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From early cave painters to Pablo Picasso to Roberto Longo, artists have long loved the expressive potential of a soft charcoal pencil or crayon. Each sweep of charcoal offers intense black color and easy blending for preliminary studies, lush landscapes, or photorealistic portraits. There is a wide variety of artist’s charcoals on the market, each with its own unique set of properties and ingredients. Compressed charcoal is a soft block or stick, often created from burned birch, clay, and black pigment. Charcoal pencils are similar to graphite pencils; they’re often used to render crisp, detailed drawings. There are also delicate charcoals made from burning willow twigs and grape vines. Buying charcoal implements in a set is a nice option, giving you tools for an array of effects from the get-go. We can help you find the set best suited to your needs; browse our picks below.

ARTNEWS RECOMMENDS
General’s Classic Charcoal Set
The popular pencil purveyor offers a number of charcoal sets, but we like this one as it covers a diverse range of charcoal types in many different grades, all at an affordable price. It’s suitable for both seasoned and beginner users of charcoal, with implements showcasing consistency in quality and performance. Highlights include eight black charcoal pencils (from 6B extra-soft to HB hard) that have little drag and blend nicely, two white charcoal pencils to create values and highlights, and 10 compressed charcoal sticks—including four sturdy jumbo pieces that can be turned on their wider sides to efficiently cover large areas. This set will satisfy virtually all your shading and smudging needs.

WE ALSO LIKE
Derwent Charcoal Set
If you love sketching with willow and vine charcoal, consider Derwent’s set. It’s the only option on our list to include both in addition to harder kinds of charcoal. You get one chunky piece of willow charcoal for intense mark-making and two long stripes of vine charcoal ideal for looser strokes, plus three charcoal pencils. One is a dark variety that’s slightly softer than General’s and therefore capable of producing slightly cleaner lines that are less prone to smudging. The other two are tinted pencils in a brown and a white—great to add subtle tones into your drawings. Also included are three compressed charcoal blocks that smudge beautifully and can achieve rich depth. Note that unlike other brands, Derwent designates its charcoal by shade rather than by the standard grading scale for hardness.

April 1 – May 22, 2022

December 6, 2021 – May 31, 2022

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Love charcoal but hate the mess? Pick up a charcoal pencil, which is composed of compressed charcoal inside a protective layer, typically wood. Suitable for drawing, sketching, or smudging, a charcoal pencil offers a familiar feel and provides you with a lot of control over your marks. Even in this more structured form, it can be manipulated to create an array of rich and dark tones, as well as thin lines and bold ones. Our picks range from beginner to artist-grade sets. Remember that charcoal, even in pencil form, is delicate, so these can still break if dropped. And sharpen with care.

ARTNEWS RECOMMENDS
General’s Charcoal Kit
This trusted brand, which has been manufacturing pencils since 1889, produces drawing tools championed for their smooth, uniform quality. Its charcoal pencils have little drag, take to blending very nicely, and are affordable. This set includes lots of options to achieve different shading effects. You get one white charcoal pencil and five black charcoal pencils, but that’s not all—compressed charcoal sticks in 2B, 4B, and 6B hardnesses, a white compressed charcoal stick, a carbon sketch pencil, a sharpener, and  a kneaded eraser round out the set. The pencils are durable and won’t easily break in your hand. Sharpening them is another story: They can snap in a hand sharpener, so it’s wise to invest in a compatible sharpener or keep them pointy with an X-Acto knife.

Buy: General’s Charcoal Kit $13.50

WE ALSO LIKE
Derwent Charcoal Pencils
Derwent’s pencils are slightly scratchier than General’s, but because they aren’t as soft, they produce cleaner lines that are less susceptible to smudging. This set includes one light, two medium, and two dark pencils as well as a white highlighting pencil. The differences among them are clear, which means you get an excellent variety of tones to work with. Encased in a round, 8-millimeter barrel made of cedar, these are comfortable to hold and relatively resistant to breaking. They come packed with their own sharpener in a sturdy metal tin. 

Days after releasing Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, his first new album in five years, rapper Kendrick Lamar has unveiled a music video featuring two Texas cultural landmarks.

