| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Monday, August 14, 2023 |
| | | The dog walker with the Chuck Close painting finally has his day | |
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Dog walker Mark Herman with a Chuck Close painting in his home in New York, on July 13, 2023. Heritage Auctions had at first declined to auction Mark Hermans painting, an early work by Chuck Close, but then they found out that it had a history. (OK McCausland/The New York Times)
by John Leland
NEW YORK, NY.- The way Mark Herman imagines it, Jack Black should play him in the movie: the scruffy dog walker whose dying client gave him a long-lost Chuck Close painting, and who then went through serial misadventures trying to sell it. On Tuesday, Herman, 67, sat for the last time in front of the painting, an abstract nude that looked gargantuan in his cluttered upper Manhattan living room. Since July 13, when the painting was rejected by Sothebys auction house, it had been his near-constant companion. Now, movers from Heritage Auctions were preparing to ship it to Dallas, where it will go up for auction Nov. 14. Im gonna be sad to see it go, Herman said. Its like a member of the family. The story of Hermans painting involves a First Amendment lawsuit, a truculent retired professor, a dogged archivist, a New York Times article and a toy poodle ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Casablanca Art School Installation View at Tate St Ives 2023 Photo Tate (Oliver Cowling) (2).
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| A lost monument in Angers | | Tate and Museum of the Home jointly acquire Rebecca Solomon's "A Young Teacher" | | The dream was universal access to knowledge. The result was a fiasco. |
Hendrik Verschuring, The Pont des Treilles on the Maine in Angers (also known as the Pont-Neuf in Angers), 1663. Oil on canvas, 26 x 36 ½ inches. Photo: Courtesy Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts.
NEW YORK, NY.- Gorinchem is a small town in the middle of the Netherlands approximately 40 km/25 mi south of Utrecht. The only fully fortified town still in existence in the country, it has a rich history of trade sitting firmly on the river Merwede. Because it serves as a transit route to the south, including Brussels and Paris, and to the east and the German states, Gorinchem, like many cities in the 17th century Dutch Republic during this time it was flourishing. What makes Gorinchem so interesting is how many artists came from this small but notable place. Hendrik Verschuring was born in Gorinchem in 1627 just after the end of the 12 years truce (a break from the 80 years war). He was the son of a military man. How much of one is probably up for debate, but his father is noted as such. We must wonder if Verschurings father wanted to keep his son out of military service or if he felt it wasnt for him, but at age 8, Verschuring was sent to apprentice with the portrait painter Dirc ... More | |
Rebecca Solomon, A Young Teacher 1861. Tate and the Museum of the Home. Purchased with funds provided by the Nicholas Themans Trust, Art Fund, the Abbott Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
LONDON.- Tate and Museum of the Home recently announced joint ownership of a landmark painting by acclaimed painter Rebecca Solomon. A Young Teacher (1861) has been acquired for the national collection and will be held equally by both institutions, enabling this significant Pre-Raphaelite work to be enjoyed by the public for generations to come. A Young Teacher is being displayed in Tate Britains new Pre-Raphaelite gallery. Hung alongside many works by Solomons male counterparts, including her brother Simeon, its inclusion offers visitors the chance to experience a fresh perspective on this ground-breaking art movement. In autumn 2024 it will move to the Museum of the Home, providing a new context in which to see this ambitious painting, after which it will be available to both institutions as well as to museums and galleries across the UK as part of the national collection. Rebecca Solomons painting is a complex reflection ... More | |
Brewster Kahle, who runs the Internet Archive, in San Francisco on June 19, 2023. (Cayce Clifford/The New York Times)
by David Streitfeld
NEW YORK, NY.- Information wants to be free. That observation, first made in 1984, anticipated the internet and the world to come. It cost nothing to digitally reproduce data and words, and so we have them in numbing abundance. Information also wants to be expensive. The right information at the right time can save a life, make a fortune, topple a government. Good information takes time and effort and money to produce. Before it turned brutally divisive, before it alarmed librarians, even before the lawyers were unleashed, the latest battle between free and expensive information started with a charitable gesture. Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive, a venerable tech nonprofit. In that miserable, frightening first month of the COVID pandemic, he had the notion to try to help students, researchers and general readers. He unveiled the National Emergency Library, a vast trove of digital books mostly unavailable ... More |
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| Tate St Ives presents the first major museum exhibition of the Casablanca Art School | | On the Hudson, visions for a new Native American Art | | Crypto's next craze? Orbs that scan your eyeballs. |
Mohamed Ataallah, Tangers (Tangiers) 1965 © Mohamed Ataallah Estate. Photo © Lenbachhaus Munich.
