| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, May 22, 2021 |
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| | London's V&A reopens with Alice in Wonderland exhibition | |
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Alice Curiouser and Curiouser, May 2021, Installation Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
by Charlotte Durand
LONDON (AFP).- After a year of the coronavirus pandemic's mind-bending assault on normal life, London's Victoria & Albert Museum reopens this week, taking visitors down another rabbit hole. "Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser" explores the global impact of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", Lewis Carroll's classic 1865 novel, and its enduring appeal to artists. The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, and plunges visitors, like Alice, straight down a rabbit hole -- the museum stairs -- with a jumble of signs in every direction. As they emerge from the V&A's dimly lit basement, guests are immersed in theatrical costumes, film extracts, manuscripts and drawings. The installations combine sound and visual effects, "to explore the origins, adaptations and reinventions" of the work first imagined by Carroll, an Oxford mathematician whose real name was ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day 'David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020' at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 23 May --- 26 September 2021. Photography: © Royal Academy of Arts , London / David Parry. All works: © David Hockney.
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| The Met changes course | | Hauser & Wirth New York presents never-before-seen works by David Smith | | New Haven's art scene: Always excellent, and now reopening | 
One of Carol Bove's four sculptures for the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hoisted into position during the installation process in New York, Feb. 24, 2021. George Etheredge/The New York Times.
by Roberta Smith
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- If not for the tumultuous events of 2020, Inside the Met, a three-part documentary about the Metropolitan Museum of Art airing on PBS on Friday (today) and May 28 might simply be a routine valentine to a great institution in the 150th year of its existence. But things did not go as planned. Thanks to the coronavirus and the mass protests following George Floyds killing, the Met, like much of New Yorks cultural world, faced an accounting unlike any in its history. Luckily, British documentary filmmaker Ian Denyer and his crew were there to capture some of it on film if often in suitably flattering terms. But as the series unfolds passing through sleepy patches and enthralling encounters with artworks, the professionals who tend them and the visitors who throng to see them you may begin to feel that the flattery is ultimately deserved. ... More | | 
David Smith, Untitled (Study for Agricola I), 1951. Cast iron, paint, 46 1/4 x 36 1/2 x 11 in. Photo: Ken Adlard. Courtesy the Estate of David Smith and Hauser & Wirth © 2021 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
NEW YORK, NY.- In a 1952 lecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts, David Smith (1906 1965) described the inspiration behind one of his recent sculptures, saying My wish is that you travel by perception the path which I traveled in creating it. That same wish goes for the rest of my work. Taking its title from his remarks, David Smith: Follow My Path is view at Hauser & Wirth New York. The exhibition invites viewers to explore the daring artistic processes by which Smith revolutionized notions of sculptures form and function, embarking on new terrain in the field of abstraction. A member of the abstract expressionist generation, Smith eschewed the conventional sculptural methods of casting and carving in favor of modern industrial techniques and materials such as torch-cutting and welding iron and steel. Working first in Brooklyn and then largely in isolation in the remote hamlet of Bolton Landing in the Adir ... More | | 
Willem Wissing, Mary of Modena, ca. 1685, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.
by Brett Sokol
NEW HAVEN (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Call her mood one of anxious joy. As the Yale Center for British Art prepares to reopen June 4, its director, Courtney J. Martin, said she is thrilled to finally flip the lights back on. Recalling that somber moment in March 2020 when the center joined art institutions across the country in abruptly closing, she said, We left to an unknown we didnt know what we were going home to; we didnt know when we would return. Seeing art in person may not have seemed vital then, but its absence has since become palpable. Im so excited to be able to offer that again, Martin continued, as a place just to go and be for the summer. Now, with infections waning and Connecticuts vaccination rate one of the highest in the country, Yale is joining a second wave of institutions resuming public access, from the Smithsonian Institutions to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The Yale University Art Gallery, New Havens othe ... More |
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| The Royal Academy of Arts presents a new body of work created by David Hockney | | Coco's choice: A Charlie Hebdo cartoonist's road back from hell | | Exhibition at the Menil Drawing Institute explores the role of drawing in monumental forms | 
David Hockney, No. 186, 11th April 2020 . iPad painting © David Hockney.
