| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, April 5, 2021 |
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| | Taking Big Bird to new heights | |
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The artist Alex Da Corte, dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West, sets up props in his Philadelphia studio, March 19, 2021. Da Corte, known for provocative, brightly colored installations, will showcase the beloved Sesame Street character at the top of the Met this spring but with a twist. Christopher Leaman/The New York Times.
by Tess Thackara
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Among the characters that artist Alex Da Corte has transformed himself into for his video work and installations are Eminem, Mister Rogers and the Wicked Witch of the West. In his Technicolor universe, American cultural icons share screen time with mascots from famous commercials, and even slasher-movie psychopaths are lovingly brought to life, with hours of prosthetics and tender, surgical-like observation. Its a big-tent worldview that he shares, curiously, with Sesame Street, in which monsters, kids and grouches coexist and in which he has discovered the subject for his latest artwork. Jim Henson and the Muppets have been an obsession of Da Cortes for a long time. During the pandemic, though, it is Big Bird, an 8-foot-2 model of empathy and earnestness, that has been on his mind. When I found Da Corte, 40, in his Philadelphia studio, he was preparing to give Big Bird perhaps the most elevated stage of its five-decade journey through the American imagin ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day A woman takes a selfie next to a golden sarcophagus at the Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC), in the Fustat district of Old Cairo, during its official reopening , on April 4, 2021, a day after the Pharaohs' Golden Parade ceremony. The NMEC which opened its doors to limited exhibits from 2017, opens fully a day after the "Pharaohs' Golden Parade", but the mummies go on display to the general public two weeks later. Mahmoud KHALED / AFP
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| Experiencing museums as they should be: Gloriously empty | | Exhibition brings into dialogue seminal works by Man Ray & Francis Picabia | | New York show of Philip Guston work to include Klan images | 
A visitor in Gallery 601, one of 21 reinstalled skylit galleries with a range of old masters, including Velázquez, Caravaggio, Guercino, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.
by Blake Gopnik
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The other morning, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vincent van Gogh and I had a chat. I asked him about the straw hat and blue cravat he had on: Was he going for an urban bohemian look, or was it all about coming off as an outsider? We had a frank exchange about his mental state. He was looking a bit wound-up Id heard rumors about some strange behavior but his eyes seemed bright and untroubled. Of course we mostly went on about his art. Where did his work fit into his eras modern painting? Was a next step toward abstraction in the back of his mind? I admit that it had been a long time since Id tried to commune this deeply with van Goghs Self-Portrait With a Straw Hat, from 1887, one of the Mets treasures. For years, every time Id gone to pay ... More | | 
Francis Picabia, Mendica, 1929-1930. Oil on canvas, 63 1/2 x 51 1/8 inches (161.2 x 130 cm) © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
NEW YORK, NY.- Vito Schnabel Gallery is presenting Man Ray & Picabia, a historical exhibition that brings into dialogue seminal works by two early modern masters and legendary artists of the avant-garde. An intimate presentation, the exhibition focuses on only nine paintings that span the late 1920s to the mid-1950s a careful selection designed to invite contemplation on the nature of artistic revolution. The canvases on view manifest Man Ray and Francis Picabias prodigious engagement with the medium of painting across multi-faceted careers marked by irreverence toward convention and an ability to cycle through the phases of modernism to arrive at exceptionally original results. This rare grouping includes paintings that have not been on display to the public for decades. Man Ray & Picabia is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by writer and Man Ray specialist Timothy Baum. While Man Ray and Francis Pi ... More | | 
Philip Guston,, Back View II, 1978 (detail). Oil on canvas, 185.4 x 205.7 cm. The Estate of Philip Guston. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Private collection.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Nearly a year after the postponement of a Philip Guston retrospective roiled the art world, some of the modernist painters controversial paintings of cartoonish Ku Klux Klan figures will be displayed in New York in September. Hauser & Wirth, which represents the Guston estate, will exhibit the paintings from the artists Klansmen series as part of Philip Guston, 1969-1979. The exhibition will run from Sept. 9 to Oct. 30 in their New York gallery and will showcase work from the final decade of his career. (Guston died in 1980.) The timing is urgent because of the arts relevance to our cultural context today, Marc Payot, president of the gallery, said in an email Wednesday, although he said the show was not organized in response to the postponement of the Guston retrospective at four major museums last year. Payot mentioned the racial reckoning and widespread calls for social ... More |
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| Regen Projects opens a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Liz Larner | | Miles McEnery Gallery opens an exhibition of new paintings by Shannon Finley | | Two brothers posed for a portrait. One lived to see it in the Met. | 
Installation view of Liz Larner As Stars and Seas Entwine at Regen Projects, Los Angeles March 27 May 22, 2021. Photo: Evan Bedford, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Regen Projects is presenting As Stars and Seas Entwine, the eighth solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Liz Larner, whose deep research-based practice is united by a continual exploration of form, material, and color. This exhibition debuts one of the new large-scale floor sculptures and a number of ceramic works that will be included in Below Above, a forthcoming museum exhibition at Kunsthalle Zurich in the summer of 2022. The works on view reveal Larners acceptance of Posthumanist thought that the Anthropocene induces as the world becomes beleaguered by rapidly depleting resources and the massive waste that accompanies our extractive industries. Meerschaum Drift, 2021, a large, low floor sculpture constructed of plastic refuse Larner collected over the course of three years, seems to billow and surge through the space like seafoam. Serving as a meditation on the pervasive and exponential presence of plastic in t ... More | | 
Castle Mind, 2021, Acrylic on linen, 29 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches, 75 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY.
