| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, May 11, 2020 |
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| | Bonfires of the Cenote Aktun Ha were created by man more than 10,000 years ago | |
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Octavio del RÃo explores the Cenote Aktun Ha. Photo: Krzysztof Starnawski.
Translated by Liz Marie Gangemi
TULUM.- More than 10 thousand years ago, on the peninsula of Yucatan, very different from the one we now know: with a cold climates and extensive prairies similar to those of the British islands or the Cantabrian coast of Spain, the first humans of America already interacted with the wild environment, leaving traces that today are being discovered and studied from archaeology and science. This is the case of a new investigation, endorsed by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), whose results are made public as part of the campaign "Contigo en la Distancia" With You by Long Distance of the Ministry of Culture, and published in the most recent issue of the journal Geoarchaeology, which verifies -for the first time in an underwater context- that hunter-gatherers lit and used fire in the space today known as the Cámara de los Ancestros Chamber of Ancestors, formation located i ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Under the exhibition title "How to Make a Paradise" Frankfurter Kunstverein has invited nine artists and collectives to present a broad spectrum of artistic projects dealing with the human desire for digital escapism, and the aspiration to expand human capabilities with technology. Curated by Mattis Kuhn with the support of Franziska Nori, the exhibition includes multimedia installations, digital films and VR experiences.
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 | | Little Richard: An ecstasy you could not refuse | | Ketterer Kunst announces auction of rarebooks, manuscripts, autographs | | 300 luminous drones above the River Maas in Rotterdam in tribute to freedom and health | 
Little Richard performs at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York, on Jan. 15, 2007. Hiroyuki Ito/The New York Times.
by Jon Pareles
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Wild and outrageous do not begin to describe Little Richard. He hit American pop like a fireball in the mid-1950s, a hopped-up emissary from cultures that mainstream America barely knew, drawing on the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the carnal. He had deep experience in the sanctified church and in the chitlin circuit of African-American clubs and theaters, along with drag shows, strip joints and, even in the 20th century, minstrel shows. He had a voice that could match the grit of any soul shouter ever, along with an androgynous, exultant falsetto scream that pushed it into overdrive. He plowed across the piano with a titanic gospel-and-boogie left hand and a right hand that hammered giant chords and then gleefully splintered them. He had the stage savvy of a longtime trouper, built by a decade of performing before he recorded ... More | | 
Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London, J. Johnson 1798. Estimate: 60,000.
HAMBURG.- At the moment the exponential curve is on the tip of everyones tongue. However, Thomas Robert Malthus explained this important principle in his acclaimed essay on the growth of population as early as in the 18th century. This milestone in modern economics is just one of many sought-after object in the Rare Books Auction. The exponential growth in anticipation of the sale had been prolonged, as the current COVID-19 situation required a six week delay of the auction date. The auction has now been scheduled for July 6. The sale will be held in due consideration of all required distancing and protection measures. Consignments will be accepted until mid May. INFLUENTIAL: The very rare edition of the important classic An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society by Thomas Robert Malthus is the first factually justified treatise on population growth and its social and economic consequences. ... More | | 
Studio Drift, Franchise Freedom, Rotterdam © Ossip van Duivenbode.
ROTTERDAM.- At 10 p.m. on the evening of 5 May, Liberation Day in the Netherlands, the performance art installation Franchise Freedom flied above the River Maas in Rotterdam to celebrate our freedom. At the initiative of artist duo DRIFT and art organisation Mothership, an impressive swarm of 300 drones used the sky as their canvas in a flying ode to freedom and as a tribute to everyone working day and night to ensure the freedom and health of others. Franchise Freedom flies to highlight the importance of two important principles of humankind, health and freedom, and help bring us together. Humankind is currently facing the biggest global crisis of our generation. Our individual and collective freedom have never been tested so seriously since the Second World War. Ralph Nauta, artist DRIFT: COVID-19 makes it abundantly clear that we as people depend on each other. The future only has value if we can rebuild this, together and sustainably, based on a greater, collective interest. In th ... More |
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| | Alone with their muses, artists in retreat wonder if it's too much | | Sabrina Amrani adds Edison Peñafiel to the gallery's roster of artists and opens online solo show | | Kimsooja creates site-specific planting project for The Wanås Foundation for Summer 2020 | 
Eric Haze at the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton, N.Y. Craig Wetherby via The New York Times.
