| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Wednesday, December 23, 2020 |
| | | Andy Warhol's Mao screen-print leads Lark Mason Associates Print Sale | |
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Andy Warhol (Am., 1928-1987), Mao, 1972, Screen-print on Beckett High White Paper, Ed. 25/250.
NEW YORK, NY.- Lark Mason Associates announced their Prints and Multiples sale is now open for bidding on www.igavelauctions.com through January 14th, 2021. Leading the sale is Mao, a screen-print by Andy Warhol, dated 1972, (ed.25/250) (Estimate $30,000-$50,000; reserve $15,000). It was donated by James Hannon, class of 1960, to his alma mater Visitation Catholic School, in Kewanee Illinoisa small midwestern town of 12,900 residents. Proceeds from the print will support technology, scholarships and operations needed to ensure students and teachers a consistent quality learning experience during the COVID 19 pandemic. Selling works that benefit a worthy cause is always rewarding, says Lark Mason. And what could be more gratifying than a small rural school in Illinois benefiting from the sale of Warhols Mao screen-print by one of its former students? ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day View of the Stabkirche, a stave church built in 1905 as part of the "Albert House" sanatorium for patients with lung diseases, in a wooded area outside the town of Stiege, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, on November 19, 2020. After the sanatorium was shut in 2009 and a fire destroyed it in 2013, the small wooden church, an architectural rarity in Germany, fell into disuse, and will now, thanks to the initiative of a local conservation group, be taken apart piece-by-piece and moved to the Stiege town center. John MACDOUGALL / AFP
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| Trump makes classical style the default for federal buildings | | Congress expected to approve new museums honoring women and Latinos | | Robert E. Lee statue is removed from U.S. Capitol |
In this file photo taken on December 5, 2020 US President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks at a rally to support Republican Senate candidates at Valdosta Regional Airport in Valdosta, Georgia. Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP.
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday that establishes classical architecture as the preferred style for new federal buildings but stops short of banning newer designs from consideration. The executive order, titled Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, mandates that federal buildings be beautiful and praises the characteristics of Greco-Roman architecture; by contrast, recent modernist designs are described in the text as ugly and inconsistent. Classical and other traditional architecture, as practiced both historically and by todays architects, have proven their ability to meet these design criteria and to more than satisfy todays functional, technical, and sustainable needs, reads the order. Their use should be encouraged instead of discouraged. ... More | |
Visitors walk around the National Mall in Washington, March 19, 2020. Alyssa Schukar/The New York Times.
by Sarah Bahr
WASHINGTON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- After decadeslong campaigns, a National Museum of the American Latino and a national museum of womens history are finally on their way to becoming reality in Washington. Both houses of Congress authorized the creation of the two museums as part of a $2.3-trillion year-end spending bill that legislators worked over the weekend to hammer out. A museum that highlights the contributions of Latinos and Latinas to our nation at a time when the pandemic has so disproportionately impacted our communities seems very fitting, Estuardo RodrÃguez, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino, said. One of the lead sponsors of the effort to create a womens museum, U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, said Monday, For too long, womens stories have been left out of the telling of our nations history, but with this vote, we begin to rectify that. Maloney, D-N.Y., added, ... More | |
In this file photo taken on August 24, 2017, visitors walk past a statue of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee in the crypt of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. MANDEL NGAN / AFP.
by Bryan Pietsch
WASHINGTON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Virginias statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee was removed from its post in the U.S. Capitol on Monday morning, closing a year that saw Confederate statues toppled as the nation reckoned with racism in its history and institutions. In April, the month before the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis would set off worldwide protests against racism and police brutality, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia signed legislation directing the creation of a commission to study the removal and replacement of the statue. (States are each allotted two statues to display in the U.S. Capitol; Virginias other statue is of George Washington.) The commissions eight members voted July 24 to recommend the removal of the Lee statue, which will be turned over to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond. The statue will be ... More |
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| How to organize an art fair in 2021 - and beyond? | | Baghdad's wristwatch repairman is a timeless treasure | | France's favourite tough guy Brasseur dies at 84 |
Lessons and best practices from this years successful events.
