| The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Tuesday, February 13, 2018 |
| | | France hands back Nazi looted art by Flemish master Joachim Patinir to Jewish family | |
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French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen (L), flanked by president of the Louvre museum Jean-Luc Martinez, visits two rooms of the Louvre museum dedicated to the presentation of 31 paintings of MNR (National Museums Recoveries register), recovered after the Second World War, on February 12, 2018, at the Culture Ministry in Paris. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP.
PARIS (AFP).- France returned three paintings by the Flemish master Joachim Patinir Monday to the descendants of a Jewish family who were forced to sell them as they fled the Nazis. The Bromberg family fled to Paris from Germany in late 1938 and were forced to sell the 16th-century "Triptych of the Crucifixion" depicting Christ on the cross the following year, along with several other paintings so they could get to the United States via Switzerland. The paintings were formally handed over to the descendants of Herta and Henry Bromberg at the Louvre Museum by French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen. It is the second time in two years that the French state has returned despoiled art to the family. In 2016 it handed over another 16th-century painting, "Portrait of a Man", by one of the followers of Antwerp artist Joos van Cleve. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Almost no other artist exercised such a decisive influence on European Baroque painting as Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640) did. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt dedicates a comprehensive special exhibition to the world-renowned artist, which is on show from 8 February to 21 May 2018: Photo: Städel Museum.
| Stadel Museum opens a comprehensive special exhibition dedicated to Peter Paul Rubens | | Artemis Gallery to auction highly refined selection of antiquities & ethnographic art, Feb. 15 | | Obamas reveal unconventional portraits in Washington |
Exhibition view of "Rubens. The Power of Transformation Photo: Städel Museum.
FRANKFURT.- Almost no other artist exercised such a decisive influence on European Baroque painting as Peter Paul Rubens (15771640) did. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt dedicates a comprehensive special exhibition to the world-renowned artist, which is on show from 8 February to 21 May 2018: Rubens. The Power of Transformation comprises about one hundred items including thirty-one paintings and twenty-three drawings by the masterand explores a hitherto little-regarded aspect in his creative process. The presentation reveals how profound the dialogue was into which Rubens entered with his predecessors and contemporaries achievements and fathoms the scope of their impact on the five decades of his production. Rubenss extensive oeuvre reflects the influences of ancient sculpture as well as that of the later art from Italy and north of the Alps, from the masters towards the close of the fifteenth century to ... More | |
Egyptian Late/Ptolemaic painted wood sarcophagus, circa 664-30 BCE, profusely adorned with hieroglyphs, deities and mythological creatures, 73in high. Provenance: California private collection, Swiss ownership prior to 1972. Estimate: $50,000-$70,000.
BOULDER, COLO.- On Thursday, February 15, Artemis Gallery will present an important boutique auction of classical antiquities, ancient and ethnographic art with prestigious provenance. The highly refined, fully curated selection comprises 330 lots reflecting many of the worlds greatest cultures of the past, from Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman to Asian, African, Oceanic and Native American. In addition, there are many outstanding entries in the Viking, Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial and Russian sections of the sale, as well as fossils, ancient jewelry and an exciting new category for Artemis: fine art. In the course of our day-to-day business, we are privileged to visit many fine residences to evaluate and accept antiquities and ethnographic art for our sales, but often we are asked if we can accept fine art, as well, said Artemis Gallery ... More | |
Former U.S. President Barack Obama stands artist Kehinde Wiley next to his newly unveiled portrait during a ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, on February 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Images/AFP.
WASHINGTON (AFP).- Former US first couple Barack and Michelle Obama unveiled their portraits at Washington's National Gallery Monday, two contrasting works by African American artists that shocked and delighted. The paintings by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, were revealed at a star-studded event that is a rite of passage for most former American presidents. The museum holds portraits of all American ex-commanders in chief, but these latest additions stand in stark contrast to the more buttoned-down approach of traditional presidential portraiture. Both show their subjects -- America's first black presidential couple -- looking cool and confident, a stark contrast to the bubbling swamp of anger and braggadocio that is political Washington today. Wiley ... More |
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| Metropolitan Museum of Art commemorates Olympics with Korean exhibition | | The San Diego Museum of Art acquires works by Lucas Cranach The Younger and John Singer Sargent | | Terracotta warriors exhibition opens at Liverpool's World Museum |
BAE Kidong, director general National Museum of Korea, talks with reporters during a press preview of "The Diamond Mountains" February 6, 2018 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Don EMMERT / AFP.
