| The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 23, 2017 |
| | | Jewish trove hidden in a church from Nazis, Soviets gives up its secrets | |
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Judaica Research Centre chief Lara Lempertiene shows a map as part of a rediscovered Jewish collection, long thought to have been destroyed during World War II, in Lithuanian national library in Vilnius on November 3, 2017 For decades, a confessional in a church in Lithuania's capital Vilnius kept a precious secret: a trove of documents offering an unprecedented glimpse into Jewish life in Eastern Europe before and during the Holocaust. Petras Malukas / AFP.
by Vaidotas Beniusis and Mary Sibierski in Warsaw
VILNIUS (AFP).- For decades, a confessional in a church in Lithuania's capital Vilnius kept a precious secret: a trove of documents offering an unprecedented glimpse into Jewish life in Eastern Europe before and during the Holocaust. The cache, with documents dating back to the mid-18th century, includes religious texts, Yiddish literature and poetry, testimonies about pogroms as well as autobiographies and photographs. "The diversity of material is breathtaking," David Fishman, professor of Jewish History at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, told AFP via telephone, describing the discovery as a "total surprise". "It's almost like you could reconstruct Jewish life before the Holocaust based on these materials because there is no aspect and no region and no period that is missing," he added. The trove was discovered earlier this year during a cleanout of the church that was used as a book repository during Soviet times. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Ferdinand Jakob looks at a moving, mechanical Nativity scene of 300 wooden Biblical figures tottering around thanks to a unique contraption of bicycle chains, shafts and gear wheels in the village of Christkindl, Austria, on December 14, 2017. The Austrian village of Christkindl is a famed Steyr pilgrimage place especially popular in Christmas time, as its name means "Christ Child", the traditional gift-bringer in large parts of Europe. Every Christmas period the small village sets up a temporary post office to stamp almost two million Christmas cards with a special postmark, and using a different design every day. JOE KLAMAR / AFP
| National Gallery of Victoria opens the inaugural NGV Triennial | | Wu Bin's 'Ten Views of a Lingbi Stone' now on view at Los Angeles County Museum of Art | | Early Christmas present of treasures worth £40 million for the nation |
Ron Mueck, Mass (detail), 201617. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. © Ron Mueck. Generously gifted by the Felton Bequest, 2017.
MELBOURNE.- The inaugural NGV Triennial presents an unprecedented, large-scale exhibition of international art, design and architecture from December 15, 2017 to April 15, 2018 at the National Gallery of Victoria. Free and exclusive to Melbourne, the NGV Triennial showcases major works by more than 100 artists and designers from 32 countries, transforming all four levels of NGV International. Traversing established, mid-career and emerging practitioners at the forefront of their fields, the NGV Triennial artists and designers are exploring some of the critical issues of our time through practices embracing cutting edge technologies, from 3D printing to robotics, as well as performance, film, painting, drawing, installation and fashion design, tapestry and sculpture. Tony ... More | |
Unknown, Taihu Stone, circa 1987, Limestone, a) Stone: 25 3/16 à 37 in. (64 à 94 cm), b) Floor stand: 35 7/16 à 22 7/16 à 19 11/16 in. (90 à 57 à 50 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the 2017 Collectors Committee (M.2017.73a-b), photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting Wu Bins Ten Views of a Lingbi Stone, featuring one of the most extraordinary paintings of a stone ever created. In ancient China, strange and marvelous stones were valued for their beauty and as reflections of the hidden structures underlying the universe. Stones were seen as fluid and dynamic, constantly changing, and capable of magical transformations. Wu Bins Ming dynasty handscroll, painted in 1610, comprises 10 separate views of a single stone from the famous site of Lingbi, Anhui Province. Each view is rendered with exceedingly complex brushwork as fine lines twist, waver, and unravel, describing the shifting ... More | |
Conversion of St Hubert by Philips Wouwerman. Photo: National Trust.
LONDON.- The Arts Council published its 2016/17 Cultural Gifts Scheme and Acceptance in Lieu annual report. It shows that in the last year, 44 cases spanning a vast range of works of art worth £40 million were accepted for the nation under the governments Cultural Gifts Scheme and Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. Objects accepted through these schemes are allocated to public collections throughout the UK and are available for everyone to engage with and enjoy. Cultural Gift highlights include: The first cultural gift to the ss Great Britain Trust of over 850 items relating to one of the nations greatest engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his family One of the most important donations to a UK museum of works by Fabergé including carved animals once belonging to Queen Alexandra A strikingly realistic Renaissance sculpture of a foot The first cultural gift to the Scottish ... More |
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| A new lease of life for cherished toys at Lisbon doll hospital | | French woman, husband incommunicado in China after Liu Xiaobo tribute | | Iranian director facing jail for film attacking corruption |
Manuela Cutileiro, owner of the Doll Hospital, dresses up a doll in front of drawers of doll parts at the Doll Hospital in Lisbon on December 12, 2017. PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP.
