The Week in Art

This week, three artist interviews: Carsten Höller on his book of games, Takashi Murakami on his new work, and Valeria Luiselli and Leo Heiblum on their Dia sound installation. Höller is the author of a book featuring 336 games that can be played alone, in pairs or in groups, without any props. He tells Ben Luke about art and play and his perennial quest for unpredictability. Takashi Murakami has been in London this week for the opening of his exhibition, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, at Gagosian. We speak to him about the show and his fascination with the television series Shōgun. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Echoes from the Borderlands, a sound installation created by Valeria Luiselli, Ricardo Giraldo and Leo Heiblum, which was unveiled at Dia Chelsea in New York this week. Valeria and Leo join us to tell us more about the project.

Book of Games by Carsten Höller, edited by Stefanie Hessler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Taschen, 760 pp, £40 or $50 (hb)

Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 8 March 2025.

Echoes from the Borderlands: Study Two, Dia Chelsea, New York, until 1 March 2025.

The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, Ben Sutton, and our art market editor, Kabir Jhala, are in Florida and report on the sales and the mood on the first VIP day at Art Basel Miami Beach. On 8 December, the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris will reopen, more than five years after the fire that partly destroyed it. Ben Luke talks to one of the architects responsible for its rise from the ashes, Pascal Prunet. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Madonna and Child with Saints (1526-27) by Parmigianino, better known as The Vision of Saint Jerome. The painting this week returned to public display for the first time in 10 years, in a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London, following conservation, and we talk to Maria Alambritis, the show’s co-curator.

Art Basel Miami Beach, until Sunday, 8 December.

Notre-Dame reopens on Sunday, 8 December.

Parmigianino: The Vision of Saint Jerome, National Gallery, London, until 9 March 2025

Two exhibitions have just opened that look at art and tech: in London, Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet celebrates the pioneers of kinetic, programmed and digital art, and offers a kind of origin story of contemporary immersive installation. Ben Luke speaks to Val Ravaglia, the co-curator of the show, amid the blinking lights and bleeping sound. In California, meanwhile, Digital Witness at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) looks at how new software and hardware shaped the worlds of design, photography, and film between the 1980s and now. We speak to the exhibition’s curators, Britt Salvesen, the department head and curator of prints and drawings at Lacma, and Staci Steinberger, the curator of decorative arts and design at the museum. And this episode’s Work of the Week is the Harmonia Macrocosmica (1661) by Andreas Cellarius, a celestial atlas made in the Netherlands. Rebecca Feakes, the librarian at the Blickling Estate, a 17-century mansion in Norfolk, UK, run by the National Trust, tells our associate digital editor, Alexander Morrison, about the book.

Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern, London, until 1 June 2025.

Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, until 13 July.

The Harmonia Macrocosmica is the centrepiece of Journey Through the Stars, Blickling Estate, UK, until 5 January.

Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), the work featuring a banana stuck to a wall with grey duct tape, sold at Sotheby’s in New York, on Wednesday for $5m or $6.2m with fees. But how did other works fare at this week’s auctions in New York? Ben Luke talks to Ben Sutton, The Art Newspaper’s editor, Americas, about the sales. Frank Auerbach, the painter who escaped the Holocaust and dedicated more than 70 years to creating portraits and cityscapes in London in raw, thick paint and expressive charcoal, has died. We speak to the curator of three of his most important exhibitions—and a model for Auerbach for more than 40 years—Catherine Lampert, about his work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Mzwandile at home after coming from the rehab center (2018), a photograph from Nyaope, a series by the South African photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa. In the series he explored the devastating effect on his local community of a heroin-based drug, called nyaope. The work is part of the exhibition Heroin Falls, at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, UK, and I spoke to Lindo about the work.

Heroin Falls, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK, 23 November-27 April 2025