| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Friday, March 12, 2021 |
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| | JPG file sells for $69 million, as 'NFT mania' gathers pace | |
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Beeple, Everydays The First 5000 Days, NFT, 21,069 pixels x 21,069 pixels (316,939,910 bytes). © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
by Scott Reyburn
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- After a flurry of more than 180 bids in the final hour, a JPG file made by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, was sold Thursday by Christies in an online auction for $69.3 million with fees. The price was a new high for an artwork that exists only digitally, beating auction records for physical paintings by museum-valorized greats like J.M.W. Turner, Georges Seurat and Francisco Goya. Bidding at the two-week Beeple sale, consisting of just one lot, began at $100. With seconds remaining, the work was set to sell for less than $30 million, but a last-moment cascade of bids prompted a two-minute extension of the auction and pushed the final price over $60 million. Rebecca Riegelhaupt, a Christies spokeswoman, said 33 active bidders had contested the work, adding that the result was the third-highest auction price achieved for a living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney. Billed by the auction house as a unique work in the history of digital art,& ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Some of the over 800 items on auction are seen at the preview of Julien's Auctions Hollywood Sci-Fi, Action Fantasy and More auction in Beverly Hills, California, March 10, 2021. A prototype of the terrifying monster from "Alien," a mobster's three-piece suit worn by Al Pacino in "Scarface" and Harry Potter's wand are among 800 items from classic Hollywood movies up for auction next month in Los Angeles, April 28 and 29. VALERIE MACON / AFP
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| Palmer Museum acquires rare work by Grafton Tyler Brown | | What are NFTs, anyway? One just sold for $69 million. | | SFMOMA announces major gift from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection | 
Grafton Tyler Brown, Hot Springs at Yellowstone, 1889 (detail), oil on canvas, 16 x 24 inches. Purchased with funds from the Terra Art Enrichment Fund, 2020.
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State announced the purchase of the 1889 painting Hot Springs at Yellowstone by the artist Grafton Tyler Brown (18411918). Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to free Black parents, Brown went on to become known for his landscape paintings of Western subjects. Nineteenth-century landscape paintings by African American artists are exceedingly rare, said Erin M. Coe, director of the Palmer Museum of Art. This work is the first by an African American artist of the era to enter the museums collection, she added. Grafton Tyler Brown spent his early childhood in Pennsylvania after his parents relocated from the slave-holding state of Maryland in 1837. As a teenager, he moved to California and worked for a noted lithographer in San Francisco. He took over the business in 1865 and renamed it G. T. Brown & Co. The business prospered producing city views, maps, and billh ... More | | 
Everydays The First 5000 Days, a collage of all the images that the artist known as Beeple has been posting online each day since 2007. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
by Josie Thaddeus-Johns
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, has just sold an NFT at a record-breaking $69.3 million, the third-highest price achieved by a living artist. The sale, at Christies, for the purely digital work was the strongest indication yet that NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, have taken the art market by storm, making the leap from specialist websites to premier auction houses. Beeple, a newcomer to the fine-art world who first heard about NFTs five months ago, is the most high-profile artist to profit off the huge boom in sales of these much hyped but poorly understood commodities. If you have heard about them and want to know what the fuss is about, heres a primer. What is a "nonfungible token," or NFT? An NFT is an asset verified using blockchain technology, in which a network of computers ... More | | 
Elizabeth Catlett, Singing Head, 1968; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Catlett Mora Family Trust / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS); photo: David Heald.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced a major gift of 31 paintings, sculptures and drawings by 20 American artists from the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collectioncelebrated for its intergenerational holdings of abstract art of the African diaspora. The addition of important historical works by Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis and Richard Mayhew, among many others, has inspired a reexamination of SFMOMAs permanent collection and is having a transformative impact on its galleries. The extraordinary gift enables SFMOMA to feature a broader range of artists contributions to key modernist movements, and to explore their extensive social networks and associations in cities across the United States and abroad. This group of works plays a foundational part in the museums long-term goals to present the history ... More |
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| Music for the virus-tested: The Shed plans a cautious reopening | | Van Gogh Museum offers virtual preview of new exhibition | | Aaron Rose, photographer whose work long went unseen, dies at 84 | 
A stage ready for live performances at The Shed in New York. Jasdeep Kang via The New York Times.
