| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, January 30, 2022 |
| | | In San Francisco, art that unspools the mysteries of the universe | |
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A photo by Matthew Millman/SFMOMA of works by Tauba Auerbach, whose mediums include painting, photography, design, music, sculpture and typography, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Franciso. Tauba Auerbachs eclectic works reignite wonder where art and science collide in this career survey. Matthew Millman/SFMOMA via The New York Times.
by Tausif Noor
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The past two years and counting, with their plague and political upheavals, have suggested that uncertainty is the order of the day. If it can be difficult to remember what pre-pandemic stability looked like, searching for signs to make sense of it all only feels right. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has turned to New York-based artist and designer Tauba Auerbach for answers. In characteristic fashion, Auerbach a Bay Area native has responded with further questions, doggedly seeking out new ways to induce tiny transformations in our perception of randomness. Recognizing that the very existence of randomness keeps us going, the artist has committed to a practice that maps the limits of what can possibly be known. Since 2009, Auerbach whose pronouns are they/them has sustained a rigorous drive for investigating both scientific and spiritual concepts, drawing equal inspiration from the precision of mathematical proofs, the intuitive features of reiki (a ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of the 'Francis Bacon: Man and Beast' exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (29 January - 17 April 2022). Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2022.
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| Charles Ray is pushing sculpture to its limit | | Hauser & Wirth opens an exhibition featuring works by Max Bill and Georges Vantongerloo | | The Royal Academy of Arts opens the first exhibition to chart Francis Bacon's fascination with animals |
Huck and Jim one of the works on display at Charles Ray: Figure Ground, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Jan. 22, 2022. Ray has been exploring the nude for 30 years male and female, old and young, including his own body. Charlie Rubin/The New York Times.
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK, NY.- I was looking up at the head, but I was mistaken. Charles Ray was instructing me to look at the foot. It was a freezing morning, and Ray and his crew had just finished installing a new work by this Los Angeles sculptor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was, like every Ray installation, a logistical feat his strangely sized nudes or eerie wrecked cars can weigh 4 tons or more but omicron breakouts had wrought havoc on the movement of sculptures and technicians, and this one almost didnt make it to New York. Archangel, 13.5 feet tall and seven years in the making, depicts a seminude young man in flip-flops and rolled-up jeans, carved from cypress by woodworkers in Japan. The pandemic prevented Ray from traveling to Osaka to approve the final work, ... More | |
Georges Vantongerloo, Composition émanante de lovoïde (Composition from the Ovoid), 1917. Mahogany painted, 16.5 x 6.5 x 6.5 cm / 6 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 in. Photo: Jon Etter. © 2022 ProLitteris, Zurich / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy the max bill georges vantongerloo foundation and Hauser & Wirth. Collection Angela Thomas Schmid, Zumikon.
NEW YORK, NY.- The lifelong friendship and extended written correspondence between Swiss artist Max Bill and Belgian-born artist Georges Vantongerloo united their independent artistic and intellectual endeavors and helped to push the boundaries of their work into new aesthetic realms. Hauser & Wirth New York is presenting crossover, an exhibition devoted to the two polymaths art and ideas, at the gallerys 69th Street location. Vantongerloo was, together with Piet Mondrian, a key member of the Dutch art movement de stjil. Bill, a former student of the Bauhaus, was deeply involved with the Paris-based abstraction-création artist collective beginning in 1933, a group that Vantongerloo was also a member of since 1931. The two first met in 1935 and felt an immediate appreciation and respect for each others distinct ... More | |
Installation view of the Francis Bacon: Man and Beast exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (29 January 17 April 2022). Photo: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2022.
