The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, November 13, 2023



 
Largest UK Holbein exhibition in over 15 years opens at The Queen's Gallery

Visitors will be introduced to paintings and decorative arts from the collections of Henry VII and Henry VIII, showing how the Tudor court was home to works from across Europe.

LONDON.- More than 50 works by Hans Holbein the Younger from the Royal Collection, including drawings, paintings, and miniatures, have gone on display at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, in the largest UK exhibition of the artist’s work in over 15 years. Holbein at the Tudor Court brings together more than 100 objects to chart the career and legacy of the great Renaissance artist at Henry VIII’s court. The exhibition tells the story of Holbein’s time in England, navigating the shifting sands of religious reform and political intrigue to rise to the position of king’s painter and create the enduring images of Henry VIII and his circle that we know today. At the heart of the exhibition are more than 40 of Holbein’s intimate portrait drawings of the royal family and the Tudor nobility, from Jane Seymour to Sir Thomas More. Drawn from life during personal sittings in prep ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Installation view 1000 ... miles to the edge - donation from Kasper König Museum Ludwig, Cologne November 11, 2023 - March 17, 2024 Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne/Marc Weber.








Tate opens 'Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990'   Lice genes offer clues to ancient human history   A Black woman's rise in architecture shows how far is left to go


Rita Keegan Red Me 1986 UK Government Art Collection; Artwork © Rita Keegan; © Image: Crown Copyright, UK Government Art Collection.

LONDON.- Tate Britain presents Women in Revolt!, a landmark exhibition of feminist art in the UK from 1970 to 1990. It explores how interconnected networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Showcasing work by over 100 women artists and collectives living and working in the UK, this is the first major survey of its kind. Painting, drawing, photography, textiles, printmaking, film, sculpture, and archival materials have been brought together to map a landscape of creative practice forged against a backdrop of extreme social, economic, and political change. As well as celebrating the work of well-known artists such as Sonia Boyce, Susan Hiller, Chila Kumari Singh Burman and Linder, Women in Revolt! platforms many women, who despite long careers, have been largely left outside the artistic narratives of the time. Shown in a major institutional exhibition ... More
 

An undated photo provided by Frank Collins/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Pediculus humanus, the human louse. (Frank Collins/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via The New York Times)

by Carl Zimmer


NEW YORK, NY.- Along our evolutionary journey from monkey-like primates to bipedal apes to big-brained humans, we have had the company of an extraordinarily loyal companion: Pediculus humanus, otherwise known as the human louse. And all the while, lice have recorded this journey in their genes. A new study, for example, found that some lice in the Americas are hybrids of those carried there by Native Americans and others ferried across the Atlantic by European colonists. “We humans do not live in a bubble,” said Marina Ascunce, an evolutionary geneticist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an author of the new study. “Lice are part of our lives and our history.” Lice commonly dwell on people’s heads, clamping onto hair shafts, piercing ... More
 

Architect Kimberly Dowdell, who will soon become the American Institute of Architects’ first Black female president in its 166-year history, in downtown Chicago, Nov. 6, 2023. (Akilah Townsend/The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- When Kimberly Dowdell becomes president of the American Institute of Architects next month, her ascent will be noteworthy. Dowdell, an architect in a profession that is overwhelmingly white and male, is a Black woman, the first to fill the post in the group’s 166-year history. African Americans make up 13.6% of the U.S. population, but only 1.8% of licensed architects in the country are Black, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Fewer than one-quarter of the nearly 120,000 licensed architects in the United States are women, and not even one half of 1% of architects are Black women. Black female architects are so few and far between, and obtaining licensure is such a point of pride among them, that many take pains to note their place in the chronology of advancement in the field — Dowdell, 40, said ... More


Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery acquire film installation by Isaac Julien   Landmark show features works by more than 50 American artists across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries   Kunstmuseum Luzern opens exhibition of works by Guy Ben Ner


Installation view, Isaac Julien: “Lessons of the Hour,” SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Sept. 24–Dec. 15, 2019. Copyright Isaac Julien, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro. Image courtesy of SCAD.

WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum have jointly purchased the tour de force “Lessons of the Hour” (2019) by artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien. The moving image installation interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of 19th-century activist, writer, orator and philosopher Frederick Douglass (1818–1895). Through critical research, fictional reconstruction and a marriage of poetic image and sound, Julien asserts Douglass’ enduring lessons of justice, abolition and freedom that remain just as relevant today. This is the first joint acquisition by the two Smithsonian museums, which share a historic building in downtown Washington, D.C., and is the first work by Julien to enter each of the museums’ collections. “Lessons of the Hour” is an important addition to the museums’ growing time-based ... More
 

Joseph Holston, The Elder, 2002. Oil on canvas; 30 x 40 in. The Phillips Collection: Gift of Joseph and Sharon Holston, 2014. © Joseph Holston 2002.

DENVER, CO.- The Denver Art Museum today opened the exhibition All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection, opening Nov. 12, 2023, and on view through March 3, 2024. This exhibition features key works from Washington, D.C.-based The Phillips Collection, one of the most celebrated collections of American art in the U.S. All Stars encompasses more than 140 years of unexpected visual conversations between American artists about what connects us as humans by artists including Benny Andrews, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe and many more. All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection is on view in the Hamilton Building’s level 2 Anschutz and Martin & McCormick galleries. This landmark show features 75 masterworks by 56 artists and traces American art from the birth of the modernist spirit at the end of the 19th century through post-war American painting in the ... More
 

Guy Ben Ner, We’ve Lost, 2022, Neonbuchstaben, Ausstellungsansicht Kunstmuseum Luzern 2023, Courtesy of the artist, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv, Zürich. Photo: Marc Latzel.

LUCERNE.- The films of Guy Ben Ner (*1969) are homemade in a dual sense, in terms of their aesthetic and of their setting. His family’s apartment repeatedly serves as the film location and the films feature his wife and children. For example, he transforms their kitchen into a ship or a rabbit hutch. Filming and the family’s everyday life intermingle and mutually influence each other. In Moby Dick (2000) Guy Ben Ner, in the role of the one-legged Captain Ahab, stands on the kitchen worktop beside the water dispenser, jumps out of the fridge or has a plate slide over and back between himself and his daughter in keeping with the swell of waves. Here the artist combines Herman Melville’s literary classic with a homage to the silent movie era’s delight in improvisation. Technically speaking, Guy Ben Ner’s films resemble amateur videos. As this artist does not aim to create ... More



UWE Bristol researcher discovers identity of mystery figure on Led Zeppelin IV cover   Lara Parker, a memorable witch on 'Dark Shadows,' dies at 84   Outland and Southbank Centre, London, open large-scale public exhibition of Leo Villareal's "Cosmic Bloom"


The image of a Wiltshire thatcher made famous by the Led Zeppelin IV album cover was discovered in a Victorian photo album.

BRISTOL.- A grey beard underlining his weathered face, the figure stoops whilst apparently pausing for the photographer, his leathery hands grasp the pole supporting the bundle of hazel on his back. The framed colour image of an elderly man carrying a large bundle of sticks on his back will be recognised worldwide. It is the centrepiece of the iconic front cover of Led Zeppelin IV which famously features no words. The origin of the central figure has remained a mystery for over half a century. It can now be revealed as a late Victorian coloured photograph of a Wiltshire thatcher. The original of the photograph made famous by the band was recently discovered in a late Victorian photograph album. The discovery was made by Brian Edwards, a Visiting Research Fellow with the Regional History Centre at ... More
 

Her three-dimensional portrayal of a character who was also a vampire helped the Gothic soap opera develop a cult following.

