| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Thursday, April 22, 2021 |
| | | New Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts exhibition opens at the McNay Art Museum | |
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Polar Bear. In the studio, 2008. Hoy Amanecà con el Polo Norte por Dentro. Proyecto Finesterra. Photo: Iker Vicente.
SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Plays, operas, ballets, and musicals often require designers to mimic the natural world on stage. Sometimes their re-creations are so lifelike it makes the viewer wonder is it real? Unexpected materials such as Styrofoam, chicken wire, insulation foam, and electronics are reimagined on stages as dense forests, winter wonderlands, and surreal landscapes. Designers stretch their artistry as well as the limitations of fabric to transform performers into tree creatures, flying owls, and even supernatural fairies. Opening April 22, Is It Real? Staging Nature invites visitors on a behind-the-curtain exploration of flora, fauna, and other elements of nature through the lens of theatre design. The technical aspect of theatre is excitingand visitors will find much of what they see in the gallery surprising, said R. Scott Blackshire, PhD, Curator, The Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts. The artworks celebrate designers, costumers, and set paintersartists in their ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Costa Rican artist Oscar Ruiz poses as he installs his artwork "Bosque de Sargazo" (Sargassum Forest), part of the "Proxima Temporada" (Next Season) exhibit on climate change at the Contemporary Art and Design Museum (MADC) in San Jose, on April 20, 2021. Costa Rican artists in collaboration with scientific investigators will present eight works on the impact of climate change on nature in the Central American country, considered a biodiversity paradise. Ezequiel BECERRA / AFP.
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| Documentary tells 'unknown' story of Titanic's Chinese survivors | | Two ultra-rare bangles steal the show at Sotheby's Hong Kong | | Covid-hit UK museum reopens early... as a supermarket |
In this picture taken on April 20, 2021, Luo Tong, producer of a documentary about the Titanic's Chinese survivors, The Six, poses for a portrait during an interview in Shanghai. Jessica YANG / AFP.
by Peter Stebbings
SHANGHAI (AFP).- A new documentary film has revealed the "completely unknown" story of six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic and adds a new chapter to the history of the world's most famous ship. With Oscar-winning director James Cameron as executive producer, "The Six" has earned glowing reviews in China and at one point trended on the country's Twitter-like Weibo after its release on Friday. Director Arthur Jones hopes it will have the same impact when it is screened overseas and finally dispel myths that have endured for more than a century. For the Briton and lead researcher Steven Schwankert, "The Six" gives a voice, life and faces to a small band of Chinese men who were among about 700 people to survive the Titanic's sinking in 1912. Jones ... More | |
A Jadeite Bangle - The Circle of Happiness. A true treasure of nature weighing 277.673 carats. Courtesy Sotheby's.
HONG KONG.- Two breathtaking bangles, each representing in their very own way the pinnacle of bracelet design, stole the show at Sothebys Hong Kong yesterday: A diamond and rock crystal bracelet combining the legendary artistry and craftsmanship of Cartier with a phenomenal 63.66-carat pear-shaped internally flawless white diamond, sold for HK$46,877,000 / US$6,036,350. A sensational jadeite bangle weighing 277.673 carats and described by the SSEF laboratory as a true treasure of nature achieved HK$30,425,000 / US$3,917,830. The bangle carries a subtle range of green to vivid green colours that is characteristic of the finest green jadeite-jade from Burma (Myanmar). The two pieces were offered in the Magnificent Jewels sale which totalled HK$418,588,600 / US$53,901,650, with 62 % of the bidders participating online. This auction was presented in Sothebys new innovative format ... More | |
A worker fills a shopping cart with products designed by emerging artists inside the newly created High Street shop in the Design Museum in west London. JUSTIN TALLIS AFP.
LONDON (AFP).- Touching artwork is strictly forbidden in most museums, let alone buying it and taking it home. But the Design Museum in London wants visitors to do precisely that. It has transformed its gift shop to create what it describes as "the world's first artist-designed supermarket" as a way of getting around coronavirus lockdown rules. Under the government's plan to ease restrictions, museums in England have to remain shut until May 17 at the earliest, even as gyms, hairdressing salons and pubs have reopened. But the west London museum has avoided weeks of further closure by converting its gift shop into a store selling essential items. The products -- ranging from rice and coffee to the most modern of essentials, face masks -- are wrapped in packaging designed by 10 emerging artists. Proceeds from the five-day exhibition, which runs from ... More |
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| Xavier Hufkens opens an exhibition of new work by Daniel Buren | | Häusler Contemporary opens an exhibition of works by Richard Allen Morris | | Philip Mould & Company exhibits a group of exceptional Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits |
Installation view.
