known to have been named Gabrielle. Murphy has traced her descendants, but has not revealed the surname, at their request. She says that Gabrielle was not a prostitutebut worked as a maid in the brothel.

Martin Bailey is a Van Gogh specialist and author of The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Goghs Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln, 2013)

The 43rd edition of the Fiac fair (Foire Internationale dArt Contemporain), which launches this autumn (20-23 October) at the Grand Palais in Paris, is expanding into two new spaces. A new section of the fair, called On Site, will take place in the Petit Palais opposite which, like the Grand Palais, was built for the Exposition Universelle (Worlds Fair) in 1900.

On Site will assemble around 20 works that will [fill] the spaces of the Galerie Sud, the Pavillon Sud and the Jardin du Petit Palais, as well as the esplanade in front of the building. This sector enables Fiac galleries to exhibit in unique conditions, in direct proximity to their stands at the Grand Palais, within the remarkable context of the historic Petit Palais, says a statement on the Fiac website. 

Back in the Grand Palais, nine galleries including P420 from Italy and London-based Richard Saltoun, will show works dating from the 1970s in Le Salon Jean Perrin, a new exhibition space located on the first floor between le Salon dHonneur and the Square Jean Perrin entrance. 

This years fair at the Grand Palais will include 185 galleries, compared to 173 participants in 2015, with 42 newcomers. French dealers, 52 in total, make up 28% of this years fair roster; the US contingent, which numbers 35 galleries, includes Andrea Rosen and Metro Pictures, while 25 German galleries are due to take part.

Fiacs parallel fair Officielle, which was held across Paris at the Docks-Cit de la Mode et du Design, has been postponed after only two editions. The new fair was billed as a platform for emerging art but in an interview with our sister paper Le Journal des Arts earlier this year, Fiacs director Jennifer Flay said that the organisers, Reed Exhibitions, decided to put the fair on hold because of the perceived remoteness of the Cit de la Mode et du design, and the high cost of the stands. While some galleries worked well, many did not make back their costs, she said.

Meanwhile, the organisers of Frieze London and Frieze Masters have decided to move both fairs earlier in the month this year, to avoid a clash with the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, which falls on 11 October. Both fairs VIP openings will be on 5 October, with the events running until the weekend of 8 and 9 October. Fiac is due to run from 20 to 23 October, leaving nine days in between.

Although sometimes thought of as the gallery equivalent of a gone fishin sign for an art world that largely shuts down after Art Basel in June, summer group shows, ranging from the serious to the irreverent, can prove lucrative for some galleries during the usually dry months of July and August. 

London's Ibid gallery may have playfully called its summer show Holiday (until 6 August), but it has works by major names, such as Francis Picabia, Alberto Giacometti, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Yayoi Kusama and Henri Matisse. These summer shows are just as important as any other because everyone's around Europe for Basel this year," says Chelsea Zaharczuk, the gallerys associate director. "Also, we have Manifesta11 [in Zurich, until 18 September], and there's the Tate Modern opening [of the Switch House extension]."

The independent curator and writer Neville Wakefield is curating the show Mount Analogue (16 July-14 August), at Performance Ski in Aspen, Colorado. "Housed in the resort towns premier ski shop that has been specifically redesigned for the exhibition, Mount Analogue brings together a wide range of contemporary artists who examine the cultural history of the mountainsbe they spiritual, sublime, or the sites of luxury vacation," a press statement says. With works on view by artists including Dan Colen, Doug Aitken, Gerhard Richter, Richard Prince, and Sterling Ruby, asking prices are hitting the seven-figure mark. The show is organised by the New York-based art consultancy, Darrow Contemporary.

These holiday shows are made to sell. New Yorks Team Gallery has a summer group show wishfully titled Golden Eggs (until 5 August), which borrows its title from Karl Marxs Das Kapital, and features artist such as Barbara Kruger and Hans Haacke. Meanwhile, Untitled gallery hosted a 2013 summer show called Jew York, featuring only Jewish artists, which, said the gallerys owner Joel Mesler, sold well. People kind of give dealers more leeway in terms of the consignments and the possibilities of working with different artists [in summer shows]," Mesler says. "Having Sherrie Levine, Darren Bader and Jennifer Rubell in the same room togetherthat only would have happened in the summer, especially on the Lower East Side."

