The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Saturday, April 27, 2024



 
Chicago Museum says investigators have no evidence art was looted

In an undated image provided by Art Institute of Chicago, “Russian War Prisoner,” a drawing by Egon Schiele from 1916 that is now held by the Art Institute of Chicago. In a court filing, the Art Institute of Chicago fought Manhattan prosecutors’ efforts to seize an important Egon Schiele drawing, denying that the Nazis had stolen it. (Art Institute of Chicago via The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- The Art Institute of Chicago has rebuffed an attempt by New York investigators to seize an Egon Schiele drawing in its collection, asserting in a strongly-worded 132-page court filing that the investigators have produced no evidence that the artwork was looted by the Nazis as they claim. The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of collector Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Jan Josephszoon van Goyen (13 January 1596 - 27 April 1656) was a Dutch landscape painter. Van Goyen was an extremely prolific artist; approximately twelve hundred paintings and more than one thousand drawings by him are known. In this image: River Scene, 1652.






Two-person exhibition of works by Randy Dudley and Robert Gniewek opens at The Louis K. Meisel Gallery   Lark Mason Associates announces results of series of Asian art sales   Lawrence Weiner Estate joins Gladstone


Robert Gniewek. Gateway Motel, Sunset, 2024, oil on linen, 24 x 22 inches.

NEW YORK, NY.- The Louis K. Meisel Gallery is presenting Forgotten Industry, a two-person exhibition of recent Photorealist works by Randy Dudley and Robert Gniewek. Both originating from the Midwest, the artists’ work subtly overlaps in subject and genre, and yet diverges stylistically. Focusing on urban and industrial landscapes across ... More
 


After Giambologna, Two Patinated Bronze Allegorical Figures of Astronomy and Architecture Fetches $500,00, surpassing its $800-1200 estimate.

NEW YORK, NY.- Amidst the dazzling array of Asian art treasures in the Shahmoon Family Collection Asian, European and Other Works of Art, one of the four sales presented by Lark Mason Associates on iGavelAuctions.com, during Asia Week New York, was one standout that attracted a great deal ... More
 


Lawrence Weiner.

NEW YORK, NY.- Gladstone Gallery announced its representation of the Lawrence Weiner Estate in New York. Recognized as a pioneering figure of Conceptual art, Lawrence Weiner is celebrated for his work with language, often in large-scale public installations and spanning film and video, posters, artist books, and audio. In graphic text-works that play with the tensions ... More


Successful Classic Week at the Dorotheum   Erwin Wurm opens exhibition in the former nave of KÖNIG GALERIE   Part II of Elmer's Toy Museum collection heads to auction May 11 at Milestone in Cleveland


Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), Portrait-sketch of the Infanta María Isabel (1789–1848), later Queen of the Two Sicilies, half-length, for the Portrait of the Family of Carlos IV, oil on canvas, 71.8 x 59.1 cm, realized price €712,500

VIENNA.- Dorotheum's newly renovated, state-of-the-art ceremonial hall, the Franz-Joseph-Saal, provided the elegant backdrop for the Old Master Paintings sale on April 24th, 2024. The first sensation of the night came right at the beginning of the auction with a Madonna and Child with John the Baptist by a close associate of Sandro ... More
 


Erwin Wurm, Wurst (Flat Sculptures), 2021. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 x 4.5 cm. 150 x 120 x 4.5 cm. Unique.

BERLIN.- Where to start with Erwin Wurm, if not at the very beginning? There was Plato in his own way. He had instructed all those who practiced what we now call “art” that it was at best an illusion, a phantasm, of which they were capable. Via the French, the ancient Greek term became the familiar "phantom". This is the title Erwin Wurm has given to his current exhibition in the former nave of KÖNIG GALERIE. Phantoms, in ... More
 


Issmayer (Germany) tin clockwork Gordon Bennet racer in excellent condition with original passenger figures. Length: 7½in. Estimate: $4,000-$6,000. All images courtesy of Milestone Auctions, Willoughby, Ohio, USA.