BRUSSELS.- Xavier Hufkens is presenting an exhibition of new work by Daniel Buren. The exhibition comprises a series of high wall reliefs in which the artist combines his visual tool (the alternating stripes) with two other important elements in his work (colour and mirrors) to create works that enter into a dialogue with the space, with each other and with the viewer. Géométries colorées [Coloured Geometries] is the first exhibition that Buren has conceived for the Rivoli space. This is important to note as it is not the artworks per se that are the subject of the exhibition but their relation with the space in which they are situated. And for the artist, this is both a physical reality i.e. the architecture (in this instance, the double-height void, clean contemporary lines and tight volumetrics) and a set of ever-changing conditions (light, atmosphere, people, even principles and ideologies). ... More | |
Richard Allen Morris, Bandit, 1986. Mixed media, 30.48 x 60.96 x 5.08 cm. Photo: Martin Böck.
ZURICH.- In the exhibition Richard Allen Morris «Multiple Identities» Häusler Contemporary presents the «Guns» series from 1965. An exclusive assortment of works on paper and canvas showcases this American artists painterly originality and subversive touch, which are admired by his fellow artists but are largely undiscovered by the general public. Since the 1960s, Richard Allen Morris (*1933) has explored various media in painting, pushing the image to the threshold of object and relief and alternating wittily and ironically between figuration and abstraction. Described as a painters painter, Morris has worked in obscurity for decades. Only a few contemporaries have been afforded a glimpse of the artists oeuvre, which helps to explain why renown has come so late in his career. «The usual suspects» are how ... More | |
Nicholas Hilliard, A Gentleman, Wearing Deep Pink 'Pinked' Doublet and White Lawn Collar Trimmed with Lace, c. 1595. Watercolour on vellum stuck to pasteboard set in silver-gilt frame. Oval, 2 3/8 in (60 mm) high. Photo: Philip Mould & Company.
LONDON.- This spring, Philip Mould & Company shines a spotlight onto a group of exceptional Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits that have benefited from the very latest developments in a formerly dark age of British art history. In recent years, a new generation of art historians has benefited from improved access to unseen or overlooked documentary sources and transformative technological advances in the physical understanding of art, to produce fresh insights into the life and work of many of the artists of this era, shedding new light on their painting practices and the production of portraits in 16th and early 17th century Britain. This emerging period of art history is one that has a global ... More |
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| New digital art space revealed in the Santa Fe Railyard | | How a multimedia whiz seized digital theater's big moment | | Mao Ayuth, filmmaker who survived the Khmer Rouge, dies at 76 |
JaTovia Gary, Citational Ethics (Saidiya Hartman, 2017), 2020, neon, glass, wire, metal. © JaTovia Gary, collection of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.
SANTA FE, NM.- The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation announces the opening of a new 3,500 square-foot space for experiencing contemporary art in the Santa Fe Railyard District. Art Vault is dedicated to sharing the Foundations world-class collection of digital, electronic, virtual, and new media artworks, curated in thematic exhibitions. Art Vault at 540 South Guadalupe Street is the only digital art collection open to the public in the Southwest, and one of very few in the United States. Artworks from the Thoma Foundation collection are on view year-round, rotating seasonally. There is no admission fee, and school and group tours are available by appointment. Featured exhibitions will include emerging and mid-career artists alongside internationally renowned pioneers of video sculpture, self-taught computer artists, and influential digital time-based media artists. Large-scale digital and video installations invite ... More | |
The projection designer Jared Mezzocchi at an undisclosed location, April 12, 2021. Mezzocchi has become a go-to guy for ambitious virtual productions. Next up: Starring in his own haunted house play. Greg Kahn/The New York Times.
by Elisabeth Vincentelli
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In March 2020, live venues closed, and the theater industry was shocked into numbness. But for multimedia designer and director Jared Mezzocchi, the moment felt like a ringing alarm. Mezzocchi warmed up in early May by codirecting a livestreamed student production of the Qui Nguyen play She Kills Monsters at the University of Maryland, where he is associate professor of dance and theater design and production. The show made imaginative use of filters in Zoom. Who knew that you could generate creature features in an app conceived for office meetings? Numerous projects of diverse sizes and genres followed, playing to strengths Mezzocchi had developed as a projection designer, the person ... More | |
Mao Ayuth in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sept. 11, 2017. Quinn Ryan Mattingly/The New York Times.
