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| | Kunstmuseum Basel features the first avant-garde movement of the 20th century | |
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Kunstmuseum Basel, installation view. Photo: Gina Folly. © 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich.
BASEL.- The grand special exhibition Matisse, Derain and Friends at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau is dedicated to the first avant-garde movement of the twentieth century: the Fauves. Presenting around 160 first-rate works, many of which have never been shown in Switzerland, it turns the spotlight on the experiments with color that Henri Matisse, André Derain, Georges Braque, Maurice de Vlaminck, and others undertook between 1904 and 1908. It illuminates the roles of art critics and the art market in the emergence and establishment of the movement, which paved the way for Cubism. Fauvism has had a lasting influence on the discourses of painting in modernism and beyond. The term fauves (big cats or wild beasts) was coined by Louis Vauxcelles in a review of the 1905 Salon dAutomne. The critic used it to describe the expressive application of paint and the unusual combinations of colors, which represented ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Solange Pessoa, Bags - Bregenz version, 1994-2023. Installation view first floor Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2023. Photo: Markus Tretter. Courtesy of the artist, Mendes Wood DM © Solange Pessoa, Kunsthaus Bregenz.
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| In a city defined by history, Chinatown's champions fear new arena for 76ers | | Last chance to see: Major survey of the work of Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain | | Boom in AI prompts a test of copyright law | 
Market Street in Philadelphia in 1904. (Library of Congress via The New York Times)
by David W. Chen
PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Deborah Wei first wore a No Stadium in Chinatown T-shirt emblazoned with red English letters and Chinese characters in 2000, when she helped to scuttle a proposed baseball stadium for the Philadelphia Phillies. She wore an updated version a decade later, with the word Stadium crossed out and replaced by Casino, when local opposition derailed a Foxwoods project. Now Wei and other activists are donning a third edition to fight what they fear is the most serious threat yet: a $1.5 billion plan to build a basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers, 6 inches away from Chinatowns southern boundary. I dont know what is next, said Wei, a 66-year-old educator who co-founded the community group Asian Americans United in the 1980s. Philadelphia, a city that so carefully curates its history, is wrestling over how to shape the future of its ... More | | 
Sarah Lucas Exacto, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York © Sarah Lucas.
LONDON.- Tate Britain presents a major survey of the work of Sarah Lucas. One of the leading figures of her generation, Lucas is internationally celebrated for her bold and irreverent work, often exploring the human body, mortality, and very British experiences of sex, class and gender. This exhibition brings together more than 75 works spanning four decades, from breakthrough early sculptures and photographs to brand new works being shown for the first time. Devised in close dialogue with the artist and presented in her own voice, this survey takes a fresh look at Lucass practice to date. Sarah Lucas rose to prominence among the Young British Artists of the early 1990s. She attended Goldsmiths College from 1984-87 and showed her work in Freeze, the legendary exhibition curated by Damien Hirst in 1988. Exhibiting together and sharing a playful and daring approach to materials and images, this generation challenged the British art world ... More | | 
The ChatGPT website in New York, July 10, 2023. The advent of applications like ChatGPT has raised new legal questions about intellectual property. (Jackie Molloy/The New York Times)
by J. Edward Moreno
NEW YORK, NY.- The boom in artificial intelligence tools that draw on troves of content from across the internet has begun to test the bounds of copyright law. Authors and a leading photo agency have brought suit over the past year, contending that their intellectual property was illegally used to train AI systems, which can produce humanlike prose and power applications like chatbots. Now they have been joined in the spotlight by the news industry. The New York Times filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement, the first such challenge by a major American news organization over the use of AI. The lawsuit contends that OpenAIs ChatGPT and Microsofts Bing Chat can produce content nearly identical to Times articles, allowing the ... More |
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| Tom Wilkinson, actor in 'The Full Monty,' dies at 75 | | Her sculptures were ignored for 33 years. Then she got a new roommate. | | Italy's raucous holiday classics are not your standard hallmark movies | 
A versatile actor who also starred in Shakespeare in Love and Batman Begins, he won acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage.
