| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Tuesday, August 4, 2020 |
| | | Wartime 'pantomime pictures' revealed in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle | |
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During the recent closure of Windsor Castle, portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Waterloo Chamber were removed to facilitate essential maintenance work, revealing wartime Âpantomime pictures underneath. The pantomime pictures can be seen by visitors to Windsor Castle. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.
LONDON.- During the Second World War, Her Majesty The Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) and her sister Princess Margaret took part in a series of pantomimes in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle to raise money for the Royal Household Wool Fund, which supplied yarn to make comforters for soldiers fighting at the Front. At the beginning of the war, the series of portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence that usually line the walls of the Waterloo Chamber were removed from their frames for safe keeping. To make the space more festive, 16 Âpantomime pictures were commissioned to cover the bare walls. Teenage evacuee and part-time art student Claude Whatham was asked to recreate fairy-tale characters on rolls of wallpaper. He shared a temporary painting studio in the Garter Throne Room with Sir Gerald Kelly, who was working on King George VI and Queen ElizabethÂs Coronation portraits. After the war, the portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence were returned to ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Iranian Alireza Parsa poses next to mask-themed artworks on display at an art exhibit in Cama gallery in the capital Tehran on August 1, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. ATTA KENARE / AFP
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| | Sotheby's reports $2.5 billion in sales | | The Met announces major gift from Adrienne Arsht | | Unique retrospective of the work of Nicolas de Staël on view at The Centre Pompidou Málaga |
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Head). Courtesy Sotheby's.
by Scott Reyburn
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Sothebys, the international auction house bought in 2019 by telecommunications magnate Patrick Drahi, reported Monday that it has sold $2.5 billion of art and collectibles so far this year. The figures include more than $285 million from online-only auctions and $575 million in private sales. The art and luxury markets have proven to be incredibly resilient, and demand for quality across categories is unabated, Charles F. Stewart, Sothebys chief executive, said in the statement, acknowledging the challenge of selling high-end inventory during the coronavirus pandemic. As a privately held company like its rival international auction houses Christies, Phillips and Bonhams Sothebys is under no obligation to release sales figures. It did not divulge in its official release how these figures compared to the same seven-month period last ... More | |
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Exterior). Photo courtesy of The Met.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that Adrienne Arsht has pledged $5 million in support of its MetLiveArts series and also its internship program. This transformative gift will provide funds for performance programming that champions resilience through art by engaging with artists of varied backgrounds, perspectives, and voices; it will also ensure that all of the Museum's undergraduate and graduate internships will be paid. The previously unnamed internship positionssome 70 last yearwill now be named as Adrienne Arsht Interns. "Adrienne Arsht's remarkable generosity, vision, and long-standing commitment to The Met is truly inspirational," said Max Hollein, Director of the Museum. "These funds will activate a landmark shift in The Met's expansive and multidisciplined internship program, enabling greater inclusivity and access while also significantly furthering the Museum's continued dedication to engaging ... More | |
Les Musiciens, souvenir de Sidney Bechet, 1953. Oil on canvas, 161,9 x 114,2 cm. Donation in 1982. Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national dart moderne, Centre de création industrielle © Adagp, Paris. Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Service de la documentation photographique du MNAN. Dist. RMN-GP.
MALAGA.- The Centre Pompidou Málaga is presenting a unique retrospective of the work of Nicolas de Staël (Saint Petersburg, 1914 - Antibes, 1955), a major artist of the French art scene from 1945 onwards. The exhibition aims, through several of his masterpieces, to present the exceptional career of this artist who placed the dialectic between abstraction and figuration at the heart of his extraordinary and all-too-brief oeuvre. Born in Russia, Nicolas de Staël studied in Belgium before moving to France in 1938 where he first became known through an exhibition at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris in 1944. Living and working in a period in which abstraction was triumphant, the artist returned to figuration in 1952 with cut-back and powerfully constructed forms. After moving to the South of France in 1953, ... More |
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| | Protests damage statue of Belgian king outside museum | | Exhibition of works by Pentti Sammallahti celebrates the light, warmth, and freedom of summer | | Anne Frank memorial tree vandalised in France's Corsica: prosecutors |
A picture taken on August 3, 2020 shows a bust of former king Leopold II covered in red paint, with "BLM" spray-painted on its base, in the park of the Africa Museum in Tervuren, near Brussels. François WALSCHAERTS / AFP.
