| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, December 26, 2020 |
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| | Museo Nacional Thyssen‐Bornemisza features German Expressionist paintings | |
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George Grosz, Metrópolis, 1916-1917 (detail). Oil on canvas, 100 x 102 cm. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
MADRID.- When in 1961 Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen‐Bornemisza acquired Young Couple by Emil Nolde he initiated a change of direction in the Thyssen familys collecting activities. While his father Henrich Thyssen had assembled a remarkable collection of Old Masters during the interwar period, between the 1960s and 1990s Hans Heinrich would be extremely active as a collector of the principal 20th‐century art movements, among which German Expressionism would occupy a pre‐eminent place. In 1993 the Spanish State acquired most of the Thyssen collection and the Museo Nacional Thyssen‐Bornemisza thus came to house a significant representation of German Expressionism, a movement barely represented in Spanish collections. For the first time in decades the present exhibition, German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen‐Bornemisza Collection, reunites those works with the group of Expressionist paintings that rem ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day William Turner Gallery is presenting Recent Works, an expansive new series of paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Andy Moses. This extensive presentation marks the artistâs first solo exhibition since his highly acclaimed 30 Year Survey exhibition in 2017 at the Santa Monica College Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery.
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| Christie's luxury market report | | Ancient DNA continues to rewrite corn's 9,000-year society-shaping history | | Danysz launches its secondary market department | 
Patek Philippe. A titanium automatic "Cathedral" minute repeating annual calendar wristwatch, ref 5033, 2003. Price Realized (USD$) 1,951,360. © Christie's Images Ltd 2020.
NEW YORK.- There has been an accelerated shift to online sales with a 41% increase in luxury lots sold in online auctions; 82% increase in the number of luxury online sales, and a 205% increase in the value of online luxury sales YoY. Performance has been strong across all categories with an 87% overall sell-through for the portfolio; 136 records were set and 53 lots achieved over $1million. The year included multiple white-glove sales with 100% sell-throughs including A Wonderful Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Collection (December 5, Hong Kong); and Handbags Online: The London Edition (June 25, London). New heights have been realized for online luxury sales with records set for a jewel sold online, handbag sold online, and watch sold online at Christies. Record online sale totals have also been achieved ... More | | 
An assortment of corn cobs of varying ages found at the El Gigante rock shelter site in Honduras.
WASHINGTON, DC.- Some 9,000 years ago, corn as it is known today did not exist. Ancient peoples in southwestern Mexico encountered a wild grass called teosinte that offered ears smaller than a pinky finger with just a handful of stony kernels. But by stroke of genius or necessity, these Indigenous cultivators saw potential in the grain, adding it to their diets and putting it on a path to become a domesticated crop that now feeds billions. Despite how vital corn, or maize, is to modern life, holes remain in the understanding of its journey through space and time. Now, a team co-led by Smithsonian researchers have used ancient DNA to fill in a few of those gaps. A new study, which reveals details of corns 9,000-year history, is a prime example of the ways that basic research into ancient DNA can yield insights into human history that would otherwise be inaccessible, said co-lead author Logan Kistler, curator of archaeogenomics ... More | | 
Clemence Demolling - Head of the secondary market Department.
PARIS.- 2021 marks a new stage in Danysz gallerys development with the launch of a department dedicated to the secondary market. Involved on a daily basis in enriching art collections, in searching for exceptional and historic street art masterpieces for private and public clients, the gallery relies on 30 years of expertise in this field. Following the gallerys success on the primary market, with its discoveries, the promotion and the production of contemporary talents, the gallery places this department in the continuity of its activities. It relies on its founders status as a recognized expert by the Compagnie Nationale des Experts in 2010. With this new department, the gallery offers a range of tailor-made services, from artworks valuation to advising collectors in resale, as well as helping in setting up their art collections. Clemence Demolling is appointed Director of the Secondary Market Department and shares ... More |
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| Our favorite arts pictures of 2020 | | Salman Toor, a painter at home in two worlds | | The artists we lost in 2020, in their words | 
Erykah Badu at her home in Dallas, July 9, 2020. Rahim Fortune/The New York Times.
