| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Sunday, December 15, 2019 |
| | | Exhibition at McNay Art Museum pays homage to the City of Light | |
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Highlights include eight large scale color prints by one of the finest color lithographers of the 19th century, Henri Rivière. One of these offers a soaring view of Paris from the heights of Notre-Dame.
SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Drawn entirely from the McNays collection, Paris: Notre-Dame and Beyond celebrates Paris monuments and marvels with more than 30 artworks depicting the City of Light, on view through February 23, 2020. The fire at the cathedral of Notre-Dame this year served as a reminder of the special place Paris holds in the hearts and minds of people around the world, said Lyle W. Williams, Curator of Prints and Drawings. Even those who have not traveled to the city know it as an iconic world center of culture, history, art, and cuisine. Highlights include eight large scale color prints by one of the finest color lithographers of the 19th century, Henri Rivière. One of these offers a soaring view of Paris from the heights of Notre-Dame. Gothic Revival architect Eugène Viollet-le-Ducs beloved spire, which collapsed in the April fire, is hauntingly visible ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Theaster Gates: Amalgam, installation view at Tate Liverpool © Mark McNulty
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| | Christie's to offer important Bill Traylor work from the Collection of Alice Walker | | U.S. places sanctions on art collector said to finance Hezbollah | | Danny Aiello, actor in 'Do the Right Thing,' dies at 86 |
Bill Traylor, Man on White, Woman on Red (detail). Estimate: $200,000 - 400,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2019.
NEW YORK, NY.- Christies will offer Bill Traylors Man on White, Woman on Red / Man with Black Dog (double-sided), from the collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker, as a highlight of the Outsider Art sale on January 17 (estimate: $200,000 400,000). This rare painting was a gift from filmmaker Steven Spielberg to Alice Walker after the conclusion of filming The Color Purple, a film adaptation of Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel focused on the lives of African-American women in the 1930s. Alice Walker, writer, poet, and activist, remarked: After Steven Spielberg completed filming The Color Purple, in 1985, he gave me as a gift, Man on White, Woman on Red. He was hopeful (he said with a smile) that when I saw the film, I didnt feel like the angry Woman on Red. I answered (with a laugh) I hope so too. On my first viewing a private one in San Francisco I did have some ... More | |
U.S. officials described the diamond dealer, Nazem Said Ahmad, as one of the top donors to Hezbollah.
by Elizabeth A. Harris
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- The Treasury Department announced sanctions Friday against a diamond dealer who the government said has used an art gallery in Beirut and an extensive personal art collection, sprinkled with names like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, to shelter and launder money. U.S. officials described the diamond dealer, Nazem Said Ahmad, who lives in Beirut, as one of the top donors to Hezbollah, a political movement based in Lebanon that is considered a terrorist group by the United States. The Trump administration said that Ahmad was involved in blood diamond smuggling. Ahmad, one of three people on whom Treasury officials imposed sanctions, is perhaps better known for what he collects than what he sells. A spread in Architectural Digest Middle East last year showed the walls of his Beirut ... More | |
The actor Danny Aiello dines at Sardi's in Manhattan, July 10, 2011. Librado Romero/The New York Times.
by Anita Gates
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Danny Aiello, the burly New York-born film and stage actor who was 40 when he made his movie debut and 16 years later earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as a pizzeria owner in Spike Lees Do the Right Thing, died Thursday. He was 86. His death was confirmed by Jennifer De Chiara, his literary agent, in an email. No other details were provided. In Do the Right Thing, Lees 1989 film about a white business in the predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, Aiello was a morally complicated racist villain, willing to wield a baseball bat but sentimental about the young people in the neighborhood who had grown up on his food. He won the role after establishing himself as a memorable character actor in films like Moonstruck (1987), in which ... More |
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| | First art museum dedicated to celebrating southern China's regional Lingnan culture will open in March 2020 | | Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg opens an exhibition of works by Sagmeister and Walsh | | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opens "Norman Rockwell: American Freedom" |
Construction site of HEM.
