| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Saturday, January 1, 2022 |
| | | Doris Lee, unjustly forgotten, gets a belated but full blown tribute | |
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An undated image provided by the estate of Doris Lee shows Thanksgiving, 1935, a painting by the artist. A major new retrospective, Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee, traveling nationally through 2023, is reintroducing the painter and illustrator at the nexus of folk art and Modernism to the public. Estate of Doris Lee, via D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. via The New York Times.
Meredith Mendelsohn
NEW YORK, NY.- Shipped off to boarding school as a teenager in 1920 to get the edges polished off and prepare for college, artist Doris Lee cut her hair to rebel against her surroundings the least adventuresome and imaginative in her life, with no access to painting. This act of rebellion was met with suspension and the schools admonishment that nice girls have long hair. Judging from the many photos that remain of Lee (1905-83), she never chopped off her hair again. But she continued to cut a path of her own for the next four decades. An accomplished Depression-era figurative painter and tremendously successful commercial artist through the 1940s and 50s, Lee learned at a young age that to stay in the game she had to at least pretend to play by the rules. Her farm scenes and family gatherings might summon a Rockwellian sentimentality or the wholesomeness of Grandma Moses (with whom shes sometimes compared), but beneath the surface of her A ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are presenting the exclusive West Coast presentation of Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo. The exhibition steps into the 1870-1880s, a period when white settlers continued to claim and mine lands in California and the West that had been inhabited by Indigenous populations for thousands of years.
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| Eli Wilner & Company offers partial funding to museums for frame restoration projects | | The Broad presents special exhibition 'Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade' | | The Met exhibits more than 100 Modernist British prints created between 1913 and 1939 |
An Eli Wilner & Company master artisan restores a gilded punchwork spandrel on the frame holding a circa 1858 copy of Raphaels Madonna of the Chair painting in the collection of the Historic Charleston Foundation's Aiken-Rhett House.
NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Wilner & Company is currently accepting applications from museums and other non-profit cultural organizations for partial funding towards frame restoration projects. This is made possible in part by a continued commitment of funds from several generous private benefactors who wish to support projects of significant historical importance. Framing needs are often considered a low priority within overall conservation budgets, and due to the labor-intensive and highly specialized processes of carpentry, carving, and gilding that are involved, proper frame restoration can be extremely costly. The current deadline to submit frame restoration projects for this partial funding offer is February 15, 2022. Institutions are urged to send their applications at their earliest possible convenience as the funding is limited and the pool of submissions ... More | |
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Pure Insecurity, 2019. Oil paint, paint stick, gouache, soft pastel on linen canvas, 20 x 20 in. (50.8 x 50.8cm).
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Broad is presenting Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade, a free exhibition in the first-floor galleries running from November 20, 2021 to April 3, 2022. This exhibition highlights a selection of nearly 60 works acquired in the ten years since Eli and Edythe Broad publicly announced their plans for the opening of the museum, the Diller Scofidio + Renfro building on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. With its unique honeycomb veil design, The Broad was built to house the collection of postwar and contemporary art that the Broads cultivated for over five decades, and the museum has offered free general admission since its opening in 2015. The exhibition celebrates the museums dedication to collecting artists work in depth, featuring artworks that have entered the Broad collection in the last decade with some as recently as this year. Since Unveiling is made possible in part by generous support from Le ... More | |
Cyril E. Power (British, London 18721951 London). The Eight, 1930. Linocut, 13 in. x 9 1/4 in. (33 x 23.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Leslie and Johanna Garfield, 2019 (2019.415). © Estate of Cyril Power. All Rights Reserved, 2020 / Bridgeman Images.
NEW YORK, NY.- During the tumultuous years between 1913 and 1939, numerous British artists and expatriates linked to modernist movements such as Vorticism, Futurism, and the Grosvenor School of Modern Art turned to printmaking to convey the vibrancy and innovation, as well as the destruction and turmoil, of contemporary life. On view November 1, 2021January 9, 2022, Modern Times: British Prints, 19131939 features more than 100 outstanding and rare works on paper made during this period. Their subjectswhich included factories and underground trains, war-torn landscapes and dazzle ships, leisure activities, and the countryside as both idealized rural landscape and one transformed by urban expansionreveal an interest in speed, motion, labor, industrialization, technology, and ... More |
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| How we make sense of time | | When a master printer picks up the camera | | How much would you pay for Karl Lagerfeld's gloves? |
A metronome in Memphis, Tenn., on Dec. 21, 2021. January 2022 arrives as our methods of keeping time feel like they are breaking. Houston Cofield/The New York Times.
