| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Monday, February 14, 2022 |
| | Carmen Herrera, Cuban-born artist who won fame at 89, dies at 106 | |
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Carmen Herrera at her studio in New York, April 7, 2016. Herrera, a Cuban-born artist who painted abstract geometric shapes in Paris and New York all but unnoticed for most of her long life, then soared to international fame after her canvases began selling when she was 89, died on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022, at the loft in Lower Manhattan that had been her home for 60 years. She was 106. Todd Heisler/The New York Times.
by Robert D. McFadden
NEW YORK, NY.- Carmen Herrera, a Cuban-born artist who painted abstract geometric shapes in Paris and New York all but unnoticed for most of her long life, then soared to international fame after her canvasses began selling when she was 89, died Saturday at the loft in lower Manhattan that had been her home for 60 years. She was 106. Antonio Bechara, an artist and friend and her legal representative, confirmed her death. In an art world that worships the new and the young, Herrera advanced into old age ignored by the commercial markets, savoring only the solitary pleasures of all struggling artists: creating wonders for their own sake. The passing years became decades, and then a half-century. Patiently, her brushes yielded minimalist geometric configurations, like visual haiku, in stark black-and-white and later in radiant colors: triangles and trapezoids, curvaceous shells, rondos and diamonds floating in a pristine white-canvas universe. In postwar Paris, Herrera exhibited at the Salon des Réalite ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day 'Bodily Abstractions / Fragmented Anatomies' at Hauser & Wirth focuses on artists whose work approaches the body and anatomy in complex ways through degrees of abstraction or fragmentation. In doing so, these artists both subvert the way the body has been traditionally represented in the history of art and the conventions surrounding the (classical or modern) fragment.
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| Sotheby's unveils towering example of Monet's Waterlilies & Picasso portrait of his rival lovers | | After Pak and Beeple, what's next for NFT collectors? Art made with a paintbrush | | Exhibition 'Maurice Denis: Amour' opens at the Van Gogh Museum | 
A stunning example of Claude Monets Nymphéas series, this depiction of the waterlilies at Giverny was painted between 1914 and 1917. Courtesy Sotheby's.
LONDON.- Works by two of the most internationally acclaimed artists were unveiled at Sothebys Hong Kong this past week, ahead of Sothebys Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London on 2 March. A stunning example of Claude Monets Nymphéas series, this depiction of the waterlilies at Giverny was painted between 1914 and 1917. The culmination of the artist progression towards true abstraction, this ground-breaking series is widely considered his greatest achievement, and this expressive, later work perfectly encapsulates the artists vision on a grand scale. Having last been at auction in 1978, the work has not been exhibited since 1995, when it went on view across three museums in Japan. It is now coming to auction from a distinguished Japanese private collection. The women of Picassos life were the fulcrum of his creative genius - essential to his creative ... More | | 
Beeple, Everydays The First 5000 Days, NFT, 21,069 pixels x 21,069 pixels (316,939,910 bytes). © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY.- Felix Xu started his NFT art collection by purchasing a Chromie Squiggle, generated by an algorithm. Today, Xu, a 29-year-old Chinese tech executive, has more than 3,000 blockchain-based collectibles. But there is a hole burning in his crypto wallet that he would like to fill with real paintings. His budget stretches toward $500,000 and he is already on the waitlist for in-demand artists who use paint and moving brushes like Zhang Zipiao. So in December, Xu, a founder and CEO of startups Arpa and Bella Protocol, ventured through the gallery booths of Art Basel Miami Beach, where dealers from David Zwirner and Pace Gallery tried bending his ear toward the contemporary art market. He was looking for an education; they were looking for a sale. I was really amazed with all the sculptures and paintings, Xu said in an interview, crediting the fair with ... More | | 
Omslag - Maurice Denis 1899.
