| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Friday, April 1, 2016 |
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| | Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, famed for futuristic curves, dies aged 65 in Miami | |
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A file photo taken on September 25, 2013, shows Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid posing for pictures outside her design for an extension of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London. Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid died of heart attack aged 65 it was reported Thursday March 31, 2016. LEON NEAL / AFP.
By: Katherine Haddon
LONDON (AFP).- Zaha Hadid, the world's most famous female architect who attracted plaudits for works of sweeping curves and controversy for huge cost overruns, died on Thursday at the age of 65, her company said. Iraqi-British Hadid, the first woman to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture, was best known for her designs for the Guangzhou Opera House in China and the aquatics centre used in the 2012 London Olympics. But she faced criticism last year after her futuristic $2 billion (1.7 billion euro) design for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic stadium was scrapped amid spiralling costs and complaints over the design. Born in Baghdad in 1950, where her father was a politician, Hadid forged a career in the male-dominated world of architecture bringing her curvaceous, radical designs to life in glass, steel and concrete. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day FRANKFURT.- The Stadel Museum is presenting the large-scale exhibition "Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence". With the aid of some 120 prominent loans, the exhibition acquaints the German public with a key chapter in the history of Italian art - Florentine Mannerism - in all its diversity for the first time. Photo: Stadel Museum.
| More analysis needed on King Tut 'hidden chamber': Egypt minister Khaled al-Anani | | The Oppenheimer Blue: The largest Fancy Vivid Blue diamond offered at auction | | Son begins quest to bury Islamic State-slain Khaled al-Assaad known as 'father of Palmyra' | 
British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves arrives to enter King Tutankhamun's tomb at the Valley of the Kings. MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP.
LUXOR (AFP).- Further analysis is needed of the tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun to determine if the resting place also contains the remains of legendary beauty Queen Nefertiti, Egypt's antiquities minister said Thursday. Khaled al-Anani appeared to dim some of the optimism surrounding the tomb in the ancient necropolis of Luxor after his predecessor said this month that there was a "90 percent chance" of two hidden chambers possibly containing organic material at the site. "I hope we are going to find something else, but nothing is certain at the moment," Anani told AFP outside Tutankhamun's tomb. He was speaking as new radar tests were carried out on the mausoleum. Results are expected on Friday. A study by renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves has said that Nefertiti's tomb could be in a secret chamber adjoining Tutankhamun's final resting place in the Valley of Kings at Luxor in southern Egypt. Reeves, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, believes one ... More | | 
The fancy vivid blue rectangular-cut diamond, weighing approximately 14.62 carats, flanked on either side by a trapeze-shaped diamond; also accompanied by the original Eight Shades mounting from Verdura, ring size 6, mounted in platinum. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2016.
GENEVA.- Christies will present the Oppenheimer Blue, the largest and finest Fancy Vivid Blue diamond ever offered at auction. Weighing 14.62 carats, this exceptional stone will lead Christies auction of Magnificent Jewels, held at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues. This exceptional blue diamond, named in honor of its previous owner Sir Philip Oppenheimer, is estimated at US$38-45 million. On May 18th, Christies will present the largest and finest Fancy Vivid Blue diamond ever seen. This stunning Fancy Vivid Blue rectangular-cut gem promises to create a media sensation as it travels around the world, fascinating both collectors and gem enthusiasts alike, before it makes its way to the auction block in Geneva. ---Rahul Kadakia, International Head of Jewellery This incredible Fancy Vivid Blue diamond was previously owned by Sir Philip Oppenheimer, ... More | | 
Head of Syria's Museums and Antiquities Administration Maamun Abdelkarim (L) sits with Tarek Khaled al-Assaad (R), the son of slain Palmyra's chief archeologist Khaled al-Assad. JOSEPH EID / AFP.
DAMASCUS (AFP).- The son of a Syrian archeologist who was beheaded by Islamic State group jihadists in ancient Palmyra is on a mission to give his father a "dignified" burial near the world heritage site. Khaled al-Assaad, known as "the father of Palmyra", was 82 years old when IS fighters executed him on August 18, 2015, three months after the group overran the city known as the "Pearl of the desert". Syrian troops backed by Russian forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, after a fierce offensive to rescue the city from jihadists who view the UNESCO-listed site's magnificent ruins as idolatrous. "The jihadists beheaded him and they placed his head on the ground, underneath his body, which hung from an electric pole in the main square of Palmyra," 35-year-old Tareq Khaled al-Assaad told AFP at a museum in Damascus. "Someone took his head and buried it, while two men rescued the body and buried it somewhere else. Our goal is to bring the head and the body ... More |
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| Hungarian Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz dies in Budapest after a long illness | | Daily: Exhibition of works by Annette Messager opens at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York | | Apple chooses de Young Museum app to premiere on Apple Watch | 
Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz posing with his 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature. STF / POOL / AFP.
