| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Wednesday, February 12, 2020 |
| | | David Hockney's 'The Splash' makes £23.1 million at Sotheby's London | |
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David Hockney's breath-taking The Splash sold for £23,117,000/ $29,820,930 / 27,509,230 (est. £20-30 million) the third highest price for the artist. Executed in 1966, the landmark pool painting first appeared at auction in Sothebys London salesroom in 1973, and again in 2006 when it sold for £2.9 million / $5.4 million a record price for Hockney at the time. Courtesy Sotheby's.
LONDON.- Seminal pop art painting "The Splash" by David Hockey sold for £23.1 million ($29.8 million) at a London auction on Tuesday, the third highest price paid for a work by the British artist. "The Splash", which was painted in 1966, depicts the moment just after a diver has broken the surface of a swimming pool, capturing the fantasy Californian lifestyle. "Not only is this a landmark work within David Hockney's oeuvre, it's an icon of Pop that defined an era and also gave visual identity to LA," said Emma Baker, head of the contemporary art sale at London's Sotheby's auction house. Sotheby's also called the work "a quintessential example of Hockney's lifelong fascination with the texture, appearance and depth of water". The price, bid by an unknown buyer, is nearly eight times that achieved when the work last sold at auction for £2.9 million in 2006. Yorkshire-born Hockney's "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" sold for over $90 million in New York in 2018, an auction record a ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Artemis Gallery is holding an important one-day auction featuring museum-worthy examples of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Near Eastern, Far East / Asian, Pre-Columbian, African / Tribal, Oceanic, Native American, Spanish Colonial, Russian, Fossils, Ancient Jewelry, Fine Art, so much more! In this image: Egyptian Limestone Relief Panel Fragment - Men on Boat. Est: $30,000 - $45,000.
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| | Half-a-million insect species face extinction: scientists | | Bulgaria may pull out of 'insulting' Louvre icons show | | Asia Week New York gallery exhibitions and events will move forward as scheduled |
Polygrapha suprema (Schaus, 1920), a rare and endangered butterfly exclusive to the high mountains of Atlantic Forest (Brazil). Threatened by habitat loss. Photo by Augusto Rosa.
PARIS (AFP).- Half of the one million animal and plant species on Earth facing extinction are insects, and their disappearance could be catastrophic for humankind, scientists have said in a "warning to humanity". "The current insect extinction crisis is deeply worrying," said Pedro Cardoso, a biologist at the Finnish Museum of Natural History and lead author of a review study published Monday. "Yet, what we know is only the tip of the iceberg," he told AFP. The disappearance of bugs that fly, crawl, burrow, jump and walk on water is part of a gathering mass extinction event, only the sixth in the last half-billion years. The last one was 66 million years ago, when an errant space rock wiped out land-based dinosaurs and most other life forms. This time we are to blame. "Human activity is responsible for almost all insect population declines and extinctions," Cardoso told AFP. The main ... More | |
This file photo shows the Apollon Gallery on January 14, 2020 at the Louvre museum in Paris after the reopening of the Gallery following ten months of renovations. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
SOFIA (AFP).- Bulgaria is considering pulling out of a forthcoming exhibition of Christian Orthodox icons at the Louvre museum in Paris after an outcry from nationalists and the Orthodox Church. The nationalist VMRO party, a junior partner in the conservative government, has condemned the show as a "mockery" and an "insult" because it plans to explore the influence of Islam over Christianity. Bulgaria's Orthodox Church has said it refuses to send icons and objects from a monastery and two church museums to the event. Eighty percent of the country's population are members of the church. "It is likely that the exhibition will be cancelled or replaced by another one," a culture ministry spokeswoman told AFP on Tuesday. Talks with the Louvre were already underway, she added. A statement Monday from the ministry said it would be best to withdraw from ... More | |
