A brush with...

Salman Toor talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, and lives and works in New York. His paintings capture everyday moments in the lives of fictional young, queer, Brown men. Set within private and public environments, these scenes speak of a wealth of feelings and experiences, ranging from touching domestic intimacy and love, to communal solidarity, to societal precarity and violence. While abundantly concerned with contemporary life and identity, Salman’s paintings are informed by a deep passion for historic art, both in Western and South Asian traditions. The result is a body of work of immense technical sensitivity and beauty, shot through with poignancy and wit. He reflects on the growing complexity of his references to the Western tradition of painting in relation to his subject matter. He discusses how the “mist and gaseousness” of a particular shade of green has helped him create particular moods and atmospheres in his work. He talks about playing with conventions in the depictions of certain types of bodies, and exploring and subverting orientalist and racist tropes. Among many other references, he recalls the early influence of Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) and Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period, the enduring impact of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whose sweetness is like “a cup of tea with five teaspoons”, and suggests that he enjoys painters who embark on “slightly crazy” transformations of academic painting traditions. He expresses his ongoing admiration for Anton Chekhov’s short stories and discusses how Whitney Houston’s music was important to him and his “chosen family” in his early years in New York. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Salman Toor: Wish Maker, Luhring Augustine Chelsea and Tribeca, New York, 1 May-21 June. Please note that this episode contains a contextualised homophobic slur in the title of a group of Salman Toor's works.

Kent Monkman talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Monkman was born in 1965 in St Mary’s, Ontario, and today lives and works between New York City and Toronto. He is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, in Manitoba, Canada, and uses the language of European and North American art to reflect on Indigenous experiences. He addresses colonisation and its legacies, loss and memory, resistance and protest, and the disparities between Native American and settler colonial attitudes to gender and sexuality, among many other subjects.Monkman is often present in his work through his gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a glamorous, supernatural, shapeshifting time-traveller. At once a witness, a trickster and an agent of change, Miss Chief is a key means for Monkman to subvert colonial perspectives, in challenging both the imagery of Old Master paintings and the construction of histories relating to Indigenous peoples. In the conversation, he describes Miss Chief’s role—“living inside” his paintings—reflects on the reimagining of queer narratives of the American fur trade, and discusses the historical and present reverence for gender-fluid or two-spirit people in Indigenous communities. He reflects on the enduring impact of Eugène Delacroix’s painting and writing, the influence of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith on his political conviction, and the dramatic impact of seeing Antonio Gisbert Pérez’s painting The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga (1988) at the Prado in Madrid. He gives insight into the complex process of making his paintings and other aspects of his studio life. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors, Denver Art Museum, Colorado, US, 20 April-17 August; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 27 September-8 March 2026

Ed Atkins talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Atkins, born in Oxford, UK, in 1982, is best known for exploring the strange but endlessly rich space between the digital world and human experience and emotion. He has taken an unorthodox approach to software and hardware, “misusing” them, as he puts it, to produce videos and animations that reflect on technologies critically and poetically, testing their relationship with the messy world of physicality and feeling. A crucial factor in achieving this is his work in writing and drawing, which offers a counterweight to the digital textures of the video installations. Atkins himself is ever-present in the multiple manifestations of his practice, physically and emotionally, and the result is a body of work that, for all its deliberate complexities and confusions, has a profound core of tenderness. He reflects on the transformative experience of encountering the Czechian artist Jan Švankmajer’s animated films on television, the emotional impact of Velázquez’s Las Meninas, his collaborations with the Swiss composer and clarinettist Jürg Frey, and his ongoing engagement with the US literary critic Leo Bersani. Plus, he discusses life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Ed Atkins, Tate Britain, London, until 25 August; Ed Atkins, Flower, Fitzcarraldo Editions, published on 10 April, £12.99 (pb).