BUDAPEST (AFP).- Hungarian author Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz has died aged 86 early Thursday in Budapest after a long illness, his publisher said. The Holocaust survivor, who won the Nobel in 2002, passed away at his home, the director of Magveto Publishing, Krisztian Nyary, told AFP. "He was one of the 20th century's most influential Hungarian writers, not just through his works but through his thoughts and worldview as well. He will remain hugely influential on other writers in years to come," Nyary said. In an interview in 2013, Kertesz revealed that he had Parkinson's disease. The son of Jewish parents, Kertesz was born on November 29, 1929 in Budapest. At the age of 14, he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, before being sent to Buchenwald. Following the liberation of the camps, Kertesz returned to the Hungarian capital where he began working as ... More | | 
LOiseau, 2015. Black aluminum foil, two painted hooks, 7-13/16 x 7-13/16 x 4-11/16 in. 20 x 20 x 12 cm.
NEW YORK, NY.- Marian Goodman Gallery New York announces an exhibition of Annette Messager, Daily, which will open on Friday, April 1st and remain on view though Saturday, April 30th, 2016. In this exhibition Annette Messager creates a dramatic incursion into the space with her installation, Daily, a monumental work presented on the Third Floor Project Space in conjunction with recent works, Le crabe cancer, Le bras chaussure, En equilibre, Loiseau, Jambes oiseau, and new Pole Dance drawings, which are shown in the adjacent room. These works provide a platform for a reinvention of her practice of creating hybrid forms drawn from personal memory and daily life, inspired by fiction and fantasy. As Messager says, For me, the fantastic is in daily life; real life is more extraordinary than all of the imagination. In Daily, we see simple and utilitarian constituent parts which appear on t ... More | | 
Visitors effortlessly receive notifications on the Apple Watch as they approach selected artworks.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The de Young Museum app is now available for Apple Watch. The app, created in partnership between the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and local start-up Guidekick, initially launched in October 2015. It was the first museum app to take advantage of Apples indoor positioning technology, which allows visitors to pinpoint their position in the museum within three meters. Visitors effortlessly receive notifications on the Apple Watch as they approach selected artworks. The de Young Apple Watch app will track visitors progress through tours and allow them to control audio playback from their wrist. The Apple Watch automatically syncs with the iPhone app. The iPhone app features a 3D map of the building to ease navigation and way finding, and allows users to select thematic tours or to navigate the galleries more freely. Content is automatically triggered ... More |
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| Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco acquire masterpiece by American sculptor Hiram Powers | | Steidl and UCLA College present "Robert Frank: Books and Films 1947-2016" at Bergamot Station | | Freeman's appoints new SVP & Division Head of American & European Furniture & Decorative Arts | 
Hiram Powers, Greek Slave, ca. 1873.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Art Museums of San Francisco have acquired a two-thirds-scale marble version of the American sculptor Hiram Powerss iconic masterpiece, Greek Slave (ca. 1873), the most famous sculpture of the 19th century. Drawing inspiration from the renowned Hellenistic marble sculpture of the Venus de Medici (1st century BC) in Florences Uffizi Gallery, Powers completed his original plaster in 1843. His Florence studio subsequently carved six full-size and three two-thirds-size marble versions for British and American clients. Powerss subject is a shackled Greek woman taken captive by Turkish Ottoman forces during the Greek War of Independence (18211832) and publicly displayed for sale in a slave market in Constantinople (Istanbul). The young womans fringed shawl and hat are placed on the post adjacent to her right hip, as are the discreet locket suggestive of broken familial bonds and a Christian cros ... More | | 
Street line, New York, 1952. Robert Frank.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Robert Frank (b. 1924, Zurich) is one of the pre-eminent figures of twentieth-century photography. With his innovative approach to technique and subject matter and through his personal viewpoint, Frank has revolutionized documentary photography and redefined the aesthetics of the still and moving image. Robert Frank: Books and Films, 19472016 is not a retrospective, but a volatile experience focusing on Franks output as a book- and filmmaker. The exhibition presents for the first time his complete restored films. Conceived by Robert Frank and Gerhard Steidl, the exhibition is as bold, accessible and humble as Franks work itself, and has been designed to enable particularly younger generations to engage with his practice. Franks films and photobooks are placed in the overarching context of his photographs, which are presented in an immediate and straightforward way: printed in sequences of four to five on up ... More | | 
