| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, April 25, 2021 |
| | | Maine officials say artist's estate overpaid lawyers by $3.7 million | |
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The home of the late artist Robert Indiana in Vinalhaven, Maine, May 18, 2018. The Maine attorney generals office filed papers in Knox County Probate Court this week demanding that the executor of Indianas estate, James Brannan, a Maine lawyer, put back into the estate nearly half the money, $3.7 million, that he had paid out to seven law firms. Sarah Rice/The New York Times.
by Graham Bowley and Murray Carpenter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Robert Indiana and his artistic legacy have suffered many indignities since his death at 89 in his home in Maine in 2018. Had the artist, in fact, designed much of his last work, been paid the full royalties due from business partners or been properly cared for in his last days, living alone in a ramshackle house on the island of Vinalhaven? Those questions have been debated for years in Maine and New York courtrooms. Now, as perhaps a final indignity, the Maine attorney generals office is saying the lawyers who charged $8.4 million to handle those legal matters, and others, for Indianas estate were significantly overpaid. The attorney generals office filed papers in Knox County Probate Court this week demanding that the executor of Indianas estate, James Brannan, a Maine lawyer, put back into the estate nearly half the money, $3.7 million, that he had paid out to seven law firms. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view. © Not Vital. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London • Paris • Salzburg.
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| Malaysian artist arrested for allegedly insulting queen | | With a new museum, African workers take control of their destiny | | Opera's biggest fan leaves behind a sprawling time capsule |
Fahmi is being investigated for breaking sedition laws, and faces up to three years if convicted under the act, Huzir said. He is also being probed under the communications act.
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP).- A Malaysian artist has been arrested for allegedly insulting the queen by posting a satirical playlist online, police said, fuelling concerns about a widening crackdown on freedom of expression. Fahmi Reza, also an activist, is best known for a cartoon of Najib Razak depicted as a clown that became a symbol of protest before the ex-leader's scandal-hit regime lost power in 2018. He was detained late Friday over a playlist he posted on Spotify which allegedly insulted Malaysia's queen, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah, police said. It featured a portrait of the royal and 101 songs, nearly of all which included the word "jealously", senior police official Huzir Mohamed said in a statement. It came after a storm of criticism online after someone raised questions about the royal family and coronavirus vaccines, and the queen reportedly responded "Are you jealous?". Fahmi is being investigated for breaking sedition laws, and faces up to three years if convicted under the act, ... More | |
Cedrick Tamasala's "How my Grandfather Survived (2015), center, surrounded by the work of other members of the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League collective, on display at SculptureCenter in New York, Jan. 28, 2017. Joshua Bright/The New York Times.
by Nina Siegal
AMSTERDAM (AFP).- When Dutch artist Renzo Martens presented his film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty at Tate Modern in London in 2010, he couldnt help but notice the many Unilever logos painted across the museums white walls. Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch company that owns Axe, Dove, Vaseline and other household brands, sponsors the Unilever Series, in which an artist is commissioned to make a site-specific work for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Unilever, Unilever, the Unilever series, Martens says in his latest documentary, White Cube, recalling that moment. The greatest, most famous artists of the world, financed by Unilever. Unilever was once nearly ubiquitous, too, in the region of Congo where Martens has worked since 2004. Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, from 2008, documented dire conditions on the countrys palm ... More | |
An autographed photo of Sherrill Milnes in Lois Kirschenbaums opera collection at her home in New York, April 9, 2021. Vincent Tullo/The New York Times.
by Corey Kilgannon
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- To Lois. For many of operas greatest stars since the 1950s, writing that phrase before signing an autograph was both a rite of passage and an honor. After they had finished a long performance at the Metropolitan Opera, singers like Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming knew that Lois Kirschenbaum would be waiting at the stage door to greet them. The artists admired her almost as much as vice versa. Kirschenbaum was a switchboard operator from Brooklyn, who became perhaps New Yorks biggest and longest-standing opera buff and an obsessive autograph collector. For over half a century, she spent about 300 nights a year at the Met and other musical and dance performances. Legally blind since birth, she would usually sit in the uppermost balcony and follow the action with a pair of large binoculars, always hustling back after the curtain call programs and headshots in ... More |
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| Art Gallery of New South Wales launches 150th anniversary celebrations | | Christie's Hong Kong Chinese Paintings Department presents rare and exquisite paintings | | Emily Ratajkowski is selling an NFT at Christie's |
Aboriginal artist Judith Inkamala (L), Marlene Gilson (C) and Marlene Rubuntja pose for pictures in front of their art work projected on the sails of the Opera House as part of 'Badu Gilli: Wonder Women' in Sydney on April 22, 2021. Saeed KHAN / AFP.
