Art institute of chicago

Thursday

Xico Greenwald

Playing the long game

Back in the fall of 1995, on the centennial of Paul Cezanne’s breakout late-career exhibition at Ambroise Vollard’s avant-garde art gallery, a retrospective opened at the Grand Palais in Paris, titled simply “Cézanne.” That show traveled to the Tate in London in 1996 and then to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Now, more than a quarter century later, another retrospective with a similarly spartan title has opened in the Windy City: a joint venture between the Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern.

cezanne

Thursday

Stuart Jeffries

The artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise

From our UK edition

A few years ago, the American artist Barbara Kruger covered the façade of Frankfurt’s Kaufhof department store with a pair of huge eyes. It was as if Big Brother had come out of retirement. Above that unsparing gaze was the slogan, in Kruger’s signature Futura bold italic font: ‘You want it. You buy it. You forget it.’ It was a typical work of art by Kruger. She made her career from what’s called culture jamming, subverting media messages by transforming them into their own anti-messages and by indicting the business of capitalism.