The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, January 19, 2024


 
An ancient woolly mammoth left a diary in her tusk

In an image provided by the university, Karen Spaleta analyzes a mammoth tusk at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Spaleta was part of a group of scientists that figured out how to use layers of minerals left behind on mammoth tusks to track where the animals once lived. (J.R. Ancheta/University of Alaska Fairbanks via The New York Times)

by Carl Zimmer


NEW YORK, NY.- Scientists have written the biography of a 14,000-year-old female woolly mammoth by analyzing the chemicals in her tusk. The animal, nicknamed Elma, was born in what is now the Yukon and stayed close to her birthplace a decade before moving hundreds of miles west into central Alaska, the study found. There she remained until she reached about 20, when she was most likely taken down by hunters. Scientists are beginning to tell such ancient stories by looking at the layers of minerals that once accumulated each day on the outside of the tusks of mammoths and mastodons. As researchers study more tusks, they hope to settle some of the biggest questions about how the hulking mammals thrived for hundreds of thousands of years. They are also gathering clues to how mammoths and mastodons became extinct at the end of the ice age — perhaps with some help from humans. “There are answers out there,” said Joshua Miller, a University of Cincinnati paleoecologist who was not involved i ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Heritage Auctions’ $20.3-million Comics & Comic Art event, held Jan. 11-14, contained more records than a jukebox. Chief among their impressive ranks was one of only two copies of The Amazing Spider-Man No. 1 graded CGC Near Mint/Mint 9.8, which realized a record-setting $1,380,000. Spider-Man wasn’t the lone seven-figure superhero in this auction: One of only two copies of Superman No. 1 graded Fine/Very Fine 7.0 soared to $2.34 million, close to a record high for the first issue of the Man of Steel’s solo book.





Adele, Beyoncé, the Sphere: How Es Devlin reinvented modern spectacle   First issue of 'Amazing Spider-Man' swings to record-setting $1.38 million at Heritage Auctions   At art fraud trial, Sotheby's is pressed on role in sales to Russian oligarch


Visitors at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum on the Upper East Side watch an immersive display of Es Devlin’s studio with a video where the designer explains her process. (Es Devlin Studio via The New York Times)

by Walker Mimms


NEW YORK, NY.- As visual storytelling presses toward new technological heights, it is worth recalling that some of the oldest and richest tactics of illusion — from the proscenium arches of the Renaissance to the lintels and lightboxes of Robert Wilson — originated onstage. Over the past 20 years, many spatially encompassing and conceptually driven sets have come from British artist Es Devlin, a stage designer for Adele and the Weeknd, and for U2 at the maiden show of the Sphere, Las Vegas’ new 160,000-square-foot dome of LED screen. When no concert screen could impress enough last year, Devlin’s billboard-size one for Beyoncé delivered like some fulfillment from “2001: ... More
 

Superman #1 (DC, 1939) CGC FN/VF 7.0 Off-white pages.

DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions’ $20.3-million Comics & Comic Art event, held Jan. 11-14, contained more records than a jukebox. As expected, the auction proved a history-maker and a headline-maker thanks to its remarkable assemblage of the sole-highest-graded examples of key titles. Chief among their impressive ranks was one of only two copies of The Amazing Spider-Man No. 1 graded CGC Near Mint/Mint 9.8, which realized a record-setting $1,380,000. The book, which hit newsstands in March 1963, just seven months after Peter Parker and his web-slinging alter-ego debuted in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, made its auction debut at Heritage during Thursday afternoon’s Platinum Session. This landmark book came from CGC’s Curator Pedigree and sold for nearly three times the amount realized by the CGC Near Mint+ 9.6 copy that sold in July 2023 for $520,380. Spider-Man wasn’t the lone ... More
 

The Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev looks out from his penthouse in Monte Carlo, Monaco, Sept. 18, 2018. (Benjamin Bechet/The New York Times)

by Graham Bowley


NEW YORK, NY.- The painting Sotheby’s was trying to sell was a newly discovered work by one of the world’s greatest artists, Leonardo da Vinci. It was known as the “Salvator Mundi” and was a depiction of Christ. But it had a code name: Jack. Samuel Valette, a Sotheby’s specialist, testified in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday about how one day in March 2013 he had taken the painting crosstown in an SUV from the auction house’s headquarters on York Avenue to a premier apartment overlooking Central Park. It was one of the many trips he had made to display paintings for a prospective buyer, Valette said. He was, as usual, accompanied by security personnel, and the painting, already valued at tens of millions of dollars, was in a protective crate. The apartment was owned by Dmitry Ryb ... More