BUDAPEST.- It has been a tumultuous year for art fairs: the vast majority of organizers had to cancel or postpone their events. Those who were bold, reflective, and lucky enough won not only experience but important lessons for the long run, too. Now the organizers and prominent participants of one such art fair share their 5 tips for a successful art event in the coming years. The pandemic posed the biggest ordeal in the history of art fairs - it jolted the art industry more than any other crisis of our time. Although most events had to be canceled, the now ending art fair season hasnt been uneventful, and we can learn crucial lessons from those who could organize despite all circumstances. The consequences of COVID have been catastrophic in the art world. Galleries turnover collapsed (sometimes even by 90%) due to closures and the lack of physical sales even worsened by the mass cancellation of art fairs, from which they reported only 16% of their income in 2020, compared to ... More | |
Watch repairman Youssef Abdelkarim repairs a watch at his workshop on Rasheed Street in Iraq's capital Baghdad on December 9, 2020. AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP.
by Salam Faraj and Habib Haj Salem
BAGHDAD (AFP).- Youssef Abdelkarim's storefront on one of Baghdad's most historic streets is a time capsule -- literally. Thousands of wristwatches fill the tiny shop, where three generations have repaired Iraq's oldest timepieces. The dusty display window on Rasheed Street features a single row of classic watches in their felt boxes right at the front, with a mountain of haphazardly piled pieces behind it and others hanging from hooks overhead. Inside, there are watches in plastic buckets on the floor, packed in cardboard boxes on shelves and stuffed into suitcases. In a far corner, behind an old wooden desk, 52-year-old Abdelkarim is hunched over an antique piece. "Every watch has its own personality. I try to preserve it as much as I can, as if it were my own child," he told AFP, squinting through black, thick-framed glasses. ... More | |
In this file photo taken on May 25, 2006 French actor Claude Brasseur poses upon arriving at the Festival Palace. Valery HACHE / AFP.
by Emilie Bickerton
PARIS (AFP).- Claude Brasseur, one of France's most beloved character actors -- who died Tuesday aged 84 -- lived as colourful a life off-screen as on it as a daredevil parachutist, Olympic bobsledder and Paris-Dakar rally champion. With his rugged physique and dark, lively gaze, he took on many tough guy roles, but was equally celebrated for comic appearances including playing Sophie Marceau's father in "The Party" and his brilliant turn as "king of the campsite" Jacky Pic in the "Camping" films. Brasseur, the godson of the adventure-loving American literary giant Ernest Hemingway, won two Cesars -- the French equivalent of the Oscars -- and was also a hit on the small screen, notably in his 1971 performance as Vidocq, the Parisian criminal mastermind turned policeman. A life-long bon vivant, Brasseur was a regular in Parisian nightclubs and had a taste for ... More |
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| The Baseball Hall of Fame tries to contextualize baseball's racist past | | Thomas Goode delves into its history for Sotheby's auction | | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstmuseum Bern jointly acquire monumental work by El Anatsui |
A plaque for Cap Anson, believed to have refused to participate in any game involving Black players. A new exhibit tries to contextualize Anson. Baseball Hall of Fame via The New York Times.
by Tyler Kepner
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, confers a kind of halo to each member. The gallery feels like a chapel, and the Hall of Famers are the saints. A few gilded sentences summarize the reasons to honor each one. Of course the people that have plaques in there, its all going to be about the good stuff, Ozzie Smith, the artful shortstop for the Padres and the Cardinals and a member since 2002, said by phone the other day. But theres some bad stuff, too, and thats for all of us. I think we all have a dark side of our lives. For some, that dark side casts an especially long shadow. Baseballs first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was inducted in 1944, when the color line he upheld was still in place. He is hailed ... More | |
The Ruby Vase, Commemorating the Coronation of George VI, 12 May 1937. Courtesy Sotheby's.
LONDON.- Thomas Goode & Co., home to the worlds finest tableware, china, silver and crystal on Londons South Audley Street since 1845 and in Mayfair since 1827, is opening-up its collections for the first time in 200 years for an auction with Sothebys. Over nearly two centuries of production and collecting, Thomas Goode has accumulated numerous wonderful objects, including one copy of every commissioned piece supplied for their own archives. Many of these treasures have been stored unseen in the attics and vaults, until now. Highlights unveiled in this sale include a Coronation Cup made to celebrate Edward VIIIs coronation, which never happened; Thomas Goodes own copy of a miniature dinner service commissioned for Queen Marys famous Dolls House at Windsor Castle; plates commissioned by The Royal Household for Buckingham Palace, and a lot named The Emperors Table, which includes a complete Sevres dinner service made ... More | |
El Anatsui, In the World But Dont Know the World, 2009, aluminum and copper wire, 560 x 1,000 cm, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstmuseum Bern. @ El Anatsui. Photo Peter Tijhuis.
