As we've said before, it’s really hard to keep up with all that's new in the music world. Which is a shame because 2013 has been a great year for everything from hyperactive house music to straightforward indie rock. Yesterday, we went over the albums you have to check out from this year, but for those of you who don’t have an hour to dedicate to a whole record, here are the songs you can’t miss from the first half of 2013.

Lindstrom & Todd Terje - “Lanzorate”

Two Norwegian producers, prolific on their own, get together and make the most epic dance track of the year. Shades of Georgio Morodor, with heavy synth-melodies and a four-on-the-floor beat that just don’t stop. Let the end summer fade to the sounds of this one.

Disclosure -  “When a Fire Starts to Burn”

Their album can be tedious, but then again, how can you go anywhere but down after opening like this? Harkening back to sounds of UK garage, with a vocal-sample flip from motivational speaker Eric Thomas, this should be playing in every club.

Madlib & Freddie Gibbs - “City”

The first tease from one of the most anticipated collaborations of the year: Super-producer Madlib and Gary, Indiana’s resident street poet, Freddie Gibbs, combine to convince hip-hop fans that in the age of hyper-commercialization, there are still a few people out there who do it for the love of beats and rhymes.

Superchunk - “Me & You & Jackie Mittoo”

Superchunk has been at it awhile, and their latest material, set to be released in August, is some of their best yet. Straight power pop that puts a smile on your face, a summer anthem with a singalong chorus meant to be shouted out loud.

A$AP Rocky - “Wild for the Night”

Can we ignore Skrillex any longer? Probably not. The kids love him, even though he looks an anemiac Corey Feldman, and this song, which he produced for rapper A$AP Rocky, is one of the best hip-hop anthems of the year. Expect trunks to rattle from the bass thump of this one.

The Bilinda Butchers, “Lovers’ Suicide!”

The San Francisco band combines jangle rock and showgaze into a delightfully upbeat song about heart break. Yeah, happiness and sadness may be the opposite of one another, but here they make such wonderful bedfellows.

Danny Brown, “Kush Coma”

The first single off of the Detroit rapper's upcoming album "Old," proves that there really isn't a beat that Danny Brown can't rapper over. Unfortunately, the official version features a lackluster guest verse from A$AP Rocky (it's not his fault, we can't think of anyone else who Brown wouldn't have made look bad), but we'll always have the original scifi/horror masterpiece.

TOY and Natasha Khan, “The Bride”

The aggresive collaboration between the British psych rockers and Khan always seems as if it's milliseconds from careening out of control, but somehow it never does. It's the sort of mesmorizing track that makes us long for an acid western for it to be the theme song too.

Rustie, “Slasherr”

Even though it's only three and a half minutes long, the Glasgow producer's latest A-side, feels hours long (in a good way), a non-stop barrage of synth explosions, hand claps, and ridiculous bass drops. As immediately accessible as it may be, the best part are the numerous subtle production details, some of which you won't hear until your 50th listen.

Young Thug (Featuring Maceo), “Picacho”

Simply put, the year's most unhinged song, a delirious mixture of 8-bit bleeps, squelched rapping, and a chrous that makes reference to a Pokemon. It shouldn't work, but the track and rapper are genuinely weird in an impossible to turn away from way. Play this for the next person who foolishly tells you all rap music sounds the same.

The death of drummer and percussionist Steve Berrios on Thursday, at age 68, came as shock — he died at home in New York City, no details were forthcoming as to the cause — and sent waves of sadness and gratitude through more than one music community.

Berrios played and recorded widely on more than 300 albums, beginning on traps and timbales with percussionist Mongo Santamaria’s band and, later on, with a long list that includes: Tito Puente, Art Blakey, Max Roach’s M’Boom, Randy Weston, Grover Washington Jr., Willie Colon, and Miriam Makeba. With his own Son Bachéche band, playing music rooted in Yoruba tradition, he made two memorable recordings in the 1990s, one of which earned a Grammy nomination.