by Bob Morris
EAST HAMPTON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- When Eric Haze was 10 years old, he and his sister posed for Elaine de Kooning in her downtown Manhattan studio. It was 1972 and it had been arranged through a colleague of his father. In between sittings, the artist, who painted John F. Kennedy, Berry Gordy and Pelé, and was married on and off to Willem de Kooning, gave Haze brushes and told him to paint. She also taught him how to stretch canvases. Within a few years he moved from abstraction to graffiti, which fascinated de Kooning, recalled Haze, 59, who grew up in Manhattan. She told him that artists have to follow their muses in each moment. By the early 1980s, he became part of Soul Artists, an influential New York City graffiti ... More | | 
Edison Peñafiel, Still of Sempiterno, 2017. Multichannel video and audio. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani.
MADRID.- Sabrina Amrani announced the incorporation of Edison Peñafiel to the gallerys roster of artists, and presents his online exclusive solo show Sempiterno Born in Ecuador in 1985, Edison Peñafiel migrated to the United States to leave the political and economic instability of his native country. His singular style integrates video and multimedia installation to create surreal echoes of our world, environments that translate experience. His work centers the migrant as a subject, informed by his own life. Sempiterno starts with Edison Peñafiel's attempt to create an art piece away from politics, from social criticism, in a way opposed to the rest of his works. "Somehow, the unconscious ends up bringing politics and social reality to my head again", explains the artist, because the ... More | | 
Kimsooja 2016 Portrait at EMST by Giannis Vastardis.
KNISLINGE.- The Wanås Foundation presents Sowing Into Painting, a multidimensional project including site-specific installations, film, sculpture, and painting by the artist Kimsooja. Wanås Konst is a unique cultural foundation in Southern Sweden composed of a sculpture park and art galleries on the site of a medieval castle and an organic farm. With this exhibition, Kimsooja creates new works incorporating this diversity of locations and investigates the conceptual relationship between (agri)culture, painting and textiles. The title for the exhibition, Sowing into Painting, is also the title of Kimsoojas new planting project, a field of flax. Taking advantage of the surroundings, she cultivates two varieties of flax plants to generate linseed oil and linen. As well as being a physical source of painting materials, the field becomes a fluid tableau woven into the earth. Sown at the end of April, it will grow, flower, and b ... More |
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| | Frankfurter Kunstverein reopens with "How to Make a Paradise: Seduction and Dependence in Generated Worlds" | | Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, architect and passionate urbanist, dies at 88 | | The Duchess of Cambridge and National Portrait Gallery launch Hold Still | 
Jaakko Pallasvuo, How to Make a Paradise, 2017. Photographer: Norbert Miguletz © Frankfurter Kunstverein. Courtesy: the artist.
FRANKFURT.- Under the exhibition title How to Make a Paradise Frankfurter Kunstverein has invited nine artists and collectives to present a broad spectrum of artistic projects dealing with the human desire for digital escapism, and the aspiration to expand human capabilities with technology. Curated by Mattis Kuhn with the support of Franziska Nori, the exhibition includes multimedia installations, digital films and VR experiences. The works of Jakob Kudsk Steensen; artist duo Fleuryfontaine, consisting of Galdric Fleury and Antoine Fontaine; as well as the collective Keiken + George Jasper Stone focus on individual experience in virtual worlds. All describe a feeling of loneliness in their work through varying stylistic perspectives. Keiken + George Jasper Stone's spatial installation "Feel My Metaverse" focuses on the artificiality of physicality in today's self-optimization and do-it-yourself culture. The digital image ... More | | 
Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, left, then director of the Mayor's Office of Midtown Planning and Development, telling reporters about a project on the East Side of Manhattan, in New York on Sept. 19, 1972. Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times.
by Paul Goldberger
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, an architect who grew up on a grand classical estate in Virginia before becoming one of New Yorks most prominent and impassioned advocates of urban design, died Saturday at his home in East Hampton, New York. He was 88. The cause was Alzheimers disease, his wife, Anya Robertson, said. The scion of an aristocratic Virginia family, Robertson designed a wide range of buildings in multiple styles, but he never lost his love of classicism, which he called the symbolic hard currency of architecture. Its gold in the bank, he said in a 1996 interview with Town & Country magazine. The other stuff is leveraged buyouts and soybean futures. Robertson first came to public notice not as an ... More | | 
5-year-old Eadee © West Midlands Ambulance Service.
