| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, July 6, 2020 |
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| | Frederick Douglass, seen up close | |
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An image provided by Tubyez Cropper, Beinecke Library, artifcats of Frederick Douglass personal collection owned by Beinecke Library of Yale University Library. Yale has acquired a renowned private collection relating to the abolitionist and orator, including rarely seen family scrapbooks that offer a window onto his complicated private life. Tubyez Cropper, Beinecke Library via The New York Times.
by Jennifer Schuessler
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In 2006, historian David Blight had just given a talk about Frederick Douglass in Savannah, Georgia, when he was introduced to Walter Evans, a retired surgeon and collector. Evans invited him to stop by the house and see his Douglass collection. Blight was cautiously intrigued. But later, as Evans began laying out some carefully rebound scrapbooks on his dining room table, he was stunned to see page after page of newspaper clippings, letters and personal reminiscences of the escaped slave who became one of the most famous men in 19th-century America. They were the Douglass family scrapbooks, carefully assembled and annotated by Douglass sons and all but unknown to scholars. I was astonished, Blight recalled in an interview. Im not even sure I knew what I was seeing at first. Evans put it a bit more vividly. I could see Davids head exploding, he said. The trove became a seedbed for Blights Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 bio ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Nick Mooney, a visitor services assistant at Manchester Art Gallery, inspects the galleries that are due to reopen to the general public next month, with new measures in place to mitigate the risk from Coronavirus, in Manchester, north-west England on July 3, 2020. English art galleries, museums and cinemas are able to open their doors from Saturday, July 4, as relaxations of the coronavirus restrictions continue. OLI SCARFF / AFP
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 | | Phillips' white glove Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art realizes $41,135,750 | | Kunsthaus Zürich opens 'Smoke and mirrors. The Roaring Twenties' | | Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong opens an exhibition of new works by Gary Simmons | 
New auction records set for three artists including Titus Kaphar, Christina Quarles, and Ali Banisadr. Image courtesy of Phillips.
NEW YORK, NY.- Joan Mitchells 1962 Noël achieved a remarkable $11 million, demonstrating a robust market for her work, hailing from her early years in Paris when she innovated with slashing brushstrokes and emotive drip techniques. Gerhard Richters 1994 Abstraktes Bild (801-3) was a rare-to-market work from the height of his abstract period and achieved $3,680,000. The successful inclusion of Maxfield Parrishs 1921 Humpty Dumpty recontextualized this figurative and nearly surrealist painting in the oeuvre of realism and 20th century art movements, a positioning trailblazed by Phillips last year with the inclusion of Norman Rockwell in a 20th Century & Contemporary Sale. Basquiats Victor 52448 is a remarkable example of a work from later in the artists oeuvre and one of the largest works on paper by the artist. This work demonstrates Phillips repositioning of Basquiats market with a record sale of his work from 1987, proving that masterworks ... More | | 
Fabian Marti, Cosmic Giggles Series (IX), 2010. Collage, gelatin silver prints (photogram) One-off, 59 x 46 cm. Kunsthaus Zürich, 2010, photo: Courtesy of the artist and the Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich © Fabian Marti.
ZURICH.- From 3 July to 11 October 2020 the Kunsthaus Zürich presents a major themed exhibition on the 1920s: Smoke and Mirrors. The Roaring Twenties. For the first time since the 1970s, an art exhibition sets up a transnational dialogue between Bauhaus, Dada, New Objectivity and the design and architecture icons of modernism. Meanwhile, art practitioners from the 21st century revive the disruptive spirit of the inter-war years to produce surprising new works of their own. The 1920s were a decade of both progression and backlash. A catastrophic world war followed by a pandemic with remarkable parallels to the current corona crisis awakened peoples thirst for life. At no time in the 20th century was the desire for change more intense. Urban visions were created and cities grew at breakneck speed. Conventional role models in society and family were questioned and upended; ... More | | 
Gary Simmons, Untitled (Watch Tower No. 4), 2019. Signed and dated on verso. Gouache and charcoal on paper. Unframed: 80.1 x 66 cm (31 1/2 x 26 in.). Courtesy the artist and Simon Lee Gallery. © Gary Simmons.