NEW YORK, NY.- Lara Parker, who found small-screen fame in the 1960s and ’70s as a beguiling and vengeful witch on the popular Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” died Oct. 12 at her home in Topanga, California. She was 84. The cause was cancer, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, a friend and fellow “Dark Shadows” actress. “Dark Shadows,” seen daily on ABC from 1966 to 1971, was a departure from standard soap opera fare, blending romantic intrigue with horror and science fiction. The show chronicled a wealthy and eccentric Maine family dealing with the usual soap melodramas — but also time travel, ghosts, werewolves and vampires. With her icy beauty and elegant demeanor, Parker proved coolly seductive in her primary role among several on the show, Angelique, an 18th-century servant girl and witch who puts a curse on ... More
 

Still from Leo Villareal’s Cosmic Bloom #1214, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist and Outland.

LONDON.- Outland announced the public display of Leo Villareal's Cosmic Bloom, as part of the Winter Light outdoor exhibition at Southbank Centre, London. Bridging the gap between the art world and established and emerging digital practices, Outland has partnered with the legendary institution to project Cosmic Bloom on the Royal Festival Hall’s historic facade, situating the artist’s generative work in the curated dialogue of the Winter Light exhibition. Villareal’s hypnotic, intricate patterns will appear larger-than-life in the most ambitious installation of the work to date. Comprised of 1300 unique, generative artworks, Cosmic Bloom is inspired by organic and biological structures, stellar phenomena, and atomic patterns. The projection at Southbank Centre is accompanied by a rotating playlist of six tracks by electronic music artist Kode9, creating an immersive ... More


For a disenchanted ironist, revolution and rediscovery   Exhibition of new paintings by Joel Mesler opens at David Kordansky Gallery   Barbra Streisand is ready to tell all. Pull up a seat.


A real vigor emerges in this exhibition at the Neue Galerie, which focuses on the painter’s unflinching Weimar scenes.

by Jason Farago


NEW YORK, NY.- Before the war (the First World War, I mean; with so many wars one can lose count), Max Beckmann was painting clean, traditionalist self-portraits and lush pictures of bathers by the sea. He was a neoconservative with no time for Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso, and certainly no interest in the coming of abstraction. Then, when the war broke out, the artist volunteered for the medical corps of the Imperial German Army. He got posted to Flanders, Belgium, where he witnessed the murderous, meaningless second Battle of Ypres. He sketched the Belgian landscape, and the doctors and orderlies. A war offers no exceptions for those with an artistic temperament, and painters would fight, and die, for both the Allies and the Axis. Otto Dix, Beckmann’s fellow ironist, ... More
 

Joel Mesler, Untitled (Sunset), 2023, pigment on linen, 65 x 50 x 1 1/4 inches (165.1 x 127 x 3.2 cm), framed: 65 3/4 x 50 3/4 x 2 inches (167 x 128.9 x 5.1 cm). Photo: Dario Lasagni.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- David Kordansky Gallery is presenting zrikha sheqi’att hashemesh (Sunrise Sunset), an exhibition of new paintings by Joel Mesler, on view in Los Angeles at 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. from November 11 through December 16, 2023. Mesler has become known in recent years for paintings that bring together autobiographical reflection, self-effacing humor, an open-hearted sense of precision and design, and a sly conceptualism with roots in a heterogenous group of modernist and postmodernist approaches to artmaking. zrikha sheqi’att hashemesh (Sunrise Sunset) finds him expanding his work in each of these categories and revealing the deeper strains of cultural awareness and collective purpose that have motivated him since the beginning of his multi-faceted career. The exhibition ... More
 

Barbra Streisand at her home in Malbu, Calif., on Oct. 26, 2018. (Ryan Pfluger/The New York Times)

