| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 11, 2021 |
| | | A 21st-century Emily Dickinson finds a home in the archives | |
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Sketches, with fabric swatches, by the costume designer Jennifer Moeller, from the show Dickinson at Harvard's Houghton Library in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 7, 2021. The Apple TV+ series Dickinson is donating scripts, props and other artifacts including painstaking replicas of the poets manuscripts to the Emily Dickinson Museum and Harvard University. Matt Cosby/The New York Times.
by Jennifer Schuessler
NEW YORK, NY.- The Apple TV+ series Dickinson has won raves for its absurdist, existential take on the life of Emily Dickinson, which turns the poet into a passionate proto-feminist navigating a time as tumultuous as our own. But even its most-over-the-top flights of fancy have been grounded in historical scholarship and cutting-edge literary theory, garnering it an ardent fan base among scholars. Now, a show that emerged from the archives is returning whence it came, for as Dickinson might have put it all Eternity. The series, whose three-season run will come to an end Dec. 24, is donating dozens of costumes, period furnishings and props to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, where they will be used to flesh out the sense of her daily life at the Dickinson homestead. And in a twist, it is donating its production archive of scripts, costume and set designs, and paper props to Harvard Universitys Houghton Library. Included in the haul: the shows ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of Jeffrey Smart, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2021.
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| Exhibition of works by Jeffrey Smart opens at the National Gallery | | Sapphires & emeralds drive $3.5 million Hindman Important Jewelry Auction | | Excellent results in December auctions cap exceptional year at Koller |
Installation view of Jeffrey Smart, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2021.
CANBERRA.- The National Gallery celebrates the work and life of renowned Australian artist Jeffrey Smart with a major new exhibition, which opened to the public today. With a career spanning seven decades, Adelaide-born Smart provided a fresh take on 20th century modernity, capturing the dynamism and beauty of urban life in his depictions of sweeping roadways, high-rise apartments, construction sites and other elements of the industrial age. Marking the centenary of Smarts birth in 1921, Jeffrey Smart brings together more than 100 works of art from public lenders and private collectors as well as the National Gallerys collection, tracing his artistic legacy from his early years in South Australia to his last painting, Labyrinth, completed in 2011, two years before his death. Exhibition curators Dr Deborah Hart, Henry Dalrymple Head Curator, Australian Art, and Dr Rebecca Edwards, Sid and Fiona Myer Curator, Australian Art, have explore ... More | |
An Important Antique, Color-Change Sapphire and Diamond Ring, by Gillot. Price Realized: $256,250.
CHICAGO, IL.- On December 7, Hindman Auctions presented a successful Important Jewelry auction that totaled to $3,591,406. Bidders from 39 states and 21 countries participated, and there was eager competition for exquisite sapphires and emeralds. Jewelry from the Collection of Maria Perry (Lexington, Kentucky), Property from the Collection of Barbara Kohl-Spiro (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and from the Family Collection of Commodore Matthew C. Perry and August Belmont (Brooklyn, New York) all saw exceptional engagement. Emerging as the top lot was an important antique, color-change sapphire and diamond ring, by Gillot (lot 53), which sold for $256,250, significantly above its presale estimate of $80,000-120,000. It consists of an intricate handmade setting with engraved detail containing an oval cut color-change sapphire weighing approximately 20.50 carats. Another standout sapphire ring was a Tiffany & Co., Schlumberger, unheated Burmese ... More | |
Zdenek Sykora, Lines no. 93, 1992 (detail). Sold for CHF 488 000.