LISBON (AFP).- In the heart of old Lisbon, there's a "hospital" that treats patients who are small and fragile, often mangled and battered, and sometimes more than 100 years old. This rare facility mends the cracked head, broken limb or missing eye of many a child's favourite toy -- their doll. The loving care given at Lisbon's doll hospital has been going on for five generations. "We have clients from all over the world and all ages. There are museums which ask us to restore pieces, also private collectors, but the vast majority of our clients are individuals -- people who are sentimentally attached" to their dolls, says Manuela Cutileiro, 72, the hospital's owner. The dolls all have a patient file and are painstakingly restored by the skilled hands of three women "surgeons", who give them a new body part or hair, chosen from drawers full of pieces of dolls, a macabre collection of heads, limbs and ... More | |
The couple had travelled from their home in the French city of Lyon to participate in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism Architecture, witnesses who spoke with the couple in Shenzhen told AFP.
BEIJING (AFP).- A French citizen and her husband have been incommunicado for a week after the couple travelled to southern China to paint a tribute to the late democracy activist and dissident Liu Xiaobo, friends and witnesses said Friday. Marine Brossard and Hu Jiamin painted a mural at the entrance of a public exhibition in Shenzhen on December 15, but city authorities covered the wall with a banner the same evening, witnesses told AFP. Tributes to Liu are censored in China. Brossard is a French national, but Hu's nationality is unclear, a friend who has known them for over five years said. AFP tried to call Hu several times this week, but an automated message said his phone was switched off. The couple had travelled from their home in the French city of Lyon to participate in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism Architecture, witnesses who spoke with the couple in ... More | |
This file photo taken on May 27, 2017 shows Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof posing as he arrives for the "Un Certain Regard" prize ceremony. LOIC VENANCE / AFP.
PARIS (AFP).- It is not easy to lead a good and virtuous life in Iran if the film-maker Mohammad Rasoulof's latest film, "A Man of Integrity", is anything to go by. Its downtrodden hero struggles to make an honest rial from his goldfish farm, caught in a nightmarish, distorting fish bowl of corruption at every turn. The film, which won the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes film festival in May, is a damning indictment of how the "daily reality of graft" is sapping the Islamic Republic. "Corruption has penetrated every layer of society," Rasoulof told AFP by Skype from his home in Tehran, where he is effectively under house arrest since his passport was confiscated when he returned from the Telluride film festival in the US in September. The dark thriller tells the story of Reza, who refuses to pay a bribe for a loan that would save his business, and finds himself ... More |
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| 'Christ Child', Austria's Christmas village | | Heritage Auctions' new mobile app: Your collection on demand | | World War I mystery solved as wreck of Australian sub found |
A post office worker stamps envelopes with Christmas postmarks in the village of Christkindl, Austria, on December 14, 2017. JOE KLAMAR / AFP.
CHRISTKINDL (AFP).- Traditionally in Austria, and elsewhere in Europe, it's not Santa who gives out the gifts but the "Christkindl" ("Christ Child"). And in the village actually called Christkindl, it's busy right now. Every Christmas period the small village sets up a temporary post office to stamp almost two million Christmas cards with a special postmark, and using a different design every day. "When you consider the number of inhabitants it's certainly a record, particularly seeing as this happens over just six weeks," says Eva Poetzl from the local tourism office. "Either people bring the letters themselves or, more usually, a special service by the Austrian Post transports them here to be stamped, including from abroad," Poetzl told AFP. Gerhard Eismayr, one of several thousand people who make the pilgrimage to Christkindl to get his greetings cards stamped in person, said ... More | |
The app offers free appraisals using your device's camera.
