| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, July 11, 2016 |
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| | Old bones at Philistine cemetery in Israel shed new light on Goliath's people | |
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US anthropologist and pathologist, Sherry Fox shows a skull discovered at the excavation site of the first Philistine cemetery ever found on June 28, 2016 in the Mediterranean coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon. With an excavation in southern Israel unearthing a Philistine cemetery for the first time, bones of the biblical giant Goliath's people can finally shed new light on mysteries of their culture. The cemetery's discovery marks the "crowning achievement" of some three decades of excavations in the area, the expedition's organisers say. MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP.
by Daphne Rousseau
ASHKELON (AFP).- With an excavation in southern Israel unearthing a Philistine cemetery for the first time, bones of the biblical giant Goliath's people can finally shed new light on mysteries of their culture. The cemetery's discovery marks the "crowning achievement" of some three decades of excavations in the area, the expedition's organisers say. Some of the site's finds were going on display Sunday at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. Almost three millennia since the Philistines were wiped off the face of the earth by Babylonian armies, a US archaeologist was hard at work crouched in one of their funerary chambers at the excavation in the Mediterranean city of Ashkelon. Brush in hand he delicately extracted from the sandy soil the complete skeleton of a Philistine buried with a terracotta perfume flask, fused to the skull with the passage of time. "This discovery is a crowning achievement ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day BRUCE CONNER: IT'S ALL TRUE is the first monographic museum exhibition in New York of the artist Bruce Conner, the first large survey of his work in 16 years, and the first comprehensive retrospective. Installation view of BRUCE CONNER: ITâ??S ALL TRUE. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 3-October 2, 2016. © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Martin Seck
| Nazi-seized Degas drawing sells for 462,500 euros | | Sotheby's to offer Mahlers complete Second Symphony | | Napoleon's last horse to strut his stuff after makeover | 
The drawing was confiscated in August 1940 from the Paris home of Maurice Dreyfus, a doctor.
PARIS (AFP).- A drawing by Edgar Degas that was seized by Nazi Germany in 1940 and returned to its rightful owner in May fetched 462,500 euros ($511,000) at auction on Sunday, organisers said. An Italian collector purchased the 1898 drawing, titled "Trois Danseuses en Buste" by telephone, according to the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau near Paris. The work had been valued at between 350,000 and 450,000 euros. The drawing was confiscated in August 1940 from the Paris home of Maurice Dreyfus, a doctor. It was found in 1951 in a closet of the former German embassy in Paris, and given to the Louvre Museum before it was identified as the property of the Dreyfus family. "We received a gift from heaven when we learned that they found the Degas drawing," Dreyfus's daughter Viviane told AFP. "It's as if my father gave us a gift from beyond the grave. We ... More | | 
Monumental manuscript of Mahlers complete Second Symphony (The Resurrection). Estimate in excess of £3.5m. Photo: Sotheby's.
LONDON.- On 29 November 2016, Sothebys in London will offer at auction the complete manuscript of Gustav Mahlers Second Symphony (the Resurrection). This dramatic manuscript, spanning 232 pages and written in the composers distinctive hand throughout, is the highest-estimated musical manuscript ever to be offered at auction, estimated in excess of £3.5m. This hugely significant monument of musical history is made all the more noteworthy by its remarkable provenance. It is being offered by the estate of the American economist and businessman, Gilbert Kaplan (1941-2016), who, having become infatuated with Mahlers Symphony No. 2 upon seeing the piece performed at New Yorks Carnegie Hall in 1965, dedicated his life to realising his dream of conducting the piece with the worlds greatest orchestras. No complete ... More | | 
People restoring Vizir, the last horse of Napoleon Bonaparte the Ist. FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP.
