| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 21, 2019 |
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| | Science, splendor and 'Dresden green' to impress a sovereign | |
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Turban snail cup from the second half of the 17th century, on display at Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe, exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Dec. 16, 2019. Dozens of ingeniously crafted objects are on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including the worlds fanciest hat pin at 41 carats. Karsten Moran/The New York Times.
by James Barron
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- You could walk through Making Marvels the Metropolitan Museum of Arts show of 16th- to 18th-century mechanical wonders that double as exquisite works of art and miss the news. Making Marvels brings together hundreds of elaborately crafted objects, many never seen in the United States: an ornate silver table decorated with sea nymphs, for example, or a clock with Copernicus depicted in gilded brass. Some, like a chariot carrying the wine god Bacchus, are spectacularly inventive Bacchus can raise a toast, roll his eyes and even stick out his tongue. Some, like a charming rhinoceros, a collage created from tortoiseshell, pearls and shells, are merely lovely. So Making Marvels is a parade of science and splendor, not always in that order. But the news? Discreetly displayed in the show is one prize jewel that was not stolen in a brazen heist 4,000 miles away. ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Massimo Vignati poses near a Maradona shoe on November 20, 2019 in his 'Maradona museum' in Naples. The Massimo Vignati Museum in Naples is unique in its kind. Neither it does appear on any map of the city, nor in travel guides, and entry is free of charge. And yet, all of Diego Maradona is there, in the basement of a typical building in Secondigliano, a hard neighborhood in the north of the city. Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP
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 | | V&A acquires the most exquisitely modelled piece of English porcelain, discovered at a French flea market | | In Brazil's pampas, a Triassic Park once flourished | | A 3,500-year-old disposable cup helps British Museum examine our relationship with rubbish | 
Louis-François Roubiliac (1705-1762), 'Head of a Laughing Child', about 174649 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
LONDON.- Today the V&A announces it has acquired a previously unknown porcelain sculpture Head of a Laughing Child (about 174649) after its chance discovery at a French flea market eight years ago. Following extensive research, the V&A can now reveal that the sculpture was almost certainly cast from an original clay model made by the renowned French-born sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, who was active in London in the 1740s. The sculpture, acquired with generous support from Art Fund, joins the V&As National Collection of Ceramics. It is now on display in the museums British Galleries, alongside some of the earliest examples of English porcelain revealing the vibrant artistic milieu of mid-eighteenth-century London. A rare survival, the sculpture was discovered in south west Brittany in France in 2011 by retired porcelain dealer Louis Woodford, who recognised it as a significant piece of English ... More | | 
Fossils of the Gnathovorax Cabreirai dinosaur are seen at CAPPA, a Brazilian research support centre for paleontology in Sao Joao do Polesine, Brazil, on December 2, 2019. CARL DE SOUZA / AFP.
by Jordi Miro
SÃO JOÃO DO POLÃSINE (AFP).- Millions of years before the arrival of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, another fearsome dinosaur -- the Gnathovorax -- roamed what is now southern Brazil, ripping apart its prey with sharp teeth. Measuring nearly 10 feet (three meters) long, it was the biggest dinosaur of its time, and also the most ferocious -- placing it at the top of the food chain, as T.rex once was. Basically, the Gnathovorax cabreirai was the king of Triassic Park, if you will, as the dominant creature of the pre-Jurassic period that began roughly 250 million years ago. "In the Triassic ecosystem, it held a place similar to what lions have today," says Rodrigo Temp Muller, a 26-year-old paleontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria. And the Gnathovorax's stomping grounds ... More | | 
Minoan cup being held. Photo: Trustees of the British Museum.
