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How do Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z differ from the older and more traditional generations of art collectors, such as the affluent Baby-Boomers? Gen-z’s behaviour greatly differs from that of the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers, who although have a much higher budget and can afford top-segment six-figures artworks, are resistant to online buying. These generations are revolutionising the art system, they are pushing for a democratisation of the market, for innovation...and they are so avant-garde in this sense! For the first time, we are seeing art collectors who do not abide by the artworld rules and, instead, who are the true impetus for change! Millennial collectors, besides their developed awareness towards environmental and ethically viable lifestyle solutions, lead art market sales, spending 6 times more than Baby Boomers. We admire younger generations for holding these important values, and at Arriere-Garde we share the same ethical concerns, Our artists are also truly engaged with preservation, social equality and the call for making of our planet a better world. See for instance the work of Brazilian artist CONRADO ZANOTTO, who creates eco-friendly art works that allow collectors to experience the integration between humankind and nature. Millennials and Gen Z are both aware of their agency in terms of sustainability, climate change and social factors, and the most willing to buy art online. At Arriere-Garde, we totally relate to them as we are as tech-savvy and interested in preservation and ecology as they are! They are those most likely to tap into the large majority of online art sales, which belong to the more affordable and mid-price segments of a long-standing exclusivist and class-based art market. Millennials and Gen-Z are most likely to apply their social and environmental awareness whilst exploring the art collecting experience. As opposed to the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers, they are the type of person that for sure is not familiar with the long-standing habit of attending snobbish private views at art galleries or populating the pretentious rooms of an auction house. Are you enjoying our content? Join more collectors and subscribe to our site to receive new content from our BLOG by e-mail.

The Covid-19 pandemic and political upheaval of the past few years has only increased street art's popularity and importance as people's voice. Street art has been popular for the past decade, with our Brazilian artist David Magila being an example of it. Magila has been involved in great public art projects in Brazil’s biggest metropolis: São Paulo. These projects have allowed Brazilian people to enjoy amazing art whilst walking on the street and without the need of visiting museums…which for many is rather impossible given the country’s economic reality that does not allow most people to afford the price of museum tickets. The Covid-19 pandemic and political upheaval of the past few years has only increased street art's popularity and importance as people's voice. Perhaps due to a rise in more locally focused art initiatives, as well as outdoor exhibitions, resulting from closures and restrictions during the pandemic, street art has also become a more prominent topic. Last year, it was announced that the Uffizi Gallery in Florence had acquired its first street art piece – a self-portrait by the UK-based artist Endless – which will go on display among the gallery’s Renaissance collection. For instance, Banksy has created artworks that have been sold at auctions for millions of dollars. Weighing in on everything, from the Israel-Palestine conflict to Black Lives Matter and Brexit, Banksy’s talents know no bounds. Some of his famous artworks include Napalm (2004), Love is in the Air (Flower Thrower) (2003) and Girl with Balloon (2002). Moreover, street artists were also able to capture the social and economic state of the world during the pandemic. Here too, Banksy’s Game Changer (2020), a tribute to healthcare workers and frontline heroes, was hailed by artists and art enthusiasts alike. With recent political conflicts as well as social unrest in the world, street art has garnered more attention and will continue to do so this year as well. Last year, at Vienna Art Week 2021 – under the theme of ‘Losing Control’ – the festival’s main curated exhibition - was hosted at an abandoned car dealership and featured work by street artists ASTRO and Sobekcis on the building’s exterior walls - as well as a large-scale rooftop painting by Artists for Future with the message: WHAT DO WE WANT? As part of a large-scale exhibition of sculptures and installations by contemporary artists, street artist JR’s work was presented at the pyramids of Giza in Cairo, Egypt at the end of 2021 – an optical illusion of the top of one pyramid being torn off. In late 2020 - early 2021, the Public Art department of Qatar Museums launched the first round of JEDARIART – a two-part project to activate urban spaces in Doha by commissioning murals by Qatar-based emerging and established artists. The program is currently open and accepting