HONG KONG.- Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong announced a presentation of new works by Gary Simmons, comprising drawings and a painting, which continue the artists ongoing exploration into the politics of race and identity through his signature erasure drawings. In this new series, Simmons positions seemingly benign images of lighthouses and watchtowers in comparison to one another in terms of function and as metaphors for surveillance in the US. Alternately symbols of hope and oppression, the light house acts as a point of arrival and an emblem of safety, while conversely, the watch tower is a metaphor for the omnipotent hand of the law and a revealing symbol for the American prison system. While the act of erasure renders the imagery ghostly and uncertain, the viewer is nonetheless struck by the clear divergence between looking to a light house and being surveyed ... More |
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| | Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac opens an exhibition of new paintings by Jules de Balincourt | | Margaret Morton, photographer at home with the homeless, dies at 71 | | Marianne Boesky Gallery opens dual-artist exhibition of Thornton Dial and Jasmine Little | 
Portrait of Jules de Balincourt in his studio, Brooklyn, 2020. Photo John Spyrou.
PARIS.- Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting an exhibition of new paintings by Jules de Balincourt. This latest series of abstract landscapes, initiated over a year ago and finalised during the first half of 2020, express a desire for both physical and emotional escape. Mixing intimate and large formats, many of these paintings convey the soothing presence of nature and manifest the need for a shelter far from the world we live in. Created while Jules de Balincourt was splitting his time between Costa Rica, where he has been living partially for the past 20 years, and Brooklyn, where he has spent the last few months in lockdown, the paintings result from a personal reflection on the possibilities of isolation. The title of the exhibition There are more eyes than leaves on the trees derives from a vernacular Costa Rican proverb, which conveys the notion that as isolated as you may be, everyone is always aware ... More | | 
For decades people lived in a two-mile freight tunnel under Riverside Park, until Amtrak evicted them in the mid-1990s. Ms. Morton photographed Larry, a resident, making a meal. Photo: Margaret Morton.
by Penelope Green
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- From her apartment on East 10th Street in Manhattan, Margaret Morton had a front row view of the homeless encampments that engulfed Tompkins Square Park in the late 1980s. As she walked to work at Cooper Union, where she was a professor, she began to photograph these improvised structures, showing the ways people were moved to make themselves at home even when they had so little. When the city bulldozed the park in late 1989, scattering those who lived there, Morton followed them and spent the next 10 years documenting their world and that of others on the margins, not only telling their stories but also advocating for their welfare. The author Philip Lopate, who described ... More | | 
Thornton Dial, Wondering Lady Figures Out What It Takes, June, 1998. Conte crayon and charcoal on paper, 30 x 22 inches. Framed dimensions: 33 1/2 x 25 inches © 2020 Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
ASPEN, CO.- Marianne Boesky Gallery is presenting a dual-artist exhibition of works by Thornton Dial and Colorado-based artist Jasmine Little. The presentation focuses on Dials works on paper created between 1991 2005 and four new stoneware vessels by Little. The exhibition is on view July 2 through September 13, 2020, at the gallerys space in Aspen, Colorado. Dial and Littles works are also being featured in an online viewing room to accompany the exhibition on the gallerys website. Shown together, Dials works on paper and Littles stoneware vessels explore their distinct approaches and interest in iconography. The works on view highlight both artists facility in portraying narrative structures through their chosen medium and create a dialogue around ideas of ownership, ... More |
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| | Tramaine de Senna installs a new commission in Antwerp's main historic park | | The unsung heroes of fashion, now mostly unemployed | | Nikolai Fadeyechev, elegant Bolshoi dancer, is dead at 87 | 
Tramaine de Senna, Figure of Color, bronze and pigmented wax, 2020. Photography Tom Cornille, courtesy Kunst in de Stad - Middelheim Museum.
ANTWERP.- Public Figure is a new series of artists commissions for the public space of Antwerps main historic park (Stadspark). For this first edition, artist Tramaine de Senna (1981, U.S., lives and works in Antwerp) was invited to create a new bronze sculpture that will be on view for one year amongst the other figures in the park. Public Figure is an initiative of Kunst in de Stad Middelheimmuseum. Since its inauguration in 1869, the park is adorned with statues and monuments depicting or celebrating noted historical figures such as painters and poets, monarchs and military men. Now, under the moniker of Public Figure, a disused stone plinth offers contemporary artists a yearly opportunity to add new figures to this public space. By doing so, these new artworks respond to questions about the meaning of public representation today: Who or what ... More | | 
Saint Laurent fall winter collection during the Ready To Wear Fashion Show in Paris on Sept. 24, 2019. Valerio Mezzanotti/The New York Times.