LONDON.- The Royal Academy of Arts presents David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 comprising a new body of work created by David Hockney RA during a period of intense activity at his home in Normandy, charting the unfolding and progression of spring. The period in which these works were made coincided with the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, when Hockney, along with the rest of Europe and much of the world, was in a state of lockdown. Faced with an unprecedented and disconcerting period, Hockneys focus on the emergence of spring instead celebrates the natural world and urges people, as he does himself in one of his frequently used phrases, to love life. This is the first time the works have been exhibited, opening exactly a year after the works were made. Hockney has been fascinated by conveying the passing of time through painting and the exhibition presents over a hundred works t ... More | | 
The cartoonist Corinne Rey, known as Coco, in Paris on March 16, 2021. James Hill/The New York Times.
by Roger Cohen
PARIS (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For years after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, the most unbearable words for Corinne Rey, known as Coco, were these: In your place. Other people couldnt put themselves in her place at the satirical magazine. Others couldnt know what they would have done. On Jan. 7, 2015, Rey, a cartoonist, was leaving the magazines offices here to pick up her 1-year-old daughter from day care when she was confronted by two masked men brandishing assault rifles. They pointed the guns at her head. Take us to Charlie Hebdo! they shouted. You have insulted the Prophet. In her recently published graphic novel, To Draw Again, Rey, 38, portrays herself as a small, trembling figure being tracked up the stairs by two immense featureless shapes whose weapons bear down on her. That is how I saw them, she said in a recent interview in Paris. Monsters, dressed in black, huge, with no human ... More | | 
Claes Oldenburg, Proposed Colossal Monument for Park Avenue, New York - Bowling Balls, 1967. Graphite and watercolor on paper, 28 Ã 22 1/8 in. (71.1 Ã 56.2 cm). The Menil CollecƟon, Houston X 709.
HOUSTON, TX.- The Menil Collection is presenting Dream Monuments: Drawing in the 1960s and 1970s, exclusively on view at the Menil Drawing Institute from May 21September 19, 2021. Dream Monuments presents drawings that challenge the conventional idea of the monument as a permanent, grand, or commemorative form. The provisional character of drawing helped artists envision forms in improbable scales and for impossible conditions, radically transforming the monument to have a new set of sensibilities. Scaled to the size of the page but enormous in ambition, these works rethink history while rendering environments at turns as absurd, surreal, and subjective. The exhibition takes its inspiration from the unrealized exhibition Dream Monuments, planned by the Menil Collections founders Dominique and John de Menil. Letters, interviews, and notes indicate ... More |
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| First issue of The Shadow sets $156,000 world record in Pulp magazine auction at Heritage | | Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announce key appointments in Curatorial, Exhibition Design, and IT | | M HKA opens the first mid-career survey exhibition of artworks by Shilpa Gupta | 
The Shadow - April 1931 First Issue (Street & Smith) Condition: FN-.
DALLAS, TX.- A scarce first edition of The Shadow, published in April 1931 sold for $156,000 Thursday, May 20, at Heritage Auctions, setting a world record as the most expensive pulp magazine ever sold. The rare book, graded in Fine-minus condition, claimed top lot honors in a 586-lot special sale of rare pulp magazines and related collectibles. The price realized for The Shadow No. 1 is the highest recorded for a pulp of any kind, said Rick Akers, Consignment Director of Comics at Heritage Auctions. I expected it might pass $50,000, but things got pretty exciting when it surpassed $100,000, with heated live bidding. The consignor contacted me after the auction and said he was thrilled with everything from start to finish with Heritage Auctions and the results, Akers said. The online auction featured a 100 percent sell-through rate and realized $636,648, nearly three times expectations. Akers said the sa ... More | | 
Emily Beeny holds a PhD from Columbia University and is a specialist in French paintings and drawings of the 17th through 19th centuries.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco today announced the appointment of Emily Beeny as Curator in Charge of European Paintings after an extensive international search. The role will oversee the Museums holdings of more than 800 paintings from the 14th to early 20th centuries as well as the development of original exhibition programming. Also announced were the additions of Paul Peterson, who joined the institutions leadership team as the Director of Information Technology, and Alejandro Stein, who now serves as the Director of Exhibition Design. We are delighted to announce the appointments of these three leaders of their respective fields, states Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Together they will help us shape a new and important chapter at the de Young and Legion of Honor. ... More | | 
Shilpa Gupta, Singing Cloud, 2008-2009. Courtesy: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. Acquired with funding from The Augustinus Foundation. Installation view at Seoul Museum of Art, Media City Seoul 2010. Photo by: Myungrae Park. Object built with thousands of microphones with 48 multichannel audio, 9 min 30 sec audio loop, 457 x 61 x 152 cm.