proposals for its second round on an ongoing basis. Another major public art initiative, Destination Crenshaw – an extensive community project and outdoor museum of work by Black artists along Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles – is set to debut the first phase of the project this autumn. In the meantime, the project has been running mini mural contests to showcase the work of winning artists along the Crenshaw Boulevard construction site while work is underway. Part of the current conversation around public murals and street art concerns how to preserve them – particularly in the context of protest art created as part of the global movement towards social justice and equality. The Urban Art Mapping Project of the University of St Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota has established a crowdsourced database and map to document street art that has emerged around the world in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The project’s additional databases include one for street art images relating to and responding to Covid-19, as well as an Eco Street Art Database to collect street art that addresses topics like the ecological crisis, environmental justice, and sustainability. Each of these databases have been established to provide a free future resource for scholars and artists, while acknowledging street art’s role and potential in activism – a foundation to build from. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Forces creating radical paradigmatic shifts in art and society have been at play for quite some time and they are revolutionising the way of showcasing and selling art. This means that the art system has been shaken out of its comfort zone and forced to modernise. The 22nd century Modernity is here to stay! Artists as true innovators have been responding to the new paradigms for years now, creating art highly responsive and merged with the tech and digital world: and at the forefront of creative innovation we see a production pullulating with artificial intelligence (AI) art, NFTs and artworks made in the METAVERSE. The radical paradigmatic shift we are seeing is the following: On the other hand, given the economic uncertainty we all still live and which was induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and given the looming global crisis in the second half of 2022, collectors are starting to view digital art as a value-preserving asset meant to diversify their investment portfolios and mitigate unpredictable times. And of course NTFs here are playing a big part. NO NEED FOR MATERIAL WHITE CUBES TO SHOW AND BUY ART… On the one hand, we have the digital revolution and its pervasion of the creative domain. Creative communities have begun to adapt to immersive virtual events and exhibitions, enabling artists to reach global audiences from the comfort of their homes. …HENCE THE PROLIFERATION OF SPACES IN THE METAVERSE WHERE NEW WAYS OF CURATING AND DISPLAYING ART ARE DISRUPTING OLD RULES AND ADAPTING TO THE ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES OF THE VIRTUAL ART WORLD! Additionally, with the absence of geographical boundaries that the process of art moving online is offering, art buyers are enjoying new ways of conversation and connection with the artworld. As well as they are increasingly cherishing the ‘feeling of a community’ within the global art world that the digitalisation of the art market is capable to offer… …THERE IS NO SUCH A FEELING OF ‘GLOBAL ART VILLAGE’ WHEN TRAVELLING TO THE ENCLOSED AND LIMITED SPACES OF PHYSICAL GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS…AT LEAST NOT AT THE SCALE OFFERED TO THOSE JOINING THE DIGITAL ART COMMUNITY! Hence, the white cube has lost its vital and somewhat authoritarian role in the art system: artists do not need physical spaces to display art that is so radically away from the material world. Collectors are either dismissing the gallery space because the new generations of collector despise the snobbism of the gallery world or are enthralled with art forms which are immaterial and circulating in the digital space. A glimpse of change…whilst we wait for the RADICAL REVOLUTION: Galleries, museums, fashion houses and even massive art festivals around the world have been forced to move away from the TRADITIONAL AND PHYSICAL WHITE CUBE FORMAT: Since the global lockdowns resulting from the pandemic, they have begun to use various platforms in the metaverse to capture the spirit, culture and qualities of a real-life event and emulate them in an interactive virtual reality (VR) space. The virtual world has been the only way for them to keep afloat over lockdown and to cope with the global reopening last year ruled by stringent rules of social distancing in the physical exhibition spaces. These are mere glimpses of the big revolution in the art system that will, in our view, gradually lead to the extinction of that ‘Dinosaur Institution’ that has ruled the life, fortune and misfortune of artists since the Parisian Salons of the 1800s… …And hey, Paris has lost its supremacy as the centre of cultural production with World War II…It is time that the old notion of the Salon through which it used to express this supremacy loses its dominance too! Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Surrealist art aficionados will appreciate the dreamlike quality of this trend, which has undoubtedly taken off for its reinvention of time-honored subjects: the human form and nature. Portraiture has been a staple painting genre for time immemorial, but lately, artists have been finding inspiration in the animal kingdom. Animal portraiture is as big today as painting and photography revolving around natural themes and landscapes. This particularly because while confined, we have become more and more aware of the importance of creating a pleasant space at home, and the soothing effect of being surrounded by Nature. We can bring the outside world in with art. Floral compositions can add a cheerful touch, while views of familiar places or imaginary lands can create a calming environment. With irresistible and unexpected compositions of human figures juxtaposed with flora, floral figures have become a prevalent subject for artists working across mediums. Surrealist art aficionados will appreciate the dreamlike quality of this trend, which has undoubtedly taken off for its reinvention of time-honored subjects: the human form and nature. Inherently poetic and evocative of nature, floral heads, silhouettes, and bodies intertwined with botanicals can infuse your space with a timeless sense of romanticism. This art trend expresses a desire to get back to nature and exudes feelings of harmony, fantasy, and whimsy. Painter Kim Kimbro explores animal portraits as metaphors for the complexity and fragility of the human experience. Other artists, such as Drew Doggett, capture the majesty of natural habitats through dramatic black and white animal photography, which, particularly at a large scale, brings impact to a collector’s home. And others, such as JJ Galloway, approach their animal artwork with a dose of humour and fun. Whether you’re looking for subtle emotion, a window into the sublime, or some light-heartedness, animal portraiture is a delightful and unexpected addition to a space. The animal kingdom has inspired an amazing temporary art installation in Central London, called ‘Wild Table of Love’, a huge tableau features a circle of bronze animals tucking into platefuls of food on show until May 2023. It's the most bonkers banquet since the Mad Hatter's tea party... and it, too, includes a rabbit. That rabbit may give you a clue to the sculptors. This is the work of Gillie and Marc, whose Rabbitwoman and Dogman sculptures are frequent visitors to our city. The prolific duo are also behind the chimp sculptures near London Bridge, and the recent exhibition of bronze lions near Waterloo. This new installation is endearing, to say the least. Two seats at the table have been left free, so that passers-by can sit down with the animals and enjoy the mock repast. Besides the rabbit and dog, the table features 10 of the most beloved mammals on the planet, including several endangered species. As the world continues to fight with the ongoing health and environmental crisis, the art world has to face the consequences of its squandering attitude and start making efforts to shrink its carbon footprint and adopt sustainable measures. In 2022, we are highly likely to see a greater sense of responsibility from both the commercial and public spheres of the art market, let alone major artistic works addressing climate change. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

2022 is the year of celebration of figurative painting’s resurgence, arising from a need to recognize people, signs, or situations, inflated by this post-pandemic time. The increased development of this trend results from a renewed focus on human experience and how it is reflected through the expression of the body ant its artistic renderings. This focus is a response not only to the existential suffering at global level brought about by the protracted isolation we all experienced over the pandemic, but also to international protests and discourse around police brutality and institutionalized racism, addressing questions of representation and visibility. Art critic Enos Nyamor has pointed out in a recent review of the contemporary art world that “In the past year more figurative paintings and miracles of seduction, have revisited the convergence of Black bodies… There has been such flavour in colour, such prominence in features, in representations of the Black body – Blackness as a luminous texture on both screen and canvas.” A current exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Black American Portraits, also spans over two centuries to the present day, and focusses on  Black American subjects and narratives. In our TWITTER PAGE - which we invite you to follow as it works as a radar that scans and skims the best news in the global press specialised in the art world and the art market - we have shared a few posts where the return of figurativism linked to questions of minority emancipation and Black art are in the spotlight. You may read them here and look forward to much more in our Twitts….SEE YOU THERE! Galleries: ‘Questions Arise After Gallery Shows White Artist’s Photos of