LONDON.- A disposable cup made around 3,500 years ago is the centrepiece of a new display at the British Museum which looks at what we can learn from items that people throw away. The Asahi Shimbun Displays Disposable? rubbish and us (19 December 2019 23 February 2020) highlights 4 varied examples of objects that were all at some point discarded as rubbish but have since been acquired by the Museum because of their historical or social significance. The ancient disposable cup was made on the island of Crete during the Minoan period, around 1700-1600 BC. The Minoans were one of the first advanced civilisations in Europe, and they mass produced these handle-less clay cups known as conical cups due to their shape - over centuries. Thousands of them have been discovered in high concentrations in archaeological sites across the island, demonstrating that these cups were often deliberately discarded in ... More |
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| | Much about this artist is in doubt. Not his talent | | J.D. Salinger, unbound | | The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opens an exhibition of masterpieces from the Kunsthalle Bremen | 
John Beasley Greene, Giza. Pyramid of Cheops, or Khufu, 185354. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
by Arthur Lubow
SAN FRANCISCO (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Although John Beasley Greene journeyed to Egypt in the 1850s as an archaeologist, his photographs of ruined statues and barren sands reveal the eye of a poet, not a scholar. Portraying half-buried, decayed monuments of a once mighty civilization, the stark images evoke the rueful irony of Shelleys sonnet Ozymandias. Compared with modern photographs, Greenes pictures have the delicacy of watercolor washes, marked by the soft contrasts and powdery textures that are characteristic of paper negatives. Even when his photographs document hieroglyphic inscriptions, they feel like romances. Unfortunately, his infatuation with the East was short-lived. He died in 1856 at the age of 24, probably of tuberculosis. Probably is a qualifier that attaches to much of Greenes biography. Until recently, even the spelling of his name (Beasly? Green?) was ... More | | 
An affidavit from J.D. Salingers 1982 lawsuit against Steven Kunes. The J.D. Salinger Literary Trust. Photograph by Robert Kato via the New York Times.
by Alexandra Alter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- When J.D. Salinger was 18, unpublished and spending long hours at his typewriter, he received an encouraging letter from an admirer. I accept your story. Consider it a masterpiece. Check for $1,000 in the mail. Curtis Publishing Co. It wasnt really from a publisher those notices wouldnt arrive for years. It was from Salingers mother, who slipped it under his bedroom door one night when she heard him typing. He kept the note for 73 years, until his death in 2010. The handwritten note is now on display at the New York Public Library, in the first public exhibition from Salingers personal archives. The exhibit, which runs through Jan. 19, includes more than 200 items on loan from the J.D. Salinger Literary Trust, including photographs from Salingers life; a meticulously hammered metal bowl he made when he was a boy; his correspondence with friends, family, fans and prominent writers and ... More | | 
Theodor Rehbenitz, Portrait of Vittoria Caldoni [Bildnis der Vittoria Caldoni], 1821. Oil on canvas, 47 x 37.5 cm. Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen Bequest of Johann Friedrich Lahmann, 1937. Inv. 456-1937/28.
BILBAO.- The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is presenting Masterpieces of the Kunsthalle Bremen: From Delacroix to Beckmann, an extraordinary selection from the holdings of the Kunsthalle Bremen which reveals the close ties between German art and French art in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to the lively dialogue between two parallel artistic streams which changed the way modern art was viewed, the exhibition also reflects the unique history and artistic discourse of this museum in a survey that starts with Romanticism and then dips into Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, the artists colony of Worpswede, and German Expressionism. The Kunsthalle Bremen was founded in 1849 as a continuation of its forerunner, the Kunstverein in Bremen, an association founded in 1823 by art lovers and experts to improve societys sense of beauty. Made up at first of a group of citizens who were committed to and loved art who ... More |
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| | i8 Gallery exhibits 'Kiss the Day Goodbye' by Charles Atlas | | Major exhibition of work by the Belgian-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs opens at Eye Filmmuseum | | Rijksmuseum announces 2019 is its most successful year ever | 
Charles Atlas, Kiss the Day Goodbye, 2015 (installation view). Two-channel video installation with sound © Charles Atlas; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.
REYKJAVIK.- i8 Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition by the pioneering film and video artist, Charles Atlas. The show opened during the darkest days of winter, and consist of the single video work, Kiss the Day Goodbye; a grid of 24 sunsets shot by Atlas in Florida, at the Rauschenberg Residency, from his balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. In Atlass blazing setting suns, the traditional sentimentality of the sunset motif is infused with the urgency and intensity of the enviromental, political, and cultural decline of the present moment. Embracing a pre-apocalyptic mood, invoked in part by its mournful soundtrack, Kiss the Day Goodbye points towards finality, the end of a phase of our history. And yet, the work remains elemental and beautiful. For over four decades, Atlas has stretched ... More | | 
rancis Alÿs. Photo: Hans Boddeke.