by Michael Paulson
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The New York City arts scene is about to pass another milestone on the road to reopening: The Shed, a large performing arts venue in Hudson Yards, said Wednesday that it would hold a series of indoor performances next month for limited audiences in which everyone has either been tested for the coronavirus or vaccinated against it. The Shed said it would present four events next month: concerts by cellist and vocalist Kelsey Lu, soprano Renée Fleming and a string ensemble from the New York Philharmonic, and a comedy set by Michelle Wolf. Each of the performances will be open to up to 150 people, all masked, in a space that can seat 1,280. The Shed said it would require patrons to present confirmation of a recent negative coronavirus test, or confirmation of full vaccination; requiring testing allows the Shed admit the largest number of audience members allowed under state protocols. In these first steps, ... More | | 
Edvard Munch, 'Felix Auerbach', 1906 (detail), oil on canvas, 85.4 x 77.1 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM.- It is exactly a year ago this week that the Van Gogh Museum was first forced to close its doors due to the coronavirus measures. The museum has now once again been closed for a significant length of time, and it is currently not possible to visit the new exhibition Here to Stay: A decade of remarkable acquisitions and their stories. In order to offer the public an impression of the exhibition, from today, the museum is revealing a selection of the key works and stories from Here to Stay online. It goes without saying that visitors will be welcome at the physical Here to Stay exhibition as soon as Dutch museums are allowed to reopen. The exhibition has been extended until 29 August 2021. Here to Stay: A decade of remarkable acquisitions and their stories features a large selection of artworks that have been added to the acclaimed museum collection in the past 10 years. The exhibition introduces the full extent of the Van Gogh Museum collection area: from paintings and drawings to prints ... More | | 
The photographer Aaron Rose, at his Manhattan studio, March 12, 1997. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.
by Neil Genzlinger
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In the early 1960s a young man was stalking people on the beach at Coney Island not with ill intent, but with a camera. He took countless pictures, the subjects unaware that they were being photographed. I liked the big, fat men, the photographer, Aaron Rose, told Popular Photography many years later. When they laid down, their bellies stuck out and bulged out. I just find it very comical, very cartoonish. But the big-bellied men, and all the others whose images he captured, need not have worried about being exposed in galleries or some museum show, at least not for more than a half-century. Rose was an innovative and prolific photographer, making tens of thousands of one-of-a-kind images over the course of his career. But for most of that time he showed his work to no more than a small circle of acquaintances. Only in 1997, when he was persuaded to have some of ... More |
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| Detroit museum tries to change after review cites a culture of fear | | Duke's Nasher Museum names new Senior Curator of Contemporary Art | | Beeple, artist at the leading edge of a delirious digital market | 
The Detroit Institute of Arts, July 15, 2020. Brittany Greeson/The New York Times.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The Detroit Institute of Arts is taking steps to improve its workplace culture following a critical review by outside investigators who said they had fielded employee complaints of retaliation by the director whose autocratic leadership style, they said, had fostered an environment that led a disproportionate number of women on staff to leave. The findings of the review by the law firm Crowell and Moring, which was hired by the museum, were presented to members of its board in November but were not made public. The investigators, from the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm, also said that current and former staff members they had spoken to complained that the director, Salvador Salort-Pons, demonstrated a lack of facility with race-related issues, according to an audio recording of the board meeting at which the investigators presented their findings. The museum said Monday that it had taken a number of steps in response to the findings, including establishing a new b ... More | | 
Lauren Haynes, newly named Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, will begin her position as the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art on June 7 at the Nasher Museum. Photo by Rana Young.
