| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Monday, May 2, 2022 |
| | 'The Red Studio,' Matisse's masterpiece, gets a life all its own | |
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The Red Studio (1911) by Henri Matisse, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, April 27, 2022. MoMAs latest excursion into modernist art history reunites all the surviving works that Matisse depicted in the painting. Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.
by Roberta Smith
NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Arts latest excursion into modernist art history by way of its astounding collection is Matisse: The Red Studio, a small but spectacular exhibition that dissects one of the artists greatest early paintings. This show reunites for the first time since they left the artists studio in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux all the surviving works that Henri Matisse depicted in The Red Studio, a painting whose seductive radicalness has attracted admirers since it entered the museums collection in 1949. Bringing together six paintings, three sculptures and a ceramic plate in The Red Studio turned out to be a marvel of detective work on the part of its curatorial teams, which were headed by Ann Temkin, MoMAs chief curator of painting and sculpture, and Dorthe Aagesen, who holds virtually the same title at SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, in Copenhagen. Its loans come from museums and ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Julian Schnabel: For Esmé - With Love and Squalor, April 9 - May 21. 1201 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019. Photography courtesy Pace Gallery.
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| The Frick Pittsburgh presents 'Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary' | | Ukraine says Russia looted ancient gold artifacts from museum | | The Fundació Joan Miró presents a major exhibition of Miró's work at My Art Museum in Seoul | 
Romare Bearden (American, 19111988). Homage to Mary Lou (The Piano Lesson), 1983. Lithograph. © 2022 Romare Bearden Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
PITTSBURGH, PA.- The Frick Pittsburgh is presenting Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, an exhibition of original artworks, limited edition prints, and archival materials through which innovative artist Romare Bearden (1911-1988) celebrated African American subjects, beginning Saturday, April 30 at The Frick Art Museum. Drawing on his own experiences, Bearden created narratives that reflect both the nostalgic rural North Carolina of his childhood and the vibrant urban life of places like Pittsburgh and Harlem. Bearden spent portions of his youth with his grandparents in Pittsburgh, and his 1984 mural Pittsburgh Recollections, installed at the Gateway T station, honors the citys history and its residents work ethic. The artists work layers themes from art history, literature, and religion with everyday rituals like family dinners to create visual stories that depict and elevate the Black experience while ... More | | 
What is thought to be a Scythian gold helmet, displayed at a museum exhibition in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 9, 2021. Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times.
by Jeffrey Gettleman and Oleksandr Chubko
KYIV.- The heist started when a mysterious man in a white lab coat showed up at the museum. A squad of Russian soldiers stood behind him, with guns, watching eagerly. Using long tweezers and special gloves, the man in the white coat carefully extracted scores of special gold artifacts more than 2,300 years old from cardboard boxes in the cellar of a museum in Melitopol, a southern town in Russian-occupied territory, Ukrainian officials said. The gold items were from the Scythian empire and dated back to the fourth century B.C. Then the mysterious expert, the Russian soldiers and the gold disappeared. The orcs have taken hold of our Scythian gold, declared Melitopols mayor, Ivan Fyodorov, using a derogatory term many Ukrainians reserve for Russian soldiers. This is one of the largest and most expensive collections in Ukraine, and today we dont know where they took it. This ... More | | 
Joan Miró, Woman and birds in a landscape 1970 - 1974. Acrylic on canvas. Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona.