BRUSSELS (AFP).- A bust of late Belgian king Leopold II, who exploited the country's brutally-run former central African colony as a personal estate, has been vandalised for a third time. Ruling the Belgians between 1865 and 1909, Leopold II was revered at home as the builder of his country, but his legacy came under the spotlight this year as anti-racist protests spread around the world. During his reign, the land that was then the Belgian Congo and is now largely in the Democratic Republic of Congo was run for his profit and millions of Africans were killed, tortured or died of the hardship of forced labour. When "Black Lives Matters" protests erupted this year triggered by anger in the United States at the latest police killings of unarmed black suspects, Leopold's many monuments were targeted. The latest incident is thought ... More | |
Pentti Sammallahti, Hydra, Greece (dog in window), 1975.
NEW YORK, NY.- Nailya Alexander Gallery is presenting Pentti Sammallahti: Summertime, on view online Monday 3 August - Friday 28 August 2020. This exhibition includes images from over forty years of the artists career, from the 1970s to the present, and celebrates the light, warmth, and freedom of summer. Born in 1950 in Helsinki, Pentti Sammallahti stands today as a landmark figure in Scandinavian photography, renowned worldwide for his emotive images of animals and nature and for his masterfully crafted gelatin silver prints. His work expresses the beauty and wonder of the world through his far-flung travels across Siberia, Japan, India, Nepal, Turkey, Africa, the British Isles, and both Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in his native Finland. Pentti Sammallahti: Summertime embraces the photographers famously peripatetic spirit by including images from almost every continent that capture the unique atmosphere of season. As always, Sammallahtis keen ... More | |
The Anne Frank Tree in 2006. Photo: huliana90212/wikipedia.org
AJACCIO (AFP).- A commemorative tree grown from a cutting of the horse chestnut Anne Frank wrote about in her diary during World War II, has been vandalised on the French island of Corsica, prompting an investigation, prosecutors said Monday. The damage to the tree, donated in 2010 to Corsica by the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, was discovered early Sunday, just hours before an annual event was hosted on the Mediterranean island to remember the Holocaust. Jewish teenager Frank found encouragement in a white horse chestnut tree she could see from a window in a concealed apartment on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht where she and her family hid from the Nazis for nearly two years. On February 23, 1944, she wrote in her diary, now one of the world's most widely-read books: "The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air." ... More |
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| | Sculpture in the City at the Wadsworth activates art and architecture online and on Main Street | | $12.2 million Lalanne menagerie drives Sotheby's record-breaking Design Sales in New York | | Painstaking organ repair starts at Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral |
Alexander Calder (American, 18981976), Fabricated by Segre Iron Works (formerly of Waterbury, CT), Stegosaurus, 1972. Painted Steel. Image courtesy of The Ella Burr McManus Trust, 2008.
HARTFORD, CONN.- Sculpture in the City is a cityscape-focused program launched in recent weeks activating the works of sculpture and architectural design on the grounds of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and beyond. The Wadsworth's historic buildings and installations of public sculpture, joined by two important works of public art neighboring the museum, Alexander Calder's Stegosaurus and Carl Andre's Stone Field Sculpture, are at the core of this effort. Signage on the grounds makes self-guided touring possible any day in person, aided by links to in-depth stories, archival images, and video content accessible anytime online. Live programming around the initiative spans guided outdoor art talks with Wadsworth curators, conservators, and education staff (available with advance registration) to content created by partnering organizations Connecticut's Old ... More | |
François-Xavier Lalanne, Singe I and Singe II, estimates $400/600,000 each. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- Sothebys summer auctions of 20th & 21st Century Design concluded last Thursday in New York, with an exceptional total of $22 million against a pre-sale high estimate of $11.6 million for the series. The July offering achieved a new record total for any various-owner sale of Design at Sothebys worldwide, for the second consecutive year, and also featured a white-glove sale (100% sold) dedicated to the celebrated furniture of American designer, Thomas Molesworth. Jodi Pollack, Co-Worldwide Head of Sothebys 20th Century Design Department, said: We are beyond thrilled with the resounding success of our summer season. These outstanding results include our highest-ever total in company history for a various-owner Design sale amidst a pandemic no less which speaks to the strong global demand and enthusiasm we continue to see in this space. We remain committed to presenting the market with ... More | |
Notre Dame de Paris organist Johann Vexo was the organist who was playing when the blaze broke out. MANDEL NGAN / AFP.
