The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, January 2, 2023

 
Roland Auctions NY's first sale of the year on January 7th focuses on Mid-Century-Modern

Lot 413 Warren Platner for Knoll Throne Mid-century modern lounge chair with molded shell seat, over a steel rod cage base. Est. $4,500-$6,500.

GLEN COVE, NY.- Roland Auctions NY in Glen Cove, NY is presenting their first auction of the New Year on January 7th at 10am, with a strong focus on Contemporary and Modern Art and an impressive selection of Mid-Century Modern furniture. Getting much of the spotlight already is a monumental outdoor “Shark” sculpture, measuring 18 Ft. in length, by contemporary artist RISK (Kelly Graval). Roland will also feature works by D*Face, Andy Warhol, KAWS, Dale Chihuly, Lucio Fontana, Flo Perkins, DAIN, Martiros Saryan, along with hundreds of lots of Fine Art, Decorative Arts, 20th Century Modern, Antique & Vintage Furniture, Textiles, Silver, Gold and Silver Jewelry, Rugs, Collectibles, Asian Art and Decorative Arts, and Lighting. Previews will be held on Thursday, January 5th and Friday, January 6th from 10am - 6pm. This “Shark” (2018) made from found metal objects, is one of the artist’s first Shark sculptures, was first ex ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
"Beyond King Tut" at Pier 36 in New York City opened for a special midnight showing to commemorate 100 years since the discovery of the tomb. The new exhibition created in partnership with the National Geographic Society is now open for a limited run in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Vancouver, with San Diego and more cities coming in 2023.





Exhibition features more than 250 artworks from dozens of distinct cultures across the African continent   Museum of Fine Arts, Boston exhibits 'The Weng Family Collection of Chinese Painting: Art Rocks'   Groundbreaking Alberto Giacometti exhibition to open at Nelson-Atkins


Face Mask, 20th century. Probably Ubi; Côte d’Ivoire. Private collection, Belgium. Photo by Hughes Dubois.

CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting The Language of Beauty in African Art, an exhibition of more than 250 artworks from dozens of distinct cultures across the African continent. Unlike previous exhibitions that have been guided by Western aesthetic standards, The Language of Beauty in African Art seeks to elevate the local indigenous perspectives on beauty and ugliness of the artworks’ makers and communities. The exhibition is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from November 20, 2022 through February 27, 2023. When Westerners began to collect and study African art in the early 20th century, they admired objects for a range of perceived qualities; however, they rarely if ever took into account any form of local appreciation, value, and criticism. Western scholarship consequently made many assumptions—some correct and some not—about how visual aspects, like size, rare materials, and embellishments, translated ... More
 

Glass in the shape of a rock, Chinese, Qing dynasty, 18th century. Glass with wooden stand. Gift of the Rosenblum Family. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

BOSTON, MASS.- In China, rocks in their natural form are objects of great aesthetic appreciation. As far back as 1,000 years ago, serious art collectors and critics acquired and competed for rocks with the same passion they afforded great works of painting and calligraphy. Rather than celebrating superficial beauty, collectors exalted imperfection for its expressive possibilities and sought rocks that were not symmetrical or smooth or pretty. They used terms like strange, weird and awkward as complimentary descriptions of the rocks they most preferred. The humble rock became, like an abstract sculpture, a medium to explore forms and textures, and to express one’s inner being. In the minds of serious connoisseurs, rocks, as microcosms of mountains—or even the entire universe—were meditations on life itself. From 2018 to 2021, Wan-go H. C. Weng (1918–2020) made the largest gift ... More
 

lberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901 - 1966) The Chariot, 1950. Painted bronze. Gift of the Hall Family Foundation, acquired from the Patsy and Raymond Nasher Collection. F99-33/7

KANSAS CITY, MO.- An exhibition of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), widely acclaimed as a defining artist of modernism and of the 20th century, opens at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City March 18, 2023. Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure explores the central focus of the artist’s oeuvre: his extraordinary and singular portrayals of the human figure. The creative process that led to Giacometti’s figures will be considered through the artist’s work in sculpture, painting, and drawing. Showcasing Giacometti’s major achievements during the post-WWII years, the exhibition is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in the Midwest. “The exploration of a body and its placement in space constitute essential questions Giacometti confronted in his continuous struggle with matter,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director ... More