AMSTERDAM.- Rising prices on the art market make it increasingly difficult for public art institutions to acquire new works by celebrated artists. Now Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstmuseum Bern have joined forces to acquire a work by El Anatsui from the Sigg Collection, a Swiss private art collection. El Anatsui from Ghana is Africa's most prominent contemporary artist, known for large sculptures made from recycled bottle caps. The work will be shown alternately in Bern and Amsterdam. The purchase was financed for the Stedelijk Museum by the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Mondriaan Fund, and the BankGiro Loterij, from Swiss side it was financed by Stiftung GegenwART, with special thanks to the Sigg Collection. The artwork in question is In the World But Don't Know the World from 2009. The monumental sculpture made of aluminum and copper ... More |
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| Foreign authors top sellers with literature-loving Tehran women | | The mystery of the disappearing manuscripts | | A arte Invernizzi gallery opens an exhibition of works made between 1948 and 2020 by artists who work with the gallery |
Employee Sepideh Daryan displays a bestselling book at a bookstore of the Nashre-Cheshmeh Publishing House on Karim Khan street in the Iranian capital Tehran, on December 5, 2020. ATTA KENARE / AFP.
by Ahmad Parhizi
TEHRAN (AFP).- French authors Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir rub shoulders with the likes of Jewish diarist Anne Frank and Russian poet Osip Mandelstam in Tehran bookstores where the largely female readership lap up foreign writers. "Iranian women read more, translate more and write more. In general, they are more present in the book market than men," said Nargez Mossavat, editorial director of Sales publishers. "Books are a necessity for me, it's the only refuge, which sometimes makes me angry," said the 36-year-old author, without dwelling on the limitations to cultural life in the Islamic republic of Iran. As a publisher, "I choose books that speak to our society today", she said, pointing to work by Mandelstam, who died in a Gulag, or the novel "Minor Apocalypse" ... More | |
This year, the volume of these emails exploded in the United States, reaching even higher levels in the fall around the time of the Frankfurt Book Fair, which, like most everything else this year, was held online. Daniel ROLAND / AFP.
by Elizabeth A. Harris and Nicole Perlroth
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Earlier this month, the book industry website Publishers Marketplace announced that Little, Brown would be publishing Re-Entry, a novel by James Hannaham about a transgender woman paroled from a mens prison. The book would be edited by Ben George. Two days later, Hannaham got an email from George, asking him to send the latest draft of his manuscript. The email came to an address on Hannahams website that he rarely uses, so he opened up his usual account, attached the document, typed in Georges email address and a little note, and hit send. Then Ben called me, Hannaham said, to say, That wasnt me. Hannaham was just one of countless targets in a mysterious international ... More | |
Mauro Staccioli, Scultura, 2012. Weathering steel, 46x23,2x23,2 cm. Courtesy A arte Invernizzi, Milan. Photo: Bruno Bani, Milan.