ST IVES.- The Casablanca Art Schools revolutionary approach proposed a bold new visual culture following Moroccos independence in 1956. Reflecting a new social awareness, artist-professors including Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa and Mohamed Melehi transformed this institution by encouraging artistic experiments, looking beyond western academic traditions and drawing on existing local culture. This exhibition explores how the teachers and students of the Casablanca Art School combined traditional Berber skills, materials and visual languages with modernist influences from Europe and North America, creating a space to reimagine Moroccan contemporary art and its relationship with everyday life. Working across painting, sculpture, graphic design, architectural mural painting and many other media, the artists associated with the school placed art into public spaces and promoted it as a shared experience. This landmark exhibition brings together works by more than twenty artists, to incl ... More | |
Conscientious Conscripture, an installation by the New Red Order collective in Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969 at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., Aug. 8, 2023. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)
by Holland Cotter
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY.- A MAGA-style baseball cap, scarlet and sloganeering, sits on a shelf, as if for sale, surrounded by other promotional retail: T-shirts, totes, lighters. Make Amerika Red Again is embroidered on the front of the cap, which is also stitched with pretty beadwork and topped by a yellow feather. Where are we? Apparently in the merchandise section of what looks like a combination campaign headquarters, tech showroom, surveillance center and stage set. Its furnished with desks, chairs, posters and multiple digital screens all belonging to something called the New Red Order, a self-declared public secret society of artists and filmmakers seeking to lay bare the open secret of Western expansion. Want to know more? Maybe ... More | |
An attendee uses their phone to connect to an orb from Tools for Humanity, the company behind Worldcoin, at an art gallery in downtown Manhattan, July 27, 2023. (Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet/The New York Times)
by David Yaffe-Bellany
NEW YORK, NY.- One evening last month, a crowd of cryptocurrency enthusiasts gathered at an art gallery in downtown Manhattan. They were greeted by a scene from science fiction. At one end of the room was an open bar. Across from it stood a loose array of gray pedestals, arranged like a futuristic Stonehenge, each displaying a metal sphere about the size of a bowling ball. The event was a launch party for Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project created by Sam Altman, OpenAIs CEO, and the crypto company he co-founded, Tools for Humanity. As music thrummed in the background, guests congregated around the shiny orbs, which looked like a cross between a giant eight ball and HAL 9000, the rogue computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The gathering was a small step in what Tools for Humanity claims will be a world-changing project: to scan ... More |
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| Rome's iconic umbrella pines imperiled by pests and the ax | | 36 Hours in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | | The roller rink popcorn factory and the jailhouse pub |
A spot where umbrella pines were removed at Piazza Venezia, in the center of Rome, Aug. 11, 2023. (Elisabetta Povoledo/The New York Times)
by Elisabetta Povoledo
ROME.- The protesters who had gathered on an arid patch of lawn in Romes central Piazza Venezia hailed from neighborhoods all around the capital, but they had one concern in common: saving the towering umbrella pine trees that for centuries have adorned the citys low-slung skyline but are disappearing in distressing numbers. Celebrated in music and art, and admired by the ancient Romans, the trees are as much a part of the citys identity as its human-made landmarks. They are in the hearts, photographs and memories of everyone, said Jacopa Stinchelli, who is helping lead the defense of the pines, which in recent years have taken a mangy turn. An infestation of a pernicious and invasive pest, an insect known as the pine tortoise scale, which sneaked into Italy about a decade ago, has killed many trees. In the eyes of some Romans, however, its not just the bugs that are to blame for the demise of so many ... More | |
Chua Van Phat, the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in July 2023. (Justin Mott/The New York Times)
by Patrick Scott
