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7 min read

Inclusivity, culture and power

The nightlife of Oxford occupies an important place in the story of the city, and in its historic contribution to the wider world.

Nightlife can embrace or ostracise. Some spaces are widely accessible – open to non-students and actively welcoming to those who identify as LGBTIQA+. Other spaces bar entry in accordance with university tradition.

This accessibility is important, because the international importance of the university gives Oxford’s night-time scene real power. Over time, it has been shown to dictate national politics, shape culture, and embody the systemic social divide in this country. In many ways, traditional systems of power are perpetuated by Oxford’s nightlife.

There is also an important relationship with film and literature. Oxford’s nightlife has been widely portrayed in fictional media, and at the same time venues in the city have played a role in the discussion and production of literary creations.

Cultural contributions

The public houses of Oxford have long contributed to the cultural fabric of the city and the wider world. The most prominent example is the Eagle and Child pub, founded in 1650. In the early to mid-twentieth century this was the place in which J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis first shared the manuscripts of The Lord of The Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia, reading them aloud to a group of writers known as ‘The Inklings’. This group, which included poets Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, was a forum in which the writers discussed their work. They met in the ‘Rabbit Room’ of the Eagle and Child, and in Lewis’s own rooms at Magdalen College.

4 min read

Tracing Oxford’s history in its buildings

During my time in Oxford, I have seen many shops come and go. Nowadays they often leave with little or no sign they ever existed, but back in the day when advertising was hand painted on walls, the new owners often just covered it up. Taking a walk in Oxford and keeping your eyes open, you can still find the fading remains of some of these so-called ghost signs today as they get uncovered. In a broader definition they can also include metal signs or stone engravings. Have you noticed some of the ones below?

1) Curry’s, Cowley Road

Curry’s signage on Stockmore Street / Cowley Road. Photo by Paul Freestone 2020.

On the popular Cowley Road in East Oxford, you can find the traces of a shop that some of you may be very familiar with. Although now selling primarily electronics, then Curry’s were advertising above what is now Atomic Burger with the words “Accessories Curry’s Cycles”. On the side of the building on Stockmore Road the faded writing reads “Toys & Baby Carriages Curry’s Cycles and Radio”. The advertisement was likely put up sometime between 1934 and 1948.

2) Lumley’s Grocery, Walton Street

Lumley’s corner shop. Photo by Isisbridge 2013, album “ghost signs etc”.

In Jericho two special signs are displayed above the Oxford Wine Café at 127 Walton Street: they are ghost signs covered up by ghost signs. The sign at the top reads “The finest Turkey coffee ¼ [meaning: one shilling and fourpence] in one pound canisters”. However, if you look very closely, you can make out another advertisement beneath the visible one. It says “G. Lumleys Grocery Provision Warehouse”. The previous corner shop also encouraged passers-by to “try Geo Lumleys 2/6 [meaning: two shillings and sixpence] tea” on the lower of the two signs. Again, a previous advertisement can be made out beneath this sign proclaiming “[illegible] Bacon, Crosse & Blackwell’s Pickles”. George Lumley was a grocer there until 1888.

Peter Schjeldahl, whose exuberant prose and perceptive mind made him one of the most widely read art critics in the U.S., has died at 80.

He had been battling lung cancer, and he chronicled his experience with the disease in a memorable 2019 essay called “The Art of Dying” that appeared in the New Yorker, the publication for which he had served as head art critic since 1998.

The New Yorker confirmed Schjeldahl’s death in a tweet on Friday evening.

For the past half-century, Schjeldahl made sure to address the most important shows around New York, as well as, on occasion, ones outside the city. Reading his criticism, one got a sense for which shows truly mattered in a scene that is overcrowded with retrospectives, blockbuster exhibitions, and big solo shows.

Much of the appeal of Schjeldahl’s writing is its stylishness. Schjeldahl had gotten his start as a poet and, because of that, his writing has a different feel from most other art critics’. Often, his reviews were rid of art jargon, causing them to be legible to a larger audience, even when he was dealing with conceptual work.

Fast fashion juggernaut Shein launched a new collection inspired by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo Thursday. However, the Chinese online retailer’s collaboration is with the Frida Kahlo Corporation, a Panamanian licensing and commercialization company that has been fighting with members of the artist’s family for almost ten years over trademark and property rights. 

The news of the Shein x Frida Kahlo collaboration was first reported by the Spanish daily newspaper El País. 

The new collaboration appears to be the latest episode in the ongoing dispute between FKC and some of Kahlo’s relatives.

