| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, December 19, 2016 |
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| | Lost treasures of Syria's Palmyra rise again in new 3D show at the Grand Palais | |
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Guests wait for the arrival of French President during the opening of the Palmyra Exhibit, a three-dimensional projection featuring never-before-seen images of Palmyra taken by a drone in April after the city was liberated from IS fighters, at the Grand Palais in Paris on December 13, 2016. Palmyra may just have fallen yet again to the Islamic State group, but a new "immersive" 3D show in Paris lets you walk through the Syrian city's classical colonnades as they were before the jihadists blew them to bits. The "Eternal Sites" exhibition uses high-definition images often shot by drones to allow the public to visit four of the most threatened heritage sites in the world in war-torn Syria and Iraq. Francois Mori / POOL / AFP.
by Antoine Froidefond
PARIS (AFP).- Palmyra may just have fallen yet again to the Islamic State group, but a new "immersive" 3D show in Paris lets you walk through the Syrian city's classical colonnades as they were before the jihadists blew them to bits. The "Eternal Sites" exhibition uses high-definition images often shot by drones to allow the public to visit four of the most threatened heritage sites in the world in war-torn Syria and Iraq. The eighth-century Umayyad Mosque in Damascus -- regarded by many as the fourth holiest place in Islam -- and the Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle near the ravaged city of Homs have also been virtually recreated under the dome of the Grand Palais in Paris. The show, which has been organised with the nearby Louvre museum, is part of a global push to digitalise spectacular archaeological sites that are at risk. The remains of the ancient Iraqi city of Khorsabad, which dates from the 7th century BC, has also been recreated using images captured by French company Iconem. Like the o ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Indian sculptor and philanthropist Sonal Ambani (L) poses next to her sculpture 'Inception' - an elephant made out of stainless steel mirror finished tea kettles - during a preview of The Ahmedabad Art E Fair at The Rajpath Club in Ahmedabad on December 16, 2016. SAM PANTHAKY / AFP
| Foam opens overview of the work of Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto | | Metropolitan Museum of Art opens first retrospective exhibition devoted to the Indian artist Y. G. Srimati | | °CLAIR Gallery presents Halsman: Facets and Faces | 
Bay of Sagami, Atami, 1997 © Hiroshi Sugimoto.
AMSTERDAM.- In the exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto - Black Box, Foam presents an overview of the work of Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Tokyo). The exhibition is divided into five sections devoted to the artists major series: Theaters (1976-ongoing); Lightning Fields (2006-ongoing); Dioramas (1976-2012); Portraits (1994-1999); and Seascapes (1980-ongoing). On display are a total of 34 large-format works, selected by guest curator Philip Larratt-Smith, that offer a survey of the artists last forty years of artistic activity. Given that some of the series are still ongoing, the exhibition also looks forward to future creations. Born in Tokyo in 1948, Hiroshi Sugimoto moved to the USA in 1970 to study photography. A multi-disciplinary artist, he works in sculpture, architecture, installation and photography and in the latter field is considered one of the most important creative figures working today. Sugimotos ... More | | 
Y.G. Srimati, Mahakali New York, 1980. Watercolor on paper, 29 ¼ in. x 21 7/8 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Michael Pellettieri, in memory of Y.G. Srimati, 2009 (2009.211) Photo: © 2009 M. Pellettieri.
NEW YORK, NY.- The first retrospective exhibition devoted to the Indian artist Y. G. Srimati (19262007) is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring some 25 meticulously executed watercolor paintings, augmented by musical instruments, archival photographs, and performance recordings, An Artist of Her Time: Y. G. Srimati and the Indian Style demonstrates Srimatis consistent commitment to her vision of an Indian style. Raised in the heated climate of the independence movementas a teenager, she performed devotional songs at prayer meetings for Mahatma GandhiSrimati explored themes from Indian religious epic literature and rural culture, asserting traditional subject matter as part of a conscious expression of ... More | | 
Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood, 1954. Vintage print, 21,5 x 15,8 cm. © Philippe Halsman/coutesy °CLAIR Gallery.