Nicholson comes to Freemans with more than 20 years of auction and art advisory experience.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Freemans announced Nicholas B. A. Nicholson has joined the team as Senior Vice President, Division Head of American & European Furniture & Decorative Arts effective immediately. Nicholson will also lead the English & Continental Furniture & Decorative Arts department at Freemans, which includes silver, objets de vertu, and Russian works of art. We are thrilled to welcome Nick to Freemans. With a wide-ranging knowledge of European furniture and decorative arts and Fabergé to Americana and 20th Century Design, he will be an invaluable to asset to our firm, said Freemans President Paul Roberts. Nicholson comes to Freemans with more than 20 years of auction and art advisory experience and has worked with private collectors, international museums, institutions, and independent appraisal firms. While he is considered an expert on Russian works of art, ... More |
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| Pace/MacGill Gallery opens exhibition of works by British artist Richard Learoyd | | Career spanning exhibition of work by Michele Oka Doner opens at Perez Art Museum Miami | | Exhibition of new work by Barbara Takenaga opens at DC Moore Gallery in New York | 
Richard Learoyd, Tatiana with Cape, 2010. Camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph mounted to aluminum image, paper and mount, 58 x 48 inches © 2016 Richard Learoyd
NEW YORK, NY.- Pace and Pace/MacGill Gallery inaugurate their representation of British artist Richard Learoyd with an exhibition of his large-scale color and black-andwhite photographs made over the last decade. Featuring a selection of portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, Richard Learoyd will be on view on the second floor of 32 East 57th Street from April 1 through April 30, 2016. With an unparalleled passion for the medium and its materials, Richard Learoyd explores the limits of photographic expression in his portraits, nudes, still lifes of animals and mirrors, and views of the English countryside. His work occupies a unique place within the practice of contemporary photography, employing anachronistic production techniques, borrowing from the aesthetics of the finest figurative painters of the 19th and 20th ... More | | 
Michele Oka Doner, On Fire I, 2014. Organic material in abaca paper in artists frame, 39 7/8 x 28 7/8 inches. Courtesy Doner Studio, New York. Photo credit: Nick Merrick/Hedrich Blessing.
MIAMI, FLA.- Pérez Art Museum Miami is presenting Michele Oka Doner: How I Caught a Swallow in Midair. Oka Doner is a Miami native whose work has been presented around the globe since the 1960s. The exhibition will be on view through September 11, 2016. The robust selection of artworks included in the exhibition span the duration of Oka Doners career and highlight major moments in her artistic development, revealing the lasting influence of the natural world on her practice. How I Caught a Swallow in Midair is organized by former PAMM Director Thom Collins, and coincides with the premier of the Miami City Ballets presentation of A Midsummer Nights Dream, with costumes and sets designed by the artist. How I Caught A Swallow in Midair takes its name from a 1990 cyanotype, in which Oka Doner captured an organic abstract ... More | | 
Nebraska II, 2015 Acrylic on linen 54 x 45 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- DC Moore Gallery is presenting Waiting in the Sky, an exhibition of new work by Barbara Takenaga. This is the artists fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition will comprise a series of large-scale paintings, on linen and panel, and a wall-piece related to her current installation at MASS MoCA. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay written by American poet and critic John Yau. Barbara Takenagas new body of work continues the artists eloquent inquiry into the emotional weight of imagined spaces and natural phenomena. Each carefully constructed composition questions the boundaries of the known by offering visual translations of the ever-changing nature of the physical world. Through the artists process of random background pours of paint and an ordered, labor-intensive approach, she constructs funnels, geodes, maps, and webs with her signature vocabulary o ... More |
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Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium
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 French and international art dealers exhibit at PAD ParisPARIS.- PAD Paris celebrates its 20th anniversary with the most renowned French and international art dealers showing their attachment to this event, which has become a must for amateurs and collectors of Art and Design. As a nod to the PAD London 10-year anniversary next October, PAD Paris 2016 welcomes a number of renowned British galleries such as Aktis Gallery, FUMI, Repetto, Rose Uniacke