SHUNDE.- He Art Museum in Shunde will welcome its first visitors on March 21, 2020, with an inaugural exhibition titled From The Mundane World. Named after the museums founder He Jianfeng He in Chinese denotes harmony, balance and fortune; which forms the museums core philosophy and architectural design. HEM is conceived as a gateway into the regional Lingnan culture and Lingnan School, an indigenous style of painting originally created by artists living in the three coastal provinces of Guangdong (known as Canton), Guangxi and Hainan (an island on the south China sea). These provinces encompass an expanse of 39 cities, two autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau and border Vietnam. The English translation of Lingnan means South of the Ranges, referring to the region south of the five mountain ranges that separate the Yangtze River from the Pearl River. HEMs architectural design and collection ... More | |
Stefan Sagmeister (*1962) & Jessica Walsh (*1986), Exhibition logo, 2018/19 © Sagmeister & Walsh, New York.
HAMBURG.- What is beauty and why do we feel so attracted to it? Ever since the debates on aesthetics in antiquity, philosophers, scientists, psychologists, and of course artists and designers have been arguing about the nature of beauty, its effect on human perception, and the resulting behaviour. The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) is dedicating itself to this discourse in the exhibition project Beauty by Stefan Sagmeister, the graphic design superstar from New York. Together with Jessica Walsh, Sagmeister makes a very personal and visually compelling case here for the appreciation and enjoyment of beauty. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, beauty has increasingly fallen out of favour in the design discourse. Sagmeister and Walsh now counter this distrust of the beautiful with ... More | |
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Freedom of Speech, 1943. Oil on canvas, 45 ¾" x 35 ½". Illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1943. Collection of Norman Rockwell Museum. ©SEPS: Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved. www.curtislicensing.com
HOUSTON, TX.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Norman Rockwell: American Freedom. The presentation is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Norman Rockwells iconic depictions of FDRs Four Freedoms Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Wantexploring how the 1943 paintings came to be embraced by millions of Americans, providing crucial aid to the war effort and taking their place among the most indelible images in the history of American art. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from December 15, 2019, through March 22, 2020. Houston is the fifth venue for the acclaimed exhibitions seven ... More |
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| | First solo museum exhibition in the UK of American artist Theaster Gates opens at Tate Liverpool | | AI puts final notes on Beethoven's Tenth Symphony | | New York's newest private museum is tucked away in Brooklyn |
Portrait of Theaster Gates © Palais de Tokyo, 2019.
LIVERPOOL.- Tate Liverpool presents the first solo museum exhibition in the UK of American artist Theaster Gates (b. 1973). Combining sculptures, film, dance and music the exhibition explores complex and interweaving issues of race, territory, and inequality in the United States. Theaster Gates: Amalgam takes as its point of departure the history of Malaga, a small island off the north east state of Maine, USA. From the mid-nineteenth century, the island was home to an ethnically-mixed community living in relative isolation. Malagas community was seen as an undesirable presence on land that could be used as a tourist destination. In 1912, the state governor ordered their eviction and the community was forcibly relocated to the mainland. They were offered no housing, jobs or other support and some were involuntarily committed to psychiatric institutions. The island remains uninhabited to this day. Amalgam presents a sequence of installation ... More | |
CEO of Telekom Tim Hoettges speaks during a presentation of a part of Beethoven's 10th symphony at the Telekom headquarters in Bonn, western Germany, on December 13, 2019. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP.
BERLIN (AFP).- A few notes scribbled in his notebook are all that German composer Ludwig van Beethoven left of his Tenth Symphony before his death in 1827. Now, a team of musicologists and programmers is racing to complete a version of the piece using artificial intelligence, ahead of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year. "The progress has been impressive, even if the computer still has a lot to learn," said Christine Siegert, head of archives at Beethoven House in the composer's hometown of Bonn. Siegert said she was "convinced" that Beethoven would have approved since he too was an innovator at the time, citing his compositions for the panharmonicon -- a type of organ that reproduces the sounds of wind and percussion instruments. And she insisted the work would not affect his legacy because it ... More | |
Jens Faurschou during construction of the Faurschou New York in Brooklyn, on Sept. 9, 2019. Charlie Rubin/The New York Times.