MILAN.- The A arte Invernizzi gallery is presenting On the Edge. The exhibition includes collages, works on paper, projects and small sculptures made between 1948 and 2020 by artists who work with the gallery. After the exhibition Close Up in 2016, which examined aspects of closeness and intimacy of vision, the meditations on small-format works continues here, highlighting another crucial aspect, which is that of their extreme, liminal intensity and bodily materiality. The exhibition offers us an experience of the encounter with the work of art as an intimate, proximate event, taking us to the very limits of the sensible world, to see beyond the boundaries of our conscious knowledge. We are given a tangible sense of the constant transformation of the image as a living body, not just in terms of its material form but also in its ramifications and in its flights of meaning. In the evolution of a reality that understands all, that ... More |
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Cleaning Rubens's 'Het Steen' | National Gallery
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Grayson Perry turns diamonds into cash for charity fundraiser
WOKING.- Grayson Perry is one of a string of top artists and celebrities whose talents have helped raise tens of thousands of pounds for Transplant Links Community, a charity which gives patients who have been dealt a difficult hand the chance to change their life for the better through kidney transplantation. Ewbanks Auctions in Surrey hosted the auction on December 11, selling original artwork by Perry, leading contemporary artists David Mach and Frank Bowling both of whose work is in national collections, including The Tate David Bowies close friend George Underwood, David Shrigley, whose artwork filled the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square and other notable figures. As well as the £10,700 raised by Perrys two images of the Queen of Diamonds, bidding raised £3,600 for Frank Bowling Ace of Spades design, £3,300 ... More
Cambodia's giant life-giving Tonle Sap lake in peril
KOH CHIVANG (AFP).- As night falls over his floating village, fisherman Leng Vann puffs on a cigarette and heaves a sigh for Tonle Sap, the great inland lake that has sustained Cambodia for centuries. More than a million people live on or around the lake, the world's largest inland fishery, but water levels have plummeted and fish stocks dwindled because of climate change and dams upstream on the Mekong. Tonle Sap was once renowned for its abundance of fish and wildlife -- 43-year-old Leng Vann recalls catching hundreds of kilos a day in his nets. His house, which floats on the lake, sits five metres (16 feet) lower than it should in mid-October, at the end of the rainy season, and when he draws his net from the waters, it is empty. "We fishermen survive by water and fish. When there is no water and fish, what else can we hope for?" said Leng ... More
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art opens augmented reality exhibition
BEIJING.- UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents Mirage: Contemporary Art in Augmented Reality, a special exhibition for augmented reality (AR) art undertaken in collaboration with Acute Art, the worlds most extensive platform dedicated to the medium. Artworks will be viewable through Acute Arts app in locations around UCCA Center for Contemporary Art and at hotel and apartment community Stey-798, located just outside 798 Art Districts western entrance. Participating artists include Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Chicago), Darren Bader (b. 1978, Bridgeport, Connecticut), Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou), Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen), KAWS (b. 1974, Jersey City, USA), and Alicja Kwade (b. 1979, Katowice, Poland). UCCA is excited to engage with a new way of presenting art, one that has the promise to open up global ... More
Artist-made teapots on display at Racine Art Museum
RACINE, WI.- Over the last twenty years, the Racine Art Museum has built one of the largest public collections of contemporary artist-made teapots in the United States. With over 500 piecesmostly made of clay yet also including metal, fiber, and other mediathere are a number of artists subjects and techniques represented. Open through July 25, 2021 in the unique street-facing Windows on Fifth Gallery at RAM, Someone's Cup of Tea: Contemporary Teapots from RAM's Collection features a sampling of the museum's current holdings. Objects that are used in ritualsand therefore connected to social and cultural traditionshave symbolic or metaphoric significance as well as practical function. The teapot can be a container for liquid but could also be considered a vessel for communication and a symbol of interpersonal relationships ... More
New book chronicles how Cranbrook Academy of Art radicalized art and design in America
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI.- Cranbrook Art Museum announced the forthcoming release of With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932, a singular exploration of the storied institution as a radical experiment in the education of artists, and survey of the artists who studied and taught there. Available February 2021, the 624-plus-page hardcover book accompanies an exhibition of the same name, on view at the museum from June 18September 19, 2021. Although schools of art and design emerged in the twentieth century places such as the Bauhaus or Black Mountain College only Cranbrook Academy of Art remains today as a vital force in the worlds of art, architecture, craft, and design. Widely considered the cradle of mid-century modernism in America, the Academy not only pioneered a more organic ... More
