Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Darren Almond is recreating the\u00a0interior of a chapel when I\u00a0arrive at his studio in Norfolk. Specifically, the Cappella Sansevero in Naples, where his\u00a0new paintings are about to be installed. The works depict the folds and abstract forms of the rags that Lucian Freud wiped his paintbrushes on, then discarded on\u00a0the\u00a0floor around his easel.\u00a0For Almond, one of Britain\u2019s leading contemporary artists, the rags suggest \u201cthe\u00a0residue of an artist\u2019s life; a lifetime spent studying light falling on flesh\u201d. He photographed them in Freud\u2019s old painting studio, and was transfixed by the traces of\u00a0pigment in\u00a0their pleats and swirls. Having enlarged the photographs, he applied his own colours to them in delicate washes, \u201ca veiling of paint\u201d that he hopes will convey \u201cthe liminal space between life and death\u201d.That idea will gain special resonance next to the Cappella\u2019s star attraction: a shroud-draped sculpture known as the Veiled Christ. Carved by Giuseppe Sanmartino in 1753, the marble masterpiece depicts the son of God taking his last breath. \u201cIt\u2019s an extraordinary thing,\u201d\u00a0says Almond. \u201cThere\u2019s this subtle inhalation at\u00a0the mouth, but what you find yourself looking at is the veil. It\u2019s so thin and full of\u00a0light. Like looking at wet lint.\u201dThe works depict the rags that Lucian Freud wiped his paintbrushes on, then discarded on\u00a0the\u00a0floorAlmond, 53, is of medium height with\u00a0an admirable beard and dressed in a rust-coloured corduroy suit. There is a dash of Henry VIII about him, though his voice, which carries a hint of his native Wigan, is\u00a0preternaturally soft. Six months ago, he decided to take the plunge and move the centre of his artistic operations from north-west London to an old threshing barn on the edge of the Fens in Norfolk. He bought the place, which has the wide, deep feel of a medieval feasting hall, in 2009 \u2013\u00a0\u201cthe best stupid mistake I ever made\u201d.\u00a0Watching the tones and shades of the rags change over many hours in Freud\u2019s studio felt familiar to Almond: for one of his earliest works, Tuesday (1996), he had done the same in his London studio, taking a photograph of the daylight on its wall every minute, for 1,440 minutes. Time has remained a key theme since. It\u2019s a feature of his Turner Prize-nominated film If I Had You (2003), which followed his widowed grandmother revisiting the site of\u00a0her honeymoon; of Meantime (2000), a\u00a0shipping container turned clicking, clacking digital clock; and his ongoing series Fullmoon, photographs of significant landscapes (Constable\u2019s Suffolk, C\u00e9zanne\u2019s Provence and so on) taken at night with lunar light. He points to one photo depicting a faint streak of light across Ribblehead Viaduct. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the last mail trains. I\u00a0used to\u00a0jump on as a kid and ride around the country. They\u2019re long gone now.\u201dThough the chapel has a robust contemporary art programme, it\u2019s a considerable coup to show in a space so precious that tourists are forbidden from\u00a0taking photographs inside. \u201cWhen Darren shared his concept with us,\u201d says\u00a0Maria Alessandra Masucci, director of\u00a0the Sansevero Chapel Museum, \u201che explained that\u00a0while working on the\u00a0rags, he immediately recognised a connection with the baroque aesthetics of\u00a0the Sansevero Chapel. I\u00a0knew what he meant as\u00a0soon as I saw them.\u201dAlmond counts the Veiled Christ as \u201cone\u00a0of those experiences that stays deep in\u00a0you\u201d. It was the same in Freud\u2019s studio, he says. \u201cThe more times you go around the\u00a0sun, the more you wonder why you\u2019re still carrying those impressions and encounters. It\u2019s a question I\u2019ll spend the rest of my life struggling to answer.\u201d\u00a0What you find yourself looking at is the veil. It\u2019s so thin and full of lightOver time, Freud\u2019s rags formed large piles that grew to resemble \u201cthe tide of the sea coming in and out\u201d, says Freud\u2019s former assistant, the artist David Dawson. Dawson inherited Freud\u2019s Kensington house and studio when the portraitist died in 2011. He\u00a0is inundated with requests to visit it and turns most of them down, \u201cbut I like what Darren does and I felt he\u2019d be sympathetic to it\u201d. When Dawson saw the finished paintings, he told Almond how, when Freud was old and frail, he had turned to him and said: \u201cDavid, I think my palette is a bit like British songbirds: earthy brown tones and a\u00a0sudden flurry of colour.\u201d The image so delighted Almond that he has named the paintings in tribute \u2013 Leptotila Verreauxi (white-tipped dove), for instance, and Passer Domesticus (house sparrow).Almond was born in Wigan, Greater Manchester, in 1971. \u201cIt was magical, the\u00a0industrial heartland.\u201d He grew up on the outskirts of\u00a0town, and attributes his newfound connection to landscape to a\u00a0schoolfriend\u2019s dairy-farmer father, for whom he washed milk bottles every Sunday. \u201cI can paint an idyllic picture but\u00a0it\u00a0was also brutal. There\u2019s a forgotten majority in the north that have suffered a\u00a0lot. There wasn\u2019t a book in our house. I\u00a0don\u2019t know where the light that got\u00a0me moving came from, apart from being witness to the hardship and thinking, \u2018Let\u2019s\u00a0try and turn this around.\u2019 I also had nothing to lose. I think that\u2019s the biggest thing. I\u00a0literally had nothing to lose.\u201dHe pulls out a reproduction of Freud\u2019s 1970-72 painting of Paddington, Wasteground with Houses. He first saw it in a book while studying at Wigan Tech. \u201cThat picture is what made me realise I would move to London to become an artist. The Freud penny has been falling for quite some time.\u201dHe graduated from Winchester School of Art in 1993, and had his first exhibition at White Cube in 1997, joining Jay Jopling\u2019s starry post-YBA fold. The same year he became the youngest artist (at 26) in Charles Saatchi\u2019s influential Sensation exhibition. Today, he rolls from one international show to another \u2013 Tokyo, Berlin, San Francisco and Geneva. His most-seen public work is probably the series of three artworks he created for the\u00a0new Bond Street station, a permanent installation commissioned by Crossrail Art Programme to commemorate the opening of the Elizabeth Line in 2022. Success has \u201ccome about through a lot of hard work\u201d, he says. \u201cThrough drive and being bloody determined, and I\u2019m still the same way.\u201d\u00a0Later, he talks about his grandfather who lived next door when he was growing up in Wigan. \u201cA wonderful, kind man; a year-round gardener who\u2019d have flowers in\u00a0the front and vegetables in the back on the\u00a0smallest of budgets. He liked to do things with his hands and he would make things. And I remember when I had just started school, I went back all\u00a0excited. I\u00a0said, \u2018Guess what? Today, all afternoon, we just played.\u2019 And he said to me: \u2018Playing\u00a0is the most important way to learn.\u2019 Isn\u2019t that great?\u201d\u00a0Rags runs until 17 March, museosansevero.it. Songbirds & Willows to 8 March, alfonsoartiaco.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Darren Almond is recreating the\u00a0interior of a chapel when I\u00a0arrive at his studio in Norfolk. Specifically, the Cappella Sansevero in Naples, where his\u00a0new paintings are about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":175911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-175910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175912,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175910\/revisions\/175912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}