37 of its gallery exhibitions, 17 gallery talks and events will take place as scheduled from March 12 to 19th.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Asia Week New York Association has announced that 37 of its gallery exhibitions, 17 gallery talks and events will take place as scheduled from March 12 to 19th. However, due to the coronavirus outbreak, their auction house partners- Bonhams, Christie's, Doyle, Heritage and Sotheby's- will reschedule the majority of their March Asian art auctions and related events to take place the week of June 22nd. Says Katherine Martin, chairman of Asia Week New York: "Due to the tragic coronavirus outbreak and the effect it's had on so many people, we understand the difficult decision that the auction houses had to make to respectfully accommodate their buyers. Our dealers will still present their exhibitions, which are free and open to the public, and maintain their schedule of gallery talks and receptions throughout the week." According to Ms. Martin, managing director of Scholten Japanese Art, Christie's and Sotheby's will still present ... More |
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| | The official Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience makes its UK debut | | Joseph Shabalala, Ladysmith Black Mambazo founder, dies at 78 | | Pace features three new works from James Turrell's Constellation series |
Installation view of Meet Vincent van Gogh, London. Image courtesy of Meet Vincent van Gogh. Photo: Luke Walker. Meet Vincent van Gogh, 7 February 2020 - 21 May 2020, Upper Ground, London, meetvincent.co.uk
LONDON.- The Van Gogh Museums blockbuster Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience is on view in Londons South Bank, from 7 February 2020 21 May 2020. The interactive and multisensory experience follows in the footsteps of the worlds most iconic artist, bringing together the Van Gogh Museums world-leading research and unique collection of the artists personal letters, to recreate Van Goghs life in his own words. A touring exhibition focused on Vincents inspiring life story, Meet Vincent van Gogh fulfills the Van Gogh Museums mission of making the artists life and works accessible to a global audience. The fragile nature of Van Goghs original works prevents them from travelling beyond the Museum walls; this experience ensures the collection can continue to enrich and inspire audiences across the world. ... More | |
In this file photo taken on August 01, 2002 Joseph Shabalala, legendary founder of South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo, celebrating 42 years of acapella Zulu melodies at a show in Johannesburg. ALEXANDER JOE / AFP.
JOHANNESBURG (AFP).- Joseph Shabalala, founder of South Africa's multiple Grammy-winning choral group, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo, has died, the choir said on Tuesday. He was 78. Shabalala passed away at a Pretoria hospital following complications from back surgery that left him wheelchair-bound, according to local media. "Our Founder, our Teacher and most importantly, our Father left us today for eternal peace," the choir said on social media. "We celebrate and honor your kind heart and your extraordinary life. Through your music and the millions who you came in contact with, you shall live forever." Shabalala had retired in 2014 and handed control to the all-male choral group to his four sons. Founded in the southestern city of Durban in the 1960s, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo ... More | |
James Turrell, VARDA (03), 2017 © James Turrell, Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran.
LONDON.- Pace Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of new works by Light and Space master James Turrell at 6 Burlington Gardens. On view from 11 February to 27 March 2020, the exhibition marks the artists ninth solo presentation with Pace and features three new works from his Constellation series. Influenced by the notion of phenomenology in pictorial art, Turrells early work focused on the dialectic between constructing light and painting with it, building on the sensorial experience of space, colour, and perception. These interactions became the foundation for Turrells later developed oeuvre, which evolved to an investigation of the immateriality of light itself. With these new pieces, Turrell continues his exploration of technological possibilities combined with sensory practices and gradient colours. Presented in site-specific chambers, the works feature elliptical and circular shapes with a frosted glass surfac ... More |
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| | Soulages masterpiece offered at Bonhams Post-War & Contemporary sale in London | | Hamiltons Gallery opens an exhibition of works by photographer Hiro | | Exhibition at Pinakothek der Moderne marks the 100th anniversary of Max Klinger's death |
Peinture 128,5 x 128,5 cm, 16 décembre 1959 (detail). Estimate: £5,500,000-7,500,000. Photo: Bonhams.
LONDON.- Peinture 128,5 x 128,5 cm, 16 décembre 1959 by the French artist Pierre Soulages (b 1919) leads Bonhams Post-War & Contemporary Art Sale in London on 12 March. This sublime painting is a masterpiece of the artists oeuvre and from his most important period. It is also one of only a very few executed in this arresting red and black palette. The work has an estimate of £5,500,000-7,500,000. In Peinture 128,5 x 128,5 cm, 16 décembre 1959, Soulages unusually employs an intense crimson to form the foundation for the painting. This differentiates the work from others of the same period, and produces a mercurial surface that constantly shifts under light. It also undoubtedly echoes the palettes of Soulagess friend Mark Rothko, to whom the French artist had been introduced in New York in 1957. A contemporary of Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and a close friend of Zao Wou-Ki, Pierre Soulages is universally regarded as one ... More | |
Betta Splendens (05018), New York City, 1981 (detail) © Hiro
LONDON.- For decades, the legendary photographer Hiro has become highly regarded for his fashion, beauty, still life and portrait photography for Harpers Bazaar, Vogue, Rolling Stone and many other publications. In the 1980s, as a purely personal project, Hiro photographed dazzling fighting Betta Splendens fish and powerful male game fowl. These photographs, charged with brilliant colour, violent movement, and high emotion, reveal Hiros genius in discovering beauty in the unexpected. In places where one could not imagine finding it. His work is characterised by surprises, abnormalities, unusual lighting, surrealism, and an astounding vision. To look at a photograph of Hiros is to come face to face with a picture rife with unusual lighting effects, surprising angles, juxtaposing elements and bold colours. The Fighting Fish series comprises 24 colour images of Siamese fighting fish, which Hiro photographed in a tank in his studio, and the Game Fowl series ... More | |
Max Klinger (18571920), Self-Portrait with a Cigar, 1909 (detail). Aquatint, 236 x 142 mm (plate), 318 x 210 mm (sheet) Inv.-Nr. 1957:437 D Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München.
MUNICH.- Max Klinger (18571920), considered the German Michelangelo by his contemporaries, was not only famous for his sculptures and paintings but also for his prints, in particular. His innovations in this field were compared to no one less than Albrecht Dürer. Numerous 20th-century artists, including Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz and Max Ernst, drew on the works of Max Klinger. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München is commemorating the graphic artist who completed many of his major cycles in Munich and worked intensively with a publishing house in the city. The sensational new narrative style in Klingers graphic cycles is shown using selected examples and his last, rarely exhibited cycle Tent (Opus XIV, 191517) will be displayed in Munich for the first time. Apart from Klingers native city of Leipzig, ... More |
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| | John Beardsley is the inaugural Curator of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize | | Mary Quant exhibition hits 400,000 visitors in time for the designer's 90th birthday | | Metro Pictures now representing Gretchen Bender Estate |
John Beardsley, 2020. Photo © Ronda Ann Gregorio, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Cultural Landscape Foundation today announced that influential writer, curator, historian, and professor John Beardsley is the inaugural curator of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize (Oberlander Prize). Beardsley has curated several influential exhibitions, including The Quilts of Gees Bend at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, has authored noted books such as Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape, and has organized numerous symposia, among them Cultural Landscape Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa. Beardsley was most recently Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. The biennial Oberlander Prize is the first international landscape architecture ... More | |
Installation view.
LONDON.- To celebrate Mary Quants 90th birthday, the V&A announced that its exhibition, Mary Quant, has welcomed 400,000 visitors, making it the museums third most popular fashion exhibition ever, after Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. The show has now surpassed Wedding Dresses 1775-2014 (316,852 visitors) and Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion (272,564 visitors) to also make it the most successful show ever housed in the museum dedicated fashion gallery (Gallery 40). The record-breaking show will close at the V&A in South Kensington on 16 February before it begins its journey to V&A Dundee. Tickets for the show in Dundee will be available from 20 February and it will open to the public on 4 April as part of V&A Dundees Fashion 2020 season. Quant personified the energy and fun of swinging London and was a powerful role model for the working woman. Challenging conventions, she popularised the ... More | |
Gretchen Bender, Total Recall, 1987. Eight-channel video on 24 monitors and three rear projection screens, 18 minutes. Installation view, 2019. Red Bull Arts New York. Courtesy of the Gretchen Bender Estate and Metro Pictures, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- Metro Pictures announced that the gallery now represents the Gretchen Bender Estate. Bender (19512004) was a pioneering American multi-disciplinary artist whose practice interrogated the accelerated age of mass media. She came to prominence in the 1980s as a post-appropriation artist in New York, where her work was first presented at non-profit art spaces like the Kitchen, Artists Space, and White Columns. Her work was also exhibited at Lower East Side galleries Nature Morte and International and Monument, as well as at Metro Pictures, then located in Soho. Her work was included in the seminal group exhibition Forest of Signs (1989) curated by Ann Goldstein at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as well as in group exhibitions at the New Museum, New York; ... More |