by Seth Mydans
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Mao Ayuth, one of the few Cambodian filmmakers to survive the Khmer Rouge era, during which most artists and intellectuals were killed, and who then rose to become secretary of state in the Ministry of Information, died on April 15 in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. He was 76. Phos Sovann, a spokesman for the ministry, said the cause was complications of COVID-19. Mao Ayuth, who was also a novelist, poet and screenwriter, began his film career in the 1960s and early 70s, in what became known as a golden age of Cambodian cinema. Filmmaking flourished under the countrys leader at the time, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, an avid cineaste who directed his own films. Mao Ayuths first film was one of the last movies to reach the screen before the fanatical communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 and tried to eradicate all ... More |
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| Flowers Gallery reopens after a long lockdown in London with a new exhibition of recent works by Bernard Cohen | | Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso & more in Old Master Through Modern Prints at Swann Galleries | | Half a century later, John Lennon's 'Plastic Ono Band' still hits hard |
Bernard Cohen, Interiors, 2020 (detail), oil on canvas, 120 x 150 cm © Bernard Cohen, courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
LONDON.- Bernard Cohen is considered one of Britains most significant painters, whose paintings tell stories about identity and experience. Interiors is an exhibition of recent works demonstrating Cohens sustained enquiry into the complex chaos of everyday existence. Since the 1950s, Cohen has developed a wide range of inventive techniques and processes of painting, creating labyrinthine compositions of line, shape, pattern and colour. His paintings will often tell many stories at once, using distinctive strategies of layering, superimposing, and condensing multiple images to establish intricate networks and relationships. In a Spotlight exhibition at Tate Britain in 2017, Cohen's paintings were described as being, both individually and as a whole, "a series of diagrams about painting. This approach developed during the 1960s, with works that incorporated many small ... More | |
Albercht Dürer, The Birth of the Virgin, woodcut, circa 1503. Estimate $15,000 to $20,000.
NEW YORK, NY.- Old Master Through Modern Prints are at auction Thursday, May 6 at Swann Galleries. Prints feature in the sale, from Northern Renaissance and Golden Age icons Dürer and Rembrandt to Impressionist collaborations, European Modernists, and American printmakers. Old Master prints open the sale with engravings, woodcuts, etchings and drypoints by both well-known and lesser-known printmakers whose images have stood the test of time. Highlights include an intricate run of etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn with Joseph Telling his Dreams, 1638, leading the selection at $30,000 to $50,000. Also by Rembrandt is Landscape with an Obelisk, circa 1650, expected at $20,000 to $30,000; and The Holy Family, circa 1632, at $15,000 to $20,000. Albrecht Dürer is on offer with The Sea Monster, engraving, before 1500; and The Birth of the Virgin, woodcut, circa 1503, both available at $15,000 to $20,000, each. The selection includes engravings by Luca ... More | |
Lennons songs made large topics deeply personal: family, faith, class, fame, drugs, love, fear.