In this first episode of the new series of A brush with…, Ben Luke talks to the painter Celia Paul about her influences—including writers as well as contemporary and historic artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Paul was born in 1959 in Trivandrum, India, and now lives in London. She makes intense yet ruminative paintings of people close to her, the spaces in which she lives and works, and landscapes of poignant significance. Her paintings are made from life but are pregnant with memory, poetry and emotion, which she imbues in her distinctive painterly language. Her art possesses a rare tranquillity in which one perceives deep feeling; Paul wrote in her memoir that her paintings are “so private and personal that there’s almost a ‘Keep Out’ sign in front of them”. At once a singular figure yet also connected to strands of recent and historic figurative painting in Britain, she has been admired widely throughout her career but only recently been recognised as a major figure in British art of the past 40 years. She discusses the fact that she began painting before she knew about art, but when she was introduced to Old and Modern Masters, she discovered El Greco and Paul Cezanne, who remain important to her today. She also reflects on the compassion in Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, the stillness and scale of Agnes Martin and the elementary power of the novels of the Brontë sisters. She also describes her response in painting to the artists of the School of London, including Lucian Freud, with whom she was once in a relationship, and Frank Auerbach.Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts, Victoria Miro, London, until 17 April 2025. Celia Paul: Works 1975–2025, published by MACK, £150 (hb)

Renée Green talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work.Green was born in 1959, in Cleveland, Ohio, and lives today between Somerville, Massachusetts, and New York. She brings together a wealth of cultural forms in complex and layered works that manifest as installations, video pieces and texts, among other media. Through what has been described as a “methodology of citation”, in which she overtly names and synthesises the language and forms of the disparate individuals she references, Renée reflects on the nature of ideas, on subjectivity and perception, on fiction and reality, and on memory—personal and collective. Just as she is generous in her allusions, so her art is an invitation to the viewer, to witness the connections she assembles, and help shape the works’ meaning. She discusses how her work is concerned with “perception and sensation” and how drawing is a daily activity alongside reading and research. She reflects on her ongoing fascination with On Kawara and how her interest in particular artists “has to do with their physical location, the material aspects of what their existences might have been like, and then what kinds of questions emerge from those conditions”. She discusses the references in her work to the writing of Muriel Rukeyser and Laura Riding, and the friendship and dialogue she had with the film-maker Harun Farocki. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Renée Green: The Equator Has Moved, Dia Beacon, from 7 March and will be on long term view.

Somaya Critchlow talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Critchlow, born in London in 1993, makes paintings and drawings of Black women, often nude, that are rooted in the present and yet draw on a wealth of imagery from the recent and distant past. The women are fictional but can be informed by anything from self-portraits and other life studies to images from pop culture and depictions of women in the history of art. They engage frankly with what it means to represent the female body and with power relations: between the artist and her subject, between the subject and the viewer, and ultimately between Critchlow and us. Depending on your perspective, her art offers different degrees of delight and discomfort. But her balance of fine drawing, a time-honoured approach to paint and colour, and arresting imagery means that her work is endlessly intriguing. She discusses the breakthrough moment where she realised that she was her own first model, being “comfortable with feeling uncomfortable”, the influence on her of Angela Carter’s response to the Marquis de Sade, her engagement with a wealth of visual artists, from Käthe Kollwitz to Francesca Woodman, Leonor Fini, Titian and Francesco de Goya, the power of David Lynch’s films and the consistent importance to her of Japanese manga. She gives insight into her life in the studio and responds to our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Somaya Critchlow: The Chamber, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 20 July. Group shows: A Room Hung with Thoughts British Painting Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, US, until 11 May; Woman in a Rowboat, Olivia Foundation, Mexico City, until 28 September.This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app. The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where Somaya Critchlow is showing her work between February and July of 2025. If you download Bloomberg Connects you’ll find that the guide to the gallery has a section on the exhibition, with pictures of Somaya’s work in situ in the historic gallery spaces. There is also extensive content on the gallery’s other exhibition, Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, the first major exhibition of the British artist. You can explore the works while listening to the actor Tamsin Greig reading excerpts from Garwood’s autobiography. Elsewhere, the guide features an animated film telling the story of the gallery and a guided tour of the many masterpieces in its collection. 