Yet Berrios is best known as a founding member of the Fort Apache Band.That group’s blend of Afro-Latin rhythms and the swinging pulses of American jazz is singular, and it was elevated mightily by Berrios’s precise skills, bilingual knowledge, and graceful approach. I last heard Berrios perform with Fort Apache at Manhattan’s Blue Note, just three weeks ago. There, he locked into a rhythm section authoritatively (as befit a relationship spanning four decades) with bassist Andy Gonzalez, pianist Larry Willis, and the group’s leader, conguero Jerry Gonzalez, who also plays trumpet. As usual, from behind his trap set, Berrios projected both easeful humility and fierce focus; when he directed a shift from, say, a songo rhythm to a hard-dug bebop groove, the moment was often seamless enough as to be imperceptible. Gonzalez’s Fort Apache band is a wondrous machine of virtuoso parts; Berrios enabled its smooth gearshifts and quick acceleration, and kept its direction on track.

(The picture above was taken at that Blue Note gig, by Jerry Gonalez’s wife, Andrea Zapata-Girau.)

Berrios was born in Manhattan on February 24, 1945, to parents who had just arrived from Puerto Rico. Maybe he got on so well with Jerry Gonzalez because he first played trumpet — well enough to score first place at the Apollo Theater’s competitions five times. His father, Steve Sr., was a drummer with the major Latin bands of the era. Steve, Jr. soaked up jazz tradition from his father’s record collection and circle of musician friends. His early mentors in Afro-Cuban percussion were celebrated masters Willie Bobo and Julio Collazo (the latter instructed him in the ritual traditions of the two-headed batá drums and became his spiritual mentor in Santería, the Yoruba-based tradition that is the wellspring of Afro-Cuban folkloric music). After settling on drums and percussion, Berrios began playing in local dance bands and, in the 1970s, joined Mongo Santamaria’s band. In 1981, he helped form Fort Apache, with which he recorded several albums, beginning with “The River Is Deep” (Enja, 1982) and through “Rumba Buhaina” (Sunnyside, 2005).

Jerry Gonzalez recalled the beginnings of his long collaboration with Berrios via email from his home in Spain:

I met Steve in the 1960s when I was still at Music & Art High School and my brother and I were playing with Monguito Santamaría's band [Mongo’s son]. Steve came to our rehearsal. At that time he was playing with Mongo Santamaría. I remember doing a few gigs opposite to Mongo Santamaria at the Village Gate and Bottom Line. We would bump into each other in rumbas in the parks, concerts, and “toques de santo” [Santería ceremonies] and we kept gravitating towards each other until the point that we started the Nuyorican Village, which was a cultural center for all Latino artists. We started workshops there and, later, at the Soundscape, where we would perform once every week for two years with different musicians that we met.

We both played trumpet and Afro-Cuban percussion, we thought alike, we had the same kind of taste, and we knew what we wanted to do. When I started Fort Apache, I was looking for someone who could really combine the Afro-Cuban and the jazz essence as one and Steve was it, the perfect combination. He was a walking encyclopedia of rhythms. He knew how to adapt the Afro-Cuban to the jazz with such a good taste — and he was one of the few who could really swing and understand what the swing was about. He had the essence of Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, Julito Collazo (one of the real masters of the batá drums in America), and the Muñequitos de Matanzas.

Gonzalez wrote that he is trying to organize a New York City memorial to Berrios: “Larry Willis, my brother Andy, [saxophonist] Joe Ford, me, and the whole Fort Apache extended music family together to pay tribute to Steve.”

Berrios’s subtle but bold influence spans musical communities and generations. Once, after sitting in on drums at the Blue Note with the Fort Apache band, Jeff “Tain” Watts described for me how Berrios was a source of “secrets you cannot find anywhere else.”

Berrios’s credits include work with Chico O’Farrill’s orchestra. He’s also worked with Chico’s son, pianist and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill. “I played with Steve for 20-plus years, as recently as three months ago,” Arturo wrote in an email. “We were all in awe of him because he was the definitive master Latin-jazz drummer. He was the contradiction to the notions that Latinos couldn’t swing and jazzers had no timba. With all due respect to all the other great drummers, this man invented modern Latin-jazz drumming, he defined the style, and played it better than anyone. Last of a kind, his pocket will never be duplicated.”