AMSTERDAM.- The exhibition Maurice Denis: Amour opened at the Van Gogh Museum on Saturday 12 February. This presentation focuses on the print series Amour (1899), which consists of 13 colour lithographs with sophisticated colours and delicate, chalky lines. Artist Maurice Denis based his prints on poetic passages in his journal expressing his love for Marthe Meurier, who would later become his wife and regular model. Denis spent years creating the perfect series. Maurice Denis: Amour therefore features not only the 13 colour lithographs, but also 45 colourful drawings and trial proofs on loan from various European and American collections, united for the first time in this way. Maurice Denis was part of Les Nabis, a group of young painter-printmakers. Around 1900, the group wholeheartedly embraced the technique of colour lithography. The print series Amour is considered to be the highlight of Denis oeuvre. When making ... More |
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| The Orlando Museum of Art presents Heroes and Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Thaddeus Mumford Jr. Venice Collection | | Julie Saul, effervescent New York gallerist, is dead at 67 | | Arnolfini presents a new and immersive site-specific installation by Donna Huanca | 
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1982. Oilstick and acrylic paint on cardboard, 56 x 36.5 in. MJL Family Trust, LLC, c/o Mr. Richard LiPuma, Manager.
ORLANDO, FLA.- On view at the Orlando Museum of Art, Heroes and Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Thaddeus Mumford Jr. Venice Collection presents a rare group of paintings from a private collection that is being shown for the first time. Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a drug overdose at 27. The eight short years that preceded his death in 1988 were marked by an astonishing trajectory from a little-known street artist to become an international art world celebrity. His life was a familiar story of our time in which a vulnerable artistic genius rocketed to fame only to have his life spin out of control and end in tragedy. The drama of Basquiats life story has contributed a great deal to his now-legendary stature, but as this exhibition affirms, it is the brilliance and originality of his work that is of enduring importance. The twenty-five paintings presented at the OM°A were made by Basquiat in Venice, California, in 1982. ... More | | 
Sally Gall Tailwind, 2015 (detail). Pigment print 26 x 40, 33 x 50 Edition of 10. © Sally Gall, Courtesy Julie Saul Gallery, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- Julie Saul, an energetic and outspoken longtime New York gallerist who championed, often fiercely, photographers like Sally Gall, Andrew Bush and Arne Svenson, as well as multimedia artists like Sarah Anne Johnson, Maira Kalman and Roz Chast, died Feb. 4 at her familys home in Tampa, Florida. She was 67. The cause was acute myeloid leukemia, said her sister and only immediate survivor, Linda Saul-Sena. Saul, who was educated as an art historian, had been working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the early 1980s when she teamed with Nancy Lieberman, an art director working in advertising, to sell photography out of Liebermans Upper West Side apartment. They were young and entrepreneurial, and, as Lieberman pointed out, in those days you could start a gallery on a shoestring. Their first artists were Gall, who makes sensuous investigations of the natural world, from clouds ... More | | 
Donna Huanca Portrait by Tobias Willmann. Courtesy Peres Projects, Berlin.
BRISTOL.- Arnolfini are presenting a new and immersive site-specific installation by Donna Huanca. Huancas interdisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, performance, choreography, video and sensory interventions, all based around her exploration of the human body. Huanca builds her experiential installations around the history and architecture of each new site, enhancing the sensory elements of visitors interactions using sound, scent, and texture. Her CUEVA DE COPAL presentation at Arnolfini plunges the viewer into a cocoon-like space, encouraging viewers to separate their experience from the world around them. Previous installations have seen the artist transform the Copenhagen Contemporarys industrial space of the former B&W welding hall, the early 18th century palace of the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, as well as engage the high desert landscape surrounding the Ballroom Marfa, Texas. Huanca ... More |
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| Stephanie Selby, 'A Very Young Dancer' who inspired many, dies at 56 | | 'The Art of the Highwaymen' on view at the Polk Museum of Art | | Exhibition explores the surprising and bizarre in over 50 works of modern and contemporary art | 
A copy of A Very Young Dancer, featuring Stephanie Selby in Cody, Wyo., Oct. 1, 2011. Lynn Donaldson/The New York Times.
by Katharine Q. Seelye
NEW YORK, NY.- Stephanie Selby, who was the high-profile subject of A Very Young Dancer, a book that inspired a generation of would-be ballerinas and future dance stars, but who abruptly dropped out of the ballet world and disappeared from view, died Feb. 3 in Cody, Wyoming. She was 56. The cause was complications of an apparent attempt to end her life, said Howell Howard, a cousin. At 10, Stephanie was living the dream of many aspiring dancers, taking lessons at the School of American Ballet in the New York City borough of Manhattan, a prestigious ballet academy founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein and the training ground for Balanchines New York City Ballet. In 1975, photographer Jill Krementz, ... More | | 
H Newton, 'Untitled.' Oil on panel.
