| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Monday, September 7, 2020 |
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| | From the seabed, figures of an ancient cult | |
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A photo by Jonathan J. Gottlieb of a 2,500-year-old Phoenician artifacts recovered from the Mediterranean. A new analysis of a trove of Phoenician artifacts, long ascribed to a single shipwreck, reveals that they are more likely votive offerings that accumulated between the 7th and 3rd centuries, B.C., as part of a cult devoted to seafaring and fertility. Jonathan J. Gottlieb via The New York Times.
by Joshua Rapp Learn
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In 1972, in one of the early finds of marine archaeology, researchers discovered a trove of clay figurines on the seabed off the coast of Israel. The figurines hundreds of them, accompanied by ceramic jars were assumed to be the remains of a Phoenician shipwreck that had rested under the Mediterranean for 2,500 years. The artifacts were never fully analyzed in a scientific study, and were filed away and mostly forgotten for decades. But a new analysis by Meir Edrey, an archaeologist at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, and his colleagues indicates that the items were not deposited all at once in a wreck. Rather, they accumulated over roughly 400 years, between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., in a series of votive offerings, as part of a cult devoted to seafaring and fertility. These figurines, the majority of them, display attributes related to fertility, to childbearing and to pregnancy, Edrey said. The anc ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Hampton's Virtual Art Fair hosted by Christofle, opened featuring 90 international galleries, and 105 booth displays from 11 countries around the world and 30 cities across the US. Over 2,000 pieces of artwork are being displayed in the virtual reality booths in 2D and 3D, and available for purchase on the website directly from the galleries.
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 | | Images of California's history that endure | | Iraq's Jews fled long ago, heritage struggles on | | Trump returned from Paris in 2018 with art from US envoy's residence | 
Dorothea Lange, Drought Refugees following the crops of California, August 1936. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Paul S. Taylor, 7.75 in x 7.375 in. A83.19 © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California.
by Jill Cowan
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The photograph shows a woman in a patterned dress, hauling a pail of tomatoes in the Coachella Valley. Its 1935, and her face is shaded from the punishing sun by a straw hat. Another image shows a mans bare back as he plows cauliflower fields in Guadalupe, California, in 1937. Its labeled Filipino Field Worker. Dorothea Langes photographs of Okies and Arkies the dust-caked Depression-era refugees standing forlorn before their ragged tents or trudging along desolate highways are familiar to many Americans. They inspired John Steinbeck and have lodged themselves deeply in the countrys psyche. But when I looked at the ... More | | 
Ranj Abderrahman Cohen, an Iraqi Kurdish Jewish man, stands at a ruined Jewish synagogue in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on July 5, 2020. SAFIN HAMED / AFP.
by Qassim Khidir
ARBIL (AFP).- Growing up in Iraq, Omar Farhadi would heat up dinner for his Jewish neighbours when they rested on the Sabbath. Few are left, and their heritage risks fading away too. Across Iraq, Jewish roots run deep: Abraham was born in Ur in the southern plains, and the Babylonian Talmud, the central text of Judaism, was compiled in the town of the same name in the present-day Arab state. Jews once comprised 40 percent of Baghdad's population, according to a 1917 Ottoman census. But after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, regional tensions skyrocketed and anti-Semitic campaigns took hold, pushing most of Iraq's Jews to flee. In the north, the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil was once the heart of the ancient kingdom of Adiabene, ... More | | 
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference the White House on September 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP.
WASHINGTON (AFP).- President Donald Trump has come under heavy fire for his decision in 2018 not to visit a US military cemetery while in Paris on an official visit. What did he do instead? According to Bloomberg News, he killed time in the US ambassador's palatial residence, the Hotel de Pontalba, where he admired several pieces of art... and the following day ordered them loaded onto Air Force One for the return trip to Washington. That fact was confirmed by a presidential spokesman, Judd Deere, who told AFP that Trump brought the artworks to be "prominently displayed in the People's House" -- the White House. But at the time, Bloomberg reported, Trump's impulsive move raised eyebrows, stunning some of those involved, and sending State Department lawyers scurrying to ensure the move was legal (they ultimately ruled that it was, because the artwork was ... More |
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| | Oscar-winning Czech director Jiri Menzel dies at 82 | | Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie opens an exhibition of works by Beth Campbell, Nils Erik Gjerdevik, and Michelle Grabner | | 7 sculpture gardens that merge art with the landscape | 
In the 1960s, he was one of the leading figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave of cinema, alongside another Oscar winner Milos Forman.
