A conversation with renegade artist Ai Weiwei; elsewhere, UK’s galleries open doors today

A SUMMARY OF THE MOST EXCITING ART NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

While we focus on Indian art, we can’t obviously function in a vacuum. It’s a small world and everything is connected, especially on the web. So, let’s train our spotlight across the world map to see what’s going on — from art trends to socio-political issues to everything that affects the great aesthetic global consciousness. Or, let’s just travel the world and have some fun!

Once a rebel…

Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has spent 81 long days and nights in a 12×24 foot padded cell. If the government’s intention was to crush the spirit that defined his defiant 35-year art career, it failed. Later in 2021, 63-year-old Ai aims to publish his long-gestating memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, offering insights into his artistic practice and activism through the framework of the last century of Chinese history. Today he lives in a villa on a country estate east of Lisbon in Portugal, with his three cats and exotic birds. He speaks about state oppression, writing a memoir for his son and why there’s no hope for social media with The Independent.

England’s art hubs get some pandemic relief

As leading museums and galleries reopen in England on Monday, their directors have urged the public to grab a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see national treasures up close, thanks to distancing norms — which would make great art more easy to examine than ever before (or definitely so for more privileged sections of the population). Pre-booked time slots and queuing even for free displays will persist, but free tickets are being made available by some for a limited time, and most of these establishments are vying for a break from the strictures of the pandemic. The Guardian reports.

185-year-old painting leads to new species of snake

Between 1875 and 1895, a scientist with the Natural History Museum happened to confuse two species of snakes in South India — and for the next 150 years, people continued to follow this identification without questioning it. The rediscovery started when in 2016 a colleague of Museum associate Dr Deepak Veerappan collected a snake from Tamil Nadu that looked different from the widespread species normally thought to be found in the area. Soon, they fell back on a series of natural history paintings produced in 1836 by a Danish physician and zoologist Theodore Cantor — so detailed that even the scales on a snake’s heads could be counted as a way to tell them apart. Finally, the racer snake species found a new member. Natural History Museum recounts the fascinating tale.