| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Monday, September 11, 2023 |
| | | Rehs Contemporary acquires captivating new works by Italian artist Stefano Bolcato | |
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Stefano Bolcato (Born 1967), Chop Suey (Tribute to Edward Hopper). Oil on canvas, 15.74 x 19.68 inches. Signed.
NEW YORK, NY.- Rehs Contemporary, a leading gallery dedicated to showcasing innovative and thought-provoking contemporary art, announced two exceptional new artworks by acclaimed Italian artist Stefano Bolcato. Titled "Chop Suey (Tribute to Edward Hopper)" and "New York Office (Tribute to Edward Hopper)," these charming paintings reinterpret iconic compositions using a unique quirk Lego people. Bolcato's artistic prowess shines through his manipulation of Lego figures to reimagine Edward Hopper's renowned works. "Chop Suey" masterfully captures the essence of Hopper's original while infusing it with a sense of playfulness. The composition is nostalgic while offering a fresh perspective on Hopper's classic scene. Similarly, "New York Office explores the well-known Hopper painting, portraying a scene that is at once familiar and refreshingly novel. Bolcato's ingenuity is on full display as he conveys the emotions an ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 10, 2023 through January 13, 2024. Photo: Jonathan Dorado
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| The 19th century's most scandalous painting comes to New York | | Asia Week New York zooms-in on 'The Celestial City: Newport and China' | | Ed Ruscha's 'Chocolate Room' still tantalizes |
An ink portrait of Ãdouard Manet, done by his friend and rival Edgar Degas between 1861 and 1864. Manets infamous 1863 painting Olympia, has left Paris only three times. (Musée d'Orsay/Art Resource, NY via The New York Times)
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK, NY.- A colossal ineptitude, one enraged critic called it. Her face is stupid, another wrote. The papers declared it shapeless, putrefied, incomprehensible. They said it recalls the horror of the morgue. And when the Parisian crowds rolled into the Salon of 1865, they too went berserk in front of Ãdouard Manets painting of a courtesan, her maid and her high-strung black cat. Spectators were sobbing, shouting, getting into scuffles; the Salon had to hire armed guards. The picture was so stark that visitors kept trying to puncture the canvas with their umbrellas. Never, reported one of Paris better literary reviews, has a painting excited so much laughter, mockery, and catcalls as this Olympia. Olympia now belongs to the Musée dOrsay, where she still faces down crowds calmer ones, though just as thronging with her indelible blank stare. (The pa ... More | |
Canton Harbor Scene, attributed to Yeuqua (Chinese active 1850-1885). Courtesy: Preservation Society of Newport County.
NEW YORK, NY.- In conjunction with The Preservation Society of Newport County, Asia Week New York is pleased to present The Celestial City: Newport and China, a webinar that will explore Newports deep connection with China from the 18th century through the Gilded Age, on Tuesday, September 12th at 5:00 p.m. EST. The webinar will focus on the treasures of Chinese art collected by Newport merchants and industrialists; photographs and stories from Newports early Chinese community; and the writings, portraits and family heirlooms of Chinese women suffragists who inspired American womens rights leaders including Alva Vanderbilt Belmont of Marble House. Contemporary artworks by Yu-Wen Wu and Jennifer Ling Datchuk will illuminate Chinese contributions to Newport, as well as hidden connections between the Newport mansions and the Chinese American experience. According to Trudy Coxe, CEO of the Preservation Society, some aspects of the Newport-China connection are well known, such as the fo ... More | |
Ed Ruscha examining color samples at his studio in Culver City, Calif., July 25, 2023. (Daniel Dorsa/The New York Times)
by Travis Diehl
NEW YORK, NY.- A rich perfume wafts through the sixth floor of Manhattans Museum of Modern Art, where the installation of Ed Ruschas full-dress survey Now Then is underway. You sense it before you see it: a room where the white walls are turning velvety brown. A chocolate room. Members of the McPherson family, dressed in their La Paloma Fine Arts company T-shirts, bustle around their rig. Edan McPherson dips a long squeegee into a pool of melted chocolate, draws the rubber blade across the coarse mesh. His son, Daniel, whisks the prints away, while his sister Robyn feeds fresh paper. His wife, Lynda, and daughter, Kayla, monitor double boilers of chocolate in reserve. The drying racks fill up, two tenths of a pound of dark chocolate coating each sheet. When the chocolate sets, theyll trim and hang each print, floor to ceiling, like shingles on a Craftsman house. Chocolate Room is an oddity in Ruschas influential oeuvre. Of the 85-year-old Nebraska ... More |
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| Jobless, divorced, on probation; a pandemic hobby turned his life around | | Patricia Caulfield, who battled Warhol over use of her photograph, dies at 91 | | The teacher behind the world's great conductors |
Danny Cortes with one of his miniature creations, a Chinese restaurant, at his studio in Brooklyn, July 24, 2023. (Lanna Apisukh/The New York Times)
by Liza Weisstuch