ZURICH.- Koller's end-of-year auctions were characterised by extremely active bidding in every collecting category, with total hammer prices realising 150% of the lower estimates - a sign of a very healthy auction market, and a fitting end to an exceptionally successful year for the Zurich auction house. Two works by Czech artist Zdenek Sykora soared above their pre-sale estimates: 'Lines no. 12', 1981, realised CHF 1.03 million (lot 3469, CHF 150 000/250 000), and 'Lines no. 93', 1992, sold for CHF 488 000 (lot 3470, CHF 80 000/140 000). Both were from the artist's best-known series of partially computer-generated works, and will enter private collections in his homeland. Op-Art was also actively disputed during the auction, with 'Rot-Grüne Energie II', 1971, by Günter Fruhtrunk tripling its estimate at CHF 97 900 (lot 3424, CHF 30 000/50 000). A small-format work by Willem de Kooning found a new owner at CHF 534 000 (lot 3444, CHF 60 ... More |
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| Kim Abeles turns the climate crisis into eco-art | | Latvian National Museum of Art opens an exhibition of works by Māra Kažociņa | | KM21 opens Oscar Murillo's first solo show in the Netherlands |
The artist Kim Abeles in Los Angeles, Nov. 19, 2021. Joyce Kim/The New York Times.
by Jori Finkel
CULVER CITY, CA.- When Kim Abeles had a studio in downtown Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, she was thrilled one day to see a deep bluish wedge appear between two buildings: a sliver of the San Gabriel Mountains, which had for months been obscured by the citys notoriously thick smog. Abeles, a conceptual artist by training with roots in nature she once lived in a grain silo in Ohio turned her amazement into a project governed by rules of her own making. She set out to photograph that space from her studio fire escape every day until the mountain appeared clearly again. It took a full year and three weeks. She soon found other ways to approach the wedge. She decided to walk from her studio on Sept. 10, 1987, toward the mountain as the crow flies, she said, until she could actually see it. She had ... More | |
Māra Kaociņa. Robert. 1965. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga.
RIGA.- The Spiral, an exhibition of Māra Kaociņas paintings, is being presented in the LNMAs cycle The Generation in the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga from 10 December 2021 to 6 February 2022. Māra Kaociņa occupies an outlying place in the overall picture of Latvian art. The painter was predominantly drawn to a metaphorical interpretation of the surrounding world. She consistently strove to imbue reality with another, deeper meaning, rejecting didactic content and petty details. It is demonstrated already by The Spiral (1961), a composition from her study years, whose title has become the title of this exhibition. It perfectly characterises the essence and uniformity of her entire oeuvre of over thirty years. Māra Kaociņa very rationally approached everything that had to do with painting, craft and skill, she strove to stu ... More | |
Oscar Murillo, surge (social cataracts), detail, 2019. Photo © Jack Hems. Courtesy the artist.
THE HAGUE.- To artist Oscar Murillo there is no distinction between art and life. His work explores universal themes like migration, displacement and the human impact of globalisation. KM21 is to present Murillos first solo show in the Netherlands, showcasing the work of an artist of international renown. At the heart of the presentation will be a new series of large-scale paintings, which draw on sources of inspiration such as the world-famous water lilies painted by French artist Claude Monet; as well as reflecting the turbulent backdrop of social upheaval against which they were made. At the age of ten, Oscar Murillo (b. 1986, Colombia) and his family moved from his birthplace La Paila to London. His work, which is closely interwoven with his own personal story, is a visual exploration of subjects like labour, community and cultural exchange. In large paintings, often combined with video, sculpture, drawings and performance, Mur ... More |
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| Lakeland Arts receives Barbara Hepworth sculpture | | Best art books of 2021 | | Gillian Jason Gallery launches first gallery space with 'At Peace' featuring leading Black female artists |
Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), Moon Form.
