| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 25, 2021 |
| | | He paid $30 for a drawing. It could be a Renaissance work worth millions. | |
|
|
Albrecht Dürer, The Virgin and the Christ Child with a Flower on a grassy Bench. Signed by the artist in monogram (lower centre): AD Watermark: Trident and Ring (also known as Trident and Ball, or Trident and Shield) China ink on fine linen paper, 6 3⁄8 x 6 7⁄16 in. (162 mm x 164 mm.).
by Alyssa Lukpat
NEW YORK, NY.- In 2016, a man picked up two items at an estate sale in Concord, Massachusetts: a fake jade necklace for $1 and a small drawing of the Virgin Mary and Child for $30. He tucked the drawing away in his house, where he showed it to the occasional guest, his friend would later say. Something about it was intriguing, even though he did not know where it came from. This month, a panel of experts at the British Museum in London delivered a stunning answer: The artwork, titled The Virgin and Child With a Flower on a Grassy Bench, was an undiscovered drawing by Albrecht Dürer, a renowned German artist born in 1471. The man, whose identity has not been revealed, had made one of the most extraordinary discoveries of Renaissance artwork in years, the experts said. The drawing might be worth tens of millions of dollars. The declaration that the drawing was the work of Dürer an assessment that is not universally shared among researchers came about as a result of a chance me ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day New Galleries of Dutch and Flemish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Leo and Phyllis Beranek Gallery. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
|
|
|
|
|
| Historic year at Sotheby's sees 2021 sales hit record high of $7.3 billion | | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston debuts new Dutch and Flemish galleries | | Strong results for Christie's in 2021 |
Our unparalleled expertise and innovation mindset led to extraordinary results across categories and regions and set new benchmarks for selling art and luxury. -- Charles F. Stewart, Sothebys CEO. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- Sothebys reported a record year in the companys history, driven by strength and depth of demand and an influx of new collectors, and powered by rapid expansion of offerings and platforms. New sale formats and categories attracted a wider audience of participants (a record number of bidders joined in Sothebys sales, with 44% them new to Sothebys) and a rise in quality works coming to the market is meeting strong demand from new and established collectors. Notable achievements underlying these historic results include a number of new benchmarks established across regions and categories, including a record year in Asia, a record year for global sales of Modern and Contemporary art, and a record year for Luxury with Watches, Wine & Spirits, Design and Books & Manuscripts each achieving all-time highs for annual auction totals. Additionally, ... More | |
Gerard ter Borch (Dutch, 16171681), The Card Players, about 1659. Oil on canvas, laid down on panel. Promised gift of Rose‑Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
BOSTON, MASS.- In the 17th century, global commerce fueled the economy of the Netherlands and Flanders and sparked an artistic boom. Merchants sailed from Amsterdam, Antwerp and other ports across seas and oceans, joining trade networks that stretched from Asia to the Americas and Africa. This unprecedented movement of goods, ideas and people, both free and enslaved, gave rise to what some have called the first age of globalization. On November 20, 2021, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened a suite of seven newly renovated galleries that explore the rich visual culture of the Dutch Republic and Flanders during this time, bringing together nearly 100 paintings by the greatest mastersincluding Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Gerrit Dou, Frans Hals and Anthony van Dyckin addition to works on paper and decorative arts such ... More | |
Pablo Picassos Femme assise près dune fenêtre (Marie-Thérèse) sells in New York, May 2021, for $103.4 M. The highest value work sold at auction this year. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY.- Guillaume Cerutti, Christies Chief Executive Officer, commented: We are pleased with our 2021 achievements. Beyond our auction and private sales results -which are exceptional, Christies has also made a breakthrough in new sales formats and categories, NFTS in particular. They have allowed us to showcase works by new emerging and under-represented artists, and to reach out to a new audience of younger clients. We have also made great progress in other priorities, with important investments in Asia and with our commitments to becoming carbon net zero by 2030, and to building and sustaining a more equitable and diverse profile for our company. Growth, innovation and responsibility remain at the forefront of our objectives for 2022. Total projected sales in 2021: USD$ 7.1B (£5.2B) Strong Rebound +54% vs 2020; +22% vs 2019. Highest total in last 5 years, back to higher levels ... More |
|
|
|
|
| Peru's ancient treasures travel to UK for first time for major new British Museum exhibition | | Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive goes online | | The Barber Institute of Fine Art opens the UK's first ever show devoted to Clara and other well-known pachyderms |
Miniature gold figure of a llama, Peru, Inca, about 1500. © 2021 The Trustees of the British Museum.
