Dean Kissick

Thursday

Dean Kissick

Vaccine wars: the global battle for a precious resource

From our UK edition

39 min listen

Why has the vaccine rollout turned nasty? (00:45) What's the sex abuse scandal rocking France's elite? (16:55) Have artists run out of new ideas? (28:35)With Daily Telegraph columnist Matthew Lynn; science journalist and author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 Laura Spinney; Spectator contributor Jonathan Miller; journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet; Dean Kissick, New York editor of Spike Art Magazine; and Eddy Frankel, visual art editor of Time Out magazine.Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Max Jeffery, Alexa Rendell and Matt Taylor.

Dean Kissick

The rise of bad figurative painting

From our UK edition

Bad figurative painting is today’s hottest trend. Last autumn Artnet listed the top ten ‘ultra-contemporary’ artists (meaning those born after 1974) with the highest total auction sales so far that year. Counting down: Lucas Arruda, Jia Aili, Ayako Rokkaku, Dana Schutz, Amoako Boafo, Nicolas Party, Matthew Wong, Jonas Wood, Eddie Martinez, Adrian Ghenie. None are household names. All are figurative painters, though some play with bad abstraction as well. None are particularly exciting. Many, many others are climbing after them. Since the list was published, Dana Schutz’s ‘Elevator’ (2017) sold for nearly £4.8 million at Christie’s Hong Kong, a new record price for the artist. The work is a poor impression of cubism.