by Elizabeth Dias
NEW YORK, NY.- Deep inside a mountain in West Texas, Alexander Rose has been working to build a clock with a pendulum that will tick for 10,000 years. It is hundreds of feet tall, powered by the temperature difference between day and night, and synchronized by the solstice. The idea, said Rose, the executive director of the foundation behind it, is to help humans think about time well beyond our own lives. They call it the Clock of the Long Now. The coronavirus pandemic has slowed installation, and it has also made time itself feel strange, going by both in a blur and horrifically slowly, he said. There was that moment in the middle of 2021, last summer, when we all thought, all right, this is it, we are all coming out, he said. Well, that lasted about ... More | |
"Wildwood, New Jersey," date unknown, by Richard Benson (American, 19432017). Offset lithograph, image: 16 3/8 à 13 1/16 inches.; sheet: 24 15/16 à 19 1/16 inches. © Estate of Richard M. A. Benson. Promised gift of William M. and Elizabeth Ann Kahane. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021.
by Arthur Lubow
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Is technical wizardry enough to make someone an artist? Richard Benson was unrivaled as a printer of photographs before he became a photographer. Hired in his early 20s by an art book printing company to make halftone negatives to run on an offset press, he realized, as he later wrote, I couldnt understand printing without first mastering photography, and so my career began. At the time of his death at 73 in 2017, Benson profoundly understood the processes and techniques of photographic printing. He was also a beloved professor and dean at Yale University. His own work with a ... More | |
Marie Laurencin, La soeur de Narcisse, 1908.
PARIS.- Karl Lagerfeld, a charismatic designer who died in 2019 and was as much a pop culture figure as a fashion superstar, would have been amused by what has been going on at Sothebys here and in Monaco this month. Karl felt that objects are there to serve, and people shouldnt be enslaved by them, said Pierre Mothes, vice president of Sothebys France. He never wanted to be shut in a mausoleum, like a pharaoh. Twenty years ago, he told me: I dont want to be the conservator of my own collection. But a series of three auctions of 1,200 lots from that collection, assembled from Lagerfelds five residences in and around Paris and in Monaco, has demonstrated that his fans have no such qualms. Karls taste and his photographic eye inspired affection and positive feelings for a lot of people, which makes them want to own part of his personal universe, said Mothes, who is also the sales curator and head ... More |
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| Is that a burning bush? Is this Mount Sinai? Solstice bolsters a claim | | High Museum of Art presents KAWS prints exhibition | | Betty White, a TV fixture for seven decades, is dead at 99 |
Thousands of rock carvings, petroglyphs and engravings have been discovered at Mount Karkom in the Negev Desert in southern Israel, Dec. 21, 2021. Amit Elkayam/The New York Times.
by Isabel Kershner
MOUNT KARKOM.- The mountain kept its secrets for centuries, its air of sacred mystery enhanced by a remote location in the Negev desert in southern Israel. But one day last week, hundreds of Israeli adventurers headed deep into the wilderness to reach Mount Karkom, determined to get closer to answering a question as intriguing as it is controversial: Is this the Mount Sinai of the Bible, where God is believed to have communicated with Moses? Mount Sinais location has long been disputed by scholars both religious and academic, and there are a dozen more traditional contenders, most of them in the mountainous expanses of the Sinai Peninsula across the border in Egypt. But Mount Karkoms claim has gained some popular support because of an annual natural phenomenon that an intrepid group of archaeology and nature enthusiasts ... More | |
KAWS (American, born 1974), THE THINGS THAT COMFORT, 2015, screenprint on paper, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the artist, 2016.59. © KAWS, image courtesy KAWS INC.