Berrios’s family has requested that anyone wishing to contribute to his funeral expenses please make a donation here. Donations can also be mailed to Jazz Foundation of America, 322 W. 48th St., New York, N.Y. 10036.

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Nature isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the Hamptons these days, yet choreographer Robert Wilson’s always-kooky annual summer benefit at the Watermill Center, called “Devil’s Heaven” this year, saw many people going au naturel. As guests ambled through the forest and around the property, they encountered nude models painted green, or in the patterns of a Mondrian painting, a nude woman reclining in a pool of a dark, honey-like substance, and even Lady Gaga, who showed up looking more natural than usual, sans makeup and with long dark hair, a black dress with cut-outs, and a nose ring — an alleged attempt to retrieve her former self.

Gaga, who made her entrée with artist Marina Abramovic, is reportedly collaborating with Wilson on her new album “Artpop.” The three posed for photo ops and even suggestively dipped their spoons in the honey pool to taste the substance. The appearance of Lady Gaga, who has been unveiling artwork as teasers for her new single release and performance at the MTV Music Awards in August, signals yet another connection between the art world and the leading lights of the music industry (earlier this month this phenomenon hit a particular high — or low — at Pace Gallery, which hosted musical star Jay Z’s collaboration with Abramovic for his Abramovic-inspired endurance performance/video).

As per usual at the summer benefit, which caps the summer art season in the Hamptons, there were plenty of other fusions of visual art and performance to be seen. And there was plenty of people-watching to be done, as well: Among the artists, socialites, and celebrities mingling at the $1,000-per-plate event were Wynona Ryder, Cindy Sherman, Alexander Soros, and Josephine Meckseper.

To see pictures of the action at the Watermill Center's “Devil’s Heaven” benefit, click on the slideshow.

Name: Daniel Knorr

Age: 45

Occupation: Artist

City / Neighborhood: Berlin

Your new solo show, which opened Saturday at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, “Depression Elevations,” includes a series of sculptures from resin casts of holes in Los Angeles city streets, and is also paired with the publication of a Los Angeles-focused book in your longer-running Carte de Artiste series of global encyclopedias, which draw together images of discarded objects found in urban landscapes. What led into the particular focus on topographies and found objects?

Topography, in my case, is more related to the social fabric as a landscape. Our act of driving shapes the road into that landscape. I focused on these found objects because they are witnesses of our time and left behind as objects with no value. The book produces a cultural statement going forward to give to these objects a variety of values in all possible social areas.

Courtesy of Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles

This is also your first solo show in Los Angeles. What were some of the things that stood out to you about the city in contrast to those you’ve worked with previously, and are there any specific ways that this translated into your working process?

Finally, I arrived home. The conceptualists of the ’70s working in L.A. were my spiritual influences when I started thinking about art. Further, my work always responds to a place, here in Los Angeles I found the car culture as one of the special conditions of the city. Depression Elevations are physically the potholes of the streets, but also refer to the world economic crisis, political conflicts, psychological condition, etc.

The Carte de Artistes books first began with an edition on your home country of Romania, and have extended to other countries or specific cities. Have you found that specific types of found objects appeal to you in different locations?

There are different objects that stand out in each country. In L.A., it was the fact that the public space is extended into the roads — for example, we found many objects near the highways. We found signs that were made by homeless people as well as political advertisements.

What’s the last show that surprised you? Why?

The last show I saw that surprised me was James Turrell here at Kayne Griffin Corcoran. After experiencing his Meditation Room I began to see light fragments outside the gallery in ways that were informed by the piece.

What’s the most indispensable item in your studio?

Good question, I’m still thinking.

What’s the first artwork you ever sold?

It was a watercolor drawing made by my uncle that I pretended was mine.

What’s the weirdest thing you ever saw happen in a museum or gallery?

An Italian museum, near Napoli, burned art pieces of their own collection to protest the fact that they had no money to maintain the museum.

What work of art do you wish you owned?

Any Duchamp readymade that you can still find on the market.