by Alan Yuhas
NEW YORK, NY.- Tom Wilkinson, the actor who could transform a manic lawyer, a steel-foreman-turned-stripper and parts small and large into mesmerizing characters, winning Oscar nominations and plaudits for his performances in movies like Michael Clayton and The Full Monty, died Saturday, according to a family statement. He was 75. The statement, from his agent sent on behalf of his family, said he died suddenly at home. It did not provide other details. Wilkinsons range seemed to know no bounds. He earned Academy Award nominations for his work in In the Bedroom and Michael Clayton and delighted audiences in comedies like The Full Monty and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. He appeared in blockbusters like Shakespeare in Love and Batman Begins, and took on horror in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, history as Benjamin Franklin in John Adams, and memory in Eternal Sunshine of t ... More | | 
Hanna Eshel did not succeed in the New York art world. Her only reliable exhibit space was her own loft. But a musician in search of a home changed that.
by Alex Traub
NEW YORK, NY.- Hanna Eshel waited more than 40 years for a stroke of luck in her art career. The pivotal event, when it finally arrived, was not a gallerist seeing the appeal of her work or a critic writing about its depth. It actually had nothing to do with her art. Her good fortune can be traced to early 2011, when a 38-year-old singer and guitarist named Quinn Luke returned home to New York City after three years of touring. He had money to spend and knew what he wanted: to live in a real Manhattan loft, fit for the fabled bohemians of the citys past. He looked for seven months until a new listing appeared: 2,500 square feet, 15 windows, $1,500 a month and a 212 phone number. Luke arrived the next morning. The building, 640 Broadway in NoHo, had a rickety old freight elevator, left over from the days when the building housed glove and shoe manufacturers. He opened a door on the sixth floor, walked down a ... More | | 
The director Enrico Vanzina arrives at a 1980s-themed ski race during an event celebrating 40 years of Cinema Panettone in Cortina, Italy, Dec. 16, 2023. (Chiara Negrello/The New York Times)
by Jason Horowitz
CORTINA DAMPEZZO.- On a recent evening inside the Hotel de la Poste, an alpine hotel in Cortina dAmpezzo, Italys most ski-and-be-seen winter destination, a boisterous party celebrated the birth of a cinematic era. Forty years earlier, the libidinous, up-chalet-down-chalet comedy Christmas Holiday, set in the lodge, was released. Nominally about a plain but lucky-in-adultery piano bar singer and the wealthy Milanese, salt-of-the-earth Romans and tuxedoed bons vivants who surround him, the film previewed decades of gleefully vulgar, broad and formulaic Christmas comedies that earned a fortune and came to be known, after the cakes Italians devour during the season, as Cinepanettone. To celebrate the anniversary, the films producer, writer and stars carved up an enormous panettone the size of a fire hydrant and participated in a weekend of Cinepanettone-themed ... More |
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| Major artwork secured for the people of Scotland - Unknown Man by Ken Currie | | How 'That Octopus Book' won over more than a million readers | | Bonniers Konsthall presents: Anna Andersson and Maja Fredin | 
Ken Currie, Unknown Man, 2019 © Ken Currie. Photo: Neil Hanna. Collection: National Galleries of Scotland. Purchased with assistance from the Heinz Fund, Art Fund and Vivienne and Robin Menzies, 2023.
EDINBURGH.- Ken Curries Unknown Man, a portrait of the preeminent forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black, has been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland. This arresting portrait has been on long loan to the gallery since 2021 but has now been secured for the nation permanently. This acquisition ensures the continued enjoyment of this poignant work, currently available to view for free at the Portrait gallery. Unknown Man depicts one of the most distinguished, internationally famous contemporary Scots, Professor Black. Curries large-scale painting shows her in surgical robes standing behind the covered remains of a body. The idea for the portrait grew when Currie and Professor Black met during a BBC Radio 4 discussion on the relationship between art and anatomy. Currie later visited the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identi ... More | | 
Shelby Van Pelts Remarkably Bright Creatures is an increasingly rare kind of hit: a quiet, quirky literary book sold by word-of-mouth and bookseller recommendations. Photo: Alexa Viscius for The New York Times; mural by Jason Brammer.