SYDNEY.- The Art Gallery of New South Wales kicked off its 150th anniversary celebrations with a burst of color and light, collaborating for the first time with the Sydney Opera House to mark the annual Badu Gili festival of First Nations Culture by projecting artworks onto the iconic sails of the Opera House. The work of six leading Aboriginal women artists represented in the Art Gallerys permanent collection will light up each evening in a six-minute animation on the sails, as the Gallery leads up to the completion in 2022 of its Sydney Modern expansion project, designed by SANAA. Michael Brand, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales, said, Badu Gili: Wonder Women celebrates our renowned First Nations artists and their works in the Gallerys collection, as well as our deep and longstanding relationships with communities across Australia and our curatorial leadership. While we work to complete our e ... More | |
Wu Guanzhong, North Wudang Mountain. Scroll, mounted and framed, ink and colour on paper, 89.5 x 67.8 cm. (35¼ x 26 ¾ in.) Estimate: HK$4,000,000 6,000,000 / US$520,000 780,000.
HONG KONG.- Christies will present a series of spectacular Chinese Paintings at auction this Spring on 26 and 27 May. Highlighted by exceptional masterpieces from the classical to the modern age, Wutong Studio in Autumn by Zhang Zongcang and Chess Playing by Fu Baoshi will lead the sales of Fine Chinese Classical Paintings and Calligraphy and Fine Chinese Modern and Contemporary Ink Painting. In addition, two spectacular masterpieces from distinguished Asian private collections, Temple at the Mountain Peak by Zhang Daqian and Scenery of Mount Lao by Wu Guanzhong, will be presented in the 20th and 21st Century Art Evening Sale on 24 May. Kim Yu, International Specialist Head of Chinese Paintings Department, remarks: In addition to our line-up of masterpieces, we are also excited to continue Christies longstanding tradition of bringing the finest private collections to auction, such as The Collection of Zhang Xinjia, a prominen ... More | |
Emily Ratajkowski, an actress, on the roof of her apartment in Los Angeles, July 21, 2015. Elizabeth Lippman/The New York Times.
by Kate Dwyer
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In an effort to reestablish authority over the usage of her likeness, Emily Ratajkowski, a model and writer, is minting a nonfungible token, or NFT, which will be auctioned at Christies on May 14. The piece will be titled Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution. As Ratajkowski chronicled in a widely read essay published in The Cut last fall, shed been surprised to find out, in 2014, that a nude photograph of her was hanging in the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. As part of his New Portraits series, artist Richard Prince had taken one of her Instagram photos and printed it on a large canvas, priced at $90,000. Ratajkowski tried to buy the piece but a Gagosian employee bought it for himself. After contacting Princes studio directly, though, she was able to obtain a second Instagram painting of herself, featuring a photo from her first appearance in Sports ... More |
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| Thaddaeus Ropac London presents a selection of portraits by Not Vital | | Copper prototype of first U.S. dollar brings $840,000 at Heritage Auctions | | Nepal reopens quake-toppled historic tower |
Not Vital, Monk Portrait, 2016. Oil on canvas, framed and glazed. Framed dims 38,98 x 30,71 x 3,15 in © Not Vital. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London Paris Salzburg.
