| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Friday, December 30, 2022 |
| | | Inside an underground network of Los Angeles museums | |
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A diorama titled The Universal Form at the Bhagavad-Gita Diorama Museum in Culver City, Calif., Dec. 23, 2022. Shrines to skateboarding, bunnies, neon, aviation and citrus trees dot the sprawling region, highlighting its diversity. (Philip Cheung/The New York Times)
by Adam Nagourney
CULVER CITY, CA.- The Bhagavad-Gita Diorama Museum is not easy to find. It is hidden down a passageway in the Hare Krishna temple complex on a side street in Culver City. Although a sign outside advertised the museum as open, the front door was locked one fall morning; it took five minutes for a worker to arrive and reveal its warren of 11 dioramas depicting Hare Krishna history. The Martial Arts History Museum, 22 miles away by car in Burbank, is more conducive to a visit. Its on Magnolia Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares in the San Fernando Valley but at 2,000 square feet, it is so cramped that the museum has turned away buses of schoolchildren who wanted to view, among other artifacts, a headband worn by Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid Part II. This is the first and only museum of its kind, can you believe it? said its president, Michael Matsuda. The only one in the world that covers all the martial arts. Over the past decade, Los Angeles has em ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Taylor Mac in âA 24-Decade History of Popular Musicâ at St. Annâs Warehouse in New York, Oct. 8, 2016. In Machine Dazzleâs museum survey and performances, the costume designer (and Taylor Mac collaborator) is like Krazy Glue â bonding art, theater and drag. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
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| Music historian takes a top job at New York Public Library | | Arata Isozaki, prolific Japanese architect, dies at 91 | | An opera house gives contemporary art a major role |
An undated photo provided by Jonathan Blanc/New York Public Library shows Brent Reidy, an amateur jazz pianist and the new director of Research Libraries at the New York Public Library. Reidy said he hoped to help democratize the 127-year-old library by reaching a younger generation. (Jonathan Blanc/New York Public Library via The New York Times)
by Dan Bilefsky
NEW YORK, NY.- The New York Public Library on Thursday named Brent Reidy as director of its research libraries, putting the 40-year-old music historian at the helm of four vast public research centers whose holdings encompass 17th-century Shakespeare folios and sheet music belonging to Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie and Mozart. Reidy, who has been serving as interim director since William P. Kelly retired in April, will preside over the collection, acquisition and preservation strategies at the research libraries, which have a budget of $145 million and welcome 4 million visitors a year. The position gives him an outsized voice on the direction of national humanities research. An amateur jazz pianist who unwinds by playing John Coltrane, Reidy said he hoped to help democratize the 127-year-old ... More | |
The world's first inflatable concert hall in the disaster-hit northeastern coast town of Matsushima.
by Joseph Giovannini
NEW YORK, NY.- Arata Isozaki, a prolific Japanese architect, urban planner and theorist who received a belated Pritzker Architecture Prize at the age of 87, died Wednesday at home in Okinawa. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his longtime companion, Misa Shin, in a statement. Practicing at a time of seismic shifts in architectural practice and theory, Isozaki was both an agent and messenger of change who never repeated himself in his work. Each of his buildings was unique and escaped signature. In scores of major structures built in a dozen countries, Isozaki absorbed and reinterpreted Eastern and Western traditions, fluently importing and exporting architectural influences. In a half-dozen books, he explained Japans rarefied building customs, emphasizing the nations intangible spirit. An ambassador between cultures, Isozaki became an international power broker in his field; his colleague Tadao Ando called him the emperor ... More | |
This season, Chinese-born multimedia artist Cao Fei is showing a female avatar a dystopian, pale-white head so imposing that signs have been put up all over the opera house to alert spectators to its presence.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Vienna State Opera is not exactly a go-to place for cutting-edge contemporary art: Inaugurated a century and a half ago, it is housed in an ornate edifice with gilded and velvet interiors. Yet every year since 1998, a contemporary artist has been commissioned to deliver a design for the safety curtain that about 600,000 operagoers gaze at before performances and during intervals all season long for eight or nine months. More than two dozen artists have designed 176-square-meter (nearly 1,900-square-foot) images for the opera house and produced safety curtains that are nothing like what operagoers see elsewhere. Kara Walker, who was the inaugural artist in 1998, delivered a curtain featuring her signature silhouettes of African American figures. Jeff Koons adorned one with toy monkeys and cartoon characters. And Cerith Wyn Evans treated the public to a brief text (in German) that invited operagoers to imagine a situation that, in all likelihood ... More |
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| Works by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and Michael Andrews on view at Gagosian | | Jimmie Durham: humanity is not a completed project, curated by Kathryn Weir, at Museo Madre | | Vera Girivi "Intimate Silence" on view at the Anna Zorina Gallery |
Francis Bacon, Head of a Man, 1960. Oil on canvas, 5 3/8 x 85.2 cm. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS, 2022.