In 1954, Frida Kahlo died without a will. Kahlo’s property rights were inherited by her niece, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, according to Mexican law. Isolda Pinedo Kahlo’s daughter, Maria Cristina Romeo Pinedo, was then granted power of attorney over these rights in 2003. The following year, Pinedo and others formed The Frida Kahlo Corp. with the primary objective of “licensing and commercializing the ‘Frida Kahlo’ brand worldwide.”

In 2018, a story by Reeves Wiedeman for New York magazine detailed the haunting account of a couple, who after buying a valuable home in a New Jersey suburb, became the targets of an anonymous stalker. Taunting Derek and Maria Broaddus via anonymous letters signed, “The Watcher,” the author delivered menacing references to their three children and specifics on their domestic lives gathered in drive-bys to the home.

A fictionalized version of the saga is played out in a new Netflix limited series produced by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. It follows the descent of married couple, Dean and Nora Brannock (Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts), as they purge their lifesavings to buy a historic mansion outside of New York City. The Brannocks find themselves unable to sell it to escape the anonymous threats. Further menacing the couple’s polished lifestyle throughout the series is an increasingly dire financial situation.

The series delivers a cautionary tale about upper middle class excess and contains subtexts about a milleu of contemporary afflictions: financial security, market uncertainties, class wars, generational infighting, and paranoia.

Further stoking Murphy and Brennan’s riffs on class tensions afflicting metropolitan elites: the producers draw out a subplot that taps into art world caricatures that ushers in some of the show’s campiest moments.

Executing the bulk of the series memorable lines is a real-estate agent and art school-grad named Karen played by Jennifer Coolidge (the actress has gained a recent cult following for her portrayals of cheap anti-heroines). As the agent listing the sprawling property, Karen runs into Nora at the open house, recognizing each other from their days at RISD. Nora quips about her first major show at a new gallery in Tribeca for which she was featured in the Times.

One of Paris’s most iconic buildings, La Monnaie, serves as the setting for the eighth edition of Asia Now Paris, an ambitious art fair that has brought together more than 75 galleries from across Asia.

For its first fair since the start of the pandemic and its first in La Monnaie, Asia Now expanded in size. It’s also gotten buy-in from top galleries like Almine Rech, Perrotin, Richard Saltoun, Frank Elbaz, and P21. 

“This edition is special,” Asia Now director Alexandra Fain told ARTnews at a preview on Thursday.

In addition to well-presented booths, the fair has a program that includes numerous talks and performances, as well as various site-specific commissions. Among them are a durational live-painting session by Ayako Rokkaku and a special project of ceramics that incorporate hemp by artist Natsuko Uchino, who is collaborating with 91530 Le Marais, a farm about 40 minutes outside Paris founded by Victoire de Pourtalès and Benjamin Eymère.

But most importantly, it is showing truly cutting-edge work from artists active across Asia. (The fair uses the definition of the continent provided by the Asia Society in New York, which accounts not just for East Asia but also for the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.) Be prepared to learn about artists who have yet to come across your radar; it makes for a wonderful experience.

On the outskirts of Paris this week, in the suburb of Aubervilliers, 250 artists opened their studios to the public for a program called POUSH, which began in 2020. The brainchild of Hervé Digne, the cofounder of the art production consultancy Manifesto, POUSH offers emerging artists heavily subsidized studio space by making deals with real estate developers who are holding onto enormous, abandoned buildings. 

“At first, the landlords were skeptical,” said Digne, as we stood in the massive artistic compound. Its site was once a perfume factory, then a data center. “Artists in an abandoned building? They didn’t think it would go well.” 

But Digne, who had experience with government officials and developers from his Manifesto work, eventually convinced a developer in the suburb of Clichy to offer the office tower to artists. In return, POUSH was have to cover utility costs and some taxes, and thus, POUSH was able to offer studio spaces to artists at a heavily reduced rate of about 10 to 13 euros per square meter a month. After two years, the developer in Clichy wanted the space back.

“We gave it back on time and in the same condition,” Digne said. It was important to him to set a good example so that the program could hopefully spawn similar schemes.

Digne began POUSH as a way to address two key issues he thought were facing artists: a lack of affordable studio space and an epidemic of loneliness. He thought to himself: “These artists leave school, and they begin a very intense period, often very alone. But what if they weren’t?”

The original stone mosaic floors where St. Nicholas—the inspiration for Santa Claus—would have stood during mass and where his tomb is located within the building, have been uncovered by archaeologists excavating the Church of St. Nicholas in Demre, Turkey. Since 1982, the church has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To access the remains of the third-century basilica below, an upper layer of Byzantine-era mosaic tiles were removed. After the older church was flooded due to rising sea levels, the current structure was erected over top its remains in the Middle Ages.

“We are talking about the floor on which St. Nicholas’s feet stepped. This is an extremely important discovery, the first find from that period,” Osman Eravşar, the head of the provincial cultural heritage preservation board in Antalya, told Demirören News Agency.