The recently released song “N95” has a video, codirected by Lamar and music executive Dave Free, that includes the Fort Worth Water Gardens, designed by Philip Johnson, and the city’s Kimbell Art Museum.

In one clip, Lamar is seen descending the steps into a geometric vortex carved in stone down which water cascades in sheets, and collects at the bottom in a meditation pool.

The public square, opened in 1974, sits at the south end of Fort Worth’s downtown district; it also appeared in Solange’s 2019 music video for the song “Almeda.” Images of Lamar standing at the bottom of the Fort Worth site mimic other images of him floating in the video: it opens with a segment filmed at a Los Angeles beach in which he is levitating over the ocean with his arms outspread as if on a cross.

Later, Lamar takes center stage in an empty auditorium in the Kimbell Museum’s Renzo Piano–designed auditorium, playing the piano. The venue echoes Louis Kahn’s landmark 1972 architectural design for the original museum, recognized for its scale and light-filled vaulted space, but is even more open and transparent.

Anna Delvey, the notorious scammer who traversed the upper echelons of the art world prior to being caught and arrested for grand larceny, finally opened her own art show on Thursday.

Titled “Allegedly,” the event took place at Bar Chrystie in the Public Hotel. Before it even opened, it was covered extensively by the press, garnering headlines in the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and Rolling Stone, as well as art publications like this one. While many in the art world wouldn’t be caught dead working with or being seen supporting the young German, it seems that Delvey pulled off a wildly successful event, even though she is still behind bars.

“I will say this, it was a really good time,” said Gutes Guterman, cofounder of the Drunken Canal, who attended Anna Delvey’s solo show. “Someone called the event the ‘death of culture,’ but it was the pinnacle. A socialite behind bars? That’s so pop culture.”

Delvey is committed to the bit, which is perhaps the best you can hope for amid a celebrity culture that has turned to anxious hyper-management of one’s image.

At last night’s opening, a Delvey drag performer lipsynced, donning her trademark heavy, black framed glasses. Afterward, models wearing nylon masks stomped around the bar holding Delvey’s sketches. The works are simple pencil on paper drawings with a comical bent that she created in Orange County Detention (she is now in ICE detention for overstaying her visa). Some drawings were faux newspaper covers titled The Delvey Crimes or The Delvey Journal, in which cartoons and captions abound.

Resin is so versatile—you can use it to coat easily scratchable surfaces, create highly detailed molded pieces, or sculpt it as a medium all its own. In nature, trees secrete this viscous liquid to heal gashes and punctures; synthetic resin, which is what you’ll find in most crafting supply stores, comes in liquid or powder form and firms up when mixed with resin hardener in a one-to-one ratio. First time using this miracle material? Browse our selection of starter products—all of which include both resin and hardener—to find your perfect pick.

Few institutional shows have dwelled on the question of what happens to the convention of the muse when both an artist and their subject are women. “Women Painting Women” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is among the exceptions to explore that potent alchemy of talent, gender identity, and insight. Conceived by chief curated by Andrea Karnes, it features some 50 female-identifying artists spanning the 1960s—the earliest painting is by Alice Neel—to today.

In the show, hallowed names in feminist art are represented; among them are Faith Ringgold, Marylin Minter, and Paula Rego. Younger artists like Jordan Casteel and Apolonia Sokol are given prominent placement beside them.

Earlier this week, Karnes was joined at Frieze New York by Marylin Minter and Jenna Gribbon, two artists in the show, for a panel discussion moderated by curator Alison Gingeras. Karnes spoke of her emphasis on people rarely represented in the art historical canon: Black, Brown, and Indigenous women, as well as elderly women, pregnant women, trans women, and people who reject the gender binary. Citing Linda Nochlin’s famed 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” as her lodestar, Karnes spoke of wanting to “repoint to the idea of greatness.”