MUNICH.- Photographers who capture an iconic image are often confronted with a paradox: the celebration of a single photograph overshadows the entirety of an artistic oeuvre. Yet what happens in those rare situations when a single photographer is responsible for scores of iconic images? This question is explored by the Halsman: Facets and Faces exhibition. Philippe Halsman (b. Riga, 1906; d. New York, 1979) remains one of historys most esteemed photographers, yet there is no consensus as to what constitutes his most important work. The groundbreaking jumpology series that created a bold vision of identity through movement? His famed pictures of Alfred Hitchcock that set a new standard for interpretive portrait photography? His collaborations with Salvador Dalì that are a monument of the Surrealist movement? By juxtaposing these disparate facets of Halsmans artistic ... More |
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| Redwood Library and Athenæ um presents master drawings, Renaissance to contemporary | | Kerlin Gallery opens exhibition of new work by Siobhán Hapaska | | Outfits worn by Baroness Thatcher go on display at the V&A | 
Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), Venus Blindfolding Cupid (detail), pen and brown ink, brown wash on paper.
NEWPORT, RI.- Departing from the appreciation that drawing not only remains foundational to art theory and pedagogy, but that it is also undergoing a discernible resurgence in current artistic practice, the Redwood Library and Athenaeum presents The Variable Line: Master Drawings, Renaissance to Contemporary, on view from December 1, 2016 March 5, 2017. Organized by the Redwood Library, the sole U.S. venue, and featuring forty-five works, the exhibition is arranged as a survey featuring many types of drawingsfrom preliminary sketches to finished presentation drawingsrendered in a rich variety of styles and techniques, and treating a broad range of themes. Artists have always relied on drawing to put down ideas quicklyit serves this purpose perhaps even more now as the medium on- ... More | | 
Siobhan Hapaska, Us, 2016.
DUBLIN.- Kerlin Gallery announces an exhibition of new work by Siobhán Hapaska (b. 1963, Belfast). This is Hapaskas fourth solo show at the gallery and her first in five years. At the very heart of Siobhán Hapaskas work is a deep and sustained consideration of the complex nature of human relationships. Her sculptures, wall works and large-scale kinetic installations provide a sophisticated and nuanced articulation of our suspended state, creatures held in tension or equilibrium between powerful opposites. This exhibition features work from a new series of floor-based, concrete canvas sculptures, and wall works, which again draw our attention to formative contradictions within our society; freedom versus constraint, movement versus stagnation, nurture versus neglect and violence versus surrender. The artists innovative use of materials and restless experimental approach reflect her interest in such dualities, ... More | | 
Items from Baroness Thatcher display, V&A Fashion Galleries. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
LONDON.- Three iconic outfits and a hat worn by the late Baroness Thatcher are now on display in the V&As fashion galleries. Worn by the former British Prime Minster at significant moments in her public and private life, they give insight into the working wardrobe of one of the most important figures in recent political history. The garments are part of a collection of six outfits generously donated to the Museum earlier this year by her children, Sir Mark Thatcher Bt., and Hon Carol Thatcher, and her grandchildren Michael Thatcher and Amanda Thatcher. The three outfits and hat join an illustration by Ian Thomas that has long been in the V&As collection as part of the display. The illustration by Thomas, best known for his designs for the Queen and other members of the royal family, shows a jade georgette dress with diamanté beading that was made for Baroness Thatcher to wear to the ... More |
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| "Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism" on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art | | Large-scale musical installation by Sam Taylor-Johnson on view at Museum Voorlinden | | Hollywood legend Zsa Zsa Gabor dead at 99: husband | 
Adjani Okpu-Egbe, The Politics of Mary Seacole, 2014. Mixed media on canvas, Courtesy of the artist.
TEL AVIV.- Sub-Saharan Africa is present in all its complexity and power in the art world and the artistic discourse of the past few decades. The comprehensive group exhibition reflects this dynamic presence: it represents works that were made in or about Africa and focus on an Afro-futurist aspect as a way of deflecting Africa's tortured past and appropriating the future through a black cultural lens. The exhibition reflect the vitality and effervescence that motivate Africa today, as well as the chaotic, brutal and at times tragic African reality. The works in the exhibition were created during the post-colonial period: the earliest date to the 1960s and 1970s (Africa's "Decade of Independence") and should be viewed as individual cases, as well as expressions of colonialism's ramifications, through a redefinition of the African body, ... More | | 
Sam Taylor-Johnson, Sigh, 2008. 8 screen projection. Duration: 8 minutes 37 seconds. © Sam Taylor-Johnson. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. Courtesy White Cube.