LONDON.- The Royal Academy of Arts presents Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, the first exhibition to chart the development of the artists work through the lens of his fascination with animals, and how this impacted upon his treatment of his ultimate subject: the human figure. Francis Bacon (19091992) is recognised as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Since his death, the world has changed in ways that make his unnerving work ever more prescient. This important exhibition includes 46 remarkable paintings spanning his career; from his earliest works of the 1930s and 40s through to the final painting he ever made in 1991, which is exhibited publicly for the first time in the UK. Among the works, a trio of paintings of bullfights, all made in 1969, are displayed together for the first time. In Bacons paintings, man is never far from beast. That humankind is fundamentally an animal was a truth tha ... More |
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| The Fahey/Klein Gallery opens an exhibition of photographs and screenprints by Miles Aldridge | | Women's Museum presents first off-site contemporary art exhibition | | Jonathan Brown, pioneering historian of Spanish art, dies at 82 |
Miles Aldridge, Five Girls in a Car #3, 2013.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Fahey/Klein Gallery is presenting Miles Aldridge: High-Gloss, an exhibition of photographs and screenprints by renowned artist, Miles Aldridge. This exhibition features a selection of familiar and newly release images that, in pure Aldridge fashion, are glamorous yet probe societys idealized notions of domestic bliss, where sinister undercurrents swirl beneath a flawless surface. Miles Aldridge is a photographer who is well known for staging elaborate mise-en-scènes that have a film noir quality. The technicolor dream-like worlds he constructs are vibrant, fragmented narratives that defy expectations. Long interested in art history, his highly stylized work draws inspiration from representations of the female nude in art, as well as in pulp fiction and pin-ups. As Aldridge states: In my work there is always a push and pull between high and low art. Aldridge is a contemporary artist w ... More | |
Sarah Morris, Dulles, 2001; Print, silkscreen on paper, ed. 32/45, 29 x 29 in.; Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer; Photo by Aaron Wessling Photography.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Museum of Women in the Arts announces its first off-site exhibition to take place while its historic building is temporarily closed to the public for a major renovation. On view at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center from January 29 through May 22, 2022, Positive Fragmentation: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation includes more than 150 works by 21 contemporary artists who use fragmentation both stylistically and conceptually. This is the first showing of a multi-year tour organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Some of the artists pull apart images and ideas to expose what lies beneath or herald the value of each part. Others assemble fragments to create a new whole defined by its components. Employing a wide range of ... More | |
Jonathan Brown, right, guest curated an exhibition at the Frick Collection in New York on May 15, 2001. Bill Cunningham/The New York Times.
by Holland Cotter
NEW YORK, NY.- Jonathan Brown, an art historian, curator and teacher who produced magisterial studies of Diego Velázquez, El Greco and other painters of the so-called golden age of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish painting, and who went on to do groundbreaking work on Spanish colonial art in Latin America, died Jan. 17 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 82. Art historian Edward J. Sullivan, a longtime colleague of Browns at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, said the death came after a long, unspecified illness. When Brown entered the field in the 1960s, international academic attention to Spanish Baroque art was languishing under the long, repressive dictatorship of Francisco Franco. ... More |
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| The Morgan opens an exhibition celebrating the life and work of American poet Gwendolyn Brooks | | Geneva's Museum of Art and History challenges traditional display methods with new exhibition | | Hamiltons Gallery opens an exhibition of works by the gallery's represented artists. |
Jeff Donaldson (19322004), To Gwen with Love. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., 1971. The Estate of Jeff Donaldson, courtesy of Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Morgan Library & Museum is presenting Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poets Work in Community. This exhibition celebrates the life and work of American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (19172000). Though Brooks is well known for her poetry, few recognize her expansive social and political impact. The first Black author to win a Pulitzer Prize in any category, Brooks led a decades-long career marked by her engagement with struggles for racial justice. Her early writings centered around the people she grew up with and observed on the streets of Bronzeville, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Chicago. As her connections to this community grew in tandem with the international struggles against anti-Black racism, so did the scope of her poetry and her influence. Comprising ... More | |
Installation view. © Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, photo: Julien Gremaud.
GENEVA.- For its second major carte blanche exhibition, The Museum of Arts & History has enlisted leading French curator Jean-Hubert Martin to breathe new life into the museums permanent collection. Spanning over 3,550 m2 across two floors, the playful display features some 600 pieces, including loans from other Swiss institutions. Titled Draw Your Own Conclusion, the exhibition resists traditional display methods which favour chronology and didactic learning experiences. Instead, the show prioritises a sense of play and curiosity, orchestrating an unlikely dialogue between Naqada II pottery from Ancient Egypt, modern Kabuki Japanese prints and 19th-century Swiss painting. Since the second half of the 19th-century, museum conservation and display techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, leading to considerable advancements but often neglecting ... More | |
Mario Testino, Gisele, 2007.