The show notably grapples with how the definition of “woman” has expanded, grown elastic, to better serve a diversity of self-representation, an aim that has also been advanced by recent shows of pre-20th-century artists like Artemisia Gentileschi and Berthe Morisot. Does the use of the term “woman” have the potential to exclude participants or viewers? Yes, inevitably, said Karnes. But the curatorial team made an admirable effort to make sure every artist included in the show consented to the definition.

“I told them ‘I’ll be in a show, but I’ll never be the only woman again,” Minter said, reflecting on her early career as the “token female artist” in group exhibitions. She pushed against the notion and counted a victory if the curator conceded to including one more woman.

The Hamptons is a battleground of epic proportions: the world’s rich fight to develop the highly prized land of the East End while planning boards raise infrastructural and environmental concerns, creating bureaucratic stalemates. David Zwirner, owner of the mega-gallery of the same name, has found himself caught in the throes of this very problem as he attempts to set up an artist’s residency next to his home in Montauk.

As documented in the East Hampton Star, the Planning Department has some issues with the project. Zwirner hoped to build some 17 cottages on the shore of Lake Montauk, to be known as the Bridgeford Cottages, that he would offer to artists at a subsidized cost. He is aiming to construct those cottages within the next two years.

As the structures abut Zwirner’s estate, the Planning Department was initially worried about zoning issues. The cottages were to be zoned as commercial space, but if invited artists crossed over into the residential zoning of the Zwirner home, perhaps to use the pool, things could get awfully muddled, at least by zoning standards.

It now seems that the issue is not so much who uses the pool but rather the environmental health of the lake, which already suffers from pollution. The Planning Department would like to see a deteriorating existing bulkhead either completely removed, allowing the natural shoreline to emerge, or rebuilt, so the rotting debris doesn’t continue to filter into the lake.

The Zwirners, it would seem, prefer that it remain in its current, slightly dilapidated condition.

Traveling with your art supplies can be cumbersome and even harrowing—unless you have the right bag to pack them in. If you’re a painter, you probably want separate pouches for your brushes that can keep them secure; you might even want to carry an easel. If you’re a sculptor, you likely have many oddly shaped tools. It’s important to think about organization when browsing for a travel bag, but don’t forget to consider comfort: Is a backpack, messenger bag, or briefcase-style carrier best for your journey? To help you decide, we’ve found five artist-friendly canvas or nylon bags that make commuting a cinch—whether to and from your studio, the classroom, or the great outdoors.

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has signed an agreement with the French city of Bayeux that will see them work together on scholarship surrounding the Bayeux Tapestry, a 223-foot-long work that ranks among the most important pieces of the Middle Ages.

The deal, first reported by the Times of London, could put the V&A one step closer to reviving a loan agreement for the tapestry itself, which hasn’t left France in more than 950 years. In 2021, that deal was put in jeopardy when a condition report on the Bayeux Tapestry found that it was too fragile to travel. Some read the report as a sign of strained relations between the U.K. and France in a post-Brexit Europe.

Created in the 1070s, the nine-panel embroidery depicts 58 scenes chronicling the 1066 Normandy Conquest of England following the Battle of Hastings. Scholars believe it was commissioned by the Duke of Normandy’s William the Conqueror’s brother Bishop Odo following the political victory.

It is not the first time the V&A has worked with French officials on efforts around the medieval artifact.

The museum’s first director, Henry Cole, helped lead the effort to produce a replica of the tapestry in 1869, negotiating with a Bayeux official to complete the project. The replica was first exhibited in 1873 and later displayed in the Cast Courts at the South Kensington Museum.

Lorenza Böttner gazes confidently and seductively over her left shoulder in a pastel self-portrait from 1989. Her hair is flowing; meanwhile, her naked and muscular body reflects the bands of rainbow light surrounding her. Though the environment lacks a horizon line, the rainbow fades into a deep, dark blue that helps ground the scene. Chalky, dirty footprints are scattered over the gradient, as if the paper had at one point itself been a ground—or more specifically, a dance floor. The portrait is a record of irreverent dancing in more ways than one: Böttner is grooving, and it’s contagious.