PRAGUE (AFP).- Oscar-winning Czech film director Jiri Menzel has died aged 82 after battling serious health problems for a long time, his wife Olga Menzelova said on Sunday. "Our dear Jiri, the bravest of the brave. Your body left our mundane world in our arms last night," she wrote on Facebook. Menzel won the Academy Award for the best foreign language film with "Closely Watched Trains", a World War II drama, in 1967. Born on February 23, 1938, Menzel studied film direction in Prague, graduating in 1962. In the 1960s, he was one of the leading figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave of cinema, alongside another Oscar winner Milos Forman. "Closely Watched Trains", based on a novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, was Menzel's first feature film. Hrabal became an endless source of inspiration for Menzel, who shot the bitter-sweet film "Larks on a String" in 1969, depicting the life of people sid ... More | | 
Installation view. Photo: Serge Hasenböhler.
BASEL.- Mixing mobiles, drawings, photography, oil paintings and silverpoint works, we reflect on the past, potential future and actual circumstances. Our lives and environment have changed drastically since these works were made, but they remain relevant and fresh, inviting us to unite together to join forces for a better future. Weaving lines, shapes, thoughts and colors is the theme of Back to the Roots in a year marked with upheaval and a need for unity. Ideas and concepts are presented as if suspendend in order that we may appropriate them and integrate them in our space and individual life. The sharpness of the photo allows us to see each thread, warp and weft and the combined results. The weave allows us to see combinations and various densities of blues and reds. Alternatively, the solid, richly colored background and dense black in both of Gjerdeviks paintings presents sharp constrasts. The combination of various black shapes create the sine curves ... More | | 
Snowshoe tours in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Photo by Nate Ryan, courtesy Walker Art Center.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Many museums and galleries across the country have cautiously begun to reopen in recent weeks, offering a chance for the culture-starved to enjoy a moment of reprieve with their favorite works of art. Still, the lines can be long, and timed ticketing limits a more impulsive visit. These seven sculpture gardens or outdoor art spaces ranging from world-class art collections to more hidden and eccentric destinations are especially appealing beginning this month, when the weather is ideal for strolling outside and the fall programming and curatorial programs (some of them delayed from closings this summer) begin in earnest. This 42-acre park and museum was founded in 1992 by American artist Seward Johnson, with the hope of promoting a better understanding of contemporary sculpture. Close to 300 works by artists such as Beverly Pepper, Kiki Smith, Anthony Caro, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Austin Wright populate the grounds, ... More |
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| | Galerie Nathalie Obadia opens The Village, Luc Delahaye's fourth solo exhibition in Paris | | Centre Photographique Marseille presents the exhibition project Odyssey - an Exile Collage | | Ludwig Museum in Budapest exhibits sixty artworks from Deutsche Telekom's collection | 
Luc Delahaye, Le Filet (234 vues), 2019 (detail). Digital C-print, 71 1/4 x 71 1/4 in. 73 5/8 x 73 5/8 in. Edition of 3 + 1 AP © Luc Delahaye. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia Paris/Brussels.
PARIS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is presenting The Village, Luc Delahayes fourth solo exhibition in Paris. The photographer shows us here a group of large-scale photographic tableaux and black and white series. All the works were realized during a long stay in a village in northern Senegal, near the river after which the country was named. Le Champ (The Field) represents a young man preparing a rice paddy before it is sown. In a wide-open landscape, halved by the horizon, the man whose profile is sharply defined by the hard light is captured in motion. The energy he emits, the size of his body within the frame and the wealth of details make him look like an archaic vision of hard work. As with the other large-scale formats included in the exhibition, the photograph is a reconstruction ... More | | 
Olaf Metzel (Englisch Kasten 2), We Refugees, 2020. Digital print, aluminium, stainless steel, 80 x 70 x 15 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Produzentengalerie Hamburg. Photo: Leonie Felle.
MARSEILLE.- The exhibition project Odyssey an Exile Collage takes as its starting point the odyssey of the Heine monument designed by Danish classicist sculptor Louis Hasselriis which portrays the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine as a suffering human being of old age who versed the painful experiences of his life censorship, political persecution, being spied on and illness. The marble statue was commissioned and first installed in 1892 by Empress Elizabeth of Austria in the Achilleion on the Greek island of Corfu, from where it was brought to Hamburg in 1909 by the son of Heines former publisher Campe, staying there until 1939 when the statue was moved by his daughter to its present location in the Parc Mistral in Toulon to protect it from vandalism. In Sanary-sur-Mer, just a few miles ... More | | 
Roman Ondak, Mars Walk, 2019.
