The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, December 14, 2023



 
Dream of talking to Vincent van Gogh? AI tries to resurrect the artist.

Vistors experieince a virtual reality experience, “Van Gogh’s Palette” at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris on Dec. 5, 2023. In “Bonjour Vincent” at the Musée d’Orsay, Vincent van Gogh chats with visitors, courtesy of artificial intelligence. AI developers have learned to gently steer the conversation on sensitive topics like suicide to messages of hope.(Elliott Verdier/The New York Times)

by Zachary Small


PARIS.- Vincent van Gogh has been surprisingly busy for a dead man. His paintings have featured in major museum exhibitions this year. Immersive theaters in cities like Miami and Milan bloom with projections of his swirling landscapes. His designs now appear on everything from sneakers to doormats, and a recent collaboration with the Pokémon gaming franchise was so popular that buyers stampeded at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, forcing it to suspend selling the trading cards in the gift shop. But one of the boldest attempts at championing van Gogh’s legacy yet is at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where a lifelike doppelgänger of the Dutch artist chats with visitors, offering insights into his own life and death (replete with machine-learning flubs). “Bonjour Vincent,” intended to represent the painter’s humanity, was assembled by engineers using artificial intelligence to parse through some 900 letters that the artist wrote during the 1800s, as well as early biographie ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Childhood photographs of CNN anchor, author and podcast host Anderson Cooper and his brother, Carter, in the historic firehouse that he bought for $4.3 million in 2009, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan on Nov. 13, 2023. On the bookshelves and side tables of a living room in Cooper’s converted firehouse are various objects he recovered from his mother’s home. (Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times)






Earliest meetings of Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys revisited in exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac   At Trump's fraud trial, a courtroom artist with a different view   Anderson Cooper's newest assignment: Grief (His Own)


Andy Warhol. Joseph Beuys, Lucio Amelio [Gallery], Naples 1980; Joseph Beuys 1921-1986; Tate, ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008; © DACS, 2023; Photo: Tate.

LONDON.- Revisiting the earliest meetings of Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys in 1979, this exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac London brings together a selection of Warhol's celebrated portraits of Beuys. While the Beuys portraits are held internationally in the collections of major institutions - including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, and Tate, London - this is the first time the group of works has been presented in a solo focus show since they were exhibited in the 1980s. The two giants of art history first encountered one another in person at an exhibition opening at Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Germany. Described by the American writer David Galloway as having 'all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon,' the moment marked a key point of contact between the leading representatives of European and American art. The pair met on several further occasions that year, including on 30 October 197 ... More
 

Artist Isabelle Brourman, shows a mixed media work she created at the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump, in her apartment in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Dec. 6, 2023. (Lila Barth/The New York Times)

by Zachary Small


NEW YORK, NY.- When former President Donald Trump’s eyes drifted shut as his former accountant testified during his civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court this fall, no photographers captured the moment: Cameras were banned during the trial. But several courtroom artists — an anachronistic group that continues to use chalky pastels to draw scenes from camera-free courtrooms to sell to TV stations and newspapers — were on it, erasing Trump’s pupils from their sketches. “He’s nodding off!” artist Isabelle Brourman whispered to a colleague. Brourman, a 30-year-old newcomer, was not part of the dwindling coterie of commercial courtroom artists who make their livings selling cinematic, sometimes vaguely expressionistic trial drawings to news outlets. She is there for a different kind of art project: A mixed media artist, she has found herself drawn to big trials, sketching the Johnny ... More
 

The CNN anchor, author and podcast host Anderson Cooper at home in the historic firehouse that he bought for $4.3 million in 2009, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan on Nov. 13, 2023. (Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times)

by Rukmini Callimachi


NEW YORK, NY.- It took Anderson Cooper more than a year after his mother’s death to begin clearing out her apartment. It was an emotionally draining task, one that he put off — something his mother may have anticipated, because she left him a road map. He began finding notes she had left him, tucked away in drawers and sealed containers. Written in her hand on heavy stationery, they acted as a kind of treasure hunt to their shared grief. Cooper’s mother, heiress and fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, was one of the most famous women in the world, courted by Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando, photographed by Richard Avedon, and a muse to Truman Capote, who is believed to have based the character of Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” partly on her. Just sorting through her personal papers would have been challenging for her son after her death at the age of 95 in 2019. But the apartment was also the final ... More


'Birthday Boy: Jubilation and Melancholia' by Zipora Fried is his third exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.   Edwynn Houk Gallery has reception and book signing with the artist Elinor Carucci   National Theater, source of Broadway hits, gets its first female leader


Zipora Fried, Benevolent Fever, 2023 (detail). Colored pencil on archival museum board; 58 x 94 inches (147.3 x 238.8 cm).