If you know anything about Böttner—a Chilean-German artist who was born in 1959, started presenting as female in art school, made many self-portraits, and died in her thirties of AIDS-related complications—you’ll recall that there is no arm at the end of that left shoulder she’s gazing over, nor at the end of her right one. Though it’s right there, in the middle of the five-foot sheet of paper, the nub on her shoulder is far from the first thing a viewer notices in this work. The other striking details include the deft, Degas-esque linework; the immaculate vibe; and Böttner’s skillful handling of color. The rainbow is both campy and delicate, gently refracted by the surfaces of her sculpted figure and windswept hair.

All this the artist pulled off by drawing with her feet and her mouth. Yet rather than depict herself as a freak capable of feats, Böttner appears, in the 20 or so self-portraits on view in “Requiem for the Norm,” her retrospective at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York, engaged in various banal and tender acts: bottle-feeding a baby or reading a book as she turns the pages with her toes. The self-portraits don’t invite pity or applause, nor do they hide her disability. They are joyful and beautiful, and decidedly not about “overcoming.”

Spanning Böttner’s 16-year career, the show also highlights a few series of photo-based works as well as ephemera from performances, including footage, photographs, and posters. A video of her 1987 performance Venus de Milo, a landmark work of disability culture, shows Böttner covered in a fine layer of white plaster and standing on a platform with a cloth draped over her lower body. For more than 20 minutes, she holds a pose resembling that of the titular armless statue. Before descending the podium and exiting stage left, Böttner asks the audience, in German, “Well, what would you say if the artwork moves of its own accord?” This wry piece retools the politics of staring, calling attention to how impairment can seem downright romantic as a metaphor, or when depicted in art or suggested by ruins, while in daily life, visibly disabled people are often gawked at or shunned.

9 min read

A brief overview of the history of vaccination in Oxford

The remarkable success of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine’s rapid development, testing and rollout presents a moment in time to look briefly back at the history of vaccination in Oxford. Since the pioneering works of Edward Jenner in the 18th century with smallpox vaccination and the social and economic issues that ensued, clear correlations can be seen to those same issues being encountered today with the COVID 19 pandemic.

Many of the issues encountered in the 18th century are currently familiar. They included inoculation resistance, misinformation and conspiracy theories, quarantine and isolation, reporting and surveillance, vaccine passports (a requirement to work) and incentivisation programmes.

Early inoculation

Edward Jenner is well known around the world for his innovative contribution to inoculation and the ultimate eradication of smallpox. Smallpox, the deadliest of all eighteenth-century diseases, was a terrible disease that spread from person to person without discrimination. It was widely feared, killing approximately 30% of those infected. After the initial symptoms of headache, muscle aches, exhaustion and fever, the body would become entirely covered in a rash, including inside the eyes, earning smallpox the epithet ‘Speckled Monster’. Jenner’s work is widely regarded as the foundation of immunology although its origins were in non-white cultures including China, Africa and later Turkey. Many people’s lives were saved from death and horrendous disfigurement thanks to Jenner’s remarkable work and the later developments from his endeavours.

His work started with Sarah Nelmes, a dairy maid, who had become infected with cowpox. On 14 May 1796, Jenner removed matter from pustules on her hand which he then used to inoculate an eight-year-old boy (James Phipps) who then also developed pustules but quickly recovered. On 1 July, Jenner performed the second stage of the experiment by inoculating James with smallpox. His aim was to see if the cowpox vaccine worked. This was long before medical ethics; the risk Jenner took with the boy’s life today seems unacceptable.

Vaccinating Oxford

In 1796 Finmere villagers were among the first to benefit from Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination and Robert Holt the local rector (among others) became an enthusiastic vaccinator. Holt’s achievements are noteworthy as he was untrained in medicine.  His work is an early example of overcoming inoculation resistance as his parishioners trusted him and there was success in the majority of cases. Holt supplied other clergymen and small village doctors with vaccine and was a leader in dissemination. However, not the most sanitary of procedures were always employed and secondary infections could occur which led, in time, to villagers’ refusals. Holt recognised the experimental nature of the procedure and robustly documented his results; this work earned him considerable praise within the medical profession.

How a 'very simple story' became a number one TV hit

April 8 – May 21, 2022