LONDON.- A landmark loan of ancient objects travelled from Peru to the British Museum for a major new exhibition on the ancient cultures of the South American country. Over 40 remarkable objects some dating from over 3,000 years ago have come to the British Museum in London from nine museums across Peru. Most of them have never travelled to the UK before. They are on show alongside around 80 other pieces from the British Museums collection in Peru: a journey in time (11 November 2021 20 February 2022), a special exhibition exploring the thousands of years that humans have lived in the remarkable landscapes of the Andes mountains and beyond. It is the first major exhibition the British Museum has ever staged on Peru. It coincides with the 200th anniversary of the countrys independence and is supported by PROMPERU. From the early culture of Chavin in 1200 BC, up to the fall of the Incas in AD 1532, the exh ... More | |
Hans Holbein the younger, Thomas le Strange. Private Collection. Paul Mellon Centre Photographic Archive (PA-F05235-0035).
LONDON.- Paintings, sculpture, and decorative artworks that are often locked behind the closed doors of Britains private country houses and collections and not normally seen by the public can now be accessed, thanks to a huge new online archive created by the Paul Mellon Centre. Featuring more than 100,000 digitised photographs of British art and architecture, as well as images of sketchbooks and past exhibitions, the new resource is available to search and download online at https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk for free. What might be revealed in glimpses of long-lost works? The archive contains pictures of artworks captured before their destruction: an 18th-century painting by Richard Wilson destroyed by enemy bombing at the National Gallery in 1944, the Rothes portraits decimated by warehouse fire in 1991, grand wall and ceiling panels torn from their surroundings as Britains stately ... More | |
Attributed to Peter Anton Verschaffelt (1710 93), A Rhinoceros, Called Miss Clara (1738-1758), German or Flemish, Bronze, model and cast c.1750 60, 245 x 467 x 150 mm © The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
BIRMINGHAM.- Long before the advent of Grumpy Cat, Dolly the Sheep, Lassie or even the world-famous racehorse Seabiscuit, there was Miss Clara, a female Indian rhinoceros who achieved an unprecedented level of fame during the 18TH century. This winter, she is once again in the spotlight as the leading lady in the latest of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts acclaimed object in-focus series of exhibitions. Miss Clara and the Celebrity Beast in Art, 1500-1860 is the UKs first ever show devoted to Clara and other well-known pachyderms the word used for very large thick-skinned mammals - in a period spanning three centuries. The display also considers the emergence of menageries and zoos, and the significance of the capture and captivity of these big beasts within wider discussions of colonialism and empire. It is the ... More |
|
|
|
|
| World's oldest map of the stars to go on show in UK for first time at the British Museum | | 'Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind' on view at MASS MoCA | | Waddesdon Manor unveils its 2022 programme |
Nebra sky disc, Germany, about 1600 BC. State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, Juraj Lipták.
LONDON.- The worlds oldest map of the stars will go on display for the very first time in the UK at the British Museum next year. It will be a major highlight of a new special exhibition on Stonehenge which will open at the Museum in February, the first details of which are announced today (Monday 18 October). The Nebra Sky Disc is 3,600 years old and is the oldest surviving representation of the cosmos anywhere in the world. The 31cm (12-inch) bronze disc features a blue-green patina with inlaid gold symbols thought to represent the sun, moon, stars, the solstices and the constellation of the Pleiades. It was discovered buried in the ground in 1999 near the town of Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt in the east of Germany and will be loaned to the British Museum from the collection of the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle. The UK will be only the fourth country the disc has travelled to, and its display in London will be the f ... More | |
Installation view of Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind, MASS MoCA, North Adams, November 20, 2021May 29, 2023.