ATLANTA, GA.- Since his groundbreaking solo show at the High Museum of Art in 2012, acclaimed artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly) has taken the world by storm with major exhibitions across the United States, Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East. Meanwhile, his monumental sculptural installations, augmented reality sculptures, design collaborations, toys, editioned objects and related works have seized the attention of a massive and diverse audience. Drawing exclusively from the Highs collection, KAWS PRINTS (Dec. 3, 2021-March 27, 2022) features all the artists editioned silkscreen prints in the Museums holdings along with a selection of drawings, color charts and rare early prints. The High is proud to have been among the first to present KAWS work to a museum-going public. That early engagement and his generosity hastened a relationship that has resulted in an astonishingly comprehensive public ... More | |
Betty White at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills on June 6, 2009. White, who created two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history, the nymphomaniacal Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the sweet but dim Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls and who capped her long career with a comeback that included a triumphant appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live at the age of 88 died on Friday, Dec. 31, 2021. She was 99. Amy Dickerson/The New York Times.
by Richard Severo and Peter Keepnews
NEW YORK, NY.- Betty White, who created two of the most memorable characters in sitcom history, the nymphomaniacal Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the sweet but dim Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls and who capped her long career with a comeback that included a triumphant appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live at the age of 88 died Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99. Her death, less than three weeks before her 100th birthday, was confirmed by Jeff Witjas, her longtime friend and agent. White won five Primetime Emmys and one ... More |
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| Pipilotti Rist's first West Coast survey on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art | | First comprehensive survey of the work of Hildegard Heise on view at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg | | Once a janitor, now the bar mitzvah photography king of Montreal |
Installation view of Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor, September 12, 2021June 6, 2022 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo by Zak Kelley.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor, the first West Coast survey of the internationally renowned Swiss artist. The exhibition includes Rists early single-channel videos dating to the mid-1980s, which established her critical appropriation of techniques drawn from popular culture and commercial advertising; her absorptive, architecturally-scaled installations brimming with blasts of color and lush textures, accompanied by hypnotic, lyric musical scores; as well as sculptures which merge everyday objects, video and digital images, and decorative forms. MOCAs first carbon-neutral exhibition and the first specially-ticketed exhibition since MOCA began offering free general admission, Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor also debuts a new large-scale audio-video installation made specifically for The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. We are thrilled to present ... More | |
Hildegard Heise (18971979), Ulrike von Borries im Liegestuhl, 19281933, Silbergelatinepapier, 39,2 x 29,3 cm, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, © Nachlass Hildegard Heise, MK&G.
HAMBURG.- The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg is presenting the first comprehensive survey of the work of photographer Hildegard Heise (18971979). The photographs she produced between 1928 and the early 1970s are nothing less than a revelation. In 1930, Heise exhibited alongside avant-garde photographers such as Max Burchartz, Andreas Feininger, Hans Finsler, Hein Gorny and Anneliese Kretschmer at the Internationale Ausstellung Das Lichtbild in Munich. But this buoyant period of bright prospects was followed after 1945 by a systematic side-lining of women artists. Heise continued to privately pursue photography, but her work fell into oblivion and was little researched. With around 160 images on view, the exhibition now pays delayed tribute to this important photographer. As an exponent of the New Objectivity, Heise often focused in closely on details and emphasised the structure, surfaces and form of her ... More | |
Braulio Rocha in the pews at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, where he worked as a janitor for nearly five years before transitioning into event photography full time, in Montreal, Canada, Dec. 1, 2021. Nasuna Stuart-Ulin/The New York Times.
by Dan Bilefsky
MONTREAL.- Braulio Rocha, a Portuguese janitor at a Montreal synagogue, was about to begin his daily floor mopping routine some years ago when he heard a frantic voice: The photographer assigned to shoot a bris a ritual circumcision hadnt shown up, and the babys grandmother was panicking. Rocha, an amateur photographer, had recently arrived in Canada from Madeira with $50 in savings and a beat-up old Canon camera that he always carried with him in his car. Wearing his gray-and-blue polyester janitors uniform, a long key ring dangling from his pocket, he recalls, he summoned up the courage and asked the forlorn grandmother if he could shoot the babys bris for free. She agreed, and a new career was born. Brises soon led to bar mitzvahs, and six years later, Rocha, a 45-year-old Roman Catholic, has been ... More |