LONDON.- Gagosian is presenting Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, at the gallerys Grosvenor Hill location in London. Taking as its inspiration a famous John Deakin photograph of the four painters in Soho in 1963 (along with much younger painter Timothy Behrens, the subject of a portrait by Freud that is on view), the exhibition elucidates the connections between their respective practices, and also features some of the artists portraits of each other. Curated by art historian Richard Calvocoressi, Friends and Relations contextualizes key works by four era-defining artists. Featuring more than forty paintings from private and public collections, it positions Freudin the centenary year of his birthas the groupings central figure. Each painter was aware of the others ... More | |
Jimmie Durham, Red foot, 2007, private collection, Paris.
NAPLES.- Artist, poet, performer, essayist, activist: Jimmie Durham (1940-2021) is a unique figure in the international art history of the last half century. His work addresses the foundations of European and North American culture, deconstructing received ideas and accepted categories. This first retrospective exhibition at the Museo Madre in Italy features over 150 works, some never previously exhibited. It creates links across time periods within thematic sequences, combining elements of chronology with a narrative approach and including references to the artists experiments with spatial strategies in key historical exhibitions. Across a career spanning more than fifty years, Durham dedicated his practice to the critical decoding of the naturalised images and symbols that underpin dominant cultural systems. His works, marked by a strong vein of humour, range from sculptures to videos, poems, performances ... More | |
Vera Girivi, Untitled, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 27.5 x 27.5 in, (69.9 x 69.9 cm). ©2022 Anna Zorina Gallery.
LOS ANGELES, CALIF.- Anna Zorina Gallery is pleased to announce Intimate Silence, a solo exhibition of reflective paintings by Italian artist Vera Girivi. This is the artists West Coast debut and inaugural show with the gallery. Intimate Silence brings together works Girivi produced over the past few years when the world faced periods of uncertainty, introspection, and, ultimately, a new normality. Richly detailed and boldly rendered, the paintings offer glimpses into the private worlds of women relaxing in their tranquil interiors. Girivi is a self-taught artist and began painting over six years ago in her home in Genoa, Italy. Drawing inspiration from her own lived experiences and imagination, she celebrates women of various ages and silhouettes. Her canvas expressive colors and energetic strokes belie the quiet, contemplative moments of often solitary figures tenderly captured by her brush. Whether reclining in a sitting room ... More |
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| MAXXI opens the first European retrospective dedicated to Bob Dylan's painting | | Daniel Brush, boundary-defying artist, is dead at 75 | | Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Lacroix, Saint Laurent, Valentino... a haute couture wardrobe |
Bob Dylan, Abandoned Motel, Eureka, 2015-2016. Acrylic on canvas.
ROME.- The exhibition Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum, curated by Shai Baitel, opened on 16 December at MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts. It is the first European retrospective dedicated to the visual art works of one of the most important icons of world contemporary culture. After being housed at the MAM in Shanghai and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, the exhibition is now in Rome in a version completely redesigned to interact with the dynamic, futuristic spaces of Zaha Hadid's MAXXI. On display are over 100 works including paintings, watercolours, ink and graphite drawings, metal sculptures and video material, spanning Bob Dylan's 50-plus years of creative activity. Bob Dylan said, Its gratifying to learn that my visual works are going to be exhibited at MAXXI in Rome, a truly great museum in one of the worlds most beautiful and inspirational cities. This exhibition is meant ... More | |
An undated image provided by Takaaki Matsumoto/Rizzoli Electa of a jewelry sculpture created by the artist Daniel Brush, whose works drew comparisons to Fabergé eggs for their delicacy and small-scale artistry. (Takaaki Matsumoto/Rizzoli Electa via The New York Times)
by Neil Genzlinger
NEW YORK, NY.- Some 62 years ago, Daniel Brush, a 13-year-old from Cleveland, stood in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London having a formative experience. His mother had brought him there as part of a European tour intended to, as he later put it, open up his eyes. The visit to the Victoria and Albert certainly had that effect, especially the jewelry rooms and one particular ancient gold Etruscan bowl decorated with an esoteric technique called granulation. I didnt know what granulation was then, Brush told The New York Times in 2012, but I saw a gold bowl with a bunch of tiny balls on it. I thought, I have to make something like that in my lifetime. If that was some kind of destiny, Brush had by the time ... More | |
Online sale from 11 to 25 January | Public viewing from 19 to 25 January. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022.