KENDAL.- Lakeland Arts has received a stunning sculpture created by a leading figure in the international art scene. Dame Barbara Hepworths Moon Form has been acquired for the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, which is administered by the Arts Council and allocated to Lakeland Arts. The piece has been on a long-term loan to Abbot Hall in Kendal since it was the centrepiece of the 2014 exhibition Barbara Hepworth: Within the Landscape. It now enters the Lakeland Arts collection permanently. Hepworth (1903-1975) was an internationally renowned artist of the 20th century and pioneer as a woman and mother for breaking down gender stereotypes in a largely male-dominated art sector. She sculpted Moon Form in 1968 from a single piece of white marble with incised geometric lines and finished with her iconic pierced form. The carving of the piece displays a close connection to the landscapes of Cornwall, where ... More | |
Titian: Love, Desire, Death
by Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith, Jason Farago and Siddhartha Mitter
NEW YORK, NY.- In a lockdown year, with travel reduced, there was no movable feast quite like an art book. Art is made by all sorts of people, everywhere, all the time, along many different paths, some of which are illuminated by these intriguing publications chosen by our critics. Maverick American artist Ray Johnson (1927-95), who managed to be nowhere and everywhere in the art world through his invention of Mail Art, was lucky in his longtime friend William S. Wilson, to whom, over 60 years, he gave thousands of letters, collages, drawings and clippings. Wilson saved every last scrap, and a jampacked sampling of them makes up this gold mine of a book, edited and curated by Caitlin Haskell with Jordan Carter. Funny, biting, morbid, its a page-turner for sure, and accompanies a show at the Art Institute of Chicago through ... More | |
A Marriage of Selves 48 x 36 inches
LONDON.- Growing the presence and careers of female and non-binary artists since 1982, Gillian Jason Gallery launched the UKs first female-focused commercial gallery space at 19 Great Titchfield Street, London with a powerful new exhibition At Peace, curated by Jade Foster and featuring five leading Black female artists Alanis Forde, Miranda Forrester, Sahara Longe, Cece Philips, and Emma Prempeh. Jade Foster is a British curator and artist of Jamaican and Saint Lucian heritage based in Nottingham, UK and a current CCCADI Curatorial Fellow in Afro-Caribbean Art. They are also a founding member and initiator of Black Curators Collective (BCC). Curated and selected by Jade Foster for At Peace, each of the five artists create figurative works that are unbound by prejudice; subverting and rethinking how Black women and figures have been regarded by Western naturalistic classical and modernist traditions within painting. Traditionally de ... More |
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| Dallas Museum of Art premieres immersive mural, homage to lowrider culture by Guadalupe Rosales | | Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts opens "I don't know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality" | | Christie's Fine Watchmaking: Important Timepieces and the Independent Collection achieves $5.5M |
Guadalupe Rosales, Sitting on Chrome, 2021. Courtesy the artist.
DALLAS, TX.- For the next installation of the Dallas Museum of Arts Concourse mural series, Los Angelesbased artist Guadalupe Rosales creates an immersive work that pays homage to lowrider culture and the community it fosters. Spanning the Museums main, 153-foot thoroughfare, Drifting on a Memory features vivid colors and graphic designs that evoke the brilliant surfaces of the customized cars on a monumental scale, as well as recorded sound that conveys the aural experience of cruising in East Los Angeles. Pinstriping for the mural was done by Dallas-based lowrider artist Lokey Calderon. Drifting on a Memory also incorporates two lightbox sculptures created by Rosales that hold photographs by the artist as well as some sourced from Dallas community lowriding families, engravings, and ephemera representative of Latinx culture. The resulting work is a celebration of lowriding culture and of Latinx communities and their ... More | |
Bridget Moser, When I Am Through With You There Wont Be Anything Left (research image), 2021; Multimedia installation and performance; Dimensions variable; Courtesy of the artist.
OMAHA, NE.- Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts presents I dont know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, a group exhibition exploring corporeal hospitality, from December 9, 2021 through March 20, 2022. Hospitality is usually considered a philosophical concept with juridical implications, an ethical concern or a social/political practice. This exhibition shifts the focus to consider the stealth work of hospitality on our material and political understanding of bodies. I dont know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality invites visitors to consider how hospitality has simultaneously circumscribed what we think bodies are, what we imagine they can do, how we feel they relate, whom we believe they can encounter, and ultimately, how they engage with each other and in the world. The exhibition explores these questions in space by weaving together open-ended experiential ... More | |
Greubel Forsey, Invention Piece 3, Tourbillon, 24-hour display with minutes, small seconds and 72 hours power reserve, 18k white gold, No. 9 of a limited edition of 11 pieces. Circa 2010. Price realized: $237,500. © Christie's Images Ltd 2021.
