News from the art world
The End in Trafalgar Square
Months late because of the pandemic, the 13th contemporary art commission for the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square was unveiled last Thursday, said Naomi Rea on ArtNet News. Over nine metres tall, Heather Phillipson’s The End depicts “a towering pile of whipped cream topped with a great red cherry”. A huge fly crawls on the cream, while a drone on the cherry sends a live CCTV feed to a dedicated website. Although playful, it has a dystopian edge: the cream, “piled high and on the verge of collapse, is a gesture towards the excesses of globalised society”; the drone “is a comment on institutionalised surveillance”. The fourth plinth project “was a great idea when it started”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Over the past 21 years, challenging sculptures have “put our stuffy traditions of public statuary under the spotlight”. But Phillipson’s “wilfully absurd confection” suggests that it has had its day. “In light of the fierce current debate about the significance of public statues, her creation seems frivolous, ludicrous.” This is surely the moment “to bring the fourth plinth commission to its conclusion”. It’s time “something permanent” went up instead.
The last days of van Gogh
The day before he died, Vincent van Gogh produced one final masterpiece, said Adam Sage in the Times. Possibly painted just hours before he inflicted the gunshot on 27 July 1890 that would prove fatal, Tree Roots shows twisted foliage, trunks and roots protruding from the earth; it is regarded as a harbinger of the “era of abstract painting and German expressionism” that would follow his death. Now, a researcher in France believes he has discovered “the exact spot” on which van Gogh based the scene after identifying it on a contemporary postcard. Dr Wouter van der Veen, scientific director of France’s Institut Van Gogh, was examining early 20th century postcards from the village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where van Gogh spent his final days, when he noticed similarities between a scene depicted on a card and the painting. He later travelled to the site to take a photograph, and found it largely unchanged. Although initially sceptical, experts at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum believe he may well be correct. “I was convinced,” Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the museum, said after examining the evidence. “It was difficult to contest.”