NEW YORK (AFP).- The Winter Olympics are being watched for many things: sporting excellence, of course, but also for headway on the US-North Korea nuclear stand-off and even tentative rapprochements between Seoul and Pyongyang. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is commemorating the Games with an exhibition of Korean art, much of it displayed for the first time in the United States, and which introduces an acclaimed Korean natural wonder to a new audience. That site is Mount Kumgang, in today's North Korea, and renowned throughout the peninsula for its beauty. It's where Pyongyang last week called off a joint cultural event, underscoring the fragility of the Games-led warming of ties between North and South Korea. Thousands of South Koreans visited the area from the 1990s to 2008, until Seoul suspended the trips after a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist who strayed into a restricted ... More | |
Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet by John Singer Sargent is a very personal portrait to the artist and features a young child, caught in a playful, relaxed pose.
SAN DIEGO, CA.- The San Diego Museum of Art announced the acquisition of two outstanding paintings, Nymph of the Spring (ca. 1540) by Lucas Cranach the Younger and Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet (1892) by John Singer Sargent. Both works fill important gaps in the Museums holdings, with the Sargent strengthening the already expansive collection of portraits, and the Cranach being the most important Northern Renaissance painting in the collection. Nymph of the Spring is currently on display in Genre and Myth, and Portrait of John Alfred Parsons Millet is on view in the American Art galleries. Nymph of the Spring by Lucas Cranach the Younger is an exceptionally well-preserved painting of a nude lying in a landscape, softly gazing at the viewer. The son of Lucas Cranach the Elder (14721553), a well-known German Renaissance artist, Lucas the Younger (15151586) followed in his fathers footsteps and the two became the great ... More | |
Terracotta warriors from the burial complex of China's Emperor Qin Shi Huang are on show at the exhibition on China's First Emperor at the World museum in Liverpool on February 6, 2018. Paul ELLIS / AFP.
LIVERPOOL.- The Terracotta Warriors have returned to the UK. In an exhibition being staged at Liverpools World Museum, this is the first time in more than 30 years that spectacular Class 1 National Cultural Treasures from the tomb of Chinas First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, have been brought to a museum in the UK outside London. Planned for a run of more than six months, from February to October 2018, visitors to World Museum are being given a glimpse into the extraordinary story of Qin Shihuangdi, the First Emperor of China (221 to 206 BC). His vast burial site and tomb complex was discovered near Xian in North West China in 1974, and the story of the tombs Terracotta Warriors is being displayed alongside important artefacts and research relating to the formative years of the Chinese nation, from the pre-unification Qin Kings (307 to 221 BC) to the First Emperors legacy in the Han Dynasty (206BC to 220 ... More |
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| The world of Federico Fellini arrives at Museo Picasso Málaga | | Vienna museum's 'Stairway to Klimt' takes visitors to new heights | | Harn Museum of Art displays works by influential American artist Jacob Lawrence |
Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973), Standing Woman with Hand on Hip, Paris, spring 1908. Oil on panel, 27 x 21.5 cm. Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, FABA, Bruselas © Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte © FABA Photo: Ãric Baudouin © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2017.
MALAGA.- In 1962, the great Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993), got up one morning and described an encounter with Picasso in The Book of Dreams, a set of notebooks like an oneiric anthology, in which he drew and wrote about what he had dreamed, at the request of his psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhardt, a disciple of Carl Gustav Jung. Between November 1960 and August 1990, Federico Fellini filled two thick books with an extensive imagery composed of characters and pictures that were the source of some of the unforgettable scenes in his films. Pablo Picasso was first depicted in a dream dated 22nd January, 1962, in which Fellini and his wife, Giuletta Masina, were visiting Picasso at his home, gathered in the kitchen in a cosy, friendly scene. In his memoirs, ... More | |
A visitor, standing on a suspended bridge, twelve metres above ground, looks at paintings by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt which adorn the arches of the mains staircase on February 12, 2018. JOE KLAMAR / AFP.