Victor Hugo Statue takes a prominent place in France's debate on race   Art Institute receives a remarkable collection and $3M endowment gift from the Stenn Family   mumok presents a group exhibition: 'mixed up with others before we even begin'


A statue of Victor Hugo, created by the Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow, in Besançon, France on Dec. 6, 2022. (Andrea Mantovani/The New York Times)

by Catherine Porter


BESANÇON, FRANCE.- The statue of Victor Hugo has loomed outside the city hall of his birthplace, situated on the Esplanade for Human Rights, since 2003, his white beard knotty, his black suit rumpled, his face cast down at his pocket watch. Over the years, the colored bronze began to fade, turning to brown and green, until the mayor’s office recently hired an expert to do a restoration. And that is when the seemingly unremarkable refurbishment of a statue turned into another controversy in France about race, identity and the importation of American “woke” ideas about racial injustice — what the French call “le wokisme.” The city hall’s Facebook site announced the statue had been restored to reflect the original work by celebrated Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow, who, it said, liked color and was not keen on “simple bronzes.” ... More
 

Eve Hesse. Untitled, 1967. Promised gift of The Stenn Family.

CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago announced both the acquisition of a transformative collection of contemporary prints and drawings and a financial gift from The Stenn Family. A promised gift of 97 prints and drawings—from artists including Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Judy Chicago, Donald Judd, and Sol LeWitt—will be united with more than 100 previously given works from The Stenn Family, creating a truly outstanding collection of works on paper by Pop, Conceptual, and Minimal artists from the 20th century. Representing an era that saw a radical change in how works on paper were made, used, and appreciated, this gift will allow museum visitors to see an expansive representation of this foundational moment in the history of drawing. Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, celebrates this moment, remarking “This gift, together with Irving Stenn’ ... More
 

Leilah Babirye, Nakawaddwa from the Kuchu Ngabi (Antelope) Clan, 2021. Glazed ceramic, wood, wax, wire, bicycle chain and found objects, 85.5 × 35.5 × 34.5 cm. Courtesy of Gordon Robichaux, NY and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London Photo: Mark Blower © the artist.

VIENNA.- Conjunctions, chains, and combinations; hybridization, creolization, and amalgamation; bastards, liaisons, aggregators, mycelia, rhizomes, and networked constellations. mixed up with others before we even begin investigates artistic phenomena that reconcile different, often contradictory entities within contemporary visual culture. The exhibition posits these forms of coming into contact and being related against the imperatives of autonomy, originality, and authenticity, and also against a Western notion of purity, which expedited in the modern age and is increasingly voiced once again on the global stages of politics and economy. The featured artists enter into a dialogue with works from the mumok collection and objects from the collections of the Natural History Museum Vienna ... More



White Cube presents an online exhibition of works by Dyani White Hawk   Missoula Art Museum celebrates photography exhibition featuring local and national artists   Zabludowicz Collection opens an installation by created by multimedia artist LuYang


Dyani White Hawk, 2022. Photo by Jaida Grey Eagle. 

LONDON.- White Cube is presenting an online exhibition of works by Dyani White Hawk. As a Sičáŋğu Lakota artist, White Hawk’s practice is informed by a Lakota worldview, which places at its centre the interrelatedness between all life and the land. Understanding culture as fluid and responsive to contemporary experiences, as curator Jade Powers has commented: ‘[White Hawk] visualises oral histories, shifts representation, subverts notions of hierarchy, and deliberately connects histories to bring Native art into the collective understanding of American art history.’ Finding belonging in the realm of abstraction, White Hawk’s visual language is inspired by the histories of Lakota abstract art forms such as beadwork, porcupine quillwork and parfleche painting, as well as Euro/American abstract art forms, most notably within the eras of expressionism and colour field painting. ... More
 

Deschner Maxim Series. Photo Courtesy of the Missoula Art Museum.