LONDON.- The Duchess of Cambridge and the National Portrait Gallery have today (Thursday 7th May) launched Hold Still, an ambitious community photography project to capture the spirit, the mood, the hopes, the fears and the feelings of the nation as we continue to deal with the Coronavirus outbreak. Whilst many people's lives are on hold to help protect our helpers and heroes, there are some that are working harder than ever, and others that are enduring the upheaval of hardship and loss. Spearheaded by The Duchess, Patron of the National Portrait Gallery, Hold Still will create a unique photographic portrait of the people of our nation as we hold still for the good of others, and celebrate those who have continued so we can stay safe. The Duchess and the National Portrait Gallery are inviting people from across the UK to submit a photographic portrait which they have taken during these extraordinary times. Participants are also encouraged to provide ... More |
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| | The Kunsthaus Baselland reopens with three exhibitions | | Patricia Fleming Gallery presents 'Excerpts from the Library'; a new online exhibition by Ilana Halperin | | BPS22 - Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut presents a solo exhibition of work by Latifa Echakhch | 
Christoph Oertli, Monsieur René, 2012, (videostill), Courtesy the artist
BASEL.- From Tuesday May 12, The Kunsthaus Baselland will reopen its current exhibitions by Marlene McCarty, Christoph Oertli, and Stefan Karrer which will be extended until July 5th. The museum is convinced of the necessity of culture in these times and are therefore making the exhibitions accessible to visitors again. This is in accordance with the Federal Councils decision of April 29, 2020 and in compliance with all the protective and hygienic measures required of Swiss museums by the Federal Office of Public Health, so that you and they can enjoy your visit. The garden at the entrance to the Kunsthaus Baselland seems at first familiar and inviting. Tender little plants will continue to stretch up through the soil over the next few weeks. Despite the time of year, some of them will even grow to display the beauty of their blooms. And, the accompanying large-format sometimes wall-sized drawings by ... More | | 
Ilana Halperin, Excerpts from the Library (detail), 2016. Detail from a selection of an etched book of 800 million year old mica. Courtesy of the artist and Patricia Fleming, Glasgow 2020.
GLASGOW.- Ilana Halperins practice of intertwining intimate geological narratives with human histories and lived experience is reflected in this body of work that combines drawing, photography and sculpture. Through exploring geologic timelines, both ancient and newly formed, Halperin uncovers deep and personal connections between people and the places they inhabit. As Halperin has expressed, rocks are really the first immigrants, and as an immigrant herself, a New Yorker who now lives and works between Glasgow and the Isle of Bute, Halperin views her own movements as a fleeting, yet significant continuation of a much older migratory tradition. In turn Halperins work exists as an evolving embodiment of geologic and human migration. Drawing and painting are constant studio-based occupations for Halperin. In a new watercolour ... More | | 
Latifa Echakhch, Mer d'encre (détail), 2012, collection de l'artiste. Photo: Leslie Artamonow.