NEW YORK, NY.- Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is now presenting Birthday Boy: Jubilation and Melancholia, a solo exhibition of recent work by artist Zipora Fried. This is the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery, presenting a recent series of color-pencil abstract drawings and new ceramic works. “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” ―Soren Kierkegaard. The drawings featured in Birthday Boy: Jubilation and Melancholia reiterate color and line as the most foundational elements of Fried’s colored-pencil abstractions. Rows of luminous pigment are built up line by line, with each stroke of the pencil existing as both a self-contained singular gesture and a constituent strand of a greater whole. As one’s gaze travels across Fried’s chromatic landscapes, lighter hues meld into vibrant saturation, while deeper tones unfurl into areas of shadow. Fried v ... More
 

Elinor Carucci, Early in Ginsburg's time on the Supreme Court, 2020.


NEW YORK, NY.- Edwynn Houk Gallery is presenting Elinor Carucci’s photographs of the collars of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in conjunction with the publication of her fifth monograph, The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Portrait of Justice, with Sara Bader (Clarkson Potter/Random House, 14 November 2023). The opening reception and book signing with the artist is today, Thursday, December 14th, and the exhibition will continue through February 10th, 2024. Elinor Carucci (b. 1971) is an Israeli-American photographer of Mizrahi Jewish descent, who immigrated to New York in 1995. Her work exploring intimate personal spaces with her own body and family has garnered awards from the ICP (2001), the Guggenheim Foundation (2002) and NYFA (2010). Her photographs encompass an intimate portrait of her family (Closer, 2002); mending partnerships (Crisis, 2003); a behind- ... More
 

The National Theatre in London, on Dec. 14, 2022. National Theater, source of Broadway hits, gets its first female leader; Indhu Rubasingham will lead the venerable London institution where plays including “War Horse” and “The Lehman Trilogy” originated. (Tom Jamieson/The New York Times)

by Alex Marshall


NEW YORK, NY.- Since the National Theater opened in London in 1963, its artistic directors have been among the greats of British theater: Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn, Nicholas Hytner and Rufus Norris. They also had two other things in common. All six are white men. On Wednesday, the theater brought that era to an end when it announced the appointment of Indhu Rubasingham to the top position. She will be the first woman and person of color to lead the National Theater. Rubasingham, 53, will join next spring, the theater said in a news release. She will work for a year alongside Norris, who is departing, before taking sole charge in spring 2025, when she will also share the role ... More



Skull of ancient 'Sea Monster' With daggerlike teeth discovered in England   Self-taught artist Timothy Cummings's fantasy filled paintings to be exhibited at Nancy Hoffman Gallery   Mitchell-Innes & Nash opening inaugural show by artist Marcus Leslie Singleton


An artist’s rendering of a pliosaur attacking a smaller animal. by Livia Albeck-Ripka and Derrick Bryson Taylor. (BBC Studios via The New York Times).

NEW YORK, NY.- In the spring of 2022, Philip Jacobs, an artist and fossil hunter, was walking along the Jurassic Coast in southern England when he came across a snout. It was about 2 feet long, complete with teeth, and appeared to have come from an ancient ocean predator known as a pliosaur. When crews returned days later with a drone, they found the snout had fallen from a cliff towering over the beach — embedded in the cliff was the rest of the skull. The more than 6-foot-long fossil, with the skull intact and no bones missing, is the “discovery of a lifetime,” one expert said. “There are some special features in it that we haven’t seen on the previous ones that have been discovered,” Steve Etches, a paleontologist who has been collecting fossils for more than 40 years and was involved in the excavation, said by phone Monday. “And it’s the most complete. So the whole ... More
 

Timothy Cummings, Béret Beauté, 2023. Acrylic on board, 10 x 8inches.

NEW YORK, NY.- An exhibition of paintings by self-taught artist Timothy Cummings will open at Nancy Hoffman Gallery today, where it will remain on view through Saturday, January 27, 2024. While most of Cummings’s paintings are dream-like fantasies filled with myriad detail and discovery, each has a figure or figures. Much of Cummings’s work addresses the issue of youthful turmoil, of that awkward moment between childhood and adulthood, of identity, of gender. The artist often paints figures as a child might conjure them in his/her mind, giving a dreamlike, fantasy quality to a grown-up persona. Mostly intimate in scale on small wooden panels (from 8 x 10 to 38 x 48 inches), Cummings’s acrylic paintings, carefully and meticulously created, suggest a master’s technique with imagery that could only be contemporary. Inspired by Renaissance paintings as well as by primitive art, Cummings’s new works ... More
 

Marcus Leslie Singleton, Elliyoun, 2023. Oil, spray paint, glitter and adhesive on wood panels. Triptych, overall: 60 by 128 in. 152.4 by 325.1 cm. Left panel: 60 by 40 in. 152.4 by 101.6 cm. Center panel: 60 by 48 in. 152.4 by 121.9 cm. Right panel: 60 by 40 in. 152.4 by 101.6 cm.