MISSOULA, MONT.- The Missoula Art Museum is presenting works by 20 artists in their exhibition, Omnipresent: Photographs from the MAM Collection. For the first time, the Museum surveys photographs collected since 1975. The exhibit brings together local artists such as the late Stan Healy, Kristi Hager, Marcy James, Lauren Grabelle, Chris Autio, Jill Brody, and David Spear, and nationally known artists, such as UM alumna Holly Andres, Imogen Cunningham, and Lee Friedlander. With the advent of the iPhone and social media, the photographic image is ‘omnipresent’ in our daily lives. MAM’s new exhibit continues the invigorating conversation around the medium. “We live in a world that is obsessed with photo images—we take pictures of everything, all the time. When you walk into the gallery, the photographs ... More
 

Installation view of LuYang, LuYang NetiNeti at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2022. Photo: David Bebber. Courtesy of the artist, Zabludowicz Collection and Société, Berlin.

LONDON.- Enter the disorientating and darkly humorous worlds created by multimedia artist LuYang (b. 1984, Shanghai) for their first UK solo exhibition. Immersed in the cultures of anime, videogames and sci-fi, LuYang combines Buddhism, neuroscience and digital technology to investigate the mysteries and mechanics of the human body and mind. The title LuYang NetiNeti incorporates the Sanskrit expression ‘neti neti’, meaning ‘neither this, nor that’. The Main Hall focuses on the artist’s own avatar, DOKU, created using CGI animation and by motion-tracking the movements of dancers. The six versions of DOKU that exist to date correspond to the six paths of Buddhist reincarnation: Hell, Heaven, Hungry Ghost, Animal ... More


The Metropolitan Museum of Art receives $10 million gift from Adrienne Arsht   Last days to see the exhibition of Mouteea Murad: The Common Pursuit of Happiness at Ayyam Gallery   Patron Gallery presents Alex Chitty: Figs break open of themselves & Kadar Brock: The purple rose ashram of the new age


In this file photo visitors enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the Richard Serra exhibition in New York, April 12, 2011. (Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times).

NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that Adrienne Arsht has pledged $10 million in support of the MetLiveArts performance series, the largest single gift to the Museum’s Department of Live Arts. This transformative gift will fund department activities that uplift and highlight themes of resilience through art. The gift follows previous donations from Ms. Arsht to The Met that have strengthened inclusivity by creating the Museum’s first ever fully paid internship program and supported a diverse program of contemporary performance art. “We are incredibly grateful to Adrienne Arsht for her remarkable gift, which will significantly advance the Museum’s commitment to groundbreaking performances and a thriving commissioning program,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “The deep impact of Ms. Arsht’s ... More
 

Mouteea Murad 'Trial No. 141', 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 200 X 200 cm.

DUBAI.- “If there is an abiding theme in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people’s past histories.” - Douglas Kennedy. Mouteea Murad: The Common Pursuit of Happiness on view since November 14th, and will continue through January 5th at the ayyam gallery in Dubai. The soul is a timeless and boundless gift God has accorded us and us only. A gift that needs to be cherished, studied, and delved into. Past souls’ work and thoughts remain, and our predecessors’ glories fill our hearts. Thus making the task of distinguishing one’s self exhausting. Unfortunately, society’s views and values often lead us towards misconception and aesthetic abuse. Nonetheless, the act of creation leads to a deeper understanding of our psyche. Diving into our complex minds, the most abstract matter, we enter a quest towards reality, our version of the truth. ... More
 

Kadar Brock, Bolshevik Pete's, Mutual Tipple, You Never Heard, 2021

CHICAGO, ILL.- Alex Chitty produced this series of wall-based sculptures and photographs over the course of two years—the two extraordinary years of the initial Covid disruption, to be specific. In this extended period of close looking and unhurried experimentation, she developed the pieces presented here as a single, ongoing body of work: She refers to the first work we encounter in the gallery, Figs break open of themselves (I, II, III) (2020–22), as “an index of ideas” that holds the “individual chapters” of the other pieces. Within this triptych, we are introduced to the full array of artistic strategies that reappear across the rest of the exhibition—the back and forth between surface and depth, striking configurations of textures and finishes, moments of humor and withholding. Chitty has long engaged with aesthetic and material elements of the domestic, which she reflects on here as a site of gathering and conversing, ... More




Strike up the Band!