But summer shows can sometimes defy expectations. The provocative curator Tom Eccles put together As Long As It Lasts, at Marian Goodman's New York space, in 2009. It featured works by artists including William Kentridge, Gerhard Richter, Lawrence Weiner and Tacita Dean, who took on the themes of transience and death.

"I thought: all these guest curators have beach balls or sunny beach scenes or boats, so I ran in the other direction," Eccles says. Still, it seems you can't do just anything in the summer. The New York Times review, he noted, included the line: "It's all a bit heavy for August." 

Staff at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will themselves become works of art this autumn, when the choreographer Jrme Bel presents a performance piece featuring around 25 museum staffthe latest work in the institutions long-running Artists Choice series. The MoMA Dance Company, as Bel calls it, will perform during public hours in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium (27-31 October). Bel has invited each participating member of staff to choreograph a brief solo dance of their choice, a statement says. Curators had better start practising their Rockettes moves.

A German collecting couple have converted their private residence in Dsseldorf into a contemporary art complex housing an exhibition space and artist studios. Rosi and Rudolf Dahmen, a retired lawyer, have transformed a former squash centre in the centre of the city, into the 1,500 sq. m Privatsammlung gallery, which can be viewed by appointment.
 
We intend to show temporary exhibitions, but not on a regular basis. There is no permanent curator. The artists will mainly curate these private exhibitions. It is about a dissolution of the private and public [aspects], Rudolf Dahmen says.
 
The launch show is dedicated to two German artists, and includes 54 works by Gregor Schneiderincluding the sculptures Blauer Sack (2001) and Man (2004), and the photograph Cube Venice (2005)as well as 20 sculptures, videos and photographs by Ralf Berger (until 28 August). Schneider says that the couple live with their art. The boundary between private and public disappears in the building. The collection is even in the bedroom!

The couples 1,000-strong collection includes works by Richard Long, Franz Erhard Walther, Sigmar Polke, Nina Canell, and Christian Boltanski. The Dahmens also run an art space in the town of Mnchengladbach in North-Rhine Westphalia, which incorporates both artist and music studios.

Two major philanthropic organisations on either side of the Atlanticthe Los Angeles-based Getty Foundation and the UK charity, the Rothschild Foundationhave announced a new joint, annual fellowship which, say the founders, will support innovative scholarship in the history of art, collecting, and conservation, using the collection and resources of both institutions. 

The first recipient of the Getty Rothchild Fellowship is David Saunders, "a foremost expert in the area of conservation science," formerly of the National Gallery and the British museum, who plans to use his time under the fellowship, to focus on museum and gallery lighting. Saunders will study at the Getty in Los Angeles from January to March next year, and at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, from April to June. 

"The Getty and the Rothschild Foundation hold similar values regarding the understanding and conservation of visual art around the world, and it is only appropriate that we would work together to support individuals who demonstrate these values through their research, says Jim Cuno, the president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in a statement. 

Lord Rothschild says he is thrilled with the selection of Dr Saunders as the first Getty Rothschild Fellow, since his "work is of the greatest possible relevance to Waddesdon, as a historic house seeking to present itself in innovative ways".

Stuart Davis (1892-1964) is known, perhaps more than any other American artist, for his ability to combine the formal inventions of the avant-garde with the political spirit of the American scene. The drama of his paintings (which are the subject of a survey titled In Full Swing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York) were deepened by the early Modernist debates of out of which they were borndebates in which abstraction and realism came to loggerheads at a defining moment for American art. As the exhibition title implies, Davis synthesised the lessons of Cubism with a jazzy and politically-aware adoption of American popular imagery: shop windows, consumer packaging and the high-key colours of the radiant city. As Duke Ellington put it: it dont mean a thing if it aint got that swing, a lyric that Davis painted into American Painting (1932/1942-54).