Thomas Ruff talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, in what was then West Germany, and has, over five decades, extensively probed the forms and possibilities of photography. Though he is a key figure in the international generation of artists that emerged in the 1980s and experimented with the very nature of the photographic medium and discipline, Ruff has carved out a singular practice. He works in distinct series whose formal characteristics vary enormously, but are underpinned by experimental unorthodoxy, technical curiosity and conceptual rigour. Each new group contributes to a profound philosophical exploration of the photographic image and what it means to make a picture. But while the intellectual underpinning of his work is unwavering, Thomas makes prints that are remarkably beautiful objects. Operating in a medium that remains associated with the factual record and documentary, he has relentlessly made the case for a photographic practice in which imagination is a primary agent. He discusses his interest in “the puzzle of photography”, the distinctive geneses of his various series of work, and his conviction that while seeking an “intellectually high-end product… of course I want to have fun”. He reflects on the early influence of the photographer Ernst Haas, how Piero della Francesca influenced his early Portraits series, how he chose to study art over astronomy, yet outer space has remained a core concern in his work, and how the satirical television show Spitting Image proved an unlikely influence. Of course, he reflects on the work of numerous photographers, from Eugène Atget and Walker Evans to Lou Landauer and his teachers in Düsseldorf, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses, David Zwirner, London, until 22 March; his work features in Typologien, a survey of 20th-century German photography at Fondazione Prada, Milan, 3 April-14 July.

The first episode of 2025 of A brush with… features a conversation with Linder, who discusses her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Born Linda Mulvey in Liverpool in 1954, she is best known for her photomontages, made from images found in books and magazines across six decades. They bring together sex and sexual politics, glamour and grit, satire and seduction. Since emerging in the punk era of the late 1970s—a culture whose DIY approach and unflinching attitude to society her work embodies—Linder has reinvigorated a radical tradition of avant-garde art-making while developing a singular voice. She reflects on the particularities of her native Britain while also addressing global struggles and themes, including feminism and class politics. She discusses her use of the scalpel as a “magic wand” in cutting up print material, her journey to Delphi and recent use of ancient Greek and Roman imagery, her fascination with Ithell Colquhoun and other Surrealists, the impact of reading Germaine Greer and the Brontës, how she has used Playboy magazines from 1968 in a new body of work, and how she connects the Indian musical instruments, the dilruba and taus, with Barbara Hepworth. Plus, she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “What is art for”?This episode contains descriptions of abuse and sexual violence.Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, 11 February-5 May; a version of the show, curated by Hayward Gallery Touring, will travel across the UK in 2025 and 2026: Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, 23 May-19 October; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, 7 November 2025-8 March 2026; Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, 27 June-20 September 2026.

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset talk to Ben Luke about their influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work. This is the first episode of A brush with featuring an artist duo. Over the past 30 years Elmgreen and Dragset have consistently created unexpected scenarios within and outside of the museum and gallery structure. Playful, even mischievous at times, and yet shot-through with searing critique and sincere expression, their sculptures and environments are fundamentally concerned with space, both private and public, and the people and communities that occupy it. Elmgreen was born in 1961 in Copenhagen and Dragset in 1969 in Trondheim, Norway. They now live and work in Berlin. They discuss the influence of Hannah Ryggen and Vilhelm Hammershøi, Michael’s meeting with Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his effect on their work, and how they feel their work relates to Samuel Beckett’s writing, and the final, moving scene of Wim Wenders’ film Paris Texas. Plus, they give insight into their lives in the studio and answer our usual questions, including: what is art for?Elmgreen & Dragset: L’Addition, Musee d’Orsay, Paris, until 2 February 2025; Elmgreen & Dragset: Spaces, Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, 23 February 2025; K-BAR is open now at Khao Yai Art Forest, Thailand; Nurture Gaia, Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand, until 25 February 2025.