More News

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by British artist Faisal Abdu'Allah
MADISON, WI.- Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting Dark Matter, an exhibition by British artist Faisal Abdu’Allah (b. 1969, London). The exhibition explores personal identity, cultural representation, and self-determination. Dark Matter includes a selection of the artist’s most celebrated series, as well as a reconstruction of Garden of Eden (2003), an architectural installation the artist created in collaboration with renowned architect Sir David Adjaye. It is the first time that Garden of Eden will be exhibited in the United State. Exploring issues of privilege, exclusion, and the voyeuristic gaze, this interactive work separates visitors based on genetic traits—in this case, eye color—in order to undermine our perceptions of difference and alienation. With Garden of Eden, Abdu’Allah points to the privileges conferred to certain people based on the nuances of their genetic matter ... More

Fran&ccedilois Ghebaly Gallery presents Ivana Bašić: Form of Flight
LOS ANGELES, CALIF.- François Ghebaly is now presenting Form of Flight, New York-based artist Ivana Bašić’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The wall-based sculptures and drawings on display offer an introduction to the formal strategies and unique material language that the artist has developed over the course of her practice—what the artist calls “a language of becoming." Yugoslavian-born artist Ivana Bašić has for over a decade endeavored at an artistic and philosophical workspace far beyond the conventional bounds of human or organic form. To the contrary, her figures are metamorphic, in states of shifting biological, physical, and metaphysical identity. Charged by the artist’s early vantage of violence and brutality brought on by the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bašić’s multidisciplinary practice levies a posthumanist lens to investigate our most pressing ontological ... More

Cara De Silva, food historian who preserved Jewish recipes, dies at 83
NEW YORK, NY.- Cara De Silva, a journalist and historian of food and culinary culture who in 1996 edited a groundbreaking collection of recipes amassed by prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp, which became a surprise hit, died Dec. 7 in New York. She was 83. Her close friend and fellow food writer Fred Plotkin said that the death, at a hospital, came after a very brief illness, but that the exact cause had not been determined. A lifelong Manhattanite who made her name as a reporter for Newsday and later as a freelance writer for publications like The New York Times and the food, wine and travel magazine Saveur, De Silva was less interested in hot trends and buzzy restaurants than in the culinary byways and subcultures that undergirded a community, and in the way a place’s history could be understood through its food. “The venerable socca symbolized an older ... More

Speed Art Museum receives monumental gift of more than 170 works
LOUISVILLE, KY.- In a transformative addition to its collection, the Speed Art Museum has received a monumental bequest of 177 works of contemporary art from the private collection of the late Alfred R. Shands III (1928-2021) and Mary Norton Shands (1930-2009). Ranging from paintings, prints, and works on paper to ceramics and large-scale sculptures, the Mary and Alfred Shands Art Collection features notable works by artists including Petah Coyne, Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson, Zaha Hadid, Alfredo Jaar, Anish Kapoor, Sol LeWitt, Maya Lin, Odili Donald Odita, Kiki Smith, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Betty Woodman. With significant additions by a range of major twentieth-century figures including works by female artists, artists of color, and leading Kentucky artists, the landmark gift brings greater depth and breadth to the Speed’s contemporary art holdings ... More

Tallinn Art Hall opens its Lasnamäe Pavilion with a new exhibition
TALLINN.- “Is There Hope For Lovely Creatures?”, asks the opening exhibition of Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion, which focuses on the inner world of women, the most fragile yet bravest members of society. The main starting point for the exhibition is the honest and personal reactions of Estonian- and Russian-speaking artists to trust and climate crises, wars and pandemics, the imbalance in traditional family relationships and what the tensions caused by them have transformed into in our innermost feelings. Maintaining balance on such a fluctuating terrain, a woman and her sensitive skin leave a particularly strong impression. “Being the first exhibition at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion, Is There Hope For Lovely Creatures? seeks to access the distinctiveness of the creative impulses of Russian-speaking artists in Estonia. Speaking about womanhood ... More