NEW YORK, NY.- Mitchell-Innes & Nash is featuring new work by Marcus Leslie Singleton in his inaugural show with the gallery. On view starting today, Return from Exile showcases 10 new paintings, including the artist’s largest paintings to date, and his first exhibited video. A deeply personal show, Return from Exile confronts issues of visibility, spirituality and the historical significance of everyday moments. “We are not bound by our histories. I don’t believe we have to keep doing the same things we used to do under the umbrella of tradition,” said Singleton. “That is what I’m critiquing and challenging in the show—attempting to reconstruct a beginning or a new standard of humanizing us in this new age.” Best known for his figurative paintings, ... More


Marlborough Gallery Barcelona currently showing exhibition 'Close Encounters' by Martine Stig   World-famous Spanish artist Cristobal Gabarron opens solo show at Ora-Ora   'Shota Suzuki: Eternal Garden' highly anticipated second solo exhibition now opening at Ippodo Gallery


Martine Stig, Nir Portrait, 2023. Inkjet projection on paper, 39 x 26 cm.

BARCELONA.- The exhibition Close Encounters brings together a selection of new works by Dutch artist Martine Stig that explore other spectral sensitivities.The work delves into visual realms that are invisible to the (human) naked eye, but can be seen by machines and animals. Leveraging technology’s ability to re-imagine, the boundaries between humans and nature slowly shift and we are encouraged to explore our environment, of which we are an indelible part, and expand our concept of reality. We live in a post-optic world. Human vision is decentralized as (sole) base for knowledge production to make room for the nonhuman (machines, animals, plants). Yet, our worldview is based on optical information (“seeing is believing”!) and our visual culture leans heavily on old habits: affirming the human spectrum as the norm, celebrating the indexical qualities of the image. The post-optic, as Carolyn L. Kane coins it, is an extension ànd a challenge of vision rooted ... More
 

Cristobal Gabarron, Green Mowing B, 2023. Fiberglass and polychrome resin, 52 x 6.4 x 8 x 7.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ora-Ora.

HONG KONG.- Ora-Ora commences a new solo show by world-famous Spanish artist Cristobal Gabarron today. The multi-disciplinary artist, an international force since the 1960s, has created five brand new series of works specifically for a Hong Kong audience. Spanning Christmas and into the New Year, this five-week event will take place in Ora-Ora’s Tai Kwun gallery in Hong Kong. In recognition of the artist’s multi-decade commitment advocating for humanism, the exhibition is titled: “Gabarron: The Humanist.” Gabarron has been a consistent and major artistic voice in favour of tolerance, understanding and supporting societal progress, and has worked extensively with international organizations like the UN or the EU to promote a safer, more joyous world. The timing of his exhibition in Hong Kong coincides with a period of uncertainty and suffering in Europe and the Middle East, which makes ... More
 

Shota Suzuki 姫菫 , Dandelion Fluff artworks by Shota Suzuki, 2023. Copper, brass, nickel plating. Photo Credit: Go Sugimoto.

NEW YORK, NY.- Ippodo Gallery presents Eternal Garden: Metalworks by Shota Suzuki, the long awaited second solo exhibition of sculpted metalworks by the distinguished talent from Kyōto. Featuring 23 new works, a delicate mise-en-scène of dandelions, ginkgo leaves, and sakura branches springs to life from today to January 13, 2024. Despite the stillness of Suzuki’s metal flowers and plants, the leaves and petals pulsate as part of a scenic whole and signify the fleeting essence of life. Shota Suzuki (b. 1987) studied metalsmithing at Tohoku University of the Arts, where he mastered skills that enable him to model that which he sees in the world. Drawing upon rich natural colors, Suzuki imagines plant life from brass alloy and other metals such as gold, silver, copper, and nickel. Hammering flat sheets and long fibers, Suzuki manipulates the hot metal with forging, soldering, and hand-sculpting techniques until ... More




