| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, April 20, 2020 |
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| | The inventive chef who kept his 700 paintings hidden | |
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The Sardine Fisherman's Funeral" by Ficre Ghebreyesus. The estate of Ficre Ghebreyesus via Galerie Lelong & Co., New York via The New York Times.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Mixing memories of his North African childhood with his day-to-day life as a husband and father in New Haven, Connecticut, Ficre Ghebreyesus conjured up an imaginary space of his own. He created this multilayered world in his studio, where, after his sudden death at 50 in 2012, he left behind more than 700 paintings and several hundred works on paper. And he performed a similar magic in the popular Caffe Adulis, where he earned his living by cooking hybrid recipes that drew on the culinary heritage of his native Eritrea and neighboring Ethiopia. If, by some chance, a habitué of the Caffe Adulis ventured to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, and sought a beloved dish on a local restaurant menu, disappointment usually ensued. People would ask for shrimp in Eritrea, and it doesnt exist, said Ghebreyesus widow, the distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander, who is the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The thing that was cool about Ficre as a chef is that ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day In this file photo taken on May 20, 2019 Gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin poses during a photo session in Paris on May 20 , 2019. Art galleries fear an escalation of bankruptcies due to the consequences of the coronavirus crisis, while the professionals try to organize themselves to deal with it. JOEL SAGET / AFP
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 | | Postponing live sales, auctions pivot to online | | Peter Beard's family confirms his seath | | William Bailey, Modernist Figurative painter, dies at 89 | 
Acquired in 1984 by the Norwegian collector Hans Rasmus Astrup, the triptych has been in the care of Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo since its founding by Mr. Astrup in 1993. Estimated to sell for in excess of $60 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Francis Bacons 1981 three-part oil painting, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, was supposed to feature in Sothebys marquee contemporary art evening auction in New York on May 13, when it was estimated to sell for at least $60 million. That live auction clearly wont be happening now, in light of the coronavirus. But Sothebys has yet to announce what it plans to do with its May sales instead: Hold them online? Postpone them till late June, as its competitors, Christies and Phillips have assuming its possible for people to gather by then? Cancel till the world is less upside down? Like companies all over the world, auction houses now find themselves in uncharted territory, trying to find a way to keep their businesses afloat even as the future of buying art looks as if it may be forever changed. With workers being furloughed and headquarters lying empty, some art professionals say the current ... More | | 
Peter Beard (American, b. 1938), Untitled (Elephants and Baboons under Kilimanjaro), 1984. Oversized digital pigment, printed later, 29 x 80 inches.
by Stacey Stowe
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The family of Peter Beard, the artist and wildlife photographer who disappeared last month from his ocean bluff property on Long Islands East End, confirmed that a body found on Sunday in Montauk was Beards. After a 19-day search, the East Hampton Town Police released a statement on Sunday afternoon saying it discovered the remains of an elderly male consistent with the physical and clothing description of Beard was located in a densely wooded area. Police added that the investigation remained open while the body, discovered in Camp Hero State Park in Montauk, awaited identification by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner. On Sunday evening, Christine Heenan, a spokesperson for the Beard family, confirmed his death in a statement: Peter defined what it means to be open: open to new ideas, new encounters, new people, new ways of living and being. Always insatiably curious, he pursued ... More | | 
Bailey, whose pristine, idealized still lifes and female nudes made him one of the leading figures in the return of figurative art in the 1980s, died on Monday, April 13, 2020, at his home in Branford, Conn. He was 89. Ford Bailey via The New York Times.
by William Grimes
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- William Bailey, whose pristine, idealized still lifes and female nudes made him one of the leading figures in the return of figurative art in the 1980s, died Monday at his home in Branford, Connecticut. He was 89. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Alix Bailey. Beyond his painting, Bailey influenced generations of students in his many years as a teacher at the Yale School of Art. In some of his best-known work, Bailey arranged simple objects the eggs, bowls, bottles and vases that he once called my repertory company along a severe horizontal shelf, or on a plain table, swathing them in a breathless, deceptively serene atmosphere heavy with mystery. His muted ochres, grays and powdery blues conjured up a still, timeless world inhabited by Platonic forms, recognizable but uncanny, in part because he painted from ... More |
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| | Janet Borden, Inc. announces the death of photographer John Pfahl | | Exhibition examines the role of materiality in artistic expression | | This artist proposes a community space 'to dream, to imagine' | 
John Pfahl, Bethlehem.