HO CHI MINH CITY.- Ho Chi Minh City is synonymous with street food and motorbikes: It often seems like one massive, sizzling food court combined with a beeping motorcycle rally that came to town and never left. Almost as dizzying is how quickly Vietnams biggest city is transforming with new urbane enclaves and upscale planned communities, as well as the high-rises constantly shooting up, including the countrys tallest skyscraper, Landmark 81, which opened in 2018. The busy boulevard along the Saigon River at Bach Dang Wharf last year added a pedestrian park and a dramatic suspension bridge over the water to an emerging finance district. Whats constant is the optimism of savvy locals, Vietnamese returning from abroad and ambitious foreigners infusing the city with inventive bars, high-fashion boutiques, chic eateries and hotels. Hop on the back of a motorbike for a whirlwind street food tour with XO Tours, in ... More | |
UnQuiet Antiques, housed in a historic firehouse in Coxsackie, N.Y., on June 24, 2023. (Lauren Lancaster/The New York Times)
by Sal Cataldi
NEW YORK, NY.- When the owners of a solar-powered popcorn company in the Hudson Valley were looking to expand operations, they saw an opportunity in an empty roller rink. A former magazine editor who dreamed of opening an antiques store in the Catskills knew shed found the perfect place when she came upon an 1870s firehouse. And about 20 miles away, a film producer turned liquor entrepreneur realized he could make and sell his products out of a retro drive-in movie theater. As more creative, sustainability-minded urbanites move north of New York City, business owners are repurposing the deep stock of old buildings in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Adaptive reuse is the technical term for this practice, which involves renovating a building while preserving its historic character to serve something other than its original purpose. Probably the most notable reuse project is Dia Beacon, a contemporary ... More |
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| Gerald Peters Contemporary opens 'Steven J Yazzie: Throwing Stars Over Monsters' | | National Museum of African Art releases "Heroes" publication | | Embrace the arts: Hilliard Art Museum announces annual fall exhibition opening |
Steven J. Yazzie, Balancing the Wind, 2023, oil on canvas, 64 x 78 inches.
SANTA FE, NM.- Gerald Peters Contemporary has opened Steven J Yazzie: Throwing Stars Over Monsters. The comprehensive exhibition brings together new paintings, drawings, photographs, and video works by the Denver-based artist. Working with a variety of media, Steven J Yazzies (Diné/Laguna Pueblo) work is a meditation on the intersections of technology, culture, and nature, and how these elements shape our understanding of the world. In his ongoing Drawing and Driving series, begun in 2006, Yazzie steers a gravity-powered vehicle along a downhill stretch of road while drawing an image of the surrounding landscape. In picturing landscape from the point of view of a moving vehicle, Yazzie highlights the impact of technology in ones experience of the world. Consistent with the artists larger interest in utilizing multisensory experiences to challenge perceptions, Yazzie has ... More | |
As part of the museums longstanding commitment to and collaboration with institutions of higher learning on the continent, more than 100 copies of the Heroes catalog will be donated to universities and art institutions across Africa.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonians National Museum of African Art will release the catalog to its landmark, award-winning, multi-platform project Heroes: Principles of African Greatness Sept. 3. Initiated and led by curator Kevin D. Dumouchelle, the Heroes project has grown from an in-person exhibition built of more than 50 art works from the museums collection, which ran from 2019 to 2022, to an ongoing multimedia digital experience featuring videos, an interactive tour, a curated playlist and finally, a book published by Hirmer Publishers and jointly distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The book, authored by Dumouchelle, will be available in bookstores worldwide and is currently available to pre-order. Heroes gives readers an opportunity to ... More | |
Kei Ito Portrait Each Tolling Sun Performance Still, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
LAFAYETTE, LA.- September heralds in the much-anticipated Fall Opening Celebration, showcasing a calendar filled with artistic and cultural experiences at The Hilliard Art Museum. The Fall Exhibition Opening Reception is Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. The members reception is from 4-6 p.m., and the event is open to the general public from 6-8 p.m. The Fall reception will include Festivals Acadiens et Créoles unveiling of their 2023 Official Pin and Poster. This years artwork was designed by local artist, Lu Wixon. Guests will be able to purchase the 2023 Festivals Acadiens et Créoles pin and poster at the event as well as during Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, Oct. 13-15 held at Girard Park in Lafayette, LA. We are delighted to continue this long-term partnership with Festivals Acadiens et Créoles and to celebrate their featured artists and musicians alongside our new exhibitions, says Museum Director ... More |