NEW YORK, NY.- In March 2020, Danny Cortes was facing a crisis he was out of work, in the middle of a divorce and serving a four-year probation sentence for selling drugs when COVID hit. He found himself isolated and devoting an unhealthy amount of time to Instagram. Idly scrolling his feed, he noticed a diorama of a World War II scene, then a model railroad set, then intricate, hyper-realistic models of movie sets. He was drawn to the remarkably robust community of miniature makers. A longtime collector of action figures with time on his hands and not much else to do, he started tinkering. Using poster board from a 99-cent store, he built what was familiar, an urban fixture that most New Yorkers walk past without a glance: a bodega icebox. And that tiny icebox three inches tall and covered in reproductions of stickers by local graffiti crews turned his life around. I loved that when I worked on a piece, I didnt think about my problems my divorce, the pa ... More | |
Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 24 x 24 inches, © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- Patricia Caulfield, who during her time as a top editor at Modern Photography magazine in the 1960s successfully sued Andy Warhol for misappropriating a picture she made of hibiscus blossoms, then left the publication to become an acclaimed nature photographer, died July 16 in the New York City borough of Manhattan. She was 91. Her death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by her sister, Kathleen Hall, her only immediate survivor. After about a decade at Modern Photography, Caulfield became its executive editor in about 1964. Her photo of an arrangement of blossoms taken in Barbados appeared with an article in the June issue that year. Warhol soon called the magazine wanting to buy the photo but felt the price was too high. According to the lawsuit, which Caulfield filed in November 1966, he then clipped the picture from the magazine, cropped it and produced silk-screen paintings from it for what became his Flowers series, first shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery ... More | |
Jorma Panula, who has taught an outsize number of great conductors, at his home in Veikkola, Finland, Aug. 3, 2023. (Vesa Laitinen/The New York Times)
by Joshua Barone
VEIKKOLA.- He doesnt like talking about himself, Marja Kantola-Panula said, gesturing to her husband, Jorma Panula, across their dining table while he sat silently. He had been asked a question about his sprawling presence in classical music as arguably the worlds most influential conducting teacher. But instead of answering, he took a bite from a pastry. When Panula, 93, does speak, its brief and authoritative, at times abrasive and absolutely clear. At his home, a modest yet paradisiacal retreat tucked among trees in the countryside northwest of Helsinki, he explained, I was in the orchestra, and most musicians, they hate talking. He is not so different in the classroom, where he is known for quietly listening, happy to offer advice if students ask for it but otherwise saying little, gruffly, and certainly never lecturing. His approach hasnt really changed in the half-century he has spent shaping young conductors at the storied Sibelius Aca ... More |
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| Museum curators evaluate AI threat by giving it the reins | | A portrait miniature was muse to Mickalene Thomas | | Marc Bohan, head designer for Dior for three decades, dies at 97 |
From left: Julia McHugh and Marshall Price. (Eamon Queeney/The New York Times)
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK, NY.- Marshall Price was joking when he told employees at Duke Universitys Nasher Museum of Art that artificial intelligence could organize their next exhibition. As its chief curator, he was short-staffed and facing a surprise gap in his fall programming schedule; the comment was supposed to cut the tension of a difficult meeting. But members of his curatorial staff, who organize the museums exhibitions, embraced the challenge to see if AI could replace them effectively. Professions of all kinds military pilots, comedians, firefighters, advertisers are confronting how artificial intelligence will change long-standing responsibilities, as well as assumptions they have about the technology. We naively thought it would be as easy as plugging in a couple prompts, Price recalled, explaining why curators at the North Carolina university have spent the past six months teaching ChatGPT how to do their jobs. The experiments results will be unveiled Saturda ... More | |
A mixed-media diorama in an Edwardian silver jewelry box by Curtis Talwst Santiago titled What Are You Doing? (Amir Hamja/The New York Times)
by Hilarie M. Sheets
NEW HAVEN, CONN.- An exquisite portrait miniature of Rose Prentice, a domestic worker in her Sunday best, painted in around 1837, joins the constellation of proud, self-possessed Black women to have served as muse to artist Mickalene Thomas. Since her first solo museum show in 2012 at New Yorks Brooklyn Museum, Thomas has been widely known for her bold and bedazzled paintings and photographs in which she centers images of her mother, herself, her friends and lovers in sumptuous or art-historical tableaus as a celebration of Black femininity and agency. Now, in Mickalene Thomas / Portrait of an Unlikely Space, which opened Friday at the Yale University Art Gallery, she has created context and community for the museums sole portrait miniature of an African American that was acquired in 2016. For a loan exhibition revolving around a tiny work in watercolor on ivory, Thomas has designed an immersive domestic environment ... More | |
File photo of the exhibit Christian Dior: Couturier du Rêve at the Musée des Art Décoratifs in Paris July 3, 2017. (Agnes Dherbeys/The New York Times)
by Alex Williams