VIENNA (AFP).- Visitors to Vienna's art history museum on Monday enjoyed a closer look at 13 of Gustav Klimt's unsung masterpieces thanks to a walkway erected over a monumental central stairway. The sprawling Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM), opened in 1891 under Emperor Franz-Joseph, houses one of Europe's most important art collections while also showcasing interior design by the cream of Vienna's artists and sculptors. Among those commissioned to decorate the building was Klimt, then 28 and considered a rising star of the Austrian neo-classical school. But until now the museums 1.4 million annual visitors could only admire the paintings from afar. The eye-level experience is well worth the climb up the "Stairway to Klimt", as the museum has dubbed the new installation, in a nod to the song by heavy-metal band Led Zeppelin. Paying homage to the Venetian, ... More | |
Jacob Lawrence, The Builders (Family), silkscreen on paper, 34 x 25.75, 1974. © 2018 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
GAINESVILLE, FL.- History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence will be on view at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida from Feb. 13 to Aug. 5, 2018. This traveling exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of influential American artist Jacob Lawrences (19172000) printmaking oeuvre, featuring more than 90 works produced from 1963 to 2000. The exhibition explores three major themes that occupied the artists graphic works. Lawrence started exploring printmaking as an already well-established artist. Printmaking suited his bold formal and narrative style exceptionally well. The relationship between his painting and printmaking is intertwined, with the artist revisiting and remaking earlier paintings as prints. The inherent multiplicity of this medium provided an opportunity for the artist to reach broader audiences. Lawrence was primarily concerned with the narration of African-American experiences ... More |
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| John McEnroe's Mark Bradford masterwork to be sold at Phillips | | Exhibition featuring twelve historical performance editions by Marina Abramović opens at Sean Kelly | | Auerbach and School of London artists lead Bonhams Post-War and Contemporary Art sale |
Mark Bradford (b. 1961), Helter Skelter I, 2007 (detail). Estimate: £6 - 8 million. Image courtesy Phillips.
LONDON.- This season, Phillips will present Mark Bradfords Helter Skelter I from the Collection of John McEnroe, 7-time Grand Slam Champion and avid collector of contemporary art. The large-scale work was executed in 2007 and stands over 10 meters wide, evocative of the urban landscape of Los Angeles. Phillips currently hold the top two auction prices for Bradfords work, having sold Constitution IV, 2013 in October 2015 and Rat Catcher of Hamelin III, 2011 in October 2016. Expected to realise in excess of £6 million, Helter Skelter I has never been publicly offered and is poised to set a new auction record for the artist when it is presented in the Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in London on 8 March, 2018. Jean-Paul Engelen, Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said: Helter Skelter I was first shown at the inaugural exhibition Collage: The Unmonumental Picture at the ... More | |
Marina Abramović, Freeing the Memory, 1975; publ. 1994. 2 black and white photographs with 2 letter press text panels, framed: 49 3/4 x 24 inches, edition of 16 with 3 APs © Marina Abramović. Courtesy: the Marina Abramović Archives and Sean Kelly, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- Sean Kelly is presenting Marina Abramović Early Works, an exhibition featuring twelve historical performance editions, first issued by the gallery in 1994, that document Abramovićs early performances (1973-1975). They are presented with screenings of five of the artists earliest films (1975-1977). The exhibition of these rarely seen works, most of which are now in museums, celebrates the pioneering legacy of Abramović, who is internationally recognized as the most significant figure in the history of performance art; it also acknowledges the three-decade professional collaboration between Marina Abramović and Sean Kelly. This is the artists ninth solo exhibition with the gallery. The performances documented in these early editions represent the ... More | |
Detail of Nude on a Red Bed No. 3 by Leon Kossoff. Estimate: £300,000-500,000. Photo: Bonhams.