NEW YORK, NY.- Miles McEnery Gallery is presenting an exhibition of new paintings by Shannon Finley. Cascade is the artists inaugural exhibition at the gallery and opened on 1 April at 520 West 21st Street and remain on view through 8 May 2021. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by David Ebony. In Cascade, Finley explores the wonders of the perceptual and cognitive experiences created by abstraction. The ten new paintings that make up the exhibition employ an elaborate iconography of repeated geometric forms, interwoven lines and gestures, rich textures, and nuanced color contrasts. Optics, geometry, and color coalesce to create a personal and interior exploration of the processes of illusion and perception. The formulation of each painting derives from a visual language of the artists invention that points to a variety of sources. Finley alludes to interstellar space in works such as Cosmic Rays, Orbit Walker, Pathfinder, and S ... More | | 
Jeff Neal stands by an Alice Neel painting, The Black Boys, of himself and his brother, Toby, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, March 17, 2021. Amr Alfiky/The New York Times.
by John Leland
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- When Jeff Neal was 8 or 9 years old, an older friend would take him and his brother Toby on trips around New York City. They would go to the Empire State Building or the parks, and one day they went to a large apartment on the Upper West Side that was filled with paintings. This was the mid-1960s. The apartment was where Alice Neel lived, and it was the kind of place where people came and went freely. Neel was not famous yet it was still a decade before she had her first museum show and if her visitors caught her eye, she might ask to paint them. The brothers friend, Allen Tobias who was like a surrogate older brother and had arranged the visits assured them: She is going to be a famous painter someday. The two boys sat for her perhaps a dozen times, returning week after week. And she always gave them snacks, recalled Jeff ... More |
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| Winfred Rembert, 75, dies; Turned painful memories into art | | Clyfford Still's rare masterwork PH-568 leads Sotheby's Hong Kong Contemporary Art Spring Sales 2021 | | Van Dyck, Lippi, Savery and Waldmüller sell for strong prices in Koller's Old Masters & 19th Century Paintings auction | 
The artist Winfred Rembert at his home in New Haven, Conn., June 28, 2000. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times.
by Katharine Q. Seelye
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Winfred Rembert survived a near-lynching in rural Georgia in 1967. Just 21, he had been stripped of his clothes by a mob of white men and hoisted upside down from a tree, a noose around his ankles. One man came at him with a knife and nearly castrated him, sending blood gushing down his body. The only reason he was not killed was that another white man stepped in, saying there were better things that could be done with Rembert, like throwing him back in jail, from which he had just escaped. After seven years of incarceration and hard labor for stealing a car, taking a gun from a deputy sheriff and escaping from prison, Rembert was released. He married, moved north and had eight children. And in a turn of events that no one had expected, ... More | | 
Clyfford Still, PH-568, 1965, oil on canvas. 285.1 by 226.7 cm. 112¼ by 89¼ in. Est. HK$ 105,000,000 145,000,000 / US$ 13,540,000 18,690,000. Courtesy Sotheby's.