WILLOUGHBY, OHIO.- Last October antique and vintage toy fans added a new chapter to the legend of Elmer’s Auto and Toy Museum, which closed its doors in 2022 after 28 years of operation. Stoked by intense media coverage and toy-hobby chatter, bidders worldwide set their sights on rarities from the Wisconsin museum’s archive ... More



Modern & Contemporary African and Middle Eastern Art Auction on 1st May features celebrated artists and emerging talent   During Frieze Week, artists examine the effects of technology   International and American folk artists spotlighted in Slotin Auction's April 27-28 masterpiece sale


Kamal Youssef, Tradition. Signed and dated KAMAL 70 lower right oil on canvas. Property of the Kamal E Youssef Family Trust. Estimate £6,000 - £9,000.

LONDON.- Since May 2023, Olympia Auctions has sold works by eminent artists in Africa and the Middle East via dedicated sales run by highly regarded expert Janet Rady. It’s May 2024 auction continues the tradition, with seventy-seven exceptional works by artists such as Ablade Glover from Ghana, Hendrick Lilanga from Tanzania, Muraina Oyelami from Nigeria, Kagiso Patrick Mautloa from South Africa. In addition, the sale ... More
 


Mika Tajima, Negative Entropy (Sound Bath, Purple, Full Width, Exa), 2024. Cotton, polyester, wool acoustic baffling felt, aluminum, white oak. © Mika Tajima, courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo: Charles Benton.

NEW YORK, NY.- During Frieze Week in New York, three artists are exploring the environmental and psychological reverberations of our relationship with technology. Ethiopian artist Elias Sime delves into the consequences of overextracting metals to make smartphones, laptops and batteries. Mika Tajima gives form to the vague sense of unease many people feel ... More
 


Howard Finster’s “Elvis At 3 Years Old” (c. 1976), an early painting from the Georgia folk artist that he painted on a heavy burlap sack, is included in Slotin Auction’s Self-Taught Art Masterpiece Sale on April 27-28.

BUFORD, GA.- Slotin Auction has been the go-to auction house for folk art, especially made-in-America self-taught art, since it held its first auction in 1994. But with each of the handful of sales it holds each year, Slotin expands the borders of what it defines as folk as well as the geographic lines of where that art is created. The growth in ... More


Women lead the way at Freeman's │ Hindman's $2.9M Post War and Contemporary Art Auction   Video games are a playwright's muse, not her hobby   One for the ages: Sonia Delaunay's wearable abstractions


Pat Steir (American, b. 1938), Small Ghost Waterfall, 1993 (detail). Sold for $533,400.

CHICAGO, IL.- Work by Gertrude Abercrombie, Olga de Amaral, Louise Nevelson, and Pat Steir beat their estimates selling for six figures in Freeman’s | Hindman’s Post War and Contemporary Art auction on April 24. On the day, seven works sold for over $100,000, four of them created by female artists, spearheading Freeman’s | ... More
 


The writer Bekah Brunstetter at home in Los Angeles, April 10, 2024. (Daniel Dorsa/The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- Writer Bekah Brunstetter is decidedly not a video game aficionado. Her personality type — “psychotically obsessed with productivity,” as she put it — has sealed off all gaming rabbit holes for the past 25 years. And yet Brunstetter, perhaps best known for her television work on “This Is Us” and the book for the current Broadway ... More
 


Installation view. © Bruce M. White.

NEW YORK, NY.- If Wassily Kandinsky bent the visible world to the whims of his canvas, reducing concert hall scenes to puddles of color and line, Sonia Delaunay seems to have worked the other way around. A fashion and textile designer by trade, the Ukrainian-born Delaunay (1885-1979) filled the world with bold and delightful patterns — with the chevrons and dot grids and floral ... More




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More News

He's music's Mr. Adjacent, connecting minimalism to disco
NEW YORK, NY.- For 45 years, Peter Gordon has held onto a reel-to-reel tape of a show he performed in 1979 at the Mudd Club in New York City with a trio called the Blue Horn File. Gordon, violinist Laurie Anderson and percussionist David Van Tieghem — a group of new music all-stars — did a short set with the playful and unshackled feel of cartoon music. It was one of only three shows the Blue Horn File played. Gordon, a saxophonist, composer and bandleader who has been a mainstay of downtown music for decades, has recorded for several different labels. But he decided to take a different path with these tapes: This week, he is releasing “The Blue Horn File at Mudd Club” as one of the first titles on Adjacent Records, his new digital-only label. “It eliminates the middleman,” he said. “With record companies, people second ... More