by Alexandra Alter
NEW YORK, NY.- Last year during the holiday sales rush, Beth Seufer Buss started getting an unusual request from customers at Bookmarks, the independent bookstore where she works in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was always, Do you have the book with the octopus? she said. She knew exactly which book they meant: Shelby Van Pelts Remarkably Bright Creatures, a novel that features a cranky, mischievous octopus. The surge in demand was unexpected because the novel had come out months earlier, in the spring of 2022. Even more surprising, sales continued to accelerate after the holidays, into the winter and spring of 2023, and have never died down. The book with the octopus was Bookmarks top-selling ... More | | 
Anna Andersson, Transitor, 2022.
STOCKHOLM.- Every year, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation awards grants to young artists to support their work. The 2023 grant recipients are Anna Andersson and Maja Fredin, two artists with distinctly different styles of expression. Anderssons abstract sculptures speak to us on a level beyond words and demand slower listening. Fredins installations resemble the rides in a miniature Disneyland, capturing us in the split second when laughter abruptly turns dead serious. What the two artists share in their practice is an emphasis on allowing hand and mind to work together. In performance, sculpture, and installations, the artists are presented in separate comprehensive exhibitions, each encompassing both new and significant earlier works. Anna Andersson explores the potential of the sculptural medium, and the interplay between thought and action. In her work, there is a constant pursuit of something, even if she doesnt always know exactly ... More |
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| Sculptor Stephan Balkenhol honors the collection of Old Masters at the Museum Wiesbaden | | Willie Nelson's sense of style | | 2023: A new balance recovery attendance numbers & new acquisitions by women artists | 
Stephan Balkenhol, 2023. Photo: Kathrin Balkenhol.
WIESBADEN.- The internationally renowned sculptor Stephan Balkenhol is opening a special kind of time window for us. Part of the art family he has created gathers for a museum visit and honors the collection of Old Masters at the Museum Wiesbaden. As at an important family celebration, the closest members of the family and their extended circle, including their animal companions, come together to see each other again and discuss what they have seen. This creates an informal dialog between current contemporary art and its artistic predecessors. The visitors enter the resulting spatial image and become part of the shared art viewing experience. Traditional viewer relationships are broken up, set in motion and unite all participants. Balkenhol's artistic work is deeply rooted in European art history and its humanistic aspirations. At times, Balkenhol draws directly on this cultural heritage, transfers it into his very ... More | | 
Willie Nelson, onstage in Texas on Nov. 16, 2002. The Texas troubadour, who is having a moment at age 90, found success only after he decided to be fully himself, in his music and his look. (James Estrin/The New York Times)
by Steven Kurutz
NEW YORK, NY.- Roll me up and smoke me when I die, Willie Nelson sang from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl during his 90th birthday celebration in April. As usual, Nelson looked very much at ease. He was wearing a cowboy hat over a red bandanna, and his hair spilled down his back. His trusty guitar, a road-worn classical acoustic model named Trigger, hung from the red, white and blue strap around his neck. At his side was his longtime friend, the equally relaxed Snoop Dogg. The duet with Snoop was one of many high points for Nelson in 2023, when fans and colleagues expressed their appreciation for one of the great survivors of American cultural life. In ... More | | 
Nan Goldin, Elephant mask, Boston, 1985. © Nan Goldin.
AMSTERDAM.- The Stedelijk looks back at 2023the first lockdown-free year since the pandemicas a year in which we found a new balance. A new balance in visitor figures, in how we engage with the collection, and in the themes we explore. The Stedelijk looks back at 2023the first lockdown-free year since the pandemicas a year in which we found a new balance. A new balance in visitor figures, in how we engage with the collection, and in the themes we explore. The museum reported that a recovery is clearly underway in attendance numbers.The Stedelijk expected to welcome just over 600,000 visitors by the close of 2023, which not only puts them above their own forecast for this year but also at 90% of the numbers in 2019, the last pre-corona year. This is an encouraging sign. In 2023, the Stedelijk hosted major surveys by the Canadian artist collective ... More |
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Immerse in Raqib Shaw's Diaristic and Dreamlike Paintings
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 Dutch National participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia announcedAMSTERDAM.- For the Dutch National participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the Cercle dArt des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC) collective in collaboration with artist Renzo Martens and curator Hicham Khalidi will present new artworks as part of their ongoing commitment for the plantation of Lusanga to be freed, regenerated and transformed back into sacred forests, as well as their commitment to a greater project of spiritual, ethical and economic reckoning. The exhibition will be on display from 20 April 2024 until 24 November 2024 at the Rietveld Pavilion in Venice and simultaneously in the White Cube in Lusanga (DRC). By twinning the White Cube the previously established museum by Martens and CATPC in Lusanga with the Rietveld Pavilion in Venice a level playing field has been created by and for CATPC: this is what the ... More  Exhibition showcases the creativity of the Caribbean diaspora in BritainTORONTO.- Heralded by the UK Guardian as exhilarating, mighty and tender, and The Times as highly evocative, Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art, 1950s-Now, opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Dec. 6, 2023. Tracing the extraordinary impact of Caribbean art and thought on British art history over seven decades this poetic and powerful exhibition crosses the Atlantic for the first time, making its North American debut in Toronto. Co-curated by David A. Bailey, Director, Artistic Director of the International Curators Forum, and Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain, Life Between Islands at the AGO is overseen by Julie Crooks, Curator, Arts of Global Africa, and the Diaspora. Referencing poetry, film, activism and music, the exhibition reflects through art how Caribbean-British artists forged new identities, communities, and cultures ... More  Moderna Museet Malmö opens 'Anders Sunna: Illegal Spirits of Sápmi'MALMO.- In this monumental work of art, Anders Sunna chronicles his familys half-century-long conflict with the Swedish state. The piece measures 20 meters in length, and the narrative is told in six chapters from the 1970s until today, with one large painting per decade. The paintings are inserted into a wooden structure that also holds an archive of all the legal cases the family has been involved in. Visitors are welcome to browse through the many binders, which contain thousands of documents. Illegal Spirits of Sápmi depicts a Sámi reindeer-herding familys fight against the authorities, states exhibition curator Joa Ljungberg. It is a story of drawn-out conflicts with significant personal losses. Behind this family tragedy hides a larger story of oppression with colonial overtones. For Anders Sunna, art has offered an opportunity for redress ... More  2024 at Hastings ContemporaryHASTINGS.- Hastings Contemporary has announced its wide-ranging programme of exhibitions for 2024
The Ethiopian multi-disciplinary artist Sime (b.1968) comes to the UK with his first major solo show in Europe, and the touring exhibition Elias Sime: Eregata እርጋታ will feature at Hastings Contemporary in the Spring. The exhibition will focus on the last decade of Sime´s career with over 25 works displaying large-scale abstraction works, ceramic installations and sculptural assemblages. In autumn, the complex genre of still life art will be explored. Drawing from two of the UK´s most significant collections, the Ingram Collection and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, the exhibition will be a wide-ranging show of more than 30 works, charting an evolution through decades of fascination with the domestic objects and basics of everyday life. ... More  Gerry Holzman, master carver of a New York merry-go-round, dies at 90NEW YORK, NY.