PARIS.- From 11 to 25 January, for Paris Fashion Week, Christies will present an online selection of the 115 most beautiful Haute Couture pieces from the V.W.S. Collection - From Beijing to Versailles, whose section dedicated to Decorative Arts was put up for auction at Christies France on 13 and 14 December. Two pieces of this set have already been sold during The Exceptional Sale, an anticipation of this top quality collection curated by an art lover. One of them achieved a world record for Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld. Alongside designers Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, other great 20th century masters will be showcased: Christian Lacroix, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Valentino, etc. The collection, made up of pieces dating back mainly to the 1970s, 80s and 90s, highlights the exceptional know-how, creativity and glory of Haute Couture as some of these creations may be considered ... More |
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| AstaGuru Auction House concludes the year on a high note with its latest 'Historic Masterpieces' Auction | | Making intergalactic and intergenerational art | | Original marketing artworks by Jim Lee, Frank Cirocco, Mick McGinty & more join Heritage's Video Games Auction |
Leading the sales was work by F. N Souza, lot no. 18, titled The Castle. Executed with oil on masonite board in 1957, this work was acquired at an amount of INR 4,55,40,000.
MUMBAI.- AstaGuru Auction House concludes the year on a high note with its latest Historic Masterpieces Auction AstaGuru Auction House concluded their recent auction titled Historic Masterpieces with tremendous success. The stellar line-up of the Modern Indian Art auction showcased 35 extraordinary works by 19 revered modern artists of India, including Hemendranath Mazumdar, F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, Jehangir Sabavala, M.F. Husain, Akbar Padamsee, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Krishen Khanna, Jogen Chowdhury, Prabhakar Barwe, K.G. Subramanyan, Ram Kumar, J. Swaminathan, Somnath Hore, Himmat Shah, Satish Gujral, N.S Bendre, K.K. Hebbar, Nicholas Roerich. Several of these works appeared in an auction for the first time with lot no. 16, Resuscitative Mythic Man by Bikash Bhattacharjee breaking the artists previous record at a sale value ... More | |
Lita Albuquerque, standing, with her daughters, Isabelle, left, and Jasmine, in Isabelles studio in Los Angeles, Dec. 19, 2022. All three artists are interested in rituals embodying female power. (Magdalena Wosinska/The New York Times)
by Jori Finkel
LOS ANGELES, CA.- For a few months in the spring of 2020, Isabelle Albuquerque tried to live like a deer. She spent time here at Griffith Park around dusk, watching as the animals emerged. She ate with them and like them, adopting their diet of only raw vegetables, fruits and nuts, including a lot of grass. Something like method acting, it was her way of preparing to create a sculpture merging her body and that of a deer, complete with hooves. This rather feral artwork is now on view at Jeffrey Deitch in New York as part of her series Orgy for Ten People in One Body (through Jan. 28), featuring 10 sculptures of the artists body captured in different mediums in moments of ecstasy or metamorphosis or both. One bronze sculpture reimagines the classical ... More | |
Robert Florczak Prince of Persia Computer Game Original Box Art (Broderbund, 1989).
