Summer Brennan can recognize a Vincent van Gogh painting by its wispy, vibrant brushstrokes. A series of loopy spirals or spindly legs? That’s probably Louise Bourgeois.
Art
'Wordle' fan? The National Gallery of Art has launched a copycat. – The Washington Post
But after a few days of playing “Artle,” Brennan, a writer based in Paris, began to notice some holes in her art knowledge. For 30 years, she has indulged her love of visual arts by visiting galleries, reading books and attending shows. So when she couldn’t identify a piece by French photographer Eugène Atget, it felt like an embarrassing lapse.
“It does give you some self-awareness when you realize that all the artists you know right away are like White 19th-century artists, that maybe it’s time to expand some of your art appreciation,” Brennan said.
One of the latest “Wordle” copycats challenges players not with letters, but with images plucked from the National Gallery of Art. The popular daily word game, which was purchased by the New York Times for seven figures in January, has sparked dozens of spinoffs: “Squabble” (a Wordle battle royal), “Herdle” (for the musically minded), and even “Lewdle” (for profanity experts).
“Artle” begins by showing players a piece of art — a painting, photograph or sculpture — from the National Gallery of Art’s 150,000-piece collection, including whimsical paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and somber Roy DeCarava photographs. Players have four chances to guess the artist. Unlike “Wordle,” there are no hints, although the art becomes progressively easier to identify as players strike out. Players can then share their results with friends through text messages or on social media.
Mary Gregory, an art critic based in New York, began playing “Artle” as soon as it launched last monthand it’s now become a ritual. Every day, Gregory and her husband return to the gallery’s “Artle” website to test their art aptitude and extend their untouched winning streak.
“It’s fun. It’s a little challenge. And, you know what? If you get it wrong at the end, they tell you who it was,” she said. “These are in the collection of the National Gallery, and the National Gallery belongs to everybody.”
Steven Garbarino, a product manager at the gallery, began developing the game after noticing that people were searching for “Art Wordle” online but that no such game existed. It was the worst possible time. In late March, the museum’s staff was busy with “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” the gallery’s largest exhibition since the start of the pandemic. Garbarino worried that launching a gaming app would be seen as a distraction.
To his surprise, National Gallery of Art Director Kaywin Feldman quickly jumped on board. It took little more than a month to build the game, and it quickly began attracting an audience, with players in nearly every country. It has been played more than 1 million times and has 30,000 daily players. The game has increased traffic to the museum’s website by 125 percent.
“You can catch a little bit of lightning in a bottle and see cascading results,” Garbarino said. “We don’t have to spend 12 months developing a huge strategy and positioning plan. We can build something small [like ‘Artle’] that engages the audience.”
Projects such as “Artle” reflect a new vision for the National Gallery of Art: a desire to quickly reach new, more diverse audiences. Since being named director in 2019, Feldman has updated the museum’s mission statement and priorities. The product management team, which developed the game, has doubled in size, including adding more software engineers and digital consultants under Feldman’s leadership. “The bulk of our funding comes from the American taxpayers, so we owe it to them to give them the greatest art experience they can have. And the nation is a very diverse place. We want to focus on the great richness of the diversity of the American people and better reflect the nation,” Feldman said in an interview with Washingtonian last year.
The team worked closely with the gallery’s education department to choose a mix of famous, easily identifiable art and more obscure pieces. Within the game, for example, Georgia O’Keeffe paintings are considered easy to identify, while those by James McNeill Whistler are a little more difficult. Meanwhile, a piece by Elizabeth Catlett, a Black sculptor and graphic artist, is considered difficult to pick out.
The gallery wants the artists displayed in the game to reflect a diversity of races and gender, Garbarino said. “Often some of the lowest success rates are on artists of diverse backgrounds, artists of color or women artists,” he said.
It’s a challenge. Of the 157,553 objects in the gallery’s collection, only 2.3 percent are by non-White artists, and 8.1 percent are by female artists. In the first 45 days of “Artle,” 17.8 percent of the objects used in the game were by non-White artists and 22.2 percent were by female artists.