HONG KONG.- Sothebys Contemporary Art Spring Sales 2021, scheduled for 19-20 April in Hong Kong, presents an exceptional selection of Western and Asian masterpieces of unprecedented calibre and diversity. Led by Clyfford Stills PH-568 from 1965, a majestic masterwork from the artists late period, the Contemporary Art Evening Sale will showcase a stellar line-up of works by blue-chip artists, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter and Adrian Ghenie. Asian highlights include a robust assemblage of historical early works by major Chinese Contemporary artists such as Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Xiaodong and Fang Lijun. International young talent is also under the spotlight, with exciting pieces on offer by some of the most sought-after names in the market, such as Avery Singer, Shara ... More | | 
Anthony van Dyck, Saint Jerome in the wilderness. Oil on panel. 47.1 Ã 40.4 cm.Sold for CHF 2,44 million.
ZURICH.- Koller's Old Masters & 19th Century Paintings auction in Zurich on 26 March registered robust prices, with highly competitive bidding for many of the top lots, despite the fact that the sale had to be held without in-person bidding. Anthony van Dyck's St Jerome in the Wilderness, a fascinating, freely executed study which may have belonged to his mentor, Peter Paul Rubens, sold for CHF 2.4 million after a protracted bidding battle, well above pre-sale expectations of CHF 800 000/1 000 000 (lot 3027). A recently rediscovered mystical depiction of St Benedict by Filippino Lippi more than tripled its low estimate to sell to a Swiss collector for CHF 134 000 (lot 3002). A charming bucolic scene by Dutch master Roelant Savery (lot 3022) left one German private collection to enter another, also selling for more than three times its low estimate, at CHF 128 000. An impressive portrait of a young man attributed ... More |
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| Performing arts make a cautious return in New York | | Fine Autograph and Artifacts featuring Hollywood in April 14 auction | | From Rivera to Warhol to Banksy, a torrent of astonishing prints and multiples come to Heritage Auctions | 
Jon Laster hosts the first live show inside the Comedy Cellar in over a year in New York, April 2, 2021. More than a year after the pandemic abruptly shuttered theaters and concert halls across the city, limited audiences were welcomed back inside. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.
by Matt Stevens and Julia Jacobs
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The days are getting longer. The sun is out. The number of vaccinated New Yorkers continues to grow every day. And now, more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic suddenly brought down the curtain at theaters and concert halls across the city, darkening Broadway and comedy clubs alike, the performing arts are beginning to bounce back. Like budding flowers awakening just in time for spring, music, dance, theater and comedy began a cautious return this past week, as venues were allowed reopen with limited capacity in most cases, for the first time since March 2020. Many did. ... More | | 
James Dean Original Photograph by Roy Schatt.
BOSTON, MASS.- With over 800 rare and remarkable items up for auction, R.R. Auction's April Fine Autographs and Artifacts sale features something for every collector with online bidding March 26 - April 14. Highlights include books signed by John F. Kennedy; among them is a John F. Kennedy Multi-Signed' History of Ireland' Book Set. The Complete six-volume set of History of Ireland by Rev. E. A. Dalton. First edition. London: The Gresham Publishing Company, 1912. Hardcovers bound in green cloth with elaborate gilt titling and decoration to spines and front covers, 1674 total pages. The first free end page of each volume is signed in black ink, "John F. Kennedy," with the lone exception occurring in the sixth volume, which is signed upside-down on the final free end page; this distinction suggests that the volume was likely stacked upside-down at the bottom and that Kennedy accidentally signed the book believing it was right-side up. The consignor ... More | | 
Banksy (b. 1974), NOLA (White Rain), 2008. Screenprint in colors on Arches paper, 29-3/4 x 21-1/2 inches. Estimate: $50,000 - $70,000.