by Vanessa Friedman, Elizabeth Paton, Jessica Testa and Guy Trebay
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In a pre-coronavirus world, hundreds of editors, clients, stylists and celebrities would have converged on Paris this weekend, clacking over the cobblestones in their kitten heels for the couture shows. Those singular displays of fashion art handmade clothes custom-ordered by the very few represent equal parts creative laboratory, artisanal expertise and visual extravaganza. For many, they are also a major employment opportunity. You may see models in gowns on Instagram and hear of the famous names responsible for the updos and cat eyes, but making that perfect 20 minutes happen also demands an army of independent contractors, largely unknown and, now that the shows have gone digital, largely unemployed. Here, a ... More | | 
Nikolai Fadeyechev in Swan Lake in Moscow, 1956. Photo: RIA Novosti archive.
by Anna Kisselgoff
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Nikolai Fadeyechev, one of the Bolshoi Ballets greatest dancers, who was hailed for his distinctive noble style and his chivalry as a partner to the Russian companys leading ballerinas from the 1950s to the 70s, died June 23 in Moscow. He was 87. His death, from heart failure, was announced by the Bolshoi Theater. As an artist, Fadeyechev was one of a kind. In a company acclaimed for its athletic male dancers, he chose to be an elegant and eloquent presence. When audiences were introduced to the Bolshoi in London in 1956 and New York in 1959, both the public and critics were stunned by the bravura of the male dancers and the virtuosity and emotional depth of ballerinas like Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. Fadeyechev was favored as a partner by both, in no small part because he showed off his ballerinas and did ... More |
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| | Beyond Broadway, the show does go on | | Intersect Art and Design announces 100 exhibitors from 26 countries for Intersect Aspen | | Berkshires museums announce reopening plans | 
Scott Naas, who play Jesus, is unmasked during The Great Passion Play, a large-scale production adapted from the Christian Gospels, in an outdoor amphitheater in Eureka Springs, Ark. on June 27, 2020. Beth Hall/The New York Times.
by Michael Paulson
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Inside a former firehouse in Richmond, Virginia, a lone actor performs The Picture of Dorian Gray for audiences as small as two. In a Denver parking lot, theatergoers in cars watch, through their windshields, four performers costumed as grasshoppers. On a 600-acre property in Arkansas, a cast of about 130 re-enacts the story of Jesus for several hundred ticket-holders spread across a 4,000-seat outdoor amphitheater. The coronavirus pandemic has shuttered Broadway through the end of the year (at least), and the nations big regional theaters and major outdoor festivals have mostly pivoted to streaming. But even as infections surge in the United States, many theaters are finding ways to ... More | | 
Sharif Bey, Choir Singer: Bass, 2020. Earthenware, nails and mixed media, 20 x 10 x 10 inches, 51 x 25.5 x 25.5 cm. Signed and dated. Courtesy of albertz benda.