NORTH ADAMS, MASS.- MASS MoCA is presenting Yto Barrada: Ways to Baffle the Wind, on view beginning November 20. The exhibition of new and recent workincluding sculpture, drawings, textiles, films, and works on paperis assembled to model, parody, and learn from attempts to regulate and organize nature. Ways to Baffle the Wind is a collaboration between MASS MoCA and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, based in New Orleans. The exhibition is guest-curated by Andrea Andersson, Founding Director and Chief Curator of the Rivers Institute. The title of the exhibition comes from a 1952 copy of the lifestyle publication Sunset Patio Book, which included an eponymous essay outlining various ways to evade the wind, including a makeshift machine made with cotton balls and string. Ways to Baffle the Wind puts objects to work in the service of studying the natural world and how our ... More | |
Thomas Gainsborough, Francis Nicholls The Pink Boy, 1782 (before cleaning); oil on canvas; Waddesdon (National Trust) Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957. Photo: Waddesdon Image Library, The Public Catalogue Foundation, Art UK.
WADDESDON.- 2022 gets underway with plenty of sparkle and bright lights, as Waddesdon extends its dazzling Illumination display by artist Leo Villareal, celebrates the life and legacy of the all-powerful Alice de Rothschild and unveils Joana Vasconcelos astonishing, architectural Wedding Cake. As befits a French Renaissance chateau in rural Buckinghamshire, there is plenty more to surprise and delight throughout the year ahead. Part of what began as Illuminated River in July 2019 - a multi-award-winning art installation that has transformed the capital at night with an orchestrated series of light works on the nine bridges that span the central London stretch of the Thames - now forms a focused exhibition at Waddesdon. Illumination showcases three works; Empyreal Tide, 2018, Blossom, 2003 and Radiant Wheel, ... More |
|
|
|
|
| Paul Holberton publishes 'Modern Drawings: The Karshan Gift' | | First major solo exhibition by artist Betsy Bradley on view at Ikon | | A new carol for an old Christmas tradition |
Modern Drawings: The Karshan Gift. £25.00.
LONDON.- This stunning catalogue showcases for the first time an outstanding group of modern drawings by European and American masters, assembled by the late Howard Karshan and his wife, Linda, who recently presented the works to The Courtauld. It is one of the most significant gifts of art to The Courtauld in a generation. Edited by Coralie Malissard and Barnaby Wright. Accompanying an exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, Modern Drawings: The Karshan Gift features drawings by renowned artists including Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz. The 24 drawings of the Karshan gift are a significant addition to The Courtaulds collection. The works demonstrate Howard and Linda Karshans sensibility for the expressive power and rich variety of drawing as an art form. The drawings ar ... More | |
Betsy Bradley (2018). Photo by Louis Moore.
BIRMINGHAM.- Ikon presents the first major solo exhibition by Midlands-based artist Betsy Bradley, Chasing Rainbows, running 3 December 2021 13 February 2022. A significant achievement for the artist before she turns 30, Bradley colours Ikons upper galleries with her gestural paintings which evolve into large-scale sculptural, and suspended, forms recalling functional and playground objects. The show explores Bradleys approach to painting as a life force that traces the dance between thought and action. Bradleys meditative practice is rooted in mark-making, surprise and play. Always intuitive, her inspirations come from what she describes as miraculous everyday phenomena, such as the incidental colours of a patinated billboard or the rainbows reflected through the glass of her front door. Driven by impulsive gestures, Bradley celebrates chance as a means of freeing her artistic process and th ... More | |
Since the early 1980s, when the Choir of Kings College began ordering up new works for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, notable composers of religious music like John Tavener and Arvo Pärt have written for it, as well as more surprising names like Harrison Birtwistle, a British composer of spiky modernist pieces.