PARIS (AFP).- Workers began a painstaking four-year process Monday to restore the great organ of the Paris Notre-Dame cathedral, ravaged by fire in April last year. The fabled instrument was not badly damaged in the devastating blaze, but there was limited relief for admirers as it was covered in lead dust and has also suffered from temperature fluctuations in the cathedral since the fire. A 30-metre (100-foot) scaffolding has been erected around the organ to allow it to be safely dismantled piece by precious piece and lowered to the ground. The voice of the monument since 1733, the organ has 8,000 pipes and a sound when in full flight that its players describe as truly symphonic. While the April 2019 fire toppled the spire of the cathedral and destroyed much of the roof, the organ was spared by the flames and was doused with relatively little water as firefighters fought to save the historic structure. But the instrument still needs a ... More |
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| | Lai Chiu-Chen's first solo show in the United States opens at Eli Klein Gallery | | Sworders announces sale of Arts & Crafts & Art Deco | | New exhibition featuring nine contemporary artists addresses issues of race, gender, identity |
Lai Chiu-Chen, Hey, Which Eye You Are Using to Stare at Me, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 70 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches (180 x 140 cm).
NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Klein Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition 99% Unreal, by Taiwanese artist Lai Chiu-Chens (b. 1970). This is the artists first solo show in the United States, showcasing fifteen iconic paintings which were done between 2012 and 2019. Lais paintings, created during the explosion of access to information, present us with an intriguing look at the portrayal of mundane pop references co-existing within a setting of social, political and economic turmoil. The 1970s and 80s, when the island was under martial law, was difficult, to say the least. Democratic reform was deemed necessary, whereas political tensions with Mainland China remained at a high level. With globalization and consumerism looming, artists in Taiwan at the time often found themselves in a position where raw materials were abundant, and the tension between order and expressiveness was at its historical high. Lai Chiu-Chen ... More | |
Demetre Chiparus (1886-1947), 'The Dancer of Kapurthala', patinated and gilt-bronze and ivory, on a stepped onyx base, signed on the plinth and stamped 'Made in France and numbered 35', 57cm high. Estimate: £35,000-45,000.
STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET .- Sworders' September 8 sale of Arts & Crafts & Art Deco includes an unprecedented number of pieces by Stanley Webb Davies (1894-1978). More than 30 pieces by the Windermere craftsman will come under the hammer from table lamps and trays to bedroom furniture. Trained in the Cotswolds but choosing to work in the Lake District, Webb Davies handmade pieces in indigenous timbers were a direct backlash against the mechanisation and automation of the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributing to the debate on British industry in the 1940s he wrote to the Guardian newspaper describing "probably the chief evil of our present industrial age the tyranny of the machine." It was, he felt, "more important that industry should turn out excellent men and women than a flood of cheap and useful goods." Sworders ... More | |
Carrie Mae Weems, Moody Blue Girl, 1997. Gelatin silver print with text on mat, 30 x 30 in. Edition 4/5. Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 2017.18.
