Friday Lates: What is art for?

'What is Art For?' is a comprehensive new volume of interviews by the art critic, writer and broadcaster Ben Luke. Building on over two decades of art world experience and the success of ‘A brush with…’, his popular podcast produced by The Art Newspaper, Luke presents 25 in-depth conversations with some of the most vital artists working today and reflects on who and what drives them to make art, with many of them drawing inspiration from the National Gallery Collection.

To mark the release of his new book, Luke is joined by featured artists Cornelia Parker and Zadie Xa, as well as our Ardalan Curator of Modern & Contemporary Projects, Daniel F. Herrmann, to discuss the influence of art and artists at the National Gallery from the likes of Jan van Eyck, Diego Velázquez and JMW Turner.

Daniel F. Herrmann is the Ardalan Curator of Modern & Contemporary Projects at the National Gallery, London. His work relates the historical collection to contemporary art and culture through exhibitions, commissions, residencies, research and interpretation. Recent projects include Jeremy Deller’s ‘The Triumph of Art’ (2025), ‘Mud Sun’ by Richard Long (2025), ‘Lucian Freud: New Perspectives’ (2022) and ‘Messengers’ by Bridget Riley (2019). Previous exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery include ‘Eduardo Paolozzi’ (2017); ‘The London Open’ (2015); and ‘Hannah Höch’ (2014).

Ben Luke is a writer and broadcaster. He is a contributing editor of The Art Newspaper and presents its podcasts ‘A brush with…’, of which there have been more than 100 episodes since 2020, and the topical art news programme ‘The Week in Art’, which has run for more than 300 episodes. From 2009 to 2024, he was an art critic at the London Evening Standard. He is a regular guest on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’ and Monocle 24’s ‘The Globalist’. Ben has contributed to books on artists as diverse as Phyllida Barlow, Glenn Brown, Michael Craig-Martin, Matthew Krishanu, George Shaw and Jiro Takamatsu. He was selected in the Critics’ Critics section of Artforum’s Best of 2024 issue.

Cornelia Parker is one of Britain's best loved and most acclaimed contemporary artists. Always driven by curiosity, she reconfigures domestic objects to question our relationship with the world. Using transformation, playfulness and storytelling, she engages with important issues of our time. Parker’s major exhibitions include a retrospective at Tate Britain in 2022. She was the UK’s first Female Election Artist and the first woman artist to undertake The Met Museum’s annual rooftop commission. She is currently working with the conservation departments at the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery on the production of new works for exhibition in 2026.

Zadie Xa (b. 1983, Vancouver) is a London-based artist whose expansive practice addresses hybrid and diasporic identities, familial legacy, folklore and ritual. Weaving together painting, sculpture, textile and performance works, Xa assembles installations that immerse audiences inside modern-day folktales, which draw upon her Korean heritage and early years in the Pacific Northwest, while elevating narratives historically repressed or erased. Xa will present her Turner Prize-shortlisted installation at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, from September 2025, followed by an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2026. 'Scorpian', a work bringing together painting, live performance and costume, was presented by Xa and Benito Mayor Vallejo at The National Gallery in 2021.