NEW YORK, NY.- Marc Bohan, the longest-serving creative director at Christian Dior, who spent nearly 30 years spinning out classically attuned looks with a touch of whimsy that, however resplendent, were meant to be worn, not gazed at on mannequins or in fashion magazines, died Wednesday in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France. He was 97. His death was confirmed in a statement by Dior. Because he worked in an era before fashion became mass entertainment, Bohan was not required to be visionary. And surviving for decades at the upper reaches of the fickle fashion world, with its unceasing scrutiny, merciless critics and head-spinning fashion cycles, he showed little interest in coming up with grandiose couture creations that functioned more as sculpture than practical apparel, no matter how sumptuous or bejeweled his own work was. Im not designing to please myself or for a photograph, he told USA Today for a 1988 profile. ... More |
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| The deadpan laureate of American art | | Salvation Mountain in California searches for how to save itself | | What $50 million can buy: Inside the sleek new White House Situation Room |
Pay Nothing Until April, a painting from 2003 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Sept. 5, 2023. (Vincent Tullo/The New York Times)
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK, NY.- In the beginning was the word; the image, with all its troubles, came later. For 65 years now, Ed Ruscha has evaded the presumed exhaustion of painting through a linguistic trapdoor: an equation of language and picture, each putting pressure on the other to produce some of the keenest evaluations any artist has ever made of American life. It was an approach born from advertising and design, channeled into fine art. It looked like pop, it looked like conceptualism. It was neither; it was an artistic inquest into the essence of things. What is the essence of things? Might it not be something simpler than they teach in physics laboratories or divinity schools? Might it be, especially in America, something more mundane? Ed Ruscha / Now Then opens to the public Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, and it is so finely calibrated, so well-balanced so cool, in stylistic and emotional and HVAC senses that you may not initially clock its scale. To call it the show of the ... More | |
Empty paint cans near where Ron Malinowski, the caretaker for the Salvation Mountain sculpture, is conducting repairs in Slab City, Calif., Aug. 14, 2023. (Kitra Cahana/The New York Times)
SLAB CITY, CALIF.- In the summer, the desert surrounding the Salton Sea in California seems to glow from the glare of the unrelenting sun. The temperature can climb to 110 degrees and higher, and layers of dust coat car tires and the legs of people braving the heat. For most of the day, the sky stays a constant blue, the horizon punctuated by the orderly fronds of date palm trees grown on nearby farms. Almost 10 miles from the southeastern banks of the Salton Sea, about a 90-minute drive from Palm Springs, another mark appears on the landscape, this one unruly and vivid: the rainbow hill of Salvation Mountain. A large white cross sits on top of the sculpture, and just underneath, among stripes of blue and swaths of green, the words GOD IS LOVE are spelled out in red and pink sculpted letters. Old, brightly colored paint cans line the perimeter, and scattered near the base of the hill are a few vehicles, nearly all of which have been painted with messages about Jesus and the Bible. The hill, m ... More | |
In an image from the Biden administration, the completed renovations in the White House Situation Room in Washington, Aug. 16, 2023. The ultrasecure facility, which was last upgraded in 2006, is returning to use after officials closed it for a year to modernize it in an era of high-tech sparring with China and Russia. (Carlos Fyfe/White House via The New York Times)
WASHINGTON, DC.- The White House Situation Room, the ultrasecure facility known to West Wing insiders simply as the whizzer, has undergone a $50 million renovation, with sophisticated communications equipment and technology to prevent U.S. adversaries from listening in. To walk into the heart of the refurbished Situation Room, which got its nickname from the acronym WHSR, feels a bit like entering the set of a Hollywood thriller. In the windowless basement, one floor down from the Oval Office, the presidents oversize swivel chair faces three huge screens that he can consult while overseeing covert operations around the world. This was enhanced to the highest standard, said Marc Gustafson, the senior director for the White House Situation Room, who oversaw the renovation. You constantly enhance to keep up with foreign adversaries. During a tour ... More |
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Se Oh | âBriefly Gorgeousâ Seoul
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Ozioma Onuzulike opens his first one-person exhibition with MARC STRAUS
NEW YORK, NY.- MARC STRAUS is presenting new works by Ozioma Onuzulike in his first one-person exhibition with the gallery. A ceramics artist, renowned poet, and a leading figure in the contemporary ceramic art scene in Africa, Onuzulike is presenting works from four series: Palm Kernel Shell Beads, Yam, Honeycomb, and Chainmail. The works directly address challenges that are not only historical and contemporary to Africa but also the world over with regard to colonialism, migration, and global warming. In the Palm Kernel Shell Beads series, Onuzulike reflects on the historical use of beads as items of commercial exchange for slaves in Africa by European merchants. A variety of other goods traded through the network included spices, silk, gunpowder, jewels, textiles, glass, wine, and mirror, much of which Onuzulike subtly references in the nuanced ... More
