The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, August 5, 2023


 
Secret no more: Louis Armstrong Center amplifies Satchmo's vision

Louis Armstrong’s monogrammed handkerchief on display on his Selmer Trumpet at the new Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, July 14, 2023. New jazz and exhibition spaces, and an inaugural show curated by Jason Moran, feature the trumpeter’s “wonderful world” in full, collaged onto the walls. (Ike Edeani/The New York Times)

by Melena Ryzik


NEW YORK, NY.- You can find anything in Queens. And yet for decades, the Louis Armstrong House Museum has been a well-kept secret on a quiet street in the Corona neighborhood. The longtime residence of the famed jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, it is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior. The museum’s new extension, the 14,000 square foot Louis Armstrong Center, blends in a little less. It looks, in fact, a bit like a 1960s spaceship landed in the middle of a residential block. By design, it doesn’t tower over its neighboring vinyl-sided houses but, with its curvilinear roof, it does seem to want to envelop them. And behind its rippling brass facade lie some ambitious goals: to connect Armstrong as a cultural figure to fans, artists, historians and his beloved Queens community; to extend his civic and creative values to generations that don’t know how much his vision, and his very being, changed things. It wants, above all, to invite more people in. “The ho ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Installation view, "Chewing Gum VI" Aug 4 - September 7, 2023, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong. Photo: Cow Lau, courtesy Pace Gallery.





How do you tell the story of 50 years of hip-hop?   Australia will return looted sculptures to Cambodia   Dallas Museum of Art selects Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos as winner of International Design Competition


Thebe Kgositsile, known as Earl Sweatshirt, a rapper in the group Odd Future, in Los Angeles, April 28, 2012. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

by Jon Caramanica


NEW YORK, NY.- Hip-hop is a wondrous and centerless tangle, ubiquitous even if not always totally visible. It is a fount of constant innovation, and a historical text ripe for pilfering. It is a continuation of rock, soul and jazz traditions, while also explicitly loosening their cultural grip. It is evolving more rapidly than ever — new styles emerge yearly, or faster, multiplying the genre’s potential. And it has impact far beyond music: Hip-hop is woven into television and film, fashion, advertising, literature, politics and countless other corners of American life. It is lingua franca, impossible to avoid. It is far too vast to be contained under one tent, or limited to one narrative. The genre is gargantuan, nonlinear and unruly. It has its own internal quarrels and misunderstandings, and its stakeholders are sometimes friends and collaborators, and sometimes ... More
 

Cham people, Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Padmapani, 9th­­–10th century, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, Acquired 2011, Deaccessioned 2021, On loan from the Kingdom of Cambodia, 2023–2026.

by Natasha Frost


NEW YORK, NY.- An ancient gilt bronze Buddhist sculpture that traveled a circuitous and legally questionable route from a rice paddy in southern Cambodia to the capital of Australia will soon be headed back to its homeland. The sculpture of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Padmapani — the benevolent “lord who looks on from above” and “lotus bearer” — dates to the ninth or 10th century. Over about 15 years, it traveled from a rural area near the Vietnamese border to the hands of Douglas A.J. Latchford, a notorious trafficker of Asian antiquities. In 2011, he in turn sold it and two smaller accompanying statues to the National Gallery of Australia, where they have resided ever since. Now, after an extensive investigation into the work’s provenance, the gallery will return the sculptures in no more than three years ... More
 

Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano © Alvaro Felgueroso Lobo.

DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art has announced that the team led by the award-winning Madrid-based practice Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos (NSA) has won the Reimagining the Dallas Museum of Art International Design Competition. The decision by the Museum’s Architect Selection Committee (ASC) was ratified yesterday by the Dallas Museum of Art Board of Trustees, and this concludes the six-month international competition, which launched in February 2023 and attracted 154 submissions from around the world, resulting in a shortlist of renowned U.S. and international teams. Known for their dynamic and innovative façades at the Contemporary Art Centre in Córdoba, and the Montblanc Haus in Hamburg, the Spanish design team of Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano has previously received accolades including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Hannes Meyer Prize, the Alvar Aalto Medal, and the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts from the Government of S ... More


'My Soul: Mexican Surrealism with a Japanese Heart' solo exhibition for Yui Sakamoto   Back to the 80's at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris on September 21st   New portrait of Harry Styles unveiled for David Hockney exhibition at National Portrait Gallery


Yui Sakamoto, My soul, 120 cm x 120 cm.

ASHEVILLE, NC.- Bender Gallery is presenting My Soul: Mexican Surrealism with a Japanese Heart, the first solo exhibition in the US of Japanese Mexican artist, Yui Sakamoto. Sakamoto paints large colorful and highly detailed dream-like works, carrying forward the rich history of Surrealism in Mexico. With his unique dual heritage, Sakamoto seamlessly blends themes and iconography from Japanese culture, Mexican folk art, pre-Columbian artifacts, and current cultural references. Sakamoto’s work is nothing short of amazing and Bender Gallery is proud to showcase it in the US. One can argue that Mexico has been an important center for Surrealism for centuries. Long before the influx of Surrealist artists and writers fleeing Europe at the onset of World War II, Mexico had a Surrealist movement of its own percolating. The landscape of Mexico is surreal itself: pyramids, Olmec, ... More
 

Patrick Nagel, Untitled (Noble 1982). Photo: Bonhams.

PARIS.- Following the success of the exhibition on the 80’s presented at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs early this year in Paris, Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr is scheduling an auction on the theme of all things 80s, to take place on Thursday 21 September in Paris. The 80’s in France have left their mark on everyone’s mind, be it in music, fashion or history. Indeed, this historic decade resonates in France as a political and artistic turning point in the fields of fashion, design, and graphics, from the election of François Mitterrand in 1981 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Claire Gallois, Director of the Design department at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris, commented: "The 80s, synonymous with form and colour, have been back in the spotlight in recent years, with works by Patrick Nagel, Garouste & Bonetti and Sottsass. This sale will give art lovers the chance to immerse themselves ... More
 

Harry Styles. Photo: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima.

LONDON.- Over 30 new portraits, painted at the artist’s Normandy studio between 2021 and 2022, will be displayed for the first time when the National Portrait Gallery opens David Hockney: Drawing from Life on 2 November 2023. The updated exhibition – last staged at the Gallery for 20 days, prior to its closure due to Covid – will include examples of Hockney’s most recent portraits, seen for the first time, including a painting of singer Harry Styles. From today, tickets go on sale for the National Portrait Gallery’s major autumn exhibition, David Hockney: Drawing from Life. Displayed for just 20 days prior to the Gallery’s closure due to Covid in March 2020, the critically acclaimed exhibition – now restaged – has been expanded to include 33 of the artist’s most recent portraits, painted in acrylic between 2021 and 2022. One of these new works depicts singer, Harry Styles, and is unveiled for the fir ... More



'The Soils Project' collaboration between TarraWarra Museum of Art, Van Abbemuseum, and Struggles for Sovereignty   50th Anniversary of Historic Women Curated Exhibition of Women Artists at Berry Campbell x Frampton Co   Springfield Art Museum acquires interactive sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas


Diewke van den Heuvel, Crack 2022. From the series Melting Heart digital print on recycled pet-bottle fabric. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

WURUNDJERI COUNTRY.- TarraWarra Museum of Art has announced The Soils Project exhibition, presented from 5 August - 12 November 2023. The Soils Project brings together 13 practitioners and collectives from Australia, the Netherlands and Indonesia to explore the complex and diverse relationships between environmental change and colonisation. The exhibition is the latest iteration of an ongoing research-based experimental project developed in collaboration with leading contemporary arts museum the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands and Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The Soils Project arises from specific and situated practices that each of the participants and artists brings to their understanding of soil, as both metaphor and matter. The Soils Project has been in development since 2018. An international collaboration between three organisations, and several artists, curators, writers and activists, the project ha ... More
 

Martha Campbell, Christine Berry, and Elena Frampton. Photo: Blaine Davis.




NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell and Frampton Co present Women Choose Women, an exhibition of women artists on view opening today through September 9, 2023 at Exhibition The Barn in Bridgehampton. Spanning the 1950s to today, the exhibition includes art and design works by Lynne Drexler, Elaine de Kooning, Nanette Carter, Elizabeth Osborne, Yvonne Pickering Carter, Lillian Thomas Burwell, Susan Vecsey, Perle Fine, Mary Dill Henry, Jill Nathanson, Charlotte Park, Ethel Schwabacher, Ann Purcell, Yvonne Thomas, Carmen D’Apollonio, and Barbora Žilinskaitė. With a shared vision for supporting women in the fields of art and design, this exhibition is curated by Christine Berry and Martha Campbell, co-founders of Berry Campbell, and Elena Frampton, principal of Frampton Co. Berry Campbell is known for bringing to light artists who were overlooked due to age, race, gender or geography, particularly women of Abstract Expressioni ... More
 

The installation of this work on the Museum’s grounds – on the Hatch Foundation Lawn - creates an intentionally interactive experience that contrasts with the Museum’s other current outdoor sculpture offerings.

SPRINGFIELD, MO.- The Springfield Art Museum has announced the acquisition and installation of the interactive sculpture Ernest and Ruth by Hank Willis Thomas. Thomas is a prominent contemporary Black artist who uses photography, sculpture, and installation work to explore issues of identity, history, race, class, and popular culture. Thomas was born in New Jersey and is currently based in New York City, where he is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University and an MA in Visual Criticism and an MFA in Photography from California College of the Arts. His work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. His work is also in numerous public collections including The Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ernest and Ruth – named after Thomas’ grandparents - is both a sculpture and a ... More


Works by James Childs now available at Clamp   New Frontier to auction prized Old West and Native American artifacts, Aug. 26   'Brand Spanking New: Freshly Acquired Artwork' at Laguna Art Museum on view now


James Joseph Childs, 1945, "Tattooed Nude". Oil on canvas; 42.5 x 23.5 inches. © Estate of James Childs.

NEW YORK, NY.- CLAMP has announced a significant addition to the gallery’s inventory with a group of paintings and works on paper from the Estate of James Childs. The artist, James Joseph Childs was born in North Dakota in 1945 and received a BFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1970. In 1971, Childs began studying at Atelier Lack in Minneapolis with Richard F. Lack, where he continued to craft his skills as an artist until 1975. Equally as influential on Childs was the time he spent in the summers of 1971-1973 studying imaginative painting in Massachusetts with Robert Hale Ives Gammell. Childs is viewed as a member of the Gammellites, the artists who followed in Robert Gammell’s footsteps. In 1974, Childs traveled to Europe to study classical and academic painters, which further influenced his artistic output. Neither academic nor impressionist, Childs was most interested ... More
 

Famed rodeo trick rider/roper, actor and stuntman Monte Montana’s (1910-1998) 15-inch-tall stovepipe style boots, with flashy color, stylish stitching, decorative ‘MM’ monogrammed tops, and wingtip toes. Accompanied by photo of Montana wearing the boots at a Bohlin saddlery store. Estimate $1,000-$1,500

CHEYENNE, WYO.- Collectors of genuine Old West, cowboy and Native American art and relics are getting ready to “saddle up” and head out to historic Cheyenne, Wyoming for one of the year’s most spirited gatherings: New Frontier’s big August 25-27 Show & Auction at the Laramie County Event Center at Archer. A festive, well-attended annual get-together, New Frontier’s three-day buying-and-selling bonanza draws top dealers and enthusiastic collectors from all over North America. Fans of market-fresh Western and Native American antiques, whether in attendance or taking part online, always look forward to the high-quality auction of fine and historical treasures traditionally held on Day 2 of the event. ... More
 

Installation View of 'Brand Spanking New: Freshly Acquired Artwork'. Photo Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum.