LONDON.- Thaddaeus Ropac London is presenting Not Vital: Paintings. The exhibition presents the renowned Swiss artist in an intimate new light. Focusing on a series of Portrait Paintings initiated 12 years ago, the exhibition features a selection of portraits never previously exhibited in the UK and many of which have never been seen by the public, revealing a unique dimension to Vitals multifaceted practice. Rendered predominantly in a minimalist palette of white, greys and black, the series of oil paintings features individuals close to the artist; important historical figures, such as singers, poets, philosophers or artists; anonymous subjects; as well as self-portraits in which Vital sometimes adopts guises. Reduced to the delicate interplay of light and dark, achieved through the subtle tonalities of a limited, greyscale palette, Vital ... More | |
1794 DT$1 Dollar, Judd-18, Pollock-27, Unique, VF25 PCGS.
DALLAS, TX.- The first dollar coin struck at the fledgling U.S. Mint in 1794, an experiment in copper which would become the pattern for more valuable silver versions minted later, sold for $840,000 at Heritage Auctions Friday, April 23. Referred to as the "No Stars Flowing Hair Dollar" opened at $312,000 when it was put up during a live auction Friday evening. In less than a minute, intense bidding quickly pushed the coin beyond expectations it would sell between $350,000 and $500,000. The 230-year-old dollar has been off the market for 20 years, residing in the private collection of Bob R. Simpson, part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team and a lifelong Texas energy executive. Simpson purchased the coin in 2008. Simpson has been selling highlights from his collection through Heritage Auctions, which have so far totaled more than $54 million. The unique rarity was excavated from the site of the first Philadelphia Mint before ... More | |
Nepals Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli (C) waves during the inauguration ceremony of the new 23-storey, 84-metre (276-foot) white tower, built next to the rubble of the 19th-century historic Dharahara tower that collapsed in a devastating 2015 earthquake, in Kathmandu on April 24, 2021. Bikash KARKI / AFP.
KATHMANDU (AFP).- Nepal on Saturday inaugurated a replica of a historic tower that collapsed in a devastating 2015 earthquake, a day before the disaster's sixth anniversary. The 19th-century, nine-storey Dharahara tower, a major tourist attraction, was among buildings which crumbled in the 7.8-magnitude quake that killed nearly 9,000 people. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli inaugurated the new 23-storey, 84-metre (276-foot) white tower, built next to the rubble of the original, by raining flowers from the top-floor balcony. "Dharahara is linked to our feelings, pride, past and history," the prime minister said. Two underground floors have also been built, to hold a museum about the quake. The tower had already been rebuilt once, after a 1934 earthquake. ... More |
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| Egyptology is having a big moment. But will tourists come? | | She turned her audacious lens on herself, and shaped the future | | Xavier Hufkens opens American artist Sayre Gomez's first exhibition with the gallery |
A tour guide at the Saqqara Necropolis outside Cairo, Nov. 14, 2020. Sima Diab/The New York Times.
by Abdi Latif Dahir
CAIRO (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- On a cool morning last November, Egypts tourism and antiquities minister stood in a packed tent at the vast necropolis of Saqqara just outside Cairo to reveal the ancient sites largest archaeological discovery of the year. The giant trove included 100 wooden coffins some containing mummies interred over 2,500 years ago 40 statues, amulets, canopic jars and funerary masks. The minister, Khaled el-Enany, said the latest findings hinted at the great potential of the ancient site and showcased the dedication of the all-Egyptian team that unearthed the gilded artifacts. But he also singled out another reason the archaeological discoveries were crucial: It was a boon for tourism, which had been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. This unique site is still hiding a lot, el-Enany said. The more discoveries we make, the more interest there is in this site and in Egypt ... More | |
Laura Aguilar, Barbara Carrasco, 1990. Gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches. Courtesy of the artist and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center © Laura Aguilar.
by Holland Cotter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- It feels good a relief to know that photographer Laura Aguilar, who died in 2018, lived long enough to see her fine career survey, which opened a year earlier in her hometown Los Angeles and has now, at last, landed in New York. Its a movingly, sometimes discomfortingly intimate show. To know Aguilars art is, to an unusual degree, to know her, and to care about her, and to care about what she cared about: under-the-radar, under-threat social communities and hard-won personal survival. Titled Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, the retrospective was part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the Getty Foundation-sponsored extravaganza in 2017 of more than 70 concurrent exhibitions in and around Los Angeles that together demonstrated the influence of Latin America and ... More | |
The title of the exhibition, True Crime, reflects one of the leitmotivs of the exhibition and a recurring theme in Gomezs oeuvre, namely the gap between fact and fiction and the notion of constructed realities.