Daviss roots are in Ashcan School realism, but we dont see any of this at the Whitney. The exhibition begins in media res with a room flexing Davis breakthrough mastery of Cubist forms in the 1920s. Here, in a work like Lucky Strike (1921), Davis registered a near total departure with the naturalist pathos of Ashcan realism, opting instead for a penetrating geometric analysis of an everyday object. But most of the works in this initial gallery are aspirational and clumsy. There arent any masterpieces, only imitations of other leaders of the American avant-garde who were galvanised by the Armory Show in 1913. Still, these works show the young artist formulating the building blocks of a style that he would later perfect on a much grander scale.

His Egg Beater paintings are his first novelties. There are four eloquent compositions on view in a section that bridges the exhibitions first and second rooms. Here we witness the first flash of Daviss ability to balance a composition while reducing a subject to its most elemental form. Its also the first sign of his mastery of colour. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney agreed. She and her circle supported Davis, which allowed him to dig deep into his newfound fascination with analytical depiction. More importantly, his patrons helped fund a trip to Paris in 1928, an almost required right of passage for American artists at the time.

There, Davis discovered simultaneity. This went hand-in-hand with his rediscovery of the urban scene, one now littered with telltale signs of global commerce, communication and politics. A work like House and Street, painted in 1931 after he was back in the US, depicts, in part, a sign that reads "Smith", a reference to Al Smith's 1928 campaign for the White House. It is an unmistakably urban American scene. Yet its flat, geometric composition also brings to mind the Paris of Cubism. The implied cacophony and verve reads like a stark poem to urban chaos and simultaneitytwo hallmarks of modernity.


These revelations come through in other works with floating text, which punctuate his frenetic and semi-abstract arrangements. In New York-Paris No. 2 (1931), Davis again mixes landscapes, this time more explicitly. The view is of two cities united by technology, travel and an aesthetic kinship: modernity gripped both, though in separate ways.

The 1929 stock market crash led to a period of activism that slowed Daviss productivity as a painter. Except for wall texts in the third gallery, there is little sense of Daviss avowed socialism, especially his advocacy for the notion of the artist as a cultural worker. Such a glossing over of political conviction about the artists place in society could not come at a worse time. Today, in a period of increasing wealth for the collecting class, many artists are nevertheless in a precarious position. Groups like Wage (Working Artists in the Greater Economy) have pushed arts institutions to pay artists in a manner reminiscent of the cause of the Artists Union, which Davis led during the Great Depression. In May, Wage issued a letter to the New Museum in New York asking them to commit to paying artists for performances, talks and other work. No artist, if at all realistic, will tolerate this denial of the principle that a man must be paid for his labor. Thats Davis in the pages of the radical magazine Art Front in 1935. The Whitney curators missed a golden opportunity.

Instead, the Whitney show is testament to a different kind of force. What distinguished Davis as such an important bridge in the history of American art? What set him apart from his peers? The curators answer these questions in the final rooms through a crescendo of works in Davis mature style. Colonial Cubism (1954), for example, is so balanced in colour and rhyme that it momentarily tricks the viewer into thinking that it depicts a whole scene. Like work that precedes it chronologically, this one drew inspiration from things Davis encountered in his surroundings, which he collided with the analytical style that took his entire career to perfect. Part of the joy of this show is the way it charts Daviss penchant for a self-referential re-working of past forms. In Colonial Cubism, the explorations of the 1920s pay dividends. The result is a microcosm of how Davis left American art much different than when he found it.

Davis is one of the best American examples of the notion (though it remains fiercely debated until today) that artists are most powerful when they commune with the outside world and when they use contemporary lifewhatever that may meanas subject matter to produce a result that captures a particular moment in time.

Davis left us with two lasting lessons: that Modernism didnt just happen in the artists studio and that artists ought to be paid for their labour. These lessons, rendered in a politically-tinged realism that assimilated stylistic innovations imported from European Modernism, were his greatest source of strength.

Mike Pepi is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared in frieze, e-flux, Flash Art, Art in America, DIS Magazine, Rhizome, and The New Criterion.


Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, until 25 September


For an interview with the curators of the exhibition, see Back to the beginning with Stuart Davis

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, which holds the largest collection of antiquities in northern Europe, has agreed to restitute illegally excavated artefacts to the Italian government. In an historic agreement under negotiation since 2012, the Danish museum will return the eighth-century BC bronze chariot, shield, weapons, incense burners and tableware from the tomb of an Etruscan prince, among other archaeological objects, to Italy between December and the end of 2017. 