NEW YORK, NY.- With great sadness, Janet Borden, Inc. announces the death of photographer John Pfahl on April 15 in Buffalo, New York. A great artist and educator, whose Altered Landscape photographs were profoundly influential, he will be missed as our longstanding artist and good friend. We send our condolences to his wife Bonnie Gordon, and to his extended family and students and friends. In John Pfahls first major body of work, the renowned series Altered Landscapes, the artist used everyday materials such as string and tape to create three-dimensional disruptions in the landscape that looked two-dimensional in the photograph. By inserting patently false lines, and incursions into sometimes banal, often picturesque landscapes, Pfahl pointed out and played up the photographers authority over the scene. His point has been that the photograph is a creation, whether altered or not. The importance of this self-consciousne ... More | | 
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Paradise Pies (II and VI) -- VI, 5/6 Red, 2009. Cast aluminum painted with acrylic, 6-3/8" x 13-1/4" x 9-1/2". Cast 5 of 6. Edition of 6. © 2020 Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
NEW YORK, NY.- Pace Gallery presents Material Matters, an online exhibition examining the role of materiality in artistic expression. Curated by Andria Hickey, Senior Director and Curator, in collaboration with Joe Baptista, Vice President, and Danielle Forest, Executive Assistant, this presentation highlights the physical, formal, and symbolic transformations of material experimentation and the ways material choices provide the tools for artists to disrupt expectation, shape meaning, and embody symbolic content. Spanning over sixty years of making, it includes works by Lynda Benglis, Tara Donovan, DRIFT, Lee Ufan, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Robert Rauschenberg, Arlene Shechet, Song Dong, Sui Jianguo, Richard Tuttle, and Yin Xiuzhen. Works by Benglis, Ufan, Shechet, ... More | | 
Kosoko performing in Chameleon. The poet and performer was well equipped to adapt when he learned that his latest work, Chameleon: A Biomythography, would not go on as scheduled at New York Live Arts this month. EMPAC via The New York Times.
by Siobhan Burke
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Since New York theaters shut down in mid-March, creators of live performance have been quick to adjust: improvising on Instagram, reimagining dances for Zoom, uploading their archives to Vimeo. The poet and performance artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko was well equipped to adapt when he learned that his latest work, Chameleon: A Biomythography, would not go on as scheduled at New York Live Arts this month. As its title suggests, Chameleon is mutable, the result of Kosokos exploration, over the past few years, of what he calls adaptive strategies and ways of being in the world. On April 22, Earth ... More |
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| | Exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery celebrates the centennial of Tom of Finland's birth | | Nobuhiko Obayashi, unpredictable Japanese director, dies at 82 | | Sir Quentin Blake and House of Illustration join forces to help people self-isolating stay in touch with friends | 
Tom of Finland, Untitled (Preparatory Drawing), c. 1980. Graphite on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 inches (27.9 x 21.6 cm) framed: 16 1/2 x 14 x 1 1/2 inches (41.9 x 35.6 x 3.8 cm). Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Jeff McLane.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- David Kordansky Gallery is presenting Tom of Finland: 100 Years, an online exhibition celebrating the centennial of the artist's birth. Featuring never-before-exhibited drawings in pencil and pen and ink, as well as Tom's personal collages. It will remain on view through May 12, 2020. Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish; b. May 8, 1920, d. November 7, 1991) has long been recognized as one of the 20th centurys great visual innovators. As he confronted the stigmas and stereotypes that long burdened homosexual desire, his depictions of empowered gay men fully enjoying their sexuality proved liberating on social and aesthetic levels alike. The sheer range of his influence on the culture at large is immeasurable. His work assumes ... More | | 
House,1977, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Nobuhiko Obayashi, an idiosyncratic Japanese filmmaker whose wide-ranging résumé included a horror movie about a house full of furniture that eats schoolgirls, a fantasy about a boy who befriends a 6-inch-tall samurai and an anti-war trilogy that he completed while being treated for cancer, died on April 10 in Tokyo. He was 82. The cause was lung cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2016, The Associated Press said, citing an announcement on the website of his latest film, Labyrinth of Cinema. Obayashis startling feature debut, in 1977, was House, a demented horror movie that is more comic than scary. The Los Angeles Times called it one of the most enduringly and endearingly weird cult movies of the last few decades. Reviewing it in The New York Times in 2010, when it had a theatrical run at the IFC Center in Manhattan in advance of a DVD release, Manohla Dargis described the goings-on. This might be about a haunted house, ... More | | 
The ten, individual 'Send your own Rainbow' e-cards are available to download from today from the website of House of Illustration, the art gallery founded by Sir Quentin in 2014. © Quentin Blake.