WASSENAAR.- Museum Voorlinden is presenting the video installation Sigh (2008) by British artist Sam Taylor-Johnson (1967). This work has rarely been shown and is one of Voorlindens highlights, among which are works by Richard Serra, James Turrell, and Roni Horn; artworks that are impossible to describe, and need to be experienced. Since the 1990s, the photographs and video installations of British artist Sam Taylor-Johnson have explored the rawest human emotions. These are isolated and presented in fragmented ways by either deconstructing the narrative or, as in her work Sigh (2008), altering our perception of image and sound. Sigh is an audiovisual installation of eight projections in which different sections of the BBC Concert Orchestra seem ... More | | 
This file photo taken on July 12, 1989 shows US actress Zsa Zsa Gabor exiting the Beverly Hills Municipal Court on July 12, 1989. HAL GARB / AFP.
LOS ANGELES (AFP).- Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hungarian-born Hollywood siren perhaps better known for her prodigious love life than her movie credits, died Sunday after suffering a heart attack, her husband said. She was 99. An emotional Frederic von Anhalt told AFP that Gabor had passed away at home surrounded by friends and family. "Everybody was there. She didn't die alone," he told AFP by telephone, choking back sobs. The pair married in 1986, making it her longest marriage. Gabor, who in her heyday embodied the film industry's platinum blonde ideal, was a voluptuous former beauty queen with a penchant for lame gowns that accentuated her hourglass curves. Her resume includes a long list of film roles in such hit movies as "Moulin Rouge," "Lili" and "Arrivederci Baby!" ... More |
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| Images from the Jewish Ghetto on view at Museum at Eldridge Street | | Rare and precious items abound in Don Presley's New Year's auction, Dec. 31-Jan. 1 | | Baltimore Museum of Art opens "Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art" | 
"New Jewish Market on the East Side, New York."
NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum at Eldridge Street and the Blavatnik Archive collaborate on an exhibition of early twentieth-century postcards of the "Jewish Ghetto" on the old Lower East Side and the shtetls of Eastern Europe. These vintage postcards from the Blavatnik Archive find a fitting home in the Museum's landmark site, the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue - a magnificent National Historic Landmark that is the first synagogue built in America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The exhibition is on view through Wednesday, March 8, 2017. At a time when immigration policy is front-page news, these early twentieth-century postcards provide important historical perspective. In captivating color and stark black and white, they recall vanished places that are at the heart of the Jewish immigrant experience. They also suggest how cultural conceptions and types were disseminated in popular culture. From 1880 to 1924, one third of the Jewish ... More | | 
Chinese famille rose hand-painted porcelain bowl mounted in bronze, circa 1800, 12 1/2 x 21 x 16 inches. Estimate $2,500-$4,000. Don Presley Auction image.
SANTA ANA, CA.- Don Presley Auctions New Years sale, Dec. 31-Jan. 1, will feature a fantastic array of items from a 1947 Harley-Davidson Rigid Hardtail custom motorcycle to three bejeweled daggers that once belonged to a former prime minister of Iran. Absentee and Internet live bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers. During the two full days of selling, bidders can take their pick of more than 1,000 lots worthy of inclusion in a palace. The daggers, believed to be from the 18th and 19th centuries, were passed down through the family of Hasan Ali Mansour (19231965), prime minister of Iran during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. One of the ornate daggers is gold and encrusted with diamonds. Another is gold with rubies and emeralds, and the third is silver with highly engraved gilt work and engraved bone plaques on the handle. The daggers are ... More | | 
David Goldblatt. Margaret Mcingana, who later became famous as the singer Margaret Singana, Zola, Soweto, October 1970. 1970, printed 2014. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern. © David Goldblatt.
BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art presents Shifting Views: People & Politics in Contemporary African Art, the first exhibition of contemporary African art drawn from the museums collection. It features a selection of powerful prints, drawings, and photographs by seven artists who offer pointedly political perspectives on the lives of Africans and their diasporic descendants. The exhibition is on view in the African Art Galleries December 18, 2016June 18, 2017. Shifting Views provides visitors with an opportunity to experience a broader range of African art from the BMAs outstanding collection, said BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director Christopher Bedford. These works on paper demonstrate the common viewpoints of contemporary African artists examining the effects of ... More |
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Treasures from Chatsworth, Episode 4: The Lewinski Photo Archive
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 The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia celebrates twenty-five years of PrimaveraSYDNEY.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia celebrates twenty-five years of Primavera the annual exhibition dedicated to showcasing the work of young Australian artists with Primavera at 25: MCA Collection. Curated by Megan Robson, MCA Assistant Curator, the exhibition includes work by 22 artists and collectives who have previously exhibited in the exhibition. Drawn from the MCACollection, Primavera at 25 brings together established and emerging artists working across a range of disciplines from painting, sculpture, video, performance, kinetic and installation art. For many artists, Primavera marks the start of a long relationship with the MCA. Since 1992, 206 artists have exhibited in Primavera with the MCA acquiring over 230 works by artists in the exhibition for the MCA Collection. These include artworks that were first exhibited in a Primavera exhibition ... More Specters and Experiments: Ludwig Museum exhibits paintings by Attila Szűcs BUDAPEST.- With a focus on the recent past, the exhibition provides an overview of Attila Szűcss achievements as a painter. His latest pieces are at the center of the display comprising nearly 100 works, their thematic and technical characteristics serving as a basis for the presentation of the complete uvre. The ghosts of the past, that is, the phantoms of history and the reminiscences of art history have always played a determining role in Szűcss art. The post-conceptual and post-medial painting of his is still haunted by one of the basic problems of Conceptual Art and Modernism: the inextricable interconnectedness of tangible reality and its various representations. Szűcss body of work evokes the philosophical questions of Conceptual Art pertaining to the role of art in society, and it comments on the visual culture of Modernist painting (Abstract Expressionism, geometric ... More Imagine Picasso lighting the Arches of Harlem: A new lighting system for art installationsNEW YORK, NY.- The West Harlem Art Fund and Focus Lighting, a Harlem-based architectural lighting design studio, are embarking on an ambitious project to permanently light the entire length of the 12th Avenue viaduct in West Harlem. The 12th Avenue viaduct runs from 125th Street to 135th Street near the Hudson River and adjacent to the Henry Hudson Parkway. This artistic endeavor would complement the new campus Columbia University is building from 125th Street to 135th Street, as well as new streetscaping along West 125th Street from Old Broadway to Marginal Street by NYC Economic Development Corporation. Were proud and excited to be part of this initiative to bring public light art to the West Harlem neighborhood, says Paul Gregory, founding principal of Focus Lighting. Its a unique opportunity to honor one of New Yorks beloved ... More Witness to history: Bangladesh's oldest jail opens to publicDHAKA (AFP).- Many of Bangladesh's most significant political prisoners have been incarcerated within the walls of the two-century old Dhaka Central Jail. Now the prison that has borne witness to much of the country's brutal history has opened to the public as a museum. The last inmates of the 228-year-old prison in the capital's old Mughal quarters were relocated in July this year, and the gates of the 35-acre (14-hectare) facility opened, allowing people to explore the jail for a 100 taka ($1.25) ticket rather than being arrested first. Over the last two centuries, the jail -- the biggest in Bangladesh until it closed -- has been a central stage for much of the country's history. Scores of mutineers were hanged and their bodies left to rot in the 1860s following a rebellion against the British, which became known as the Sepoy Mutiny. After the British left in 1947, thousands ... More Anacostia Community Museum's newest exhibition examines explosive Latinx growthWASHINGTON, DC.- What do Washington, D.C., Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Baltimore all have in common? They are all urban areas, are all on the east coast of the United States