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Joan Kaplan Davidson, philanthropist who championed New York, dies at 96
NEW YORK, NY.- Joan Kaplan Davidson, a preservationist and philanthropist who set projects in motion that upgraded the quality of life in New York City, died Friday in Hudson, New York. She was 96. Her son John Matthew Davidson confirmed the death, in a hospital. He did not specify a cause, saying simply that her heart gave out. Davidson served as chair of the New York State Council on the Arts in the 1970s and as New York State parks commissioner in the 1990s. But she made her most lasting mark from 1977-93 as president of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a foundation established by her father, Jacob M. Kaplan, in 1945. The fund has a modest endowment compared with giant foundations such as Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller. But it has often been the first stop for those seeking grants to save buildings, support cultural institutions or restore landmarks in New York. ... More
Romance readers swoon for Brooklyn's newest bookstore
NEW YORK, NY.- At 10 a.m. on a recent Saturday, a line of nearly 50 people mostly women stretched down a busy block in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope. Their eyes were on a pink-painted storefront adorned with pink balloons. Moments later, sisters Bea Koch, 33, and Leah Koch, 31, emerged with an announcement: We are open! The crowd cheered and applauded. Photos were taken. An hour later, the store was at capacity. And out on the sidewalk, the line kept growing. It wasnt a trendy croissant, or an influencer hawking a new video game console, that had generated so much enthusiasm. It was a bookstore: The Ripped Bodice, a shop devoted almost entirely to romance novels. Many fans had planned their weekend around the opening. Some traveled a significant distance to be there. The store opened just as the Beyoncé ... More
Keith Waldrop, professor and award-winning poet, dies at 90
NEW YORK, NY.- Keith Waldrop, whose first poetry collection was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1969 and who won the award 40 years later with his Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, died on July 27. He was 90. Brown University, where he taught for more than 40 years, posted news of his death. It did not say where he died or state the cause. Waldrop was far more than a poet. He was a well-regarded translator of French poetry and prose, was an artist whose collages were exhibited in solo and group shows, and ran a small press with his wife, the poet Rosmarie Waldrop. As a poet, he had dozens of published volumes to his credit. His poetry, as the Brown posting put it, was infused with an emotional and intellectual undercurrent that could astonish the reader in its capacity to bridge disparate thought with, if not logic, then perhaps something deeper, richer. The judges who awarded ... More
Tom Jones, half of record-setting 'Fantasticks' team, dies at 95
NEW YORK, NY.- Tom Jones, who wrote the book and lyrics for a modest musical called The Fantasticks that opened in 1960 in New Yorks Greenwich Village neighborhood and ran for an astonishing 42 years, propelled in part by its wistful opening song, Try to Remember, died Friday at his home in Sharon, Connecticut. He was 95. His son Michael said the cause was cancer. Jones and his frequent collaborator, Harvey Schmidt, first worked together when they were students at the University of Texas, Jones in the drama departments directing program, Schmidt studying art but indulging his musical inclinations on the side. They kept in touch after graduating, writing songs together by mail after they were drafted during the Korean War. Jones got out first and tried his luck in New York, failing to find work as a director but writing for the revues being staged ... More
John Barrett, hair stylist for the fashionable elite, dies at 66
NEW YORK, NY.- John Barrett, a hairdresser whose relaxed wit, scissor-sharp style and long line of A-list clients put him literally on top of the luxury fashion world, with a salon spanning the penthouse level of the Bergdorf Goodman department store, died Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 66. The death, at New York University Langone hospital, was confirmed by Jeffrey Seller, a close friend, who said the cause was complications of blood cancer. New York has no shortage of places where clients can spend $200 or more on a snip and a blow dry. But for more than 20 years from when Barrett opened at Bergdorf in 1996 to 2019, when he left to open his own salon his aerie overlooking Central Park was the destination of choice for the fashionable elite, whether they walked over from Park Avenue or flew in from Miami, Los Angeles or London. He ... More