by Jon Pareles
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- It was raw. Yet it was meticulously thought through. Plastic Ono Band, released in December 1970, was John Lennons first solo album after the breakup of the Beatles earlier that year. It was a far cry from the tuneful reassurance of Paul McCartneys one-man-studio-band album McCartney and the polished abundance of George Harrisons triple album, All Things Must Pass, both of which were also released that year. In both music and lyrics, Plastic Ono Band was a stark statement of pain, separation, vulnerability and self-reclamation after the whirlwind that had been Lennons life as a Beatle. Half a century later, the album retains its power. Now it has been remixed, massively expanded, anatomized and annotated as Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection: six CDs, two Blu-ray audio discs and a hardcover ... More |
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Claude Monet's Monumental Water Lilies Star in Sotheby's Spring Sales
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From Op Art to NFTs, Heritage Auction's Modern & Contemporary event travels back to the future
DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions May 13 Modern & Contemporary Signature Auction is a decidedly frisky peek at the past, present and future of the definition of art, spanning decades to include masterworks by revered pioneers, celebrated revolutionaries and treasured upstarts. The sale, open now, includes a beer can fashioned into a rattle by Alexander Calder in the 1940s, a hypnotic work made in the 1970s by Op art co-founder Victor Vasarely and three digital Everydays by coveted NFT world-shaker and headline-maker Beeple. And everything imaginable in between. At just 39, Mike Winkelmann is now among the worlds most famous (and expensive) artists and, certainly, one of its most prolific. In March the man known better as Beeple became a mainstream sensation when his collection Everydays: The First ... More
Pair of Chippendale mahogany side chairs bring $33,210 at Neue Auctions
BEACHWOOD, OH.- A gorgeous pair of Chippendale mahogany side chairs, crafted in Philadelphia in the 1700s, sold for $33,210 in an online-only Fine Estates Collection auction held April 10th by Neue Auctions, based in Beachwood, an upscale suburb located outside Cleveland. The sale featured 432 lots of fine merchandise from the homes of celebrated interior designers. It was an awesome sale from start to finish, said Cynthia Maciejewski of Neue Auctions. We offered personal collections of traditional furnishings and European antiques, and bidders took note. Sixty percent of participating bidders were first timers with us, and 90 percent of the items sold. A few lots did extremely well and it seems like furniture is finally making a comeback. The Chippendale side chairs were the top lot of the auction. They were centered by ... More
Marianne Boesky Gallery now representing Celeste Rapone
NEW YORK, NY.- Marianne Boesky Gallery announced representation of artist Celeste Rapone in partnership with Corbett vs. Dempsey and Josh Lilley. Born in New Jersey and currently based in Chicago, Rapone is distinguished for her narrative paintings that blur the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. To commemorate the artists representation by the gallery, Rapones works will be presented in upcoming editions of Art Basel in Basel and Miami Beach. At the core of Rapones practice are formalist concerns such as surface, pattern, and color that shape the artists inventive figures and scenes. In the artists paintings, the figure often female is the protagonist of her works. Shown contorted and twisted into impossible positions, her characters partake in moments of leisure and activity, becoming both vulnerably present and seemingly ... More
Denmark's cafes, restaurants and museums reopen
COPENHAGEN (AFP).- Denmark's bars, cafes, restaurants and museums reopened on Wednesday, giving life in the capital Copenhagen a semblance of normalcy as the spread of Covid-19 was deemed stable. The Scandinavian country decided last week to speed up its reopening. On Wednesday evening, fans were to be allowed to return to the stands to watch the final match of the Superliga, Denmark's first division football league. "The pandemic is not over ... but it feels like it's coming towards the last chapter," Darcy Millar, who owns a cafe in central Copenhagen, told AFP. On the terrace of her cafe, regulars were delighted to sit down and sip their coffee out of "real" cups. "You had to take it for a take-away ... when it was pretty cold and that was frustrating," said Dominic Parr, a 26-year-old local. But now "it's fantastic, I'm very happy." A ... More
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami opens retrospective of artist Michael Richard
MIAMI, FLA.- The Museum of Contemporary, Art North Miami is presenting the exhibition Michael Richards: Are You Down? ― the first museum retrospective of the work of Michael Richards, exhibiting both his extensive sculpture and drawing practice. Of Jamaican and Costa Rican lineage, Michael Richards was born in Brooklyn in 1963, raised in Kingston, and came of age between post-independence Jamaica and post-civil rights era America. Richards used the language of metaphor to investigate racial inequity and the tension between assimilation and exclusion in his art. Flight and aviation were central themes for Richards as an exploration of freedom and escape, ascendance and descent. His artwork gestures towards both repression and reprieve from social injustices, and the simultaneous possibilities of uplift and downfall, often in the context of the ... More
The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza opens the first retrospective in Spain of Georgia O'Keeffe's work
