This month, we are excited to be launching a new podcast from the team behind The Week in Art. The new podcast, A brush with… features exclusive conversations with leading artists and will be released every Wednesday for the month of August.
Regular readers of The Art Newspaper will be familiar with our monthly interview called A brush with… in which we explore the work and life of art-world figures through their cultural experiences. The podcast adopts the same approach but zones in on artists—and in each of the four episodes of this first series, our host Ben Luke interviews a leading painter. We hear about the historic and living artists they most admire, the art that’s pinned to their studio walls, the museums that they return to, the books, music and other media that inspire them, the daily rituals of their studio practice. We ask them to choose the one work of art they would most like to live with; we prompt them to ponder what art is for.
The first episode features the Kenyan-British artist Michael Armitage. Among the many subjects he explores is the weight of painting’s history. “I find it very difficult to differentiate between historical and contemporary work,” Armitage says. “I just have stuff that I like and that I see is interesting and I don't have a problem when it was made. So that weight of history… there's that famous quote by [Philip] Guston of the artists leaving the studio one by one as you work. There’s a truth in that, because at the end of the day, them leaving the studio is when you stop trying to emulate something that you've seen that they do. But in general, there are so many points in a painting where it's good to also have help. And it's good to be able to look at what other people have done to be able to make some steps forward.”
So join us for A brush with… Michael Armitage on the 5 August. You can listen to the podcast here on theartnewspaper.com, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.