Black Suffering’: Meghan Boody’s images were initially produced in 2014 for a gun buyback program in New Orleans, but some expressed concerns when the works resurfaced this year in the context of a for-profit exhibition. By Elaine Velie, July 15, 2022. Museums: ‘A Plagiarism Row Ignited Over Paintings of a Black Cowboy at the Guggenheim’:  Now, Both Works Will Be Shown Side by Side. The controversy exploded after some noticed a Spanish artist's paintings of a Black cowboy borrowed directly from a film by Dayday. By Sarah Cascone, July 13, 2022 . The younger generation is taking the reins when it comes to critical and politically engaged figurative art, addressing the present, and creating emotional links with the viewer. And, of course: if on one side the art world is embracing NFTs, on the other, we might feel a need for palpable ideas and artworks that explore real life, human connections, identity, feelings and the social environment in which we live. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Both the aesthetics of the body and celebrity culture owe much to the classical roots of our Western Culture, and if we really think about it, there is little difference between that today’s celebrities stand for us and what Gods stood for people in Ancient Greece or Rome. The aesthetics of the body occupies a prominent place in today's world. And indeed, today’s celebrity culture, from tabloids to social media and the arts is deeply entrenched in the aesthetics of the body. Many contemporary artists have been producing work by appropriating the imagery of popular and celebrity culture; one of the main reasons being the desire of generating a criticism of our contemporary society and its obsession with appearance, consumerism, hedonism and the likes. It is therefore not surprising that the body, its semblance, and the related aesthetics which have been multiplying in endless ways to express the most disparate gender, ethnic, political and social identities, has come to the fore as subjects of contemporary painting. We have recently discovered Ricardo Coelho, a contemporary Brazilian painter committed to the pictorial exploration of the aesthetics of the body. Both the aesthetics of the body and celebrity culture owe much to the classical roots of our Western Culture, and if we really think about it, there is little difference between that today’s celebrities stand for us and what Gods stood for people in Ancient Greece or Rome. Ricardo Coelho paints the human figure with a masterly technique and a deep interest in exploring the link between celebrity culture and its ability to shape the way people want to look like, aspire to live life and behave in Western societies. Among Coelho’s conceptual sources are the concept of the classic proposed by Omar Calabrese and the structures of Aby Warburg. The artist is prone to critically approach images separated in time and space without any aesthetic-formal, historical-chronological, or iconographic restriction. This path unfolds through the analysis of the classical body not only in relation to aesthetic standards and their visual echoes in contemporary art and culture, but also through a close look at the ethical and conceptual dimensions of art production revolving around the body. Ricardo Coelho holds a Post-Doctorate from the Unicamp in Brazil, a PhD in Visual Arts from the Institute of Arts at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) (2015), having conducted part of his research at the Universitat de Barcelona (2014), with a sandwich scholarship subsidized by CAPES; Master in Visual Arts from the Institute of Arts at Unesp (2003) and a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the same institution (1999). Since 2009, he is a professor at the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Applied Arts of the Federal University of São João del-Rei, in Minas Gerais. He also works as an independent curator, exhibition designer and, as a visual artist, has participated in more than 40 exhibitions of contemporary art and video festivals in spaces such as Casa das Rosas, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Funarte, Fundação Bienal, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, besides having participated in the 2nd Cultural Award Sérgio Mota and the VideoBrasil Festival. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Well, our experience at Arrière-Garde is that the character of the Nordic countries is not only a natural consequence of the climatic features and the extremes of its longitude, but that it also results from the complexity and intricacy of diametrical opposites, from underlying contradictions, ideals of gender equality, liberalism, and social welfare as global models, and from an ever-growing ambition to put a dent in the Universe. Protractedly darkened, severely introspective, and absurdly gelid over the long winters, yet idyllically proliferating with flora and fauna, and overwhelmingly exploding with human energy and libido over the mesmerizingly bright summers. This is what to expect whilst living or travelling to Sweden, Norway, Danmark, Finland or Iceland…but what to expect from this geographical area in terms of gallery hopping or exploring what is on show in museums? Well, our experience at Arrière-Garde is that the character of the Nordic countries is not only a natural consequence of the climatic features and the extremes of its longitude, but that it also results from the complexity and intricacy of diametrical opposites, from underlying contradictions, ideals of gender equality, liberalism, and social welfare as global models, and from an ever-growing ambition to put a dent in the Universe.  