LONDON.- Hamiltons Gallerys exhibition The Great and The Good presents a specially curated group of photographs by the gallerys represented artists. Visitors will recognise classic pictures by the likes of Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon alongside innovative, contemporary images by photographers such as Sir Don McCullin, Christopher Thomas, and Mario Testino. In its entirety, the exhibition reveals the photographys capacity to communicate timeless beauty whilst challenging the way we see the world. Hiro was a Japanese-American commercial photographer renowned for his fashion and still life photography for leading magazines such as Harpers Bazaar, Vogue and Rolling Stone. He was one of the longest-serving photographers of his generation, working from the 1950s until his passing in August 2021. Hiros photographic style was unlike anything that had ever been seen before his imagin ... More |
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| Exploring other worlds: Cosmogenesis by Lee Hunter opens at John Michael Kohler Arts Center | | Fine autographs and artifacts featuring royalty up for auction | | Impressive Biddle family tankard on offer at Freeman's |
Lee Hunter, The Devil's Playground at Dawn; Near the portal in E00085; Popular Mining Parallel; E00032, 2020; custom printed fabric and thread; 96 x 114 in. Courtesy of the artist.
SHEBOYGAN, WI.- An installation by multidisciplinary artist Lee Hunter explores the narrowing gap between apocalyptic fiction and the reality of climate change, while creating space for dreaming of new, viable futures. Lee Hunter: Cosmogenesis at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI, is on view from January 25 August 8, 2022. Using sculpture, photography, textiles and a range of other media, the exhibition presents a collection of objects focused on a futuristic narrative developed by the artist. Set in the near future, Cosmogenesis is an ongoing world-building project told through the perspective of an archivist sifting through the ephemera and material culture of legendary twenty-first century transdimensional travel cults, hoping to find a key to a new cosmos. The archive comprises photographs, ceramic figures and vessels, carved ... More | |
King Henry VIII Document Signed. Estimate: $35,000+. Ends on 02/09.
BOSTON, MASS.- Remarkable Royalty is featured in RR Auction's February Fine Autographs and Artifacts sale. Boasting 1,000+ lots, the auction is highlighted by royal autographs from the Tudor era to the present dayincluding King Henry VII, King Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, the Romanov princesses, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Charles. A high point of the Royal section is a King Henry VIII signed document. The one-page Vellum manuscript signed "Henry R," October 30, 1533. Warrant ordering Lord Windsor, Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, to deliver collars and chains for his dogs and costumes for royal leash-boys. According to Henry VIII: The King and His Court by Alison Weir: 'Henry's favourite pets were his dogs, especially beagles, spaniels, and greyhounds; the latter were considered a particularly noble breed. Over the years, the King sent hundreds of such dogs; all 'garnished with a good iron collar' as gifts to the Holy Roman Emperor and ... More | |
Created in 1892 by the firm of Pavel Ovchinnikov, one of Imperial Russias most famous jewelers and silversmiths, the tankard was presented the following year to Dr. Alexander W. Biddle in gratitude for his service to Russia during the famine of 1891-92.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Freemans presents present the highlight of its February 24 Gilded Age auctiona silver plique-à -jour and cloisonné tankard with impressive provenance and a remarkable significance to Philadelphia history. Offered at an estimate of $30,000-50,000, this historically significant and impressive tankard is a testament not only to the intricacy of 19th-century Russian metalwork, but also the strength of Russian-American diplomatic ties at the turn of the 20th century. Created in 1892 by the firm of Pavel Ovchinnikov, one of Imperial Russias most famous jewelers and silversmiths, the tankard was presented the following year to Dr. Alexander W. Biddle in gratitude for his service to Russia during the famine of 1891-92. Dr. Biddle, a descendant of the prominent Philadelphia Biddle family, was ... More |
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Slay-sian Tiger Lunar New Year Calligraphy
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For this tearful TV potter, it's all about the clay
LONDON.- When potter Keith Brymer Jones was approached to front a new TV show about making ceramics, he was skeptical. Pottery, on television? Really? It would be like watching paint dry, he recalled thinking. More than seven years later, he has proved himself wrong. That show, The Great Pottery Throw Down, is gentle reality TV, but its certainly not boring. It has built a loyal viewership that tunes in week after week to watch amateur potters transform lumps of clay into tea sets, chimneys, clocks and toilets. The show is currently airing its fifth season in Britain, with four seasons available to stream in the United States on HBO Max. Brymer Jones was running a large ceramics company, Make International, when the offer came through from Love Productions, the company that also made The Great British Bake Off (which screens in the United ... More