ANTWERP.- Shilpa Gupta creates artworks that examine human relations, subjectivity and perception through themes such as desire, conflict, security, technology, borders and censorship. Her work is multi-faceted and often interactive, typically utilising media such as sculpture, installation, text and photography, and regularly displaying a mastery of audio and visual technologies. Considering technology as an extension of body and mind, Gupta possesses a sharp political consciousness towards the role, psychology and aesthetics of different media forms, particularly towards their complicity in the production of fear. Though her works could be interpreted as ... More |
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| MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna opens a solo exhibition by Italian artist Aldo Giannotti | | Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst opens an exhibition of works by artist Yael Davids | | Sixteen new member dealers from across the United States join the Art Dealers Association of America | 
Aldo Giannotti, Safe and Sound. Installation view, MAMbo Museo dArte Moderna di Bologna Photo: Valentina Cafarotti e/and Federico Landi.
BOLOGNA.- Safe and Sound, a solo exhibition by Italian artist Aldo Giannotti, curated by Lorenzo Balbi with the curatorial assistance of Sabrina Samorì, is hosted in the Chimneys Hall of MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna from 5th May to 5th May - 5th September 2021, after the postponements and a long wait caused by the Covid-19 emergency. The project, the winner of the 8th edition of the Italian Council competition, devised by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity (DGCC) of the Ministry of Culture to promote Italian contemporary art around the world, contemplates notions of safety and security considered from different perspectives. Ranging from the fundamental, existential aspect of safety, to regulations of the social sphere, to the technological impact on the field of security, the exhibition invites ... More | | 
Feldenkrais lesson with works by Stanley Brouwn and Bruce Nauman, Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2019, photo: Marcel de Buck.
ZURICH.- For the exhibition One Is Always a Plural, artist Yael Davids has selected art from the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunsts collection to bring into dialogue with her own works. She engages with the institution and its collection in an unusual manner. The foundational ideas of the Feldenkrais Method play a key role in the design of the exhibition and selection of works. This holistic body-oriented technique believes that movement principles form the basis of every human action, and it aims to expand self image through carefully performed movement sequences. Davids examines the potential of the Feldenkrais approach in a completely different area, in the experience of art. She invites visitors not only to see art but also to find another way of accessing it through body and movement. The artistic practice of Yael Davids (*1968, Jerusalem) focuses ... More | | 
TOTAH, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Art Dealers Association of America today announced the addition of 16 new members from across the country, one of the largest new member classes in the Associations history: Andrea Crane Fine Art (New York), DOCUMENT (Chicago), Andrew Edlin Gallery (New York), Jenkins Johnson Gallery (San Francisco, Brooklyn), Karma (New York), kurimanzutto (New York), Lisson Gallery (New York), Robert Mann Gallery (New York), Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), PATRON (Chicago), Nara Roesler (New York), Sprüth Magers (Los Angeles), Cristin Tierney Gallery (New York), TOTAH (New York), Various Small Fires (Los Angeles), and Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Los Angeles). They join over 170 members, from more than 30 cities across the U.S., in the nations leading nonprofit organization of fine art dealers, which is dedicated to supporting galleries cultural and economic contributions, and serves as a resource on the most import ... More |
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Marina Abramovic Celebrating (Women) Artists
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 First solo exhibition of works by February James in New York opens at Tilton GalleryNEW YORK, NY.- Tilton Gallery is presenting "When the Chickens Come Home To Roost," the first solo exhibition of paintings, watercolors and sculpture by February James in New York. February James makes evocative portraits that respond to memory and are located at the nexus between the private self and public persona. They are both profoundly personal and non-specific, imbued with a sense of mystery that allows the viewer to engage with the work and collaborate with it to find their own interpretation. The personas depicted are at once familiar and strange, very specific and yet could be any person one may have met or sat across from on the bus and wondered about their life history. One is simultaneously totally aware of their emotional state and in awe of the mystery surrounding their being. This evasiveness is central to February James' ... More  Miller & Miller announces an online-only Canadiana & Sporting auctionNEW HAMBURG.