DALLAS, TX.- Warhol and Picasso, Hirst and Haring, Lichtenstein and Close, Ruscha and Dali, Banksy and Kaws. One visionary and one iconoclast after another after another runs throughout Heritage Auctions' April 22 Prints & Multiples Signature Auction event. One highlight and one centerpiece after another after another. So, where to begin? How about in 2008 New Orleans, site of the Banksy's original stencil featuring a seemingly confounded young girl holding an umbrella that doesn't shield her from the rain, but instead brings the storm to her. Three years after Hurricane Katrina, and shortly before the arrival of Hurricane Gustav, the artist spray-painted the so-called Umbrella Girl at the corner of Kerlerec and North Rampart streets in the Marigny neighborhood along the Mississippi River. She was emblematic of every New Orleanian who believed they ... More |
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A slow look: Oriana Reinagle's 'Study of Trees'
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| More News |
 Heritage Auctions rewrites comic-book record book with $4.45-million sessionDALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions kicked off its four-day Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction Thursday afternoon with a first session that smashed records like Hulk on a rampage. The first 52 lots in the 1,483-lot event realized more than $4.45 million alone, with nearly every single comic book and work of original comic art roaring past pre-auction estimates thanks to rounds of intense bidding. One need look no further than the heated tussling over Simon Bisley's iconic cover to Lobo No. 1 published in 1990. The work featuring the snarling, cigar-chomping bounty hunter from outer space opened the day at $50,000. And by the time the dust settled, the Main Man realized $192,000 more than six times its estimate. The first session of the April 1-4 event was topped by a Batman No. 1 graded CGC VG/FN 5.0, which sold for $360,000. That's nearly twice ... More  Exhibition explores how photography, graphic design, and magazines transformed mid-century American visual cultureNEW YORK, NY.- The Jewish Museum presents Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine, an exhibition exploring how photography, graphic design, and popular magazines converged to transform American visual culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. The exhibition will be on view from April 3 through July 11, 2021. Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine highlights a time when avant-garde techniques in photography and design reached the United States via European émigrés, including Bauhaus artists forced out of Nazi Germany. Whether in the service of advertising or fashion, image-making began to burgeon as the relationship between photography and text grew more nuanced. As the standard ... More  Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers announces online-only Spring Estate Fine Art & Antique auctionCRANSTON, RI.- Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers online-only Spring Estate Fine Art & Antique auction planned for Thursday, April 8th at 6 pm Eastern time features over 400 lots of paintings, decorative arts, furniture, fine jewelry, silver, Asian arts and collectibles, pulled from prominent estates and collections across New England. Telephone and absentee bids will also be accepted. Having an online-only auction certainly takes away the action-packed feeling of a live sale, but the safety of our customers and employees is most important, said Travis Landry, a Bruneau & Co. auctioneer and Director of Pop Culture. Also, by using Bidlive.BruneauandCo.com on our mobile app, bidders are able to pay the same buyer's premium as if they were here in person. Kevin Bruneau, the president and owner of Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers, said he expects ... More  Gallery NAGA opens an exhibition of works by Joseph BarbieriBOSTON, MASS.- Just after the onset of the pandemic, Joseph Barbieris 2020 scheduled exhibition morphed into a small, online-only exhibition and was rescheduled for April, 2021 back in the gallery. Gallery NAGA is presenting--finally-- Barbieris wacky and wonderful paintings in the flesh, or shall we say, feathers. Joseph Barbieri: Lucky Ducks and Lambent Landscapes opened to the public on Friday, April 2. As he has done in the past, Barbieri presents both streams of his paintings: gentle landscapes and colorful animal portraiture, specifically animals with beaks. With the exception of one, all of the landscapes were painted on the coast of Maine and depict the abundance of evergreens and glowing birches one finds dotting the coast. Where the landscapes are quiet and gentle, the animal portraits pulse with color and life. Octogenarian portrays a green ... More  The Walker Art Center names Pablo de Ocampo as Director and Curator of Moving ImageMINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Walker Art Center announced today that Pablo de Ocampo will be its next Director and Curator of Moving Image. de Ocampo is a curator currently living in Vancouver, Canada. Over the last 20 years, his practice has been rooted in artists film, while also engaging more broadly with the moving image across a wider field of performance, music, and contemporary art. Realizing projects in cinemas, galleries, and on the stage, de Ocampo has continually centered artists and prioritized support for the creation of new work. Walker Chief Curator Henriette Huldisch stated, Im absolutely thrilled that Pablo de Ocampo will be joining the Walker. Pablo is known for his audaciously original approach to programming and his expansive curatorial thinking around the moving image. With his deep commitment to artists, ... More  2021 Exhibit Columbus announces design conceptsCOLUMBUS IN.