DURHAM, NC.- Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art has named Lauren Haynes as senior curator of contemporary art, museum director Trevor Schoonmaker announced Thursday. She will begin her position as the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art on June 7. Haynes comes to Duke from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where she has been curator of contemporary art since 2016. For the past year, Haynes also directed the artist initiatives at both Crystal Bridges and the Momentary, a satellite to Crystal Bridges in downtown Bentonville, where she led the visual arts team. Previously, Haynes for nearly a decade was a member of the curatorial department at the Studio Museum in Harlem. I am thrilled that Lauren is joining our team. Ive been following her career since we first met ... More | | 
Everydays The First 5000 Days is a tour-de-force by Mike Winkelmann, a leading digital artist best known as Beeple. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY (AFP).- Six months ago he had not sold any work -- but on Thursday one of his creations will exceed $13 million at auction. The American artist Beeple is at the vanguard of an exploding virtual market, feverishly fuelled by digital collectors. The numbers, naturally, make him smile. Yet at 39, Beeple -- whose real name is Mike Winkelmann -- is keeping his feet on the ground, even though he admits it's all "a little head spinning." Beeple, from Charleston, South Carolina, is the artist behind the first ever 100 percent virtual piece sold at Christie's auction house: his "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days," a collage of digital images, is expected to be sold Thursday. By Wednesday evening the bidding had already passed $13.2 million. At the end of February another of his works, "Crossroads," was resold for $6.6 million on the platform Nifty Gateway, which specializes in virtual works. Beeple received 10 percent. And ... More |
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| John Edmonds wins Foam Paul Huf Award 2021 | | CUE Art Foundation presents a solo exhibition by John Feodorov | | Art Gallery of Ontario appoints Xiaoyu Weng as Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art | 
The Villain, 2018 © John Edmonds / courtesy of the artist.
AMSTERDAM.- The Foam Paul Huf Award 2021 goes to John Edmonds (1989, US). Earlier this week, a jury of five industry specialists chose this years winner from a selection of more than 100 nominees from 24 countries, selected by 25 nominators worldwide. The Foam Paul Huf Award is presented annually to a photography talent under the age of 35 to encourage photographers in their artistic development. Foam has organised the award annually since 2007 and the winner is chosen by an independent international jury. John Edmonds is the fifteenth winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award. The jury report states: "John Edmonds work impressed the jury with its very articulate, distinctive style and clarity of vision. With the seemingly simple but in essence culturally complex nature of his body of work he questions issues of identity and power from an African-American perspective. Edmonds work stems from a deep understanding ... More | | 
John Feodorov, Collectibles #25, 2020 Archival giclée print, 33.75 x 24 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- CUE Art Foundation is presenting Assimilations, a solo exhibition by John Feodorov, curated by Ruba Katrib. Drawing upon his experience growing up half-Navajo (Diné) and half-white in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Feodorovs multimedia installation, paintings, and prints explore how identity and memory are shaped amidst the violent pressures of cultural assimilation and the legacy of settler colonialism in the United States. In the front gallery, Feodorovs installation, How I Learned To Be A Christ-jun, displays Pentecostal and Jehovahs Witness hymn books and pages along with a New Testament Bible translated into the Navajo language in an altar-like space. Manipulated recordings play a Christian congregation singing hymns combined with looped audio of the artists mother and grandfather singing traditional Navajo songs. In the main gallery, large paintings combine the artists family photographs and o ... More | | 
In addition to her curatorial work, Weng is an active writer, editor and educator. Photo: Alexei Ponomarchuk.
TORONTO.- The Art Gallery of Ontario today announces that Xiaoyu Weng has been appointed Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art. Currently The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Associate Curator at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Weng assumes the role this summer pending approval of authorization to work in Canada. Xiaoyus uniquely international experience and vision, and her longstanding engagement in expanding the art historical canon will help us further our goals of leading global conversations from Toronto. She will also help us put Canadian artists on the global stage and shape the presentation of our Collection in dynamic new ways, says Julian Cox, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, AGO. In her curatorial work and scholarship Xiaoyu has explored with insight and sensitivity the many ways that difference sustains and enriches culture. We look forward to working with, and learning from h ... More |
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Watch Beeple React to the Historic $69.3m Sale of His Digital Work