- The lifetime collections of Don and Joyce Blythe an astounding assemblage of stoneware, sporting advertising, decoys, powder tins, bottles in several categories, Canadiana and more will come up for bid in an online-only Canadiana & Sporting auction planned for Saturday, June 5th, by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., at 9 am Eastern time. Don and Joyce Blyth were both avid collectors until Dons recent passing. Included in the auction is a nearly comprehensive collection of Guelph merchant stoneware and bottles, among other pieces of Guelph, Ontario memorabilia. Also on offer is Don's collection of Canadian gun powder tins, decoys, sporting and firearms advertising and other rare items. To the Blyths, the thrill was in the hunt, said Ethan Miller, of Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd. The spoils of their eight-decades-long ... More  New-York Historical Society exhibition celebrates trailblazing media icon Katharine GrahamNEW YORK, NY.- The New-York Historical Society celebrates the extraordinary life and career of Katharine Graham (1917-2001), who made history leading the Washington Post at a turning point in modern American life. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Cover Story: Katharine Graham, CEO charts how Grahams life trajectory changed in the wake of her husbands death, as she went on to become one of the most influential figures in 20th-century American journalism, business, and politics. The monumental publishing decisions Graham made at the helm of the Washington Posthelping to end a war and a corrupt U.S. presidencyare brought to life through a host of photographs, letters, costumes, and objects on view May 21 October 3, 2021 in the Joyce B. Cowin Womens History Gallery. The ... More  Arthur Pomposello, impresario for a cabaret swan song, dies at 85NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Arthur Pomposello, host of the Oak Room, the cabaret supper club in New York City's Algonquin Hotel, practiced the arts of theatricality and discretion. A dark-haired former model in a tuxedo, he parted a red curtain to allow guests inside. He glided onstage and introduced Andrea Marcovicci, for decades the Oak Rooms main attraction, as our songbird. He gossiped with journalists about what he called my cabaret, and in return the papers gave him labels such as a loquacious fixture. But Pomposello could also work quietly. This is cabaret, he whispered to loud customers. We dont talk here. He rearranged the tables, making light crowds appear livelier and making big crowds fit. Inspectors would check to see if the small-capacity room exceeded legal limits. He would show them the kitchen or show them the ... More  Beethoven is more intimate than ever in new poemsNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Although much is known about Beethoven, whole swaths of his life remain elusive. His deafness, for one thing. He started experiencing hearing loss before he was 30. But how extensive was the initial problem? How quickly did it worsen? Its not clear. His most revealing words on the subject come in a letter he wrote (but never sent) to his brothers in 1802, while seeking isolation and resting his ears in Heiligenstadt, on the outskirts of Vienna. In the Heiligenstadt Testament, as it became known, his fear comes through poignantly. But what did it feel like to go deaf? What sensations did he experience? What did music sound like to him? British poet Ruth Padel tries to fathom this mystery, and other long-mythologized strands of the composers life story, in Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life, recently published ... More  Eiffel Tower to reopen July 16 as France eases Covid curbsPARIS (AFP).- The Eiffel Tower will reopen on July 16 after several months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Paris landmark's operator said on Thursday. Visitor numbers will be limited to 10,000 a day to meet social distancing requirements, fewer than half of their pre-Covid levels, operator Sete told AFP. All floors of the monument will be accessible to visitors, except some areas where renovation work is ongoing. Only 50 percent of the usual numbers will be allowed in the lifts. The Eiffel Tower has been undergoing the most extensive revamp of its 130-year history to look its best for the 2024 Paris Olympics, including with a paint job to give it a distinctly golden hue. But painting was suspended after traces of lead were found in existing layers, making it hazardous to continue. The re-opening marks the emergence of the 10-tonne metal landmark ... More  South Australia's Kate Bohunnis wins $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize 2021ADELAIDE.- 30-year-old South Australian Kate Bohunnis has been named the winner of the Art Gallery of South Australias $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize 2021, the nations most generous prize for Australian artists under forty. AGSA Director Rhana Devenport ONZM said, The Ramsay Art Prize sets out to elevate and accelerate careers for young contemporary Australian artists. Currently unrepresented by a commercial Gallerist, Bohunnis is a rising star in the contemporary art scene, and this winning work represents an ambitious leap in her practice. After majoring in printmaking at Adelaide College of the Arts, Bohunnis studied honours at Flinders University and started to incorporate metal fabricating, mould making, movement, textiles and sound into her artwork. In her winning work, a kinetic sculpture titled edges of excess, a pendulum, ... More  Review: Bill T. Jones' fragments for a fragmented timeNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Its been a year like no other, filled with tragedy and confusion, resilience and hope. It may feel like now is the time to dance, but its still not the time to dance the pain away. In Afterwardsness, a new presentation by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the point isnt to celebrate what the future holds, but to stay put, just for a second, in the moment. Created by Bill T. Jones and Janet Wong in collaboration with members of the company, Afterwardsness is named after Sigmund Freuds idea of the belated understanding of trauma. But what it explores, in part, are Jones in-the-moment feelings regarding what he sees as twin pandemics: the coronavirus and the unrelenting violence against Black bodies. Performed Wednesday at the Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, which commissioned the ... More  Galeria Catinca Tăbăcaru opens 'Dreams Made Flesh' curated by LuÃs Manuel AraújoBUCHAREST.- Galeria Catinca Tăbăcaru is presenting Dreams Made Flesh curated by LuÃs Manuel Araújo featuring works by Catinca Malaimare, Xavier Robles de Medina, Zoe Williams, and Bruno Zhu on view at Strada Mexic 1, Bucharest, Romania. Dreams Made Flesh is a group exhibition presenting works by four artists who explore how our identities are shaped by the objects we desire through the lens of a queer perspective. Queer desires are often oriented towards everyday objects that are considered illegitimate by normative society because their uses challenge the standardisation of sex, gender, and sexuality. This exhibition was conceived out of the belief that queerness can break the repetition of a scripted life and shamelessly create new material cultures by withstanding the oppression of normativity. The dialogue between the ... More  Fairfield Porter's Yawl in the Channel achieves top lot at Bonhams American Art saleNEW YORK, NY.- The May 20 sale of American Art was led by strong prices for works across all genres and the top lot was Fairfield Porters (1907-1975) Yawl in the Channel, painted in 1974-75, which sold for $725,313. The magnificent landscape came from The Estate of Yvonne de Chavigny Segerstrom, the famed artist, arts philanthropist, retail pioneer, and member of one of Americas greatest entrepreneurial families. The 66-lot sale achieved a total of $2,280,795, and was 89% sold by lot, 94% by value. Bonhams American Art specialist Aaron Anderson said: Yawl in the Channel is a historic painting and an outstanding example of Fairfield Porters oeuvre. This was the first time that this masterwork had been offered at auction, and I am delighted that it achieved such a great result at Bonhams. We also saw competitive bidding ... More  Albert Einstein letter with famous equation 'E = mc2' sold for $1,243,707 at auctionBOSTON, MASS.- A rare letter in which Albert Einstein writes out his famous equation, "E = mc2," the only known example in private hands, sold for $1,243,707, according to Boston-based RR Auction. In German, the one-page letter was written by Einstein to Polish-American physicist Ludwik Silberstein, dated October 26, 1946. In full (translated): "Your question can be answered from the E = mc2 formula, without any erudition. If E is the energy of your system consisting of the two masses, E0 the energy of the masses when they approach infinite distance, then the system's mass defect is E0 - E / c2. In your case, (E0 - E)pot = k m2/r. On account of the kinetic energy, however, the total energy deficit is only half as large, in accordance with the virial theorem. Therefore, if is the mass of the total system, 2m - M = 1/2 k/c2 m2/r on the first approximation, ... More |
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Frank Bowling 
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp & Hans Arp: Cooperations â Collaborations 
Future Retrieval
Flashback On a day like today, Belgian author and illustrator Hergé was born May 22, 1907. Georges Prosper Remi (22 May 1907 - 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. In this image: Georges Remi aka Hergé, Le Lotus Bleu, 1936, vendu 1,1 M€ / 1,25 M$ / 9,6 MHK$ (estimate : 1 000 000 – 1 500 000 € / 8 600 000 – 13 000 000 H$K) © Hergé/Moulinsart 2015.
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