| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Friday, January 29, 2021 |
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| | A Botticelli portrait sells for $92 million at Sotheby's auction | |
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Sandro Botticelli's Young Man Holding a Roundel, sold for $92.2 million during Sotheby's Master Paintings & Sculpture Part I Auction in New York, 28 January 2021. Courtesy Sotheby's.
by Katya Kazakina
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A small painting by Sandro Botticelli fetched $92.2 million at auction at Sothebys on Thursday, in the art markets first big test of the new year. The result, an auction record for the Renaissance painter, was also the highest price paid for an old master work since Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi sold for $450 million in 2017. It also represented a windfall for the foundation of billionaire Sheldon Solow, who had bought it for about $1.3 million in 1982. The proceeds from the sale may be used to establish a private museum in Manhattan. Its a marvelous painting, Marc Porter, chairman of Christies in the Americas, said this week. Its very attractive and seductive and undeniably rare. And the question for the market is whether this pursuit of extremely rare, appealing, commercial works of art will continue to attract a large number of bidders even in the depth of the COVID-19 emergency. For now, at least, the answe ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Ensembles worn by K-pop band BTS on their "Dynamite" music video are displayed at the MusiCares Charity Relief auction Press Preview at Julien's Auctions, January 26, 2021, in Beverly Hills, California. The Musicares Charity Relief Auction will be held January 31, 2021. VALERIE MACON / AFP
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| Finally in 3D: A dinosaur's all-purpose orifice | | Monolith mania comes to Chelsea | | The Met receives extraordinary gift of Georg Baselitz paintings | 
A reconstruction of Psittacosaurus, showing how the cloacal vent might have been used for signaling during courtship. Bob Nicholls/Paleocreations.com via The New York Times.
by Katherine J. Wu
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The worlds oldest known all-purpose orifice sits in a fossil display case in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, so close to the glass that enshrines it that you can put your face up to it, like this, said Jakob Vinther, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England, holding his hand a couple inches from his nose. It belongs to a Psittacosaurus, a beaked, dog-size, leaf-munching dinosaur that lived more than 100 million years ago. And its not technically an anus, even though it sometimes functioned like one. Its a cloaca: a multifunctional outlet named for the Latin word for sewer, through which some animals including a menagerie of modern birds, reptiles, amphibians and even a few mammals can defecate, urinate, copulate and/or extrude their ... More | | 
God of Some Things (center) by Huma Bhabha, alongside various monolithic sculptures at the exhibition Between the Earth and Sky" at the Kasmin Gallery, New York, Jan. 23, 2021. Nina Westervelt/The New York Times.
by Deborah Solomon
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- I dont blame you if you never want to hear the word monolith again. It was certainly one of the most misused terms of 2020. It officially means one stone (mono for one and lith for stone or carving, from the Greek word lithos) and was pressed into overtime last fall when social media was inundated by reports of mystery monoliths. Perhaps the real mystery lies in how the word monolith, even though incorrect, was instantly and globally adopted to describe that column a column of metal, not stone that was discovered in November in a remote section of the Utah desert and spawned a series of copycat sculptures. Such questions of nomenclature have been newly awakened by Between the Earth and Sky, a handsome and inordinately timely group show ... More | | 
Georg Baselitz, Portrait of H.M. Werner, 1969. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Baselitz Family, 2020, © Georg Baselitz 2021. Photo: Jochen Littkemann.
NEW YORK, NY.- German artist Georg Baselitz and his wife, Elke, have gifted six landmark paintings by the artist to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in honor of its 150th anniversary in 2020. The portraits, made in 1969, are among the first that Baselitz created using the radical strategy of inversion, in which the pictorial motif is literally turned upside down, enabling the artist to focus on painting's possibilities, rather than the image of the sitter in direct relationship to the viewer. The compositional and conceptual conceit of upending the figures fundamentally destabilizes the viewer's perspective, thereby thwarting our ability to firmly identify elements like narrative, content type, and artistic tradition, thus setting Baselitz's works in a category of their own. The six paintings will remain on view in Georg Baselitz: Pivotal Turn in The Met's Robert Lehman Wing through July 18, 2021. "The Met is tremendously grateful to Georg ... More |
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| Phillips announces private Italian collection 'Out of the Blue: Works from The Collection of Enea Righi' | | Cutting-edge Carmen Herrera offered at Bonhams Prints & Multiples sale | | Cowan's to present first dedicated various owner African Americana sale | 
Jenny Holzer, Arno, 1998. Estimate £50,000-70,000. Image courtesy of Phillips.