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Gérald Genta | The Picasso of Watch Design
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Sam Fender, a songwriter caught between stardom and his hometown
NORTH SHIELDS.- Sam Fender, a singer-songwriter often labeled Britains answer to Bruce Springsteen, realized his life had changed for good on Halloween. This year he bought eight massive boxes of chocolate for any children who might knock on his door in North Shields, a working-class town on the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England. Fender expected the stash to last all night, but it went almost instantly. Everyone in the neighborhood was, like, Thats Sam Fenders house, lets go knock! the musician recalled in a recent interview at his studio a short walk from the town center, in a nondescript building surrounded by car mechanics workshops. The trick-or-treaters parents were more keen on getting selfies with the star than candy, whether they knew his music or not. That scared us a bit, he said. It was just nuts. Over the past year, Fender, 27, has become one ... More
On Broadway stages, the beautiful rooms are empty
NEW YORK, NY.- When Bobbies balloons are more fascinating than she is, your production of Company has a serious problem. Im speaking of the inflatable Mylar numerals that, in the current Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, keep drawing the eye away from the main character as she is feted by friends on her 35th birthday. Those balloons stand-ins for Bobbies disappearing youth arent the only scene stealers. Bunny Christies ingenious design for the revival is filled with visual gimmicks that in representing the productions themes keep crowding out the characters. During the song Another Hundred People a barbed tribute to the missed connections of urbanity large neon letters that spell the shows title start wandering about the stage, as if stalking the cast. Eventually, three of the letters regroup to spell NYC: a neatly made ... More
Ben McFall, 'the Heart of the Strand,' is dead at 73
NEW YORK, NY.- Ben McFall, the longest-tenured bookseller in the history of the Strand, New Yorks renowned bookstore, who for decades peered above his spectacles at a line of acolytes, tourists and young colleagues for whom he incarnated the stores erudite but easygoing spirit, died Dec. 22 at his home in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was 73. Jim Behrle, his partner, said the cause was a fall. He added that McFall had pulmonary fibrosis, which had recently rendered him nearly bedridden. McFall enjoyed duties and perks not given to any other Strand employee. For much of his tenure, he was the only person in charge of an entire section. Not only that, the fief he governed the fiction shelves provides the Strand with the core of its business in used books. He determined the price of each used hardcover novel and book of stories and then affixed a Strand sticker to the dust jacket. ... More
Maggie Gyllenhaal has dangerous ideas about directing
NEW YORK, NY.- Maggie Gyllenhaal has never shied away from difficult roles. The actor has been pushing boundaries for years with performances of complicated characters like an assistant playing sadomasochistic games with her boss (Secretary), the daughter of an arms dealer caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (The Honorable Woman) and a sex worker in 1970s New York (The Deuce). But its the job of director and screenwriter of The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of Elena Ferrantes novel of the same title, that may be her riskiest role yet. The film, set on a sun-drenched Greek island, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a solo working vacation who gets entangled with a young mother, Nina, played by Dakota Johnson. As she becomes more involved with Nina and her sprawling family, Ledas past and the decisions she made as ... More
A story of love and obsession
NEW YORK, NY.- The Harlem house had been empty for eight years when in 2010 British poet James Fenton and Darryl Pinckney, an African American cultural critic and author, decided to rescue it. They had seen the place mainly by flashlight because the windows (there are more than 50) were covered in plywood and sheets of plastic. Inside, there were 17 closet toilets and an indeterminate number of one-room apartments. There were dead pigeons and crack vials. The basement was underwater. Someone had been systematically breaking in to steal the lead pipes and had opened the water main. It was, as Fenton said, totally disgusting and horrible. But it was also beautiful, at least on the outside. Built in 1890 as a family home for John Dwight, a founder of Arm & Hammer, the house was a fanciful shape, with a stack of four oval rooms, one on each of four floors, that ballooned out onto 123rd Street, and an imposing Neo-Renaissance entry, with an arch and pillars. More recently, it had been a single-room-occupa ... More
In Mexico, women directors take the lead
MEXICO CITY.- As a young girl growing up in 1980s Mexico, the idea of becoming a filmmaker was almost unthinkable for Fernanda Valadez. Other than a movie club at the local university, there were no cinemas in her hometown, Guanajuato, and films made by women were few and far between. The dream of making cinema was something far away, she recalled recently. We grew up with the feeling that making films was very difficult. Some 30 years later, however, that dream has become very real. Valadezs debut film, Identifying Features, won two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, and this year it won best picture, director and screenplay, among other prizes, at the Ariel Awards, Mexicos equivalent of the Oscars. After decades of fighting for recognition in an industry dominated by men, filmmakers like Valadez are setting Mexican cinema ablaze, not just ... More