British authorities have lifted the export ban on Raphael’s “Head of a Young Apostle,” paving the way for New York billionaire Leon Black to take home the early 16th-century black chalk drawing, for which he paid a record-setting £29 million ($47.9 million) at Sotheby’s London last December. Raphael executed the study, dated to 1519-1520, in preparation for what many have hailed as his greatest painting, “The Transfiguration,” which is now in the Vatican collections.

Following the sale, British culture minister Ed Vaizey imposed an export restriction on the Old Master drawing, hoping that a buyer could be found within the U.K. so it could hold onto the national treasure. “The deferral period for Raphael's ‘Head of an Apostle’ was not extended on 3 July and accordingly a license to permanently export has been issued,” Sam Gough, a media relations officer for Arts Council England, which issues export licenses, told BLOUIN ARTINFO.

The “Head of a Young Apostle” is just one of several important works that Britain has recently sought retain. Export bans are currently in place for two works purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum — a rare 15th-century Flemish manuscript titled “Roman de Gillion de Trazignes,” which the institution bought for £3.8 million ($5.8 million), and “Rembrandt Laughing,” a 1628 self-portrait by the Dutch master, for which the U.K. is seeking an estimated £16.5 million ($25 million) to keep it in the country.

WHAT: “Richard Rogers: Inside Out”

WHEN: Now through October 13

WHERE: The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, 6 Burlington Gardens, London

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: The arrival of the radically-designed Centre Georges Pompidou in 1977 caught Parisians off guard; whether they were ready or not, it provided an introduction to a post-Corbusier, rebellious brand of modern architecture by literally turning stuffy museum conventions inside-out. A young Italian-born, British-trained architect named Richard Rogers, with partner Renzo Piano, had taken the basic infrastructural elements — the pipes and ducts that controlled heating, cooling, plumbing — technicolor-coded them, and placed them on the glass-and-steel exterior as if they were decoration. The unorthodox arrangement both shocked and delighted the public, and provided the interior with uninterrupted exhibition space. It took Rogers’s status as a no-name architect with a fondness for American modernism and recast him as a pioneer in architecture’s High-Tech movement, an iconoclast, and a visionary. And that was just the beginning. 

Forty years, a trove of critically acclaimed buildings, and a Pritzker Prize later, Rogers is the subject of a 50-year retrospective on view now at London’s Royal Academy. The exhibition catalogues his body of work through the usual effects of an architectural show — photographs, floorplans, and scale models — but aims to provide a broader portrait of a man whom the Pritzker jury lauded as “a champion of urban life.” As evidence of the social and political relevance of his career, the show provides samples of articles, lectures, and TV appearances that reflect the direct advisory role he played for local governments’ efforts in city planning. The bicycle-powered espresso machine in the third gallery speaks to his advocacy for technology and sustainability, as does the flat-packed energy-efficient home standing in the academy’s courtyard. 

The content is as biographical as it is historical, weaving flourishes of neon pink, green, and yellow throughout the exhibition design to reflect Rogers’s personal sense of style (noted for an aggressive use of color-blocking). Architectural buffs can look forward to seeing his personal effects, including a report from his second year of study at the Architectural Association: “His designs will continue to suffer while his drawing is so bad,” it reads, likely explaining the show’s lack of sketches.

To see highlights from “Richard Rogers: Inside Out,” click on the slideshow. 

LOS ANGELES — Running at the Geffen Playhouse since June 18, Judy Gold’s one-woman show, “The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom,” is being held over until August 18, due to popular demand.

The show premiered off-Broadway at the DR2 Theatre in 2011 to positive reviews, which continued in Los Angeles, with the Los Angeles Times calling Gold “an enormously likable performer.”

A successful standup comic since the 1980s, Gold is active in the LGBT and Jewish communities. In a recent interview with ARTINFO, she spoke about the show, women in comedy, and changing attitudes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act.

Tell us a little about the show. It came from your experience pitching a sitcom?

I’m really proud of the show and it really is a very honest story about my dreams and growing up in the ’70s. The fact is I was addicted to sitcoms growing up. I always thought when I grew up that I would be on a sitcom or have my own sitcom. It’s really a story of having a dream and following your dream.