TOLEDO, OH.- A new exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art examines the work of contemporary African American artists who use a mixture of text and images to tackle cultural stereotypes and challenge oppressive racial characterizations. PICTURE ID: Contemporary African American Works on Paper, which was scheduled to open in March and postponed due to the coronavirus, will be on view for the public beginning Aug. 4 in Gallery 4. The exhibition will close on Jan. 17, 2021. All works in the exhibition are drawn from TMAs permanent collection. The nine artists featured Glenn Ligon, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Martin Puryear, John Rozelle, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems and Fred Wilson created works in response to artistic developments and cultural debates prevalent through the late 1980s ... More |
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Studio Visit with Artist Cary Fagan | Christie's
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Almine Rech opens an online exhibition of new paintings by Chloe Wise
NEW YORK, NY.- Almine Rech is presenting Second Nature, an online exhibition of new paintings by Chloe Wise, now on view until August 13, 2020. The late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu intervened within the discourse of consumption habits in his landmark study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), a text that is essential reading for the lovers and collectors of Chloe Wises work. Wises work is formally and conceptually diverse, yet identifiable through its recurring symbols. Whether it is her bricolaged figurative paintings with modernist and postmodernist points of reference, delightfully anachronistic video performances, or food sculptures that look like hyperreal midcentury curiosities from a grandparents cottage, Wise emphasizes the joys of the everyday. The everyday is not necessarily ordinary, Wises ... More
University Archives prepares for what could be the biggest auction in company history
WESTPORT, CONN.- A United States flag flown aboard the Apollo XIII space mission in 1970 with a NASA certificate signed by all three astronaut crew members, a manuscript document for the sale of G. Westinghouse & Company from George Westinghouse, Sr. to his son in 1871, and an albumen photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1864 and signed by Lincoln, are all part of University Archives next online auction on Wednesday, August 19th, at 10:30 am Eastern time. The auction is being billed as the largest and most diverse in the companys history. The full catalog, showing a whopping 351 lots, is up and online for bidding and viewing now, at the newly revamped University Archives website, as well as the platforms LiveAuctioneers.com, Invaluable.com and Auctionzip.com. Phone and absentee bids will also be accepted. This sale is packed ... More
Major John Hitchens retrospective reopens at Southampton City Art Gallery
SOUTHAMPTON.- Southampton City Art Gallery is presenting a retrospective by the acclaimed British painter John Hitchens. Entitled Aspects of Landscape, the exhibition features more than fifty works spanning almost six decades and charts the artists journey from descriptive to a unique form of abstract painting. Hitchens first came to public prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, when his work was represented by the London galleries, Marjorie Parr and Montpelier Studio. Since this period his work has been acquired by many public institutions and private collections in the UK and overseas. Then as now, his main subject and source of inspiration is the landscape of the British Isles, its hills and field patterns, woodland, sea, the night sky and forms in nature and the South Downs and woodlands that surround his studio, which he has known since ... More
Excavation begins at historic Dakar market in renovation project
DAKAR (AFP).- Heavy-duty excavators have begun to raze the famed Sandaga market, a sprawling hub of informal trade in the heart of Senegal's capital Dakar, which the authorities want to rebuild and modernise. The great hall, built in the Sudanese-Sahel tradition in 1933, has housed hundreds of stalls selling merchandise of all kinds, from food to craft goods. It was closed in 2013 for public safety after the edifice was weakened by several fires. Under the watchful eyes of city and state authorities, three heavy diggers on Sunday evening began to destroy dozens of makeshift shops that had proliferated at the foot of the hall. Police deployed in force to keep onlookers well clear of the work. The machines threw up thick clouds of dust while they smashed market stalls and tipped loads of rubble, beams and corrugated iron into dump trucks. The traders, whose ... More
Leon Fleisher, spellbinding pianist with one hand or two, dies at 92
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Leon Fleisher, a leading American pianist in the 1950s and early 60s who was forced by an injury to his right hand to channel his career into conducting, teaching and mastering the left-hand repertoire, died Sunday in a hospice in Baltimore. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his son Julian, who said he was still teaching and conducting master classes as recently as last week. Fleisher came to believe that his career-altering malady, focal dystonia, was caused by overpracticing seven or eight hours a day of pumping ivory, as he told The New York Times in a 1996 interview and for 30 years he tried virtually any cure that looked promising, including shots of lidocaine, rehabilitation therapy, psychotherapy, shock treatments, Rolfing and EST. At times, he later said, he was so despondent that he considered ... More
Minister for Sports, Heritage and Tourism Nigel Huddleston visits Charleston as charity plans for the future