California's most iconic roadside attractions   Auction of Nelson Mandela items set after court fight with government   The ancient back story of the slimiest animal in the sea


The Cabazon Dinosaurs, a famed roadside attraction along I-10 in Cabazon, Calif. on March 12, 2022. (Jamie Lee Taete/The New York Times)

by Soumya Karlamangla


NEW YORK, NY.- The news last week that Pea Soup Andersen’s on the Central Coast had suddenly closed elicited a wave of nostalgia among Californians, even those like me who had never actually eaten there. The restaurant's whimsical advertisements along Highway 101, featuring two cartoon chefs, were dependable road-trip markers for me when I was growing up in Ventura County, confirming that we had officially made it out of congested Southern California. (The restaurant, in the small city of Buellton, opened 100 years ago, and the billboards went up not long after that.) The outpouring of memories got us thinking: What are the other iconic roadside landmarks across the state? The best known are probably the Cabazon Dinosaurs, the world’s tallest thermometer, the Winchester Mystery House, the formerly reeking Harris Ranch, the Paul Bunyan statue in Klamath and the giant Randy’s Donuts sign visible from the 405 freeway. But many of our favorite attractions are far less ... More
 

A Madiba shirt once worn by Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s eldest daughter is moving forward with an auction next month of the former president’s personal belongings after a two-year legal battle with the South African government, which had tried to block such a sale saying the items were artifacts of national heritage. (via Guernsey’s via The New York Times)

by Matt Stevens


NEW YORK, NY.- Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter is moving forward with an auction next month of the former president’s personal belongings after a two-year legal battle with the South African government, which had tried to block such a sale saying the items were artifacts of national heritage. The proposed sale had drawn attention when it was announced in 2021. South African officials balked, objecting in particular to the sale of a key to the Robben Island prison cell where Mandela was held. Proceeds from the auction are intended to finance a memorial garden honoring Mandela, who dedicated most of his life to emancipating South Africa from white minority rule, the organizers said. He died in 2013 at 95, 23 years after his release from prison and 19 years after he was elected president. The key, which ... More
 

A slime eel, or hagfish, subject of a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. (Pascual-Anaya et al., Nature 2024 via The New York Times)

by Veronique Greenwood


NEW YORK, NY.- The hagfish, a deep-sea scavenger about the size and shape of a tube sock, has the curious ability to smother itself in its own snot. The mucus is a defense mechanism, released into the water (or in one unfortunate incident, all over an Oregon highway) when the fish feels threatened. Once it hits seawater, a tiny amount of the ooze expands to 10,000 times its original size in a fraction of a second, forming a tenacious web of goo. A shark trying to take a bite of a hagfish will find itself suddenly unable to breathe, its gills clogged with the slime. But the same is true of the hagfish itself, which finds the process of being captured by scientists late at night on boats in the black ocean a bit stressful. Juan Pascual-Anaya, a biologist at the University of Málaga in Spain who has spent summers collecting hagfish off the coast of Japan, recalls having to strip the elastic gel off the animals with his hands. “We have to be removing the mucus all the time on ... More



The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair to hold Winter edition at Evolution London   Jeffrey Gibson opening a new UK solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery   New rotation of Museo del Barrio's most ambitious presentation of its permanent collection on view to March 10th


Afshar village wool rug South-East Persia, circa 1910. 2.00m x 1.44m. Price: £1,950. Photo: Aaron Nejad Gallery.

LONDON.- From Tuesday 23 to Sunday 28 January 2024, The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair returns to the mezzanine level, above the Winter edition of The Decorative Fair at Evolution London in Battersea Park. LARTA is London’s premier event solely devoted to the wonders of handmade carpets, rugs and textiles from around the world and through the eras; a visual feast presented by a group of highly knowledgeable experts. In this its 12th year, LARTA has enticed back a few former exhibitors, including Markus Voigt, Villa Rosemaine from France and Gideon Hatch. Joining for the first time is Textile Antiques, the new business set up by Joseph Sullivan. Amongst the eclectic mix of rugs, carpets, textiles, antique costumes and tapestries to discover, there are some real treasures. James Cohen has two impressive Ziegler & Co. carpets, one large ivory carpet measuring 343 x 552cm, dating around 1890. James Cohen explains, “This is the rug ... More
 

Jeffrey Gibson, 'JUST ANOTHER PART OF YOU', 2023. Acrylic paint on cold press paper, vintage beaded element, vintage beaded wristwatch, glass beads, acrylic felt, nylon thread and silicone adhesive, 162.6 x 121.9cm (64 x 48in). Copyright Jeffrey Gibson. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. Photo by Max Yawney.