Jean Franco, 98, pioneering scholar of Latin American literature, dies
NEW YORK, NY.- Jean Franco, a pioneering literary scholar who did much to shape Latin American studies in the late 1960s and ’70s, examining the region’s literature through feminist and political perspectives, died Dec. 15 at her home in New York. She was 98. Her son, Alexis Parke, confirmed the death. Latin American studies was just emerging when Franco began her academic career in the mid-1960s, and much of it was focused on economics, sociology and political science. But it was also the moment when a new generation of writers was appearing across the region, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. Through a series of wide-ranging studies, including her landmark book “The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist” (1967), Franco argued that the region’s literature deserved its own sustained focus ... More

How Barbara Walters went from 'Today girl' to pioneering media star
NEW YORK, NY.- Long before she became the first woman to co-anchor a network newscast and the foremost prime-time interviewer of heads of state and Hollywood stars, Barbara Walters understood the power of television. When she was a teenager in New York City, she saw that TV provided an escape for her cognitively disabled sister, who spent hours watching “I Love Lucy” and “Texaco Star Theater.” And it wasn’t lost on her how her father’s nightclub business fell off in part because of television's ability to keep people in their living rooms at night rather than out on the town. Walters, who died Friday at age 93, had spent more than five decades in front of the camera and had become a titan of the medium: lauded for the subjects she scored, criticized for her coziness with them, even memed for how she presented herself. But when she started out ... More

Edward Hopper and Guy P&egravene Du Bois: Painting the Real at the Polk Museum of Art
LAKELAND, FLA.- 511 Projects opened the exhibition, Edward Hopper and Guy Pène Du Bois: Painting the Real at the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, this past December 17th, and will continue to have it on view through March 26th, 2023. The exhibition of sixty artworks by the Hopper and Pène du Bois is the first to examine these two American modernist masters side by side, within the context of their close personal relationship as well as their shared commitment to painting the real life and lives that surrounded them in twentieth-century America. Born in Brooklyn in 1884 to French parents, Guy Pène du Bois was a painter of people and their relationships. His French-American dualist identity gave him a unique perspective as both insider and outsider – at home but also abroad – towards Americans and American life in the twentieth century ... More

India's most awaited art & culture movement, The Mumbai Gallery Weekend is back 12th to 15th January, 2023
MUMBAI.- The most awaited event on Mumbai's art and culture calendar, Mumbai Gallery Weekend, is back from 12th to 15th January, 2023 — this time on a far grander scale, with a wider range of galleries, both established and young, that are situated throughout the city — in Colaba, Fort, Kala Ghoda, Ballard Estate, Worli, Lower Parel, Byculla and Bandra. The four-day Gallery Weekend is a fantastic opportunity to engage with the Visual arts — including Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Media Art, Installation, the Decorative Arts, and Design. New entrants on Mumbai’s gallery scene that will be part of the Weekend, include ExperimeterColaba, ChemouldCoLab, Art and Charlie, and the impressive Ice Factory Ballard Estate — ... More


PhotoGalleries

New Images in the Age of Augustus

Alexander McQueen

Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk

Freedom of Movement


Flashback
On a day like today, Italian painter Piero di Cosimo was born
January 02, 1462. Piero di Cosimo (2 January 1462 - 12 April 1522), also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was a Florentine painter of the Italian Renaissance. He is most famous for the mythological and allegorical subjects he painted in the late Quattrocento. In this image: Piero di Cosimo, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Catherine of Alexandria, Peter, and John the Evangelist with Angels, completed by 1493. Oil and tempera on panel, 203 x 197 cm (79 7/8 x 77 1/2 in.). Museo degli Innocenti, Florence.

  
© 1996 - 2021
Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez