| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Friday, October 30, 2020 |
| | | Michelangelo Pistoletto endures. Even COVID couldn't stop him. | |
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Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto at his foundation, the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, in Biella, Italy, Oct. 8, 2020. Pistolettos career covers more than 60 years, ranging from Pop to Arte Povera. A New York gallery has mounted a rare show of his work. Marta Giaccone/The New York Times.
by Ted Loos
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For someone who is 87 and who survived a severe bout of COVID-19 that put him in the hospital for a month, Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto was steadily upbeat on the phone, speaking from a respite on the Ligurian coast. Im still alive, he said, sounding defiant, as if it had been a close call. It was very, very hard to retake life, Pistoletto added of his long recovery. He spoke in imperfect English but with the forceful current of someone who has worked for a lifetime to make himself understood, in his case through his art. After this lockdown time I am feeling revitalized, and life is very good, he said. One engagement he has retaken is the exhibition of his work at the Lévy Gorvy gallery in New York, through Jan 9. The show, organized with Galleria Continua of San Gimignano, Italy, was designed by Pistoletto himself. It features 19 works made more than 50 years by a man who gained early fame in pop art, then became a star of the arte ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Dresses are on display during the press preview for the The Costume InstituteÂs exhibition "About Time: Fashion and Duration" on October 26, 2020, which will be on view from October 29, 2020 to February 7, 2021 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The show traces 150 years of fashion, from 1870 to the present, along a disrupted timeline, in honor of the MuseumÂs 150th anniversary. TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
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| | After backlash, Philip Guston retrospective to open in 2022 | | Julius Caesar "assassination coin" sets world record of nearly $4.2 million | | KGB Museum closes; Lipstick gun and other spy relics go on sale |
The painting Bombardment, by Philip Guston, 1937, at the Whitney Museums Vida Americana show, in New York, Feb. 16, 2020. Emiliano Granado/The New York Times.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The much-discussed Philip Guston retrospective will now open in 2022, a spokeswoman for the National Gallery of Art in Washington said Wednesday, after the announcement last month of a delay until 2024 sparked a backlash in the art world. The National Gallery and three other major museums had announced that they were delaying the retrospective, which was originally intended to begin its tour last June, after taking into account the surging racial justice protests across the country. The museums had decided that roughly 24 of the Guston works featuring Ku Klux Klan members risked being misinterpreted and needed to be better contextualized for the current political moment. Some critics said the decision to delay the retrospective amounted to self-censorship fueled by fear of controversy, but the National Gallery countered that the ... More | |
Recently announced and authenticated, the third known ides of March gold coin is the most valuable ancient coin ever sold.
LONDON.- A previously unrecorded example of a valuable ancient Ides of March gold coin commemorating the assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. sold for £3,240,000 ($4,188,393, 3,588,602) on October 29, 2020. Authenticators in the United States and United Kingdom who verified its authenticity predicted it would sell for millions more than a London auction houses conservative £500,000 pre-sale estimate. Im not surprised it set a world record as the most valuable ancient coin ever sold, said Mark Salzberg, Chairman of Numismatic Guaranty Corporation in Sarasota, Florida, the company whose experts in the U.S. and U.K. confirmed its authenticity. Its a masterpiece of artistry and rarity, still in mint condition after 2,000 years, and only the third known example made in gold. Many of us believed it would sell for millions, and it did. The name of the winning bidder was not revealed by ... More | |
Julius Urbaitis and Agne Urbaityte, father and daughter curators of the K.G.B. Spy Museum in New York, Jan. 16, 2019. The museum, shut since March, is closing for good. Karsten Moran/The New York Times.
by Sarah Bahr
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Julius Urbaitis had a grand plan: Take his collection of KGB memorabilia, acquired over three decades, and create a museum in downtown Manhattan. People would come from all over the world to admire Cold War relics like a gun masquerading as a tube of lipstick, a replica of an umbrella with a hidden poison needle and a bronze desk lamp that supposedly sat in Josef Stalins villa. The 57-year-old Lithuanian collector filled a warehouselike space in Chelsea with more than 3,500 artifacts related to the KGB, the Soviet Unions intelligence agency and secret police. My daughter and I have invested a lot of work, energy, heart and many years of collecting artifacts, Urbaitis wrote in an email Tuesday. But now that dream is dashed. ... More |
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| | At the Queens Museum, home and the world | | Artcurial's Old Master & 19th Century Art department will hold its prestigious bi-annual sale on 18 November | | Art Gallery of Ontario announces new department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora |
In an undated image provided by Heather Hart and Queens Museum, Heather Harts Oracle of the Twelve Tenses (2020) in the group show After the Plaster Foundation, or, Where can we live? at the Queens Museum in New York. Heather Hart and Queens Museum via The New York Times.
by Holland Cotter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Over the years, the Queens Museum has helped me define my sense of what an art museum can be: a place as much about ideas as about objects, as much about politics as about aesthetics, and as much about local as about global. All of these opposites-that-arent-really-opposites figure in the museums three new, post-lockdown exhibitions. One, a large group gathering, considers the economics and ethics that underlie, and can easily undermine, the concept of home. A second is a career survey of a great American photographer who has consciously anchored his art in rootlessness. And a third show looks widely at the world through a prism of small drawings made, over nearly a century, ... More | |
Jean-François Millet, Barque de pêche (detail), Oil on canvas, (32,50 x 41 cm). Estimate : 400 000 - 600 000 €
PARIS.- On Wednesday 18 November, Artcurial will hold its major sale of Old Master & 19th Century Art, which takes place twice a year. There will be over 180 works of art on offer, with paintings, drawings and sculptures ranging from a rare German Renaissance panel depicting the story of Judith and Holofernes to an important selection of 19th century works of art. Other highlights to be offered by the auction house include an extraordinary selection of monumental paintings as well as pieces from the Donon Maigret Collection that highlights a predilection for French 18th century art inherited from Dormeuil. The second part of this collection will be offered in the Furniture & Works of Art sale on 9 December. A highlight of the sale on 18 November will be a magnificent example of the enigmatic production of German Renaissance painters : an oil on board depicting Judith carrying the head of Holofernes, attributed to Melchior Feselen (est: 400 ... More | |
Moridja Kitenge Banza, Christ Pantocrator No 13, 2020. Acrylic and gold leaf on wood, 40 x 30 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Purchase, with assistance from the Christian Claude Fund. Photo courtesy of Galerie Hugues Charbonneau.
TORONTO.- Today the Art Gallery of Ontario announced the establishment of a new Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, which will focus on expanding both the museums collections and its exhibitions and programs of historic, modern and contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora. The Department will be led by Dr. Julie Crooks, formerly the AGOs Associate Curator of Photography; her new title is Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora. Simultaneously, a new support group, Friends of Global Africa and the Diaspora has been formed with the dual goals of supporting the Departments work in this area, as well as creating a more dynamic forum for community voices. The creation of this new Department expands and formalizes work that has been underway at the AGO for several years. For example, in 2019 the museum ... More |
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| | Sisi in private: Museum Ludwig displays the empress's photo albums | | Lost Bob Dylan Archives of blues musician Tony Glover headlines Marvels of Modern Music auction | | Bierstadt's majestic Golden Gate panorama leads Bonhams American Art sale |
Ludwig Angerer, Elisabeth von Ãsterreich-Ungarn with her Irish wolfhound "Horseguard", 1864. Albumen paper on cardboard, ca. 9 x 6 cm. Museum Ludwig, Köln. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln.
COLOGNE.- Like many upper-class women of her time, Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, known as Sisi, collected portrait photographs in the 1860sit was in vogue. The Museum Ludwig holds eighteen of her albums with some 2000 photographs in carte de visite formatphotographs mounted on cardboard around six by nine centimeters in size. They show members of the nobilitymany of them from Elisabeths familyas well as celebrities and artworks. Only in recent years have such albums been rediscovered as creative collages, imaginative spaces for social structures, and a medium for self reflection. Among the empresss eighteen albums are three albums of beauties. I am creating a beauty album, and am now collecting photographs for it, only of women. Any pretty faces you can muster at Angerers or other photographers, I ask you to send me, she wrote in 1862 from Venice to her brother-in-law ... More | |
Bob Dylan Hand-Annotated 1971 Interview Transcript (Tape #2, First Correction).
BOSTON, MASS.- RR Auction's latest Marvels of Modern Music sale is led by the collection of blues musician and writer Tony Glover, a personal friend of Bob Dylan.
Tony Glover (19392019) was a musician, writer, and critic, who befriended Bob Dylan in the Minneapolis coffeehouse scene where they would, on occasion, share the same stage. He was one of the few hometown friends that Dylan stayed in touch with after going to NYC. Dylan dedicated his prose-poem contribution to the 1963 Newport Folk Festival program to Glover, calling him a 'best friend in the highest form. Among the top items are early 1960s letters from Bob Dylan to Tony Glover; included is a Dylan signed letter to Glover from January 1962. The one-page handwritten letter thrice-signed from Bob Dylan, with the original hand-addressed mailing envelope, postmarked January 20, 1962, with Dylan striking through the Book of the Month Club' address field and writing: " ... More | |
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Entrance to Golden Gate (detail). Estimate: $200,000-300,000. Photo: Bonhams.
NEW YORK, NY.- The American Art sale on November 24 will offer an array of exciting works across the 19th and 20th century genres represented in the category. Leading the sale is Entrance to Golden Gate by Albert Bierstadt, one of the most vivacious personalities of the American art world in the second half of the 19th century. He combined his flair for showmanship with abundant artistic talent to produce sublime panoramic views of the American West that awed and inspired audiences around the world. One of his superb works from California, Entrance to Golden Gate, exhibits Bierstadt's dramatic celebration of an unspoiled landscape and his mastery of light. It is estimated at $200,000-300,000. During his extensive travels throughout the West, Bierstadt spent much of his time in California recording the topography of the Golden State, from the coast to the Sierra Nevada Mountains; he loved the resplendent beauty of California's coastline, ... More |
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| | Simon Lee Gallery opens a group exhibition curated by Eric N. Mack | | Louis Lozowick leads Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann | | Sanford Biggers opens second solo exhibition with Marianne Boesky Gallery |
Installation view, Pedestrian Profanities, Curated by Eric N. Mack, Simon Lee Gallery, New York, 29 October 12 December 2020. Courtesy of Simon Lee Gallery. Photo: Pierre Le Hors.
NEW YORK, NY.- Simon Lee Gallery, New York is presenting Pedestrian Profanities, a group exhibition of interdisciplinary artists, designers and polymaths curated by Eric N. Mack, which explores the relationship between fine art, design and fashion, and the ways in which they are activated by a participating body. This show is about the event of walking down the avenue. The role of a mannequin in a storefront is to elicit a direct relationship between the consumer, their body and the garment; to engender a sense of its structure. In a similar way, the role of the viewer in the act of observing, or consuming, an artwork bestows value and radiant spirit: the art object, at its most sacred, should reflect altered systems of value, especially in observation of our world's brutalities. In contemplating either artwork or clothing, the viewer enacts a sense of embodiment outside of their-self an act of transference. This exhibition imagines ... More | |
Louis Lozowick, New York, lithograph, circa 1925. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.
NEW YORK, NY.- Swann Galleries Old Master Through Modern Prints sale on Thursday, November 12 will include masters of printmaking from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. The auction is led by Louis Lozowicks scarce circa-1925 Art Deco lithograph New York, of which only three other impressions have been seen at auction in the past 30 years ($40,000-60,000). Edward Hopper is available with Night Shadows, etching, 1921 ($20,000-30,000): the work is the only commercial etching printed by Hopper and was created for The New Republic, New York, and published in a limited edition portfolio for their December 1924 issue. Additional works by American printmakers include color woodcuts by Gustave Baumann, classic views of New York City by Martin Lewis, and the important Regionalist lithographer Thomas Hart Benton. Latin American stalwarts include Wifredo Lam with Pleni Luna, a 1974 portfolio with complete text and 10 color lithographs ($6,000-9,000); Mixografias by Rufino Tamayo: Persona ... More | |
Sanford Biggers, The Ascendant, 2020. Pink Portugal marble. Sculpture: approx. 48" x 11" x 10". Plinth: approx. 27" H X 33" W x 33" D. Overall: approx. 75" x 33" (SB.17302) Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Sanford Biggers. Photo: Peter Kaiser.
NEW YORK, NY.- Marianne Boesky Gallery will present Soft Truths, artist Sanford Biggers second solo exhibition with the gallery. With his show, Biggers delves into the parallels between our experiences with and understanding of Classical sculpture, extending his career-long engagement with aesthetics, cultural narratives, and the body politic. The exhibition will feature a selection of new marble sculptures from the artists Chimeras series and quilt-based paintings and sculpture works. Soft Truths will be on view October 30 December 12, 2020. The exhibition will follow the opening of Biggers exhibition, Codeswitch, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts on September 9, which includes approximately fifty of the artists quilt-based works. Biggers exceptionally varied oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles, films, mixed- ... More |
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Exhibition Tour---About Time: Fashion and Duration with Andrew Bolton
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A not-so-merry mix: Shakespeare, bluegrass and Randy Quaid
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Shows stumble and fall on the way to Broadway all the time. Then theres Lone Star Love, which after nearly two decades as a regional-theater staple, finally crashed thanks to the mercurial behavior of its star, which resulted in his lifetime banishment from Actors Equity. The actor: Randy Quaid, who with his wife/manager, Evi Quaid, has since been in the news largely for brushes with the law. Today, almost 13 years after its aborted Broadway opening, the creators of the show are reluctant to speak the names of the couple at the center of the cancellation. He is the actor who caused an unbelievable fracas, or simply that actor; she is known as her. Flash back, though, to happier times, when Lone Star Love was simply a bouncy Texas-set updating of Shakespeares The Merry Wives of Windsor, complete ... More
Diane di Prima, poet of the Beat era and beyond, dies at 86
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Diane di Prima, the most prominent woman among the male-dominated Beat poets, who after being immersed in the bohemian swirl of Greenwich Village in the 1950s moved to the West Coast and continued to publish prolifically in a wide range of forms, died Sunday at a San Francisco hospital. She was 86. Her husband, Sheppard Powell, confirmed her death. She had been living at an elder care home since 2017 because of various health problems, having moved there from the couples home in the citys Excelsior district. Di Prima was initially known as one of the Beats; she published her first poetry volume, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, in 1958, two years after Allen Ginsbergs celebrated Howl and Other Poems appeared. It cost 95 cents. Lawrence Ferlinghetti provided the introduction. Heres a sound ... More
Fresh push to save Vienna's Jewish cemetery 'jewel'
VIENNA (AFP).- "It might sound strange but when I came here for the first time... I fell in love with this place," says Jennifer Kickert, spokeswoman for an association striving to clean up a long-neglected Jewish cemetery in Vienna's north-eastern suburbs. As russet-coloured leaves fall gently past Kickert on a beautiful autumn day in the Waehring cemetery, it's easy to see what prompted her enchantment on that first visit ten years ago. In operation between 1784 and the late 19th century, the artfully carved tombstones and prominence of the people buried in the cemetery make it a "cultural and historical jewel" according to Ariel Muzicant, former president of Vienna's Jewish community organisation IKG. But until recently this reminder of Vienna's imperial heyday had been hidden under dense layers of vegetation, with the graves ... More
Exhibition featuring eight photogravures by Rodrigo Valenzuela opens at Asya Geisberg Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- Asya Geisberg Gallery is presenting "Stature", the gallery's first solo exhibition with Rodrigo Valenzuela, whose career encompasses photography, installation and video. "Stature" features eight photogravures taken of the artist's studio constructions. As is typical of the artist, the series masterfully balances on a fulcrum between fiction and documentary traditions, "commonplace" materials and rarefied results, flattened photos of ambiguous scale and three-dimensional references. The forms in "Stature" could refer to Brutalist architecture, outdated machinery, or modernist monsters, but in fact they are concrete and plaster casts of discarded consumer packaging. Their immobility, too, is an illusion - all the forms are carefully stacked and tenuously balanced, rather than glued in place. There is ample metaphor to be quietly ... More
'Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women's Rights' opens at the British Library and across the UK
LONDON.- Offering a fresh take on womens rights, Unfinished Business: The Fight for Womens Rights (23 October 2020 21 February 2021) is divided into Body, Mind and Voice, with each section introducing a contemporary activist organisation working in the UK today before exploring the history behind the issues their campaigns tackle through a variety of items from the British Librarys collections and lenders. Featuring campaigns by gal-dem, Bloody Good Period, Now for Northern Ireland, STEMettes, United Voices of the World, Fawcett Society, Women for Refugee Women, Glasgow Womens Library and LD Comics, the exhibition highlights how women and their allies have fought for equality with passion, imagination, humour and tenacity. Including personal diaries, subversive literature, protest fashion and banners, womens voices ... More
Austria gets virus-themed stamps on toilet paper