BARCELONA.- The depth of meaning in Joan Mirós work springs from a desire to capture the essence of human existence. On a personal level, this desire also implied an affirmation of identity that arose from Mirós strong connection with the land with the medieval town of Mont-roig del Camp, in the Catalan countryside, where his family had a house and which was the original source of his creativity. Paradoxically, he could only achieve this aim by breaking boundaries and constantly reconsidering his own creative effort, which he was finally able to materialise in the context of the Paris avant-garde and in a century marked by cruel conflicts. The artists wish thus acquired a dimension that moved beyond the realm of the individual to become universal. Miró aspired to achieve a collective, anonymous form of art, and this explains the multidisciplinary nature of his work and his quest for collaborations. Through painting, he created a complete universe of signs and symbols. Insp ... More |
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| Pace Gallery naugurates new West Coast flagship in Los Angeles with Julian Schnabel exhibition | | Delayed Philip Guston show opens, with a note from a trauma specialist | | Tate Britain opens London's biggest retrospective of Walter Sickert | 
Julian Schnabel: For Esmé With Love and Squalor, April 9 May 21. 1201 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90019. Photography courtesy Pace Gallery.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Pace Gallery is presenting the inaugural exhibition of its new West Coast flagship in Los Angeles, For Esmé with Love and Squalor, featuring 13 new velvet paintings and a large-scale bronze sculpture by the artist Julian Schnabel. Since the late 1970s, Schnabels experimental practice and use of unconventional materials has invented a new kind of painting. In 1990, at the time of the acquisition of Schnabels four paintings Los Patos del Buen Retiro for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, then director María de Corral wrote, ...what really interests me is that nothing gives the impression of being fixed or closed off. Instead, all of the elements seem to be in a permanent state of flux and ones perception of them is so arbitrary that all interpretations end up being ... More | | 
The Studio (1969), one of many hooded images by Philip Guston, at the artists exhibition, Philip Guston Now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, April 25, 2022. Tony Luong/The New York Times.
by Marc Tracy and Robin Pogrebin
BOSTON, MASS.- In the summer of 2020, looking over a checklist of images and the installation plan for the upcoming Philip Guston show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Kaywin Feldman, who was in her second year as the museums director, felt uneasy. How would the cartoonish, hooded Ku Klux Klan figures painted by Guston who explored racism in his enigmatic, politically charged work look to visitors amid the pain and the push for racial justice that had just exploded after the killing of George Floyd? There were no Black curators on the museums staff at the time. Feldman consulted employees from across the museum, including educators and security guards, to hear their thoughts. ... More | | 
Walter Sickert Self portrait, c.1896. Leeds Art Gallery © Bridgeman images.
LONDON.- This week, Tate Britain opened Londons biggest retrospective of Walter Sickert (1860-1942) in almost 30 years. A master of self-invention and theatricality, Sickert took a radically modern approach to painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, transforming how everyday life was captured on canvas. This major exhibition features over 150 of his works from over 70 public and private collections, from scenes of rowdy music halls to ground-breaking nudes and narrative subjects. Spanning Sickerts six-decade career, it uncovers the people, places and subjects that inspired him and explores his legacy as one of Britains most distinctive, provocative, and influential artists. Highlights include 10 of Sickerts iconic self-portraits, from the start of his career to his final years. For the first time, these portraits are brought together from collections across the UK and internationally, including the National ... More |
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| Louis Stern Fine Arts opens an exhibition of works by Austrian sculptor Knopp Ferro | | Art Gallery of Ontario plans expansion to house growing collection of global modern and contemporary art | | Alexandria Smith's first solo exhibition with Gagosian opens in New York | 
Installation view.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Louis Stern Fine Arts announced participation in an international exhibition series, to run between 2022 2024, celebrating the work of Austrian sculptor Knopp Ferro (b. 1953). In honor of the artists 70th birthday, numerous galleries across the United States, Latin America, and Europe with whom Ferro has exhibited throughout his decades-long career will stage a cycle of solo exhibitions exploring the depth and diversity of his artistic practice. Knopp Ferro: Levitating Lines combines recent and older metal kinetic sculpture by Ferro and is the first US-based exhibition in the two-year-long series. Born in Cologne, Germany and currently based in Munich, Ferro began his artistic career during the highly experimental Fluxus period in the 1970s. After studying metal sculpture and performance at the University of Applied Sciences for Art and Design in Cologne, Ferro spent half of the 70s and most ... More | | 
Selldorf Architects is designing a major new expansion and enhancement of the Frick Collection.