Since it’s based on your personal experiences, how do you know how much to reveal? Do you ever get reprimanded by people close to you?

I did have an aunt who heard a joke and took my brother and my sister and I out of the will. We call it the four million dollar joke and it wasn’t even funny. My uncle had died and we were at shiva or something and she was wearing this necklace and someone commented, “That’s a nice necklace.” And she said, “Oh, it’s Dave’s old belt buckle.” And I said, “Oh, what about those round ball earrings?” Of course she heard it, and it was so many years ago but my brother and sister never let me live it down.

How is this different than what you do in your standup act?

They have a beginning, middle, and end and I’m really telling a story. The difference between a theater and a comedy club, it’s like night and day. There’s no blenders going off, there’s no waitresses, there’s no checks. In comedy clubs you really have to fight to get their attention. In theater, they come ready. They are paying attention and you have to fight to keep their attention. And I get to have moments that are not funny, that are just emotional, and just being able to take that side and have those moments and have the audience go on this journey with me.

There’s been a lot of talk about women in comedy lately. Suddenly people have woken up to the fact that women can be funny.

Funny is funny no matter what. There’s plenty of non-funny men and yet no one says men aren’t funny if they hear a non-funny man. They’ll have three male comics and it’s a show. Three female comics on a show is a special event. Ladies night out!

The Supreme Court recently overturned DOMA. As a gay parent, do you see attitudes changing?

I see it with my children. They have no reaction to a transgender child in their school, a child with two moms, a child with two dads, a gay child, a questioning child — they’re people. It’s happened pretty fast, I think. In our lifetime, for the federal government to acknowledge same sex marriage. We [still] have a lot of work to do… and there are plenty of politicians who feel that they have the right to say the most awful, horrible things about homosexuals and the children of homosexuals. But still, I definitely believe I see it in so many ways.

And yet there are still people who are outraged by the decision.

If I marry my partner and I live in a house with my kid, how does that affect your life? How does that affect your marriage? How does that affect your family? When you really think about it and you break it down, you’re telling me Jerry Sandusky is entitled to more rights than I am. Eric Menendez got married in jail, and that’s sanctioned by our government. How is that fair?

Do you think it’s getting easier to come out?

A gay person comes out hundreds of times a day, especially a gay mom like me. When I’m with my kids, you get these questions, “Oh, is the dad tall?” People just assume. So we ware always coming out and my kids are always probably coming out, too. When they meet new people, “What does your dad do?” When we get to the point of not assuming, that is going to be amazing. Mostly I see with the next generation. I see it with gay kids in their 20s — “My parents know, no problem.” If they could see the reaction of our parents when we told them! It’s night and day. I think that generation is going to really change the world regarding this issue.

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Fans of 16th-century British history anticipating BBC2’s six-hour miniseries of Hilary Mantel’s novels “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” will be intrigued to know that two movies and a miniseries about Mary Stuart (1542-1587) are coming their way. In each case, the accent will be on youth.

The talented French ingenue Camille Rutherford has completed her portrayal of Mary in the Swiss-French coproduction “Mary Queen of Scots,” which has been directed by the Swiss maverick Thomas Imbach and will have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

It was adapted from the Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s 1935 biography “Maria Stuart,” which speculatively offered some of the queen’s innermost thoughts. Though the trailer below suggests the influence of energetic French costume dramas like “Queen Margot” (1994), “The Horseman on the Roof” (1995), and “The Princess of Montpensier” (2010), there are signs that Imbach is interested in psychological insight. Zweig, after all, was a friend of his compatriots Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schnitzler.

The 19-year-old Irish actress Saiorse Ronan (“Atonement,” “Byzantium”) will play the title role in another “Mary Queen of Scots,” which is in pre-production for a 2014 start at Working Title. It has been written by Michael Hirst, who wrote “Elizabeth” (1998) and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (2007) for the same British company. That pair of theatrical films played fast and loose with history, but not as much as 2007-10’s “The Tudors” series, which Hirst created for Showtime.