The pieces, believed to have come from the Sabine necropolis at Colle del Forno near Rome, could be sent to the Museo Civico Archeologico di Fara in Sabina, where additional material from the tomban unusually large structure indicating the special status of the deceasedis on display. A statement issued by the Glyptotek acknowledged that: "investigations have shown that the objects had been unearthed in illegal excavations in Italy and exported without licence".

According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, the museum will hand over around 500 items acquired in the 1970s through the late US ancient art dealer Robert Hecht. Hecht was tried by Italian courts in 2005 for conspiring to receive antiquities that had been illegally excavated and exported from Italy. The case against him ended without a verdict in 2012 after the statute of limitations expired. He died weeks later, aged 92.

The director of the Glyptotek, Flemming Friborg, confirmed that the objects to be restituted were "mainly acquired" from Hecht, who "at that time was regarded as a respectable individual". Friborg says: "With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that these acquisitions should not have been made, but judging the past by the moral and ethical standards of the present is seldom constructive."

"What at first looked as if it would turn into a legal, political deadlock, has now, through an intense academic dialogue been transformed into a powerful and visionary agreement," Friborg says. In exchange for the long-awaited restitution, the Italian ministry of culture has pledged to lend significant artefacts to the Danish museum on continuous rotation. The Glyptotek will also collaborate more closely with Italian institutions on research and exhibitions. The first Italian loans are due to feature in the museums new presentation of its antiquities collection. 

Visitors to Goethes house on the Frauenplan at Weimar pass through the Maiolica Room, where samples from his collection of Italian tin-glazed pottery are displayed. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar, which conserves and studies the heritage of Weimar Classicism, has now sponsored a beautifully produced new catalogue of Goethes maiolica. Since it contains large coloured illustrations of every one of the 105 items, along with detailed descriptions and accounts of their provenance, Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz must be considered exceptional value for money.

The introductory essay tells us about the production and sale of maiolica. Two-thirds of Goethes pieces come from Urbino, one of the great centres of istoriato potterythat is, plates and the like with brightly coloured historical, mythological or Biblical scenes, which were particularly popular in the early and mid-16th century. Some of Goethes maiolica can be traced to specific workshops, including the two leading ones in Urbino, belonging to Guido di Merlino (active in the 1540s) and his rival Guido Fontana (last recorded in the 1570s). Most of the remaining items come from Venice, mainly from the workshop of Domenico da Venezia (documented from the 1560s). Surprisingly few come from Faenza, the great centre of maiolica production where the istoriato style originated soon after 1500. The collection also contains a few non-Italian items: three bowls from Germany, and some cups and salt cellars from Limoges.

In Germany, the trade in maiolica and other artefacts centred on Nuremberg. In the late Middle Ages Nuremberg, like Augsburg, was an important commercial city governed by patricians. The value they attached to art is apparent to anyone who visits the handsome four-storey house occupied by Albrecht Drer. By the 18th century, however, Nuremberg had fallen on hard times, and many art collections had been offered for sale. When in Nuremberg in 1797, Goethe almost certainly visited the collection of Hans-Albrecht von Derschau, a Prussian officer whose poor health induced him to retire and devote himself to art. Early in 1817, after prolonged negotiations over the price, Goethe bought from Derschau 42 pieces of maiolica and three enamelled vessels. After Derschaus death in 1824, his property was auctioned, and Goethe then acquired more pieces, notably a plate with a fine depiction of Scipio Africanus in Spain (no. 36 in the catalogue).

Why did Goethe collect maiolica? He was of course an enthusiastic collector of paintings, sculptures (including plaster casts of famous statues), drawings, porcelain, gems and much else. His collection numbers some 26,500 items, only a small proportion of which can be shown to tourists. But his interest in maiolica developed late. During his stay in Italy, from 1786 to 1788, he showed no interest in it. In a satirical epigram of 1797 he even mocked people who preferred maiolica to ancient vases. By 1804, however, he owned a few pieces, and from 1816 onwards he collected maiolica seriously.