Michael Cuscuna, who unearthed hidden jazz gems, dies at 75
NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Cuscuna, who brought an artist’s level of devotion and a scientist’s attention to detail to the work of exhuming and producing archival jazz recordings — work that vastly expanded access to the buried treasures of American music’s past — died Saturday at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 75. Singer and songwriter Billy Vera, a friend of more than 60 years, said the cause was complications of esophageal cancer. Cuscuna may have been the most prolific archival record producer in history. Starting in an era when midcentury jazz experienced a resurgence of interest, his name showed up in the fine print on more than 2,600 albums, most of them reissues, many of which included his painstaking liner notes. The Mosaic label, which he founded with music business veteran Charlie Lourie 41 years ago, has become ... More


'So Far From Ukraine': A princely dancer finds a home in Miami
MIAMI, FLA.- “Imagine you’ve been rushing through the forest for hours,” choreographer Alexei Ratmansky called out to Stanislav Olshanskyi as he ran across an airy ballet studio in Miami Beach. Olshanskyi, playing a prince, was searching for the woman he has been duped into betraying. “You are just now realizing the consequences of what you’ve done,” Ratmansky said. “How does it feel?” Outside, visible through large windows, people passed by, dressed for the beach. Inside, the willowy, delicate-featured Olshanskyi — a prince out of a fairy tale — gathered his thoughts and tried his entrance again, this time conveying the requisite urgency, verging on panic. It was a week before the opening of Miami City Ballet’s “Swan Lake,” which the company performs in a critically ac ... More


A very famous model stars in a very pixelated book of wigs
NEW YORK, NY.- Guido Palau was sitting in an airport lounge in Miami, on his way to New York. Kaia Gerber was sitting in a car in Los Angeles, on her way to the airport. “This is exactly what our life is like,” Palau said on their group call. “Story of our life,” Gerber echoed. Still, at the end of 2022, they found a day off to “play together,” Palau said. He made some wigs. Gerber modeled them. Palau and his assistants filmed her on their iPhones, then took screenshots from their videos. Those screenshots became images in Palau’s latest book, “Hidden Identities,” to be released May 4 by Idea. “We live in a world where so many of the images we’re seeing are high-definition and curated,” Gerber said — unlike the pixelated and blurry images of “Hidden Identities,” which Palau has described as banal and amateurish. ... More


Carrie Robbins, costume designer for dozens of Broadway shows, dies at 81
NEW YORK, NY.- Carrie Robbins, a meticulous and resourceful costume designer who worked on more than 30 Broadway shows from the 1960s to the 2000s, died April 12 in New York City. She was 81. Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Daniel Neiden, a friend, who said her health had declined after she fell and broke her hip in December. In 1972, when she was just 29 years old, Robbins began “emerging as one of the hottest costume designers in show business,” as syndicated fashion columnist Patricia Shelton put it, thanks to her work that year on the original Broadway production of “Grease,” six years before it was turned into a hit movie. Robbins was given a budget of only $4,000 (the equivalent of about $30,000 today). For the character Frenchy, she dyed a wig bright red using a Magic Marker and fashioned a pink ... More


'Orlando' review: A Virginia Woolf fantasy that plays with gender
NEW YORK, NY.- There’s a slight pause and a knowingly raised eyebrow — enough to provoke laughter from the audience — when the title character of “Orlando” begins to introduce himself with this line: “He — for there could be no doubt of his sex.” But the play is set in a universe in which there is, in fact, doubt. And this Orlando is played by protean writer and performer Taylor Mac, who delivers the line while cutting a resplendent androgynous figure in shiny red boots and white, vaguely Elizabethan garb. Sarah Ruhl’s play, in a revival that opened Sunday at Signature Theater, is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantasy of the same title. Published in 1928, the book has traversed the decades as seemingly unscathed by time as its protagonist. When it starts, Orlando is a 16-year-old boy during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. About ... More


