| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, April 16, 2023 |
| | | Yes, people will pay $27,500 for an old 'Rocky' tape. Here's why. | |
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Rare action figures at Heritage Auctions, which exemplify the marketing of nostalgia as a powerful tool the company leans into, in Dallas, Texas on Jan. 26, 2023. The offices of Heritage Auctions look like a cross between an Amazon warehouse and a very wide-ranging museum, with a dash of âHoardersâ thrown in. (Zerb Mellish/The New York Times)
by David Streitfeld
NEW YORK, NY.- Just about everyone has somewhere special they went when young, a place that glows in memory. For some it may be a library or game arcade, for others a baseball field or bookstore. For Jay Carlson, growing up in western Massachusetts in the early 1990s, the center of the universe was the video rental store. This was before streaming, before Netflix, before DVDs. The videocassette player was the summit of consumer technology. At the rental shop, 12-year-old Jay would bump into friends and neighbors, hear about something that couldnt be missed, talk up his own favorites. It was like social media before social media was invented. He grew up, got married, had children, went to work in the finance department of a retailer. Technology moved on, but his heart did not. One day, he saw in his local comics store a tape of Ghostbusters, the first movie his parents let him pick out himself. It was $7, still sealed from the factory. I said to my wife, I think I might s ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Alex Katz: Collaborations with PoetsKatz, Poetry Foundation Installation Images
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| Gagosian London exhibits new works by Richard Wright | | Rare Proof of 1829 Half Eagle leads Harry W. Bass Collection, Part III, at Heritage Auctions | | The art collection of music industry legend Mo Ostin unveiled at Sotheby's |
Richard Wright, No Title, 2023 (detail). Acrylic on door, 106 3/8 x 35 1/2 x 1 3/4. © Richard Wright. Photo: Prudence Cumin Associates Ltd.
LONDON.- Gagosian is presenting an exhibition by Richard Wright featuring painted objects, works on paper, books, and painting executed on the gallery interior. Wright is known for large-scale and site-specificbut often temporarypainted and applied metal-leaf installations and leaded window works that invest architectural spaces with new optical and associative complexity. Shifting between illusionism and abstraction, his projects alter the viewers perception of space. Incorporating graphic and ornamental elements, they allude to Minimalism and Renaissance art, as well as to commercial image making. In his stylistically diverse works on paper, Wright employs ink drawing, gilding, printmaking, enamel, and watercolor painting techniques. A new site-specific painting at the Davies Street gallery incorporates the surfaces of an internal door, Wright once again disrupting ... More | |
1829 $5 Large Diameter, Large Date, BD-1, R.7, PR66+ PCGS. JD-1, R.8 as a Proof.
DALLAS, TX.- The key elements that drive desire for important coins rarity, condition and a history of residence in elite collections all are in place for an elusive prize that will be available in Heritage Auctions' CSNS US Coins Signature® Auction May 3-7. The 1829 half eagle Large Diameter, Large Date, BD-1, R.7, PR66+ PCGS. JD-1, R.8 as a Proof that will be offered is one of just two proofs known of this magnificent coin, which is among the most coveted of 122 lots from the The Harry W. Bass, Jr. Core Collection, Part III that will be up for grabs in the five-day event. In Heritage's Jan. 5 The Bass Collection, Part II US Coins Signature® Auction - Orlando FUN, 30 records were set on the way to a total of $24,322,741. The event was the second installment of the collection of Harry W. Bass; proceeds from the auction will benefit the dozens of Dallas-based nonprofits supported by the Harry W. Bass Jr. Foundation, with a particular emph ... More | |
René Magritte, LEmpire des lumières, August September 1951, oil on canvas, 31 5/8 by 25 7/8 in. Estimate $35 45 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- He listened to artists and always put them first, was how Fleetwood Mac singer and songwriter Stevie Nicks remembered Mo Ostin (1925 - 2022), the legendary record executive who was pivotal in the bands ascent to the rocknroll pantheon. In a rare interview, Ostin echoed this sentiment, explaining that, in his view, the artist is the person who should be in the foreground. Mo Ostins unerring ear for music, his instinctive ability to identify artistic talent and his transformative role in the music industry have despite his own famous modesty been widely celebrated. Described as one of the greatest record men of all time, and a prime architect of the modern music business, Ostin presided over Warner Bros. Records for more than three decades and was a leader in the field for more than half a century, instrumental in transforming a traditional industry with a staid ... More |
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| A selection of rare 18K gold Omega chronographs among items in Space Exploration and Aviation auction | | Heritage's May 9 auction features legendary offerings from D.C.'s famed The Guitar Shop | | Edward Koren, 87, whose cartoon creatures poked fun at people, dies |
Filled with flown material, astronaut autographs, and significant space watches, RR Auction's Spring Space Exploration sale has 'the right stuff' for every space collector.