Better than besties: Why gay holiday films matter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- I gasped so loudly, it sounded like Judy Garland had shown up at my Christmas party. It happened during Dashing in December, a new holiday film on the Paramount Network about two men who fall in love on a ranch. I involuntarily inhaled as Wyatt, a stuffy venture capitalist, locked lips with Heath, the sweetheart ranch hand. Watching it made me feel like Santa put me at the top of his nice list. Im gay. I kiss men. Never at a ranch, once at a Dennys. But there was something so surprisingly renegade about the movies smooch. Leading men just dont kiss each other in the conservative fraternity of holiday TV movies. They do now. As I recently reported, this year there are six new holiday-themed films with gay and lesbian leading characters, including Happiest Season (Hulu), The Christmas House (Hallmark ... More
Virtual idols take to the real-life stage in China
BEIJING (AFP).- Liu Jun has long been a fan of a Chinese star called Amy, a teenage pop singer with red hair whose autograph he treasures -- and who only exists in the digital world. On Saturday "Amy" won a breakthrough virtual talent show in China, where computer-generated entertainers perform in front of real-life judges and tens of millions of online viewers. "You can't see what they are like in real life, so you can have more fantasies about them," said 28-year-old Liu, who has attended more than ten of Amy's concerts and fan events in recent years. "The virtual idol is indestructible -- as long as the image is still there, she can stay in your heart forever," he added. Amy found fame on "Dimension Nova", which claims to be the world's first talent show bringing together digital performers to dance and sing in front of three -- real-life -- celebrity judges. ... More
Uncovering lost Black history, stone by stone
HOPEWELL, NJ (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- History can seem thick on the ground in this quaint, prosperous town of 2,000 in semirural central New Jersey, not far from where Washington crossed the Delaware. A cemetery on the main street holds a grand obelisk honoring John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Next to it stands a monument topped by a stone on which another patriot stood to give a fiery speech supporting the cause of liberty. But one afternoon in late summer, a group from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia drove right past those landmarks, and followed a winding road up to a burial ground with a different story to tell. Stoutsburg Cemetery, tucked in a clearing about halfway up Sourland Mountain, is one of the states oldest African American burial grounds. It may also be one its best chronicled, ... More
A 'Messiah' for the multitudes, freed from history's bonds
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A gay Chinese Canadian tenor struts through the streets of Vancouver, British Columbia, joyously proclaiming that evry valley shall be exalted as the camera focuses in on his 6-inch-high stiletto heels. A Tunisian Canadian mezzo-soprano reimagines Jesus as a Muslim woman in a headscarf. In Yukon, an Indigenous singer praises the remote snow-covered landscape in Southern Tutchone, the language of her ancestors. This is not your grandparents Messiah, Spencer Britten, the tenor in heels, said in an interview. He and the other performers are part of Messiah/Complex, an iconoclastic new production of Handels classic oratorio, which draws on biblical texts to form a stylized narrative of suffering, hope and redemption. An 80-minute film featuring a dozen soloists from all corners of the country, this ... More
The Chazen acquires significant bodies of work from current and emeriti UW-Madison faculty
MADISON, WIS.- The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of WisconsinMadison opened to the public in 1970. This year, even as the coronavirus limited 50th anniversary celebratory events and programs, the staff of the Chazen sought ways to deepen the museums connection to the university and the history of artmaking on campus. One result of that effort is the recent acquisition of work from current and emeriti faculty of the University. As of November 2020, groups of work by mosaic artist Marjorie Kreilick and sculptor Truman Lowe will become part of the Chazens permanent collection, along with single works by print artist Emily Arthur and photographer Darcy Padilla. These four outstanding faculty members have mentored and shaped many UW students and artists across the globe, said Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen. One of the really ... More
London's Pax Romana to welcome New Year with Jan. 10 Antiquities, Ancient Jewellery & Weaponry Auction
LONDON.- Pax Romana, the respected London antiquities gallery and boutique auction house headed by Dr. Ivan Bonchev (PhD, University of Oxford), will launch its 2021 calendar of events with a January 10 auction of connoisseur-level antiquities, ancient jewellery and weaponry. The 610-lot offering is highlighted by Egyptian pieces formerly held in museum collections, TL- or XRF-tested art from Ancient China, and unique helmets dating to as early as 900 BC. All items are offered with no reserve and will be sold to the highest bidder at or above the starting price. Bid absentee or live online through LiveAuctioneers. This is truly Pax Romanas most magnificent sale to date, said Dr. Bonchev. We are very proud of the selections included in this auction as well as the painstaking research that supports each piece. Our clientele expects a first-class ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Anne Truitt Sound
Islamic Metalwork
Klaas Rommelaere
Helen Muspratt
Flashback On a day like today, Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh was born December 23, 1908. Yousuf Karsh, CC (December 23, 1908 - July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer best known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. In this image: Yousuf Karsh, Ford of Canada (surgeons), 1951.
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