Slings and Arrows: The Queering of St. Sebastian by Dr. William Eiland @ Rollins Museum of Art



More News

First retrospective of South African artist and activist Gavin Jantjes now on view
SHARJAH.- As of November 18th, Sharjah Art Foundation and The Africa Institute opened the presentation of the first retrospective of acclaimed South African artist and activist Gavin Jantjes. Featuring over 100 works from 1970 to the present, Gavin Jantjes: To Be Free! A Retrospective 1970–2023 underscores pivotal phases in the artist’s life and career over the last 50 years. The exhibition includes his early work in printmaking, painting and anti-apartheid activism; his transformative role at art institutions in the UK, Germany and Norway; his figurative portrayals of the global Black struggle for freedom; and his recent transition to non-figurative painting. The exhibition also debuts a new series of large-scale paintings that Jantjes created during his 2022 residency at Sharjah Art Foundation. The exhibition is on view at Galleries 4, 5 and ... More

Koichiro Takagi 'Deliver to Your Soul' at MAKI Gallery
TOKYO.- MAKI Gallery presented Deliver to Your Soul, Japanese artist Koichiro Takagi’s second exhibition with the gallery, at Tennoz I, Tokyo. Born in Tokyo in 1974, Takagi moved to San Francisco after university to study silkscreen printing, then went on to pursue a painting career while working as a studio assistant in New York. Since his return to Tokyo in 2005, he has developed a unique visual lexicon combining embroidery, printmaking, and traditional painting techniques. Deliver to Your Soul features approximately 30 examples from his most recent body of work, including those which fuse the artist’s ongoing references to religion and counterculture with motifs relating to postal correspondence. Takagi’s striking compositions are immediately recognizable by their whimsical cast of anthropomorphic animals, often rendered in stiff ... More

Michael Bishop, genre-busting writer known for science fiction, dies at 78
NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Bishop, an author who was best known for his award-winning science fiction but who ranged far beyond the genre, venturing into realism, noir mystery and even Southern Gothic, died Nov. 13 in LaGrange, Georgia. He was 78. His daughter, Stephanie Bishop, said the death, at a hospice facility, was from complications of cancer treatment. Bishop emerged in the 1970s as part of a new cohort of science fiction writers, including Ursula K. LeGuin and J.G. Ballard, who were intent on bringing their field into mainstream acceptance. They sought to present “mature science fiction,” which used imagined worlds and realities to mine fundamental questions of human nature. Bishop and others saw it as an advancement over their pulpy predecessors and as an antidote to the takeover of their field by mass pop culture, especially ... More

Review: In 'Translations,' what's lost when language is looted
NEW YORK, NY.- A drunken philosopher alights on what may be his pinnacle argument: That we are shaped not by the facts of history, but by our imagination of it. “We must never cease renewing those images,” he says, or we’ll stop living. That thirsty scholar is Hugh (Seán McGinley), who runs one of Ireland’s clandestine (and illegal) hedge-schools, teaching a rustic assembly of adult pupils out of his dilapidated shanty. “Translations,” from 1980, is the first play in the Friel Project, a season of three works at the Irish Repertory Theater. A modest yet exquisite revival directed by Doug Hughes, it makes a rigorous case not only for Brian Friel’s preeminence as an interpreter of Irish national identity, but for the vitality of art in deciphering life. It’s 1833 in Friel’s fictional small town, Ballybeg, where a sweet, putrid smell rising from the potato fields ... More

The year of the mega sleeve
NEW YORK, NY.- When Holly Waddington, the costume designer for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ much heralded phantasmagorical film about a young woman’s psychological and sexual awakening that opened Friday, began thinking about what her heroine would wear, she said she was thinking “skinny arms and these kind of straight skirts with the big bustle.” The film, which is based on a 1992 book by Alasdair Gray and stars Emma Stone, is set in an unidentified time period that is sort of like the 1880s — if the 1880s took place in an alternate dimension in which time folded in on itself, so the past was also the future. In part, that’s why Waddington was drawn to a silhouette that was slim on top and exaggerated at the bottom. Also, it’s “quite phallic,” she said, “and that felt right.” Lanthimos had other ideas. “He said, ... More

Societal constructs that confine and define feminine experience examined in 'Restraint'
NEW YORK, NY.- Sargent’s Daughters is opening Restraint, an exhibition featuring the work of Wynnie Mynerva, Sarah Slappey, and Rachel Youn. Placing paintings, sculptures, and drawings by these artists in dynamic conversation, the exhibition explores depictions of physical constraints to consider the balance between strength and vulnerability, pain and pleasure. Evoking both tangible limitations of the body and emotional limitations placed on women and queer people, Restraint examines the societal constructs that confine and define the feminine experience. Wynnie Mynerva’s (b.1992, Lima, Peru) practice spans painting, performance and video, railing against centuries of Western, phallocentric artwork which has perpetuated the dynamic of male as active, female as passive. Wynnie Mynerva seeks to reject this standard, ... More