BUDAPEST.- The first temporary exhibition at Ludwig Museum following the lift of the lockdown opened on September 3 under the title Keeping the balance, exhibiting approximately sixty artworks from Deutsche Telekoms collection (Art Collection Telekom). The selection mainly features works of art from artists with roots in Eastern Europe. The exhibition, originally planned to open at the beginning of June, is an indication of life cautiously getting back to business as usual. How can one strike and preserve balance in a complex, controversial and often antagonistic reality? The question posed by the exhibition raises hope and posits the statement simultaneously that conducting disputes about art and facing reality may bring forth ideas and relate experiences that are especially helpful in our effort to find balance. Telekom, as one of the largest telecom providers in Europe, has strong roots in Eastern Europe, dem ... More |
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| | Exhibition examines origins of Abstract Expressionism | | Schirn Kunsthalle exhibits works by Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian | | New York Philharmonic is back, pandemic-style -- playing in the streets | 
Jimmy Ernst, Untitled, 1958. Oil on canvas.
BRIDGEPORT, CONN.- Housatonic Museum of Art is presenting its newest show, The Roots of Abstraction. The exhibition, on view from September 3, 2020 through August 31, 2021, features a selection of paintings and sculpture by famed modernist artists who were active in New York City in the early 1940s, and were engaged with the political and artistic debates of the day. The Roots of Abstraction contextualizes a world-altering time when New York became the center of contemporary art. The exhibition includes works by William Baziotes, Romare Bearden, Jimmy Ernst, Herbert Ferber, Richard Hunt, Seymour Lipton, Alfonso Ossorio, Theodoros Stamos, Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli and Hale Woodruff, said Robbin Zella, HMA Director. These giants of the abstract expressionism movement battled the establishment and captured the attention of the entire mid-century art world. Theirs was the fertile ground upon which twentieth ... More | | 
Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian exhibition view, © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2020, Photo: Marc Krause.
FRANKFURT.- From September 3 to December 13, 2020, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting the first solo exhibition in Germany by Ramin Haerizadeh (*1975), Rokni Haerizadeh (*1978), and Hesam Rahmanian (*1980). The Iranian artist collectives large-scale installations transport viewers into a highly distinctive world. They create surprising encounters, focus attention on the urgent political and social conflicts of the present challenging power mechanisms, normative gender roles, and the art world. For the exhibition, Haerizadeh, Haerizadeh, and Rahmanian developed an environment that they regard as an alternative landscape. It revolves around the Near East, around war, exile, and migration as well as quarantine and dance. With melancholic poetry and caustic humor, the artists transform bleak scenes into caricature-like grotesques that ... More | | 
Violinist Quan Ge (L) and violist Cong Wu of the New York Philharmonic play with their 'bandwagon's pop-up concert series' at Betty Carter Park on September 04, 2020, in the Brooklyn Borough of New York City. Angela Weiss / AFP.