by Ted Loos
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Jens Faurschou grew up on the Danish island of Funen, to parents who werent big art-buyers but who had a ceramics collection. No, he did not come from money. Not a dime, unfortunately, he said. He had a formative experience going to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, where three works struck him with particular force: an Edward Kienholz, an Yves Klein and an Arman. Faurschou, 59, studied economics in Denmark, and then in the 1980s started making visits to New York, where he did his first art deal. He learned a lesson: He liked stretching his limits. And on Sunday, the Danish dealer-turned-philanthropist is opening his third exhibition space as the newest member of New Yorks private museum club. The ... More |
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| | TEFAF supports three global and diverse conservation and restoration projects | | The Kestner Gesellschaft opens an exhibition of works by the Czech artist Eva KoťÃ¡tková | | Kerlin Gallery opens an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Guggi |
Pietá, c.1710-20 by Melchor Pérez HolguÃn (c.1660 c.1732). Oil on canvas, 60 ¼ x 48 7/16 in. (153 x 123 cm). Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund. Image ccourtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
HELVOIRT.- As part of TEFAFs dedication to supporting the international art community the organisation donates money to restoration and conservation projects around the world through two distinct initiatives the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund and the Prince Claus Fund. The scope of the projects is always diverse, and TEFAF has been privileged to work with a large spectrum of institutions and organisations, from internationally renowned museums to national archives. Presentations about each project will be displayed at TEFAF Maastricht 2020, which takes place from the 7-15 March 2020 (Early Access Day 5 March; Preview Day 6 March) at the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre), Maastricht, The Netherlands. The V&A, UK, and Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), USA are the recipients of the 2020 TEFAF ... More | |
Eva Kotátková, Me and others, me from parts, 2018. Metallobjekt, Stoff, 157 x 44 x 44 cm. MaÃe variabel. Courtesy die Künstlerin, Meyer Riegger Berlin/Karlsruhe.
HANOVER.- The Kestner Gesellschaft is presenting the solo exhibition »In the Body of a Fish out of Water« by the Czech artist Eva KoťÃ¡tková (*1982 in Prague, lives and works in Prague) in the buildings two upper exhibition halls. With around ten works, including drawings, videos, objects, and large-scale installations activated by performances, the artist creates new worlds that initially have a playful effect. Central themes of her works are everyday power relations and the effects of social norms on the human body and mind. She draws on her work with children making their way through the education system and with people who are stigmatized as »mentally ill.« KoťÃ¡tkovás steel frames, which recall body parts such as torsos, spines, and arms, or clothing with carefully finished holes where vital organs are located, have an oppressive effect: While they suggest the human body, they also invoke its captivity within ... More | |
Guggi, Pot I, 2019, polished bronze and black patina, edition of 3, 81 x 119.5 x 119.5 cm / 31.9 x 47 x 47 in. Images courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.
DUBLIN.- Kerlin Gallery is presenting Broken, an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Guggi. Since the early 1990s, Guggis work has continued to explore the depiction of common everyday objects. With a focus on repetition and abstraction, Guggis signature motifs of bowls and other vessels are transformed and set free from their normal context, often articulated with a deceptive simplicity that heightens their stillness and meditative presence. In this new exhibition, Guggi continues the Broken series, first exhibited at Chateau La Coste, France, in 2018 and at Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, in 2019. Working on distressed brown paper with torn edges and surface creases he divides the picture plane into two distinct sections; solid velvety, textured geometric rectangles are juxtaposed with more open and fluid spaces. The line drawings of Guggis signature motifs are disrupted and begin to recede into a heavily textured amorphous ... More |
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Roxane Gay on using art to confront history | MoMA BBC | THE WAY I SEE IT
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The heroes of Bastogne: 75 years on
BASTOGNE (AFP).- The Battle of the Bulge was the last German offensive of World War II, and the Siege of Bastogne the scene of a heroic defence by American paratroopers. Seventy-five years on, the Belgian town is hosting a weekend of colourful re-enactments followed by solemn ceremonies of remembrance. Veterans, historians and military enthusiasts will join international officials to mark the now legendary close quarters battle on a snowbound wooded plateau. Bastogne's relief in late December 1944 by General George "Old Blood and Guts" Patton helped seal his reputation as one of America's military giants. But the out-gunned paratroopers of the 101st Airborne -- who held the pocket for a week against advancing German armour -- also claim a share of the glory. The Belgian town of Bastogne, close to the Luxembourg border in the Ardennes hills, ... More