by by Alex Marshall
LONDON.- Every Christmas Eve, the British composer Cecilia McDowall follows the same routine. At 3 p.m., as family members arrive at her London home, she goes into the kitchen, turns on the radio and starts making a Christmas pudding a slow-cooked, booze-soaked British dessert while listening to the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge, perform its Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. That service of Bible readings and Christmas music is one of Britains best known festive traditions, broadcast live on radio stations worldwide, including on around 450 in the ... More |
|
TATM Film: BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY
|
|
|
| More News |
Franklin A. Thomas, pathbreaking Ford Foundation president, dies at 87
NEW YORK, NY.- Franklin A. Thomas, who rose from working-class Brooklyn to become, as president of the Ford Foundation, the first Black person to run a major American philanthropic organization, died Wednesday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. Darren Walker, the foundations current president, confirmed the death. Thomas was already a highly regarded nonprofit and corporate leader in 1979, when the Ford Foundations board of trustees chose him from among some 300 candidates to succeed McGeorge Bundy as the organizations president. Unlike Bundy, who had come from Massachusetts wealth and academia with a stop at the White House as national security adviser, Thomas grew up in near poverty. But driven by his hardworking immigrant mother, he won a scholarship to Columbia University and then worked for the city and ... More
Beyond the books: Joan Didion's essays, profiles and criticism
NEW YORK, NY.- Joan Didion, who died Thursday at 87, is best known for her essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and After Henry, to name a few though she also wrote blazingly original narrative nonfiction (Miami, The Year of Magical Thinking, Salvador) and novels (Play It as It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer). Her work for The New York Times is as eclectic and insightful as you might imagine, ranging from a profile of Joan Baez to a review of John Cheevers Falconer. Didions 1966 profile of Joan Baez and the community opposition to the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence the folk singers school in Californias Carmel Valley is a classic. Scum, hissed an old man with a snap-on bow tie who had identified himself as a veteran of two wars and who is a regular at such meetings. Spaniel. ... More
Ballet's disciplined rebel moves on
CANNES.- The Carolyn Carlson Company had just finished the final performance of the two-week Cannes Dance Festival on Dec. 11, and the festival director, Brigitte Lefèvre, went onstage to begin a post-show conversation. But Carlson is not much of a talker. Instead of discussing her piece, she began a little mime routine, to which Lefèvre responded with Chaplinesque comedic timing, mimicking bashful reluctance and deference to Carlson as the audience roared its approval. It was a fitting conclusion to Lefèvres final turn as the director of the Cannes festival, a low-key but vibrant biennial that offers both well known and experimental work. She took on the role in 2015, soon after retiring as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Lefèvre, 77, looks pretty much as she did in 1992, when she arrived at the Opera: a redhead with a gamine cut and an unaffected ... More
A guide to Joan Didion's books
NEW YORK, NY.- Joan Didion, who died Thursday at age 87, was a prolific writer of stylish essays, novels, screenplays and memoirs. Here is an overview of some of her works, as reviewed in The New York Times. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968): Didions first collection of nonfiction writing, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, brings together some of the finest magazine pieces published by anyone in this country in recent years, wrote Times critic Dan Wakefield. Play It as It Lays (1970): John Leonard wrote of Didion and this novel, She writes with a razor, carving her characters out of her perceptions with strokes so swift and economical that each scene ends almost before the reader is aware of it, and yet the characters go on bleeding afterward. A Book of Common Prayer (1977): Like her narrator, she has been an articulate witness ... More
All human experience, colour, history and portraiture is here: Compton Verney reveals 2022 exhibition programme
COMPTON VERNEY.- Portraiture, painting and photographs are at the fore in a compelling mix of historic and contemporary exhibitions at Compton Verney in 2022. The Warwickshire art gallery and park will also unveil two outdoor installations, by renowned artists Luke Jerram and Morag Myerscough. The spring season begins with a celebration of eight years of Sky Arts most successful TV series, Sky Portrait Artist of the Year. This commemorative exhibition is curated by one of the programmes guest judges, Kathleen Soriano, and will feature over 120 works, selected from submissions to the competition by more than 1,000 artists, who have taken part since it was launched in 2014. Showcasing the sheer diversity of the different ... More
Thomas Kinsella, evocative Irish poet, dies at 93