- Gerry Holzman, a master woodcarver who conceived, and toiled for 20 years to build, a merry-go-round that celebrated New York state with riding animals including a beaver, a cow and a pig, as well as portrait panels of citizens such as Susan B. Anthony, Grandma Moses and Theodore Roosevelt, died Dec. 8 at his home in Brunswick, Maine. He was 90. The cause was heart failure, his daughter Nancy Holzman said. A former high school teacher, Holzman was the head carver and fundraiser of the Empire State Carousel, a whimsical and educational reminder of state fairs and carnivals past. The carousel, which is 36 feet wide and 23 feet high, was built with the help of about 1,000 volunteer carvers, woodworkers, painters and quilters. It is a permanent and popular attraction at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, ... More  Mbongeni Ngema, playwright best known for 'Sarafina!,' dies at 68NEW YORK, NY.- Mbongeni Ngema, a South African playwright, lyricist and director whose stage works, including the Tony-nominated musical Sarafina!, challenged and mocked his homelands longtime policy of racial apartheid, died Wednesday in a hospital in Mbizana, South Africa, after a car accident. He was 68. Ngema was a passenger in a car that was struck head on when he was returning from a funeral in Lusikisiki, in Eastern Cape province, according to a family statement cited in the South African news media. His masterfully creative narration of our liberation struggle honored the humanity of oppressed South Africans and exposed the inhumanity of an oppressive regime, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Ngemas death. In the decade before the release ... More  Willie Ruff, jazz missionary and professor, dies at 92NEW YORK, NY.- Willie Ruff, who fashioned an unlikely career in jazz as a French horn player and toured the world as a musical missionary in the acclaimed Mitchell-Ruff Duo while maintaining a parallel career at the Yale School of Music, died Sunday at his home in Killen, Alabama. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his niece Jennifer Green. Ruff, who was also a bassist, played both bass and French horn in the duo he formed with pianist Dwike Mitchell in 1955, which lasted until Mitchells death in 2013. They opened for many jazz luminaries, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan; played countless concerts in schools and colleges; and toured foreign countries where jazz was little known or even taboo. In 1959, they flouted edicts against music that the Soviet Union deemed bourgeois, performing an impromptu set in ... More  Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School donates massive collection of Braille music to NYPLNEW YORK, NY.- The New York Public Librarys Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Librarythe only public library in the state of the New York that is dedicated to serving patrons who are blind, visually impaired, or are otherwise physically unable to read standard printis excited to announce that Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School (FMDG) has donated their entire Braille music catalog, the second-largest collection of Braille music in the country. Through this donation, the Heiskell Library will make the music catalog accessible to the public. On Tuesday, November 14 the Heiskell Library and FMDG hosted a reception at the Heiskell Library to celebrate the gift that included musical performances from visually-impaired students who use the collection. Faculty and students from FMDG performed a seIection of pieces from ... More  I want a city, not a museumNEW YORK, NY.- Some years ago, as my mother and I were walking on New York Citys Upper West Side, she pointed out a redbrick town house in the West 70s where, she said, my great-grandfather had lived as a child. It was an awkward building, the door set back under a large arch, the roof sharply peaked, and I wondered that it had survived as the city rose around it. I have since discovered that many of the places in New York where my ancestors lived are still standing: tenements on the Lower East Side, brownstones in Brooklyn Heights, a squat apartment building in Astoria, a two-family building in Canarsie. Look around most neighborhoods in the city and youll find that the stage on which New Yorkers live and play, the physical city, hasnt changed much in a very long time. More than half the citys housing is in buildings constructed ... More  Murder most unromantic in a new 'Carmen' at the Metropolitan OperaNEW YORK, NY.- A close observer might have noticed the flicker of menace that passed between the man and the woman: how his hand, which had just cupped her cheek, slid down and opened to encircle her throat. But though her body grew still for a moment, it didnt show fear. Instead, she seemed to give as good as she got during their heated exchange of words, in full view of a crowd a crowd that appeared to freeze when he grabbed her arm and roughly shoved her, sending her flying to the ground. Domestic abuse is often considered a private problem that happens behind closed doors. On New Years Eve, it will take center stage at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production of Georges Bizets Carmen, conducted by Daniele Rustioni. The opening run stars Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina in the title role ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, cinematographer and producer Vilmos Zsigmond died January 01, 2016. Vilmos Zsigmond ASC (Hungarian: June 16, 1930 - January 1, 2016) was a Hungarian-American cinematographer. His work in cinematography helped shape the look of American movies in the 1970s, making him one of the leading figures in the American New Wave movement.
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