BRUSSELS.- Xavier Hufkens is presenting American artist Sayre Gomezs first exhibition with the gallery. Comprising a new series of large-format urban landscape paintings and three-dimensional works, the artist takes Los Angeles as the starting point for an expansive exploration of contemporary metropolitan life and the psychology of place. The title of the exhibition, True Crime, reflects one of the leitmotivs of the exhibition and a recurring theme in Gomezs oeuvre, namely the gap between fact and fiction and the notion of constructed realities. It references an immensely popular genre of literature, film and television that appears to be rooted in reality but tends to be meticulously scripted. The phenomenon is aptly summarised by the UCLA media scholar, Mark Seltzer: true crime is crime fact that looks like crime fiction, it marks, or irritates, the distinction between real and fictional reality, holding steadily visi ... More |
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Ice & Light Illuminate a Pivotal Landscape by Monet
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Louisiana Museum of Modern Art wishes to shed new light on Troels Wörsel's work
HUMLEBÃK.- A new exhibition in the series Louisiana on Paper presents the Danish painter Troels Wörsel. When Wörsel died the previous year there were a considerable number of paper works in his studio, most of them never exhibited. With a selection of these, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art wishes to shed new light on this important Danish artist whose work to some extent is still unknown to his fellow countrymen. Wörsel is represented by several paintings in Louisianas collection. Danish painter Troels Wörsel (1950-2018), who would have been 70 this year, lived abroad since 1974, Munich first and then Cologne, and in 2007 represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale. Wörsel was a thoughtful and in his way fastidious person. As an artist, he was naturally affected by what surrounded him, but the social life and life outside the studio, ... More
An artist who is always heading for home
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In January 2020, an MTA bus driver named Tyrone Hampton found a nonverbal child still sitting onboard at the end of a run in Upper Manhattan. He called for help and watched over the boy until he knew hed get safely home. It was a small news story, with a happy ending. But it was the kind of incident that touches Azikiwe Mohammed, 37, an artist who, through different media painting, textiles, performative installations is interested in constructing spaces of safety and welcome for people of color and for immigrants whose space is often threatened. I have a bunch of alerts set for when people dont make it home, Mohammed said in an interview at the Yeh Art Gallery at St. Johns University in Jamaica, Queens, where the first exhibition devoted to his textile-based art is concluding soon. One of the 40 pieces ... More
Smithsonian museums will reopen in May (yes, you can visit the pandas)
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- If you live in D.C., youre this close to the return of in-person panda peeping at the National Zoo. The weather is getting warmer. More people are being vaccinated. And now, in the latest sign of cultural life returning to the country, the Smithsonian announced Friday that it will reopen eight of its Washington-area institutions, including the National Zoo, next month. They wont all throw their doors open at once, though. The National Air and Space Museums Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, will kick things off May 5. It will be followed by the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery on May 14. The final wave will include the National Museum of American History, the National Museum ... More
Exhibition sheds new light on a key figure in French literature and queer culture at the turn of the millennium
FRIBOURG.- Writer, editor, magistrate, artist and public figure, Guillaume Dustan (19652005, Paris) made 19 films between 2000 and 2004 using a DV camera. These films make up a part of his oeuvre that is little-known to date. The exhibition in Fri Art Kunsthalle sheds new light on a key figure in French literature and queer culture at the turn of the millennium. In his final book, published in 2005 (Premier essai, Flammarion), Dustan releases his complete filmography. He describes these then unknown and daring films as follows: My films are shot according to the Warholian dogma: in DV with a very pretty Sony camera that gives a very strange image, without credits, with live sound, without editing. They are edited-whilst-filmed. In this act of filming the author/artist carries further the personal approach and moral style he has until then been shaping ... More
The magazine that invented street style
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- One of the most influential magazines most people have never heard of existed for the blink of a hair-covered eye in the Bay Area from 1970 to 1971. The brainchild of a pair of editorial refugees from glossy-land and a Rolling Stone photographer, Rags was the first publication to identify street style as a discrete fashion sector and call out the establishment for trying to manufacture trends. You can draw a direct line from its birth to the work of Bill Cunningham (Rags had an On the Street photo section eight years before On the Street appeared in The New York Times) and such Instagram sensations as The Sartorialist and Tommy Ton. Barbara Kruger was an art director before her work was shown at MoMA; R. Crumb did illustrations for the prototype before he created Fritz the Cat. Rags covered vintage ... More
Galerie Nathalie Obadia opens its fifth exhibition with Sophie Kuijken
PARIS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is presenting Belgian artist Sophie Kuijkens fifth exhibition, following her 2020 show in Brussels. Shielded from the limelight for nearly 20 years, then unveiled for the first time in 2011 at the Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum, under the encouragement of its director Joost Declerq, Sophie Kuijkens pictorial oeuvre is a highly singular addition to the art of portraiture. Following in the footsteps of Flemish painting, Sophie Kuijkens work disrupts the genres traditional codes from the inside, by adopting a deeply troubling contemporary approach. In an atypical space between two worlds, her portraits are imbued with a paradoxical presence, at once silent and scrutinizing, human and spectral, blurring the contours of humanity. The exhibition presents ten new paintings on wood panel and, for the first time, on canvas, which, ... More
Galerie Barbara Thumm announces representation of MarÃa Magdalena Campos-Pons
BERLIN.- Galerie Barbara Thumm announced that MarÃa Magdalena Campos-Pons has joined the gallery program. The gallery also announced her first solo show at the gallery, entitled "The Rise of the Butterflies" in the fall 2021. In 2017 the gallery presented her work in the group show entitled "Black Matters", as well as in New Viewings in 2020, both curated by Octavio Zaya. Campos-Pons was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959 and grew up in a sugar plantation town called La Vega in Cuba. In the late 1980s, her art work gained international recognition with her abstract paintings dealing with female sexuality. Her work coincides with the rise of the New Cuban Art movement which began as a reaction against the repressive aspects of the Cuban state and the introduction of conceptual art. A large part of this artistic movement was the introduction of Afro- ... More
Florian Zeller, French writer conquering global stage and screen
PARIS (AFP).- His plays have been staged in more countries than any French writer of his generation, and with his first film up for six Oscars, Florian Zeller looks set for still greater success. At 41, Zeller has already had a glittering career, described as a "genius" by Le Figaro and "the most exciting new theatre writer of our time" by The Guardian. In Britain, he is compared to one of his heroes, Harold Pinter, and in France, to his most fabled of predecessors. "He is a child of Moliere," said French actor Pierre Arditi, who appeared in two of Zeller's plays, "The Truth" and "The Lie". "When we read his plays, we think that it's simple but it's much more complex, and that is what defines a great writer... He's a young surgeon of the human soul." But it was in creating a film adaptation of his most ... More
Who votes for the Oscars, and how does it work?
HOLLYWOOD (AFP).- The ballots are all in! Millions of television viewers around the globe will tune in Sunday to watch the Oscars, the glitziest night in showbiz, but most don't know how the winners are chosen. Answer: more than 9,300 people in the entertainment industry select the honorees. The number is a record high. But who are they and how did they get to become voters? Here is a look at the complex, sometimes confounding process that leads to the winners of the 23 Academy Awards: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles currently has 9,362 voting members. Academy membership is divided into 17 branches -- actors, directors, producers, costume designers and so on -- and candidates must be active or otherwise have "achieved distinction" in the industry. Applicants must be sponsored by two Academy ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Sophie Taeuber-Arp & Hans Arp: Cooperations â Collaborations
Future Retrieval
Clarice Beckett
Kim Tschang-Yeul
Flashback On a day like today, Dutch painter and sculptor Karel Appel was born April 25, 1921. Christiaan Karel Appel (25 April 1921 - 3 May 2006) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s. He was one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra in 1948. He was also an avid sculptor and has had works featured in the museum of Great Samo and MoMA. In this image: Karel Appel, Big Bird Flying Over the City, 1951. Oil on canvas, 49 3/16 x 65 3/4 inches (125 x 167 centimeters) © Karel Appel Foundation, c/o ARS New York, 2014. Courtesy of the Karel Appel Foundation and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
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