DALLAS, TX.- Collectors may browse and bid in hundreds of auctions and access more than 4 million prices realized from the convenience of their smartphone with the debut of the Heritage Auctions Mobile App. The new, free smartphone application offers Face ID and Touch ID sign-in, free appraisals using your device's camera, instant lot tracking and one-touch mobile bidding. The app is now available for both Android and iOS smartphones. "This app was designed to be streamlined," said Jim Halperin, Co-founder of Heritage Auctions. "Our pledge to continually invest in new technology aligns our clients' interests with our interests and provides the first class experience." Among the new app's features: Access to values of previously sold lots spanning 40 different categories of fine art and collectibles Free appraisals using your device's camera A Currency Converter to calculate foreign exchange rates ... More | |
HMAS AE1, the first of two E Class submarines built for the Royal Australian Navy, disappeared on 14 September, 1914 near the Duke of York Islands with 35 crew members from Australia, Britain and New Zealand on board.
SYDNEY (AFP).- Australia's most enduring military mystery has been solved after the wreckage of the country's first submarine was found more than a century after it vanished off Papua New Guinea, officials said Thursday. HMAS AE1, the first of two E Class submarines built for the Royal Australian Navy, disappeared on 14 September, 1914 near the Duke of York Islands with 35 crew members from Australia, Britain and New Zealand on board. It was the first Allied submarine loss in World War I. AE1 was found in more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) of water after an expedition -- the 13th such search -- was launched last week using Fugro Equator, a ship also used by Australia to hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. "After 103 years, Australia's oldest naval mystery has been solved," Defence ... More |
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| Exhibition at L.A. Louver features over a dozen paintings in bold and subdued palettes by Heather Gwen Martin | | The June Kelly Gallery celebrates its 30th anniversary with a group exhibition of works by gallery artists | | U.S. pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale to feature film and video artworks |
Heather Gwen Martin, Cue, 2017 (detail). Oil on linen, 77 x 82 1/2 in. (195.6 x 209.6 cm). Photo: © Heather Gwen Martin. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA.
VENICE, CA.- L.A. Louver is presenting new works by Los Angeles-based artist Heather Gwen Martin. All produced over the past year, the exhibition features over a dozen paintings in bold and subdued palettes, and in a wide range of sizes, from small-scale intimate pieces to her largest work to date, approximately 8 x 10 ft. (2.4 x 3 m). Martin continues to evolve the color and spatial relationships in her lyrical, vivid abstract paintings. Painting on linen, she first primes each support with an oil ground, embracing the fabrics natural surface irregularities that result from this process. The underlying texture roots the materiality of the painting to come, and inserts the artists hand as the maker. Once the background is awash with color, Martin develops the composition with varied biomorphic forms and lithe meandering lines, in an array of sumptuous colors. The two-dimensional paintings are not visually flat. Elements push forward, rec ... More | |
Bruce Dorfman, Torso, 2009. Paper, pencil, gouache and acrylic, 24 x 18 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- The June Kelly Gallery celebrates its 30th Anniversary with a group exhibition of drawings and photographs by gallery artists. It opened on Thursday, December 21, 2017 and continues through January 30, 2018. To mark the 30 years, the gallery artists were invited to exhibit drawings and photographs embracing independent selections of a multiplicity of subject, style and process. Drawing and Photography are expansive concepts. In this exhibition, interpretation of either medium is not limited to a traditional sense as the drawn line made with a pencil, pen, or charcoal on white paper as in Stan Brodskys drawing, titled Rear View, 1968. James Little speaks of his brilliantly colored vertical geometric bands, When Aaron Tied Ruth, 2008, executed in multiple layers of oil and wax on canvas as a drawing. Rebecca Welz refers to her welded and twisted steel rods reflecting interconnectedness, Lace Barnacle, 2017 as a drawing an ... More | |
Still from Cosmic Generator (2017), Mika Rottenberg. © Mika Rottenberg.