1855 $50 strikes gold at Heritage's FUN US Coins Auction Jan. 10-14
DALLAS, TX.- The finest known example of a coin once dubbed “the most beautiful of all Pioneer gold coins, and one of the rarest” will take center stage in a new collection when it is sold in Heritage’s FUN US Coins Auction Jan. 10-14. Fort Worth coins dealer B. Max Mehl is the source of that praise for the 1855 Kellogg & Co. Fifty Dollar PR64 Cameo PCGS. CAC. Kagin-4, High R.6, of which only 14 examples are known to present day collectors — none with a higher grade than the example that is up for grabs in the first major auction of the new year. This beauty has been called the finest known since its first public offering in 1909. “All known examples of the Kellogg $50 were struck in proof format — likely to serve as presentation pieces for officials and businessmen,” says Todd Imhof, Executive Vice President at Heritage Auctions. ... More

Hermès Himalayan Kelly brings $125,000, leads Heritage's Luxury Accessories Auction above $2.3 million
DALLAS, TX.- On Dec. 7, during Heritage’s Holiday Luxury Accessories Signature® Auction, one of the most incredible and sought-after handbags ever created realized $125,000: an Hermès 28cm Matte White Himalayan Niloticus Crocodile Retourne Kelly. The rare bag helped lead the auction to a total of $2,380,594. A masterwork of wearable art, the handbag is fashioned from one of the scarcest materials on Earth — the hide of the Niloticus crocodile. Inspired by the snow-capped Himalayas, the natural olive brown skin is painstakingly bleached and hand-dyed to create an ombre of smoky grays that fade into a luminescent white. “The Himalayan Kelly blends precious materials with exquisite craftsmanship, and it is produced in extremely limited quantities, making the bag one of the most coveted and elusive in the world,” says Diane D’Amato, ... More

BAM announces a dance-heavy season
NEW YORK, NY.- A rock opera by performance artist Taylor Mac, the New York premiere of a dance work by Mark Morris and a film retrospective of actor Jeffrey Wright are among the offerings of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s upcoming season, the performing arts center announced Tuesday. “It’s a big dance season,” said Amy Cassello, BAM’s interim artistic director. “We’re offering things that can’t be offered anywhere else in the city.” Taylor Mac’s “Bark of Millions,” a queer musical-opera-variety show with music by Matt Ray, choreography by Faye Driscoll and extravagant costume designs by Machine Dazzle, will run Feb. 5-10. “It’s big and over the top and ambitious,” Cassello said. Later in the lineup is choreographer Mark Morris’ “The Look of Love” (March 20-23), an homage to composer Burt Bacharach that premiered last year at the BroadSta ... More

Andre Braugher, actor on 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' and 'Homicide,' dies at 61
NEW YORK, NY.- Andre Braugher, an Emmy Award-winning actor best known for playing stoic police officers on the television shows “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Homicide: Life on the Street,” died Monday. He was 61. His death was confirmed Tuesday by his longtime publicist Jennifer Allen. She said that Braugher, who lived in New Jersey, had died after a brief illness. She did not elaborate. Braugher had a breakout role as an intense cop on “Homicide,” a 1990s Baltimore crime show that chronicled the frustrations of policing a city beset with murders. He spent the last years of his life playing another serious police officer in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but in a very different register: The series was a sitcom, and he played his role as a police commander for laughs. He also earned plaudits for his portrayal of an openly gay cop who didn’t play ... More


PhotoGalleries

Gabriele Münter

TARWUK

Awol Erizku

Leo Villareal


Flashback
On a day like today, American painter George Rodrigue died
December 14, 2013. George Rodrigue (March 13, 1944 - December 14, 2013) was an American artist originally from New Iberia, Louisiana, who in the late 1960s began painting Louisiana landscapes, followed soon after by outdoor family gatherings and southwest Louisiana 19th-century and early 20th-century genre scenes. His paintings often include moss-clad oak trees, which are common to an area of French Louisiana known as Acadiana. In the mid-1990s Rodrigue's Blue Dog paintings, based on a Cajun legend called loup-garou, catapulted him to worldwide fame.In this image: Wendy and M.

  
© 1996 - 2021
Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez