Cover painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Art reviews thanks to Culturetrip.com
Marlene Dumas
One of the most important figurative painters of our age, South Africa-born contemporary artist Marlene Dumas rarely paints from life, and yet her paintings are full of the pains and shames of modern existence. Reconsidering the long tradition of the female form and the nude in art in terms of our modern world of pornography and celebrity, her work often has a hauntingly bleak quality all of its own that has taken audience by storm everywhere from the Venice Biennale to the Tate Modern in London and New York City’s Met Breuer.
Julie Mehretu
Ethiopia-born painter Julie Mehretu’s work is so layered and so complex that the viewer could spend hours trying to unearth every detail on her chaotic yet entirely purposeful canvases. Favoring a very unique form of Abstract Expressionism, Mehretu’s whimsical, whirlwind paintings read like a mix of a Kandinsky, a Pollock, and a Dada collage; intricate details move at the speed of light, yet her work also exudes a stoic knowledge. In short, Mehretu’s works are like no others in the world of contemporary painting, and this has made her one of the most successful woman painters of our time.
Bridget Riley
When viewed on a computer screen Bridget Riley’s work may cause eye pain, but seeing it in person allows the viewer to appreciate her true artistic genius. The queen of Op Art – art created from abstract patters that create optical illusions – Riley’s work evokes visual sensations unlike any other. Colors are created from the merging of black and white components; her works seem to shiver, shimmer and pulsate; some have even described themselves losing their balance when confronted with one of her assemblages. Far from merely acting as a box of tricks, however, each painting is carefully planned, and deeply, theoretically rigorous.
Yayoi Kusama
One of the most idiosyncratic oeuvres in the history art, Yayoi Kusama has long created work that is at once totally unique, yet completely fitting to its time. From her forays into abstract expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s to her Infinity Mirrors of today (perfect for the selfie generation), Kusama has always reflected our world – whilst living in a bright polka-dotted universe of her own. Her paintings are the best example of this; at once beautifully surreal, and yet also paranoid and troubling – either way, Kusama is one of the most beloved contemporary artists in history, and has the world clamoring to be a part of hers.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
The child of Ghanaian parents raised in the United Kingdom, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s work largely focuses on incorporating black faces into the contemporary art canon. Noting that the only BME faces depicted throughout art history were those of servants, Yiadom-Boakye’s profound yet playful work portrays BME subjects in portraits undeniably reminiscent of the works of the Old Masters to draw attention to the precise fact that these subjects have been missing from artists’ canvases for too long. Drawing inspiration from historical aesthetics but progressively looking towards the future, the artist was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2012.