Peter Robbins, original voice of Charlie Brown, dies at 65
NEW YORK, NY.- Peter Robbins, whose voice brought the Peanuts character Charlie Brown to life on television in the 1960s but who struggled with mental illness and served prison time later in his life, died Jan. 18 in Oceanside, California. He was 65. The cause of death was suicide, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner. A list of his survivors was not immediately available. At age 9, Robbins achieved a breakthrough when the producers of the 1965 TV movie A Charlie Brown Christmas cast him as the voice of the hapless but endearing central character. Introduced in Charles Schulzs popular comic strip Peanuts, Charlie Brown would become a sentimental presence on the screen with his catchphrase, Good grief!, familiar yellow shirt and frequent teasing by his friend Lucy. Robbins, who was born Louis G. Nanasi, would ... More
Two of baseball's rarest cards, featuring Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb, make their auction debut in February
DALLAS, TX.- Gary Dean Simpson got into baseball card collecting like most other kids: "I was enamored of baseball, I was going to be a baseball player, and it was a bond with my dad." This was in the 1970s, when Gary Dean was just entering his teenage years prime time for a wannabe baller with a passion for gathering colorful cardboard keepsakes featuring hardball heroes, especially in small-town Mineral Wells, Texas, where the kid spent blazing-hot, bone-dry summers with his MaMa and PaPa, farmers by profession and antique traders by passion. By the time he turned 14, Simpson turned to the buying and selling of cards, taking out ads in Sports Collectors Digest and The Trader Speaks. He became a treasure hunter, accompanying his grandfather to antique stores in search of old cards to buy and sell. But it was one trip in particular that ... More
AstaGuru's second edition of 'Opulent Collectibles' Auction concludes successfully
MUMBAI.- AstaGurus annual Opulent Collectibles online auction concluded last evening with an impressive sales value of INR 6,62,51,808 Crores (US$ 920,116). The second edition of the auction featured a well-curated selection of 19th and 20th-century antique furniture and home décor collectibles, which celebrated the rich design aesthetics and traditions from different countries such as India, China, Japan, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The auction attracted collectors in large numbers who were looking to enrich their collections with pieces that are steeped in culture and history. Commenting on the results Sunny Chandiramani, Vice President, Client Relations, AstaGuru Auction House said, We are extremely pleased with the results from our second Opulent Collectibles auction with several lots surpassing their estimates. ... More
Carol Speed, vixen of the blaxploitation era, dies at 76
NEW YORK, NY.- Carol Speed, the leading lady of the cult blaxploitation films The Mack and Abby, who used her sex appeal for poignant drama in one and campy horror in the other, died Jan. 14 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She was 76. Her family announced her death in a statement published online. It did not specify the cause. A button-nosed Californian, Speed became a B-movie headliner in the 1970s playing a demon and a prostitute. For those roles, her fresh-faced prettiness provided a dramatic contrast, making it all the more striking for her to portray a character in the throes of lurid desire or enmeshed in a melancholy plight. The blaxploitation genre a burst of low-budget movies in the 1970s that starred Black actors and dealt with gritty urban themes often featured female characters who were forced against their will into danger and ... More
Joni Mitchell plans to follow Neil Young off Spotify, citing 'lies'
NEW YORK, NY.- Joni Mitchell said Friday that she would remove her music from Spotify, joining Neil Young in his protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Mitchell, an esteemed singer-songwriter of songs like Big Yellow Taxi, and whose landmark album Blue just had its 50th anniversary, posted a brief statement on her website Friday saying that she would remove her music from the streaming service. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives, she wrote. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue. Her statement adds fuel to a small but growing revolt over Spotify, with few major artists speaking out but fans commenting widely on social media. The debate has also brought into relief questions about ... More
Beegie Adair, a jazz master in country music's capital, dies at 84
