Winston Churchill: The Painter review – We will daub them on the beaches

The Guardian reviews "Winston Churchill: The Painter," an exhibition of nearly 60 paintings by the former British prime minister, curated by Xavier Bray and Lucy Davis. The show assembles works from across the UK and private collections, depicting scenes from Churchill's travels, stately homes, and leisure moments, painted as an amateur Sunday painter for stress relief rather than artistic acclaim. The review notes Churchill's use of techniques borrowed from Walter Sickert, including projectors and monochrome underlayers, and describes his style as charmingly amateurish with a vivacity in seascapes but weakness in figures and architectural luminosity.

Marianna Simnett’s Furry Friends

Marianna Simnett’s exhibition at Société, Berlin, features a provocative mix of film, painting, and sculpture that revels in grotesque, erotic, and fantastical transformations. Works like *Hyena and Swan in the Midst of Sexual Congress* (2019) and the films *Leda was a Swan* (2025) and *Blue Moon* (2022) reimagine classical myths and fairy tales through a feminist, body-horror lens, using AI-assisted visuals and stop-motion to explore themes of animality, abjection, and pleasure. The show includes taxidermy-inspired animations, BDSM-inflected live-action shorts, and sculptures that ensnare human figures in animal forms.

Review of the Italian Pavilion by Chiara Camoni and its relationship with the Biennale

La recensione del Padiglione Italia di Chiara Camoni e la sua relazione con la Biennale

Chiara Camoni's Italian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, titled "Con te con tutto," is reviewed in relation to Koyo Kouoh's central exhibition "In Minor Keys." Camoni's installation features a crowd of female figures sculpted in clay and natural materials, described as "donne tronco" (trunk women), which evoke growth, transformation, and the intuitive, manual gestures that Kouoh champions. The review highlights how Camoni's work dialogues with Kouoh's curatorial emphasis on drawing, painting, and craft as intuitive practices, moving away from conceptual art. It also notes a performance by Magdalena Campos Pons at the Tese theatre, which includes a portrait of Toni Morrison and Kouoh, accompanied by music by Kamal Malak.

Death as Performance

Der Tod als Performance

The article reviews Maria Martínez Bayona's debut sci-fi comedy film "The End of It," which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows Claire, a 250-year-old artist who, in a future where medical advances have eliminated death, decides to stage her own suicide as a radical art performance. The story critiques a world obsessed with synthetic rejuvenation and explores themes of mortality, authenticity, and the commodification of art.

Huet Lost in the Clouds

Huet perdu dans les nuages

The Musée de la vie romantique in Paris has reopened after a major renovation, but its inaugural exhibition, focused on the 19th-century painter Paul Huet (1803-1869), has been met with harsh criticism. The show examines Huet's depictions of skies and compares his work to contemporaries, yet the reviewer finds it neither a proper retrospective nor a coherent thematic exhibition. The cramped galleries, uneven selection of works, cluttered hanging, and garish scenography are all faulted, with many comparative pieces outshining Huet's own paintings.

Ghosts in a Postcard Idyll

Geister im Postkartenidyll

Kôji Fukada's film "Nagi Notes" premieres in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, following Yoriko (Takako Matsu), a sculptor and farmer living a quiet, self-sufficient life in the rural Japanese town of Nagi. Her routine is disrupted when her old friend Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect, arrives to model for a sculpture, stirring buried emotions and past conflicts. The film explores the slow, delicate process of creating art and the psychological tensions between the two women, set against the backdrop of Nagi's idyllic but symbolically flat landscape.

Vegas, your merciless universe

Vegas, ton univers impitoyable

The article reviews a performance titled "Showgirl" by the duo Marlène Saldana and Jonathan Drillet, staged at the Carreau du Temple in Paris on July 2-3, 2026. The show draws irreverent inspiration from Paul Verhoeven's 1995 cult film "Showgirls," using its plot and the fate of its lead actress to critique the objectification of women. Through kitschy costumes, bold sets, and humorous numbers, the performers subvert patriarchal narratives, with music by Rebeka Warrior amplifying the feminist revenge theme.

Haegue Yang’s Constellations for a Divided Korea

Haegue Yang's exhibition "Star-Crossed Rendezvous" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles features two large-scale Venetian blind installations that explore themes of division, exile, and reunification. The works draw on the arbitrary 1945 division of Korea by U.S. military officers and the life of composer Isang Yun, who was tortured and imprisoned by South Korean authorities. One installation mirrors and inverts a cube of white blinds inspired by Sol LeWitt, while the other uses colored blinds, projections, and Yun's "Double Concerto" to create a fragmented, shadow-filled meditation on longing and separation.