We have worked in the region for over half a decade, and we have been involved with curatorial projects there, meeting many artists and other representatives of the artworld there. Most recently, we have also discovered the unique work of Finnish contemporary artist Leena Mertanen. And the art of Leena Mertanen is the quintessential expression of the Nordic character: unforgiving in its dark side, strong in its humour, temperamental in its emotions, intricate in its way of exploring human nature, complex in its rendering of personality and personas, primal in its depiction of our drives and desires, sharp whilst it unveils the social domain to the extent of blatantly exposing its most repressed and unspoken corners. Indeed, Mertanen’s art is the embodiment of the radical cultural hybridity that takes shape through the Nordic reality, climate, societal rationale, and ethical configuration. Her works come frequently in imposing and majestic large scale and are in several art collections worldwide since her debut solo exhibition in 2005, when she graduated from the Savolinna School of Art and Music in Finland. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Digital art is now a global leading art trend and is present on myriad screens around the world. 3D art and artificial intelligence (AI) based art are on an upward trend as technology enables artists to expand their horizons. The digitalisation of the art world means that artists and collectors are using computers and smart phones to create and buy art, and this phenomenon in return requires tech geeks to push the boundaries of innovation and to generate new tools to be used by artists to produce work and by collectors as online platforms where to buy art! Digital art is now a global leading art trend and is present on myriad screens around the world. Science, Technology, and Art are blending within this domain to drive innovation, such as AI-based algorithms that allow us to contemplate the beauty of new pieces of Digital Art.  We have been seeing a great expansion in the artworld in this direction, and platforms such as Spacial.io, Decentraland and New Art City are proliferating with interesting art and increasingly offering exhibitions in the virtual world. It is therefore natural that also museums and galleries are adopting technology to create digital exhibitions and usher in a new interpretation of what it means to ‘showcase’ art. Here are some shows we advise you to see or look up in the press to understand better: United Visions from 26 July at the New Apple Store in Brompton Road, London Here you can see how Apple teamed with the prestigious Getty Museum to recreate William Blake’s terrifying visions in augmented reality: a MUST-SEE SHOW where one can understand what kind of pathway the exhibition world is taking as big art institutions and mega tech companies join forces to disrupt old notions of the art world! You can also admire how the monstruous nightmarish figures in William Blake’s ‘The Ghost of a Flea’ (1819) can come to life through three-dimensional recreations that stand at about 3 metres tall around you! …unmissable really….!! Mexican Geniuses: A Frida and Diego Immersive Experience From 28 May 2022 at Dock X London, Retail Park, Unit 1 Canada Water, Surrey Quays Rd, London, SE16 2XU One of London’s most hotly anticipated exhibitions of the year, the show is bringing to life the work of Mexico’s most famed painters, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in an explosion of colour and brushstrokes across giant screens. A VR experience will also be available, transporting visitors to the Mexican streets that inspired many of Frida and Diego’s paintings. Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience Until 25 September 2022, 106 Commercial Street, E1 6LZ, London This incredible immersive installation is dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh, and here you can literally ‘step into his paintings’! Of course, you cannot step into a canvas by this great Master, but for sure you will be experiencing Van Goth’s art and get a sense of the new significations given to the art experience and to what a work of art can actually be. Treat yourself to this all-encompassing, 360-degree display of the Dutchman’s work – which takes over all your surroundings with the use of several dozen projectors and hyper-realistic VR headsets. AI art right now it is not only a trend that has gone viral among the youngest generations of artists, but it is also supported by visionary art and academic institutions which understand that the future of art production and of the art system lives in the digital and virtual space. An example of this is the AI INNOVATIONS SUMMIT 2022, which