A new year of global art
Ambassador of Culture of Malta FRANCIS SULTANA shares the third monthly column on arts and culture in collaboration with Times of Malta, in which he presents a set of local and international exhibitions to be seen by a common line.
As we draw the line under the challenging year of 2021, we can only hope that 2022 will bring lasting change for all of us – a year of positivity, enterprise and creative exit. I am excited about the coming year as many projects that my studio and I have been working on for a long time, under difficult circumstances, will finally be launched.
If you’re looking for some inspiration to pass on your own creative juices, then I highly recommend a trip to Paris. A look at the spectacular architecture, the sweeping of the streets, the excitement of the shops and the fun of the culture – it really gives you the impetus you need to get out there and create in 2022.
For those looking for a show to get you in the mood, there is nothing better than Thierry Mugler – Couturissime in the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre. A true fashion innovator and visionary, Mugler’s work over the past 30 years has become a symbol of extravagance, exaggeration, futurism, eroticism and a full commitment to the land.
Set on two floors in the newly refurbished MAD fashion galleries, the show covers Mugler’s approach to couture, music, photography and theater. For all fashion lovers, let yourself be lost with the soundtrack of George Michael and wander the most glamorous lanes of memory, taking the iconic and extreme silhouettes, fetishized fabrics, famous faces ( from Jerry Hall to Eva Herzigova, Linda (Evangelist to Diana Ross) and the incredible places – from the rooftop of the Paris Opera House to the Sahara Desert. Evapism of pure fashion and tonic just to start the year. The show runs until April 24.
Hogarth and Europe, an exhibition that will run in Tate Britain until March, has had a lot of picture recently – both about the show’s contemporary cultural lens and the actual content of the work, which includes over 60 works of art. William Hogarth, some rarely appear in public.
For me, what is interesting about the exhibition is how the artist, along with his contemporaries in France, the Netherlands and Italy, was capturing the enormous change that was taking place during the 18th and 20th centuries. the birth of the ‘modern’ era. Across Europe, society was undergoing a huge transformation, as luxury reached new heights while poverty, especially against the backdrop of cities such as London, Paris and Venice, was falling to new heights.
Like today’s social media, in Hogarth’s works we see the amazing achievements of society and its terrible disasters side by side: the super rich, the corrupt and the immoral, the poor and downtrodden, autonomy and the extraordinary.
William Hogarth offered a deceptive lens of truth through which the public could see the reality of those in power as well as those just like them, often under the guise of caution.
The exhibition is shown alongside Hogarth’s continental contemporaries in France, Italy and Amsterdam, proving, if we needed it, that England has always been and will always be closely connected with her friends and neighbors. Europeans. Hogarth and Europe go to Tate Britain until March.
Maltese artist Giorgio Preca, like Francis Bacon, was considered by many in Malta to be too avant-garde
Like Hogarth, Francis Bacon was an artist who broke the norms of society and focused on the key elements of what makes us human. It was Bacon’s belief that the beast, the animal inside us, is never far from the surface and beneath the veneer of civilization, humans are just animals, just like any other creature.
Raised in some of the most chaotic and disturbing times of the 20th century, Bacon lived across Europe and London as an openly gay man, when things were very different from today’s acceptance.
Bacon’s experience of the visceral nature of life and the disintegration of humanity and man’s capacity for cruelty, is the basis of much of his work and the subject of a new spectacle. . Man and Beast at the Royal Academy London, which opens on 29 January.
The highlight of the show will be three bullfighting paintings being shown together for the first time – the combination of wildness and eroticism and the conflict of human authority over the animals is incredibly strong. , such as the last Bacon painting ever made in 1991. Study of Barri.
As a Bacon collector, it is the oscillation between the monumental and the intimate, the universal and the personal, that will make this show particularly powerful. The relationship between Bacon and George Dyer, his beloved for many years, is particularly poignant and tragic. Francis Bacon: Man & Beast will be open until April 17, 2022.
The Maltese artist Giorgio Preca, like Bacon, was considered by many in Malta as well avant-garde when he was working in the middle of the 20th century and struggled to show his work at home. While his contemporary artists loved the bold modernist spirit of Preca’s work, it was in Italy that the artist gained the most attention through a series of solo and joint exhibitions.
Despite this, Preca has always been very proud to be Maltese, so the title of this show – Giorgio Preca of Malta: Artist International with a Modern Spirit. Preca’s work is bold, dynamic, and powerfully packed. Landscapes, abstracts and still lifes, borrowed from the artist’s family collection, were brought to Malta.
An interesting exhibition of a champion of mid-century Maltese modernism that is often overlooked, I am glad to see MUŻA give recognition to this artist who so much embodies Maltese modernism and fully deserves to take his place within 20th century Maltese art.
Giorgio Preca (1909-1984) of Malta: Artist International with a Modern Spirit is open until February 27 at the MUSEUM.
Stay tuned for the next monthly cultural column in February. If you want to check out what I do every month, follow me on Instagram @francis_sultana.
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