LONDON.- Legendary illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has created a series of brand new, totally free rainbow e-cards for people to send to loved ones they cannot currently see due to the coronavirus lockdown, to show they are thinking of them at this difficult time. The ten, individual 'Send your own Rainbow' e-cards are available to download from today (Monday 20 April 2020) from the website of House of Illustration, the art gallery founded by Sir Quentin in 2014. The 86-year old artist explains why he decided to do this: It seems like a time when a few straightforward jokes might not come amiss; so that as I know that people have been putting rainbows into their windows to express solidarity, I took the liberty of borrowing them. You will see that I have supposed that they are real and portable, and I hope they are optimistic too. ... More |
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| | Norman Platnick, the 'Real Spider-Man,' is dead at 68 | | At Syria mosque, group recital of prayer call 'runs in the blood' | | The East River waterfront dazzles. Take a virtual tour. | 
Norman Platnick, the American Museum of Natural History's curator of spiders, at the museum in New York, Feb. 23, 2012. Librado Romero/The New York Times.
by John Schwartz
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Norman Platnick was having no luck with millipedes. He was 16, a senior in college (yes, he started at 12) and was interested in a fellow biology student named Nancy, who was very interested in millipedes, he recalled. It was 1967, and they were taking a class on arthropods and needed specimens. But, he said: I was a lousy millipede collector. There would be nothing in my jar but spiders. He examined one of the spiders for a few hours, he said, and was able to identify it as part of the genus Cicurina. So I said: That was kind of fun. Let me try another. And I just never stopped. Platnick would become a world authority on spiders and the husband of Nancy Stewart Price. He died April 8 in a hospital in Philadelphia at 68. The cause was complications from a fall in his home, said his son and only immediate survivor, William Platnick. Platnick was curator emeritus of the division of invertebrate zoology for the American Mu ... More | | 
Muezzin Mohammad Ali al-Sheikh, the eldest of the Muezzins who call Muslims to prayer, poses for a picture inside the Umayyad Mosque in the ancient quarters of Damascus on March 12, 2020. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP.
by Rim Haddad
DAMASCUS (AFP).- Inside the Syrian capital's Great Umayyad Mosque, six muezzins sit before a loudspeaker, collectively reciting the call to prayer that can be heard across the ancient quarters of Damascus. They are among 25 muezzins who take shifts intoning the azan, or call to prayer, in groups, using a technique of collective recital that is unique to the centuries-old mosque. The place of worship was closed in mid-March as part of measures to stem the novel coronavirus pandemic that Damascus says has infected 29 people, two of whom have died -- but its calls to prayer live on. Mohammad Ali al-Sheikh, the eldest of the muezzins, said the tradition runs in his blood. "I come from a long line of muezzins," the man in his eighties told AFP. "I have been a muezzin for 68 years, as was my father until he died." Muezzins may have day jobs or be retirees but are all selected for their extraordinary voice. Sheikh was drawn to the role as a child, encouraged ... More | | 
A view of downtown Manhattan and the Queensboro Bridge seen from the John Finley Walk along the East River in New York, April 2, 2020. Vincent Tullo/The New York Times.