has announced a special award for young AI enthusiasts who create visual arts using AI technologies. Its organisers claim that ‘In the modern era of rapid digitalisation of life, there is a natural, parallel evolution of art leveraging new technologies and expanding to new media’. Like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Before one claims that AI art generators will replace artists, one needs to know how AI images and pieces of art are generated. We often hear that AI is going to automate away or take over all human tasks, including those in art, film, and other creative industries. This because Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not only affecting industries like business and healthcare, but is also playing an increasing role in the creative industries by ushering in a new era of AI-generated art. AI technologies and tools are often widely accessible to anyone, which is helping to create an entirely new generation of artists. AI is a supplemental tool that artists can use to explore new creative territories. Before one claims that AI art generators will replace artists, one needs to know how AI images and pieces of art are generated. The digital platforms through which creative people can generate art are proliferating: think of DALL-E, where, for instance, artists can create AI paintings. But the truth is that the use of AI art generators, from DALL-E to OpenAI, do not substitute the work done by artists and represent merely new weapons of expression. According to Anne Ploin, a researcher at Oxford Internet Institute and a member of a team of researchers analysing the potential implications of artificial intelligence on creative work, AI art generators will not replace human artists. Instead, these programs will supplement their work by enabling them to produce high-quality pieces within a short period of time. At Arrière-Garde, we truly doubt that AI art generators and AI at large will replace the function and the agency of those who are artistic among the human species. Proof of this is the Latin American artist Sofia Crespo, who created works with the help of artificial intelligence, and is part of the GENERATIVE ART movement: where humans create rules for computers which then use algorithms to generate new forms, ideas, and patterns. Generative Art has begun to attract huge interest among art collectors—and even bigger price tags at auction. So, not only artists are in control and are managing AI; rather than being controlled or superseded by it, as they have also made of AI a profitable way of creating innovative and cutting-edge art. US artist and programmer Robbie Barrat, a prodigy still only 22 years old, sold a work called "Nude Portrait#7Frame#64" at Sotheby's in March 2022 for £630,000 ($821,000). That came almost four years after French collective ‘Obvious’ sold a work at Christie's titled ‘Edmond de Belamy’—largely based on Barrat's code—for $432,500. Drag to the side and check out some works by artist Robbie Barrat Like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Because people are feeling a big need to reconnect to other people and to explore new connections with other human beings given that social distancing is over... The aesthetics of the body and celebrity culture are themes that are still dominant in 2022! We say ‘still’ because these trends were massive already in 2017-18 and have experienced a renaissance after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic…this given that people are feeling a big need to reconnect to other people and to explore new connections with other human beings given that social distancing is over. Many contemporary artists are exploring the production of mass culture icons and the expression of the human body to pinpoint the ways in which our lived experiences are mediated through tools of representation. And sometimes it is hard to draw a line between these two trends, as they often come entwined in a single artwork. For instance, our artist RICARDO COELHO believes that the aesthetics of the body occupies a predominant place in today’s world, and indeed, today’s celebrity culture, from tabloids to social media and the arts, is deeply entrenched in the aesthetics of the body. COELHO makes striking portraits of art world celebrities such as Marina Abramovich and Andy Warhol, and, by doing so, he unveils the processes through which these universal symbols of the glory and success they convey for being artists present in books, catalogues, and tabloids both shape and embody ideas on personal identity and individual subjectivity. Celebrity culture is so widespread and is so familiar to all of us because we tend to project and introjects who we would like to be into the bodies, lifestyles, and inspirational values that celebrities stand for. A new session in the series of interviews in which art historian and critic Kalinca Costa Söderlund , THE FOUNDER OF ARRIERE-GARDE, delves into contemporary Brazilian research and artistic production with artist Juliana Freire, with the aim of demonstrating how art reflects and explores the most urgent issues of a country facing major challenges. Other artists, like our LEENA MERTANEN, are responding to the landscape of mass media culture in the era of digital revolution with humour and criticism, appropriating images or referencing the imagery of advertising, film, television, magazines, social media and beyond. MERTANEN experiments with the proliferation of new different identities that the era of WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok are generating as if the notion of the ‘self’ ad the ‘meme’ could be either interchangeable or corresponding. When identity is at the very core of artistic production, artists like MERTANEN combine photography with the adoption of their own body as a subject to add uniqueness to the creation of multiple personas with which we can all identify and engage with. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