LONDON.- Works by School of London artists feature strongly in Bonhams Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in London on Wednesday 7 March. Prominent among them is Nude on a Red Bed No 3 by Leon Kossoff, estimated at £300,000-500,000. The term School of London was first used in 1976 in the foreword to the catalogue for the Hayward Gallerys exhibition The Human Clay. The show celebrated the exploration of figurative painting by a group of 35 artists based in London. At the time, abstraction and conceptualism were the dominant trends in the Western art world. Two of the leading lights of the movement, Frank Auerbach (b1931) and Leon Kossoff (b1926), are represented by two works each in the Bonhams sale which also features a delightful watercolour by David Hockney (b1937), another of the The Human Clay exhibition artists. Bonhams Global Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art ... More |
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New creative awards and advocacy group set up in response to BREXIT
LONDON.- January saw the launch of the Emerge Awards, a UK-wide, open competition that champions emerging talent and diversity in the creative industries. Guy Armitage, the CEO of Zealous, a London-based digital submissions platform for the creative community, set up the awards in response to the changing nature of Britains relationship with Europe. Their ultimate aim is to promote and safeguard the interests of the talent engaged in all of the creative industries, and then for the organisation behind them to serve as an advocacy group, supporting national bodies such as the Creative Industries Federation. Says Armitage: The UKs creative economy currently employs one out of 11 people, contributing £160,000 a minute to its GDP, a figure that has grown year on year for the last decade. It is a key pillar to our countrys future economic prosperity, and ... More
Basquiat and Warhol share the spotlight in Woodshed Art Auctions' Feb. 1 online sale
FRANKLIN, MASS.- Its fitting that the top two lots in Woodshed Art Auctions internet only fine art auction held February 1st were claimed by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. Not only were the two arguably the kings of the New York Pop Art scene of the 1980s, they currently occupy first and second place for most ever paid for an artwork by an American artist at auction. Warhol held the record for several years when his 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold for $104.5 million at an auction held in 2013 at Sothebys in New York. But in May of last year, Basquiats enormous and powerful untitled skull painting sold for a staggering $110.54 million, also thru Sothebys. The buyer was the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Those nosebleed prices werent attained in the Woodshed auction, but they were respectable for attributions. ... More
HOME opens first major UK solo exhibition by Noor Afshan Mirza & Brad Butler: The Scar
MANCHESTER.- HOME announced the world premiere of The Scar, taking over HOMEs main gallery for the first major UK solo exhibition by artists Noor Afshan Mirza and Brad Butler. The Scar spans three chapters (1. The State of the State, 2. The Mouth of the Shark and 3. The Gossip), loosely inspired by a real car crash in Turkey in 1996. Four passengers are on a journey in a black Mercedes, unaware that their fate will lead to the largest social protest in Turkish history. Three of the passengers are State archetypes: the Head of Police, a Politician and a Right-Wing Assassin, whilst Yenge, the only female traveller, is silenced by the mens gangster talk and the genre conventions of her role in the film. In chapter 2, Yenges noir voiceover begins to interrupt the male characters forced bravado as the Resistant Dead haunt them - the residual movements ... More
Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens the first solo exhibition of London-based Chinese artist Jacky Tsai
MOSCOW.- The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents Fly Me to the Moon the first solo exhibition of London-based Chinese artist Jacky Tsai to take place in Russia. Best known for the floral skull he produced for fashion designer Alexander McQueen, in his work as an independent artist Jacky Tsai has been developing the theme of dialogue between Western and Eastern cultures by fusing Pop Art elements with ancient Chinese crafts. The exhibition presents Tsais works produced over the past several years and rendered in various techniques such as painting, screen printing and lacquer carving. Traditional techniques allow the artist to create different textures and sculpt compound objects. For example, the series depicting comic-strip superheroes in the company of characters from Chinese mythology is rendered in the technique of carved lacquer. The technique ... More
Ayyam Gallery Beirut opens a solo exhibition of artist Elias Izoli
BEIRUT.- Ayyam Gallery Beirut announces Seven Years, a solo exhibition of artist Elias Izoli. Featuring a new body of work, the exhibition highlights figurative paintings representative of the state Izoli has witnessed living in Syria over the past seven years. Izoli continues to introduce new figures through his strong grasp of draftsmanship and sensitivity to colour. Drawing from his surroundings and the overarching atmosphere in his country of residence, somber yet softly coloured, the paintings depict children who appear to reach out to the viewer. With hunched shoulders and evocative gazes, either looking directly at the viewer or off to a distance unaware that anyone is looking, the childrens presence invokes a sense of intrusion in the viewer and a heightened sense of ones own presence in front of the painting. The childrens strong gazes resonate with the viewer, ... More