by Christy Harmon, Laura ONeill, Jolie Ruben, Elena Santos, Amanda Webster, Jessie Wender and Michael Cooper
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The magenta glow of an exhibition outside the Guggenheim Museum, whose white spiral was off-limits to art lovers. The deserted grand staircase of a Metropolitan Opera silenced by the pandemic, its Sputnik chandeliers with no crowds to illuminate. Movie buffs, barred from cinemas, enjoying films at least semi-communally at a drive-in. Yes, there was absence and apartness and pain as this most socially distant of years upended art and culture. But with hindsight, 2020 had many other things to say, too, as this selection of some of our favorite arts photography published this year by The New York Times makes clear. Photographers for The New York Times captured it all, relying on their PPE as well as their light meters and lenses to bring us not just the years pain but also its pleasures, with glimpses of much-needed ... More | | 
Salman Toor, The Arrival, 2019. Oil on panel, 18 x 14 in. Image courtesy the artist.
by Roberta Smith
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Salman Toors evocative, tenderly executed paintings begin to pluck at your heartstrings almost as soon as you see them. The 15 examples of new and recent work that form How Will I Know, the artists brilliant New York institutional debut at the Whitney Museum of American Art, tell the stories of lanky, slightly rubbery, dark-haired young men, gentle souls who wouldnt hurt a flea. The narrative import zigzags from the personal to the social and political and back. It doesnt take long to figure out that the main characters here are gay, and not white. Early in the show hangs The Star, a 24-inch tondo (or circular work), its roundness echoed by the images elliptical mirror. A young man wearing a fluffy pink jacket admires his reflection while two friends tend to his hair and makeup. Its party time. The light-skinned blondness of the hairdresser accentuates the brown skin of our hero. Toor was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1983, stu ... More | | 
In this file photo taken on February 10, 2019 US singer-songwriter John Prine arrives for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards pre-telecast show in Los Angeles. VALERIE MACON / AFP.
by Gabe Cohn, Peter Libbey and Lauren Messman
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Its always difficult to lose a favorite actor or a beloved musician. But in 2020, a year of crisis upon crisis, some of those losses were especially painful, brought on by a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. The artists on this list could help us better understand the time were living through, or at least help us get through it with a smile or cathartic cry. Here is a tribute to them, in their own words. When I dared to challenge the system that would relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical backgrounds, no hopes or talents, when I questioned that method of portrayal, a different path opened up for me, the path to my destiny. Chadwick Boseman, actor, born 1976 Its crucial to know where the work stops and your life begins. Ann Reinking, dancer, born 1949 I dont consider myself ... More |
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| Roger Berlind, 90, dies; Broadway impresario who amassed 25 Tonys | | Celebrated artist Cai Guo-Qiang partners with HTC VIVE Arts to unveil first Virtual Reality artwork | | Exhibition at Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna celebrates Beethoven's 250th anniversary | 
Roger Berlind in New York, 1993. Fred Conrad/The New York Times.
by Katharine Q. Seelye
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Roger Berlind, who produced or co-produced more than 100 plays and musicals on Broadway, including such critical and box-office hits as The Book of Mormon, Dear Evan Hansen, City of Angels and revivals of Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me, Kate, died Dec. 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His family said the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest. During a four-decade career in the theater, Berlind backed some of the most original work on Broadway and amassed an astonishing 25 Tony Awards, one of the largest hauls on record. (Hal Prince, another prodigious Tony-winning producer, collected 21.) Berlind helped bring buoyant musicals to the stage, like the smash 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls with Nathan Lane, as well as sophisticated literate dramas, like the original 1984 production of The Real Thing, Tom Stoppards dazzling exploration of the nature ... More | | 
Fireworks for Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City in Liuyang, China in 2020. Photo by Lin Yi, courtesy Cai Studio.
BEIJING.- Cai Guo-Qiang, one of the worlds most celebrated artists, recently unveiled his first virtual reality artwork, created in partnership with HTC VIVE Arts. The artwork, Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City, debuted as part of Odyssey and Homecoming, the artists major exhibition at the Palace Museum, Beijing, which runs until to 5 February 2021. For this exhibition, the artist uses leading VR technology to create a wondrously magnificent fireworks ceremony dedicated to the Forbidden City and its majestic history. Cai Guo-Qiang began working with gunpowder in the 1980s and is internationally renowned for his large-scale gunpowder paintings, installations, and outdoor explosion events. His exhibition, Odyssey and Homecoming, coincides with the six-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Forbidden City. Inspired by fireworks celebrations historically held in the Forbidden City to mark the Lunar New Year, and how virtual r ... More | | 
Exhibition view. Photo:© Mark Niedermann for Tom Postma Design.