and all have experienced rapid growth in their Latinx populations, most with spurts beginning as far back as 1980sand with Washington leading the way as far back as the 1950s. Gateways/Portales, a new exhibition on view at the Smithsonians Anacostia Community Museum from now until Aug. 6, 2017, explores the triumphs and struggles of Latinx migrants and immigrants through the lenses of rights and justice, representation and celebration. The term gateways is a metaphor for points of access into community life, and gateways are thematically incorporated in the design of this issue-based exhibition. ... More 2016 Dolf Henkes Award exhibition opens at TENT RotterdamROTTERDAM.- The exhibition featuring the 2016 Dolf Henkes Award nominees Daan Botlek, Rana Hamadeh, Rory Pilgrim, and Katarina Zdjelar opened on Thursday 15 December. The biennial prize of 12,000 is awarded by the Henkes Foundation to an iconic Rotterdam artist. The winner is announced on Thursday 9 February 2017. Daan Botlek (1977, Vlaardingen) makes drawings, illustrations, and monumental wall paintings in which the human figure is a recurring motif. His work is realised in an urban setting the citys facades and abandoned buildings which he manipulates through plays of perspective and proportion. He makes humorous images using clear contours, often incorporating elements of the surroundings. At TENT, he makes a new monumental wall painting that, in combination with spatial objects, inventively plays with the space. The films, performances, ... More New display at the Museum of London traces the capital's obsession with ice skatingLONDON.- The Museum of Londons latest display, Skating on Ice, looks at the popular seasonal pastime of ice skating which, in London, dates back to at least the 12th century. The first known account by William FitzStephen describes locals strapping animal bones to their feet to play on a patch of ice at Moorfields in 1173. The display tracks the advancements in ice skate designs, highlights changing fashions, and demonstrates how skating on Londons frozen lakes and ponds became an annual, if sometimes dangerous, winter tradition. The most popular lake during the 19th century was the Serpentine in Hyde Park, attracting up to 10,000 skaters each day. A 1839 oil painting from the museums collection by J. Baber depicts a typically festive scene from these times, with stalls hiring out skates and selling food and drink, as well as Icemen on standby to rescue skaters ... More National Air and Space Museum displays suit worn on record-breaking jumpWASHINGTON, DC.- The suit Alan Eustace wore on his record-breaking freefall jump in October 2014 is now on display at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum. Visitors to the museums Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., can view the suit and the balloon equipment module in the Boeing Aviation Hangar. The museum is very excited to now have this suit and balloon system in our collection, said Cathleen Lewis, space history curator at the museum. It serves as an excellent example of both human achievement and ingenuity in spacesuit technology. Eustace, a computer scientist and lifelong aviation and parachuting enthusiast, founded StratEx: The Stratospheric Exploration Project, with the goal of creating a self-contained system for humans to explore the stratosphere. On Oct. 24, 2014, Eustace ascended to the upper reaches ... More British artist Gillian Wearing creates site-specific installation at the ICA/BostonBOSTON, MASS.- Gillian Wearing (b. 1963, Birmingham, UK) has created Rock n Roll 70 (2015/2016), a monumental, site-specific photographic mural for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Bostons Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. On view from December 9, 2016 through January 1, 2018, this new work is the first presentation in Boston of the celebrated artists work and was organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant. Best known for her photographic and video works that intimately capture aspects of our familial and personal histories, Wearing began her career photographing strangers she encountered on Londons streets and continues to explore the nuances of identity, the intersections of public and private, and the performativity of self. Over her career, Wearing has also mined her own life and history ... More Priscilla Lovat Fraser to be the new director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles LOS ANGELES, CA.- On 2 January 2017, Priscilla Lovat Fraser will become the new director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, the California-based branch of the MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art. After an intensive search and numerous conversations with high-caliber candidates, the board of the MAK Center selected the notable architecture expert, who up to then had been working at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Priscilla Lovat Fraser has been working on exhibitions, publications, and projects in the field of architecture for fifteen years. As a senior architect and project manager for the LACMA, where she had been working since 2011, she supervised trail-blazing installations such as Chris Burdens Metropolis II and a James Turrell retrospective, among others. Most recently, she was the ... More Eiffel Tower reopens after five-day strikePARIS (AFP).- The Eiffel Tower reopened to the public on Sunday after a labour strike closed the Paris landmark for five days. Members of the 300-strong workforce voted Sunday to resume their duties following a dispute over management's decision-making and maintenance work, the CGT union said. Unions and management are to sign a memorandum of understanding, the union said, without disclosing its contents. During the Christmas rush as many as 20,000 people a day ascend the tower. Among the projects that workers are concerned about are a major paint-stripping and repainting job to repair flaking areas of the 117-year-old tower which unions say poses health risks because of lead in the old paint. ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, French painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, died December 19, 1745. Jean-Baptiste van Loo (14 January 1684 ? 19 December 1745) was a French subject and portrait painter. In 1737 he went to England, where he attracted attention by his portrait of Colley Cibber and of Owen McSwiny, the theatrical manager; the latter, like many other of van Loo's works, was engraved in mezzotint by John Faber Junior. He also painted Sir Robert Walpole, whose portrait by van Loo in his robes as chancellor of the exchequer is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the prince and princess of Wales. In this image: The Triumph of Galatea, 1720, Hermitage Museum.
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