LONDON.- Stephen Friedman Gallery is opening DREAMING OF HOW IT'S MEANT TO BE, a new UK solo exhibition by Jeffrey Gibson. Gibson (b.1972, Colorado, USA) fuses his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage with references that span club culture, queer theory, fashion, politics, literature and art history. The exhibition showcases an ambitious new body of work including large-scale multi-media works, sculptures, punching bags and paintings on paper. In April 2024 Gibson will be the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. The artist’s first exhibition at the gallery celebrates the breadth of his multi-faceted practice, which is characterised by vibrant colour and pattern. Gibson is renowned for ... More
 

Francisco Manuel Oller y Cestero, ‘Plátanos amarillos,’ c. 1892. Oil on wood panel. Collection of El Museo del Barrio, New York. GiY of Carmen Ana Unanue.

NEW YORK, NY.- El Museo del Barrio is pleased to announce that the second rotation of its Permanent Collection exhibition, Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección, is now on view. Something Beautiful, which initially opened to the public in May, is the Museum’s most ambitious display of its Permanent Collection in over twenty years. Organized by Rodrigo Moura, Chief Curator; Susanna V. Temkin, Curator; and Lee Sessions, Permanent Collection Associate Curator, the second rotation expands the exhibition’s scope, showcasing approximately 150 additional artworks by some 60 artists, including 50 new acquisitions that have entered the collection within the last two years. “It is an honor for El Museo to survey the vast and diverse cultural production of the Americas, including Latinx, Indigenous, and Afro-diasporic artists. The exhibition presents key themes that investigate the complex and nuanced ways in which artists respond to the ... More


Saatchi Yates presents exhibition to mark start of new relationship with Neil Stokoe Estate   Michael Simpson at Modern Art, Helmet Row   Solo exhibition of works by Brooklyn-based artist Cathleen Clarke at Margot Samel


Neil Stokoe, Fractured, 1973, Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Saatchi Yates.

LONDON.- Saatchi Yates is currently conducting a solo exhibition by Neil Stokoe (1935-2019), the first posthumous display of works painted between the 1960s and the 1990s. Following the gallery’s successful summer exhibition Bathers, which included Neil Stokoe’s, Floating Figure II, Saatchi Yates is now representing the artist’s estate and will work with his family to bring his remarkable paintings to a wider audience. Stokoe has long been seen as the hidden giant of the ‘Golden Circle’ at the RCA. with David Hockney, Frank Bowling R.B.Kitaj, Allen Jones, and Patrick Caulfield among his contemporaries. Despite the encouragement of his close friend Francis Bacon to exhibit his paintings, he avoided the vibrant London art world of the 60’s – leaving him largely unknown today. Only afier retirement in 2002 did Stokoe first reveal any of his work. He lived a solitary, r ... More
 

Photo: Robert Glowacki. Courtesy: the artist and Modern Art, London.

LONDON.- “I believe a painting must move beyond its subject and in my own work, formal considerations are paramount. I try to ‘build’ a painting, and by putting its elements together in a certain way, I hope to find those critical relationships which will give the object its brevity, its coherence. This challenging process, like an unpredictable marriage, between abstract principles and the subliminal forces of the subject, remain for me, the very essence of the practice.” – Michael Simpson, November 2023. Modern Art is showing ‘New Paintings’, Michael Simpson’s first exhibition with the gallery, and first in London for five years. Painting almost daily for over six decades, Simpson is renowned for probing both the formal mechanics of painting and in his own words, “the infamy of religious history”. He is best known for large paintings that repeat a small number of rigorously ... More
 

Cathleen Clarke, Wrong Side of the Bed, 2023. Photo: Andi Azry.