AMSTERDAM.- This winter, Eye Filmmuseum is presenting a major exhibition of work by the Belgian-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs. Alÿs is primarily known for his playful videos that are both engaged and poetic. These imaginative and rich observations of daily life are set in sometimes politically charged moments and places. A big spatial installation at Eye provides the setting for his impressive series Childrens Games. Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic. Francis Alÿs Born in Belgium in 1959, Francis Alÿs trained as an architect in his home country and in Venice. In 1986 he moved to Mexico City, where he started to focus on visual art. On his many walks through the city, he started to study and record everyday life in and around the Mexican capital by means of simple yet striking performative actions. His work involves making subtle interventions in dail ... More | | 
Start Operation Night Watch. Photo Rijksmuseum.
AMSTERDAM.- As 2019 draws to a close, the Rijksmuseum today announced it has so far attracted 2.7 million visitors, the highest ever since the opening of the museum in 1885. Over 1 million of those were Netherlands-based, representing a rise in domestic visitors of 20 per cent on the previous year. The number of young visitors (Under-18) also grew to 475,000 an increase of 100,000. These remarkable figures are largely credited to Rijksmuseums year-long Year of Rembrandt celebrations that include landmark exhibitions All the Rembrandts, Long Live Rembrandt and Rembrandt-Velázquez. Dutch and Spanish Masters as well as the launch of Operation Night Watch, the largest and most comprehensive research and restoration project devoted to Rembrandts most celebrated painting. Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum said: The fact that 1 million of our visitors came ... More |
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| | Christine Chambers, 39, dies; Her photos empowered actors of color | | The many ways of seeing Agnès Varda | | J.K. Rowling criticized over support for anti-transgender researcher | 
The photographer and playwright Christine Jean Chambers in an undated self-portrait. Christine Jean Chambers via The New York Times.
by Katharine Q. Seelye
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Christine Chambers, a photographer whose pictures of actors of color helped document the rise of a newly energized black theater movement that began to emerge in New York a decade ago, died on Dec. 4 in Manhattan. She was 39. Her sister, Essie Jane Chambers, said she died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital from complications of a lung infection. She had also had lupus, a chronic disease of the immune system, since she was 12. In addition to being a photographer, Chambers was a playwright. The daughter of a white mother and black father, she frequently explored themes of race and identity. She was proud of being a woman of color, her sister said, but it was being biracial that provided the grist for her writing. With a longtime involvement in the theater, she understood the intimate dynamics of the live stage and photographed hundreds of actors, often during performances. In doing so, she captured the spirit of a new ... More | | 
Agnès Varda, the acclaimed French filmmaker, in Paris, June 20, 2009. Owen Franken/The New York Times.
by Manohla Dargis
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- In 1968, Agnès Varda was living in Los Angeles and trying to put together a film called Peace and Love. She had arrived from France to join her husband, Jacques Demy, who was shooting a movie for Columbia. They loved Los Angeles, where they ate with Mae West and hung out with Jim Morrison. Harrison Ford was going to be in Peace and Love, and there was talk of money from Columbia. But the studio didnt want to give Varda final cut, so she did what she always did: She went her own way. When Varda died in March at 90, she left behind an astonishing body of work that includes dozens of movies, short and feature length, fiction and documentary. (She never made Peace and Love but remained friends with Ford.) She directed her first feature, La Pointe Courte, in 1954, when she was 26; her last movie, Varda by Agnès, had its premiere in February at the Berlin International Film Festival. It will be a long time before we fully gras ... More | | 
The author J.K. Rowling speaks at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights' Ripple of Hope Awards in New York, Dec. 12, 2019. Krista Schlueter/The New York Times.