Morocco's Gnawa musical culture listed by UNESCO
RABAT (AFP).- Gnawa culture, a centuries-old Moroccan practice rooted in music, African rituals and Sufi traditions, was on Thursday added to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Gnawa refers to a "set of musical productions, fraternal practices and therapeutic rituals where the secular mixes with the sacred", according to the nomination submitted by Morocco. Often dressed in colourful outfits, Gnawa musicians play the guenbri, a type of lute with three strings, accompanied by steel castanets called krakebs. They practice "a therapeutic ritual of possession... which takes the form of all-night ceremonies of rhythms and trance combining ancestral African practices, Arab-Muslim influences and native Berber cultural performances," the nomination document reads. The tradition, which includes the veneration of Islamic ... More
Exhibition of new works by Australian photographic artist Leila Jeffreys opens at Olsen Gruin
NEW YORK, NY.- Olsen Gruin is presenting High Society, an exhibition of new works by Australian photographic artist, Leila Jeffreys. Her second solo exhibition since 2017, High Society is on view at Olsen Gruin until January 19, 2020. Revisiting the world of the Budgerigar the subject of her first solo exhibition some nine years ago Leila Jeffreys High Society includes her signature large format portraits and sees her exploring new territory. Working with over 300 budgerigars in a studio High Society reveals a beautiful society of birds through still photography and three panel video art. Acclaimed for her empathetic artistic vision and intuitive approach, Leila Jeffreys has again captured a vivid sense of personality in her feathered subjects. Each work forges an emotional and sympathetic bond with the audience as Leila Jeffreys establishes parallels ... More
William McFeely, Pulitzer-winning historian, dies as 89
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- William S. McFeely, a historian who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Ulysses S. Grant but was also well known for advancing the field of black history, died on Wednesday in Sleepy Hollow, New York. He was 89. His son, W. Drake McFeely, said the cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. McFeely also wrote an acclaimed biography of Frederick Douglass as well as Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard and the Freedmen (1968), a study of the Freedmens Bureau, set up by the government at the end of the Civil War to oversee the welfare of freed slaves, and the man who ran it. These books and other writings established McFeely as a leading interpreter of Reconstruction, the pivotal period after the Civil War. Via his books on Howard, Douglass and Grant, the historian Eric Foner said ... More
New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa opens at Monica King Contemporary
NEW YORK, NY.- Monica King Contemporary is presenting a group exhibition, New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, from December 13, 2019 January 25, 2020. New Skin features work by artists Michael Berryhill, Clare Grill, Shirley Kaneda, Juan Logan, and Jason Stopa. The artists styles are decidedly distinct, yet they are united by their use of elements that are quasi-representational. The works convey an interest in a discreet sense of touch, using decorative and architectural space that flirts with representation, while remaining not literal, and evokes a liminal space of legibility. The exhibition title New Skin is a reference to Miros painting Birth of the World, (1925). In that work, Miro poured, brushed, and flung paint on an unevenly primed canvas so that the paint soaked in some areas and rested on top in others. There is an intentional ... More
Elisabeth Sifton, editor and tamer of literary lions, dies at 80
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Elisabeth Sifton, a widely respected book editor and publisher who burnished manuscripts by many of the 20th centurys literary lions, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 80. Her son Sam Sifton, the food editor of The New York Times and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, said the cause was complications of metastatic breast cancer. Elisabeth Sifton was also an author in her own right, affirming in a memoir that it was her father, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who had popularized what became known as the Serenity Prayer, which begins, God give us grace to accept with serenity that which we cannot change. Since the prayer began circulating during World War II, various theories have emerged about its derivation did Niebuhr actually write it or cobble it together from historic ... More
kamel mennour exhibits a series of works by David Hominal