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 Rare unseen early works by Yayoi Kusama in single-owner sale at Bonhams New YorkNEW YORK, NY.- Some of the earliest recognized works by Yayoi Kusama which have never been exhibited in public will be offered in a special single-owner collection sale at Bonhams New York on Wednesday, May 12. The sale, Kusama: The Collection of the late Dr Teruo Hirose, comprises three paintings and eight works on paper, gifted by Kusuma herself to Dr Hirose, her lifelong friend and doctor whom she consulted in her early years in New York in the 1960s, when she was a struggling young artist in need of medical aid. This is, without doubt, the rarest group of Kusama works from the late 1950s and 1960 to ever come to the auction. The highlights of the sale include two of Kusamas River paintings Mississippi River and Hudson River featuring early examples of her famous Infinity Net motif. Both were created in 1960, and offered each with ... More  'Alien' prototype, 'Scarface' suit and Harry Potter wand up for auctionLOS ANGELES (AFP).- A prototype of the terrifying monster from "Alien," a mobster's three-piece suit worn by Al Pacino in "Scarface" and Harry Potter's wand are among 800 items from classic Hollywood movies up for auction next month in Los Angeles. The blockbuster auction's centerpiece is the life-sized, nightmarish Xenomorph creature from Ridley Scott's classic 1979 sci-fi horror, expected to fetch up to $60,000. Designed by Swiss artist Hans Ruedi Giger, the translucent costume was long presumed missing and has never been on sale before, according to Julien's Auctions executive director Martin Nolan. Another high-profile item is the pin-striped suit worn by Pacino's coked-up drugslinger Tony Montana in the bloody climactic gunbattle of 1983's "Scarface." The "very, very rare" costume has a pre-sale estimate of $20,000-$30,000, said ... More  A legendary designer strikes out on his own to redesign legendsNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Ian Callum, the noted automotive designer, has started a new company, simply named Callum Design. It could just as easily be called Unfinished Business. Callum believes there is still mileage left, so to speak, in some notable car designs, and his shop intends to bring certain models of yesteryear forward and show how they retain their vitality in the modern world. We are in the business of reimagining, said Callum, 66, who has been working out of his design shop in Warwick, England, since retiring in 2019 after two decades as Jaguar Land Rovers top designer. To date, he and his team of stylists, engineers and fabricators have reimagined the Aston Martin Vanquish and the Jaguar Mark 2; most recently theyve announced a second-generation Corvette project. Some stories, he noted with a wink during ... More  He went to 105 shows in one season. Now he watches TV.NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Edward T. Minieka was 5 years old when his parents started taking him to see shows. The Miniekas lived in Bridgeport, on Chicagos South Side, and hopped a streetcar to get downtown. They watched King Midas and the Golden Touch at the Goodman Childrens Theater, plus family programs at Symphony Center and the Civic Opera House. On good days, there might be a visit to the Woolworths lunch counter; on really good days, the Walnut Room at Marshall Fields. Minieka is now 77 years old. He still lives in Chicago. And he still loves the arts. In the last prepandemic season, he bought tickets for 105 live performances symphony, opera and lots of theater. Then, thanks to the lockdown, he got a TV. The performing arts depend on people like Minieka culture vultures, often retired, who fill the seats ... More  New book offers a meditation on a pioneer of American suffrage through photography, writing and ephemeraNEW YORK, NY.- In 1916, Inez Milholland Boissevain (18861916) embarked on a grueling campaign across the Western United States on behalf of the National Womans Party appealing for womens suffrage ahead of the 1916 presidential election. Standing Together, by fine artist Jeanine Michna-Bales (born 1971), retraces Milhollands journey. The 30-year-old suffragist delivered some 50 speeches to standing-room-only crowds in eight states in 21 days: Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada and California. She battled chronic illness and lack of sleep during her travels and died a month after her last speech in Los Angeles, where her final public words were, Mr. President, how long must this go on, no liberty? Through her photographs, combining dramatic landscapes and historical reenactments of important vignettes of Milholland on her ... More  MLF │ Marie-Laure Fleisch pens an exhibition of works by Hanane El Farissi BRUSSELS.- For her first collaboration with MLF l Marie-Laure Fleisch, Hanane El Farissi proposes the solo project In the Way of Transmuting. Graduated from the HISK, her sculptural work, installations and performances start from objects and everyday gestures. Individual development, what defines them and memory are the driving forces of her artistic approach. Through diverse mediums, she uses stereotypes and methods of representation, as well as trivial or anecdotal depictions, to question the values that define our contemporary way of thinking. Hanane El Farissis practice may be seen as an endlessly exploration. Inspired by the most ordinary details surrounding us, the artist extracts evidences of human violence. This research, based on daily life but also influenced by Art History, aims to reveal our identity and our past. It takes place through ... More  University of Michigan celebrates 25 years of prison art exhibitions with virtual galleryANN ARBOR, MI.