A travesty and a popular success, “The Tudors” attracted thousands of viewers interested less in the historical record than airbrushed sex performed by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as an unaccountably slender Henry VIII and various hotties. “Reign,” which will debut on the CW this fall, promises to be its slightly less lusty offspring.

Starring 22-year-old Australian actress Adelaide Kane, it begins when Mary is the 15-year-old Scottish queen regnant at the French court and about two years from becoming the queen consort of France. Apart from costumes and a carriage, the trailer for Brad Silberling’s pilot makes not the slightest concession to period atmosphere.

Purists will prefer instead the 18 seconds of “The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots” (1895), even if Mary was played by a man, Robert Thomae. Directed by Alfred Clark for Thomas Edison, it was reportedly one of the earliest films to use a jump cut as a trick effect and a trained cast.

Three Mary Stuarts will be two too many, as wise Elizabethans know from experience. In 2005, HBO’s two-part “Elizabeth I,” starring Helen Mirren as the Virgin Queen and efficiently directed by Tom Hooper, interrupted the royal progress of “Elizabeth” and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” starring Cate Blanchett and gaudily directed by Shekhar Kapur.

Mirren’s Elizabeth was earthy, stirring, a bit Margaret Thatcher-like. Blanchett’s high-spiritedness as the young Bess gave way to predictable remoteness and manufactured iconicity. Both incarnations left viewers with long memories recalling the fierce, yearning Tudor queen definitively embodied by Glenda Jackson in the BBC’s six-part “Elizabeth R” and the movie “Mary Queen of Scots” (both 1971). In the latter, Vanessa Redgrave, then 34, played Mary, who was 44 when she was beheaded after 18 and a half years of imprisonment. At 5-feet, 11-inches, Redgrave was exactly Mary’s height.

Mary Stuart fared well in “Elizabeth I” and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” because of the nuanced performances by 57-year-old Barbara Flynn and 30-year-old Samantha Morton respectively. The encounter between Mirren’s Elizabeth and Flynn’s was fictitious, of course, but made for tense drama. Morton, who used a Scottish accent when French would have probably been more accurate, was otherwise memorable as a bitter but proud woman facing an inevitable fate. 

Watch the trailer for this year’s “Mary Queen of Scots,” starring Camille Rutherford:

LOS ANGELES — What is being billed as “the finest collection of papers, costumes, and memorabilia” belonging to comic legend Lucille Ball hits the market July 30 in Los Angeles.

The piece de resistance is Ball’s signature polka dot dress, which she wore on her pioneering sitcom “I Love Lucy,” expected to go for anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000.

A fox stole she wore in the show’s third season is expected to fetch $3,000 to $5,000, and a blue skirt in one of the series’ most memorable episodes, guest starring John Wayne, is likely to draw $2,000 or $3,000.

Other items include a striped dress suit Ball wore in the 1950 Bob Hope comedy “Fancy Pants,” and a contract signed by the actress and producer Samuel Goldwyn for two of her earliest movies, 193o’s “Roman Scandals” and “Moulin Rouge.”

The items, belonging to collector Chad Dreier, who acquired them from the estate of Oscar-winning costume designer Elois Jenssen, are being auctioned by Profiles In History, which specializes in Hollywood memorabilia. Ball met Jenssen in 1947 on the set of the Boris Karloff thriller “Lured.”

In June 2011, Profiles in History sold Marilyn Monroe’s “subway dress” from “The Seven Year Itch” for $5.52 million; Audrey Hepburn’s “ascot dress” from “My Fair Lady” fetched $4.42 million.

Previous auctions have netted $805,000 for the Cowardly Lion costume from “The Wizard of Oz,” and Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch hat for $230,000.

In February 2012, Profiles in History sold Judy Garland’s ruby slippers for an undisclosed amount to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

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To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art's first solo photography show, MoMA brings back that landmark Walker Evans 1938 exhibition and its accompanying book of the same title, “Walker Evans American Photographs”.