NEW YORK, NY.- Intersect Art and Design announces the exhibitor list for Intersect Aspen (formerly Art Aspen). Intersect Aspen is the new name of the reenvisioned art fair. It will be an online-only event in 2020 due to COVID-19, and will resume its physical presence in Aspen in 2021. The online viewing room will include 100 exhibitors from 26 countries, and will be live from July 22-26, 2020 at www.art-aspen.com. Becca Hoffman, Managing Director of Intersect Art and Design says, We are pleased to have seen a very positive and enthusiastic response from a diverse group of regional, national, and especially international exhibitors. Galleries are excited about regional art fairs and their connectivity to communities known for their support and engagement in art and culture, such as Aspen. Our debut edition of Intersect Aspen has a totally fresh approach and will present a dynamic selection of artworks from a broad and globally engaged ... More | | 
Pia Camil (Mexican, b. 1980), Telluride Tunic, 2015. Stitched fabric, installed: 84 1/2 x 105 x 3 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo © Pia Camil. Photo: Art Evans.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Three major cultural institutions in the Berkshires will reopen this month, following the green light from Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who said Thursday that the state would move into Phase 3 of its reopening plans. In a joint statement, Mass MoCA, the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Clark Art Institute outlined the programming changes and social-distancing measures they will be taking to ensure visitors can return to the museums safely. Mass MoCA, which has performing arts venues, will reopen July 11 and plans to resume some smaller performances starting July 18. The galleries at the Norman Rockwell Museum and Clark Art Institute will reopen July 12. Each museum will require ticketing reservations for staggered entry, and face coverings indoors. The institutions are also planning to use visitor information ... More |
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Design in Crisis | At Home with Christie's
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 Italy's outdoor summer movies see threat from ailing film industry ROME (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Since the dawn of cinema, Italys torrid summers have made outdoor movie showings under the stars a favorite entertainment choice of the season. Even the first Venice Film Festival, in August 1932, was held on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior at the Lido, the island just off the center of Venice. But this year, several nonprofit cultural and social organizations have struggled to get their summer film festivals going after film distributors refused to rent them many requested titles, from the Harry Potter series to BlacKkKlansman to Bohemian Rhapsody. The reason? These nonprofit organizations screen films for free, even as Italys fabled film industry is reeling with many theaters closed because of the coronavirus. We use cinema as an instrument of social cohesion, to try and build community and have ... More Cure3 announce complete list of participating artists for 2020LONDON.- The Cure Parkinsons Trust, in association with Bonhams and Artwise, announced the complete list of participating artists for Cure3 2020, the 3rd edition of the acclaimed selling exhibition devised to raise awareness and funds for curative Parkinsons research. Cure3 is an opportunity to buy original art works by a host of celebrated artists whilst also supporting the important work of The Trust. Cureᶟ will take place from 5th - 8th September, with all works available to view and buy at www.cure3.co.uk, and also presented in a showcase exhibition at Bonhams, London. Cureᶟ 2020 will feature original artworks by more than 90 international artists the highest participating number ever. As well as a host of returning supporters, including Anish Kapoor, Conrad Shawcross, Ron Arad, Rana Begum, Annie Morris and Idris Khan, ... More Exhibition at Marian Cramer Projects presents an eclectic selection of works by 18 international artistsAMSTERDAM.- When artmaking steps away from realistic representation and releases itself from the rules of tangible reality, it enters the infinite sphere of imagination and innovation. Works created with such approach are fueled by the urge to create and explore this obscure realm through experimentation of both the visual and technical aspects of the creative practice. Whether with abstraction, going back to naive or bad painting, simplifying imagery to barely recognizable forms, allowing the materials to lead the creative path, the artists working in such manner at some point stopped giving a damn and boldly entered the unknown territory. Marian Cramer Projects in Amsterdam has teamed up with curator, writer, and contributing editor of Juxtapoz magazine, Sasha Bogojev, for an exciting group exhibition that celebrates the beginning of Summer ... More That healing jazz thing on a porch in BrooklynNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- He was our heard-out-the-window Pied Piper, this saxophonist who signaled the arrival of evening by playing that haunting hymn Amazing Grace. He began playing in the depths of plague and loss in Brooklyn, those early April days when the wail of ambulance sirens was our citys night song. It took several days of listening out our window in Flatbush for my wife, Evelyn, and me to slip on our masks and wander around the corner to Marlborough Road. We found our neighbor, wiry jazzman Roy Nathanson, 69, with a gray-flecked goatee and a Groucho Marx smile, blowing up a storm on his sax on his second-floor balcony, while in the yard below jazz teacher Lloyd Miller thumped expertly on his stand-up bass. Nathansons band grew by the day. Albert Marquès, a Barcelona-born Latin jazz musician and public-school teacher, ... More Exhibition of new sculptures and photographs by Cyprien Gaillard on view at Sprüth Magers, Los AngelesLOS ANGELES, CA.- Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are presenting Reefs to Rigs, an exhibition of new sculptures and photographs by Cyprien Gaillard, as well as his most recent film, in a presentation that connects with the Los Angeles gallerys particular site above a future LA Metro station and across from the La Brea Tar Pits. At this intersection of urban infrastructure and prehistoric matter, Gaillards works emphasize the cyclical, era-spanning interactions between nature and human industry, made visible and palpable through materials encountered across the world. On the ground floor of Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, large wall-based sculptures circumscribe the gallery space, composed of impossibly thin limestone panels atop honeycomb aluminum structures. Swirling constellations of fossils are embedded within each panel, as is the ... More Top Egyptian actor Ragaa al-Geddawy dies from COVID-19CAIRO (AFP).- Famed Egyptian actor Ragaa al-Geddawy died on Sunday after contracting the COVID-19 disease, the actors union said. She was 81. "Ragaa al-Geddawy passed away this morning due to COVID-19," union head Ashraf Zaki told AFP. "No public funeral was arranged for health reasons." Geddawy tested positive for the illness caused by the novel coronavirus in late May and was treated in isolation at a hospital in Ismailia province, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) east of Cairo, local media reported. She had recently finished filming for her latest TV series "Laabet El Nesyan" (Oblivion Game), which aired during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. A veteran actor, Geddawy boasted a lengthy and varied career during which she gained fame across the Arab world. Geddawy started out as a model before taking on acting roles ... More Playing Beethoven's piano sonatas changed how I hear themNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For my senior piano recital in college, encouraged by my teacher, I took on an ambitious program. I opened with an elaborate Haydn sonata and ended by pairing a Chopin nocturne with his teeming Ballade in G minor. I also played the first three of Schoenbergs Five Piano Pieces intensely complex, atonal works that hooked me. At the center of my program was Beethovens Sonata No. 31 in A flat (Op. 110), my first attempt at playing one of the composers visionary late sonatas. I loved Opus 110, which begins with a sublime, rustling first movement and ends with a formidable fugue. The work seemed to me to occupy a wholly other realm: elusive, mystical, beyond style, beyond era. Just playing it well wasnt enough. You had to take listeners with you to its distant cosmos. Was it rash of me, barely into my 20s, ... More James Sherwood, who revived the Orient Express, dies at 86NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Over his long, colorful life, the peripatetic James Sherwood seeded many businesses container leasing, a London guidebook, ferries and riverboats, hotels and restaurants (like the 21 Club in New York and Harrys Bar in London), an ice cream company, a magazine, fruit farms and a vineyard. But what made his name was his revival of the once glamorous Orient Express. Sherwood died on May 18 at a hospital in London. He was 86. His son Charles said the cause was complications of gallbladder surgery. Sherwood bought his first train in 1977: two battered first-class sleeping carriages that had been part of the Orient Express in its heyday. For more than half a century, the Orient Express ran from Paris to Istanbul, among other routes, its luxurious cars fitted out with Lalique glass reliefs, mahogany paneling ... More TarraWarra Museum of Art will reopen with 'Making Her Mark: Selected Works from the Collection'HEALESVILLE.- Victoria Lynn, Director, TarraWarra Museum of Art, said, We are absolutely delighted to be reopening our doors on 14 July. Our collection exhibition Making Her Mark had only been open for a few short weeks before we closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, and its the perfect display to welcome visitors back to TarraWarra Museum of Art, with works full of joyous riots of colour and exuberant mark-making. Our reopening comes with a few new measures including timed ticketing, capacity limits and increased cleaning regimes, and we will continue to offer digital experiences online for those who choose not to visit us in person just yet. Our Museum and the wide expanses of the Yarra Valley are the perfect place to recharge and connect with nature and art, and we cant wait to welcome everyone back. Making Her Mark offers a new appraisal of the ... More Inspiration by artist Bennu. Creativity without formulasNEW YORK, NY.- Bennu's paintings are filled with positive energy. The artists unique style is distinguished by its color, unusual and complex imagination. If you carefully examine the abstract paintings of Bennu, you can see hidden images: mysterious faces, mysterious figures, fantastic landscapes .. Each time, creating a picture, the artist Bennu is looking for something new. He is experimenting. Bennu's paintings are abstract expressionism, minimalism, symbolism. Bennu has his own personal style that sets him apart from other contemporary artists. Despite their external simplicity, they contain the philosophical thoughts of the artist about the meaning of life, love, compassion, happiness, freedom of the human person, the pursuit of dreams, which is reflected in the combination of color, brushstrokes, shapes, composition, name. The artist creates his works, ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Belarusian-French painter Marc Chagall was born July 06, 1887. Marc Zakharovich Chagall (6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 - 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints. In this image: Marc Chagall, Paradise, 1961. Oil on hardboard. H: 43.5 cm, W: 58 cm. Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Marc Chagall) / Gérard Blot / ADAGP, Paris - SACK, Seoul, 2018.
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