LAGUNA BEACH, CA.- Laguna Art Museum has unveiled its latest exhibition, Brand Spanking New: Freshly Acquired Artwork at Laguna Art Museum. A celebration of California art and its vibrant history, the exhibition features 14 recently acquired artworks that embody the essence of California, spanning from 1835 to the present day. Though Laguna Art Museum traces its roots back to 1918, the museum did not begin developing a permanent art collection until 1940. Today, the collection spans nearly every historical period of California art from 1835 until present day. This exhibition of 14 recently acquired artworks expresses unabashedly Californian ideas including excess, optimism, irreverence and perfection. Many of the artworks embrace experimentation, environmentalism and social change. “We are incredibly grateful for the ... More




Exhibition Tour-Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE-400 CE | Met Exhibitions



More News

'WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts' bridges worlds of fine art, commercial illustration and counterculture
LONDON.- Discover the vibrancy and variety of Japanese graphic arts at 'WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts'. Curated by artists Hiro Sugiyama and Takahashi Kintarō, the exhibition presents the work of 60 of Japan’s most significant graphic artists today, introducing many of them to the UK for the first time. An anthology of styles and stories, bridging the worlds of fine art, commercial illustration and counterculture, WAVE offers UK audiences a rare opportunity to fully experience the diversity of expression within Japanese graphic arts. The exhibition at Japan House London is inspired by WAVE, an annual exhibition that started in 2018 in Tokyo. Also curated by Hiro Sugiyama and Takahashi Kintarō, the WAVE ... More

A Brighton billboard takeover by artist Helen Cammock inspired by 'All About Love'
BUILDHOLLYWOOD presents 'A Brighton billboard takeover' by artist HELEN CAMMOCK inspired by ‘All About Love’ by bell hooks. Billboard and advertising spaces across Brighton and Hove will be taken over by Turner Prize-winning artist HELEN CAMMOCK for one weekend in August as part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s first major curatorial and artist commission, ‘All About Love’. Originally planned to coincide with the opening of a major outdoor commission by Cammock for the recently closed Brighton Centre for Contemporary Art, the deepest crease in the folds of stone and the sweet taste of salt (2023) has morphed from an ode to Brighton and its many folds, into a plea and a challenge to its institutions to support and nurture the contemporary visual arts in a more structured, sustained and existential way. Launching on Brighton Pride weekend, ... More

AI's inroads in publishing touch off fear, and creativity
NEW YORK, NY.- The arrival of Amazon reshaped the retail landscape for books. The rise of e-books threatened the printed word. And the boom in self publishing gave writers a path to success that left out traditional publishing houses. Each time, the book business was able to adapt. Now, publishing is facing a new disruption that is likely to be far more wide-ranging and transformative: the rise of artificial intelligence. Some in the publishing world are already experimenting with artificial intelligence programs in areas such as marketing, advertising, audiobook production and even writing, weighing their promise of supporting work done by humans against the threat that the machines may take over some of those jobs entirely. For others in the industry, the threat is already here. Writers have joined other artists, coders and content creators ... More

'Back to the Future' review: The DeLorean crash lands on Broadway
NEW YORK, NY.- The brand-extension musical is a tough genre to game, demanding something new for newcomers yet fidelity for fans. (“Hairspray” succeeded; “Frozen” did not.) “Back to the Future: The Musical,” based on the first of the time-travel films in the billion-dollar franchise, faces an additional hurdle: It hinges on a star performance that would seem to be irreproducible onstage. And by star, I of course mean the car. So, good news: In the Broadway adaptation, which opened Thursday at the Winter Garden Theater, the famously souped-up DeLorean DMC, or a life-size replica thereof, is terrific — in some ways more exciting than the one in the movies because it does its tricks live. Well, partly live. The time-warping, plutonium-powered joy rides that shuttle young Marty McFly (Casey Likes) between 1985 and 1955 in the vehicle retrofitted by ... More