CHARLEROI.- Working in painting, sculpture and installations, the Moroccan‑born artist Latifa Echakhch (El Khnansa, 1974) chooses easily recognizable objects invested with a domestic and/or social burden, which she silences through destruction, deletion or by restoring them. This thereby deprives them of their usage value pushing their function into oblivion in order to free the memories attached to them. She summons memories and frees the ghosts that emerge from these objects. The work of Latifa Echakhch is simultaneously conceptual and romantic, both political and poetic. For several years now, Latifa Echakhch has renewed the tradition of the romantic landscape and its associated motive: ruin. On the occasion of her exhibition at the BPS22 which she designed as a retro-prospective she created, in the Grande Halle, a specific path to take through decommissioned, half-suspended ... More |
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Head, 1975-A Short Film by George Griffin | From the Vaults
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 Florence Griswold Museum presents 'Sanctuary', a juried online photography exhibitionOLD LYME, CONN.- The Museums current exhibition, Nothing More American: Immigration, Sanctuary, and Community An Exhibition by Matthew Leifheit (now available online through the Museums website), motivated Director of Education and Outreach David D.J. Rau and Curator Amy Kurtz Lansing to invite amateur photographers to submit examples of their own work on the theme of sanctuary for a pop-up exhibition. In February, the call for entries was sent out. Museum staff prepared to collect images online, jury the show, and then notify the artists whose photos were selected to send or bring their work to the Museum to be shared with visitors May 1 through the end of the Nothing More American exhibition, May 24. The Museums closure due to the coronavirus meant that the exhibition had to be presented online. Nearly 300 submissions from around ... More How masks went from 'muzzle' to fashion's object of desirePARIS (AFP).- Once upon a time if you wanted to get ahead you got a hat. Now if you want step outside your front door you need a mask. In a matter of weeks, the coronavirus has upended the Western wardrobe and challenged its deepest codes about freedom, comfort and self-expression. From being a curious oddity seen only on Asian tourists, masks have suddenly become as essential as socks -- a signal of civic virtue and a passport to many public spaces denied to the bare faced. "When you wear one you are saying, 'I'm not a threat'," said French designer Stephanie Coudert, who made her name with Paris haute couture. "It's a civic gesture." Yet when she sat down to design a mask, one thought kept coming back to her. "It's a muzzle. It is hard to get away from that," Coudert told AFP. ... More 10 women in jazz who never got their dueNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Young, female instrumentalists have been establishing a firmer footing in jazz, taking some of the musics boldest creative steps and organizing for change on a structural level. But this isnt an entirely new development. While were often taught to think of jazzs history as a cavalcade of great men and their bands, from its beginnings in the early 20th century women played a range of important roles, including onstage. During World War II, right in the heart of the swing era, all-female bands became a sensation, filling the void left by men in the military. But in fact they were continuing a tradition that had begun in the vaudeville years and continued, albeit to a lesser degree, in jazzs early decades. Prevented from taking center stage, many female instrumentalists became composers, arrangers or artists ... More A five-hour crash course in Italian history that's also great filmmakingNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Long live Stalin! Verdi is dead! These two proclamations, separated by a few minutes of screen time and 44 years of Italian history, are sounded early in 1900, Bernardo Bertoluccis luxuriously long, persistently underestimated 1976 epic. The opening scenes take place on April 25, 1945, a date identified as Italys Day of Liberation from German occupation and homegrown fascist rule, and understood by at least some of the characters to herald the arrival of a long-delayed, much-desired communist revolution. Thats where Stalin comes in, his name invoked ironically by a wealthy landowner captured in his study by a very young partisan. Meanwhile, the boys comrades prepare to enact rough justice on their former oppressors. In the midst of the turmoil, our attention is turned backward, to the night ... More A pianist has cracked a composer's codeNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The music of Thomas Adès isnt easy not for listeners, and especially not for performers. His style, whether in a small solo or a work on the grand scale of his opera The Exterminating Angel, is full of contradictions: looking more complex than it sounds, teasing the ear with elusively familiar melodic strands, evoking clutter with meticulous precision. Even for pianist Kirill Gerstein, one of Adès most capable interpreters, it exists precariously at the edge of possibility. If you practice a lot, Gerstein said in a recent interview, its almost comfortable. That might be a tad too humble coming from Gerstein, who over the past decade has become a master of Adès piano works and a muse. In one of the most productive and thrilling artistic partnerships of our time, they have not only toured ... More Centre Pompidou-Metz launches new projects on streaming platforms Deezer and SpotifyMETZ.