Evans is best known for his monochromatic prints portraying the transformation of American life during an era of economic depression and political change. For the current exhibition, more than 60 prints from Evans’s original show are reinstalled in the museum’s Painting and Sculpture Galleries. To maintain the spirit of the initial presentation, the space is divided into two sections: the first area explores American society through individuals and their environment, and the second examines the expression of cultural identity through architecture.

dCurator Sarah Hermanson Meister spoke with Blouin ARTINFO about the allure behind Evans’s epochal prints and his trademark photographic style.

The exhibition runs through January 26, 2014.

It’s hard to believe, but Doig—born in Edinburgh, Scotland—has never had a proper large-scale exhibition in the country of his birth. That changes on August 3, when a survey of more than a decade of his paintings opens at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The show will later travel across the pond to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. Michael Werner Gallery will also present comprehensive shows of Doig’s work this fall in both their London and New York spaces. From his studio in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Doig spoke to Modern Painters editor in chief Daniel Kunitz.

DK: This is your first time showing at a major institution in Scotland, I gather?

PD: I know Edinburgh well from my childhood, and I was born there. I did a two-person show there some years ago, at the Fruitmarket Gallery. But that was nothing like this, which is of paintings from 2000 until now.

DK: Do you feel the work has changed in significant ways over that period?

PD: 2000 was the year that I first started visiting Trinidad. I came here on a residency, and that’s where I am now. The method of painting changed; the paintings became a little bit more expansive, maybe more fluid, less involved with the minutiae of surface. I’m still very interested in surface but not in the same way that I was.

DK: Do you think of yourself as Scottish?

PD: I can’t help but think of myself as a Scot. But I’m part of the Scottish diaspora; a lot of people of my generation emigrated postwar with their families or sought opportunity elsewhere, outside of Scotland and the U.K. I left when I was about two years old, but I visited there a lot as a child and as a teenager.

DK: Now you’re based between London and Trinidad. Do you feel that you paint differently in each city?

PD: I think the paintings are different in Trinidad because the environment is so different—the atmosphere, the heat and the humidity, the type of studio I have here. It’s in a warehouse, a much more open space than I would have in London. The actual surface of the paintings is different. I paint on rabbit glue on linen, and for some reason it doesn’t set in the same way as it does in England or in the States. I think it’s to do with the level of moisture in the air here. So the canvases are different. They absorb paint a lot more. It’s almost like painting on bare canvas.

DK:I’m amazed that you are able to work in that environment because it seems so idyllic—conducive to being outside and not working.

PD: Yes and no. It’s very hot here so you don’t really want to be in the sun particularly, unless you go to the beach every day. But you get bored of that pretty quickly. My studio is in a really industrial part of the city of Port of Spain, which is big, almost a million people. If I showed you a picture of my studio now, you’d think it could easily be in London or New York. It doesn’t look or feel tropical.

DK: What draws you to live in Trinidad?

PD: Access to nature, and the city itself is very vibrant. It is a country that is in flux in a way, and that’s very exciting.

DK:Are you athletic? I’m thinking about the subject matter of the paintings.

PD: I played ice hockey for years; that was my sport—and skiing. My sporting life is very sort of northern, winter-based. I do swim, but I don’t “go swimming.” I just swim when I can. It’s a genuine interest; let’s put it that way. It’s not like someone who paints sports from an observer’s point of view.

DK: You can tell; there’s a physical engagement in the works.

PD: The paintings are quite physical themselves, too; they require some physicality to make them.

DK:What keeps drawing you back to landscape as a subject?

PD: It’s like painting space—it gives you room. There are areas where you’re not constricted by detail. You can kind of make it up, and there’s an abstract quality to it.

DK:What tends to prompt a painting?

PD: As a painter, you are always seeking something to paint. I’m thinking about it constantly. I’m taking lots of pictures—I’ve always done that, long before the time of digital photography—not just in the landscape or in the city but also taking pictures of pictures in magazines, of postcards, taking pictures of fragments of things. It’s a slow process of the time being right for something to emerge into a painting.