A new subject for a veteran documentary maker: Herself
NEW YORK, NY.- Midway through filming “Our Body,” a sprawling documentary about the gynecological ward of a Paris hospital, the movie’s director, Claire Simon, received some medical news of her own: She had breast cancer. Four weeks into the shoot, Simon had discovered a lump beneath her armpit. But rather than cease production, she decided to improvise and turn the camera on herself. “I had to film a lot of naked women,” Simon in a recent video interview. “Then I was naked, too, and I was just like them. This changed my point of view entirely; it helped me cope and be calm in the face of my own sickness.” Motivated by the desire to show what she called the body’s “hidden truth,” Simon is but one patient among dozens in her documentary’s celebration of the body, depicted in all its wondrous and terrible iterations. “Our Body” — which ... More

Conductor John Wilson doesn't like musical distinctions
ALDEBURGH, ENGLAND.- Conductor John Wilson spends a lot of time doing what he calls “home scholarship”: reconstructing lost scores from MGM musicals, correcting mistakes in orchestral parts and preparing new editions of pieces that can seem illegible. Then, he “fixes” his orchestra, the Sinfonia of London, a project-based ensemble that Wilson revived in 2018, which will appear at the BBC Proms on Sunday. Sometimes, he offers the players work via text message. “I’ve always had a say in who’s in the orchestra,” he said, “because it has to be the right kind of sound.” Wilson, who was born in Gateshead, England, in 1972, has always opted for this front-loaded way of working, in which the conductor actively engages in the types of logistics that others might find menial. “You’d be amazed at the difference good quality orchestral parts make to performance,” ... More

How Phish's lighting designer jams with the band
NEW YORK, NY.- Sometimes Phish, the four-piece, 40-year-old jam band from Vermont, will be in the middle of an extended improvisation and building to one of its characteristic musical climaxes, when Trey Anastasio, the guitarist and frontman, will find a way to communicate to someone across the arena, a football field away, that the peak is not over just yet. “I will in the subtlest way shake my head and say, ‘No, I’m not there,’” Anastasio said in an interview, “and from way back in the room he always gets this little message. I can take it around eight more bars, or four more bars, this peak, and he’ll make some incredible move right when we make the move. We’re, like, speaking to each other from a great distance. I don’t think anyone would notice this happening other than us.” Last Friday night at Madison Square Garden, Anastasio’s interlocutor ... More

Review: An American opera gets the attention it needs abroad
PRAGUE.- Anyone bold enough to take command of a pirate ship should also be prepared for strife. Cannon battles? Frustrated crew members? All part of the job. Yet Helena, the captain of the Dragon Lily BX4, must face more than that in the first act of Anthony Braxton’s opera “Trillium X,” which was completed in 2014 but premiered Tuesday at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague. After scheming like a titan of industry, and after sending scores of enemies to their watery graves — even after genocidally pledging to foster “the kind of mess that historians will love forever” — Helena still has to deal with those who doubt her ruthlessness. When the pirate discovers some young stowaways aboard her vessel, she learns that they have studied her violent exploits at college. They’re not impressed, calling her “overrated” to her face. It’s one of the best ... More


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Flashback
On a day like today, Canadian painter Tom Thomson was born
August 05, 1877. Thomas John "Tom" Thomson (August 5, 1877 - July 8, 1917) was an influential Canadian artist of the early 20th century. He directly influenced a group of Canadian painters that would come to be known as the Group of Seven, and though he died before they formally formed, he is sometimes incorrectly credited as being a member of the group itself. Thomson died under mysterious circumstances, which added to his mystique. In this image: This newly discovered Tom Thomson oil on board recently sold for $126,500.

  
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