MALIBU, CALIF.- Maybe it’s her grandkids, maybe it’s being 81, but Barbra Streisand is open to new stuff. Take sharing. Well, take sharing herself. “My Name Is Barbra,” her first memoir, is upon us. It’s 970 pages and billows with doubt, anger, ardor, hurt, pride, persuasion, glory and Yiddish. I don’t know that any artist has done more sharing. And yet, last month, after lunch at her home in Malibu, California, Streisand shared something else, a treasure she guards almost as much she’s guarded the details of her life. And that’s dessert. There’s a lot in this book — tales of film and television shoots, clashes and bonds with collaborators, a whole chapter on Don Johnson (it’s short) and another called “Politics,” her unwavering preference for big blends of the masculine and the feminine. But food is so ubiquitous that it’s practically a love of Streisand’s life, especially ice cream. So when it’s time for dessert at Strei ... More




Luca Guadagnino on the "Naive and Sentimental" Paintings of Liu Ye | IN THE GALLERIES



More News

36 hours in Durham, North Carolina
NEW YORK, NY.- The evolution of Durham from a faded tobacco town to a diverse cultural and culinary destination has been years in the making. But the ongoing development of this central North Carolina city seems to have reached a new stage. The resurgent downtown area — long a transitional neighborhood with pockets of progress — is now brimming with new restaurants, boutiques, bars and breweries. And while construction continues apace amid the historic brick warehouses, tobacco factories and textile mills — for good and ill — visitors today have reason to venture farther afield, to emerging hot spots in East Durham and the Old Five Points neighborhood. This season, only the brilliant fall foliage can compete with all the terrific food, drink and local color there is to discover across Dur’m, as residents affectionately ... More

Getting Hollywood back up and running won't be easy
NEW YORK, NY.- Daisy Edgar-Jones, the 25-year-old British actress with an increasingly crowded dance card, will soon experience just how complicated Hollywood’s rush to return to work is going to be. Now that a tentative deal has been reached in the actors strike — and assuming union members approve the new contract in the coming days — Edgar-Jones is heading back to the Oklahoma set of “Twisters.” The production of the sequel to the 1996 disaster film “Twister” was paused this summer when the strike began. Now, with only weeks to finish the film for a planned release next summer, there’s no time to waste. That means Edgar-Jones will have to walk away from a role in a drama that Ron Howard is set to begin directing soon in Australia. Before the strike, her schedule was set up to accommodate both jobs. But with the entertainment ... More

David Bates' Katrina painting leads Heritage's Texas art event
DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas-based David Bates announced his retirement in 2021, and just two years on, it's already easy to feel a sharp pang of nostalgia for one of Texas' most beloved contemporary artists. These kinds of feelings can kick in quickly about a number of Lone Star artists, as they (and we) move from one era into another and we understand the work we have from them is limited and will grow more so with each passing year. The veterans of our lifetime who have shown us an incredible range of talent and sensibilities — from those we've lost in recent years, such as Vernon Fisher, Bob Wade and Luis Jimenez, to those who are still defining the stage like Dario Robleto, Billy Hassell, Terry Allen and Melissa Miller — now find their rich and varied output is prime-timed for auction. A host of newer and younger collectors scramble to buy ... More

Detroit expands "Sister City" in art connection with Florence, Italy
DETROIT, MICH.- The Detroit Institute of Arts presents Guests of Honor: Masterpieces of Early Italian Renaissance Bronze Statuettes, a history-making exhibition that showcases four Italian Renaissance bronze statuettes from the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, marking the first time these four statues are on display together as a quarter and on view in the United States. This special presentation – on view now through March 3, 2024 – builds on a decades-long collaboration between the cities of Detroit and Florence, as well as the DIA and the Bargello Museum, a relationship that dates back more than 50 years. “The DIA is excited to continue our close connection to the Bargello Museum and the city of Florence, and to deepen the display of our impressive Italian Renaissance collection, by offering a one-of-a-kind viewing experience,” ... More