“It’s a fine balance between bringing up artists that we think should be having a higher priority among the public while maintaining that ease of introduction to the game,” Garbarino said. “If it happens to be two days in a row where it’s a dead White man and someone is like, ‘Hey, every time I come here, it’s only a dead White man.’ It’s like, no, if you look at the broad spectrum of all the artists, it’s much more diverse. But it’s difficult to communicate that in one day.”
The well of famous artists will soon run dry, Garbarino said, and “Artle” will have to begin repeating artists or introducing its players to more unfamiliar names.
That could drive away players like Brennan’s husband who, she said, calls “Artle” “torture” and often simply offers Picasso as the answer to every image to end the game quickly.
It turns out, “Artle” may not be for everyone.
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A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.
Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.
She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.
Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”
Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.
They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.
In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.
“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.
“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
The shortlisted artists are:
Pio Abad
Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.
The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.
The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.
Jasleen Kaur
Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.
The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.
Delaine Le Bas
Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.
The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.
The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.
Claudette Johnson
Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.
She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.
Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.
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Turner Prize shortlist includes art showcasing Scottish Sikh community
A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.
Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.
She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.
Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”
Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.
They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.
In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.
“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.
“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
The shortlisted artists are:
Pio Abad
Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.
The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.
The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.
Jasleen Kaur
Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.
The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.
Delaine Le Bas
Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.
The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.
The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.
Claudette Johnson
Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.
She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.
Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.
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Claudette Johnson has been nominated for this year’s Turner prize for her work, which includes a portrait of the African-American slavery abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond commissioned as part of the Guardian’s award-winning Cotton Capital series.
Pio Abad, Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas will compete for the £25,000 prize, while the nominated artists will each collect £10,000 as the prize returns to Tate Britain for the first time in six years.
Colonialism, migration, nationalism and identity politics are the key themes running through the 40th edition of the Turner prize, which the jury described as showing contemporary British art “is appealing and dynamic as ever”.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner prize jury, said this year’s nominees were exploring ideas of identity and would be exhibited from 25 September, before the jury’s final choice.
He said: “This year’s shortlisted artists can be broadly characterised as exploring questions of identity, autobiography, community and the self in relation to memory, or history or myth.”
The Turner prize, regarded as one of the art world’s most prestigious awards, is presented to an artist born or working in Britain for an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work over the previous year.
Abad was nominated for his solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, with the jury commenting on the “precision and elegance” of his work, which takes its title from a Mark Twain poem of a similar name that critiques American imperialism the Philippines, his homeland.
The show also contains references to the Benin Bronzes, after Abad discovered that the punitive expedition of 1897 – during which British troops sacked Benin City and looted thousands of objects, of which about 900 are in the British Museum’ – set off from his home, Woolwich, in south London.
Johnson was nominated for her solo Presence exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, which the Guardian said “brilliantly questions depictions of non-white figures by such revered painters as Gauguin and Picasso”. She was also recognised for her New York show, Drawn Out, at Ortuzar Projects, which included her Redmond portrait.
She is the latest black female artist who emerged in the Black Art Movement of the 1980s to be recognised by the Turner prize, following in the footsteps of Lubaina Himid (2017 winner) and Veronica Ryan (2022), while Ingrid Pollard and Barbara Walker have both been nominated.
The jury said Johnson had been nominated because of the “renewal of her practice”, after she stopped making work in the 1990s, and the fact she was still “taking risks and trying new forms of practice”.
Kaur’s work in the exhibition Alter Altar, which was shown at Tramway in Glasgow, features sculptures and soundscapes, including a red Ford Escort covered in a huge doily, which references her father’s first car and ideas of migration and belonging in Britain.
Kaur grew up in Glasgow’s Sikh community in Pollokshields, and the jury said the exhibition was a breakout show that was “generous, celebratory, moving and alive to timely issues, speaking imaginatively to how we might live together in a world increasingly marked by nationalism, division and social control”.
Le Bas’s work, shown at the Vienna Secession exhibition, was described as a “response to social and political turmoil” and includes immersive performance art with theatrical costumes and sculptures.
Farquharson said there was a chance the show may travel to Bradford during its City of Culture year, following the precedent set by Coventry, which hosted the awards in 2021, although that was still “to be confirmed”.
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