whom are present in Paris. Moreover, galleries from Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and China, contribute to the PADs influence. Such longevity wouldnt exist without the PADs commitment to those who will become the greatest art dealers of tomorrow, the ones who reveal the future perspectives of the Decorative Arts, Design and Visual Arts markets. Among the new exhibitors, whose specialities perfectly illustrate the eclecticism and ambitions of PAD Paris ... More Russian artist Pavlensky declared 'sane' after spy agency protestMOSCOW (AFP).- Radical Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky, famous for protest performances that involve intense physical suffering, has been declared sane after a month in psychiatric hospital, he said Thursday. The 32-year-old artist, who is best known for nailing his scrotum to the cobbles of Red Square, was detained in November after setting fire to the front doors of the headquarters of the FSB security services in a protest over state "terrorism." Speaking to reporters at a Moscow courthouse about his psychiatric evaluation, he was quoted by state TASS agency as declaring: "The results of the tests are in my favour". Pavlensky faces up to three years in prison over his arson attack on the giant wooden doors of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. He is being kept in solitary confinement in a Moscow prison, his partner wrote on Facebook. The district court on Thursday ... More Britain's remaining milkmen keeping tradition afloatST ALBANS (AFP).- Once a daily sight on every British street, a dwindling but resilient band of milkmen still go out at the crack of dawn to deliver bottles of fresh milk to the nation's doorsteps. The overwhelming majority of milk used to be sold at the front door until the supermarket revolution all but wiped out this very British institution. But by selling more than milk and embracing the Internet, the few thousand remaining milkmen, including Neil Garner, have breathed new life into the cherished tradition. "It has given us a big boost and brought us into the 21st century. The future's looking bright," said Garner, the customer-nominated Milkman of the Year at Milk and More, the country's biggest doorstep delivery firm. The 57-year-old has driven his milk float -- an electrified, open-sided delivery van -- through towns and villages in the dead of night since 1994, placing glass ... More Costume, performance, persona, and pose are explored in exhibition at sepiaEYE galleryNEW YORK, NY.- sepiaEYE gallery announces Dress-Up, a group exhibition in which costume, performance, persona, and pose are explored through the lens of photographers Qiana Mestrich, Phyllis Galembo, and Charan Singh. Qiana Mestrichs series Namesake and Inherited Patterns cleverly expands on the artists exploration of her namesake, Qiana®: a silk-like nylon fabric made by the DuPont Experimental Company in 1968. The fabric became fashionable in the 1970s as a popular choice for disco attire and in turn, through heavy marketing, the name was adopted for many young African American girls born in the years to follow. Mestrich visited the archives of DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, selecting vintage fashion marketing materials featuring Qiana®. The resulting images from Inherited Patterns (2014) combine these vintage photographs with fragments of mug shot ... More Getty awards $8.45 million in exhibition grants for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiativeLOS ANGELES, CA.- The Getty Foundation today announced $8.45 million in exhibition grants to 43 Southern California organizations participating in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a region-wide exploration of Latin American and Latino art opening September 2017 and running through January 2018. Together with the $5.5 million in planning and research grants previously awarded to participating institutions, nearly $14 million in funding has been awarded since 2013. Arts organizations from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, will be presenting exhibitions and programs highlighting different aspects of Latin American and Latino art from the ancient world to the present day. Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA has been in preparation for over three years, with hundreds of curators and other scholars researching dozens of topics ... More Exhibition of works by Sam Lewitt opens at Kunsthalle BaselBASEL.- Interrogating flows of information and capital through the global economy drives much of Sam Lewitts oeuvre. Or, you could say, the currents of information and capital. As it happens, currency and current share the same root, from the Latin currere, to run. Money, or currency, doesnt have value if its not in circulationin other words, if its not running around. And an electrical current isnt considered operative if it doesnt flowin other words, if it isnt running around. The American artists project at Kunsthalle Basel reflects this need to keep moving by redirecting the flow. Literally. By rerouting the electrical current used for lighting to create heat instead, Lewitt redirects and thus disrupts one of the exhibition spaces primary operations. In the upstairs gallery a number of custom- made, flexible, ultrathin heating cir ... More Solo exhibition of new works by British-born artist Tatyana Murray on view at Gallery nine 5NEW YORK, NY.