NEW YORK, NY.- Beegie Adair, whose status as a renowned jazz pianist was all the more noteworthy for the place where she built her career Nashville, Tennessee, the home of country music died Sunday at her home in Franklin, Tennessee. She was 84. Monica Ramey, her manager and frequent vocal partner, confirmed the death. She did not provide a cause but said Adair had been in failing health. If you happened to live in Nashville and found yourself more a fan of Cole Porter than Porter Waggoner, chances are you came across Adair at some point in her six-decade career. Starting in the early 1960s, she could be found at least once a week playing at the Carousel, a downtown nightclub, or later at F. Scotts, a restaurant in the Green Hills neighborhood. Being a jazz musician in Nashville is something like being a surfer in Las ... More
'The Exiles' and 'Nanny' win top prizes at Sundance
NEW YORK, NY.- Horror/drama Nanny from first-time feature filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu nabbed the U.S. Grand Jury prize at this years Sundance Film Festival, which was primarily virtual for the second year in a row. The film about a Senegalese nanny working for a privileged family in New York City generated strong reviews and is still looking for distribution. The Exiles, about three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, won the Grand Jury prize for U.S. documentary. Utama, a Bolivian character portrait, nabbed the top award for world dramatic film, while Indian documentary All That Breathes took the world documentary Grand Jury Prize. Cha Cha Real Smooth nabbed the Audience Award in the U.S. dramatic competition just days after it sealed a $15 million distribution deal with Apple the biggest sale of the festival. ... More
Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens Board of Trustees announces appointment of four new members
JACKSONVILLE, FLA.- The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens Board of Trustees announces the appointment of four new members: Sallie Ball, Susan DuBow, Ronald Rettner and Elaine Stallings. Sallie, Susan, and Elaine will each serve a three-year term that began on October 1, 2021. Ron will serve a two-year term as he fills a vacancy on the Board. His term began on December 2, 2021. "On behalf of the trustees, we are so pleased to welcome these four dynamic community leaders to our Board, said Pam D. Paul, Board of Trustees Chair. We are very intentional about adding a diverse group of new trustees to ensure that our Board reflects our city. Their combined experience in business and nonprofit leadership adds tremendous depth to the governance of our Museum and guarantees it will continue to thrive well into the future. The Museum ... More
The art design for abolitionist place in Brooklyn moves forward
NEW YORK, NY.- New York City is pushing forward with an artwork to celebrate the abolitionist movement that some detractors have said is too abstract in a city where so few monuments honor Black people with figurative sculptures. The citys plan, still undergoing review, features a design by artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed that incorporates messages of social justice into the benches and borders of a new $15 million park in Brooklyn named Abolitionist Place. The site belongs to a corner of downtown Brooklyn that adjoins 227 Duffield St., which received landmark status last year for its connection to anti-slavery advocates of the 1800s. The citys Public Design Commission said it had tabled the discussion of the design plan last January, after a group of preservationists and activists said they thought the plan should feature statuary ... More
Tito Matos, virtuoso of a Puerto Rican sound, dies at 53
NEW YORK, NY.- Tito Matos, a master percussionist, revered educator and lifelong champion of the Puerto Rican style of music known as plena, died Jan. 18 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 53. His wife, Mariana Reyes Angleró, said the cause was a heart attack. Matos was a virtuoso of the requinto, the smallest and highest-pitched hand-held drum, or pandereta, used in plena. Rooted in African song traditions, plena emerged in the early 20th century on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and came to be known as el periódico cantado, or the sung newspaper. In street-corner style, it narrated stories, some gossipy, about love and the concerns of everyday working-class and Black Puerto Ricans. In its early years, wealthy elites maligned the genre. Matos was a member of multiple plena groups but first gained wide recognition with the band Viento ... More
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PhotoGalleries
'In-Between'
Primary Colors
The Last Judgment
Golden Shells and the Gentle Mastery of Japanese Lacquer
Flashback On a day like today, British painter Patrick Heron was born January 30, 1920. Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 - 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall. Throughout his career, Heron worked in a variety of media, from the silk scarves he designed for his fatherâs company Cresta from the age of 14, to a stained-glass window for Tate St Ives, but he was foremost a painter working in oils and gouache. In this image: Susanna Heron poses with Patrick Heronâs Nude in Wicker Chair, 1951.
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