TORONTO.- Following a rigorous selection process, the Art Gallery of Ontario today announces that it has contracted Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt and Two Row Architect to lead the design phase of AGO Global Contemporary, the museums proposed expansion project. Each a recognized leader in the creation of dynamic cultural spaces, the three architects will work as a team to design an expansion that will display the museums growing collection of global modern and contemporary art. Annabelle Selldorf, of Selldorf Architects will lead the design, in collaboration with Toronto-based Don Schmitt of Diamond Schmitt and Brian Porter of Six Nations of the Grand Rivers Two Row Architect as Indigenous architect. A project with global impact requires an international perspective, grounded in this land and this city, said Stephan Jost, Michael ... More | | 
Alexandria Smith, a Mythopoeic ecstasy, 2022. Mixed media on three-dimensional wood assemblage, 62 15/16 x 50 7/8 x 1 3/4 inches 159.9 x 129.2 x 4.5 cm © Alexandria Smith. Photo: Rob McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian.
NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian is presenting Pretend Gravitas and Dream Aborted Givens, an exhibition of new works by Alexandria Smith at its Park & 75 location. Organized by Antwaun Sargent, this is Smiths first solo exhibition with the gallery. In Pretend Gravitas and Dream Aborted Givens, Smith continues her investigation of selfhood alongside the confidences, contradictions, and uncertainties of the queer Black femme body through allegorical assemblage paintings and collage drawings housed in the artists custom frames. Smiths mixed-media works begin with drawings, which she develops intuitively within an ever-evolving personal cosmology. Atop colorful arrangements of bold shapes, she layers sculpted elements ... More |
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| Justin Green, who put himself into his underground cartoons, dies at 76 | | Naomi Judd, of Grammy-winning The Judds, dies at 76 | | Heritage Auctions offers one of Shepard Fairey's original 'HOPE' collages made for Obama's 2008 presidential run | 
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, his epic autobiographical story of Catholic guilt and neurosis, made comics grow up, a colleague said.
NEW YORK, NY.- Justin Green, a star of underground comics in the 1970s who channeled his Catholic guilt and childhood neuroses into Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, a raw and intimate confessional epic that inspired cartoonists such as Art Spiegelman to explore autobiographical subjects, died April 23 in Cincinnati. He was 76. His wife, Carol Tyler, a comics artist known for her own autobiographical stories, said the cause was colon cancer. Green arrived in San Francisco around 1970 as the underground comics world was starting to thrive. He was soon contributing to publications such as Young Lust, Insect Fear, Bijou Funnies, and Tales of Sex and Death. Within a few years, he was at work on Binky Brown. He hung its pages ... More | | 
The country music duo, made up of Naomi and Wynonna Judd, was to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Sunday.
NEW YORK, NY.- Naomi Judd, who as one half of mother-daughter duo the Judds dominated the country music charts in the 1980s with a blend of tight vocal harmonies, traditional arrangements and modern pop aesthetics, died Saturday outside Nashville, Tennessee. She was 76. Ashley Judd, the actress, confirmed her mothers death on Twitter. She did not specify where she died or the cause but said, We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. Naomi Judd had lived for years on a farm in the hills above Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. With her other daughter, Wynonna, Naomi Judd rocketed to country stardom in 1983 with the single Had a Dream (for the Heart) and, a year later, with the duos chart-topping first album, Why ... More | | 
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970), HOPE (Barack Obama), 2008 Hand-finished collage, stencil, and acrylic on heavy paper laid on canvas, 68-1/2 x 46 inches. Estimate: $300,000 - $500,000.