LAKELAND, FLA.- This spring, the Polk Museum of Art presents nearly 70 works of the prodigious and widely popular group of artists known as the Florida Highwaymen in an original exhibition entitled The Art of the Highwaymen: From the Woodsby Family Collection. The exhibition, featuring works drawn entirely from the Woodsby familys private collection, will be on view from February 12 through May 22, 2022 in the Museums main galleries. While the paintings themselves showcase beautiful Florida landscapes, including lush wetlands, warm beaches, and native Florida flora, the story of the artists behind these successful paintings is one of perseverance and determination. During 1950s America, still in the throes of segregation, a group of self-taught African American painters decided to follow their passion, despite the obstacles of racism and poverty set in their paths. Over the next forty years, the Highwaymen ... More | | 
Laure Albin Guillot [1879-1962], La Demone, c. 1928. Gelatin silver print, 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- When the pioneering Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori considered the future of his field in 1970, he anticipated a phenomenon that he found troubling. As automata became more lifelike, more closely resembling humans, Mori predicted that theyd enter an uncanny valley, a realm where they were disarmingly bizarre. Moris prediction has come to pass in technologies ranging from Disney animatronics to metaverse avatars. However, the great German artist Hans Bellmer anticipated Mori by nearly half a century, deliberately using the uncanny for artistic effect. Bellmers celebrated Poupée series of the 1930s featured an articulated pubescent female doll he photographed in sexual poses that appeared almost but not quite human: a fetish object that elicited equal parts desire and unease. One of these important Surrealist ... More |
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| Carolyn Lazard presents a newly conceived installation at the Walker Art Center | | Online presentation features new works by Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Cain | | Galerie Eva Presenhuber opens a group show in Zurich | 
Carolyn Lazard, Free Radicals, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Maxwell Graham/Essex Street, New York.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Walker Art Center presents the first US solo museum presentation of the work of New York/Philadelphiabased artist and writer Carolyn Lazard (US, b. 1987). Working across disciplines and mediums, Lazard explores the political and aesthetic dimensions of care and dependency. Their practice centers disability as a site of abundance and collectivity, questioning dominant ways of art-making and working that value efficiency and ability over life itself. For their Walker exhibition the artist presents Long Take, a newly conceived installation that responds to the legacy of dance for the camera, considered through the lens of accessibility as a creative tool. Long Take is anchored by a sound installation made of a recorded reading of a dance score, the sound of a dancers movement and breath, and an audio description. Lazard gave the original dance score to their collaborator, dancer and choreographer Jerron Herman, and fil ... More | | 
Sarah Cain, Tidal Wave, 2022. Acrylic, beads made from stones and shells, imitation silver leaf, acrylic on canvas. 177.8 x 152.4 x 5.1 cm, 70 x 60 x 2 in © Sarah Cain. Courtesy the artist.
LONDON.- Victoria Miro Projects is a dynamic series of online presentations by invited international artists in a specially conceived gallery on Vortic Collect. The inaugural project, Or is it because the problem is beautiful to me, features new works by Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Cain on view until 2 April 2022. Sarah Cain expands the traditional notion of painting within the frame by exploring abstraction and spatial interventions in a wide range of media and found materials. Leading a way into new territories of abstraction, Cain moves fluidly between works on site and her object-based studio practice. While the diversity of her materials (including paint, collaged beads, glitter, stained glass and readymade objects) makes each work unique, Cains practice is unified through her meditative, of-the-moment and personal approach to transforming the ... More | | 
Planet of the Apes (Blue Java and Nutmeg), 2022. Handblown glass, 45 x 36 x 30 cm / 17 3/4 x 14 1/8 x 11 3/4 in © Jean-Marie Appriou.