'Monster fatberg' goes on public display in London
LONDON (AFP).- History enthusiasts with strong stomachs can now come face-to-face with part of the 130-tonne "monster fatberg" found last year clogging a Victorian-era sewer, in a new London exhibit. The rock-solid mass of food fat and sanitary wipes was found in drains under a major road in Whitechapel, east London, in September, and part of it is on show at the nearby Museum of London. "The fatberg tells a story about how modern London is changing," explained Sharon Robinson-Calver, the museum's head of Conservation and Collection Care. "The museum's collection already contains objects from when London's Victorian sewer system was built. "Now, our sewers are threatened by a modern crisis. Eight times every hour a Thames Water customer suffers a blockage caused by items being flushed away or put down the drain which shouldn't be." ... More
New scholarship and research offers comprehensive look at Clarence H. White's career
WELLESLEY, MASS.- The Davis Museum at Wellesley College presents a retrospective of one of the most influential American photographers in Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 18951925. An important figure in early 20th-century photography, White played vital roles in the worlds of fine art and commercial photography. The exhibitionon view in the Camilla Chandler and Dorothy Buffum Chandler Gallery and the Marjorie and Gerald Bronfman Galleryruns from February 13 through June 3, 2018. Clarence White had a significant influence on 20th-century photographyas both an artist and teacher, said Claire Whitner, Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Collections and organizing curator of the exhibition at the Davis. At the turn of the 20th -century, Whites embrace of pictorialism and commitment ... More
Lovers through the lens - auction's photo archive recalls enduring modern love story
NEW YORK, NY.- This simple study of a young woman, left, is testament to one of the great artistic love stories of modern times the perfect Valentines gift: a c.1931 portrait of the photographer and writer Dorothy Norman by her mentor and long-time lover Alfred Stieglitz four years after they first met. Despite both being married to other people, they maintained their affair right up until Stieglitz died in 1946. The couples ardent devotion to each other is evident in other studies lotted with this portrait. Assessed by Stieglitz as Perfect, he wrote ILY (I love You) innumerable times around them and to the reverse, as can be seen. Stieglitz (1865-1946), married to the artist Georgia OKeeffe, was 44 years older than Norman, and became her mentor in his role as a leading light of photography as an art form in the United States. He was also a pioneer of landscape ... More
Premier collection of antique valentines comes to the Huntington
SAN MARINO, CA.- A spectacular trove of thousands of valentines and related materialsome dating as far back as the late 17th centuryhas been given to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, the institution announced today. Considered the best private collection of its kind in the world, the Nancy and Henry Rosin Collection of Valentine, Friendship, and Devotional Ephemera contains approximately 12,300 greeting cards, sentimental notes, folk art drawings, and other tokens of affection that trace the evolution of romantic and religious keepsakes made in Europe and North America from 1684 to 1970. The Rosins had given the collection to their son, Bob, who together with his wife, Belle, donated it to The Huntington for safekeeping. This collection was carefully created by my parents, he said. I cant think of a better place ... More
The Freud Museum opens an exhibition of new work by Gideon Rubin
LONDON.- The Freud Museum is presenting BLACK BOOK, an exhibition of new work by Gideon Rubin and the latest in a critically acclaimed series curated by James Putnam. The artists specially created project for Freuds final residence relates to the era of the late 1930s, when Freud left Vienna for London. It comprises a series of paintings on canvas, linen and paper with subject matter drawn from original pre-WW2 German magazines that Rubin has collected specifically for the project. These magazines contain idealised images of heath and efficiency to promote the myth of Aryan supremacy as Nazi propaganda. Rubin has subverted these images in his characteristic style by masking out the faces, Nazi references and swastika motifs. This process relates to our human tendency to block out unpleasant memories from our psyche. Working ... More
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Flashback On a day like today, American painter and academic Grant Wood was born February 13, 1891. Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 - February 12, 1942) was an American painter best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly American Gothic, an iconic painting of the 20th century. In this image: Grant Wood (1891?1942), American Gothic, 1930. Oil on composition board, 30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in. (78 x 65.3 cm). Art Institute of Chicago; Friends of American Art Collection 1930.934. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photograph courtesy Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY.
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