by Michael Kimmelman
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- New Yorks perimeter, where the land meets the rivers and the harbor, has always been the citys beating heart. The waterfront has morphed over the centuries, from booming port to waste ground to what it is today, a shifting, contested zone of new parks, ferry piers, aging public housing, infrastructure and upscale development. Its history is the history of New York just as the water is the citys sixth borough, toward which, as Phillip Lopate once wrote in Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, New Yorkers often look for inner peace. Twenty-five years ago, architect Deborah Berke settled with her family at Gracie Square on the Upper East Side. Berke founded Deborah Berke Partners and now divides her time between the Manhattan-based firm and Yale University, where she is dean of the School of Architecture. With her husband, Peter McCann, an orthopedic surgeon in the city, she has long made it a habit to stroll the East River promenade, sta ... More |
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India: Fashion's Muse | Contemporary Designers of India and Anamika Khanna
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 Dix Noonan Webb to sell rare 1 million Treasury BillLONDON.- A very rare £1,000,000 Treasury Bill dating from September 2003 that was never issued will be offered for sale in an online/ live auction of British, Irish and World Banknotes at Dix Noonan Webb, the international coins, medals, banknotes and jewellery specialists, on Wednesday, June 24, 2020 on their website www.DNW.co.uk. This is one of the last bills to be produced, it is on fully watermarked paper, bearing the signature of Andrew Turnbull and is stamped cancelled. It is estimated to fetch £5,000-7,000. As Andrew Pattison Head of Department, Banknotes at Dix Noonan Webb, explains: Until just over a decade ago notes such as these two were issued every week in the City under a secretive system which enabled the British Government to manage its short term borrowing policy and make sure that sufficient funds were ... More Warsaw remembers World War II ghetto uprising with low-key eventsWARSAW (AFP).- Poland commemorated the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising on Sunday, replacing its annual official ceremonies with low-key gatherings on site or online as the coronavirus pandemic prevented any big events. Wearing a protective mask, Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich recited a prayer at the monument dedicated to the uprising in front of a few dozen people who observed social distancing rules before laying a wreath. April 19 commemorates the day in 1943 when Jewish insurgents began a violent resistance against police and SS auxiliary troops who planned to deport the Jews in the ghetto to concentration camps. Their revolt, which the insurgents knew was doomed but allowed them to die fighting rather than in gas chambers, bogged down the German advance into the ghetto by several weeks. The main part of the revolt ... More Nintendo Game & Watch Sales Demo presents unique opportunity for collectors in Heritage Comics AuctionDALLAS, TX.- A fully operational table-top upright demo of the Game & Watch title Vermin, used by Mego and Nintendo to showcase the technologys capabilities at a tradeshow more than 40 years ago, will be offered in Heritage Auctions Comic and Video Game Signature Auction April 30-May 3 in Dallas, Texas. The Vermin Game & Watch Sales Demo Mego and Nintendo (c. 1979-1980) was used to show prospective buyers at a tradeshow the technology behind the commercially produced, calculator-sized electronic handheld Game & Watch toys. Mego only distributed the very first series of these handheld toys on behalf of Nintendo in North America, which included just four titles: Ball, Fire, Vermin, and Flagman. Collectors refer to these as the "Silver line, and the offered unit is the only known demo cabinet for Vermin. "This is the ... More Catinca Tabacaru Gallery presents a video exhibition presented exclusively on the gallery websiteNEW YORK, NY.- Catinca Tabacaru Gallery presents The Far Away Is Here, a video exhibition presented exclusively on the gallery website with works by Marie José Burki, Sue de Beer, Sanja Latinović, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, and Rachel Monosov. It is a curatorial response to the current global crisis in both content and form. What is happening over there will not happen here! This time it started in China, and neither the EU, nor any other nations held meetings on how to help the red dragon; maybe thinking that COVID-19 won't arrive to their part of the world. This idea that war, refugee crisis, or viruses, are far-away and not here, is the complete opposite of solidarity. Clearly, we are currently face to face with what we saw happening far-away. And now, because it is here, we are turning the world upside down. What if we always lived with the idea ... More Craig Gilbert, 94, dies; Created groundbreaking 'American Family'NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Craig Gilbert, who created what is widely considered to have been the first reality television show, An American Family, in 1973 and then all but disappeared from public view amid a storm of criticism and lasting, bitter disputes among its participants, died on Friday at his home in Lower Manhattan. He was 94. John Mulholland, a longtime friend and co-worker, confirmed the death. Gilbert spent most of his final decades living alone in a small apartment on Jane Street, relying on money he had inherited from his parents. An American Family was the last film he made. But in the early 1970s he was the envy of many documentarians, having produced well-received films about anthropologist Margaret Mead and disabled Irish writer Christy Brown. He was a producer at WNET, the New York public television outlet, ... More From father to son, the shared experience of the HolocaustNEW YORK (AFP).