CHICAGO, IL.- The curators of Dimensions of Citizenship, the U.S. Pavilion exhibition at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, today announced that they will present film and video works that explore multiple perspectivesnarrative, speculative, or impressionisticin the pavilions rotunda. Entitled Transit Screening Lounge, this collection features recent single-channel works by Frances Bodomo, Mandana Moghaddam, David Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict, Mika Rottenberg, and Liam Young. As reflections on the spatial conditions of citizenship, these evocative works join installations by the Pavilions seven commissioned participants: Amanda Williams & Andres L. Hernandez, Design Earth, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, Keller Easterling, SCAPE, and Studio Gang. The commissioners of the 2018 U.S. Pavilion are the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Curators Niall Atkinson, Ann ... More |
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Heather Gwen Martin: Currents (2017)
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Clare Matterson appointed Director of Engagement at Natural History Museum
LONDON.- The Natural History Museum announced the appointment of Clare Matterson to the position of Director of Engagement. In this role she will lead on the Museum's programme of special exhibitions, gallery enhancements and learning and outreach activities, as well as overseeing the Museum's commercial activities and public-facing digital developments. Museum Director Sir Michael Dixon says, 'Clare's appointment is an important step in the development of a major period of transformation for the Museum, as we focus greater attention on the big environmental challenges mankind faces and make significant changes to public spaces in the Museum. 'Clare brings a wealth of relevant experience to the role from the development of the Wellcome Collection to the valuable contribution she has made to STEM education in the UK. We are delighted to have her ... More
Essex Road IV: Eight contemporary artists interpret a very particular part of London
LONDON.- Now in its fourth year, Tintypes Essex Road invites eight artists to each make a short film connected to the mile-long north London street. The gallerys large window, on a busy corner of Essex Road, becomes a public screen for six weeks over Christmas and New Year. The films are back-projected into the window, shown on a loop from dusk until 11pm, highly visible to a broad range of the general public who pass by the gallery. Edwina Ashton makes films, drawings and objects featuring awkward animal characters that stand in for the human. Her hand-drawn, animated films hinge on the mismatch between our dreams and humdrum reality, offering absurdist narratives observing the everyday subtleties of human behaviour. And each December, up the Essex Road lumber twenty huge caravans Ashtons film, Forest Bred Lions, draws upon the marvel ... More
Statue of US Confederate general, a Ku Klux Klan leader, removed
WASHINGTON (AFP).- The statue of a pro-slavery Confederate general who joined the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan following the Civil War was removed from a park under cover of darkness in Memphis, Tennessee. Local television stations broadcast footage Thursday of the monument to General Nathan Bedford Forrest being removed from its pedestal by a crane and driven away on a flatbed truck under a blue tarpaulin. A statue of Jefferson Davis, who served as president of the Confederacy during the 1861-65 Civil War, was also removed overnight from a separate Memphis park. Cheers broke out as a crane lifted the statue of Davis off of its base and moved it to a waiting truck to be driven away to an unknown destination. "This is an important moment in the life of our city," Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said at a press conference at City Hall. "Let us move forward ... More
Kunsthaus Bregenz invites architect Peter Zumthor to stage an exhibition
BREGENZ.- Kunsthaus Bregenz is a distinctive place. Its atmosphere increases awareness, opening the eyes, ears, and pores. For its anniversary year KUB is now 20 years old Kunsthaus Bregenzs renowned architect Peter Zumthor has been invited to stage an exhibition. The Pritzker prize-winning architect has decided to dispense with any kind of traditional exhibition, instead creating spaces, receptacles for thinking, displaying, and listening, for the artistic ventures he cherishes and that have inspired him: Dear to Me. The musical program is being curated by the musician Peter Conradin Zumthor, readings are being organized by literature expert Brigitte Labs-Ehlert, and a film directed by Swiss filmmaker Christoph Schaub. KUBs spaces are reflecting their own use. On the ground floor a Bösendorfer grand piano has been installed in the middle of the space. ... More
Exhibition presents a full-scale reproduction of Marc Camille Chaimowicz's apartment in London
HANOVER.- Since the 1970s, Marc Camille Chaimowicz has explored the space between decoration, life, and art in his work. He develops interiors and spatial arrangements as well as various furnishings and decorative objects, paintings, vases, curtains, furniture, and wallpaper. In his art, Chaimowicz blurs the boundaries between private and public space. His formal language in painting, interiors, and arrangements is based on the painting of the Intimists in the late nineteenth century, including artists such as Pierre Bonnard and Ãdouard Vuillard. At the same time, it shows a fondness for modernist design, as exemplified by Dieter Rahms or Charles and Ray Eames. He has created the new installation One to One (2017) for the Kestner Gesellschaft, ... More
Hosfelt Gallery opens exhibition of works by Andrew Schoultz