BOSTON, MASS.- The auction will open with an unprecedented selection of rare 18K gold Omega chronographs presented to the pioneering astronauts of the 1960s. Omega initially created 26 of these gold commemorative watchesknown as the 'Tribute to Astronauts' watchto present to NASA astronauts alive and deceased, with the case back of each watch specially engraved with a quote, the name and missions of the astronaut, and a unique number relative to when the astronaut flew into space. The top lot is the Omega Speedmaster awarded to the late Gus Grissom, commander of Gemini III, whose family had accepted the 18-karat gold timepiece at a dinner in Houston, Texas, in November 1969. What sets this trio of Omega watches apart is that it might be the lowest-numbered example ever to reach the market, following behind Nixon and Agnew's pieces with estimates suggesting it could fetch over $350,000. Grissom's ... More | |
1965 Fender Precision Bass Ice Blue Metallic Electric Bass Guitar, Serial #106706.
DALLAS, TX.- In his 2011 obituary for Washington, D.C.'s celebrated The Guitar Shop, The Washington Post's John Kelly lamented the demise of the 89-year-old "oasis of blues, flamenco, rock, classical, gypsy, mariachi, any music that could be picked, plucked or strummed." Yet its owner, Steve Spellman, could not delay the inevitable any longer: It had come time to take his inventory online and shutter the brick-and-mortar landmark, whose luminous offerings beckoned from a Dupont Circle second-story window. "For decades, we were open six, seven days a week, sometimes when there were two and a half feet of snow on the ground, and nobody in their right mind was open," the 79-year-old Spellman says with a chuckle. "Now we're always open. But I don't have to open the door right now." In 1968, Spellman was a Guitar Shop student and customer when he took the reins from Sophocles Papas, a classical guitarist (and friend of Andres Segovia's) who opened the shop in 1922. The Post called Papas "the Johnny Appl ... More | |
For six decades in The New Yorker and elsewhere, his hairy, toothy, long-nosed characters offered witty commentary on the foibles of the American middle class.
NEW YORK, NY.- Edward Koren, the New Yorker cartoonist who created a fantasy world of toothy, long-nosed, hairy creatures of indeterminate species that articulated the neuroses and banalities of middle-class America for six decades, died Friday at his home in Brookfield, Vermont. He was 87. His wife, Curtis Koren, said the cause was lung cancer. In the gentle, affable kingdom of Koren, the beasts form a polite queue in the woods at a 24-hour banking ATM attached to a tree. They line up to board Noahs Ark but must pass through security-gate metal detectors. And as smiling cockroaches, they cluster like tourists with a city skyline in the backdrop. One takes a group selfie. With Charles Addams, James Thurber and Saul Steinberg, Koren was one of the most popular cartoonists in The New Yorkers long love affair with humor. To connoisseurs, his pen-and-ink creatures, with or without captions, were instantly recognizable: nonconfrontational ... More |
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| Christie's Hong Kong to offer the Cissy and Robert Tang Collection of Chinese Classical Furniture | | Solo exhibition by Los-Angeles based artist Richard Nam opens at Praz-Delavallade Projects | | National Gallery of Art acquires work by Vera Lutter |
A Huanghuali Square-corner Rectangular Cabinet and Stand 18th Century, 71 in. (180.5 cm.) high overall. Estimate: HK$1,500,000 2,500,000 / US$200,000 320,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2023.