by Maggy Donaldson
NEW YORK (AFP).- Its fall season has been cancelled and its concert hall closed indefinitely, so New York's Philharmonic is taking it to the streets. One of America's oldest musical institutions, the famed symphony orchestra is playing outdoor pop-up shows, getting creative during the coronavirus pandemic that has kept concert halls closed and New Yorkers starved for live music. Each weekend, small ensembles play at surprise locations throughout the city, wearing T-shirts and masks in front of a pickup truck dubbed the "bandwagon." Sometimes musicians get rained on or people just walk on by -- but sometimes a nearby delivery truck honks along in exactly the right key. In those ... More |
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How to capture movement | Drop-in Drawing
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 Jazz has always been protest music. Can it meet this moment?NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- If the Black Lives Matter movement has an anthem, its probably Kendrick Lamars Alright. Five years after its release, its still chanted en masse by demonstrators and blasted from car stereos at protests, fluttering in the air like a liberation flag. Like many revolutionary anthems past, this one is the work of young jazz-trained musicians. Terrace Martins shivering alto saxophone and Thundercats gauzy vocals are as powerful as the tracks spitfire refrain: Can you hear me, can you feel me?/We gon be all right. Martin, Thundercat and famed saxophonist Kamasi Washington came up together in Los Angeles Leimert Park scene, where Black music, poetry, theater and dance have blended for decades. Romantically, its the kind of place youd imagine as the backbone of the jazz world, like Spike Lees Bed-Stuy of the ... More Exhibition of new sculptures by the Senegalese artist Seyni Awa Camara opens at Baronian Xippas GalleryBRUSSELS.- The Baronian Xippas Gallery is presenting a personal exhibition of new sculptures by the Senegalese artist Seyni Awa Camara. Seyni Awa Camaras mother introduced her to traditional pottery techniques when she was just a child but her artistic work rapidly became a far cry from the utilitarian nature of objects moving into a confirmed aesthetic research into form and content. Seyni Camara is also called the Magicienne de la Terre because there is a local legend behind her apprenticeship with clay. Seyni and her brothers were allegedly kidnapped by genies of the forest. It is said that for more than four months, they taught the children all there was to know about pottery. When her children did not come home, their mother and the villagers organised human sacrifices to ensure their return. Seyni and her brothers reappeared one morning, ... More Galerie Karsten Greve opens a solo exhibition featuring new work by Chinese artist Ding YiCOLOGNE.- To open the 2020 autumn season, Galerie Karsten Greve is showing a solo exhibition featuring new work by Chinese artist Ding Yi in Cologne. Karsten Greve first presented the artist in 2006 as part of his Contemporary Chinese Art group exhibition, followed by five subsequent Ding Yi solo exhibitions in his galleries in Cologne, Paris and St. Moritz. This is Ding Yi s tenth exhibition staged in partnership with Galerie Karsten Greve. Nineteen new pieces on wood and handmade paper, including Appearance of Crosses 2020 13 , created during the global coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020 , are on show . The color range is dominated by nuances of bright lime and lemon chrome, interspersed with black, light gray, and white speckles of color. Ding Yi's color combinations call to mind neon lights, marker pens, or oscillating billboards. ... More Michel Rein opens an exhibition of works by Anne-Marie SchneiderBRUSSELS.- For more than three decades, Anne-Marie Schneider has revealed to us a dense story, constantly renewed, drawn with a scalpel affirming to our astonished eyes, like a private diary open without detours or restraint, the diversity of her impressions, the liveliness of her feelings, the pain of her disturbed ideas in the continuation of her drawings. These enabled her to write only with words in order to better perceive through successive images her implementation of essentially visual snapshots, all of which escape pre-established standards of representation or figuration. Drawing is the world (...); this is the world I am facing; it is also that of others. And indeed, each of her drawings seems to spring from the depth of her sensitivity, with the power of gushing from an inexhaustible source, to show, express, overflow with unexpected perceptions ... More Speedwell: Largescale artwork transforms Plymouth coastline to explore legacy of The MayflowerPLYMOUTH.- On Friday 4 September 2020, a new art installation Speedwell opened to the public in Plymouth, UK. Speedwell transforms the Mount Batten Breakwater into a public forum for discussion and debate about the impact and legacy of the ships journey, colonialism and the ecological state of our planet during the Mayflower 400 commemorations. Created by artist collective Still/Moving, Speedwell was funded by Arts Council England and Plymouth Culture as part of the Mayflower 400 commemorations. 63m long and 6m high, Speedwell uses illuminated signage comprising 3,723 LED lights invites viewers complex questions about themselves, the damaged planet and the legacy of the pivotal journeys made by the Mayflower and its companion ship the Speedwell. It offers multiple readings; constantly shifting between words that are lit ... More Over the Influence opens Ryan Travis Christian's first solo show in AsiaHONG KONG.