ZURICH.- The body is the oldest subject in art. Until the early 20th century, it was wrapped in certain ideas and conventions of representation that followed the themes of art: religion, mythology, everyday life, landscape, and portraiture. Time and again, the body was the projection surface of emotions such as pain, lust, passion, vulnerability, or willpower, predominantly defined and staged by male artists. It was not until the Surrealists that the door was opened to a psychologically more complex world, in which the body could completely shed the garb of realityneither always clearly assigned a gender nor explicitly staged for the male or female gaze. From that moment on, the body became a symbol: of dreams, of the unconscious, of fantasies, and the psyche of modern man. Often maltreated by fears, it increasingly functions as the scene of a spectacle of the tortured soul. Abstracted, deformed, or mechanized, it ... More |
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 Hollywood royalty comes to Sworders in the springSTANSTED MOUNTFITCHET .- Hollywood royalty comes to Sworders in the spring. The stand-alone auction on March 2 includes more than 100 lots from the family collection of the legendary American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr (1909-2000). This remarkable archive of photographs, cinema posters, personal jewellery, objects of vertu, furniture, paintings and clothing was amassed over Fairbanks Jrs life as a film star, naval officer, producer and family man. They have been consigned for sale by his grandson, Dominick Fairbanks, a film producer who inherited the collection from his mother Daphne (Fairbanks Jnrs eldest daughter). He commented: I have great pleasure in offering this collection of family items from my late grandfathers estate, so that they may be enjoyed by film collectors and Fairbanks admirers all over the world. ... More  Black authors shake up Brazil's literary sceneRIO DE JANEIRO.- Itamar Vieira Júnior, whose day job working for the Brazilian government on land reform took him deep into the impoverished countryside, knew next to nothing about the mainstream publishing industry when he put the final touches on a novel he had been writing on and off for decades. On a whim, in April 2018, he sent the manuscript for Torto Arado, which means crooked plow, to a literary contest in Portugal, wondering what the jury would make of the hardscrabble tale of two sisters in a rural district in northeastern Brazil where the legacy of slavery remains palpable. I wanted to see if anyone saw value in it, Vieira, 42, said. But I didnt have much hope. To his astonishment, Torto Arado won the 2018 LeYa award, a major Portuguese-language literary prize focused on discovering new voices. The recognition jump-started ... More  Annely Juda Fine Art opens an exhibition of works spanning 40 years of Lun Tuchnowski's careerLONDON.- Annely Juda Fine Art is presenting an exhibition of work by distinguished German sculptor, Lun Tuchnowski (1946 - 2018). The exhibition runs from 10th February 26th March 2022 and is an overview of works spanning 40 years. It is Tuchnowskis third exhibition at the gallery and the first since his death in 2018. The works were chosen from the extensive Lun Tuchnowski exhibition at Museum Würth, Kunzelsau, Germany, in 2021-22. Taking inspiration from architecture, design, literature, poetry and mechanics, Tuchnowskis eclectic sculptures are masterful explorations of form. Largely influenced by his teacher and mentor, Danish sculptor Robert Jacobson, Tuchnowski was a hands on sculptor with an appreciation for mechanical design (classic cars and motorbikes) as much as the Cubist-inspired early twentieth-century welded ... More  Compton Verney opens the largest ever exhibition of work by MasterjiCOMPTON VERNEY.- The largest ever exhibition of work by one of British photographys true pioneers opened at Compton Verney. Remarkably, in a career spanning seven decades, it was just six years ago that Maganbhai Patel (1924 2018), more widely known as Masterji, finally achieved national recognition at the age of 94 with a solo show, as part of Coventrys bid to become UK City of Culture. In Compton Verneys comprehensive survey of Masterjis career, visitors will be able to see and enjoy photographs and portraits taken between the 1950s and the 2000s, charting the South Asian community in Coventry and the West Midlands including many which have not been publicly displayed before. The images also provide an important socio-historic record of people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh settling in to a new country ... More  Mifune's transcendent films, with and without KurosawaNEW YORK, NY.- Toshiro Mifune once wrote of his collaboration with director Akira Kurosawa: I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him. OK. Fine. Those were 16 pretty great movies the two of you made together. But you made roughly 170 movies! Never? We can judge whether Mifune, who died in 1997, was being a little too harsh on himself (and his many other directors) beginning this weekend at Film Forum, where a four-week festival will present 33 of the great Japanese actors films, as well as a documentary, Mifune: The Last Samurai. It includes all the movies Mifune and Kurosawa made together certified masterpieces such as Seven Samurai and Rashomon, as well as less well-known but excellent pictures such as High and Low and Red Beard. The chance to see them on a theater screen shouldnt ... More  Dix Noonan Webb to sell the jewellery collection of pioneering archaeologist Beatrice de Cardi LONDON.