NEW YORK, NY.- Thomas Kinsella, an Irish poet and translator whose quest for coherence and meaning in a dark and precarious world engendered a body of work likened to the prose of James Joyce for its sense of place, died Wednesday in Dublin. He was 93. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by the Rom Massey & Sons funeral home. In his early days, Kinsella was feted as what one critic called probably the most accomplished, fluent and ambitious poet of his generation. Later, though, Kinsella came to occupy an ambivalent position in the Irish canon: central but somehow marginalized, honored but insecure, like a dethroned god, said David Wheatley, a fellow Irish poet. Kinsellas work was frequently described as difficult, inviting or forcing the reader to complete what Kinsella regarded as a central process of his poetry. A ... More
Kunsthalle Basel presents the 22nd edition of the Regionale exhibition
BASEL.- Artists are often credited with world-building, or at least with helping to change our views of the contemporary world. Using a variety of strategies and approaches, they create visible evidence that there is more than one way of understanding and thus shaping our complex present. The twenty-four artists selected for this 22nd edition of the Regionale exhibition work in varied genresdrawing, installation, painting, photography, sculpture, and video. They make use of readymade images or construct narratives from memory. They send us on treasure hunts or trace fraught histories. They find sense in abstraction or zero in on societal clichés. In short, they draw from the external world as well as from their own internal worlds. von möglichen Welten ( of possible worlds) already starts on the street, with a map by Fabio Sonego painted on the entrance ... More
Region-wide programme of cultural events announced to coincide with the display of the Gospels at Laing Art Gallery
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE.- A year-long series of cultural events inspired by the display of the Lindisfarne Gospels in the North East in autumn 2022, will take place in towns and cities across the region, beginning in January and peaking in autumn with two new visitor attractions for the region and the focal exhibition of the Gospels at the Laing Art Gallery, in a landmark loan from the British Library. From Hartlepool to Hexham, Berwick-upon-Tweed to Bishop Auckland, multiple venues and locations will invite visitors to explore, experience and enjoy a wealth of events, all drawing inspiration from different aspects of the 1300-year-old manuscript. Beginning in January and running through to May 2022, the programme opens with Monogatari: ... More
Hastings Contemporary launches first ever exhibition crowd sourced by Instagram
HASTINGS.- Artist Support Pledge is moving from our screens and onto real life gallery walls with the first ever exhibition crowdsourced from Instagram opens at Hastings Contemporary. More than 300 works, created by artists from around the world as well as from just around the corner, are being featured in A Generous Space. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, photography, basket-making, weaving and needlework have travelled to the UK from countries including America, Canada, India, Republic of Moldova, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, and the Republic of Ireland. There is also strong representation from local and regionally based artists. There were more than 3600 submissions for A Generous Space, all made via Instagram using the #aspshows hashtag, with ASP founder artist Matthew Burrows ... More
Two more Broadway shows close as omicron takes a toll on theater
NEW YORK, NY.- Two more Broadway shows announced Thursday night that they had closed as the spike in coronavirus cases fueled by the omicron variant takes a growing toll on the theater business. Thoughts of a Colored Man, a new play about a day in the life of a group of Black men in Brooklyn, said it had closed after two days in which it was so short of performers that it had kept going only because the playwright, Keenan Scott II, stepped in to perform. The play, which began previews Oct. 1 and opened Oct. 13, had been scheduled to run until March 13. While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, being part of this historic season on Broadway has been the greatest privilege of our lives, the plays producers, led by Brian Moreland, said in a statement. A return engagement of Waitress, which began performances Sept. 2 and was scheduled ... More
Christine Rebet's first monographic museum exhibition on view at macLYON
LYON.- The macLYON offers Christine Rebet her first monographic museum exhibition, entitled Escapologie [Escapology], inspired by the art of evasion or escape. Fascinated by the magic and optical illusions that inhabited the landscape of precinematographic entertainment, as well as by late 19th-century spiritualism, Christine Rebet combines history and fiction in fantasized realms, playing with the viewers subconscious through deceptive devices still used in contemporary politics and the media. Whether testifying to early 20th-century dictatorships or current upheavals in the Middle East, the artist creates connections between the mechanisms of entertainment and propaganda, between the powers of the mass media and oppressive regimes, exploring with ambivalent fascination the seductive power of illusory techniques. Drawing is at the heart ... More
|
|
PhotoGalleries
Cassi Namoda
Anke Eilergerhard
Jeffrey Smart
Light & Space
Flashback On a day like today, Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist Joan Miró died December 25, 1983. Joan Miró i Ferrà (20 April 1893 - 25 December 1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona in 1975, and another, the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, was established in his adoptive city of Palma de Mallorca in 1981.
|
|
|
|