- Over the Influence is presenting Here Comes The Rooster, the first solo exhibition of American artist Ryan Travis Christian in Asia. For his new show, the artist creates a menagerie of characters using anthropomorphism as a humorous route through a dark world view. Featuring new charcoal on paper works of his signature style, the exhibition also showcases a series of canvas paintings, a medium which the artist is unveiling for the first time. Here Comes The Rooster runs from 3 September to 4 October 2020 (Tuesday Saturday from 11 AM 7 PM) at Upper Gallery, Over the Influence Hong Kong (1/F, 159 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong). Ryan Travis Christian's work draws influence from vintage political cartoons and hand-drawn animation used in a cheery yet ominous fashion to comment on politics, drugs, and the contemporary ... More Sotheby's Wine announces extensive autumn sales seriesLONDON.- This autumn, Sothebys Wine will present an extensive series of auctions of wines and spirits, following an exceptional result for the first eight months of the year, during which period sales exceeded over $49 million across 20 auctions, over 6,700 lots were sold, and $28 million of wine and spirits sold online. A key driver of Sothebys Wines success was in reaching a new and young audience, with 50% of first-time bidders aged in their twenties or thirties. Over twenty wines and spirits sales both live and online are scheduled to take place between September and December, including five auctions dedicated to private collections. The enduring value of great condition and provenance was borne out by the results of the five single owner auctions held thus far this year, which totalled $26 million, representing 58% of sales. The expansion ... More Aargauer Kunsthaus continues its series of exhibitions of young art with works by Rachele MontiAARAU.- Starting from the two-dimensional medium of photography, Rachele Monti (b. 1990) creates immersive spatial installations. They are intimate worlds dominated by sensory impressions, featuring light projections, bright colours and dense surfaces, which Monti places in a tense relationship with one another in the space. Here the human body, a favourite pictorial theme of the reworked photographic image, assumes a central role. In her artistic practice Rachele Monti engages with the non tangible, which she gives a concrete form in her works. The starting point for this is the human body, which she understands not only as an assemblage of skin, bones, muscles etc., but in the extended sense also as a vehicle for feelings and stories, for the unspoken and the unspeakable. The skin becomes a screen for the projection of the invisible, ... More Nepal police clash with devotees defying virus ban for festivalKATHMANDU (AFP).- Nepali police on Thursday fired tear gas and water cannon to halt a chariot festival that drew hundreds of Hindus and Buddhists onto the streets in defiance of coronavirus restrictions. The police said at least four of its personnel were injured and a water cannon truck damaged in the clash. Festival participants were also hurt but their number was not known. People come from across the Kathmandu Valley each year to see the 15-meter-high (49-foot) wooden chariot carrying the rain deity Macchindra Nath pulled through the streets of Lalitpur, near the capital. Loud chants to let the chariot through rang out Thursday amid traditional drum beats as police lined up to stop the crowds. "Police dispersed the crowd breaching the prohibitory order using tear gas and water cannons after they pelted stones (at) the security forces ... More How the Circle Drive-in 'found its niche' in the pandemicNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- In the coronavirus pandemic, it became 15 acres of safety, 15 acres where people could lose themselves in a crowd but remain alone as they watched a movie. Or graduated from high school. Or played bingo. Or watched fireworks. Or hummed along at a concert. The Circle Drive-in in Dickson City, a tidy borough in northeastern Pennsylvania, adapted to the new rules of the pandemic, widening the spacing for cars and admitting only half as many as in the past. It stationed the popcorn-popping crew in the concession stand behind new plastic shields and assigned employees to clean the restrooms every few minutes. And the Circle put more than movies on its screens. It livestreamed events like a Garth Brooks concert (shown at 300 drive-ins around the country). It also reopened its Sunday flea market, begun ... More At in-person choir rehearsals, a balance between joyful and carefulLONDON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- On Wednesday night in a community hall here, Matilda James kick-started a rehearsal of Citizens of the World Choir with an unusual instruction. Can we really keep our voices down? she said. We dont need to be louder than when we talk. Her plea in line with findings by British scientists indicating that singing poses no more risk of spreading the coronavirus than talking, if done at the same volume initially seemed to work. But about 20 minutes in, while practicing a jaunty Zulu folk song, the 14 members were clapping along and swaying side to side. Their voices grew louder and louder, ending in a joyful, full-voiced harmony. Its really hard not to sing that one loud, said Meg Brookes, the pianist. Such measures are being adopted by choirs across the world as they return to ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, American painter Grandma Moses was born September 07, 1860. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 December 13, 1961), better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist. She is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. In this image: While Mamie Eisenhower points out a feature on the Grandma Moses canvas of their Gettysburg farm President Dwight Eisenhower smiles his pleasure Jan. 18, 1956, as he receives the painting, a gift from the Cabinet to commemorate the third anniversary of his inauguration. A gold serving dish, on the table before them, was presented on behalf of the Nation's Republican women. From left to right are President Eisenhower; Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey; Mrs. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. At left is Vice President Richard Nixon.
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