DALLAS, TX.- Of the innumerable iterations of Shepard Fairey's once-inescapable HOPE posters made in 2008 to support Barack Obama's presidential campaign, there are but three original large-scale, mixed-media stenciled collages made by the artist. One is in a private collection. Another resides in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, just blocks from the White House. And the third, from the assemblage of a major American Art collector, serves as the centerpiece of Heritage Auctions' May 19 Modern & Contemporary Art Signature® Auction, which is now open for bidding. "This work is a significant cultural icon, and it was the defining image of Barack Obama's ... More |
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A Superb Ruby Bracelet by M. Gérard
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 Rodolphe Janssen opens an exhibition of works by Jason SaagerBRUSSELS.- Working out of the expansive and arid beauty of the southwestern United States, Jason Saager approaches the subject of landscape through combined artistic processes of printmaking and painting. His elaborate environments majestically unfold onto themselves in surreal harmony, accessible only through magical gateways. In Sky Gardens, the artists first solo exhibition at the gallery, these dreamlike works recall a history of representation, where illusionary space has been historically mapped onto the paintings surface in order to articulate distance, perspective, and duration. A window into another world. Saagers works are a layered process merging the immediacy and technical prowess of printmaking with the slow, studied precision of rendering imagery in paint. Beginning with a monotype as the initial, foundational layer to ... More  The Japan Pavilion at La Biennale presents a new work by Dumb TypeVENICE.- The Japan Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale presents 2022, a new work by Dumb Type, a pioneering art collective engaged primarily in installations, video works, and performances in museums and theaters both in Japan and overseas. Mirrors on four stands rotate at high speed, reflecting lasers trained on them to project text onto the surrounding walls. The projected texts are all taken from an 1850s geography textbook, posing simple yet universal questions. The sounds of voices reading the texts are emitted from rotating parametric speakers, becoming highly directional beams of sound that travel around the room. In contrast to the discourses that surround it, the center of the room is an empty spacea place that exists nowhere, but at the same time ... More  Laura Mott named Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art MuseumBLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICH.- Cranbrook Art Museum has announced that Laura Mott has been promoted to the position of Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art Museum. She previously held the position of Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design at the museum. An accomplished curator and lecturer, Mott joined Cranbrook in 2013 and has curated and co-curated more than 20 projects for the museum, including Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality, an exhibition and publication for which she was named a Warhol Curatorial Fellow, Nick Cave: Here Hear, Maya Stovall: Liquor Store Theater, Allie McGhee: Banana Moon Horn, Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, and upcoming exhibitions with artists Tyrrell Winston and Sonya Clark. This June, the museum will premiere Tunde Olaniran: Made a Universe, a multi- ... More  Exceptional collection of collectors' firearms exceeds expectations in Gavin Gardiner Ltd's April saleLONDON.- A single owner collection of Collectors Firearms exceeded expectations in Gavin Gardiner Ltds sale of Modern and Vintage Sporting Guns and Rifles on Wednesday, April 27, 2022. The collection, which included examples by makers such as Smith & Wesson, Webley and Colt, saw a .50 boxer double barrel hammer howdah pistol sell for £8,750*. Retailed by T. Johnson of Swaffham in Suffolk, it sold for 10 times its pre-sale low estimate of £800-1,200 to a UK Private Collector [lot 30]. A fine 6.5mm bolt-action sporting rifle by Westley Richards sold for £3,500. Well-finished in the makers distinctive style, it was estimated at £400-600 and was bought a member of the UK trade [lot 97]. As Gavin Gardiner said after the sale: I was delighted by the level of pre-sale interest in the group of collectors firearms, and this was ... More  Christie's Hong Kong to offer magnificent and important masterpieces from private collections and institutionsHONG KONG.- Christies Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Spring Auctions in Hong Kong will take place on 30 May 2022. This season features the dedicated, single-owner auction Celestial Brilliance - The Wang Xing Lou Collection of Imperial Qing Dynasty Porcelain, and the leading lot of the season A Magnificent and Extremely Rare Large Doucai Vase to be offered in the highly anticipated Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale, which will showcase an exceptional selection of magnificent and important Chinese treasures from private collections and institutions. Marco Almeida, Head of Department, Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, comments: This season, we are privileged ... More  Christie's sale to present many of the world's most complicated watchesHONG KONG.