VIENNA.- The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, in cooperation with the Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, presents an unusual homage to Ludwig van Beethoven (17701827), the great representative of the First Viennese School. Beethovens popularity remains unbroken, even 250 years after his birth. Beyond the music, his humanistic messages have influenced the history of art and culture. His early deafness shaped his image as a tragic genius. Beethovens universal and unique reception, the epochal significance of his music but also the perception of his deified persona, create numerous points of entry; high and popular culture, commerce and politics all form an inexhaustible reserve of inspiration and appropriation. The exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum brings together paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, sketchbooks by William Turner, graphic works by Francisco de Goya, Anselm Kiefer and Jorinde Voigt, scu ... More |
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| Green Art Gallery opens its first solo exhibition of works by Maryam Hoseini | | New book from Thames & Hudson celebrates twenty-five years of PHUNK | | The Grand Rapids Art Museum opens a survey exhibition showcasing Mathias J. Alten | 
Maryam Hoseini, Until The End (detail), 2020.
DUBAI.- In her first solo exhibition at Green Art Gallery, New York-based Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini presents paintings on geometrically shaped, vertically oriented panels that draw the viewer into these abstract containers. Within these spaces, Hoseini's equally abstracted figures cast between the human and the animal contest their confinement, displacement, and subjugation. Hoseinis dramaturgical plotting of space, both in the composition of the paintings and in their placement in the gallery, yields dreamscapes where bodies float between abstraction and figuration. The large panels simultaneously evoke the shapes of abstracted human forms and familiar architectures, while the shadows cast against the walls highlight the theatricality and fluidity in their relationship to the viewer. One becomes strangely body-conscious encountering the work - simultaneously connecting to the human scale of the panels while being ... More | | 
Yak Yak Yak The Butter Factory, 2004 © PHUNK.
LONDON.- Celebrating twenty-five years of PHUNK, this monographtraces the ways in which the Singapore-based collective has mixed urban street culture, art and design to create a unique body of work. PHUNK is an internationally acclaimed, Singapore-based contemporary design and art collective. Founded in 1994 by Alvin Tan, Melvin Chee, Jackson Tan and William Chan when they were students at Lasalle College of the Arts, they developed a novel approach to collective art-making based on the collaborative aesthetic of a rock-and roll band and informed by a shared interest in urban subcultures. PHUNKs art has been featured in numerous biennale, museum and gallery exhibitions internationally, including the Fukuoka Art Triennale , the Animamix Biennale and the London Design Festival. PHUNK has also worked with major brands such as Nike, Diesel, Casio GShock , Levis, UNIQLO and MTV as well as with emerging designers and alternative street labels. ... More | | 
Mathias J. Alten (American, 18711938). Self Portrait, 1913. Oil on canvas, 28 ¼ x 24 3/8 inches. Grand Rapids Art Museum, Gift of the Artist, 1926.1.2
GRAND RAPIDS, MI.- The Grand Rapids Art Museum announced its exhibition showcasing Mathias J. Alten, Grand Rapids most esteemed painter. Mathias J. Alten: An Enduring Legacy is a survey exhibition that coincides with the 150th anniversary of Altens birth in 1871 and will be on view at GRAM through April 24, 2021. In the early to mid-twentieth century, Alten was nationally recognized for his landscapes, still lifes, and portraits that drew on traditional European painting as well as more modern styles, like impressionism. The exhibition shows how over his lifetime, Altens painting evolved from a controlled, academic technique into a more fluid and expressive approach. Mathias Alten emigrated from Germany to Michigan at age 17 in 1889, where he spent the majority of his career painting and teaching in downtown Grand Rapids. Nearing the ... More |
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Artist Demonstration: Sajeev Visweswaran
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| More News |