The subtlety of J.R.R. Tolkien
NEW YORK, NY.- Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, a date which yielded a spate of memorializing essays. I didnt write one because although Im currently reading The Lord of the Rings aloud to kids two and three this is the second time through, with at least one more ahead for kid No. 4 Im not a true enough Tolkienphile to be automatically aware of such anniversaries in advance. But I am enough of one to have some observations on other peoples Tolkien arguments. So lets take on a couple of questions raised by the memorializing essays, starting with the familiar debate about the supposed absence of moral ambiguity in Tolkiens works, relative both to more realistic novelists and to later fantasists who have adopted a grimmer and less heroic style. Here, from Sebastian Milbank, in an essay making ... More
36 hours in Amsterdam
AMSTERDAM.- Often caricatured as a sex-and-drugs haven, or a kind of continental Las Vegas, Amsterdam was not always an obvious choice for European cultural travel. Its image has undergone a significant transformation in the last decade, with government efforts to shrink its famous red-light district, curb reckless partying and orient visitors to its more honorable attractions. The city has regrettably lost a bit of its formerly funky edge, and the tide of tourists can make it nearly impossible to book tickets to famous attractions, such as the Anne Frank House, at the last minute. Still, there are new, off-the-beaten-track treasures to be found. Amsterdam essentially emerged from a swamp. The capital was founded along the banks of the Amstel River and built on reclaimed marshlands through an extraordinary feat of water engineering. Take ... More
Quil Lemons wants to be the Robert Mapplethorpe of his community
NEW YORK, NY.- Growing up in South Philadelphia, Quil Lemons first trained his lens on family and friends, his photographs of cousins and neighbors snaring the art worlds attention. By the time he was 20, he was focusing on young Black men as the subjects of Glitterboy, a series that highlighted, as its title suggests, adolescents slathered in glitter and colorful grease. Lately, Lemons has expanded his range. Quiladelphia, his new group of highly provocative, radically intimate photographs, on view through Nov. 4 at the Hannah Traore Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, is billed as an exploration of Black manhood. Speaking by phone from his apartment in Brooklyn, Lemons, 26, said that his portraits, paradoxically raw and refined, were meant to dissolve calcified notions of Black masculinity, family, queerness, race and beauty. ... More
Climate protesters were coming, so the Gardner Museum locked down
NEW YORK, NY.- On Thursday evening, the doors abruptly closed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Officials had learned that climate protesters were planning a visit during the hours when the cultural institution offers free admission. Activist group Extinction Rebellion had posted on social media earlier in the day, saying this would be its second attempt at visiting the museum. This is a peaceful field trip without the risk of arrest, the invitation said. In March, demonstrators had tried to stage a guerrilla art installation that would have involved inserting their own images into empty picture frames at the museum, an action intended to draw attention to the loss of biodiversity. But the event also would have fallen on the same day as the infamous art heist at the Gardner 33 years earlier, and executives were nervous about security risks and decided ... More
Shara Hughes first presentation in Los Angeles now on view at David Kordansky Gallery
LOS ANGELES, CA.- David Kordansky Gallery is now presenting Light the Dark, an exhibition of new paintings by Shara Hughes and the artists first presentation in Los Angeles. The exhibition is on view in Los Angeles, where it will occupy three of the gallerys spaces. Hughes has become increasingly recognized as one of contemporary paintings most vital and energizing voices. Her canvases, with their views of vivid landscapes and roiling natural scenes, are alive with colors, moods, and nuanced compositional transitions. They are visual experiences in which the felt dimension of life becomes palpable in the fullest way possible. Though Hughes makes no overt reference to her own biography, her work is deeply personal and suggests that all forms of lifeincluding biological life and the shifting lives of art historyexpress emotion and desire. ... More
The long life and long reach of George Balanchine's butterflies
NEW YORK, NY.- While celebrating its 75th anniversary this fall, New York City Ballet is performing 18 ballets by its founding choreographer, George Balanchine. But to get a sense of the global standing of Balanchine, 40 years after his death, other numbers might be more telling. Last year, for instance, about 50 other ballet companies across the world performed his works, about 75 dances in total. Balanchine likened his ballets to butterflies: They live for a season. But they have lasted much longer than that. They have become classics, cornerstones of the international repertory, 20th century equivalents of 19th century staples such as Swan Lake, danced everywhere by all the major ballet companies and most of the minor ones, too. These ballets, like Balanchine, emerged from the same Russian Imperial tradition as Swan Lake, but were shaped ... More
New York City Ballet was in peril. Then came a revival.