LONDON.- Phillips announced a remarkable group of 27 works from the collection of renowned Italian private collector Enea Righi. Out of the Blue: Works from The Collection of Enea Righi showcases superlative examples of 20th century and contemporary art across a rich variety of media. Important works by Alighiero Boetti sit alongside paintings by Glenn Ligon and Anselm Kiefer, an iconic LED installation by Jenny Holzer, a floor sculpture by Carl Andre, and photographic work by Louise Lawler. Out of the Blue is a leading highlight of Phillips Spring season in London and will be offered for sale on 24 March. Carolina Lanfranchi, Senior International Specialist, 20th Century and Contemporary Art, Regional Director, Italy said, I am very honoured to work with Enea Righi and his curator Lorenzo Paini, and to have had the pleasure to discover a collection formed with true ... More | | 
Carmen Herrera (b. 1915), Rojo y Negro (Red and Black), 1993 (Estimate: $3,000 5,000). Photo: Bonhams.
NEW YORK, NY.- On Monday, February 22, 2021, Bonhams Prints & Multiples will hold a Geometric Abstraction Auction in New York, highlighted by the sale of Rojo y Negro, (Red and Black), 1993, Carmen Herreras first known print published in the United States. As a Latin American female artist in the New York art world, Herrera was subject to discrimination for decades. Despite living in the city and actively working as an artist since the 1950s, she didnt sell her first artwork until 2004, at age 89. As a result of widely accepted discriminatory practices within the industry, Herreras print output is quite limited. In 1993, publisher Victor Gomez, made what was at the time considered an unconventional decision in publishing Rojo y Negro; unlike many of his male contemporaries, Gomez felt it was important to create space for female artists working in minimalist abstraction. Decades later in 2016, at ... More | | 
Black Power, Black Panther Carved Rally Stick, n.p, ca 1965. Estimate: $300 - 500.
CINCINNATI, OH.- Cowans, a Hindman company, will present its first dedicated various owner African Americana sale on February 18. The sale will feature a diverse selection of books, manuscripts, newspapers, photographs, posters and ephemera dating from the 18th century through the mid-20th century, representing themes such as slavery and abolition, militaria, civil rights, politics, art, literature and more. A number of influential figures including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marcus Garvey, Madam C.J. Walker, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis will be represented in the auction. The sale includes recorded speeches, press photographs, posters, books, a pennant, illustrated (comic) books and more documenting Dr. King and his various campaigns, most notably the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. ... More |
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| Polish Jews 'outraged' over Holocaust items smuggled to Israel | | Archaeologists discover spot in Alaska where Indigenous fort once stood | | Amid Epstein revelations, Leon Black remains Chairman of MoMA | 
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Photo: W. Kryński / POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
WARSAW (AFP).- Jewish organisations in Poland on Tuesday voiced outrage after religious artefacts found in a Holocaust-era Warsaw ghetto bunker were reportedly smuggled to Israel. Israel Hayom newspaper said Monday that two Israeli groups shipped out the items discovered by construction workers on a building site. "We are shocked and outraged by the fact that artefacts from the Holocaust period have been illegally circulated," the Warsaw-based Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews said in a joint statement. "We are therefore appealing to all persons who have any knowledge of such artefacts to pass on such information to the institutions appointed for that purpose," they added, signalling that if recovered, the pieces would be displayed in museums. Under Polish law, smuggling pre-1945 objects out of Poland is a crime carrying a maximum five year prison term. Israel Hayom reported that workers ... More | | 
An image provided via the Library of Congress shows a drawing depicting the layout of the sapling fort in Alaska between 1803 and 1806. Captain 1st Rank and Cavalier, Yuri Lisyansky, via Library of Congress via The New York Times.