Excavations at the church have been ongoing since 2017, when experts identified the seventh- or eighth-century church as St. Nicholas’s final resting place. While electronically surveying the space, experts discovered empty spaces between the floor and the foundations.

The site was originally intended to be St. Nicholas’s final resting place, but Crusaders transported his bones to Bari, Italy in 1087. During the removal, they moved the empty burial chamber to a niche on the side of the chapel.

By Friday, several participants in Paris+, the first edition of Art Basel in the French capital, reported having sold artworks worth millions of dollars, potentially suggesting that the fair could have lasting power.

Galleries brought to the fair all kinds of work, from new pieces by rising stars to old ones by art-historical giants of years past. It was well-established international talents that seem to have performed best, however, and not artists associated with the French scene.

Still, French galleries said they felt a good deal of enthusiasm at the fair—perhaps more, even, than they’d found at FIAC, the long-reigning French art fair that was ousted from its venue and October slot by Art Basel this year.

“We were surprised by the number of first choice guests, the number of collectors is exceptional per square meter,” said Galerie Templon executive director Anne-Claudie Coric in a statement. “We had visitors from the United States, Latin America, China, we saw people from Turkey. We have never seen such eagerness, such excitement around the ex FIAC, that’s one thing.”

As always, it’s worth remembering that sales at art fairs are self-reported by galleries and difficult to verify. What galleries did report, however, is roughly on par with what gets announced when they participate in other top art fairs around the world.

Gouache, an opaque water-soluble paint with gum arabic or acrylic as its binder, is one of the best-kept secrets in painting. Want flat, opaque areas of color? You’ll need only one coat with gouache. Want strong tones? Gouache has a high pigment load, ensuring saturated color. Gouache is perfect for illustration and design work because it dries quite quickly and is great for digital scanning because it is nonreflective. It’s excellent for plein air painting too, since it’s both portable and easy to clean up. Traditional gouache paints may be reactivated with water after they dry, but note that those made with acrylic binders cannot. All gouache paints work best on premium watercolor papers; because they are opaque, they also work well on colored papers. Browse our roundup of the best gouache paints to find the one that fits you best.

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Developed for artists who are keen on customizing their own palettes and mixing their own colors, M. Graham’s gouache comes out on top. This line offers mostly pure, single-pigment colors (versus hues) made with a small amount of gum arabic as the binder, so they showcase an intense and impressive pigment load. The prime ingredient, however, is honey, which makes the paint moist and free-flowing. The sweet stuff also prevents cracking during the drying process and enables artists to rewet paints more easily than gouache without honey. This paint lays down smoothly, blends with ease, and can be thinned out to achieve light, translucent washes.

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Designers, illustrators, and artists reach for Winsor & Newton’s designer gouache paints to create flat areas of vibrant color. The paint’s opacity is achieved via premium pigments and not with chalks or fillers. The ultra-high and ultra-fine pigment load provides excellent saturated color coverage that dries matte, ideal for digital reproduction. These traditional gum arabic gouache paints reactivate easily with water. If opacity and transparency are both desired, these paints pair well with watercolor paints. Calligraphers, paper marblers, and airbrush artists also use these gouache paints because of their opacity and excellent flow—the formula literally glides from the tube. Winsor & Newton’s gouache paints are available in 89 alluring colors, but just two sets: a set of six primary colors and a set of ten introductory colors.

Q&A with Francisco echo Eraso, arts and access consultant.

How did you get involved in accessibility work?
I’m a disabled, trans, Colombian American artist, curator, arts administrator, and access consultant. I started my organizing work at the now disbanded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, where I learned how to approach accessibility in a grassroots context. I moved on to larger institutions such as the Ford Foundation, where I worked on a Disability Futures Fellowship. That experience, developing programs with 20 leaders of various disability arts and justice movements, is central to how I now understand contemporary access in the arts.

What are access services?
Institutions often approach access issues through the framework of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Many art spaces are working to meet a checklist of services now required by law, whether affecting exhibition design or programs for disabled workers. Recently, there has also been a lot of recommitment to diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI), but all these efforts can still leave out many types of access that disability justice organizers foreground.

My own communities of disabled people concentrate on making space for being together. That includes access services like tours designed to meet specific disability needs, access work, care work, event coordinating, public programs, and virtual spaces. Access work should be locally centered, but also very expansive, community engaged, and led by disabled people.

What does your role entail?
Access work in the arts incorporates services such as consulting with installation teams and graphic designers to develop a universal exhibition design, which often includes tours in ASL for those who are Deaf and hard of hearing, and visual descriptions for those who are blind or have low vision.