It may not be coincidence that Goethes wife Christiane died in the summer of 1816. When his big purchase arrived from Nuremberg in February 1817, Goethe turned what had been the marital bedroom into the Maiolica Room. He spent a whole week arranging his new acquisitions, and had wooden cabinets made in which they could be displayed behind glass. This may be seen as valuable self-therapy for a grieving widower. But Goethe, though saddened, was not heartbroken by Christianes death. In the last few years of their marriage they had drifted somewhat apart, and Goethe had indulged a warm, romantic friendship with the young, pretty, gifted Marianne von Willemer.

Goethes maiolica provided light relief when his life was becoming increasingly sombre and difficult. As the catalogue lets us appreciate, the paintings are in cheerful colours, with lush green landscapes, dark blue rocks, seas and lakes, vivid orange robes for the figures, and orange curtains in domestic interiors. In a sense, too, maiolica gave relief from serious art. Malcolm Bull notes in The Mirror of the Gods (2005) that its artists gravitated towards a more light-hearted and erotic subject-matter. Goethe seems to have regarded maiolica as an indulgence; he never mentions it in his copious writings on art and he talked about it only with a few intimates. To one such, the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter, he wrote in 1827: The presence of these dishes, plates and vessels gives an impression of cheerful practical life You see how one can extenuate ones follies, but praise to any folly that gives us such harmless enjoyment.

The scenes painted on Goethes maiolica come from classical mythology, with Ovids Metamorphoses a popular source, as well as Roman history and the Bible. When in Italy, Goethe regretted that gifted painters had such repulsive subjects; he did not enjoy looking at aged monks and saints. But the maiolica pieces incur no such objection. The only saint here is the evangelist Mark, seated on a cloud and wrapped in a splendid blue robe (no. 68). The Last Supper takes place in public, at the top of a flight of stairs thronged with people (no. 35). Old Testament scenes are numerous: Joshua enthusiastically massacres the Amorites, the sun standing still to let him finish the job (no. 89); Mosess enemies led by Korah plunge into an abyss while their tent goes up in flames (no. 88).

Naked bodies, love scenes and bold erotic episodes make us think again about Goethes marital bedroom. Eve, Venus, Diana, and the three goddesses subjected to the judgement of Paris, all display their charms (though the two unsuccessful contestants give Paris very dirty looks: no. 13). Jupiters dealings with Io (no. 69) and Leda (no. 9) leave nothing to the imagination. More curiously still, Callisto is embraced by Jupiter disguised as a woman (no. 22).

The piece with the clearest link to Goethes poetic imagination must be no. 26, showing the triumph of the sea nymph Galatea. She stands on a shell, surrounded by amoretti, dolphins and a couple of ardent lovers on a raft. At the climax of the Classical Walpurgis Night in Faust, Part II, Galatea appears riding on a shell-chariot, attended by dolphins and symbolising the primal life-giving power of the sea. The maiolica paintings are certainly light-heartedand all the more delightful for itbut it would not be surprising if one of them helped to inspired what Goethe called the very serious jokes of Faust II.


Ritchie Robertson is the Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Goethe: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Italienische Majolika aus Goethes Besitz. Bestandskatalog

Johanna Lessmann, with contributions by Christiane Holm and Susanne Netzer

Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 360pp, 45/49.80/$85 (hb)

Diane Arbus saw the streets of New York City as a place full of secrets waiting to be fathomed, says Jeff Rosenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator of a show of early work by the photographer that opens today (12 July) at the Met Breuer. The pictures date from between 1956, the year Arbus began numbering her rolls of film, and 1962, when she took up her signature, square-format Rolleiflex camera. About two-thirds of the works have never before been shown or published, including Boy Stepping Off the Curb, N.Y.C. (1957-58), a spontaneous and sympathetic shot of a youngster.

In all of Arbuss work, she looked for the poignancy of a direct personal encounter, Rosenheim says. Even in her earliest studies of pedestrians, her subjects seem magically, if just momentarily, freed from the flux and turmoil of their surroundings. The museum acquired the Diane Arbus Archive in 2007 from Doon and Amy Arbus, the photographers daughters, as a gift and promised gift; it is the source of most of the photographs on show. The Alfred Stieglitz Society is the exhibitions main sponsor.