PARIS (AFP).- Visitors to the Army Museum in Paris are being treated to the rare sight of two taxidermists at work restoring a stuffed horse -- the last one ridden by Napoleon Bonaparte. "Le Vizir" is a little worse for wear more than 200 years after carrying the emperor to victory against the Prussians and the Russians -- not to mention being stuffed not just once, but twice. "It's a specimen that has suffered," was the expert, if understated, assessment of taxidermist Yveline Huguet as she worked putty into a crack in Le Vizir's chest. The white Arabian stallion, a gift to Napoleon from an Ottoman sultan in 1802, sports a brand on his rump made up of an N topped with a crown. One of the emperor's favourites -- recalling great victories at Jena and Eylau -- he accompanied his master to exile in Elba after Napoleon's first forced abdication in 1814. By the time Napoleon swept back ... More |
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| Vancouver Art Gallery exhibits works by Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paale | | Private world of Beatrix Potter revealed at Sotheby's sale | | Top Iran sculptor says accused of 'disturbing public peace' | 
Emily Carr, Juice of Life, 193839, oil on canvas, Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater, Victoria, Gift of Dr. Ethlyn Trapp, Vancouver, Photo: Stephen Topfer, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
VANCOUVER.- Vancouver Art Gallerys new exhibition reveals a previously little-known encounter between iconic Canadian painter Emily Carr (18711945) and Austrian-born Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen (19051959) On view from July 1 to November 13, 2016, I Had an Interesting French Artist to See Me This Summer: Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paalen in British Columbia showcases nearly 60 exceptional works created by both artists before and after their historic meeting in 1939, in Victoria, BC. Once regarded as an isolated figure, Emily Carrs vital connectedness to the artistic milieus of North America and Europe in the early to mid-twentieth century has surfaced in recent research. With Wolfgang Paalen and Emily Carr, a story emerges of two Modernist artists struggling to make sense ... More | | 
Beatrix with her dog Kep. Photo: Sotheby's.
LONDON.- This week, Sothebys London sale of English Literature, History, Childrens Books and Illustrations will include a collection of over 200 photographs providing a glimpse into the personal life of one of the worlds most loved childrens authors, Beatrix Potter. Spanning forty years, from Beatrixs childhood to middle age, the collection shows Beatrix at leisure, charting her family life, friends, holidays in Scotland, and life in her beloved Lake District. As expected, in many of the photographs Beatrix is pictured alongside her family pets and various dogs and rabbits, including Benjamin Bunny himself. Among the highlights are Beatrixs personal copies of the most famous photograph ever taken of her, showing the author standing in the doorway of her much-loved Lake District Home, Hill Top Farm. They come in an envelope addressed to Beatrix from the photographer, Charles King. Most of the photos however ... More | | 
This file photo taken on November 9, 2009 shows Iranian artist Parviz Tanavoli. HAIDER SHAH / AFP.
TEHRAN (AFP).- Prominent Iranian sculptor Parviz Tanavoli said Sunday he stood accused of disturbing the public peace, the ILNA news agency reported, after he was prevented from leaving the country last week. "I learnt this morning in court that the police had accused me of publishing false information and disturbing the public peace," he told ILNA, after visiting Iran's special court for culture and media. "They told me my sculptures are examples of disturbing the public peace," the 79-year-old said, although the police did not immediately confirm this. The authorities confiscated Tanavoli's passport last week as he attempted to fly to London for the launch of his new book, "European Women in Persian Houses". The book, a study of images from Iran's Safavid and Qajar eras, contains some nudes -- the display of which is banned in the Islamic republic. "I have worked ... More |
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| Check your attic, cellar & garden shed for hidden treasures | | From Guernica to slavery, Spanish vet recalls war horrors | | The color woodcut in Vienna around 1900 explored in Frankfurt | 
A remarkable and electrifying discovery was Kurt Cobains black and white Mexican Fender Stratocaster guitar played and smashed by Cobain.
LONDON.- When last did you think about looking through the years of collected junk in your attic? The auction world lives off such discoveries say Barnebys, the worlds leading art and auction search engine. Many people who do go in search of such treasure are stumped when faced with a work of art, antique or collectors item they want valued, not knowing where to begin. Barnebys offer a free service. A remarkable and electrifying discovery was Kurt Cobains black and white Mexican Fender Stratocaster guitar played and smashed by Cobain. It was used during the American leg of the In Utero Tour in late 1993. It was given personally by Cobain to an audience member at the end of the 16th Feb 1994 show at Palais Omnisport, Rennes, France. It is fully playable after restoration by a guitar technician. Normally valued at a few hundred pounds the Cobain connection added thousands to its value at around ... More | | 
Luis Ortiz Alfau, 99, stands at his home in the Spanish Basque city of Bilbao on May 5, 2016. ANDER GILLENEA / AFP.