 An Oscar winner made a Khashoggi documentary. Streaming services didn't want it.NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Bryan Fogels first documentary, Icarus, helped uncover the Russian doping scandal that led to the countrys expulsion from the 2018 Winter Olympics. It also won an Oscar for him and for Netflix, which released the film. For his second project, he chose another subject with global interest: the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post columnist, and the role that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, played in it. A film by an Oscar-winning filmmaker would normally garner plenty of attention from streaming services, which have used documentaries and niche movies to attract subscribers and earn awards. Instead, when Fogels film, The Dissident, was finally able to find a distributor after eight months, it was with an independent company that had no streaming platform ... More  Silke Otto-Knapp wins This Is Not a Prize 2020MILAN.- Mutina for Art announced that the This Is Not a Prize 2020 award has been assigned to artist Silke Otto-Knapp (Osnabrueck, 1970). This Is Not a Prize is not just an annual award but also Mutinas commitment to support a future project of the selected artist: from an exhibition to a collaboration with an international institution, a publication or the production of a new artwork. Silke Otto-Knapp has been selected by the Mutina team, by its CEO Massimo Orsini and by the curator of Mutina for Art Sarah Cosulich, following a consideration on the importance and visibility that painting has recently reacquired. This year This Is Not a Prize wishes to recognize an international protagonist like Otto-Kapp, who with painting has brought forward in time an excellent and coherent path of great historical-artistic relevance. Despite belonging to the mid- ... More  Daylight Books publishes 'Home Fires: Vol 1: The Past Photographs by Bruce Haley'NEW YORK, NY.- Bruce Haley spent his formative years on a small ranch in the southwestern portion of California's San Joaquin Valley, in an area between Lemoore and Riverdale known as the Island District. Not the sort of young man who was easily contained indoors (setting a pattern that would last a lifetime), he ran the land, rode horses and dirt bikes across the fields, and grew up. Haley is a Robert Capa Gold Medal winner and celebrated internationally for his war and documentary work that took him to Somalia, Afghanistan, Burma, and elsewhere. For this deeply personal project, he turns his camera homeward, to this agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley. The resulting images, haunting and melancholy, play out against the larger framework of contentious water politics and land use issues. All photographs were shot in the winter, "the fallow ... More  Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents four works from two series at Vienna's SecessionVIENNA.- In both his art and his audio investigations, Lawrence Abu Hamdan grapples with sound, speech, memory, and the quest for truth in the context of todays legal and humanitarian crises. A central concern that is woven through many of his works, including sound and video installations, objects, and research-based documentaries, is his engagement with questions around the relevance and critique of acoustic clues and the reports of earwitnesses as part of the gathering of evidence in legal proceedings. In his exhibition at the Secession, the artist takes these concerns a step further. He presents altogether four works from two series that probe questions related to the witness testimony. The display takes a stand for other forms of witnessing that break the juridical framework for eye- and earwitnesses statements and perhaps pose a more ... More  Now online: Zachęta National Gallery of Art presents 160 years of art WARSAW.- December 2020 marks the 160th anniversary of the establishment of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, which gave rise to Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Polands largest gallery presenting contemporary art. It all started 160 years ago with a meeting of a group of friends. At the time when Poland was not present on maps, a group of artists and patrons decided to establish a society that would take care of Polish art and artists. Today, the society still exists and implements the same goals in a new reality. In response to the crisis that affected the artistic community during the pandemic, the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts together with Zachęta has initiated the 160/160 project. It aims to support the artists associated with the Zachęta collection. Since June 2020, several dozen artists have already received ... More  Galerie Nathalie Obadia hosts artist Fabrice Hyber's third exhibition with the galleryPARIS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is hosting artist Fabrice Hybers third exhibition, Habiter la forêt, after hyberDUBUFFET in 2017, which took place in both Paris galleries. Twenty years ago, the artist began sowing 70 hectares of woods near his studio in Vendée. With this exhibition, he returns to the theme of this biotope, which is omnipresent in his work and is simultaneously subject, paradigm, utopia and life project. Through a group of recent paintings and ceramics, Fabrice Hyber examines the ties between forest and city, nature and civilization, the mutations that occur when they shift back and forth, at a time when a return to green is more relevant than ever. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, Fabrice Hyber has, for the last 30 years, developed an oeuvre reminiscent of a gigantic rhizome, a complex system ... More  Report highlights long-term benefits of scientific collectionsWASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press has published a report exploring the benefits of the nations scientific collections. The report, a joint effort of 15 federal departments and agencies led by the Smithsonian and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides illustrative examples of the many ways federal scientific collections serve the nation, from vaccine development to earthquake preparedness. While the report focuses on federal collections, it also serves as a guide for other museums, universities, research institutions and industries. The publication offers evidence-based methods for measuring the benefits of scientific collections against the costs of maintaining them. The report, Economic Analyses of Federal Scientific Collections: Methods for Documenting Costs and Benefits, was commissioned ... More  England's Creative Coast announces new dates for 2021LONDON.- Englands Creative Coast announces new dates for 2021. The landmark partnership project spans 1400km of stunning coastline stretching from the East Sussex Downs through to the Thames Estuary, launching at Turner Contemporary on 1 May and running until November. Combining seven Waterfronts art commissions by internationally acclaimed artists with the worlds first art GeoTour, Englands Creative Coast is a new cultural experience connecting art with landscape, local stories with global perspectives and linking seven outstanding arts organisations Cement Fields, Creative Folkestone, De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings Contemporary, Metal, Towner Eastbourne and Turner Contemporary. Englands Creative Coast launches with lead partner Turner Contemporary on 1 May 2021 and then sequentially with each of the partner ... More  Bollywood, reeling from the pandemic, shifts to streamingNEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Coolie No. 1 has all the hallmarks of a big Bollywood film: colorful costumes, larger-than-life sets, foot-tapping music and a melodramatic story about a man who pretends he has a twin to woo the woman of his dreams. After shooting wrapped in February, the film was set for a May theatrical release. But when Coolie No. 1 finally reaches screens on Christmas Day, it will not show up in one of Indias 3,000 theaters. Instead, it will debut on Amazons streaming service. I make films for the theater, but this time there was no way we could do that, said David Dhawan, the director. After the coronavirus pandemic barreled in and shut down movie theaters, the wait for a theatrical debut became excruciating, he said. So a deal to send the film to Amazon after its release shifted to a direct streaming plan. Its ... More  Mona is openHOBART.- Mona, the Museum of Old and New Art, reopens today, unveiling a major revamp of its semi-subterranean galleries and two new outdoor works of art. Over 350 highlights (and lowlights) from David Walshs extensive personal collection are on display. The gallery spaces have been transformed to showcase his treasure trove of ancient, modern and contemporary art, with hidden gems that have never been shown at Mona before, alongside many favouritesold and new. Newly open is House of Mirrors, an art installation composed of a labyrinth of seemingly endless mirrors. Created by Australian artists Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney, it is the worlds largest travelling mirror maze. Visitors can also view, and climb on, a giant bronze sculpture by American artist Tom Otterness. Doubling as a childrens playground Girls Rule is over ... More  Nancye Radmin, pioneer of plus-size fashion, is dead at 82NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Nancye Radmin, a pioneer of plus-size fashion who for two decades ran an upscale chain of stores, the Forgotten Woman, that served a group of women who had otherwise been overlooked by high fashion, died on Dec. 8 at her home in Lakeland, Florida. She was 82. The death was confirmed by her son Brett Radmin. For most of her life, Nancye Radmin hovered around a size 8 and preferred wearing fine fabrics like cashmere and jacquard. But by her second pregnancy, in 1976, she had gained 80 pounds and was a size 16. When she went shopping at her favorite stores in Manhattan for some new clothes, she was shocked to find that there were only polyester pants and boxy sweaters in her size. Fat, she told Newsweek in 1991, was the F word of fashion. Absolutely nothing stylish was ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Anne Truitt Sound 
Islamic Metalwork 
Klaas Rommelaere 
Helen Muspratt
Flashback On a day like today, French painter Maurice Utrillo was born December 26, 1883. Maurice Utrillo (26 December 1883 - 5 November 1955), was a French painter who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who was born there. In this image: Maurice Utrillo, Ruelle des Gobelins à Paris, 1921, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right Maurice, Utrillo, V, Mars 1921, signed, dated and titled on the reverse Maurice Utrillo, V, Mars 1921, 65 x 92 cm.
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