FIRLE.- On Friday 31 July 2020 Minister for Sports Heritage and Tourism, Nigel Huddleston, visited artists home and cultural centre Charleston which has been saved from insolvency and is now making the most of an extended closure period to build a bolder, stronger, and more sustainable organisation for the future. The charity, which receives no regular public funding and had no reserves or endowments to fall back on during the Covid-19 pandemic, has lost over £600,000 in commercial revenue since it closed in March 2020. Thanks to donations from around the world and major grants from Historic England and National Lottery Heritage Fund, the unprecedented risk of insolvency has passed and the charity is now looking towards the future and a spring 2021 reopening. While its walled garden has opened for pre-booked visits this ... More
One of the largest pieces of the Moon found on Earth lands in upcoming Heritage Auctions event
DALLAS, TX.- No hyperbole is necessary here, nor breathless embellishment. This lot in Heritage Auctions August 7 Nature & Science event is nothing less than as advertised: a large piece of the moon. To be precise, 6.4 pounds large. That is a staggering size for a moon meteorite, considering there are but a few hundred pounds of lunar material known to have crash-landed on our planet. And that is what this is: a 7.5-inch piece of the moon sliced off the lunar surface by a passing asteroid that eventually made its way to the desert of Morocco, where it was discovered and first sold from a dealer to a collector-curator only six years ago. It bears the classification NWA 8641 because its the 8,641st meteorite discovered in northwest Africa. The Meteoritical Bulletin reveals plenty about its petrography, its geochemistry, its physical characteristics. ... More
New commission to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
LONDON.- To mark the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 2020, Imperial War Museums have commissioned a new work from leading artist Es Devlin working in collaboration with her long-term studio colleague Machiko Weston. Closely aligning with the timings of the actual bombings, the 45-metre-wide digital work will be shown on the Piccadilly Lights giant screen in Piccadilly Circus at 8.10am on Thursday 6th and at 11am on Sunday 9th August and simultaneously on the Imperial War Museum website. The new commission, I Saw The World End, responds to the moment the nature and consequences of war were irrevocably redefined, reflecting on the impact of the event from both a British and a Japanese perspective. Locked down in their separate studios, the text has been researched ... More
Painting Lives: Portraits by Sarah Jane Moon on view in the virtual exhibition space Projectroom 2020
LONDON.- Painting Lives brings together 35 of New Zealand born artist Sarah Jane Moons portraits in the new virtual exhibition space moon" target="_blank">Projectroom 2020. The artists work explores identity, sexuality and gender presentation as well as formal painterly concerns that are the very basis of her fine portraiture. This exhibition of her work is the largest to date and includes portraits of doctors, lawyers, performers, writers and more. As Diana Souhami writes: "Her allegiance is to feminism. Her painterliness, technique, discipline and concentration are mainstream and for all time. She has an art theory background, knows her history and her contribution to its changing path. This year Moon has exhibited with Thompson's Galleries and the Bankside Gallery and is currently showing with the National Portrait Gallery in the BP Portrait ... More
Works by Edward Hicks exhibited for the first time in two decades
WILLIAMSBURG, VA.- The nineteenth-century Quaker artist, Edward Hicks (1780-1849), is one of the countrys best known American folk painters. His Peaceable Kingdom paintings, a series of over five dozen canvases based on the biblical prophecy of Isaiah, are some of the most beloved in American art. Today, they offer relevant messages of hope for a peaceful coexistence in the world. Hicks art, ironically, caused him much anguish. Colonial Williamsburg is the proud owner of the largest single collection of works by Hicks, and for the first time since 1999, many of these works will be on view together in The Art of Edward Hicks at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, The exhibition, which features nearly all of Hicks paintings in the collection as well as a portrait of the artist by his nephew, ... More
Tate Modern to reopen Steve McQueen exhibition
LONDON.- After successfully reopening all four Tate galleries last week, Tate Modern announced that its Steve McQueen exhibition will also be reopening on Friday 7 August and will be extended to 6 September 2020. First launched in February, the acclaimed exhibition spanning 20 years of McQueens work has been modified with new visitor signage to aid social distancing and will reopen with a reduced visitor capacity. Celebrated for his powerful and uncompromising vision, Steve McQueen creates work that addresses the urgent issues of representation, identity and history. Featuring 14 major works spanning film, photography and sculpture, the exhibition at Tate Modern is an unprecedented opportunity to experience the depth of McQueens visual art career in this country for the first time since he received the Turner Prize in 1999. The ... More
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Canova | Thorvaldsen
Flashback On a day like today, French designer Louis Vuitton was born August 04, 1821. Louis Vuitton (4 August 1821 - 27 February 1892), was the founder of the world-famous Louis Vuitton brand of leather goods now owned by LVMH. Prior to this, he had been appointed as trunk-maker to Empress Eugénie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon. In this image: In the courtyard of the Asnières workshops, around 1888, Louis, Georges and Gaston L. Vuitton (sitting on a Bed trunk) © LOUIS VUITTON ARCHIVES.
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