‘I handed a guy a starting pistol for a stick-up scene. But instead he reached into his car and took out the sawn-off shotgun you see in the movie’
I was part of the New York graffiti artists the Fabulous 5, who were primarily known for painting whole subway cars on the Lexington Avenue line. Lee Quiñones was the group’s Michelangelo. I’d been running with Jean-Michel Basquiat and wanted to take graffiti art into art spaces. I thought that an underground independent film could tell our story in the way we wanted.
Inside Presence, the Icelandic-Danish artist’s epic new show in Brisbane, what you see changes based on where you stand or how you look – crucial when it comes to tackling the climate crisis
I gasp as it comes into view: an enormous sun looming above, its surface roiling with what looks like thousands of tiny atomic explosions. It seems to notice me as well: when I stop, it stops too. It’s both awe-inspiring and unnerving.
In the mirrors around the glowing orb, I spot Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson – globally renowned for large-scale installations that challenge your sense of perception – posing for selfies with the crowd.
A brilliantly human photographer, he celebrated the overlooked, finding beauty in cheese sandwiches at a church fete or people queuing for ice cream at the beach – all while poking fun at Britishness
Martin Parr looked like “a naff birdwatcher”, according to his editor Wendy Jones. His appearance was so unassuming that he told me during a recent public talk, that while he was taking pictures during a recent seaside trip, some passersby remarked that he was “a bit like Martin Parr”. Unbothered by glitz and glamour, for more than five decades Parr purposefully pursued the most boring things he could find – he was unapologetic about the excitement he saw in a perfect cup of tea, a plate of beans on toast, or a woman filling up her car at a petrol station. He also knew that, with time, these supposedly dull things would become interesting.
Parr took delight in looking, without flattery, at the things you thought you already knew. In a Parr picture, beauty is not always graceful – the overflowing rubbish at New Brighton beach, the cucumber and cheese sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm at Shalfleet church fete (with the sign, please do take ONE cherry tomato). He made the mundane magnificent with his panache for saturated colours and surprising compositions. He was masterful at capturing the unexpected and unchoreographed interruptions that reveal the unpolished truth of the ordinary moment. He understood that the fluorescent glow of a chip shop could be as revealing as a cathedral; that the colour of a plastic beach bucket could anchor the entire mood of a nation; that the way a stranger holds a sandwich or an ice-cream speaks of class, of longing, of place, of the small stories that batter or buoy us daily. This radical attentiveness – this celebration of the overlooked – is what made Parr one of the most human photographers of our time.
Painting of Enlightenment figure, whose constitution for the island inspired revolutionaries in US, is up for auction
Thirty years ago, a painting by the British artist Sir William Beechey was sold as “portrait of a man”.
The anonymous buyer, however, knew precisely who the unnamed man in the picture was: Pascal Paoli, the 18th-century Corsican independence leader and icon of the Enlightenment.
Martin Parr, the British documentary photographer who captured the peculiarities of the nation with clarity and hilarity, has died aged 73. He had been diagnosed with cancer in May 2021.
A statement from the Martin Parr Foundation on Sunday said: “It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Parr died yesterday at home in Bristol.
From his home town of Los Angeles, the architect designed a career around defying what was predictable
In Frank Gehry’s world, no building was left untilted, unexposed or untouched by unconventional material. The Canadian-American architect, who died in his Los Angeles home at 96, designed a career around defying what was predictable and pulling in materials that were uncommon and, as such, relatively inexpensive.
Gehry collaborated with artists to turn giant binoculars into an entryway of a commercial campus, and paid homage to a writer’s past as a lifeguard by creating a livable lifeguard tower. And while dreaming this up, he transformed American architecture along the way.
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