by Liam Stack
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- J.K. Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter series, was criticized by gay and transgender rights groups Thursday after she expressed support for a British researcher whose views on transgender people were described by a court as not worthy of respect in a democratic society. The researcher, Maya Forstater, lost her job last year at a think tank in London and filed a lawsuit this year alleging discrimination based on what she called her gender critical views, which she has expressed often on Twitter. Among them is the belief, which Forstater tweeted Wednesday, that it is impossible to change sex. An employment tribunal in London ruled against her Wednesday, saying her views were not a philosophical belief protected by British law but were instead incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. It is also a slight of hand to suggest that the ... More |
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Artist Interview—Kent Monkman: mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People)
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| | More News |
 Terry Riley's avant-garde sounds are still casting spellsNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- At 84, musician and composer Terry Riley looks every bit the part of a synthesizer wizard. Visiting the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn last month from his Northern California ranch, Riley, his beard a cascade of wispy white waves tumbling onto his red scarf, was like an avant-garde Gandalf. But guru isnt just the vibe he radiates; Rileys influence stretches farther afield than almost any other figure in 20th century classical music. His landmark composition, In C, first performed in 1964 by an ensemble including Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick, helped put minimalism on the musical map, although he now disdains that term. I always thought minimalism sounded like simple-minded music, and it isnt that, he said. It has that kind of edge to it that puts everybody off. In anticipation ... More Kalfayan Galleries open a solo exhibition of Greek-Egyptian artist Farida El GazzarTHESSALONIKI .- Kalfayan Galleries presenting the solo exhibition of Greek-Egyptian artist Farida El Gazzar titled Night Garden. The exhibition at Kalfayan Galleries (11 Haritos Street, 106 75, Athens) opened on Thursday, 19 December 2019. The works presented in the exhibition unfold a personal journey to a magical world inspired by Cairo. Born in Alexandria and drawing inspiration from Egypt and artists like David Hockney, Thomas Demand and Karen Kilimnik, manuscripts, byzantine icons, Arab literature and the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, Farida El Gazzar is driven by an inner need to draw moments of meditation in lush night gardens. As the artist states: As we often throw ourselves out into our daily automated rituals with duties and chores, we sometimes stop becoming aware of our thoughts, missing out on parts of our being ... More 'Luce' an immersive show by Liz West & Jemma Appleby opens at Daniel Benjamin GalleryLONDON.- This December, Daniel Benjamin Gallery presents works by Liz West and Jemma Appleby that explore the intricate relationship between architecture, light and the human responses these invoke. A luminous light installation by British artist Liz West beams through the gallerys windows, basking the surrounding streets in vibrancy after dark and lighting up Notting Hill for a unique, immersive show. Renowned for creating vivid and sensory environments through her manipulation of light, Liz Wests Our Spectral Vision is a large-scale installation that replicates the process of diverting white light through large-scale prisms made of dichroic glass. Exhibited on the first-floor of the gallery, visitors are encouraged to submerge themselves in the rich, saturated light that will drench the room with colour. West explains the understanding of colour can only ... More Early post liberation works by Holocaust survivor David Friedmann opens at The Morris MuseumMORRISTOWN, NJ.- The Morris Museum commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with an exhibition of paintings by David Friedmann (1893-1980), a renowned portraitist in Berlin and Prague before his deportation to Lodz Ghetto in 1941. The works on view portray Friedmanns haunting memories of survival during the Holocaust, from life in the Ghetto, to internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and sub camps Gleiwitz I and Blechhammer until his liberation in 1945. The selected works, created in Prague from 1945-1948, are part of a series entitled, Because They Were Jews! David Friedman (1893-1980) was born in what is now the Czech Republic where he was acclaimed for his portraits drawn from life. In 1924, his quick-sketching ability led to an ... More Exhibition creates a unique listening environmentSARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College presents Elevator Music 40: Melissa Thorne Landslide/Solid, on view from Dec. 21 through April 26, 2020. The exhibition marks the Tangs 40th audio-based installation in the museums elevator. Landslide/Solid combines interior design, hard-edge abstraction, and narrative pop to create a unique listening environment. Drawing from the artists background in pattern painting and playing in bands, the exhibition features hand-printed sound curtains and a limited-edition 12-inch record, with audio performances by Thorne, Patrick-Ian Polk, and Jessica Catron in collaboration with musician/producer Julian Wass and artist and master printer Margaret White Lomeli. The title refers simultaneously to the visual motifs presented ... More Beatriz Olabarrieta inquires into the multifaceted nature of identity BARCELONA.