- Following "The Champion Collection, Part II: Sport Elegance", held in early April, Christies Hong Kong is thrilled to announce The Champion Collection journey with Part III: The Artistry of Complications, a single owner live sale which will be held on 24 May, showcasing rare treasures such as the Patek Philippe Ref. 5002 along with several references with special-coloured dials, for instance, a Ref. 5970R, Ref. 5020J, Ref. 5050J and Ref. 5059G. Other examples of Haute Horlogerie will be presented from Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Greubel Forsey and Audemars Piguet. The same day, 24 May, Christies Hong Kong will be holding a second live sale, The Important Watches Sale, which will feature selected pieces from The Kairos Collection, the finest collection of Patek Philippe contemporary timepieces ... More  'K(C)ongo Fragments of Interlaced Dialogues: Subversive Classifications' opens at Palazzo PittiFLORENCE.- Since 2005, Sammy Baloji has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing research on the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as a questioning of the impact of Belgian colonization. His use of photographic archives allows him to manipulate time and space, comparing ancient colonial narratives with contemporary economic imperialism. His video works, installations and photographic series highlight how identities are shaped, transformed, perverted and reinvented. His critical view of contemporary societies is a warning about how cultural clichés continue to shape collective memories and thus allow social and political power games to continue to dictate human behaviour. As he stated in a recent interview : « Im ... More  A monkish conductor who expressed his faith through musicNEW YORK, NY.- When Dimitri Mitropoulos was putting together the programs that he would conduct in 1947 as a guest of the New York Philharmonic the ensemble he later led in a fraught tenure from 1949 to 1958 he likely could not have predicted which item on his typically eclectic lists would be the most controversial. One week, this strangest and most curiously gifted of conductors, as Olin Downes of The New York Times called him, preceded Gershwins Piano Concerto with the American premiere of Mahlers Sixth Symphony, at a time when Mahlers works were regarded with incredulity. The week before, Mitropoulos, the Greek American music director of the Minneapolis Symphony, had offered firsts of Bartok and Barber. Before that, he had given a Thanksgiving premiere of Kreneks Symphony No. 4, a serial ... More  Even the 'wrong' Picasso can be so rightPHILADELPHIA, PA.- An expert on Pablo Picasso once told me that if the painter had been hit by a bus in 1905, he would have come down to us as a minor member of the symbolist movement, just then petering out in France. Its pretty clear that Picasso only really matters for what he came up with a few years later, when his cubist pictures ripped apart the fabric of Western art. In Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, at the Phillips Collection here through June 12, almost all the art predates 1905. Yet despite or because of the wrong dates of its pictures, this show is gripping. Yes, we get to see Picasso only before he figured out how to make art that matters. Sometimes, hes on whats clearly the wrong track. But were also given a chance to watch as this very young man gets his first sense of the artist he needs ... More  Casino Luxembourg presents 'Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni: The Everted Capital (Katabasis)'LUXEMBOURG.- For ten years now, Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni have been producing a protean body of work whose films, performances and sculptures present alternative hypotheses about our past and future as opportunities to transform ourselves in the present. In 2014, in a first monographic exhibition at Casino LuxembourgForum dart contemporain, the artists presented the first three episodes of season 1 of the longterm series The Unmanned. Four years later, in 2018, the exhibition 20451542 (A History of Computation) revisited the entirety of season 1 in an installation composed of eight videos tracing a subjective history of computing in reverse. Now, in 2022, the artists are taking over the Casino spaces for a third time to present all of the films and sculptures that comprise seasons 2 and 3 of the projects ... More  Miles McEnery Gallery opens an exhibition of works by Michael ReafsnyderNEW YORK, NY.- Miles McEnery Gallery opened an exhibition of recent works by Michael Reafsnyder. The artists sixth solo exhibition with the gallery opened on 28 April at 511 West 22nd Street and remains on view through 4 June 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Charles Palermo. In an effort to revive the painterly traditions spawned by Abstract Expressionism, Reafsnyders paintings feature densely filled compositions executed in brilliant color, utilizing a full inventory of application techniques. Acrylic paint is dragged, swiped, piled, scraped, brushed, pushed aside, revised and squeegeed onto stretched canvases. The big gestures suggest motiona kind of physical freedom or abundance of energy that can be associated with the post-painterly abstraction of Willem ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Plastic: Remaking Our World 
Jonathan Meese 
Useless Bodies 
WHO ARE YOU: Australian Portraiture
Flashback On a day like today, Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci died May 02, 1519. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (I15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian Renaissance polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. In this image: Codex Forster 1¹, 6v-7r, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), pen and ink, Italy (Florence), about 1505, V&A: Forster MS.141/1, Forster Bequest. © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum.
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