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Andrew Schoultz brings his signature street-savvy style to a new body of work that questions the meaning and function of public space and the nature of political discourse. With an emphasis on the formal vocabulary of abstraction, Schoultz exposes the ways in which meaning is manipulated and perception skewed as the locus for civic debate has shifted from the town plaza to the isolated, anonymous realm of cyberspace. Two monumental sculptures anchor the installation, surrounded by murals painted directly on the walls of the gallery, paintings on panel and paper, and other sculptural objects. In a new series of abstract paintings, Schoultz distills some of his familiar stylistic elements into a more formal language with subtler allusions. Other works incorporate new symbolic motifs with multiple, sometimes conflicting meanings. ... More
Purchase College names Lorenzo Candelaria as new Dean of the School of the Arts
PURCHASE, NY.- Purchase College, SUNY, announced that Lorenzo Candelaria has been appointed Dean of the School of the Arts. Lorenzo Candelaria, who is currently Associate Provost and Professor of Music History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), will replace Ravi Rajan, who left Purchase at the end of the 2016-17 academic year to become President of California Institute of the Arts. Candelaria will begin his new role at Purchase College in July 2018. A noted scholar and arts administrator, Candelaria brings decades experience in arts advocacy and arts education to Purchase. As Dean of the School of the Arts, he will oversee the nationally acclaimed conservatories of dance, music, and theatre arts, and the highly regarded School of Art+Design and arts management programs. As a candidate, Dr. Candelaria presented a vision for the School ... More
Town to Town by Niall McDiarmid to be published by RRB Photobooks
LONDON.- For the past seven years, Scottish photographer Niall McDiarmid has travelled the length and breadth of the UK stopping at more than 200 towns along the way. Town to Town will feature more than 60 portraits from this journey, in McDiarmids singular, colourful style, which collectively form a unique and poignant portrait of Britain. An exhibition of the project, to coincide with the publication of the book, will be shown at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol from 31 January 12 May 2018. From Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands to the historic town of Bodmin in Cornwall, McDiarmid has taken more than 2000 portraits on his travels. He visited town centres across the country with the same high street shops and chains of coffee shops, but he found that each retained its distinctive character due to the individuals who walk the streets. As a nation we are blessed with a talen ... More
The New York Studio School opens exhibition featuring new paintings and works on paper by John Walker
NEW YORK, NY.- The New York Studio School and Alexandre Gallery are presenting John Walker: The Sea and The Brush, an exhibition featuring new paintings and works on paper that capture the power, rhythms and raw beauty of the Northern New England sea coast. As with the landscape, the works present themselves as simultaneously tight and loose, primal and poetic. Each piece seems to reconsider the systems of nature from which they are derived. Walkers line work, its zigs and zags, elucidate the artists attempt to grasp what cant be heldthe lapping water, disintegrating horizon, evaporating marks in the muddy shoreline. The works contain the repetitive restlessness of Kusamas infinity works and the clarity of Matisse cut outs. The drawings show an intimate side of Walkers process and initial impulses. They are fast, but not casual, real, but ... More
Chaumont-sur-Loire's Arts and Nature Centre devotes all its winter exhibitions to photography.
PARIS.- The works of seven photographers, each expressing their unique viewpoints on landscape and nature, are being presented on over 2,000 square metres of exhibition space in the Château itself and its Farmyard. A special tribute is being paid to two great names in the world of photography who died before their time: Thibaut Cuisset and Gérard Rondeau. Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire is also hosting Frances first exhibition devoted to Elger Esser, one of the Düsseldorf schools major photographers. Pinhole-camera enthusiasts both, the American photographer Robert Charles Mann and German artist Hanns Zischler also are guests at this winter photography festival, alongside Eric Sander and François Méchain. Eulogising wide open spaces in equally wide shots, Thibaut Cuissets landscapes have the power to draw the viewers ... More
Kalfayan Galleries now representing the Estate of Nausika Pastra
ATHENS.- Nausica Pastra was born in Kalamata, (Peloponnese, Greece) in 1921. In 1957, she attended the sculpture seminar organised by Professor Ewald Mataré at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg, Austria. From 1957 to 1962 she studied sculpture at the atelier of Professor Fritz Wotruba at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, in Vienna, Austria. She obtained a Degree in Sculpture in 1962. From 1967 to 1973 she attended a seminar entitled "Sociology of Art" given by Professor Jean Cassou at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, in Paris, France. She was a corresponding member of the Vereinigung der Bildenden Künstler Wiener Secession. From 1964 onwards, she lived and worked in Paris, France. In 1984 she moved back to Greece and lived and worked in Athens, Thessaloniki and Paris until her death in 2011. 1976, Completes the sculpture-environment ... More
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Flashback On a day like today, Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh was born December 23, 1908. Yousuf Karsh, CC (December 23, 1908 - July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer best known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. In this image: Yousuf Karsh, Ford of Canada (surgeons), 1951.
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