Diane Arbus, Met Breuer, New York, 12 July-27 November

On 26 May, US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vowed to focus on real environmental challenges, not phony ones, cancel the USs participation in the global 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programmes. That same day, Unesco released its 100-page World Heritage and Tourism report, which showed how climate change is quickly becoming one of the most significant risks for natural and cultural heritage sites. As if on cue, three days later the River Seine reached a 30-year high, flooding areas of Paris and forcing the Louvre and the Muse dOrsay to close so staff could move works to higher ground.

Meanwhile, this week, delegates at the 40th Unesco World Heritage Committee session, at the Istanbul Congress Centre (until 20 July), will nominate properties and sites to be added to the World Heritage List.

While increased incidents of extreme weather, like the recent floods in France, reinforce the fact that the Earth is indeed getting warmerby 1C globally since 1880its effect on heritage sites is still largely misunderstood. Climate change can exacerbate existing stresses such as urbanisation, pollution and the extraction of natural resources. It can also amplify problems associated with tourismone of the worlds fastest-growing economic sectors. But responsible tourism, according to Unescos report, can help to secure the future of many World Heritage Sites in a changing climate.

The report, produced in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists, analyses 31 sites in 29 countries that are vulnerable to climate change. Globally, we need to better understand, monitor and address climate change threats to World Heritage Sites, says Mechtild Rssler, the director of Unescos World Heritage Centre. The report offers recommendations to government agencies, policy makers, tourism bodies, site managers and locals on how to respond to climate change threats.

Suggestions include: undertaking a comprehensive review of climate vulnerability of World Heritage Sites; making climate vulnerability assessment part of the World Heritage Site nomination process; developing strategies and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement of 2015; using archaeological data to learn about past human responses to climatic change; and involving local communities and indigenous peoples in all stages of climate adaptation and tourism development.


Here are six global World Heritage Sites listed as being at risk from climate change:
EUROPE
Venice and its lagoon, Italy
Venice has become the poster child for World Heritage Sites threatened by rising sea levels. In the past century, water levels have risen by nearly 30cm. Hundreds of Venices buildings and monuments have already been damaged, including the Basilica di San Marco. The effects of climate change are exacerbated by the annual influx of ten million overnight and 20 million day visitors, who spend hundreds of millions of euros in Venice. Many arrive by super-sized cruise ships. The mobile barriers being installed between the lagoon and the sea to prevent Venice flooding are due to be completed in 2017, but the frequency with which they will need to close each year will increase as the sea level rises. These closures will interfere with the cruise ships schedules. The ministry of the environment is considering a plan to build a structure in the sea outside the lagoon and bring cruise ship passengers into the port by boats that will produce almost no wake and no polluting emissions.

NORTH AMERICA
Statue of Liberty, US
The Statue of Liberty may have escaped the full wrath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, but the island it sits on did not. Flood-waters inundated 75% of Liberty Island, causing millions of dollars in damage to the sites facilities and infrastructure. The total repair bill for Liberty and Ellis islands was more than $77m. This excludes the considerable loss of tourist revenue as the popular attraction was forced to close for months. A vulnerability analysis conducted by the US National Park Service in 2015 revealed that 100% of the assets at Liberty National Monument are at high exposure risk from sea-level rise due to the extremely low elevation of the island and its vulnerability to storms.

LATIN AMERICA
Rapa Nui National Park (Easter Island), Chile
Easter Islands monolithic Moai sculptures are some of the worlds most recognisable works of art, carved from around 1250 to 1500. Around 60,000 tourists visit the tiny island 3,500km off the coast of Chile each year and its people are dependent on this lucrative revenue stream. But coastal erosion and greater wave heights are putting the sculptures, which sit directly on the coast, at risk. Experts fear that increased damage to the basalt slabs upon which the figures sit could cause the sculptures to topple.   

AFRICA
Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara,

United Republic of Tanzania

Gold, silver, ivory and Chinese porcelain were among the goods traded at these port cities in Tanzania in eastern Africa. The islands of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara were major centres of Indian Ocean trade from the 13th century until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. Erosion and coastal flooding are the greatest threat to these sites coral and limestone mortar ruins.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Hoi An Ancient Town, Vietnam


Tourists come to the ancient port city of Hoi An each year to see its 16th- and 17th-century wood-framed buildings. The architectural style of these remarkably well-preserved houses represents a fusion of foreign and native influences, namely Chinese, Japanese and European. The town is just two metres above sea level and is already prone to flooding during the rainy season. Experts estimate that the entire area could flood annually by 2020. 