John Adams' 'El Niño' arrives at the Met in lush glory
NEW YORK, NY.- On Tuesday night, the Metropolitan Opera continued to play a bit of catch-up with American composer John Adams. As a Minimalist of striking imagination and moral probity, Adams has developed a distinct musical style and point of view that have earned him a firm place in the pantheon of American art music over the past 40 years or so. His operas, though, didn’t make it to the Met stage until 2008, when “Doctor Atomic” had its East Coast premiere. “Nixon in China” followed in 2011 and “The Death of Klinghoffer” in 2014, decades after they were written. These are Adams’ so-called CNN operas, with subject matter ripped from headlines and history books. But “El Niño,” a hybrid opera-oratorio from 2000 that had its Met premiere on Tuesday, is a different animal. Created with the librettist and director Peter Sellars, ... More


A living Chinese artist bonds with a 19th-century French poet
NEW YORK, NY.- As a teenager, Chinese artist Tao Siqi was fascinated by the words of Charles Baudelaire, the French poet who was not exactly known for imagery of sweeping landscapes and cities in the rain. But it was not until a few years ago, when she reread his erotic and often bleak “Les Fleurs du Mal” (“The Flowers of Evil”), that she decided to translate his searing words onto canvas. Nine of those paintings will be on display at Frieze New York at Capsule Shanghai’s booth, more than likely turning heads with their almost fluorescent colors on canvases as large as 3 feet by 4 feet. “The first time I came across Baudelaire’s poetry was in middle school or high school, since my father had a copy of ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ in our home,” Tao, 29, said in a recent video interview. “When I first started painting, I wasn’t inspired by his poems, ... More


A new 'Great Gatsby' leads with comedy and romance
NEW YORK, NY.- Jay Gatsby — self-made enigma, party host extraordinaire and talk of the summer season in West Egg, Long Island — doesn’t carry his insecurities lightly. The facade of his wealth-drenched life is a grand and precarious creation, and propping it up requires constant vigilance. His is new money, so he has to prove his worth to the snobberati. Thus his pathetic habit of showing that photo of himself in his Oxford days to people he has barely met. Or, more endearingly, his over-the-top insistence on glamming up the humble cottage of his neighbor, Nick Carraway, when the lost love of Gatsby’s life, the fabled Daisy Fay Buchanan, is coming over for tea. In the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” which opened Thursday night at the Broadway Theater, the grass outside the cottage is groomed, flowers are everywhere, and ... More


In 'Mother Play,' Paula Vogel unboxes a family story
NEW YORK, NY.- In the first scene of “Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions,” Paula Vogel’s antic, mournful new drama, Martha, a character modeled on the playwright, offers a version of Ecclesiastes. “There is a season for packing,” Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger) says as she slits open a cardboard box. “And a season for unpacking.” Vogel, 72, has spent the majority of her career unpacking. Her work is not strictly autobiographical, but as in the plays of Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee or Adrienne Kennedy, she has a canny way of rearranging the emotional furniture of her lived experience into tragicomedy. Here, at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater, that furniture includes a mother, Phyllis (Jessica Lange), and a brother, Carl (Jim Parsons), named for Vogel’s own family. The story begins in 1964 with the family moving into a basement apartment in a Washington, D.C., suburb; Carl is 1 ... More


How postwar Paris changed the expat artists
NEW YORK, NY.- Most people looking to make it as artists today are advised to follow a hyperprofessionalized path, beginning with enrollment at one of a select group of MFA programs. But as a new exhibition reminds us, it wasn’t always this way. “Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962,” at the Grey Art Museum at New York University, celebrates the convivial, informal and often self-directed education of expatriates in the French capital after World War II. “Americans in Paris” inaugurates the university’s relocated and renamed art space; it has moved from Washington Square, where it was known as the Grey Art Gallery, several blocks east, to Cooper Square. The show devotes a lot of scholarly attention to a slice of art history — abstract painting in Western Europe in the 1950s and ’60s — that is not ... More



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Flashback
On a day like today, Dutch painter and illustrator Jan van Goyen died
April 27, 1656. Jan Josephszoon van Goyen (13 January 1596 - 27 April 1656) was a Dutch landscape painter. Van Goyen was an extremely prolific artist; approximately twelve hundred paintings and more than one thousand drawings by him are known. In this image: River Scene, 1652.

  
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