by Concepción de León
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Archaeologists have discovered the spot in southeastern Alaska where an Indigenous tribe built a wooden fort more than two centuries ago to resist Russian invaders. The fort was built in the early 1800s by the Tlingit people in Sitka, which is on Baranof Island and part of what is now known as the Alaska Panhandle, to defend themselves from Russian invaders in the Battle of 1804, according to the National Park Service website. The Sitka National Historical Park was created to protect the battle site, according to the Park Service. Its a pivotal historical event in the history of the region, but its also now, in our time, an important symbol to Tlingit people, said Thomas Urban, a research scientist at Cornell University and an author of a study, published on Monday in the journal Antiquity, detailing the discovery. ... More | | 
Leon Black, chairman and chief executive of Apollo Global Management, at a benefit gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Dec. 8, 2016. Rebecca Smeyne/The New York Times.
by Robin Pogrebin
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- After Leon Black announced this week that he would be stepping down as chief executive of Apollo Global Management amid revelations that he had paid $158 million to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, several art world figures called on the Museum of Modern Art to remove him as chair of its board of trustees. What does @MuseumModernArt board chair Leon Black have to do for MoMA to finally give him the boot? tweeted Nikki Columbus, a curator who in 2019 settled a claim of gender, pregnancy and caregiver discrimination against MoMA PS1. The museum has yet to make any statement about Black, and its director, Glenn Lowry, declined a request for comment. Members of its board and staff have not publicly voiced any disapproval of Black, whose personal fortune is estimated at more than $8 billion. And there have been ... More |
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| The empire writes back: tackling Britain's colonial past | | Egypt says retrieves 5,000 artefacts from US | | The gloopy glory of Frank Auerbach's portraits | 
British author Sathnam Sanghera poses for a photograph in Hampstead, north London on January 25, 2021. TOLGA AKMEN / AFP.
by Callum Paton
LONDON (AFP).- The statue of Robert Clive outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in central London depicts him with an imperious gaze, his hand gripping the hilt of a sheathed sword. But despite often heated debate about monuments to colonial figures with links to the slave trade and the legacy of Britain's past, "Clive of India" remains in place. For the British author Sathnam Sanghera, just seeing the monument to the controversial 18th century general who profited massively from the exploitation of India and Indians is "degrading". "I wouldn't mourn the toppling of that Clive statue, which was considered controversial when it was put up," Sanghera told AFP. Sanghera's new book, "Empireland", published Thursday, explores Britain's uneasy relationship with its past, which was thrown into sharp relief by the Black Lives Matter protests last year. Those protests saw one such statue, of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston, toppled, ... More | | 
The items, totalling nearly 5,000, mainly consisted of manuscripts, but also included funeral masks, parts of coffins and the heads of stone statues, said Chaabane Abdeljawad, an official quoted in the statement.
CAIRO (AFP).- Egypt announced Wednesday that it had retrieved some 5,000 ancient items from the United States, after years of negotiations to return what it said were fraudulently acquired items. In a statement, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities confirmed the "arrival at Cairo airport of a large number of ancient Egyptian items which had been in the possession of the Museum of the Bible in Washington". The items, totalling nearly 5,000, mainly consisted of manuscripts, but also included funeral masks, parts of coffins and the heads of stone statues, said Chaabane Abdeljawad, an official quoted in the statement. The items, which left Egypt in a fraudulent manner, would be placed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, the statement added. It was not clear how the items left Egypt illegally or ended up at the museum in Washington, but Egyptian authorities negotiated their return over several years. Many treasured items were damaged, destroyed or illegally whisked out of the country during the popular upr ... More | | 
Frank Auerbach, Portrait of William Feaver, 2007. Oil on canvas, 20 1/4 x 18 1/8 inches (51.3 x 46 cm) Private collection. © Frank Auerbach; Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art, London and Luhring Augustine, New York.