NEW YORK, NY.- Margot Samel is now going to start The Night Grows Long, a solo exhibition of works by Brooklyn-based artist Cathleen Clarke. The Victorian Era begins in the West with the reign of Queen Victoria and spans the 1800’s, where few things more haunting emerged than that of the role and spirit of the child. Across The Night Grows Long, Cathleen Clarke’s first solo exhibition with Margot Samel, concepts of the child, the threshold of girlhood, one’s proximity to mortality, and transformations of the unconsciousness of youth, are all taken up generations later in the wake and fallout of this odd and haunting history. In Wrong Side of the Bed a young girl in a nightdress seems to slide out of a window, headfirst towards a carpeted patterned ground. Green hands emerge from a darkened elsewhere to her left, grabbing her legs and torso. Are they stabilizing her in her ... More




Art as a tool for Social Emotional Learning (SEL)



More News

Pierce Brosnan pleads not guilty to hiking illegally at Yellowstone
NEW YORK, NY.- Pierce Brosnan has pleaded not guilty to hiking in a restricted area of Yellowstone National Park, according to court documents filed this month in federal court in Wyoming. The actor faces two charges that were filed Dec. 23. The court documents describe one as a “closure violation — mammoth terraces,” and the other as “foot travel in a thermal area.” Both incidents occurred Nov. 1, according to the charging documents. The Mammoth Terraces area at Yellowstone is famous for its fountains and hot springs. But visitors to Yellowstone are, for the most part, required to stay on trails and observe them at a distance. The water in the hot springs is acidic and “can cause severe or fatal burns,” according to the National Park Service. The water beneath the thin crust around the springs is scalding hot. The ... More

Sarah Stackhouse, star interpreter of José Limón, dies at 87
NEW YORK, NY.- Sarah Stackhouse, a star dancer in the Limón Dance Company who became a sought-after teacher and stager of José Limón’s choreography around the world, died Jan. 7 at her home in New Paltz, New York. She was 87. The company announced the death. Her friend Diana Byer, the founder and former artistic director of New York Theater Ballet, said the cause was salivary cancer. Limón was already one of the 20th century’s most influential choreographers when Stackhouse joined his company in 1958. Her virtuosic dance technique, natural charisma and compelling acting perfectly suited his flowing movement style and abstract narrative works, which are still performed by his company and many others around the world. The role of Desdemona in Limón’s most famous work, “The Moor’s Pavane,” based on William ... More

Broadway next for 'Stereophonic'
NEW YORK, NY.- “Stereophonic,” an acclaimed behind-the-music play about a disputatious band recording a studio album, will transfer to Broadway this spring following a buzzy and sold-out off-Broadway run. The play, written by David Adjmi, is set mostly inside a Sausalito, California, recording studio, and follows five musicians and two sound engineers through a year in the 1970s. The story — featuring romance, infighting, drug use and a solo-star-in-the-making — resembles that of Fleetwood Mac, but Adjmi says he had many inspirations for the play. The 14-week Broadway production is expected to begin previews April 3 and to open April 19 at the Golden Theater. The off-Broadway run, over 10 weeks last fall at the nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, garnered strong reviews. Writing in The New York Times, critic Jesse Green called ... More

'Sheher, Prakriti, Devi' an exhibition that marks artist and photographer Gauri Gill's first extensive curation
DUBAI.- Ishara Art Foundation is preseting Sheher, Prakriti, Devi, an exhibition that marks artist and photographer Gauri Gill’s first extensive curation. Ruminating on the interwoven relationship between dynamic cities, the natural environment and the inseparable sacred, the show presents twelve artists and collectives working across diverse contexts of urban, rural, domestic, communitarian, public and non-material spaces. Sheher, Prakriti, Devi comes from the Hindustani terms for ‘city’, ‘nature’ and ‘deity’. The exhibition germinates from Gill’s ongoing documentation of urban and semi-urban spaces in India since 2003 in a series titled ‘Rememory’ (after Toni Morrison). Gill offers a unique lens to regard cities as spaces of habitation that are shaped by multiple life-worlds. Together with various practitioners with whom she shares an affinity, the exhibition presents a world where built and ... More