HONG KONG.- On 30 May, Christie's will present the live auction "A Connoisseur's Studio: The Cissy and Robert Tang Collection of Chinese Classical Furniture" at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, featuring a diverse selection of rare and exquisite huanghuali furniture and scholarly objects, thoughtfully assembled 30 years ago by the Justice Robert Tang. As a collector, I have purchased pieces I found attractive, that appealed to me Every piece of furniture had to fit into my home and have a function. --Mr. Tang Encompassing a diverse array of forms and functions, this elegant collection features distinguished Chinese furniture, including armchairs, bookcases, screens, cabinets, tables and stools, as well as refined scholarly objects. Each item resonates ... More | |
Richard Nam, Terrible Lizards, Exhibition View, 2023.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Praz-Delavallade Projects Los Angeles is presenting Terrible Lizards, a solo exhibition by Los-Angeles based artist Richard Nam. The exhibition runs from 15 April to 13 May 2023. Nams paintings in Terrible Lizards present a variety of ancient, monstrous creatures that used to roam the earth two-hundred-thirty million years ago. Through scenic and portraiture gestures, Nam explores the mythical time of these dominant terrestrial vertebrates of its time across the tranquil and apocalyptic landscape, some in motion and others anthropomorphized. The paintings attempt to frolic with time and temperature, playing with colors and textures onto the surfaces, to capture the true essence of these creatures that have long been extinct. Nams work is also inspired by his interest in paleontology and the history of the earth. The true image of different kinds of dinosaurs are unknown and how they behaved, ... More | |
Vera Lutter, Radio Telescope, Effelsberg 111, September 2, 2013, 2013. Gelatin silver print. Image: 89 1/4 x 56 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Sharyn and Bruce Charnas 2022.152.1
WASHINGTON, DC.- For the past 30 years, Vera Lutter (b. 1960) has explored the most elemental aspects of photography: the action of light on photosensitive materials and the ability to capture a moment in time. The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired Radio Telescope, Effelsberg 111, September 2, 2013 (2013) as a gift from Sharyn and Bruce Charnas. In this work Lutters fascination with time is apparent in both her subject and her process. In 2013 Lutter traveled to Germany to photograph the Effelsberg telescope, one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. She used a camera obscura, the oldest type of camera known to humankind, in which a room or a box is darkened save for one small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto the opposite ... More |
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| Hermès Diamond Himalayan Kelly, one of the rarest handbags ever created, lands at Heritage Auctions | | Christie's announces new grant for Nazi-era provenance research | | Bold and beautiful: Colored gemstones shine at Heritage Auctions in May |
Hermès 35cm Matte White Himalayan Niloticus Crocodile Retourne Kelly Bag with 18K White Gold and Diamond Hardware.
DALLAS, TX.- The most desirable handbag in the world will take center stage during Heritage Auctions' May 4 Luxury Accessories Signature® Auction. The Hermès 35cm Diamond Matte White Himalayan Niloticus Crocodile Kelly (estimate: $240,000-$260,000) one of the rarest bags ever created is encrusted with 229 diamonds set in 18k white gold hardware and totaling 8.08 carats. But it's not just the gems that make this handbag shine. Fashioned from the hide of Africa's largest crocodilian, this wearable work of art features a spectacular but delicate ombre of smoky gray fading into luminous white an effect that evokes the majestic snow-capped Himalayas for which the bag is named. Achieving the effect requires a painstaking process of delicate hand-dyeing and bleaching, a technique that becomes more difficult and time-consuming as the color lightens. Beyond that, as with all Hermès creations, ... More | |
Each Grant recipient also will receive professional mentorship with a member of Christies international Restitution team to further support their work. Applications will be accepted until 31 May, and award recipients will be announced on 3 December 2023, to coincide with the Washington Conference anniversary.
NEW YORK, NY.- In addition to hosting a year-long global programme marking the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles, Christies announced the 2023 Christies Grant for Nazi-Era Provenance Research. The Grant, to be offered to three scholars worldwide (£5,000 each), will fund forward-thinking academic post-graduate research into subjects related to Nazi-era provenance studies. Each Grant recipient also will receive professional mentorship with a member of Christies international Restitution team to further support their work. Applications will be accepted until 31 May, and award recipients will be announced on 3 December 2023, to coincide with the Washington Conference anniversary. Sarah Done, Director, Christies Restitution Department explains: ... More | |
33.56 ct Ceylon Sapphire. Estimate: $200,000 - $300,000.