Mendes Wood DM New York opens 'Gardens of Human Nature' by Mimi Lauter
NEW YORK, NY.- Mendes Wood DM is presenting Gardens of Human Nature by Los Angeles-based artist Mimi Lauter. Comprising sixteen soft pastel and oil pastel framed works on paper of varying scale, this is Lauter's third solo exhibition with the gallery and first in New York City with Mendes Wood DM. Across the triptych Gardens of Human Nature stretches a single plot, or perhaps a table, or perhaps a bier. It hosts a series of forms: orbs laid with oil pastel thick as frosting, semicircular enclosures guarding delicately incised sprouts, a terraced mound crowned with an outstretched palm that holds three tiny sprigs, set in a pulsatile field of crimson and fuchsia. All at once a banquet, a corpse, and a flower bed, Mimi Lauter’s work welcomes the strangeness embedded in its title: cultivating what is inherently unmannered, ... More

For Joan Armatrading, classical music is just another genre
LONDON.- Last year, Chi-chi Nwanoku, the founder and artistic director of the Chineke! Orchestra, received an email out of the blue from singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading. She, the message said, had finished composing her first classical composition. They exchanged a few more emails about the piece, Symphony No. 1, and Nwanoku called to verify that she was talking with the real Armatrading, known for hits like “Love and Affection,” “Down to Zero,” and “Drop the Pilot.” Nwanoku wanted to hear the music, with the idea of having Chineke! premiere it — which the ensemble will do Nov. 24 in London. Rather than sending over a recording or a score, Armatrading decided that the only way forward was to visit Nwanoku’s home. The two sat at the kitchen table, and listened to the 30-minute electronic piano version of what would become ... More

Smithsonian expands digital capabilities to drive accessibility, impact and reach
WASHINGTON, DC.- Through its ongoing digital transformation, the Smithsonian Institution is reimagining how it uses technology to reach its audiences and elevate the visitor experience at its museums, in schools and online. The Smithsonian believes all people, in every household, classroom and community around the globe, should have the chance to meaningfully engage with the Institution and gain a better understanding of the rapidly changing world around them. The Smithsonian aims to meet these goals by adopting an organization-wide constituent relationship software that will foster a better experience for visitors, donors, volunteers and others who interact with the Smithsonian. By increasing its operational agility, the Smithsonian can ensure its vast collections and resources are free and accessible to people everywhere, ... More

National Museum of Natural History announces Dorothy Lippert as Repatriation Program Manager
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has announced that archaeologist Dorothy Lippert is the museum’s new Repatriation Program Manager. A leading figure in the field of Indigenous archaeology, Lippert is the first woman and first Native American to hold this position. “We are proud to announce Dorothy Lippert’s appointment to lead the museum’s repatriation program,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director for the National Museum of Natural History. “Dorothy’s range of experience and prominent standing in her field make her a perfect fit for this vital position.” As a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Lippert has long been interested in topics revolving around archaeological ethics and repatriation. For more than 20 years, she was a tribal liaison in the museum’s repatriation office, working ... More

An old master's song for the nation that broke his heart
BEVERWIJK.- For four nights before the concert, the old master had trouble sleeping. In his dreams, he was haunted by defeat after defeat — a failed exam, a knockout in the boxing ring. During the day, an upset stomach reduced his diet to gentle soup. But now, Sadiq Fitrat Nashenas, 88, one of the last living stars of a golden era for Afghan music, gingerly made his way through the crowd, after nearly 20 years away from the public stage. He had the thick spectacles of a long-retired professor, the neatly trimmed mustache and elegant outfit of a gentleman of a bygone era, and the shyness of an artist still uncomfortable with adulation after a lifetime of performance. The audience stood in applause. Nashenas gently raised his hands and blew kiss after kiss, until he was helped by the elbow onto the stage and seated behind the harmonium ... More


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Flashback
On a day like today, French painter Camille Pissarro died
November 13, 1903. Camille Pissarro (10 July 1830 - 13 November 1903) was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54. In this image: An unidentified visitor looks at the Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro called the "Rue Saint-Honore apre-midi. Effet de Pluie (Rue Saint-Honore Afternoon, Rain Effect)," in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Thursday May 12, 2005.

  
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