In Istanbul, revered shrines receive the wishes and woes of a modern city
ISTANBUL.- Years ago, when her sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Mahire Turk sought divine intervention. She trekked to a shrine atop a hill overlooking the Bosporus, sat under an ornate dome close to the grave of a Sufi master who died nearly 400 years ago and prayed intensely for her sister to beat the disease. After chemotherapy, her sister was declared cancer-free and is now expecting a baby, said Turk, 40, who works in a pharmaceutical warehouse. So to this day, when worries cloud her mind, Turk, like many of her compatriots in this ancient, sprawling city of 16 million, visits one of its many shrines to long-dead religious figures to seek a spiritual boost. These are the protectors of Istanbul, Turk said during a return pilgrimage to the shrine of Aziz Mahmud Hudayi, where she had prayed for her sister. I am sure that if I pay them a visit, they will protect me, too. ... More
Patrons want straight answers in Crooked House Pub's demise
LONDON.- Getting a drink in The Crooked House pub could feel intoxicating, even if youd ordered a lemonade. Originally built as a farmhouse in Englands West Midlands in 1765, the red brick structure had begun to sink in the 19th century after years of coal mining under its foundations. As a result, the walls slouched sideways at a 16-degree angle, dizzying customers and delighting children. Buttresses and steel bars made the structure safe, but it remained charmingly askew, leading to its jokey designation as Britains Wonkiest Pub. (Wonky means not straight or level in the United Kingdom.) In an optical illusion caused by the pubs slant, patrons could roll marbles and coins on some of the interiors surfaces and watch them seem to tumble uphill, as if gravity had magically reversed itself. But this week, the landmark was abruptly flattened, its structure ... More
Salon Art + Design returns with new galleries & unique displays of collectible design
NEW YORK, NY.- Salon Art + Design, the leading collectible design and art fair produced by Sanford L. Smith + Associates, announces its 12th edition, taking place at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City from November 9 - 13, 2023. Salon Art + Design has evolved into the premier destination for showcasing, acquiring and engaging with design and art. A highlight of New York City's Fall arts calendar, Salon is pleased to unveil new exhibitors, paired with special displays of collectible design. Featuring some 50 exceptional exhibitors from around the world, Salon presents leading design vintage, modern and contemporary and blue-chip 20th-century art. The fair presents an array of material from furniture, studio glass and ceramics, to Japanese art and jewelry. Salon is thrilled to welcome several new exhibitors, many who are much-anticipated up-and-comers ... More
David Lewis now representing Lisa Jo
NEW YORK, NY.- David Lewis has announced their representation of California-born, Berlin-based painter Lisa Jo and her first solo exhibition at David Lewis in Tribeca. The exhibition will feature new paintings by Jo in her signature graphic style. The oil paintings in this exhibition offer glimpses of the female body through abstracted shapes and colors and elements of pop art, always derived from the 1970s French erotic comic L'Ãcho des savanes. Jos process involves taking fragments of an arm here, a leg there, different renderings of eyes, a glimpse of a hip or a leg, graphic cutouts of long flowing hair and the suggestion of a nude, and digitally recomposing and coloring them before translating these compositions onto canvas. The resulting works give the impression of animation deconstructing and constantly moving. ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Gabriele Münter
TARWUK
Awol Erizku
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, French photographer Willy Ronis was born August 14, 1910. Willy Ronis (August 14, 1910 - September 12, 2009) was a French photographer. His best-known work shows life in post-war Paris and Provence. Ronis' nudes and fashion work (for Vogue and Le Jardin des modes) show his appreciation for natural beauty; meanwhile, he remained a principled news photographer, resigning from Rapho for a 25-year period when he objected to the hostile captioning by The New York Times to his photograph of a strike. In this image: Willy Ronis, Île Saint-Denis, nord de Paris, 1956. Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine / Dist RMN-GP © Donation Willy Ronis.
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