DALLAS, TX.- In 1989, when Robert Florczak was tasked with creating the cover art for a new video game by Jordan Mechner called Prince of Persia, the prolific commercial artist looked to an unlikely source for inspiration: actor, comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Kevin Nealon. The two men were good friends, so when Florczak asked his pal to model for Prince of Persia's cover, Nealon who is a gifted caricature artist himself was more than happy to transform into the game's traitorous Grand Vizier Jaffar. In Florczak's mixed-media painting, Nealon-as-Jaffar grips the endangered princess's wrist while two swordsmen go at it, all laid over the bold crimson drapery of a grand proscenium. The piece has a vintage movie poster feel very old Hollywood so it's no surprise that when Florczak gifted the painting to Nealon, he held on to it for 34 years. Now fans of the epic video game which spawned numerous sequels and a 2010 ... More |
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Gordon Parks Interprets Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" | UNIQLO ARTSPEAKS
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Mary Stephenson's first Asian-Pacific solo exhibition opens at Linseed
SHANGHAI.- Linseed presents UK-based artist Mary Stephensons first Asian- Pacific solo exhibition, Soft Serve. With her distinctive, dark comedy, Stephensons highly saturated worlds move us from the familiar to the uncanny, taking us to the exploration of liminal places between the physical and internal states. The exhibition opens on December 30, 2022, and continues until March 4, 2023. In contrast to her witty and playful depictions, often with frenzied choreographies, of figures and objects in her previous paintings, the exhibition comprises 15 new works that showcase a radical shift in Stephensons recent practice. The richly coloured scenes evoke otherworldliness and absurdity as the figures and characters disappear. Inanimate objects, whether it is a set of stacked pillows, an impaled lemon meringue pie, a chair, a piece of cloth, or other paraphernalia ... More
Massa Confusa, an online exhibition by João Maria Gusmão at Andrew Kreps Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- Andrew Kreps Gallery has announced Massa Confusa, an online exhibition by João Maria Gusmão on his current research on analogue means and concepts, photographic materialism, and satirical meta-literature. The title, Massa Confusa (chaotic matter), refers to the esoteric tradition of alchemy, a predecessor of modern chemistry, whose goal was to cleanse an amalgamate into a substance that could serve a variety of purposes from granting immortality to transmuting metals from quicksilver into gold. Massa confusa would be the initial chaotic description of the compound from which this mystical and chemical process would begin. The exhibition consists of twenty-four unique photographic prints shot directly on RA4 paper with an 8x10 inches camera, and a short story by João Maria Gusmão translated by Chris Foster ... More
'Broadway Rising' review: Surviving the pandemic
NEW YORK, NY.- When the pandemic halted New York theater in March 2020, effectively putting an art form on ice, it was a potent sign that the world was not well. Following the timeline of the shutdown and recovery, Amy Rices upbeat documentary Broadway Rising surveys an impressive array of voices across the industry to track how it survived and regrouped. Its like an extended backstage chronicle, except that people didnt know when or how the show would go on. In a churn of behind-the-scenes vérité and sit-down interviews (plus other to-camera commentary), we see performers, costumers, producers, musicians, playwrights and even a well-liked usher go through the coronavirus pandemics stages of grief. The subjects are fearful and anxious, for themselves and others, as figures including actress Patti LuPone and the usher worry aloud about challenges ... More
Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain opens a large exhibition devoted to Fabrice Hyber
PARIS.- From December 8, 2022 to April 30, 2023, the Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporain presents The Valley, a large monographic exhibition devoted to the painting of Fabrice Hyber. In his tentatively painted canvases, the French artist reveals a free and lively consciousness. Bringing together some sixty works, including almost twenty pieces produced specially for this exhibition, Hyber creates a school open to all hypotheses at the heart of the Fondation Cartier. Visitors are invited to explore the different classrooms according to a layout that follows the artists meandering thoughts. Artist, sower, entrepreneur, poet, Hyber is the author of a prolific body of work that comprises almost 20,000 pieces, including 3,000 paintings. Flouting categories, he takes art into all spheres of existence: mathematics, neuroscience, business, history, astrophysics ... More
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art features the exhibition Data Relations
MELBOURNE.- On December 9th, Data Relations, a major new exhibition and program exploring our rapidly expanding data economy, data-obsessed society, and the extremes of artificial intelligence, opened at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition includes artists: Zach Blas, Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker and Joel Stern), Mimi Ọnụọha, Winnie Soon; plus Data Relations Summer School. Guest Curator Miriam Kelly, Coordinating Curator Shelley McSpedden. Data Relations features major new commissions and site-specific installations from six Australian and international artists and collectives across ACCAs four galleries. In addition, a new online project by New York/Sydney based artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne launched ACCAs new Digital Wing ... More
Items from the Atlanta home of entertainment attorney Joel A. Katz to be auctioned by Ahlers & Ogletree