MADRID.- The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting the first retrospective in Spain of Georgia OKeeffe (1887-1986), one of the most important representatives of 20th-century American art. Featuring a selection of around 90 works, the exhibition offers a complete survey of OKeeffes career; a unique opportunity to discover and admire the work of this fascinating artist who is little represented outside the United States. With the five paintings in its collection, the Museo Thyssen is in fact the institution with most works by the artist outside her native country. This ambitious exhibition project has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of more than 35 international museums and collections, principally in the United States and most notably the Georgia OKeeffe Museum in Santa Fe, which has been outstandingly generous ... More
France ready to ease curfew, travel limits on May 2
PARIS (AFP).- France plans to lift travel restrictions and ease a nationwide curfew on May 2 on expectations that daily Covid-19 cases will soon start to fall, a source close to the presidency told AFP. President Emmanuel Macron also intends to stick to a goal of allowing restaurants to serve patrons outdoors from mid-May, while also reopening cinemas, theatres and museums with reduced capacity, the source said. Non-food businesses will also open their doors mid-May, after Macron announced their closure from April 3 to contain a third wave of coronavirus infections that have again pushed hospitals to the brink. Macron also ordered school closures for April to slow the outbreak, but kindergarten and primary school students are set to return on Monday, and older students on May 3. The staggered plan to exit a four-week clampdown, sketched ... More
Detroit Institute of Arts adds first surrealist painting by a woman artist
DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts board of directors has approved the purchase of a work by Danish artist Rita Kernn-Larsen (1904-1998), furthering the museums goal of increasing the number of works by women artists in the collection. This will be the first work by the artistand the first Surrealist painting by a womanto enter the museums collection; it will also be one of the only paintings by Kernn-Larsen in an American museum collection. And Life Anew will bolster and diversify the DIAs holdings of Scandinavian art as well as modern European Surrealist art, which includes such masterpieces as Shadow Country (1927) by Yves Tanguy and Self-Portrait II (1938) by Joan Miró. The museum also recently acquired a Surrealist sculpture by Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen (1905-1959). We are thrilled to bring Rita Kernn-Larsens painting into our collection. It h ... More
Art Bridges announces appointment of new Director of Art Bridges Fellows Program
BENTONVILLE, ARK.- Art Bridges Foundation announces the appointment of Alana Ryder as Director of the Art Bridges Fellows Program, effective immediately. The Art Bridges Fellows Program is a cornerstone initiative that builds on our mission of expanding access to American art across the nation, and Im thrilled to welcome Alana Ryder as the programs first director, said Paul Provost, CEO, Art Bridges. Alana brings the energy and experience to work with our partner museums and to build a program that both extends our mission and also creates a pipeline of future museum professionals from diverse backgrounds. I look forward to supporting Alana as we launch the program and assemble our first class of Fellows. The newly-created Art Bridges Fellows Program supports early-career museum professionals who will be placed with ... More
MAD Architects unveils Cloudscape of Haikou
HAIKOU.- MAD Architects today announced the opening of The Cloudscape of Haikou, located in the 20-acre Century Park overlooking Haikou Bay. Home to both an intimate library and a waystation for park visitors, the sinuous, biomorphic 11,000-square-foot vessel expansively embraces the surrounding sea, sky, and land, blurring the boundaries between them. Inviting visitors on a journey that transcends time and space, like reading itself, The Cloudscape of Haikou embodies MADs anti-material approach, which prioritizes spatial feeling over structural expression. The buildings interior volumes and exterior shape have been formed by a single, sweeping ribbon of concrete that creates a seamless flow of walls, floors, ceilings, entries, apertures, skylights, and terraces, celebrating concretes liquid nature. In its curving, porous form The Cloudscape ... More
Selection of five classic Bentleys with VIP connections for sale by H&H Classics
LONDON.- In real money terms buying a brand new Bentley has never been more affordable. A base model Bentayga might set one back £133,260 but the firms least expensive offering seventy years ago a MKVI Standard Steel Saloon - would have cost £4,473. To put that into context the average house price in 1950 was £1,891, whereas today it stands at £250,000. Thus, the last seven decades have seen the cost of acquiring a Bentley go from over twice the price of the average UK house to a bit over half. Little wonder then that the Bentley MKVI sold to such an elite clientele. Certainly, the five due to go under the hammer at H&H Classics IWM Duxford auction on May 26th 2021 all boast interesting first owners. The most expensive of the quintet when new and the most valuable now thanks to its coachbuilt body, the 1952 Bentley MKVI 4.5 ... 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, Australian painter Sidney Nolan was born April 22, 1917. Sir Sidney Robert Nolan OM, AC (22 April 1917 - 28 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. His oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known for his series of paintings on legends from Australian history, most famously Ned Kelly, the bushranger and outlaw. Nolan's stylised depiction of Kelly's armour has become an icon of Australian art. In this image: Sidney Nolan, Death of Sergeant Kennedy at Stringybark Creek, 1946, enamel on composition board, 91.0cm x 121.7cm, Purchased 1972, Courtesy National Gallery of Australia.
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