NEW YORK, NY.- Christies Fine Watchmaking: Important Timepieces and the Independent Collection (24 November 10 December) achieved a total of $5,518,250 with 95% sold by lot and 143% hammer above low estimate. There was global participation with bidders from 34 countries and over 30% new registrants. Leading the sale was Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 3 Tourbillon in 18k white gold, which sold for $237,500. The sale also achieved notable results for independent watchmakers, including F.P. Journe, Octa Reserve de Marche, 18K pink gold, brass movement, achieved $175,000 and A. Lange & Sohne Datograph Flyback in 18K pink gold, which achieved over twice its high estimate and sold for $137,500. Additionally, strong prices were achieved for Patek Philippe references including the Celestial reference ... More |
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Why Line & Berry Inlay Embodies Americana Tradition
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Nobel Prize awarded to scientist who developed bone marrow cancer treatment sells for $312,500
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to E. Donnall Thomas sold Thursday night for $312,500 at Nate D. Sanders Auctions. Thomas won the Nobel Prize for his use of bone marrow transplants to treat leukemia and other blood cancers. Thomas first published his theory on BMT treatments in ''The New England Journal of Medicine'' in 1957, and then worked methodically throughout the 1960s and 70s to turn the theory into a clinical treatment, despite it being dismissed at the time as implausible and experimental. In the latter half of the 20th century, the treatment slowly gained acceptance, with approximately 60,000 transplants now occurring each year, bringing the survival rate for some cancers from zero to near 90%. Bone marrow transplants are now considered one of the greatest success stories in cancer ... More
Sundance Film Festival unveils 2022 lineup that reflects 'age of reckoning'
NEW YORK, NY.- When members of the independent film community descend on Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival in January after experiencing the previous edition virtually they will bring with them movies that reflect the times from directors as varied as Lena Dunham and Michel Hazanavicius of The Artist. Culling from 3,762 feature submissions, the Sundance programmers chose a diverse slate of 82 titles including 39 by first-time feature directors in a variety of genres that explore myriad themes, like tackling grief and battling the status quo. Weve been through a lot these past two years and I think that has had a huge influence on what artists are concentrating on, Sundances director of programming, Kim Yutani, said. Some of that is fighting the system, really calling into question institutions, corporations. We saw ... More
In a gender-flipped revival, 'Company' loves misery
NEW YORK, NY.- If there was ever a good time to dislike Company, now isnt it. No, the death on Nov. 26 of composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim makes this more properly a time for sorrow and gratitude. He was, after all, the man who wrote those feelings into a beautiful Company song Sorry-Grateful and, in so doing, introduced ambivalence at an almost cellular level to the American musical theater. But lets face it, the revival that opened Thursday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater is not the Company that Sondheim and book writer George Furth (along with director Hal Prince) unleashed on Broadway in 1970. Sure, the score remains great, and there are a few perfectly etched performances in supporting roles, especially Patti LuPones as the undermining, pickled Joanne. As directed by Marianne Elliott, however, in a gender- ... More
Robbie Shakespeare, prolific reggae bassist, is dead at 68
NEW YORK, NY.- Robbie Shakespeare, a Jamaican bassist who, as half of rhythm duo Sly and Robbie, played with and produced some of the biggest names in music while transforming reggae with bold infusions of rock, blues and jazz, died Wednesday at a hospital in Miami. He was 68. Guillaume Bougard, a close friend and frequent collaborator, said the cause was complications of kidney and liver transplants. Starting in the mid-1970s, Sly and Robbie were among the most prolific musicians in the business, reggae or otherwise. Shakespeare once estimated that they had taken part in 200,000 recordings, either their own or as backup musicians or producers for other artists. Both men came up from the creative cauldron of 1970s Kingston, Jamaica, working as session musicians at the famed Channel One recording studio and playing ... More
Barry Harris, pianist and devoted scholar of bebop, dies at 91
NEW YORK, NY.- Barry Harris, a pianist and educator who was the resident scholar of the bebop movement and ultimately, one of its last original ambassadors died Wednesday in North Bergen, New Jersey. He was 91. His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of the coronavirus, which exacerbated a number of underlying health problems, said Howard Rees, his longtime business partner and collaborator. Starting in his teens and continuing beyond his 90th year, Harris performed, taught and toured with unflagging devotion, evangelizing for bebops stature as a form of high American modernism and helping to lay the foundation for the widespread academic study of jazz. Yet throughout his career he remained an independent educator: He never joined the faculty of a major institution, instead choosing to embed himself within ... More
Denis O'Brien, force in ex-Beatle's film company, dies at 80
NEW YORK, NY.- Denis OBrien, who with former Beatle George Harrison founded a production company that made several audacious hit movies, beginning with Monty Pythons Life of Brian in 1979, before the partnership and the companys fortunes soured, died Friday in Swindon, west of London. He was 80. His daughter Kristen said the death, in a hospital, was caused by intra-abdominal sepsis. OBrien became Harrisons business manager in 1973, hired to bring some stability to Harrisons financial affairs, which had been muddled since the Beatles broke up four years earlier. And when Harrisons friend Eric Idle, of the Monty Python comedy troupe, went to Harrison with a problem in 1979, it was OBrien who nudged Harrison into producing movies. Monty Python had begun work on a follow-up to its 1975 hit, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ... More
A tenor's Met career seemed over. Not so fast.