- In her work, Beatriz Olabarrieta (Bilbao, 1979) explores the limits of language and places the focus on the dysfunctional behaviour of communication: messages that dont find a recipient, voices that dont correspond to a narrative, or written words that belong to no language at all. For Marc Navarro, the curator of the Turn It All Turns series, in Olabarrietas work the urge to say clashes with the impossibility of information being efficiently conveyed, so that language gives way to the unpredictable. Faced with this instability of language and in a scenario in which communication becomes an act of permanent negotiation, Beatriz Olabarrieta seeks refuge in the notion of translation. This concept has a central role in her most recent projects, which address the way in which we constantly reformulate our narrative to ... More Studio Job presents never before seen pieces at Samuel Vanhoegaerden GalleryKNOKKE.- Following the critically acclaimed Banana Show of 2015, Studio Job present their long-awaited return to the Samuel Vanhoegaerden gallery in Knokke, Belgium with the Â¥$ Â¥$! exhibition. Following a visit to Studio Jobs sculpture atelier, Samuel and Job Smeets, along with the atelier team, selected a collection of pieces consisting of a few classic works, and never before seen pieces to be presented for the first time on 21st December 2019. The theme for this show follows this traditional saying, denoting elements of Studio Jobs art works included in the show; Something old represented by the Cat Fight a classic Studio Job work and sculptural metaphor for the so-called sophisticated times we primally fight through tooth and nail. For Something new; the studio turns to pieces from the Money collection, comment of the art world blinded by money, where the l ... More Thomas Elsaesser, film scholar with a broad view, dies at 76NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Thomas Elsaesser, an influential German-born film scholar and teacher whose writings brimmed with a fascination for Hollywood melodramas, the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Weimar-era movies, died Dec. 4 in Beijing. He was 76. His wife, Silvia Vega-Llona, said he had been on a lecture tour in China and was found in his hotel room after he had failed to show up for an appearance. He later died of cardiac arrest in a hospital, she said. I spoke to him a few hours before he died and he was fine, she said by phone. Elsaessers many books and more than 200 essays established him, beginning in the mid-1970s, as a leading figure in film criticism. He also started and ran major film studies departments at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England, and the University of Amsterdam. He was there when modern ... More Parasol unit presents David Claerbout: The Pure Necessity at Chapel of San Bastiaun, ZuozZUOZ.- Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art presents its second international project, The Pure Necessity by David Claerbout. The treasured Romanesque Chapel of San Bastiaun, in the village of Zuoz, Upper Engadin, Switzerland, provides a serene environment in which to view this intriguing work. The starting point for Claerbouts full-colour 2D animation is the 1967 Walt Disney classic film, The Jungle Book. In his almost hour-long adaptation Claerbout reshapes the sentimental story of a young boy abandoned in the jungle as one in which the noisy, anthropomorphised troupe of dancing and singing animal characters behave as their species would do naturally. The original films favourite characters Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa, whose delightful musical routines and witty dialogue have warmed the hearts of children and adults for decades, now ... More Hermès exotics, special orders, limited editions lift Heritage Auctions sale above $1.6 millionDALLAS, TX.- Exotic Hermès selections, special orders and limited edition handbags sparked eager bidders and led the total for Heritage Auctions Holiday Luxury Accessories Auction Dec. 8 in New York to $1,667,225. "This traditionally is an exceptional auction, and this year was no exception, Heritage Auctions Luxury Accessories Director Diane DAmato said. "It brought out a large selection of clients, some of whom were trying to add to their collections and others who were seeking and finding a perfect give for a loved one at the holidays. More than a dozen collectors made bids for an Hermès 30cm Blue Sapphire Niloticus Crocodile Birkin Bag with Gold Hardware before it closed at $75,000 to take top-lot honors while headlining the group of exotics in the sale. Other top exotics in the sale included, but were not limited to an Hermès 35cm Matte ... More Modest Maradona museum pays tribute to patron saint of NaplesNAPLES (AFP).- For some Diego Maradona is the greatest footballer of the 20th century, for others - mainly English - he is the cheating possessor of the hand of God. In Italy, however, he is and always will be the patron saint of Naples. And just as saints have their altars so Maradona has his museum, an extraordinary treasure trove of artefacts that includes the left boot with which the Argentine scored twice against Belgium in the semi-finals of the 1986 World Cup. You can also find his first contract with Napoli and even the sofa from his Naples apartment where singer Julio Iglesias once sat. It's all here in the cellar museum. Maradona arrived at Napoli as a world record $10.48 million signing from Barcelona in July 1984. His time in Catalonia had been difficult and Naples was a bolthole. He was to stay seven years, captaining the team to their first-ever Serie ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter Masaccio was born December 21, 1941. Masaccio (Italian: December 21, 1401 Â summer 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. Masaccio died at twenty-six and little is known about the exact circumstances of his death. In this image: San Giovenale Triptych (1422).
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