ARAB WORLD
Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt

and Oualata, Mauritania


These four caravan towns or ksour were founded in the Middle Ages to serve the travellers crossing the Sahara desert and became major centres of Islamic culture. Chinguetti is the seventh holiest city of Islam. The encroaching Sahara Desert is threatening the towns preservation, extreme heat is damaging ancient masonry and earthen buildings are at risk from periods of prolonged rainfall.

This book is dedicated to maiolica, the tin-glazed earthenware of Renaissance Italy. Ceramic glaze whitened with tin-oxide made the perfect ground for painted decoration, and the period 1480-1550 saw an explosion of every kind of imagery as ceramic painters responded to the new technologies of printing and printmaking. Franoise Barbe concentrates on the 16th century as a golden age and on istoriato: narrative-painted ware which only ever represented a tiny proportion of the maiolica produced in pottery workshops all over Italy but which receives disproportionate attention from collectors and scholars. This is not perhaps surprising. Made for the urban elites of Renaissance Italy, the new art form of istoriato provides a fascinating index of artistic expression and documents a wide repertory of subject matter. Maiolica in all its forms was made and used both in the great artistic centres and beyond; within the ruling elites and lower down the social scale. It provides unique insight into literacy, dialect and language, regional identity, religious culture, the revival of classical subjects and a developing sense of history.

Majolique: lge dOr de la Faence Italienne au XVIe Sicle presents a very French emphasis on literary themes and their graphic expression. Barbe shows maiolica painters responding to the prints of Schongauer and Drer but also illustrates a more unusual pairing: Nicola da Urbinos translation of Hans Burgkmair the Elders chiaroscuro print of around 1510, Lovers Surprised by Death. Nicola did not merely simplify and copy the print to fit his curved, circular surface of a ceramic platedifficult enough in itselfby introducing an exergue as on an ancient Roman coin to fill the difficult space at the base and adding a wall on the right as a framing device. He has responded subtly to the way in which the feathered wings of Death meld into the hair of the young woman as she flees in fright; both are highlighted with minute touches of white pigment. The use of a pale blue tonality for the scene, enlivened with pale green in the architectural details, with dark blue drawing and white highlights, is restrained and sophisticated as a response to Burgkmairs vision and is an original work of art in itself.

Barbes attractively illustrated survey draws on the latest scholarship, acting as a useful introduction for the general reader and as a handbook for students. She reviews early istoriato as it developed contemporaneously in a number of different pottery centres around 1480-1520. Chapters follow on the high point in the 1520s and on lustre as a luxury finish in Gubbio and Deruta. Subjects and models, ornamental designs and the function of maiolica is then discussed, ending with two chapters considering istoriato around 1540-50 and the new taste for white maiolica from the 1550s.

A discussion of historic maiolica collections in France might have been enlightening; Maiolica scholars joke that pieces with erotic and pornographic subjects often derive from French collections. A case in point is the unique dish now in Oxfords Ashmolean Museum. It presents a composite head formed entirely from penises of a man in profile. Inscribed on the back with the mark of the painter Francesco Urbini of Urbino and dated 1536, the dish anticipates Arcimboldo and comments ironically on the more usual profiles of beautiful women on maiolica. It is inscribed: Every man looks at me as if I were a head of dicks. On the back is written: If you want to understand the meaning, you will be able to read the text like the Jews do (that is, like Hebrew: right to left).

As Timothy Wilson has pointed out, this kind of playful pornography is strongly associated with the writer Pietro Aretino, who had a series of sonnets addressed to him; in one, the Pope is accused of making cardinals from I visi di cazzo or prick faces. Proof that Grayson Perry is not the first artist in modern times to paint pornography with political themes on ceramic.