(AFP).- Austria's post office has unveiled a new coronavirus-themed stamp, printed on toilet paper in an ironic nod to the stockpiling which took place at the start of the pandemic. Adorning the stamps is a picture of a baby elephant, adopted by the Austrian government at the beginning of the pandemic as a symbol of the one-metre (three feet) distance from others needed to help prevent transmission of the virus. "If you put ten of the stamps end to end you get the length of a baby elephant," explained Austrian Post spokesman Markus Leitgeb. The stamps are presented in block format in the size of a standard 10 centimetre-wide piece of toilet paper, complete with perforations to enable a smaller piece to be torn off as a standalone stamp. There is no need to moisten the stamps, which come with an adhesive backing already attached. A ... More
As lockdown revives interest in model trains, collection expected to make £10,000 sells for over £33,000
WOKING.- Clear evidence of the lockdown revival of model train sets came at Ewbanks Auctions in Surrey on October 28 when a collection valued at £10,000 sold for more than £33,000. Individual lots were soaring over estimate, with some going for more than twice expectations. It was a very good collection and largely in untouched condition, so very attractive to serious collectors, but the level of interest went way beyond even that, said Ewbanks specialist Andy Delve. Only three days before the sale I read a national newspaper article about how orders had risen significantly at Hornby, Peco and other toy suppliers during lockdown as people reassessed how they used their time and headed back to train sets and model cars. Our auction results reflect that heightened interest. One lot, a collection of 40 boxed railway coaches by Bachmann ... More
Alexander Berggruen opens an exhibition of work by Hulda Guzmán
NEW YORK, NY.- Alexander Berggruen is presenting Hulda Guzmán: my flora, my fauna . This exhibition is on view by appointment only, at the gallery: 1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3. Dominican Republic-based artist Hulda Guzmán has long employed her tropical surroundings to illustrate her exploration of perspective and reality. Introspection during quarantine, especially, has influenced her contemplation to shift further inward the flora and fauna depicted in these paintings are expressly her own. In surveying this body of work, Guzmán noted: In the face of the isolating situation, I focused on depicting my spaces and surroundings. Portraying trees helped me to divert my mind from negative thoughts and visualizations, and brought my attention back to the present momentstepping aside the mind and remembering that fear ... More
French Atmos perpetual time clock from the 1940's chimes on time for CA$6,490 in Miller & Miller auction
NEW HAMBURG, ON.- A French Atmos perpetual time clock from the 1940s chimed on time for $6,490, a Wettlaufer decorated childs wagon made in Canada circa 1890 rolled away for $5,900 and a cased set of English dueling pistols from William Chance & Son (London, circa 1830-1860), hit the mark for $4,720 in an online-only Canadiana & Historic Objects auction held October 24th by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., based in New Hamburg. The auction, packed with 699 lots, was highlighted by the outstanding lifetime collections of Dick Withington (rare clocks) and Brian Stead (Canadian furniture and pottery). The major categories included Canadiana, clocks, art, pottery and stoneware, furniture, folk art, decoys, historical objects, lamps, lighting, rugs and textiles. All prices quoted are in Canadian dollars. Brian Steads collection was received ... More
Rachel Jones joins Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
PARIS.- Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac announced that Rachel Jones is joining the gallery. The artist's work was recently included in the group exhibition A Focus on Painting, curated by Julia Peyton-Jones at the London gallery, and her first solo exhibition will be held in the London gallery in Autumn 2021. Jones is a bold, intuitive artist who uses oil stick and oil pastel to make intensely felt paintings that draw attention to a world of surfaces and appearances and an inner realm of feelings and sensations. She has a distinct, private language that communicates through colour, layering and a visual lexicon that hovers in between the concrete and the enigmatic. Her paintings betray a wisdom beyond her years and we are so proud that she has joined the gallery. Thaddaeus Ropac. Rachel Jones represents a significant new voice in abstraction. We are honored ... More
Tang Museum announces opening of 'Energy in All Directions'
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announces Energy in All Directions, an exhibition that brings rarely seen works and new acquisitions from the Tang Teaching Museum collection in dialogue with objects from the Shaker Museums extensive holdings to celebrate the life and legacy of artist and gallerist Hudson (19502014). Hudson and the Shakers valued acceptance, equality, and artistry, and both built new communities that shared common themes of inclusion, interconnectedness, and innovation. The exhibition, open online now through June 13, 2021, is an invitation to explore what a community isand can be in this time of COVID-19, social distancing, and health and safety precautions that will likely delay the exhibitions public opening until next summer. ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Klaas Rommelaere
Helen Muspratt
Bruce Nauman
Ron Arad
Flashback On a day like today, Anglo-French artist Alfred Sisley was born October 30, 1839. Alfred Sisley (30 October 1839 - 29 January 1899) was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs. In this image: French businessman Pierre de Gunzbourg, flanked by his son Vivien, left, looks at the painting, "Soleil de Printemps, Le Loing, " (Spring Sun, Le Loing) by impressionist Alfred Sisley at the Paris courthouse, Friday, June 18, 2004.
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