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A few weeks ago I reread The Emigrants, W.G. Sebalds sublime 1992 requiem of four men driven, in the face of totalitarianism, from Central Europe to England and America. In its last and most moving chapter we meet refugee Max Ferber, a painter whom the narrator watches in a dusty Manchester studio, working and reworking a series of portraits with almost obsessive repetition. He applied the paint thickly, and then repeatedly scratched it off the canvas as his work proceeded, Sebalds narrator observes. He watches the artist paint and scrape, draw and erase and then marvels that somehow Ferber, with the few lines and shadows that had escaped annihilation, had created a portrait of great vividness. When Sebald first published the novel in German, Max Ferber was called Max Aurach and he is based in large part on Frank Auerbach, the British ... More |
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| More News |
 Harvard University acquires portrait of Amanda Gorman for the permanent collectionCAMBRIDGE, MASS.- In time for the celebration of Black History Month/Black Futures Month, Harvard University has acquired a portrait of Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman for their permanent collection. Rising Ghanaian artist, Raphael Adjetey Adjei Mayne, painted the work inspired by Gormans inaugural poem delivered on January 20th, 2021. A graduate of the Ghanatta College of Art and Design, Raphael Adjetey Adjei Maynes work is a visceral assemblage of diverse facets of Ghanaian and African sociocultural experiences evoking political, emotional and practically psychoanalytical connections and cut-aways weaving private and public space realities unbound by time. The acquisition was made possible through the generous support by womens rights and LGBT+ rights activist Amar Singh who donated the painting to Harvard University stating ... More  National Gallery of Art announces new staff appointed to key positions across the museumWASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art announced today the appointment of four new staff to positions that will support the National Gallery's mission to serve the nation. These positions advance the National Gallery's strategic priorities to make the museum more visitor-focused, inclusive, and equitable, as well as to provide deeper connections to the museum's content through digital access to its collections, exhibitions, programs, and research. Mikka Gee Conway began her tenure as Chief Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Officer and EEO Director in September 2020. As part of the museum leadership team, Conway reports to Feldman and leads diversity, equity, and inclusion work across the National Gallery, as well as oversees the institution's EEO office. Conway comes to the National Gallery from the J. Paul Getty Trust, where she ... More  Almine Rech opens an exhibition of new works by the artist Alejandro CardenasNEW YORK, NY.- Almine Rech is presenting ALEXANDRIA, an exhibition of new works by the artist Alejandro Cardenas (b. 1977, Santiago de Chile), on view at the gallerys New York location. This is Cardenass first solo exhibition with the gallery. The title of the exhibition, ALEXANDRIA, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the artist himself, but also to the Egyptian citythe intellectual and cultural center of the ancient Mediterranean world for much of the Hellenistic age and known to be a place where scholarship of the East and the West was studied on an equal footing with the goal of creating a unified source of knowledge. Cardenass new body of work, which comes at a time of profound global unrest that has resulted from rampant climate change, the ongoing health and economic crises, and social injustice, came forth as a way to reflect on the present ... More  Danish author Sara Omar: Breaking taboos for Muslim womenCOPENHAGEN (AFP).- Born amid the horrors of war in Iraqi Kurdistan, Danish author Sara Omar now uses her voice to denounce violence inflicted on women in the name of reactionary Islam, a "calling" that has left her living under police protection. "I broke the taboo. I talk about the things you are not supposed to talk about. If I don't do this, who will?" the 34-year-old tells AFP in an interview in Copenhagen. Her first novel "Dead Washer" sold more than 100,000 copies in Denmark when it was published in 2017, a literary feat in the country of 5.8 million where it was hailed as the "MeToo of Muslim women." It has since been translated into several languages, including Norwegian, Swedish and French. In her writing and when she speaks out publicly, Omar describes abuse inflicted on women and children behind closed doors -- rapes, beatings, female ... More  Auschwitz child victims honoured 76 years onWARSAW (AFP).- The more than 200,000 children killed by Nazi Germany at Auschwitz were honoured on Wednesday in online ceremonies marking the liberation of the camp which has come to symbolise the Holocaust. Survivors sounded the alarm over the modern-day dangers posed by the resurgence of racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial at a 76th anniversary event. "Do not let us down," Auschwitz survivor, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, now 95, said in an appeal to young people for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Do not allow the memory to be distorted and poisoned by the ugly resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. "By denying these victims and poisoning ourselves with hatred we are murdering these victims a second time over," she said at the ceremonies, held online only for the first time due to the coronavirus ... More  French roosters now crow with the law behind themPARIS (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The crow of a rooster and the ringing of a church bell at dawn. The rumble of a tractor and the smell of manure wafting from a nearby stable. The deafening