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February 13th Auction Highlights - Part 2
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Jeu de Paume opens 'The Supermarket of Images'
PARIS.- We live in a world that is increasingly saturated with images. Their number is growing so exponentially each day more than three billion images are shared on social networks that the space of visibility seems to be literally inundated. As if it can no longer contain the images that constitute it. As if there were no more room, no more interstices between the images. This brings us closer to the point that Walter Benjamin imagined, almost a hundred years ago now, as the one hundred percent image space. Faced with such an overproduction of images, questions need to be asked, more than ever before, about their storage, management, transportation (even if it is electronic) and the paths they follow, their weight, the fluidity or viscosity of their exchanges, their fluctuating values in short, questions about their economy. In the book ... More
Miller & Miller's Canadiana, Pottery & Folk Art auction is a huge success
NEW HAMBURG.- An iconic Fat Man hooked mat from 1916 sold for $17,700, an oil painting of a horse by J. J. Kenyon galloped off for $11,800, a figural landscape by Homer Watson brought $6,900, and a circa 1940 CBC Radio Canada sign finished at $5,750 in Miller & Miller Auction, Ltd.s Canadiana, Pottery & Folk Art auction held on February 8th. The auction was held online and in the Miller & Miller gallery located at 59 Webster Street in New Hamburg. It was headlined by the collection of the late Don Pero a quiet but passionate collector of old school primitives, from pottery to furniture to folk art and select offerings from the collections of John Wine and Jim Fleming, both pioneer collectors of pottery and folk art. The iconic Canadian Fat Man wool and burlap hooked mat dated 1916, perhaps Ontarios most recognizable hooked rug, was ... More
London's 'chewing gum man' fuses art with recycling
LONDON (AFP).- Lying on a footbridge spanning London's River Thames, Ben Wilson finalises his latest creation: a miniature painting on chewing gum, stuck to the steel structure. The 57-year-old Englishman has toured the British capital for the past 15 years sculpting and repainting scraps of gum discarded by passers-by. But it's not just an eccentric hobby. Wilson considers the results "a form of art" -- as well as recycling. "I'm transforming the rubbish and making it into a form of art, so that's a form of recycling," he told AFP on a sunny morning on the Millenium Bridge in the shadow of Saint Paul's Cathedral. "(It) is taking a thoughtless action and trying to transform it hopefully into something positive," Wilson added, brush in hand. His colourful creations, barely bigger than a small coin, can be found all along the pedestrian bridge and in ... More
Terry Hands, director known for hits and 'Carrie,' dies at 79
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Terry Hands, a British director who led the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and in the 1980s took several productions to Broadway, including a well-regarded Much Ado About Nothing and the notorious musical flop Carrie, died Tuesday. He was 79. Theatr Clwyd in Wales, where he was artistic director for 18 years, retiring after directing a final Hamlet in 2015, posted news of his death. The location and cause were not given. Hands was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for almost a quarter-century, joining it in 1966 to run Theatregoround, an outreach program. In 1978 he became joint artistic director with Trevor Nunn, and from 1986 until his departure in 1990 he was the companys chief executive. One highlight of his tenure there was his work with actor Alan Howard, whom he directed ... More
In Mali, an arts festival defies jihadist violence
SEGOU (AFP).- Behind the stage looming over the banks of the Niger River, there came worrying information: Jihadists were poised to attack Mali's most important cultural festival. On stage, everything was calm. Officials lined up to give speeches to usher in the much-loved event while relaxed-looking security guards looked on. But behind the scenes, security chiefs were on the alert. And the calls were stacking up on the mobile phone of Commander Diallo, an official from Mali's security ministry. Now in its 16th year, Segou'Art Festival on the Niger is Mali's largest cultural event, a haven of theatre and music in a rising tide of war. It is staged in the town of Segou in central Mali -- a region that is now the epicentre of a jihadist revolt that began more than seven years ago. In 2019, militant groups killed over 450 civilians in central Mali alone, Human Rights ... More
Celebrated French cartoonist Claire Bretecher dies aged 79