I went to the zoo the other day. They just acquired three new lions and I took my son. The lions were caged in a pretty mean enclosure, I thought—not a very nice enclosure. But the enclosure reminded me of other paintings I’ve made. Now I’m thinking about making this painting with a lion in it, which also in a way connects to another painting I made, which had a lion from a flag on it. There are all sorts of connections. It’s often seeing images or situations in the real world that remind you of your own work in a funny way. Once you’ve been painting for so many years, it’s rare that you take something completely cold and say, “I’m going to make a painting out of this.” It usually has some reference to something you’ve done before, and that’s why you’re attracted to it. Of course there are one-offs that come into play, and that’s also very interesting. But they don’t come about so often.

DK:Do you draw?

PD: I sketch crudely, thumbnail sketches that might be the beginning of something. I don’t sit down and draw things from nature; it’s more about drawing ideas.

DK:Are you ever tempted by other media—to make something that’s not a painting?

PD: I sometimes think about it, but I’ve never really gotten beyond that. I collect driftwood and I think, Maybe I’ll make a sculpture. But then in the end it just remains driftwood; it looks too good as it is.

DK:Can we talk about the painting of serial motifs, recurring subject matter that both you and someone like Edvard Munch use?

PD: Years ago I read an essay by Peter Schjeldahl called the “Greatest Hits of Edvard Munch.” It was quite interesting, the way that Munch basically had his stock images that he would go back to; he couldn’t escape them. He was obviously drawn to specific photographs. He went back to the same ones. I can empathize with that. Only certain things are important to the individual artist.

DK:What things?

PD: I’m thinking about in Munch’s case and also in mine. For instance, my painting Lapeyrouse Wall, of a guy walking along a wall with an umbrella—there are other ways I could have done that. And I did approach the figure in different ways, in a lot of the studies. But when it came to the final painting or etchings—and I’ve done a few versions of the painting too—I tend to use that same exact pose because it’s the one that I thought said it for me. There’s so many ways to draw a figure, so many different poses, and body language in painting is so important.

This article was published in the July 2013 issue of Modern Painters.

To see images, click on the slideshow.

The artist known as Bob and Roberta Smith is plotting to “turn Kilkenny into an art school,” he told BLOUIN ARTINFO UK recently. For his first solo exhibition in Ireland, as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the outspoken artist will simultaneously display works at the Butler Gallery and coordinate art activities in several Georgian buildings in the city centre.  

This Bob and Roberta Smith extravaganza is entitled “Art Makes Children Powerful,” but because of its scale, it has been nicknamed “Bobumenta” by its initiator — a tongue-in-cheek reference to dOCUMENTA, the behemoth art exhibition held in Kassel every five years.

The artist’s much-publicised plea to education minister Michael Gove to keep the arts in the school curriculum will be among the artworks on show at The Butler Gallery.

“Art in school is about selfhood, about allowing children to become all that they can be rather than what society thinks they perhaps should be,” Bob and Roberta Smith explained. “It’s always a mistake to tell them what they should be, because we don’t know what they should be. So it’s better to give them a sense of power that they can invent their own worlds in. And art does that in schools.”

The other venues — the “Bob Centres” — will host activities such as “Be Hannah Arendt,” in which the audience will be invited to dress up as the German philosopher and reflect on the importance of public space. Held in the former meeting place of the Confederation of Kilkenny supporters, the “Centre for Argument,” will encourage people to step up on a soapbox.

Visitors will also be invited to take up an easel at the “Bob and Roberta Smith Art School,” and go to the park to draw bees’ journeys from flower to flower. “They are all slightly idiosyncratic activities, but they are also activities that people can bring their own things to — and make their own kind of art,” said the artist.  

Boosted, in the UK at least, by the astronomical rise in tuition fees, alternative art schools seem to be mushrooming, but Bob and Roberta Smith says his inspiration lays elsewhere. “My angle on it has always been about how do you prompt kids, or the more general population, to take art seriously as a career,” he told ARTINFO UK. “I think it starts in schools really. So I’m all in favor of people developing their own, idiosyncratic approaches to art education. But actually what we need is armies of kids who are great at inventing their own things.”

He concluded: “I don’t want to preach a line to people, but I want to say that the public’s ideas are as good as any others. It’s just about debating them, putting them out there, and seeing what flies and what doesn’t.”

Kilkenny Arts Festival, August 9 – 18, 2013

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