arts and design

Artist creates paintings from news stories chronicling Covid-19 crisis

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Like everyone else in the age of coronavirus, the artist Marc Quinn is going through the emotional wringer daily. But unlike most of us, he has been inspired to create a torrent of creative work – a personal visual diary of the global health emergency.

Quinn, best known for freezing 10 pints of his own blood in a bust of his head, says the pieces are “coming out of his ears” in the studio where he has been in isolation during lockdown.

His “viral paintings”, seen here for the first time, are phone screenshots of news stories – from outlets including the Guardian – printed on enormous canvases, over which Quinn pours and splashes oil paint.

Marc Quinn painting at his London studio, April 2020



Marc Quinn painting at his London studio, April 2020. Photograph: Marc Quinn Studio

The paintings – which will also be posted on his Instagram feed – explore the paradox of living through a real, life-changing time with an unseen enemy that is strangely abstract.

A viral painting featuring a story about first responders from the New York Times.



A viral painting featuring a story about first responders from the New York Times. Photograph: Marc Quinn Studio

“Being an artist, the only way I can cope with reality is to turn it into art,” he said. “That’s how I understand the world and digest it. In the past people have made paintings to commemorate historical moments. Now we’ve got a historical moment happening every 12 hours, every one hour, so it’s, how do you react to that as an artist? How do you make history painting now about probably the most historical event we’re ever going to live through?”

His feelings about events change all the time, he says: “Admiration, frustration, anger … It is an emotional washing machine. In one day you go through all the emotions. It is a great time to make art as well as a challenging time to be a human being. All the people I usually work with are working from home so I’ve gone back to basics. It’s just me, the canvas, some paint … and quiet.”

One of the works is based on a Guardian story about a Bafta-winning Syrian film maker, Hassan Akkad, who signed up to be a hospital cleaner. Akkad is a friend of Quinn’s who has worked with him on other projects.

Over the printed Guardian story Quinn has poured and thrown paint and applied fragments of gold leaf.

He has been choosing the images in a slightly random way, he said. “Sometimes it is an important story, sometimes it is nothing to do with lockdown at all. It can be a story about nature, almost an escape from it.”

The paintings tell a story of strangest times we are likely go through. “It’s paradoxical. It’s almost like the world is more real and more abstract at the same time than it has ever been.”

Quinn said he plans to donate a portion of each viral painting sale to the NHS and the World Health Organization. So far, he has about 20. “The studio is full. I don’t know what to do with them all.”

The works are an extension of a series Quinn has been making over the past 10 years called History Paintings. Due to go on show next year, the series involves Quinn exploring notions of order and chaos by making photoreal paintings of news stories about riots and revolutions and then throwing paint on top.



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