The woman behind van Gogh\’s success (and more from art around the world)

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!

‘The Woman Who Made van Gogh’

The problematic cliché goes that behind every successful man, there is a woman — strangely in this case, it rings true. While Vincent van Gogh is widely celebrated today as one of the foremost painters in world art history, not many people know that it took a diminutive, fierce, unassuming, instinctive woman to catapult the troubled artist to the fame he achieved — that too posthumously. Today, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the painter’s sister-in-law, is finally being recognized as the force who opened the world’s eyes to his genius. The New York Times offers an enthralling long-read.

Mother continues deceased daughter’s art

On August 4, 2020, the gigantic Beirut blast cut short the artistic dreams of young Lebanese-Armenian designer Gaia Fodoulian. The 29-year-old had sought to support the region’s artists and designers with a further-reaching, modern platform. But three days after she passed away, her mother Annie Vartivarian decided to complete her daughter’s work — in her memory. Finally, in April 2021, the virtual platform Art Design Lebanon (AD Leb) launched “Everyone is the creator of one’s own faith”, a physical pop-up exhibition at the blast-damaged historic Tabbal Building. Al Jazeera reports the moving tale.

‘Salt Bae’ gets sued over his own image

Turkish butcher, chef and restauranteur Nusret Gökçe — or ‘Salt Bae’ — is well known for the artwork that shows him in his signature salt-sprinkling pose. US artists Logan Hicks and Joseph Iurato say they were hired by Gökçe to create a mural of him that they got spot on. Unfortunately, Gökçe allegedly then used that same artwork at at his restaurants across the world and as his logo. Now, he faces a $5 million lawsuit for copyright infringement. Dawn’s Images elaborates.

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