NEW YORK, NY.- It was deep into Julie Taymors playful production of Mozarts The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost. Papageno, Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly Flute that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. Are you still with me? As he rotated past on a set piece, tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papagenos lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, Im right here. Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Mets mighty stage. Although he was once one of the companys brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight ... More
Christie's December Design Sales total $18,162,375
NEW YORK, NY.- Christies New York Design department concluded a successful two-day series of Design sales at Rockefeller Center on December 9 10, achieving a combined total of $18,162,375. The Design sale on December 9 achieved $13,969,125. The top lot of the sale was the iconic Moutons de Laine by François-Xavier Lalanne which sailed past its high estimate to sell for $1,590,000. The department achieved strong results throughout the over 160 lot-sale, highlighted by two significant works by Alberto Giacometti from the Collection of a Member of the Matisse Family. Lampe Coupe aux deux figures sold for $930,000 and an important Grande Feuille floor lamp achieved $1,170,000more than triple its high estimate. The sale also included a leading lot of Art Deco art to be sold in recent years, the Andre Groult important suite of furniture, ... More
The Italian Cultural Institute in Brussels presents an installation by Italian artist Rebecca Moccia
BRUSSELS.- The Italian Cultural Institute in Brussels, in collaboration with MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, presents the installation Rest Your Eyes by Italian artist Rebecca Moccia, on display from 10 December 2021 to 7 January 2022. The project is among the winners of Cantica21. Italian Contemporary Art Everywhere, an open call supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) and the Ministry of Culture (MiC) that was launched in September 2020 with the aim of promoting Italian contemporary art abroad. Rest Your Eyes is a transmedia installation featuring a news broadcast on mute, as well as two audio speakers located throughout the space and connected to multi-language web radio stations. Disturbing yet familiar like the distant and distorted chronicles coming from the speakers, the images have ... More
Best theater of 2021
NEW YORK, NY.- Until the pandemic, I had never seen a play with my shoes off. Nor had I been able to see so many from all over the world at the click of an icon. Yet by the beginning of 2021, I was tiring of those novelties. Watching shows by myself, at my desk or, more often, lolling on a sofa no longer seemed liberating but its opposite. I began to feel imprisoned in my own experience, a sensation that was one of the reasons I gravitated to the theater in the first place. Despite a few timid outings earlier in the year, two-thirds of 2021 would go by before I fully felt the pleasure of live theater again. Starting in August, and accelerating through the rest of the year, the world reopened, or should I say the worlds: not just the strange buildings dedicated to communal storytelling but also the stories being told inside them. Urgent ideas that had been pent up, in ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Antonis Pittas
Liz West
Andrea Marie Breiling
Gabrielle Chanel
Flashback On a day like today, American-Swiss painter Mark Tobey was born December 11, 1890. Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 - April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophically from most Abstract Expressionist painters. His work was widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe. In 1921, Tobey founded the art department at The Cornish School in Seattle, Washington.
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