Art News. Vasari Codex

rate_review review schedule Dec 26, 2025 visibility 30 link 35 artists, 2 galleries

the worst art we saw in 2025

Artnet News editors and writers compiled a list of the worst art of 2025, calling out works they found lazy, cynical, overhyped, or ethically dubious. Highlights include Flora Yukhnovich's site-specific painting installation at the Frick Collection, which critics deemed middling and out of place among the museum's historic masterpieces; Jeff Koons's eight-foot-tall Hulk (Tubas) sculpture, sold for $3 million at Frieze New York and described as an obnoxious trophy piece; and actor Adrien Brody's interactive gum wall installation, which invited visitors to stick chewed gum onto a canvas.

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rate_review review schedule Dec 17, 2025 visibility 19 link 16 artists, 2 galleries

worst artworks we saw around the world in 2022

Artnet News editors compiled a list of the worst artworks they encountered in 2022, including a chaotic performance by Poncili Creación at NADA Miami, an overproduced Danish Pavilion installation by Uffe Isolotto at the Venice Biennale, and a Paul Cézanne painting at the Barnes Foundation that disappointed a critic. The article offers subjective, critical takes on these works, describing the NADA performance as bizarre and jolting, the Danish pavilion as graphic and lacking a powerful message, and the Cézanne as a disappointment within an otherwise memorable museum visit.

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rate_review review schedule May 19, 2026 visibility 32 link 14 artists, 1 gallery

What ‘Costume Art’ Gets Wrong About the Body

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute spring exhibition, featuring nearly 400 objects, pairs garments and ensembles with Western figurative artworks from the museum's permanent collection in dyadic, associative displays. The show eschews traditional art-historical timelines and context in favor of visual and thematic parallels—comparing, for example, Rudi Gernreich's Pubikini with an Egyptian statuette, or Ying Gao's sound-responsive dress with a David Hockney drawing. The exhibition is sponsored by Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 22, 2026 visibility 20 link 7 artists

New biography of Chaïm Soutine pieces together illusive artist's life and works

A new biography of Chaïm Soutine, the early 20th-century painter, has been published. The book, written by Celeste Marcus, attempts to piece together the life of the notoriously private and illusive artist, examining his journey from a Belarusian shtetl to the studios of Montparnasse, his complex relationships, and the myths that have grown around his work and persona.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

rate_review review schedule Apr 28, 2026 visibility 33 link 18 artists, 2 galleries

Salon review – like getting to know fascinating guests at a fabulous party

The article reviews a salon-style exhibition curated by Matthew Higgs, director of New York's White Columns gallery, at an unnamed gallery space. The show features 43 paintings by a diverse group of artists including Denzil Forrester, Andrew Cranston, Kaye Donachie, Merlin James, Margot Bergman, Gillian Carnegie, Bill Lynch, and Adam Keay, arranged around mismatched chairs facing white windows painted on the walls. The reviewer describes moving through the space, engaging with individual works, and highlights the eclectic, unthemed curation that prioritizes personal taste and conversation over academic or political messaging.

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rate_review review schedule Mar 23, 2026 visibility 12 link 4 artists

Vincent in Brixton review – a radiant portrait of the artist as a young romantic

A revival of Nicholas Wright's 2002 play "Vincent in Brixton" is receiving a tender production directed by Georgia Green at the Orange Tree Theatre. The play dramatizes a speculative romantic episode from the young Vincent van Gogh's life when he lived as a lodger in south London, focusing on his relationship with his widowed landlady, Ursula.

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rate_review review schedule Jun 12, 2025 visibility 16 link 12 artists, 5 galleries

sanya kantarovsky chloe dzubilo rosemarie trockel

Two new art critics join the fold at Cultured, with Johanna Fateman reviewing Sanya Kantarovsky's first New York solo show since 2019, "Scarecrow," at Michael Werner Gallery's two Upper East Side locations. The exhibition features paintings, monotypes, and a glazed stoneware vase centered on Hera, a whippet belonging to artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood, alongside works like *Stage (Watteau)* that engage with historical painting. Mary Simpson covers Rosemarie Trockel's acerbic conceptualism, and Jeanette Bisschops reviews a posthumous exhibition of Chloe Dzubilo's intimate and irate drawings, "The Prince George Drawings," at Participant Inc., curated by Alex Fleming and Nia Nottage.

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rate_review review schedule Jan 16, 2026 visibility 15 link 3 artists

Why this rarely seen Van Gogh self-portrait deserves more attention

A blog post examines Van Gogh's lesser-known self-portrait, *Self-portrait with bandaged Ear and Pipe* (January 1889), held in a private collection and rarely exhibited—last lent outside Switzerland in 1990. The painting shows the artist clean-shaven, smoking a pipe, with a striking orange-red background, painted just weeks after he mutilated his ear following a row with Paul Gauguin. The post contrasts it with the more famous version in London's Courtauld Gallery, analyzing compositional details and the artist's psychological state.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 27, 2025 visibility 16 link 7 artists

Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road review – ‘I could look forever at these passing moments in cosmic colours’

The British Museum presents a rapturous exhibition of Utagawa Hiroshige's prints, showcasing the early 19th-century Japanese artist's vivid, Technicolor depictions of fleeting moments in Edo (now Tokyo). The show highlights his innovative use of rain, snow, and everyday scenes, such as pleasure boats, cherry blossoms, and temporary riverside restaurants, and includes a final section on his global influence, though critics find this epilogue rushed.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 16, 2026 visibility 25 link 6 artists

The Unnameable Artists of the Canton Trade System

Art historian Winnie Wong’s new book, *The Many Names of Anonymity: Portraitists of the Canton Trade*, investigates the lives and legacies of 18th and 19th-century Chinese artists who produced works for Western traders under the Canton system. These artists, often dismissed by history as mere copyists or left anonymous in museum "tombstone" labels, created complex works that blended European techniques with Chinese traditions. Wong challenges the reductive category of "Asian export art," proposing instead the term "Canton trade painting" to better reflect the unique atmosphere of cultural exchange in Guangzhou.

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rate_review review schedule May 12, 2026 visibility 20 link 4 artists, 1 gallery

Adrian Ghenie: Roman Campagna | Exhibition review

Adrian Ghenie's exhibition "Roman Campagna" at a Paris gallery presents a series of paintings and charcoal drawings that subvert the romantic cliché of an artist's transformative encounter with Rome. Ghenie populates landscapes inspired by the Appian Way with grotesque, alien-headed figures hunched over smartphones, urinating on monuments, or weeping at sunsets, using brown and grey tones punctuated by bright colors. The works reference Francis Bacon and William S. Burroughs, and include direct allusions to Bacon's reinterpretation of van Gogh's self-portrait, as well as a copy of a Pompeii mosaic. The show also features large charcoal drawings on paper that reveal Ghenie's process of constructing his contemporary, alienated figures.

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