- As the world marks a full year of the pandemic, the University of Michigan's Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners celebrates its silver jubilee with a digital gallery, a new format necessitated by the ongoing global health crisis. The annual exhibition by U-M's Prison Creative Arts Project has become one of the largest shows by incarcerated artists in the world. It recognizes diversity of both artists and artistic choices with a curated exhibit that features a broad array of artistic media and subject matter. William (Cowboy) Wright, Farm Hand _2_.jpg"Although we are celebrating 25 years of annual exhibitions, this is also very much a year of firststhe first digital online exhibition, the first year of virtual programs and tours, and the first time that we have been able to offer remote sales," said Nora Krinitsky, director of the Prison Creative Arts Project. "We will all miss being in th ... More  Artsy places spotlight on the MENA region art scene in MarchNEW YORK, NY.- Artsy, the largest global online marketplace for discovering, buying, and selling fine art by leading artists, will celebrate and support the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions art scene through two key initiatives. Launching on its marketplace in March, Artsy will spotlight this culturally important region through a trio of exhibitions in partnership with ArteEast to help the organization fundraise, and will also showcase programming from its leading MENA-based gallery partners. From March 15th through 31st, Artsy will stage Middle Eastern Galleries Now, an event showcasing programming from our gallery partners based in the MENA region to our global audience of collectors that span nearly 200 countries across the globe. As part of this effort, Artsy will highlight shows curated by ATHR, Custot Gallery Dubai, Carbon ... More  Sir Winston Churchill's slippers and brandy glass sell at Bellmans for almost three times their estimate PETWORTH.- In the afternoon of 9th March 2021, Bellmans sold two lots that once belonged to Sir Winston Churchill - his monogrammed midnight blue velvet evening slippers from the 1950s and a monogrammed brandy balloon from circa 1960. Estimated to fetch £10,000 - 15,000, the hammer went down at £32,000 for the slippers after strong bidding online between bidders in the UK and the US. The successful buyer, a private UK collector, paid £39,040 including buyer's premium. The brandy balloon sold for £15,000 (£18,300 including buyer's premium) against an estimate of £7,000 - 10,000 to a UK telephone bidder, who also fought off online competition from the US. Julian Dineen, who was the auctioneer on the rostrum, says: "It's been very exciting in the run up to the auction. Sir Winston Churchill is still highly regarded around ... More  Spain chessboard maker's sales soar on 'Queen's Gambit' successLA GARRIGA (AFP).- At David Ferrer's factory, workers are busy cutting, trimming and stitching together fine sheets of wood to make chessboards to meet a surge in orders in the wake of the runaway success of the Netflix series, "The Queen's Gambit". Rechapados Ferrer, a small family-run business, is struggling to keep up with demand since its boards appeared in the award-winning miniseries about an orphaned chess prodigy. "We have never experienced such a strong boom in demand for chessboards," says David Ferrer, 30, who runs Rechapados Ferrer in La Garriga, the industrial belt that surrounds Barcelona. The company usually makes around 20,000 chessboards annually, but has already received orders for more than 40,000 so far this year, thanks both to the Netflix series and renewed interest in board games ... More  Jazz noodling: Hong Kong band streams inside cramped restaurantHONG KONG (AFP).- In a densely populated city with notoriously high rents, Hong Kong's musicians are used to playing cramped stages. But few venues are quite as pokey -- or unorthodox -- as Yuen Hing Lung noodles. On a recent weekday night a jazz band was in full swing inside the 300-square-foot restaurant, perched on cola crates and using dining tables as music stands. The double bass player was squeezed into the space where the noodles are usually bubbling away. There were no live spectators. Hong Kong has placed strict social distancing limits to control the coronavirus pandemic and -- like most forms of entertainment -- live music has been decimated. So instead the musicians inside the 47-year-old noodle restaurant streamed their gig online, asking for donations in return from the few hundred who logged in. The get together ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz 
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY 
Madelynn Green 
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter and sculptor Alberto Burri was born March 12, 1915. Alberto Burri (12 March 1915 - 13 February 1995) was an Italian painter and sculptor considered a key figure in Post-War art and such artistic movements as Neo-Dada, Nouveau réalisme, postminimalism and Arte Povera. In this image: Alberto Burri, Multiplex 8, 1981. Courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Collezione Burri, Città di Castello, Italy, and Luxembourg & Dayan.
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