- Gallery nine 5 is presenting Tiers of Light, a solo exhibition of new works by British-born artist Tatyana Murray from March 17May 1, 2016. Murrays work investigates the human condition by visualizing our opposing inner contrasts. Her wide range of media discusses the very throes of human existence and our desire to balance our own duality. Murrays work embodies our struggles: strength versus fragility, order versus chaos, and complexity versus opposition. These forces, when reconciled, can create harmony. Tiers of Light exhibits two series, Ghost Series and Industrial Nature, each comprised of a mystical light and energy that characterizes Murrays oeuvre. While the two series seem aesthetically disparate at first glance, upon further exploration, the artworks actually use a similar visual vocabulary to shed light on the human condition. Murray has found inspiration ... More New film installation by Stan Douglas on view at David ZwirnerNEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner is presenting the United States premiere of The Secret Agent, a new film installation by Stan Douglas on view at 519 West 19th Street in New York. This is the artists thirteenth solo show with the gallery. The Secret Agent is Douglass adaption of the 1907 political novel of the same title by Joseph Conrad. Set in London in 1886, the book recounts an anarchists failed plot to bomb the Greenwich Observatory and is considered among the first literary portrayals of modern-day terrorism. Consistent with Douglass nonlinear treatment of historical events within his practice, his version sets the action within the context of Portugals so-called Hot Summer of 1975, which ended the turbulent period between the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 (a bloodless coup to end Europes longest dictatorship) and the ratification of a new constitution. During ... More Exhibition of works by Radcliffe Bailey opens at SamsøñBOSTON, MASS.- Radcliffe Bailey's work collectively builds an alternate history of transatlantic slave narratives, accounts and histories of culture, science, and art making; histories that ask the perennial what if questions that haunt human history. How we process stolen legacies, devalued humans, unrecognized aesthetic practices and balance their retelling through the lens of modernism and post modernist angst will keep all, us (and them) busy for years to come. No matter the weight of the subject, Bailey finds a way to bring the wonder of freedom to the table. His aesthetic drapetomania pushing our eyes forward, past nostalgia into two and three-dimensional stagings that interrogate the past and present all at once. West African ritual mark making, Dadaist and Surrealist technique, the ghosts of Negritude and Harlem Renaissance aspirations, Expressionist abstractions coupled ... More Raven Row presents the work of Channa HorwitzLONDON.- Channa Horwitz (19322013, Los Angeles) was amongst the pioneers in the late 1960s and 70s of a distinctly Californian minimalism. She came relatively late to art, arranging it around her home life, and despite corresponding and swapping work with Sol LeWitt, she received little attention from the art world until the end of her life. Horwitz claimed artistic freedom through confinement to a few simple rules. She came to base all her work on the numbers one to eight often deploying a colour code for each number and used this system to depict time and movement. Her outstanding series titled Sonakinatography can be understood in terms of notation, for instance for music or choreography. Working mostly without the promise of exhibition, Horwitz was disciplined and prolific. Although she experimented with other materials sculpture and photography, as well as ... More National Portrait Gallery acquires new sculpture of Baroness Joan BakewellLONDON.- A newly acquired portrait of Baroness Joan Bakewell, the broadcaster, journalist and writer, has been unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery it was announced today, Thursday 31 March. The ceramic half-length sculpture is part of an ongoing series of portraits of influential women by the artist Glenys Barton and it is the final of a trio of works that she has made of Joan Bakewell since 2012. All of the sittings for the sculpture took place at Baroness Bakewells home. It is the third portrait by the artist to join the Collection following the Gallerys acquisitions of Bartons sculptures of actress Glenda Jackson and the fashion designer, Jean Muir. Joan Bakewell came to prominence as a television presenter of current affairs and the arts in the 1960s on Late Night Line-Up (1965-72). She later presented Heart of the Matter (1988-2000). Her books include autobiographical works The ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, American artist Dan Flavin was born April 01, 1993. Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933, Jamaica, New York - November 29, 1996, Riverhead, New York) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. In this image: Colombian pop singer Shakira points at an untitled objekt by Dan Flavin at the 'Pinakothek der Moderne' gallery in Munich, Germany on Tuesday, 20 February 2007. Shakira performed two shows in Munich. EPA/PETER KNEFFEL
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