2022 is the year of celebration of figurativism resurgence, arising from a need to recognize people, signs, or situations, inflated by this post-pandemic time – a need to get physical. Portraiture has been a staple painting genre for time immemorial, but lately, artists have been massively returning to portraiture and figurativism. At times, figurativism is overlapped with natural themes such flora and fauna. 2022 is the year of celebration of figurativism resurgence, arising from a need to recognize people, signs, or situations, inflated by this post-pandemic time – a need to get physical. The increased development of this trend might point to a renewed focus on the lived experience of bodies, resulting not only from the pandemic, but also to international protests and discourse around police brutality and institutionalized racism, addressing questions of representation and visibility, for example. In this interview, Kalinca Costa Söderlund is live with Brazilian artist Marcelo Amorim, focussing on certain aspects of Brazilian contemporary art. The interview' central theme is: "fighting power structures in Brazil by drawing attention to entrenched mechanisms of perpetuation of the hegemony". With irresistible and unexpected compositions of human figures juxtaposed with flora, floral figures have also become a prevalent subject for artists working across mediums and focussing on figurativism. Surrealist art aficionados will appreciate the dreamlike quality of this trend, which has undoubtedly taken off for its reinvention of time-honoured subjects: the human form and nature. Inherently poetic and evocative of nature, floral heads, silhouettes, and bodies intertwined with botanicals can infuse your space with a timeless sense of romanticism. This art trend expresses a desire to get back to nature and exudes feelings of harmony, fantasy, and whimsy. Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.

Artists from all over the world are using NFTs for humanitarian purposes such as to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Several online charity auctions such as Vandalz for Ukraine, ArtWaRks Ukraine, UkraineDAO, Holy Water and RtistiQ, organised by the NFT community, are leveraging their unique digital resources to provide relief to the country’s war-stricken people and their defence and healthcare systems. Artists like Alexis Olin, Yura Miron, Artem Humilevskiy, Mykola Dosenko and Cher rnaya Rechka have been making waves in the NFT space because of their purpose-driven digital art. Similarly, the Government of Ukraine is being looking into the metaverse in order to raise funds to fight the war against Russia through the work of the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, which posted on social media that Ukraine is accepting donations in form of Bitcoins and Ethereum. The Ministry also stated that it is minting 54 NFTs to raise awareness and money to oppose the Russian invasion. The Ministry also launched a META-HISTORY MUSEUM OF WAR NFT SITE where buyers can splash their money on NFTs being sure that it is for a great cause! The Meta History Museum of War has released two collections of just under 1,700 NFTs each, with a third, collaborative series just out on May 19, 2022. Its primary project, “Warline,” documented Russia’s invasion between February 24 and March 15, 2022. Each NFT in “Warline” is a collage, pairing tweets from the likes of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, BBC News, Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and the White House with dark, emotional, and defiant digital artworks by artists from around the world. The museum is part of a larger trend: Since Russia invaded Ukraine, more than $60 million has been donated to the besieged country via the blockchain. Although cryptocurrency, and specifically the NFT market, has grown exponentially in popularity in the last year, this is the first time so much crypto has been donated in response to a global crisis. It’s not just grassroots: Ethereum founder VitalikButerin donated 1,500 Ether (equivalent to about $5 million) to the Ukrainian government and local charities. Pussy Riot, Russia’s world-famous dissident feminist activist group, has been centrally involved in donating via an NFT project called UkraineDAO. GO-GO NFTs…and carry on doing good stuff for the World !!! Did you like our content? Become a subscriber on our site and get notified when a post goes live.