Dora Thornton is the curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum and of the museums Waddesdon Bequest gallery of 300 objets dart, supported by the Rothschild Foundation

Majolique: lge dOr de la Faence Italienne au XVIe Sicle

Franoise Barbe

Citadelles & Mazenod, 272pp, 59 (hb)

A new triennial is due to open next year in Aarhus, eastern Denmark, which will encompass four kilometres of coastline surrounding the city. The inaugural ARoS triennial, organised by the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, will explore how man has depicted and altered nature according to his view of the world, a press statement says. The triennial is a key feature of Aaarhuss year-long run as European Capital of Culture in 2017. 

The triennial, entitled The Garden: End of Times, Beginning of Times, will be split into two parts: The Past (8 April-10 September 2017) and The Present and the Future (3 June-30 July 2017). Its scope is ambitious; the statement adds that the triennial covers the past 400 years and will be staged in three sections. "[It] will reflect on mans perception of nature according to philosophical, religious and political changes, the organisers say. 

The Past section, presented at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, will be based on German Romanticism of the early 1800s, early 20th-century Modernism and 1960s Land art. The Present exhibition will be shown at venues dotted around the city while a series of public art pieces will be installed on the coastal route from Tangkrogen to Ballehage in The Future section. Participating artists will be announced in due course.

The ARoS Triennial is funded by the ARoS Aarhus Museum; sponsors include local and regional authoritiesincluding Aarhus Kommune and Region Midtjyllandthe Salling Fondene charity which is backed by Dansk supermarket, and European Capital of Culture.

The ninth edition of the Liverpool Biennial (until 16 October) invites international artists to examine the citys past, present and future. While the stories they spin are not all to be trusted, the works that linger in the mind are those that engage closest with the local context. 

In some cases, fiction proves more seductive than reality. The Iranian brothers Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and their collaborator Hesam Rahmanian, whose works run through three of the main exhibitions, overlay spliced footage of Isil iconoclasm with their own watercolour animations in Big Rock Candy Mountain (2015). The video, part of Tate Liverpools show mixing contemporary art with National Museums Liverpools 18th-century collection of classical sculpture, converts militants into bikini-wearing dancers, long-beaked birds and gaping fish, seemingly neutralising their destructive acts.

The glossy films of Fabien Giraud and Raphal Siboni in the spectacular, ruined ABC Cinema, which closed in 1998, and Lucy Beech at Fact (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) promise cinematic escapism. Both dystopian narrativesthe first an apocalyptic vision of 1920s factory workers with the look of a 1980s music video, the second an uneasy encounter with a cult-like therapy groupseem to make more sense in light of the fact that the University of Liverpool houses one of the largest science fiction libraries in the world.

The biennial feels strongest when the commissioned artists work directly with the citys people and places. One of the highlights of the opening weekend was Marvin Gaye Chetwynds Dogsy Ma Bone, a joyful Scouse musical inspired by Betty Boop and Bertolt Brecht with a cast of local children in handmade animal costumes. A film of the production, shot on the streets of Liverpool, will be screened daily at the Cains Brewery venue. 

A more sober collaboration with and for children comes in the form of Koki Tanakas exhibition at Open Eye Gallery, which revisits the 1985 march by 10,000 Liverpudlian school students against the Youth Training Scheme, Margaret Thatchers controversial government initiative intended to reduce mass unemployment among young people. In the wake of the UKs Brexit referendum, the project asks whether the new generation of digital natives can rekindle the same spirit of political protest. 

While the original participants seem doubtful in Tanakas interviews, there is cause for optimism at the longer-term transformation of Liverpools urban fabric. Beyond the city centre, the biennial has pushed out to the Toxteth community, where riots erupted between residents and police in 1981. The temporary interventions Portal, a web of green laser beams created inside the former Toxteth Reservoir by Rita McBride, and Momentary Monument, Lara Favarettos slab of granite on a boarded-up street, are a walk away from Granby Four Streets, the Turner Prize-winning project by the architecture collective Assemble to regenerate the areas derelict terraced houses. 

Meanwhile, Liverpool City Council, one of the biennials main funders, has granted planning permission to a ten-year redevelopment plan for the Cains Brewery site. After the biennial runs its 14-week course, the complex of disused warehouses is due to be refurbished as artists studios and gallery spaces. 

Liverpool Biennial, various venues, until 16 October