by Laurence Boutreux
BILBAO.- Luis Ortiz Alfau was 19 and working at a food warehouse when Spain's civil war began in 1936, as General Francisco Franco led an uprising against a democratically elected Republican government. Today almost 100, Luis is one of the last surviving witnesses of the atrocities of that conflict, from the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica to the forced labour camps. "I joined a battalion of the Republican Left in the first days of August in Bilbao," he recalls at his flat in his hometown of Bilbao in northern Spain, surrounded by his archives and his computer. "As the son of a Republican I had to join because they would surely call me up and I wanted to defend freedom and the legal Popular Front government," adds Luis, wearing a traditional round Basque beret. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the war, which pitted the elected leftist government against Franco's ... More | | 
Karl Anton Reichel, Study of a Female Nude, 1909 (vertical format), Colour woodcut on paper, Image: 22,7 x 22,2 cm, Vienna Albertina, Inv. DG1910/363 © Albertina, Vienna.
FRANKFURT.- This exhibition is a first. The woodcut is one of the oldest printing techniques known and reached its zenith during the Middle Ages with Albrecht Dürer. Over the centuries the technique was increasingly forgotten, only to be rediscovered quite suddenly throughout Europe in a trend-setting development at the beginning of the 20th century. This was also the case in Vienna, where numerous artists, including a remarkable number of women, breathed new life into the color woodcut. From July 6 to October 3, 2016 the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is dedicating a major, long overdue exhibition to this previously largely neglected phenomenon. Some 240 works by over 40 artists also employing related techniques such as linocut and block printing give an impressive overview of the subject and demonstrate for the first time the full extent of the aesthetic and social achievements of the color woodcut ... More |
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| Artemis Gallery to auction fine classical antiquities + folk art benefiting Fowler Museum at UCLA | | How to Sell your Art Online: Harper Design publishes new book by Cory Huff | | Installation by artist Walter McConnell features a profusion of porcelain at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery | 
Important 18th/19th-century Benin Empire (Nigeria) bronze rooster, ex Carol Harrell collection, est. $10,000-$15,000. All images courtesy Artemis Gallery.
BOULDER, COLO.- Collecting fads may come and go, but one blue-chip category whose following has grown exponentially over the last several decades is ancient antiquities. There will always be a fascination about the way people lived many centuries ago, from prehistoric times through more recent periods. The people may be long gone, but their cultures continue to intrigue us through the art and artifacts they left behind, said Teresa Dodge, co-founder and executive director of Artemis Gallery. The Colorado-based specialty auction house has handled some of the worlds most prestigious collections of antiquities and tribal art. Its next offering, slated for Thursday, July 14, features a choice selection of 366 antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Italy, the Near and Far East; Pre- ... More | | 
6 Ways to Increase the Value of Your Art.
NEW YORK, NY.- For years, the formal gallery system has acted as a gatekeeper between artists and the people with money and influence. Now theres a new generation of artists who treat their art career like a business and are succeeding beyond anything they could have imagined. The Internet has knocked the gate down and savvy artists are seeing opportunity everywhere, even as art galleries close left and right. There are independent artists making six and seven figure incomes doing what they love. In How to Sell your Art Online: Live a Successful Creative Life on Your Own Terms (Harper Design; On sale: June 28, 2016; $14.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-241495-3), Cory Huff dispels the myth of the starving artist, introduce artists who are earning a successful living, and teach readers how they can do the same. He provides details on effective business strategies, including: how to find ... More | | 
Walter McConnell, A Theory of Everything: White Stupa, 2008. Porcelain, 264.2 Ã 284.5 cm. Photo courtesy Cross-McKenzie Gallery, Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON, DC.- American sculptor Walter McConnell explores the Wests near-fanatical fascination with blue-and-white Chinese porcelain from the 1870s through today in the installation Chinamania. On view at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery from July 9 through June 4, 2017, it complements Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Watersons Filthy Lucre, currently on view. Chinamania,the third installment of exhibitions running concurrently with Watersons Peacock Room REMIXincludes more than 50 blue-and-white porcelains from Chinas Kangxi period (16611722)similar to those originally displayed in James McNeill Whistlers Peacock Room. McConnell designed the dramatically lit display of blue-and-whites and a pendant piece created from ... More |
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Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern
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 Persuasive Percussion: On Stellar Rays opens group exhibitionNEW YORK, NY.- On Stellar Rays announced the opening of Persuasive Percussion, featuring new works by Athanasios Argianas, Julia Bland, Zipora Fried, and Ryan Mrozowski. This exhibition is the second in a series of exhibitions to inaugurate 213 Bowery with new works by gallery artists. Persuasive Percussion explores the interplay of rhythm and repetition commonly attributed to sound, but in this case, transmutable to image. The exhibition title takes its name from the series of LP albums released in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Enoch Light (1905-1978), a classical violinist, bandleader, and recording engineer who pioneered use of a specific stereo effect that bounced sound between right and left channels to create a more immersive aural experiencea radical departure from the then-commonplace mono sound of AM radio. Light notably invited Josef ... More Orlando Museum of Art acquires a painting by noted artist, Harold GardeORLANDO, FLA.- The Orlando Museum of Art announced the acquisition of Dark Landscape, a painting created in 1965 by the renowned American artist Harold Garde. Gardes extraordinary artistic career spans over 70 years. Graduating from Columbia University in 1951, Garde was immersed in the New York art world just as Abstract Expressionism was gaining worldwide attention. Gardes paintings reflect his engagement with this movement and his regard for artists such as William de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and others working in New York at that time. While Gardes work has shifted fluidly between abstraction and representation throughout his life, the spirit of creative discovery and the vitality of gestural painting, which are hallmarks of Abstract Expressionism, have remained central to Gardes work. Dark Landscape is an abstract composition that only ... More Waxworks: Rosha Yaghmai opens first exhibition with Weiss BerlinBERLIN.- Weiss Berlin is presenting the exhibition Waxworks with sculptures by Rosha Yaghmai. In the first exhibition of the sculptor with the gallery, Yaghmais continuous, intensive examination of materials, manufacturing processes, shapes and colors clearly indicates the heritage of modern American, particularly Californian, sculpture. This new group of works includes objects made of silicone, fiberglass, limestone, and found objects that all appear luminous and at the same time transparent and opaque.
The precise, molded silicone Panels appear bright but also impenetrable, solid, and heavy. Each panel includes a connecting element such as a hose for water pipes, diving, showering, or a telephone cable. In the panels, these connectors appear as fossilized relics from a bygone age: Their permeability, once the most important feature of their functionality, ... More Cause the Grass Don't Grow and the Sky Ain't Blue: Group show opens at Praz-DelavalladePARIS.- Re-enchanting the town. Learning how to be amazed. Looking reality in the eye. Showing those urban zones that are the subject of so many fantasies, but all too rarely in the spotlight for their social and cultural treasures. Highlighting movements that are looked down on at first, before they become a reference. Encouraging so-called high culture and popular cultures to meet. Exploring interactions between the urban environment and surrounding nature. Between a reality that alienates and the lyrical digressions of our individual or collective imagination. Being just as fascinated by the essence of a teeming city, as by the calm of the tropical jungle at dawn. Pushing back the limits. Challenging preconceived ideas. Blurring the boundaries. Exploring all the possibilities of the town and its suburbs these are just some of the exhibition's objectives. This show brings ... More Sissel Marie Tonn wins the Theodora Niemeijer Prize 2016 EINDHOVEN.- The Theodora Niemeijer Prize 2016 was awarded to Sissel Marie Tonn. This was announced on Thursday evening 7 July during a ceremony in the auditorium of the Van Abbemuseum. Tonn will develop the project Intimate Earthquake Archives in Het Oog (The Eye) in the Van Abbemuseum for half a year, starting on 27 September 2016, and in addition receives prize money of 10.000. The jury believed that her proposal many different fields of knowledge technology, nature, science, data and visual culture come together in a very consistent and surprisingly intimate way. Tonns intrinsic engagement in this project feels very substantial and therefore very sincere. The second place is for Marieke Gelissen, the third place for the duo Lotte van der Woude en Rosa Johanna; they will receive 2.500 and 1.500 respectively. During this second edition of the Theodora ... More Retrospective of the work of Michael Buthe on view at Haus der KunstMUNICH.- Michael Buthe was born in Sonthofen in 1944 and died in Cologne in 1994. After completing his studies at the Werkkunstschule Kassel and at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Buthe began his artistic career, at a time when German "Informal" and American Minimal Art were shaping new approaches to making and the medium of painting was in crisis. Michael Buthe's cloth objects from the 1960s and the early 1970s were a tactile response to this period. Following the creation of his first cloth canvases, Buthe continued to push the medium of painting ever further into the surrounding space, opposing the cool conceptual framework of Minimalism with a pronounced sensuality, and rigorously questioning the value of spirituality in a secular society. The retrospective follows these developments and presents Buthe's oeuvre chronologically. Although his work ... More Church and China Communists vie over French missionaryDINGAN (AFP).