LONDON.- Painting is first of all the liquid, aqueous material binding together the different fields of David Hominals practice, from performance to video, dance to sculpture. This is where he takes stock, sorts, and synthesises, but it is also where he covers over, a territory made up of a complex network of inhibitions. His disturbed, at times feverish paintings are haunted by the great historical questions of representation. Their presence is powerful, rehearsing all the grand traditions, from still life to abstraction, without, of course, ever reconciling them. Recently, sunflowers, pineapples, onions, and finally faces have been appearing on the surface of his canvases. What emerges from the paint in the series being exhibited at kamel mennour in London are hands joined in prayer. As was already clear in his earlier series of masks, Hominals interest for the image makes ... More
William Luce, playwright, dies at 88; Wrote 'Belle of Amherst'
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- William Luce, who in his 40s turned from a musical career to writing one-character plays about Emily Dickinson, Isak Dinesen, Lillian Hellman and John Barrymore all of which were produced on Broadway died Tuesday in Green Valley, Arizona, near Tucson. He was 88. His death, at a memory care facility, was caused by Alzheimers disease, his godson, Grant Hayter-Menzies, said. The Belle of Amherst, Luces play about the reclusive Dickinson, reflected his love of her elliptical poetry, which he first read in high school, and his fascination with the letters she wrote to friends. There is a mystical energy, an inner tone in her writings, Luce wrote in the authors note to Belle, which opened at the Longacre Theater in New York in 1976. Emilys poems and letters radiate an invisible light. It is much like looking obliquely ... More
'The Ferrante Effect': In Italy, female writers are ascendant
ROME (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- In Italy, literary fiction has long been considered a mans game. Publishers, critics and prize committees have dismissed books by women as chick lit and beach reads. They scoffed at Elena Ferrante, the author of My Brilliant Friend, as the writer of mere page-turners. Then Ferrantes Neapolitan novels became an international sensation, selling over 11 million copies, inspiring an acclaimed HBO series and cementing her reputation as the most successful Italian novelist in years. Her ascent, and the rediscovery of some of the last centurys great Italian female writers, has encouraged a new wave of women and shaken the countrys literary establishment. Female writers here are winning prestigious prizes, getting translated and selling copies. Their achievements have set off a wider debate in Italy about what constitutes ... More
Mega Man video game sets $75,000 world record as most expensive ever sold at public auction
DALLAS, TX.- An ultra-rare copy of Mega Man from the games first production run sparked a flurry of competitive bidding before finishing at $75,000, which has now been confirmed to have set the world record for the most valuable sealed video game ever sold at auction. The game led an assortment of 332 video games sold in Heritage Auctions Comics & Comic Art auction Nov. 21-24. This sale itself set the record for most valuable video game auction ever. The selection of Wata-certified video games sold for a combined total of $616,534 and the sealed games from the Carolina Collection pedigree, which held the cartridge of the "Dr. Wright Mega Man video game, made up $540,952 of that total. "Sealed, high-grade video games starring blue-chip characters from early print runs currently spark the most interest with collectors, Heritage Auctions ... More
FotoFest Biennial 2020 artist list announced
HOUSTON, TX.- FotoFest announced the artists included in its upcoming FotoFest Biennial 2020, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, March 8 April 19, 2020. It is the 18th edition of the Houston-based festival. Curated by Mark Sealy MBE, Director of the renowned London-based photographic art institution Autograph ABP, African Cosmologies is a large-scale group exhibition that examines the complex relationships between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, and global histories of colonialism, photography, and rights and representation. The exhibition considers the history of photography as one closely tied to a colonial project and Western image production, highlighting artists who confront and challenge this shortsighted, albeit canonized lineage. Taking its cues from John Coltranes avant-garde jazz oeuvre, ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat:
Nashashibi/Skaer
Lina Bo Bardi
Cars: Accelerating the Modern World
Flashback On a day like today, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer was born December 15, 1907. Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (December 15, 1907 - December 5, 2012) --known as Oscar Niemeyer-- was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for BrasÃlia, a planned city that became Brazil's capital in 1960, as well as his collaboration with other architects on the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.
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