- Davide Bertocchi Top 100 playlist is broadcasted on the Deezer® and Spotify® accounts of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, where are brought together the favorites soundtracks of personalities from the international art world: art critics, artists, curators, gallery owners, collectors. Begun in 2003, this project includes seven "Top 100" involving more than 700 personalities from the art world. The Centre Pompidou-Metz team has been invited to participate in eighth "Top 100" in collaboration with the artist Ettore Favini and produced by the Dena Foundation For Contemporary Art - Paris, Brussels. It will be on release in June. Etel Adnan published a fragment of his poem Night at the beginning of confinement. Then, Tatiana Trouvé and Jérémy Demester shared a drawing hidden by her reading and a fragment of a text by Fernando Pessoa. Piero ... More Watts Gallery - Artists' Village etends online programme of exhibitions, activities and eventsCOMPTON.- Watts Gallery Artists Village has extended its online programme of exhibitions, activities and events to entertain and educate diverse audiences whilst the Artists Village is temporarily closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through its website, social media channels and via the free art app Smartify, Watts Gallery Artists Village is making its collections, exhibitions, heritage, history and landscape accessible to everyone from home. And through its Art for All learning programme which is inspired by the charitys founders - the Victorian artist G F Watts OM RA (1817-1904) and his wife, the artist and designer Mary Watts (1849 1938) Watts Gallery Trust is continuing to support vulnerable members of the community. Highlights of the Watts at Home programme include: Video and audio tours of Watts Gallerys latest exhibition, Unto this ... More Interesting collection of horseracing passes to be offered by Dix Noonan WebbLONDON.- International coins, medals, banknotes and jewellery specialists Dix Noonan Webb, are encouraging racing enthusiasts to take a gamble on a group of 18th and 19th century horse racing tickets and passes that will be offered in a live online auction in their sale of Tokens and Historical Medals on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 11am on their website. The collection comprises 20 lots and estimates range from £40 to £400. Many of the pieces are engraved with names of nobility and well-known figures in the horseracing fraternity such as the Duke of Northumberland (Alnwick Castle); Hon. Egremont Lascelles (Harewood House); Major John St Leger; Henry Fiennes Pelham Clinton, (2nd Duke of Newcastle); the Duke of Portland and Lord Dundas. As Peter Preston-Morley, Specialist and Associate Director, Dix Noonan Webb, commented: We are very ... More The National Gallery of Victoria announces live studio visits with Australian artists & designersMELBOURNE.- The National Gallery of Victoria is launching a live in-studio series with Australian artists and designers, giving viewers an insight into their life and practice whilst in isolation. Artist and designers including Sydney artist Agatha Gothe-Snape, musician and artist Jon Campbell, iconic furniture designer Mary Featherston AM, and contemporary artist Yhonnie Scarce will invite viewers into their studios to discuss their practice and new ways of working during lockdown. The in-studio visits will showcase Australian artists and designers, who have been exhibited at the Gallery or are in the NGV Collection, in-conversation with NGV curators. Audiences can tune into the series on Instagram Live or on demand on the NGV Channel on NGVs website. The series acts as a platform for artists and designers to discuss the process of making new work, ... More Catch up on Korean cinema from your couchNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The international success of Bong Joon Hos 2019 thriller Parasite which won last years Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival as well as four Academy Awards in March was a reminder of the vast cinematic wealth of South Korea. Now, as most of us have cycled through our options with Netflix and other streaming services, the Korean Cultural Center of New York is offering a selection of 10 recent titles available to stream on its website for free (with English subtitles) through the end of June. Of note is director Eom Yu-nas 2018 comedic drama, Secret Mission. Set in 1941, when Korea was occupied by Japan, it stars the gruff but lovable Yoo Hae-jin, who plays an illiterate criminal named Kim Pan-soo. Kim falls in with the bookish Korean Language Society, which, against the colonialist demands ... More Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre opens a free 3D virtual exhibition, Seeds of Our CitySYDNEY.- Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre are collaborating with globally renowned design and engineering firm Arup to present a free 3D virtual exhibition, Seeds of Our City. Fortifying the connection between Western Sydney and the city, the exhibition showcases the works of three acclaimed Western Sydney artists online from the Arup Gallery in the heart of Sydneys CBD. Audiences will have the opportunity to virtually walk through the exhibition space and take in the artworks by going to www.arup.com/news-and-events/seeds-of-our-city Focused on creating vibrant, sustainable urban spaces, Arup is behind some of Sydneys most eye-catching and architecturally stunning buildings, including the iconic Sydney Opera House, the Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing Building for UTS, and the award-winning Green Square Library. ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme was born May 11, 1824. Jean-Léon Gérôme (May 11, 1824 - January 10, 1904) was a French artist born in Vesoul, France. The leading Orientalist painter of his time, he was also highly regarded for his polychromed sculptures, evocations of life in ancient Rome, and depictions of events from French history. In this image: a museum technician at Hearst Castle admires 'Napoleon before the Sphinx' (or 'Oedipus'), 60.3 x 101 cm, about 1886. Inv. no. 529-9-5092. Photo: Courtesy ©Hearst Castle®/California State Parks, photo by Vickie Garagliano. All rights reserved.
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