- To the Catholic Church, French missionary Auguste Chapdelaine is a saint, martyred for his faith 160 years ago in China. To Communist Party officials, he is a devilish rapist, bandit and spy. The finishing touches are being put to a new museum in Dingan, the village where he died, celebrating the "patriotism" of his execution and condemning the "spiritual opium" of religion. Inside, Catholic vestments and chalices are displayed near a life-sized diorama of a white-robed Chapdelaine kneeling before the Qing dynasty magistrate who had him tortured and killed. Outside, a six metre bronze mural shows the missionary confined in a cage designed to suffocate captives to death over several days. The facility is part of a local tourism drive, but also fits into the ruling party's nationalist narrative and comes as increasingly assertive authorities in Beijing decry the influence ... More Public art program of The University of Texas acquires works by Marc Quinn and Ann HamiltonAUSTIN, TX.- Landmarks, The University of Texas at Austins public art program, today announced two significant additions: the recent acquisition of Marc Quinns 2013 sculpture, Spiral of the Galaxy, to be unveiled in September 2016; and the commission of O N E E V E R Y O N E, a community-based photography project by Ann Hamilton (January 2017). Both works will be installed at the universitys Dell Medical School and are funded through a percent-for-art allocation that sets aside one-to-two percent of capital improvement projects for the acquisition of public art. The two acquisitions were initiated by Landmarks, one of the most important public art programs to emerge at an American university. On view throughout Austins 433-acre main campus, the collection includes works by Michael Ray Charles, Mark di Suvero, ... More World's biggest orchestra performs in German stadiumBERLIN (AFP).- More than 7,500 classical musicians performed in a German football arena at the weekend to set the world record for the biggest-ever orchestra. Amateur groups and full orchestras from Germany as well as Austria and the Netherlands took part in the mega-show Saturday evening in Frankfurt's Commerzbank Arena, national news agency DPA reported. With 7,548 musicians involved, the event trumped the previous biggest such performance in the Guinness Book of Records, set in Brisbane, Australia in 2013, with 7,224 musicians. The giant orchestra in Germany performed excerpts from symphonies by Dvorak and Beethoven, including the "Ode to Joy", as well as a melody from the musical "Starlight Express" and a 1976 pop song by John Miles, "Music (Was My First Love)". "We wanted to show how music can connect people, and how important it is ... More Street art, techno museums to bottle Berlin's cultural lightningBERLIN (AFP).- Berlin, the cash-strapped capital of Europe's top economy, has long tried to turn alternative culture into gold, but ambitious new bids to present underground art in museum settings could break new ground. Street art and techno music took root across the city in the hothouse environment of post-Wall Berlin, drawing young creative types from around the world with cheap rents and disused industrial spaces ripe for the taking. But as the city's trademark brand of gritty coolness became globally renowned and then gradually more mainstream, Berlin has tried to capture lightning in a bottle: capitalising on the best of its art and nightlife scene without losing the spark that made it so unique in the first place. A prime example of that high-wire act is the legendary nightclub Tresor. A former underground safe room for a pre-war department store that later ... More Vice Media acquires majority stake in Garage magazineSAN FRANCISCO (AFP).- Vice Media on Tuesday announced that it has bought a controlling interest in Garage magazine, a twice-annual publication founded by the wife of a Russian billionaire. Launched in 2011 by Dasha Zhukova, wife of Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, Garage looks at culture, art and fashion through a hip, modern lens. The magazine, named after a contemporary art museum Zhukova opened in Moscow, strives to blend print and digital media. "Through Garage's partnership with Vice, we hope to broaden the lens through which our audiences are exposed to art, architecture fashion and design," Zhukova said in a release. Financial details of the takeover were not disclosed. Garage said that it will tap into Vice expertise in digital and broadcast media to push frontiers in the rapidly changing media landscape. Vice and Garage vowed to work ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo died July 11, 1593. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books - that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject. In this image: Visitors look at paintings called Winter 1573, left, and Water 1566, right, at the exhibition of Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1527-1593, in Paris Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007. The exhibition of Guiseppe Arcimboldo was on view at the museum of the Jardin de Luxembourg from September 15, 2007 until January 13, 2008.
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