DALLAS, TX.- Nothing sparkles like a diamond, it's true, but nothing makes a statement like a stunning colored gemstone. For proof, look no further than Princess Diana's brilliant blue sapphire engagement ring. The ring, one of the most recognizable pieces of jewelry in history, turned heads in the 1980s and continues to do so now that it's worn by the new Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton. Though the vibrant hues of the Big Three sapphires, emeralds and rubies still reign supreme in collections the world over, other colorful gems, including deep-red spinels and nearly neon Paraiba tourmalines, also stand out in a crowd. During Heritage Auctions' May 8 Spring Fine Jewelry Signature® Auction, the Big Three join spinels, tourmalines, and more to make up the largest selection of unmounted colored gemstones Heritage has ever offered in a jewelry auction. The single-owner Edgehill Collection constitutes the majority of the unmounted gems and ... More |
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Hans Coper: Monumental bottle | London | April 2023
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How Broadway theater owners are trying to block a Times Square casino
NEW YORK, NY.- Some New Yorkers may love Times Square; some definitely hate it. That also goes for a casino that may be headed there. Caesars Entertainment and SL Green Realty Corp., New York Citys largest commercial landlord, say that Times Square with its neon lights and jostling tourists is tailor-made for their Jay-Z-backed bid for a parlor of one-armed bandits and roulette wheels. Via their Coalition for a Better Times Square, they have enlisted dozens of local supporters, including roughly a dozen restaurants in the area; two hotel chains with properties nearby; several unions, including the Actors Equity Association and Local 802, which represents Broadway musicians; two local stores; and a handful of landlords. But Max Klimavicius, the owner of the century-old Sardis restaurant, would like a word. A casino in Times Square ... More
K-Beauty's brush with fine art
NEW YORK, NY.- I am ginseng, boomed the voice of Tilda Swinton to partygoers in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Temple of Dendur, where Sulwhasoo, the Korean beauty brand, was throwing a lavish dinner to celebrate its new partnership with the 152-year-old institution. A promotional video featuring Swinton played overhead, depicting a ginseng root spinning in circles. The British actress had been named Sulwhasoos global ambassador, but couldnt attend because she was filming. Still, the evenings guest list was a whos who of Korean excellence, including global pop star Rosé, of K-pop group Blackpink, Academy Award-winning actress Yuh-Jung Youn, writer Cathy Park Hong and Michelin-starred chef Junghyun Park, who had prepared the ginseng-inspired menu. Rapper Anderson .Paak was the DJ for the after-party. Sulwhasoo is my moms ... More
Review: Ayodele Casel shares the floor with varied visions of tap
NEW YORK, NY.- Tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel often tells the story of learning, for the first time, about the African American roots of tap. She grew up loving Ginger Rogers, but it wasnt until college that a friend introduced her to names like Jimmy Slyde, Bill Robinson, Gregory Hines and the Nicholas Brothers. It opened my whole world, she said on the conversation series Black Dance Stories in 2020, because finally I realized that this thing I was so in love with and drawn to, even though I didnt know that much about it, was really rooted in ancestry and a legacy that was mine. From then on, she vowed to present tap and herself with the utmost integrity, in honor of my ancestors, in honor of all the progenitors of the form. That story came to mind watching Casels characteristically generous and vivacious program ... More
One of 35 known 'Watermelon' $100 bills among refreshing offerings at Heritage Auctions' CSNS currency event
NEW YORK, NY.- One of the banknotes that is among the most popular with collectors will offer a savory treat to its next owner, after it is sold in Heritage Auctions' CSNS Currency Signature® Auction May 3-5. The Fr. 377 $100 1890 Treasury Note PCGS Banknote About Unc 50 Details is known as the "Watermelon $100" because of the iconic design on the reverse, in which the zeroes resemble the popular large fruit from the same family as cucumbers and pumpkins. "Watermelon notes are always in exceptionally high demand, and Watermelon $100s are exceedingly rare," says Dustin Johnston, Vice President of Numismatics at Heritage Auctions. "The example in this auction is one of only 35 ... More
'I Raised Them!' Nina Ananiashvili's Georgian dancers come to town
NEW YORK, NY.- Nina Ananiashvili, a former star of American Ballet Theatre, is no tourist to New York City, but shell have fun playing one when the State Ballet of Georgia comes to town. As part of a short American tour, the company, led by Ananiashvili, will perform Sunday at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx. We will dance one day, but I will stay a little bit for Valentina Kozlovas competition, she said of the international ballet event in a recent video interview. So Im a tourist for three days. The company based in Tbilisi, where Ananiashvili was born will present two masterworks by George Balanchine, Serenade and Concerto Barocco, along with an homage to Georgia: Sagalobeli by Ukrainian-born Yuri Possokhov. Its a rare chance to see how Ananiashvili has transformed the company, which she took ... More
The Phandom of the Opera
NEW YORK, NY.- The Phantom of the Opera, the longest running show in Broadway history, will give its final performance Sunday, bringing its glittering chandelier crashing down on the stage of the Majestic Theatre for the 13,981st and final time. Its success was powered by all kinds of engines, perhaps none more striking than the group of die-hard patrons who call themselves Phans. They come from all over the world, drawn by its soaring Andrew Lloyd Webber score and Gothic love story, and have devoted themselves to the show, seeing it as often as possible, of course, but also collecting memorabilia, dressing up as characters, and conversing about it online. Frank Radice, a Long Island call center operator, proposed to his wife at a Phantom installation in a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and Tracy ONeill of Connecticut ... More
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Gabriele Münter
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Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Mexican architect Pedro RamÃrez Vázquez was born April 16, 1919. Pedro RamÃrez Vázquez (April 16, 1919 - April 16, 2013) was a late twentieth century Mexican architect. He was born in Mexico City. He was persuaded to study architecture by writer and poet Carlos Pellicer. In this image: National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
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