song of cicadas or the discordant croaking of frogs. Quacking ducks, bleating sheep and braying donkeys. Perennial rural sounds and smells such as these were given protection by French law last week, when lawmakers passed a bill to preserve the sensory heritage of the countryside after a series of widely publicized neighborhood spats in Frances rural corners, many of them involving noisy animals. In a nation still attached to its agrarian roots and to its terroir a deep sense of place tied to the land the disputes symbolized tensions between urban newcomers and longtime country dwellers, frictions that have only grown as the coronavirus ... More  Gunnel Lindblom, familiar face in Bergman films, dies at 89NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Gunnel Lindblom, a Swedish actress who worked with Ingmar Bergman in his early classic films and on decades of stage productions, died Sunday in Brottby, Sweden, a small community north of Stockholm. She was 89. The death was announced by her family. In The Seventh Seal (1957), Bergmans portrait of a knight (played by Max von Sydow) returning from the Crusades to find his village devastated by plague, Lindblom was an unnamed mute girl. At the films end, her character finally speaks, announcing biblically, It is finished. In Wild Strawberries (1957), about an elderly professor reflecting on life and loneliness, she was the mans beautiful and kind sister in turn-of-the-century flashbacks. In The Virgin Spring (1960), Bergmans tale of Christianity and revenge in medieval Sweden, Lindblom ... More  Christopher Little, who built an empire around a boy wizard, dies at 79NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Christopher Little, who as a struggling literary agent took a chance on a scrappy submission about tween-age wizards even though he once disdained childrens fiction as a money-loser and built it into the most successful literary empire in history on the strength of its lead character, Harry Potter, died Jan. 7 at his home in London. He was 79. His death, from cancer, was announced by his firm, the Christopher Little Literary Agency. J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, was an unpublished, unemployed single mother in Edinburgh in 1995 when she sent Little the first three chapters of her first book after finding his name in a directory of literary agents. Knowing nothing about the business, she picked him because his name made him sound like a character from a childrens book. Little ... More  Cloris Leachman, Oscar winner and tv comedy star, dies at 94NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Cloris Leachman, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a neglected housewife in the stark drama The Last Picture Show but who was probably best known for getting laughs, notably in three Mel Brooks movies and on television comedies like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Malcolm in the Middle, died on Wednesday at her home in Encinitas, California. She was 94. The death was confirmed by her son Morgan Englund, who did not give a cause. Leachman entered the spotlight as a Miss America contestant in 1946 and was still in the public eye more than 74 years later, portraying offbeat grandmothers on television and film. In between, she won admiring reviews for her stage, film and television work, as well as Emmy Awards for performances in both dramas and comedies. But ... More  Pandemic delays Cannes Film Festival until JulyNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The Cannes Film Festival, one of the movie worlds most renowned events, has been postponed, showing the continuing impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The festival was meant to run May 11-22 but has now been rescheduled to July 6-17, the organizers said in a statement Wednesday. As announced last autumn, the Festival de Cannes reserved the right to change its dates depending on how the global health situation developed, the statement said. The decision had been expected. Last month, Aïda Belloulid, the festivals spokeswoman, told The New York Times that the event might be shifted because of the pandemic, as cases were then surging across Europe. Whatever date the festival took place, she said, it will be a classic Cannes, including stars on the Croisette. Since then, the situation ... More  Aga Khan Museum launches This Being Human podcastTORONTO.- The Aga Khan Museum, North Americas first and only museum dedicated to showcasing the arts of Muslim cultures and the contributions of Muslim civilizations to world heritage, announced today the details of its upcoming podcast, This Being Human. Hosted by award- winning journalist and educator Abdul-Rehman Malik, this 26-episode bi-weekly series explores the kaleidoscopic, global experiences of modern Muslim life through the prism of arts and culture. Launching January 26, 2021, This Being Human is one of the first arts and culture podcasts devoted to amplifying the voices of leaders redefining what it means to be Muslim in todays rapidly changing world. Among Maliks first guests will be game-changing cultural luminaries such as art collector and impresario Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, two-time Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz 
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY 
Madelynn Green 
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, American painter Barnett Newman was born January 29, 1905. Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 - July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters. His paintings are existential in tone and content, explicitly composed with the intention of communicating a sense of locality, presence, and contingency. In this image: Barnett Newman, Thirteenth Station, 1965/1966. Acrylic on canvas, 198.2 x 152.5 cm (78 1/16 x 60 1/16 in.). Collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff.
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