China tops rankings for art auction revenue

Matthew Blackman:   The tile ‘New Pictures’ seemed to me to have some resonance with Zander Blom’s recent shows ‘Paintings. Drawings. Photos’and ‘New Paintings’. Was this conscious? Ian Grose: If anything, I was uncomfortably aware of that similarit

The central piece at Robin Rhode’s ‘Paries Pictus’ at Stevenson was a series of geometric forms taped in black on the white walls, and coloured in by children with outsized oil crayons. The idea of drawing and interacting with walls

The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) have recently announced a revised list of the artists who will be participating at the 2013 55th Venice Biennale.  South Africa’s exhibition, entitled 'Imaginary Fact – Contemporary South African Art and the A

Athi Joja's feature engages with the exhibition 'Marikana Hill to Constitution Hill' by Professor Pitika Ntuli that reflected on 'the violation of the democratic values of engagement and debate symbolised by the Marikana massacres'

Some years ago, when I was taking an English conversation class of mixed-level South Americans, I was asked a question: ‘What is the word for these things inside of here?’ Just from the person’s gesticulations I thought perhaps the answer was: ‘Well

The ‘Revisions’ exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery in 2006, and the eponymous book, which came out of the almost exhaustive private collections of Bruce Campbell Smith, now has an online version with an updated inventory of new ac

Zanele Muholi has recently been awarded a major freedom of expression prize at the Index on Censorship awards.  The awards' website states that prize was given in recognition of the work that Muholi has done towards revealing the plight of ‘specifica

In presenting the worldly work of Candice Breitz through the parochial filter of Matthew Blackman’s commentary, Artthrob has played itself out of important debates around whiteness, non-racialism, criticality and historical legacies where

Dear Matthew Blackman, In your haste to denounce “white guiltivism” (a smug term that seems calculated to pathologise historical remorse), you mangle and decontextualise citations of Okwui Enwezor, Andrew Lamprecht and myself, as well as hacking Ach

The Department of Arts and Culture have announced on their website that the artists, title and theme have been decided upon for this year's Venice Biennale.  In a speech announcing this, minister Paul Mashatile stated that: 'This year our exhibition

Louis Schachat, who died on 16 February, aged 86, was an attorney at law turned art dealer. But it was as an art dealer that he made a singular contribution to South African art and its cultural landscape. Louis was born in 1926, in the Boland town o

You can’t say ‘honkey’. You can’t say the ‘n’ word, or the ‘k’ word. You shouldn’t really say ‘cracker’ or ‘boer’ (the latter not in a derogatory manner, at least), but the

Since writing a review of Candice Breitz’s survey show at the Iziko South African National Gallery last year, I have regularly considered two aspects of Breitz’s work. The first is my criticism of her work Extra and the second is Okwui En

The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) announced yesterday that a the National Arts Festival (NAF) have been selected to curate and stage the South African exhibition at the 55th La Biennale di Venezia. This ended the controversial public process i

There are now less than three weeks before the prestigious Absa L’Atelier art competition closes its submissions on 8 March, for 2013.  The event, held in partnership with SANAVA (South African National Association for the Visual Arts), is now in its

South African auction audiences have grown used to stratospheric prices for the paintings of Irma Stern, and at the Strauss & Co auction in Cape Town last week Stern’s beautiful Malay Girl in its glowing golden tones did not disappoint. When the h

The Sanctuary for Independent Art, in Troy New York, which was closed for five years following a fall-out with local government funding, has now been reopened thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation. The institution’s closure - based on the ground

There were rumours dating back to 2011 that the Department of Arts and Culture had taken an expensive lease out on a building in Venice. The department neither denied nor confirmed this. Then suddenly a press release, sent from the Department of Arts

The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) has confirmed spending R21.6-million on a building in Venice to house South Africa's exhibition at the Venice Biennale for the next twenty years. Chief Director of Communications for the department, Lisa Combr

Bonhams of London have announced that they are about to put on auction the Russian-born painter Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl. The painting, also known as the Green Lady is widely considered the most reproduced print in the world. The pai

The Curatorial Intensive, a programme run by the Independent Curators International (ICI), will be coming to South Africa for the first time this March. In association with The Bag Factory artist studios in Newtown, Johannesburg, the 5-day programme

Strauss and Co will be hosting their first auction of 2013 on 4 February in Cape Town: ‘Important South African & International Art, Furniture, Silver, Ceramics, Glass & Jewellery including Jewellery from the Erich Frey Collection & Cape Furniture fr

Ghent-based sculptor Berlinde De Bruyckere has announced, on Belgian radio, that the South African-born Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee will curate her work on the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year. De Bruyckere, whose work predomi

Yesterday the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) sent out a press release calling for curators to 'submit a concept, motivation and profile for the South African exhibition to be realized within the framework of the 55th International Art Exhibi

It is a with great sadness but also in a spirit of celebration of a life of extraordinary achievement that I write this obituary for Professor Colin Richards, one of the South African art world’s brightest luminaries. Richards was a distinguish

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have been nominated for this year's prestigious Deutsche Börse Prize. The prize is awarded every year to a photographer of any nationality, who has  'contributed significantly' to photography in Europe. Ad

A new African art fair, called '1:54', is going to take place in London from 17-20 October of this year.  Running alongside the annual Frieze Fair, the art fair will aim to host around 25 galleries from the African continent.  Taking its ti

It is with a sense of deep sorrow and loss that I learned of Colin Richards’ death. He passed away on the 26th of December after complication from a fall. It is a particularly difficult thing to attempt to memorialize a man whose life has encom

The Deccan Herald is reporting that two artists exhibiting at the Kochi Muziris Biennale have had their artworks vandalised. According to the paper, paint was splashed on a work by the South African artist Clifford Charles at the main venue of the Bi

Marlene Dumas and the founders of the Handspring Puppet Company, Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, were recently awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Cape Town for their contributions to South African arts and culture. Dumas attended UCT’s M