- An interesting group of antique jewellery from the collection of the late Beatrice de Cardi (1914-2016) will be offered for sale by Dix Noonan Webb in their auction of Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu on Tuesday March 15, 2022 at their Mayfair saleroom (16 Bolton Street, London W1J 8BQ). Beatrice de Cardi left her estate to the Society of Antiquaries of London and, in accordance with her wishes, the proceeds of this sale will go towards the de Cardi awards fund and perpetuate her legacy. Beatrice de Cardi undertook pioneering fieldwork and research in the Arabian Gulf and Pakistan. Over the course of a long and distinguished career she was President of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia, the first Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology, and a recipient of the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries of London. ... More  Paul Holberton Publishing releases 'Van Gogh. Self-Portraits'LONDON.- This important publication accompanies the first ever exhibition devoted to Vincent van Goghs self-portraits across his entire career. The exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, and accompanying catalogue feature world-famous and lesser known works from the great artist. The myth of Van Gogh today is linked as much to his extraordinary life as it is to his stunning paintings. His biography has often shaped the way that his self-portraits have been (mis)understood. Van Gogh. Self-Portraits reconsiders this aspect of his production and places the artists self-representation in context to reveal the role it plays in his oeuvre. It also explores the power and profound emotion of these highly personal paintings. Van Gogh. Self-Portraits is the first time this theme has been exclusively addressed. Self-portraits painted during Van Goghs ... More  Exhibition from the MIMA collection projects an image of contemporary creationBRUSSELS.- For its 12th exhibition, the MIMA is revisiting its past and anticipating its future through the Reload exhibition, which unveils the permanent collection it has built up since 2015. This new opus adopts an original take on creation at the beginning of the millennium, dominated by the Internet revolution and the emergence of the social networks. It paints a portrait of an atypical institution and asks questions about its future. The MIMA opened its doors one month after the Brussels attacks, in a dramatic context, and had to adapt very quickly. The question it is asking itself is whether the underlying idea behind the museum will still be relevant after ten years of activity? To answer this question, the MIMA has announced that it will take stock at the end of 2026! If it fails to reinvent itself by that date, the museum will close its doors. If it succeeds, ... More  Kossmanndejong designs new permanent display for Museum SophiahofTHE HAGUE.- Last week marked the opening of the new permanent display that Kossmanndejong designed for Museum Sophiahof. Our Land Decolonisation, generations, stories shows how the Dutch East Indies colonial past lives on in Dutch society today. Through personal family histories, you will discover how the effects of the Dutch East Indies colonial past passes from one generation to the next. This multitude of perspectives invites visitors to enter the conversation with their thoughts. This exhibition is a journey backward in time. Eight families guide your journey as you travel from the present-day Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies in the 1950s. Following the families stories in reverse, each generation tells you about their experiences specific to their time and place. The families provided never-before-seen objects and images from ... More  Almine Rech opens an exhibition of works by Jean-Baptiste BernadetBRUSSELS.- Almine Rech Brussels is presenting 'Time and Again', Jean-Baptiste Bernadet's fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. It was the first time that I understood that she would grow old. I had come to spend a few days there, at the start of summer. I suggested that we go out for a ride through the countryside. We were driving. My window was down: I smoke when I drive. Hers was closed: she doesnt like the wind in her hair, which was still blonde then. I can see her, sitting beside me, two hands placed calmly on her black dress, two slender, bony hands that I have held in mine so many times. As a child, I would pinch their thin skin for a few seconds, and a small dam of flesh would take shape, before slowly sinking back, then disappearing altogether. I wished that these narrow little mounds that I shaped with the pressure of my clumsy fingers could ... More  'Improbable journey': How a movie from tiny Bhutan got an Oscar nodTHIMPHU.- As a crew of 35 people prepared to make a movie in Bhutans remote Lunana Valley, they faced a slew of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema. They did not even know what a camera was or what it looked like, Namgay Dorji, the village schoolteacher, said in a telephone interview. On Tuesday, the movie, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, was nominated for an Academy Award a first for Bhutan. Its director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, said he had been on an improbable journey ever since deciding to shoot the film, his first, in a Himalayan village about 3 miles above sea level. It was so improbable that I thought I wouldnt be able to finish, ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Life Between Islands 
Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution 
'In-Between' 
Primary Colors
Flashback On a day like today, German sculptor Katharina Fritsch was born February 14, 1956. Katharina Fritsch (born 14 February 1956) is a German sculptor. She lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Katharina Fritsch is known for her sculptures and installations that reinvigorate familiar objects with a jarring and uncanny sensibility. In this image: Katharina Fritsch, Erdbeere / Strawberry 2017. Polyester, paint, 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches, 80 x 80 x 80 cm. ©Katharina Fritsch / VG BildKunst, Bonn / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo: Ivo Faber, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
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