Sneaker sellers wrestle with price spikes after Virgil Abloh's death
NEW YORK, NY.- One late Sunday morning last month, Tia Hall was having breakfast with her girlfriend when a series of alerts popped up on her phone. When we have website sales, we have this distinct ding on our phone, said Hall, who owns Sneak City, a store in Seattle that deals in new and preowned sneakers. We were eating our oatmeal and then ding ding ding ding ding. All of those sales were for Off-White shoes, Hall said. Within an hour, her inventory (about 20 pairs) had sold, including a Nike Air Jordan 1 design priced at $7,500. By then, Hall had learned what incited the rush: the announcement that Virgil Abloh, designer of Off-White and mens artistic director for Louis Vuitton, was dead at 41 after a private battle with a rare cancer. In the immediate aftermath, sales and searches for Ablohs designs reportedly surged on resale websites. But prices also surged, as ... More
British Museum and Shropshire Museums to develop new Partnership Gallery
LONDON.- The British Museum announced plans to develop an exciting new Partnership Gallery at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery (SM&AG), part of Shropshire Museums, focusing on the national and international significance of Bronze Age Shropshire. Ambitious in scope, this partnership will create the UKs first pre-Roman British Museum Partnership Gallery with fantastic highlights dating from the period in Bronze Age Britain between 4,500 and 2,600 years ago. By immersing visitors in the rich and varied deep history of the wetlands of Shropshire Marches, the new Partnership Gallery follows the British Museum Spotlight Loan Gathering light: a Bronze Age golden sun, which was on display at Shrewsbury Museum from 10 September 12 December 2021. Both the Spotlight Loan and Partnership Gallery are initiatives as part of the British Museums National Programmes to work ... More
'Emily in Paris' and the city I thought was mine
PARIS.- I still have the text message saved from my best friend here that arrived last October with the urgency of a high-speed TGV train. It just said omg, with seven additional Gs, and preceded a screenshot of American actor Lily Collins sitting at the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie in the 5th Arrondissement of Paris: my go-to cafe in the city, with the best sausage and lentils at lunch and a view onto an obscure little square behind the Panthéon. You are all over the show, my friend texted me, and for weeks after I endured brutal mockery that my Parisian bolt-hole was about to become a tourist site, like Carrie Bradshaws brownstone or the Harry Potter train station platform. Id lived in Paris, knew my way around French culture and French men (Id just married one). Id postured as some sophisticate with better taste than the millions who come through each year. And here was Emily, in one ... More
The Hamburger Kunsthalle presents the first solo exhibition in Germany of the work of Toyen
HAMBURG.- The Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first solo exhibition in Germany of the most important and influential Czech woman artist of the twentieth century, who went by the name of Toyen (Marie ČermÃnová, b. 1902 in Prague, d. 1980 in Paris). Her fascinating and multifaceted oeuvre occupies a unique position in the male-dominated Czech avant-garde as well as in the context of international Surrealism. Toyen continued to do innovative work until well into the 1970s, producing poetic and provocative images that oscillate between reality and imagination, the seductive and the abysmal, and leave an unforgettable impression. This first comprehensive monographic show dedicated to the founding member of the Surrealist group in former Czechoslovakia assembles 300 works from all of the artists creative phases. 100 paintings, 180 drawings, collages ... More
William Morris' beloved country home Kelmscott Manor to reopen after major refurbishment programme
LECHLADE.- The doors of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire the beloved country home of William Morris, the internationally-renowned craftsman, designer, author, poet, pioneer socialist, widely regarded as the father of the Arts & Crafts Movement, will finally reopen its doors to the public on Friday 1 April 2022, having been closed since 2019. During the past 30 months a major conservation and refurbishment programme has been achieved. Practical completion of the capital phase was made possible by a £4.3 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £1.3 million raised to date from the still on-going Kelmscott Manor: Past Present & Future Campaign, which continues to actively raise additional necessary funds. (*Please see notes to editors). Aside from vital structural repairs to the 17th century manor house and its historic farm outbuildings, a new learning and activity ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Le Design Pour Tous
New Galleries of Dutch and Flemish Art
Cassi Namoda
Anke Eilergerhard
Flashback On a day like today, Chinese painter Qi Baishi was born January 01, 1864. Qi Baishi (1 January 1864 - 16 September 1957) was a Chinese painter, noted for the whimsical, often playful style of his watercolor works. Born to a peasant family from Xiangtan, Hunan, Qi became a carpenter at 14, and learned to paint by himself. After he turned 40, he traveled, visiting various scenic spots in China. After 1917 he settled in Beijing. In this image: Qi Baishi, Crabs, circa 1930. Album leaf, ink on paper. University of Michigan Museum of Art. Gift of Sotokichi Katsuzumi, 1949/1.199.
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