ATLANTA, GA.- Items from the Atlanta home of iconic entertainment attorney Joel A. Katz, more than 550 lots in all, will come up for bid in an unreserved auction planned for Thursday, January 12th, by Ahlers & Ogletree, online and live in the gallery at 700 Miami Circle in Atlanta. New Years Signature Estates auctions will also be held live and online, January 13th and 14th. The Joel A. Katz auction, starting promptly at 10 am Eastern time, will feature fine art, estate jewelry and watches, designer furniture, fine art glass, objets d'art, memorabilia, guitars and more. Highlights include incredible Daum and Lalique objects and figures, an Elton John autographed Yamaha piano, and several signed prints by artist Marc Chagall. Also offered will be custom and collectible guitars by Gibson, a set of Margaritaville Adirondack furniture gifted by singer Jimmy Buffet ... More
Heritage Auctions' $1.45 billion 2022 set dozens of auction records and redefined the collectibles world
DALLAS, TEXAS.- The worlds top collectibles auction house, Heritage Auctions, recorded more than $1.45 billion in sales in 2022, a record high for the 46-year-old Dallas-based company following 2021s landmark results. It also set dozens of significant auction records spanning most of its categories, including one for the worlds most valuable sports collectible when a 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card sold last summer for $12.6 million. That $1.45 billion does not include the $103.5 million realized for Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratovs Nobel Peace Prize medal, which he sold through Heritage on June 21. Heritage waived its commission, and every cent raised from this momentous auction was immediately paid to UNICEFs humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine. This has been a historic, headline-making year for Heritage ... More
Closing January 8th: Time management techniques at the Whitney Museum of American Art
NEW YORK, NY.- Last chance to see how photographers divide, mark, and come to terms with the passage of time at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Time Management Techniques showcases photography from 1968 to 2019 by artists who examine the mediums relationship to time. Drawn from the Whitneys permanent collection, the exhibition features many recent acquisitions alongside works that have never before been exhibited. Despite employing vastly different techniques, aesthetics, and conceptual frameworks, each of the artists works against the immediacy often associated with photography to reflect a passage of time that is slowed down, expanded, or nonlinear. Some artistsincluding Darrel Ellis and Muriel Hasbunemploy a personal archive, reaching back into their individual and familial histories to challenge the linear way these stories are often told ... More
Illuminating Toni Morrison's manuscripts at Princeton
NEW YORK, NY.- The creative process of the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who brought an indelible Black voice to American literature in novels including Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987) and taught at Princeton from 1989 to 2006, will be on display next semester at the university. A campuswide slate of public events and exhibitions uses the 200 linear feet of Morrisons personal papers, acquired by Princeton in 2014 from the author, as the springboard for new scholarship and cross-disciplinary collaborations. This project is bringing artists and scholars to Princeton who may not normally have come here and is pushing the thinking about what the archive can inspire, said Autumn Womack, a professor in the African American studies and English departments, who spearheaded the initiative. With a team of graduate students ... More
Photographer Alessandro Sarno debuts his latest book
MIAMI, FLA.- Celebrated photographer Alessandro Sarno brings the places, faces and stories of Miami to life in his latest coffee table book, Miami: Contemporary Visions from a Tropical Jungleland by Miami publisher Giusto Libri with cover art by acclaimed artist Carlos Betancourt. Alessandro Sarno has built a global following with his collection of coffee table books and photographic guides of the Bahamas: Eleuthera: The Garden of Freedom, Exumas: The Kingdom of Blue, Cat Island: Diamonds and Rust, Exuma Cays: Land & Sea Park and his travel guide, White Bull on the Highway. Sarnos Jungleland is an intoxicating addition to his publications and is a collection of tropical visions, poetry, and QR-accessible audio recordings from HistoryMiami Museums oral history project, Miami Stories, making it a full-spectrum experience of first-person narratives about the citys past ... More
Mendes Wood DM New York opens the second solo exhibition by Antonio Obá
NEW YORK, NY.- Mendes Wood DM New York is presenting the second solo exhibition by Antonio Obá at the gallery. Bringing together Obás recent work, Outras águas/Other waters intimately explores a panorama of references across the histories of Brazilian literature, music, and painting. The exhibition places his figurations into these histories, at once representing and engaging the worlds embedded in them. Outras águas/Other waters starts with the seminal writing of the Brazilian author and diplomat João Guimarães Rosa, in particular his short story The Third Bank of the River (1962). The story tells of a man who decides to isolate himself from society, his family, and his friends and live in a purpose-built canoe, sailing up and down the local river. Guimarães Rosa explores the concept of solitude as a return to the self, defending the idea that the real encounter between a person ... More
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PhotoGalleries
New Images in the Age of Augustus
Alexander McQueen
Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk
Freedom of Movement
Flashback On a day like today, Russian photographer and architect El Lissitzky died December 30, 1890. Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1890 - December 30, 1941) was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union. In this image: El Lissitzky, "Proun, Street Decoration Design", 1921. Photo Peter Cox.
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