NEW YORK, NY.- The leaders of New York City Ballet filed into a banquet hall at Lincoln Center one day in the spring of 2022 for a meeting. The organization was in an uncertain position. It had lost about $55 million in ticket sales during the pandemic shutdown, and as cultural institutions reopened that season, there was no guarantee that audiences, or donors, would return in force. The company was still working to recover from a series of scandals, including accusations of abuse against a former ballet master in chief and an outcry over vulgar texts sent by male dancers. And the nationwide reckoning over racial injustice had brought fresh attention to the dearth of people of color on and offstage in ballet. At a daylong retreat inside the David H. Koch Theater, the companys longtime home, City Ballets board, staff and artistic leaders devised a strategy. ... More
Victor Pinchuk Foundation now featuring exhibition on Russian War Crimes
BERLIN.- Victor Pinchuk Foundation opened the Russian War Crimes Exhibition in Berlin. In partnership with PinchukArtCentre, Office of the President of Ukraine, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Deutsche Bundestag, Humboldt University of Berlin. On 4th September 2023, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and PinchukArtCentre, in partnership with the Office of the President of Ukraine, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Deutsche Bundestag and Humboldt University of Berlin, opened the Russian War Crimes exhibition in Berlin. The project shows photos taken from all over Ukraine since the start of Russias brutal and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Even so, it only addresses a fraction of the committed crimes. It makes the Western audience witness the stories of torture, executions, and bombardments committed ... More
Mixed media paintings by Shaunté Gates on view at Sperone Westwater
NEW YORK, NY.- Sperone Westwater has opened Shaunté Gates second solo exhibition at the gallery, showcasing the artists new series In Light of the Hunt. In these mixed media paintings, set loosely within the journey upriver in Francis Ford Coppolas film Apocalypse Now, dreams intertwine with reality, theater and myth, drawing the viewer into what Carl Jung refers to as The Shadow: the aspects of our personalities that exert a powerful influence, despite our attempts at repression. Gates work expands this concept beyond the individual to society as a whole. Gates creates densely layered stage-like spaces combining photos from his native Washington, D.C. with images from film and television. The artist photographs friends, family and acquaintances, transforming them into the heroes of his narratives. He manipulates these images digitally as well as physically by cutting, tearing and colla ... More
A physical and spiritual awakening (but no steady paycheck)
NEW YORK, NY.- There were moments of total exhaustion. A young dancer, having performed a difficult matinee and faced with an evening show, slipped into her dressing room. She placed something soft on the ground to cushion her body from the concrete floor. She lay down. She listened. As the afternoon light faded, streetlights switched on. She could hear buses, cars, footsteps, horns images and sounds that havent faded from the memory of Barbara Walczak, one of three living dancers who performed at New York City Ballets opening night at City Center for Music and Drama in 1948. Sitting at a table in her winding, treasure-filled Manhattan apartment, she took a breath. And then my mind would return, Walczak said, and I would look ahead to the evening performance with such gratitude to be doing what I loved. Walczak, 92, always wanted to dance. ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Gabriele Münter
TARWUK
Awol Erizku
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, American painter Thomas Hill was born September 11, 1829. Thomas Hill (September 11, 1829 - June 30, 1908) was an English-born American artist of the 19th century. He produced many fine paintings of the Californian landscape, in particular of the Yosemite Valley, as well as the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In this image: Thomas Hill - Indian by a Lake in a Majestic California Landscape. Photo: Bonhams, Los Angeles, 20 Apr 2010, lot 17.
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