- Daniel Terna experienced neither the Holocaust that nearly killed his father nor the war that spawned it, but since childhood he has been immersed in the inherited trauma. It's been 75 years since the liberation of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, four of which Frederick Terna passed through, including Auschwitz. But still today the Jewish 96-year-old of Czech origin, a prolific painter whose 32-year-old son is also an artist, is reminded daily of the horrific experience that wiped out his immediate family. Daniel too inhabits those dark memories: "In the same way that my father lives with the Holocaust every day, I live with it." "Not a day goes by that you don't think about your father and what he's gone through," he told AFP from their peaceful Brooklyn home. "You can't really understand it. You can't conceptualize of it." "But I never stop thinking about it." ... More Loud, louder, loudest: How classical music started to roarNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In 1813, Beethoven wrote a symphonic work so noisy and trite that most scholars consider it an embarrassment. Wellingtons Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria depicts, with the help of spatially separated brass and percussion effects, a rout of French forces at the hands of the British. A hundred musicians played at the premiere twice as many as at the first performance of the Eroica Symphony, in 1805 with the audience seated at the center. Afterward, someone remarked that Beethoven had written a piece seemingly designed to make the listener as deaf as its composer. By all common measures of musical value, Wellingtons Victory is schlock. But in his detailed instructions on the number and positioning of instrumentalists, Beethoven reveals how carefully he crafted this sonic assault ... More South African writer Deon Meyer looks back at his 2016 virus thrillerJOHANNESBURG (AFP).- South African novelist Deon Meyer wished the deadly virus wreacking havoc in his 2016 thriller "Fever" had not turned into an eerily accurate depiction of the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the world. "I find no pleasure in it," said the crime fiction author and screenwriter. "I keep thinking of the sorrow of all those thousands of people who have lost loved ones, lost their jobs, and are living in fear." "Fever" tells the heart-wrenching story of the survival of a father and son in a desolated South Africa after a virus wiped out 95 percent of the world's population. Upon release, the novel was widely acclaimed as a post-apocalyptic masterpiece worthy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", for which the American novelist received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. Four years later, the parallels between Meyer's "Fever" and the ... More Hollywood's backstage creatives try to soldier onLOS ANGELES (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Just a few weeks ago, Hollywoods global assembly lines were spinning at full speed. Crews were working on Universals latest Jurassic World installment and Disneys live-action Little Mermaid in Britain. Guillermo del Toro was in Toronto shooting Nightmare Alley, a Fox Searchlight remake. Marvel had productions running in Australia and Atlanta. On the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, cameras were rolling on multiple soundstages and editors were working on Lin-Manuel Mirandas musical In the Heights. But that was another epoch. As with much of life around the world, film and television production has ground to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic leaving stars, stylists, directors, studio chiefs, grips, writers, set builders, trailer cutters, agents and scores of other specialized ... More LASM now presenting educational and entertaining experiences online at Virtual-LASM.org BATON ROUGE, LA.- The Louisiana Art & Science Museum has released an online portal for at home art and science experiences at virtual-lasm.org. The portal, which is organized by grade level and includes a section for all ages, includes videos, hands-on activities, and blogs produced by the Museum and Irene W. Pennington Planetarium. LASM developed virtual-lasm.org in response to the Museums temporary closure as a result of COVID-19, but this initiative to share our mission online will persist beyond the current crisis, said Serena Pandos, LASMs President & Executive Director. Since we had to close our doors in March, we have encouraged discovery, inspired creativity, and fostered the pursuit of knowledge in tens of thousands of people digitally; we hope to continue reaching people near and far through our virtual museum ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, French painter Odilon Redon was born April 20, 1840. Odilon Redon (born Bertrand-Jean Redon (April 20, 1840 - July 6, 1916) was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.In this image: Odilon Redon, The beasts of the sea, round like leather bottles, (detail). Plate 22 of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1896. Lithograph. The Kirk Edward Long Collection, 2010.60.22. Plate size: 8-3/4" x 7-1/2".
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