Notions of intersubjectivity between vision and immersion in the physical world explored by Kiwha Lee
NEW YORK, NY.- CHART is now presenting Light Punch, a solo exhibition by Kiwha Lee. Featuring a suite of new paintings, her work poses questions about what painting is in the 21st century, complicating the viewer's reading of pictorial hierarchy by engaging pattern as a narrative tool. Taking ancient Asian printmaking processes derived from craft traditions and reinventing them with oil paint, Lee explores notions of intersubjectivity between vision and immersion in the physical world. The exhibition, Lee’s first solo show in New York, opens with a reception on Friday, January 19, from 6–8pm, and will remain on view through March 9, 2024. Kiwha Lee expresses a desire to transgress artificial and arbitrary boundaries. Having lived and worked around the globe, Lee's densely patterned abstractions reflect the artist's own multi-layered identity. ... More

Reimagine art and the world at 'Light to Night Singapore 2024'
SINGAPORE.- Reimagine what art could be at the 8th edition of Light to Night Singapore. The marquee event of Singapore Art Week takes festival-goers on a journey of unexpected and unconventional exploration, using inspiration from history, origin, and artworks from the National Collection to present a multitude of sensorial experiences for all. Stretching across three weeks from 19 January to 8 February 2024, festival-goers can look forward to over 60 artworks and programmes ranging from interactive art installations, interdisciplinary programmes, mesmerising light projections, and live performances that will set the Civic District abuzz. With free and ticketed experiences for all to enjoy, festival-goers can pre-book their tickets for select programmes to secure their slots. Organised by National Gallery Singapore, supported by Development ... More

Johannes Wohnseifer presents his 10th exhibition at KÖNIG GALERIE
BERLIN.- KÖNIG GALERIE is commencing A PANCAKE SHOW, a new solo exhibition by Johannes Wohnseifer, his 10th with the gallery. The title originates from a mistranslation of the words “Painting Show”, which Wohnseifer embraced as a fitting description for his extended painterly practice. The artist works in a wide range of media– sculpture, photography, film, graphic design, and installation – all connected by their incorporation of the reality of mass media through reference and appropriation on the one side and the usage of references to art history on the other. Featured in A PANCAKE SHOW are works from the artist’s recent DEMENTIA-PAINTINGS series, in which Wohnseifer transfers digital images into the analog domain of the painted picture. In keeping with the series’ title, the artist focused specifically on visual signs ... More

Peter Schickele, composer and gleeful sire of P.D.Q. Bach, dies at 88
NEW YORK, NY.- Peter Schickele, an American composer whose career as a writer of serious concert music was often eclipsed by that of his antic alter ego, the thoroughly debauched, terrifyingly prolific and mercifully fictional P.D.Q. Bach, died Tuesday at his home in Bearsville, a hamlet outside Woodstock, New York. He was 88. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Karla Schickele. His health had declined after a series of infections last fall, she said. Under his own name, Schickele (pronounced SHICK-uh-lee) composed more than 100 symphonic, choral, solo instrumental and chamber works, first heard on concert stages in the 1950s and later commissioned by some of the world’s leading orchestras, soloists and chamber ensembles. He also wrote film scores and musical numbers for Broadway. His music was performed by ... More

Some movies hit close to home. His was filmed there.
NEW YORK, NY.- “I got called a gay elder the other day,” Andrew Haigh said. This title, bestowed by a group of younger gay men, initially rankled him. It’s true that Haigh — the director of acclaimed films like “45 Years” and “Weekend” — had recently turned 50, but he still found that landmark age hard to believe. “I’m looking older,” he told me, “but it’s a strange thing to think that I’m not young anymore.” That uncanny feeling is a key theme in Haigh’s latest film, “All of Us Strangers,” which he adapted from the 1987 novel “Strangers” by Taichi Yamada. Andrew Scott stars in the film as Adam, a screenwriter in his late 40s with a whole lot on his mind: As he entertains a tentative romance with his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), he returns to his childhood home and finds it somehow inhabited by the parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who ... More


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Flashback
On a day like today, French painter Paul Cézanne was born
January 19, 1839. Paul Cézanne (19 January 1839 - 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. In this image: Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906). Recto: The Chaîne de l'Etoile Mountains (La Chaîne de l'Etoile avec le Pilon du Roi), 1885 - 1886. Watercolor and graphite on wove paper; Verso: Unfinished Landscape, undated. Watercolor and graphite on wove paper, Sheet: 12 3/8 x 19 1/8 in. (31.4 x 48.6 cm). BF650. Photo © 2015 The Barnes Foundation.

  
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