PARIS (AFP).- Claire Bretecher, one of the most celebrated French cartoonists of recent decades and the first woman to achieve real prominence in the genre in France, died on Tuesday aged 79, her publisher announced. Bretecher rose to fame in the 1970s with the comic book series "Les Frustres" (The Frustrated Ones) which tackled issues of gender and sexuality with a mordant and deadpan humour. From the 1980s onwards her most famous character was Agrippine, a spoilt adolescent dealing with the troubles of growing up whose travails were carved into the mind of a generation. In France, comic books are known as bandes dessinees or BD and are regarded as a serious literary art form for adults as well as children. The top practitioners have a large and loyal following. In 1976, the famous French philosopher Roland Barthes hailed Bretecher as the ... More
Kunsthaus Baselland opens a retrospective exhibition of works by Christoph Oertli
BASEL.- As soon as you step into Christoph Oertlis exhibition, it becomes clear that this is about more than moving images projected onto various backgrounds, or even media works generally, which can more or less be avoided. Christoph Oertlis works demand physical presence. Visitors enter rooms with constructed screens via a platform, passing by monitors and through PVC wall partitions to reach sound works. For years, this has been the defining and characteristic feature of the Swiss film and video artists work: people in their built environment, more artificial than natural, somewhere between reality and fiction, dreamlike or unfortunately sometimes cruelly realistic. Oertlis video works show people how he lives, loves, behaves, and tries to understand and conceive his identity globally, spanning genders and generations, close, intimate, ... More
Exhibition of photographs by Colin Jones opens at North Wall Oxford
OXFORD.- Ballet dancer-turned-photographer Colin Jones (b. 1936) has been taking photographs for more than six decades and is one of Britains most significant post-war photojournalists. His ballet photography reveals the emotional intensity and beauty of ballet as well as the physical exertion and discipline of a dancers life. Drawn from the archive of TopFoto and Colin Joness own collection, the exhibition features over 50 images, many of which have never been on public display before. Taken while Jones was a dancer then photographer in the 1960s, and again in the 1990s, the prints include Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev whom he danced alongside, as well as Ninette de Valois, Kenneth MacMillan, Lynn Seymour and Tamara Rojo. Backstage at the Ballet runs at Oxfords North Wall from 11 February 7 March 2020 and admission is free. After a working-class ... More
Dual exhibitions explore two mid-century designs by Isamu Noguchi
NEW YORK, NY.- The Noguchi Museum delves into two forgotten projects by Isamu Noguchi, conceived at the height of American modernism. The Sculptor and the Ashtray explores Noguchis efforts to design the perfect ashtray (a near-universal tabletop accessory in that era), and Composition for Idlewild Airport traces the story of Noguchis unrealized design for a monumental sculpture for the new International Arrivals Building at New Yorks Idlewild Airport (now the John F. Kennedy International Airport). Both exhibitions will be on view February 12 August 23, 2020. Noguchi was profoundly in sync with Americas mid-century obsession with the power of design to shape the modern world. These side-by-side exhibitions testify to his interest in making sculpture everywhere out of everything. Most notable in his career, and in the contrast ... More
Fifty years of book arts at UW-Madison is the subject of a new exhibition at the Chazen
MADISON, WIS.- Speaking of Book Arts: Oral Histories from UWMadison is a first-time collaboration between the Chazen Museum of Art, Kohler Art Library, and UW Archives. The Chazen and the Kohler Art Library both mark 50th anniversaries in 2020. Curated by Lyn Korenic, director of the Kohler Art Library and Tracy Honn, former director of Silver Buckle Press, the exhibition covers fifty years of book arts at the university. Interviews with 21 students and teachers (past and present) recorded by the UWMadison Archives Oral History Program are presented alongside examples of their works from the Kohler Art Librarys Artists Book Collection. We are delighted to showcase the Kohler Art Librarys outstanding collection of artist books with this unique exhibition, said Chazen Director Amy Gilman. It brings attention to one of our major campus ... More
Rainbow Shoe Repair: An unexpected theater of flyness opens at Abrons Arts Center
NEW YORK, NY.- On view at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street, NYC), Rainbow Shoe Repair: An Unexpected Theater of Flyness is an exhibition that uncovers a collection of photographs taken of people of color on the Lower East Side from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. A selection of portraits are also installed outdoors around the Henry Street Settlement campus, presented in partnership with United Photo Industries. Using the local Rainbow Shoe Repair shop on Delancey as an unexpected theater for fashion, curtains furnished to service mundane needs (such as visa and passport photos) were adopted by black and brown members of the community as backdrops for vibrant portraits that showcased the family unit, devoted friendships and audacious style for posterity. These DIY portraits assembled by curators Kimberly Jenkins, Ali ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Grayson Perry
Jacob Lawrence
Science Museum
Thu Van Tran
Flashback On a day like today, French photographer Eugène Atget was born February 12, 1857. Eugène Atget (12 February 1857 - 4 August 1927) was a French flâneur and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. In this image: Eugène Atget, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, June 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print, 6 11/16 x 8 3/4" (17 x 22.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.
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