- Building upon themes presented in last year's Symposium, the 2021 Design Presentations introduced 13 site-specific design concepts, launching the third exhibition of Exhibit Columbus. Officially opening August 21, 2021 and on display until November 28, 2021, this year's continuing theme New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis builds on Columbus' legacy as a laboratory for design as civic investment. Co-curators Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles) and Iker Gil (Chicago) have invited participants to explore the future of the center of the United States and regions connected by the Mississippi Watershed. In response, architectural designs range in theme from tending ecologies, transfiguring nighttime places, and transforming words into material. As the design process continues in the coming months, participants will refine their designs in preparation ... More  They are giving Hemingway another look, so you can, tooNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Could there be anything more subversive than turning a spotlight, in this moment, on Ernest Hemingway? Though his influence on generations of writers is inescapable, he has come to be seen as an avatar of toxic masculinity, the chest-thumping papa of American letters, sacrificing all to the work, headstrong and volatile, serially discarding one wife for another. And yet this contradiction is what made him interesting to documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, who have worked together on in-depth series such as The Vietnam War and Baseball. That Hemingway is a writer who has contributed so much to the form but who is also full of complexities or, to borrow another electric word from our current moment, that he is problematic only seems to have made him more of a draw. Burns ... More  Film Forum is reopening with a classic: Fellini's 'La Strada'NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- La Strada, the 1954 movie that made Federico Fellinis international reputation and won the first competitive Oscar for best foreign film, is exemplary pop modernism an existential parable with affinities to Waiting for Godot, featuring an appealingly sad clown, haunted by a forlorn musical phrase and set in the timeless landscape of windswept beaches, tattered carnivals and deserted piazzas that Fellini made his own. Its also a crowd pleaser, appropriately chosen as one of the movies that, newly restored, will reopen the Film Forum on Friday. Fellini is out to break your heart from the get-go, as the wide-eyed waif Gelsomina (the directors wife, Giulietta Masina) is sold by her impoverished mother to itinerant carnival strongman Zampano (Anthony Quinn) as his stooge, servant and concubine. Gelsominas childlike ... More  'Follies' was my first Broadway show. 50 years later, I remember it all.NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- At long last, I was exactly where I had yearned to be for most of my young life. I had arrived in the holy land, which for me was a show palace in New York City, the world capital of my childhood fantasies. My very first Broadway musical, a form of entertainment I regarded as a religion, was about to begin. Then the lights went down in the cavernous Winter Garden Theater. It got dark, which I had expected. It stayed dark, which I hadnt. The stage was flooded in shadow, and you had to squint to make out the people on it. Some were tall, spectral beauties from another era in glittering headdresses, and others were as ordinary as my parents, dressed up for a night out. None of them looked happy. The grand orchestral music seemed to be eroding as I listened, like some magnificent sand castle dissolving in the tide, as sweet ... More  Miller & Miller to hold online-only Canadiana & Folk Art auctionNEW HAMBURG.- An online-only Canadiana & Folk Art auction featuring the lifetime Canadiana collection of Marty Osler will be held on Saturday, April 17th, at 9 am Eastern time, by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., based in New Hamburg. Online bidding will be via LiveAuctioneers.com and the Miller & Miller website: www.MillerandMillerAuctions.com. In all, 306 lots will cross the auction block. In addition to Canadiana and folk art, categories will include furniture, paintings, pottery, stoneware, tools, toys and banks, architectural and nautical. There will be no in-person event due to COVID-19, but bidders can tune in to the live webcast on auction day to watch lots close in real time. Telephone and absentee bids will be accepted. Marty Osler is a true collector. You can see his passion for history and the human experience reflected in the objects he acquired, ... More  Skywhales national tour program announcedCANBERRA.- Now that Skywhalepapa and his babies have joined Skywhale, Patricia Piccininis skywhale family is complete and ready to #HolidayHere with a two-year Australia-wide tour. From metropolitan cities to rural Australia, Skywhales: Every heart sings is a National Gallery of Australia Touring Event that will reach audiences across the country, made possible by National Tour Principal Partner The Naomi Milgrom Foundation, with the support of Visions of Australia. Skywhale and Skywhalepapa, which debuted together in April,will fly one last time in Canberra on Saturday, 3 April before the first stop of their tour in Albury on 17 April. From the sunny Gold Coast beaches to the red deserts of Alice Springs, Australians across this vast land will be able to see the skywhales soar over our iconic landscapes, said Nick Mitzevich, Director, National ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz 
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY 
Madelynn Green 
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, German painter Franz Pforr was born April 05, 1788. Franz Pforr (5 April 1788 - 16 June 1812) was a painter of the German Nazarene movement. Pforr did not live long enough to see his art acknowledged. He died of tuberculosis in Albano Laziale, Rome at age 24. In this image: Portrait by Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1810.
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