| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, March 13, 2021 |
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| | The secret stunt doubles of the art world | |
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Workers at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art install maquettes, Feb. 22, 2021. To prepare an exhibition of Alexander Calders large-scale sculptures, MoMA created a set of elaborate stand-ins. Landon Nordeman/The New York Times.
by Peter Libbey and Landon Nordeman
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- When film and TV crews need to set up cameras or adjust lighting and sound equipment, actors stand-ins people of a similar size and shape are often called in to patiently take their place. And when a script calls for a character to do something dangerous, the star usually steps aside while a stunt double takes the punch. At museums, maquettes are both stand-ins and stunt doubles. In exhibition planning, original artworks sit safely in packing crates, or hang elsewhere, while models of them are moved hither and yon with relatively little care so curators and designers can determine their layout in a gallery. Seven maquettes were created for Alexander Calder: Modern From the Start, which opens at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday. And they are among the most detailed that the museum has made. Typically, mock-ups are pieces of brown paper demarcating artworks footprints, or silhouettes fashioned from wood or cardboard. Many are constructed on the fly ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installation view of "Awaken: a Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment", organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, March 12, 2021 - January 3, 2022, Photo by David De Armas, Courtesy of the Rubin Museum of Art.
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| Garrett Bradley reminds us that Black joy always existed | | David Zwirner opens an exhibition of works by William Eggleston and John McCracken | | Exhibition at TAI Modern pairs works of Japanese bamboo art with flowers | 
A photo provided by Garrett Bradley and The Museum of Modern Art; Robert Gerhardt shows a scene from Lime Kiln Club Field Day, a 1914 unreleased film that is excerpted in Garrett Bradleys America, her four-screen video installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Garrett Bradley and The Museum of Modern Art; Robert Gerhardt via The New York Times.
by Roberta Smith
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Garrett Bradleys quicksilver, imperious video installation America, at the Museum of Modern Art is an indictment wrapped in a celebration. Completed in 2019, it reimagines some of the signal events of Black life and culture in the United States during the early decades of the 20th century reclaiming lost or overlooked pieces of history in a display of inexhaustible narrative and spatial complexity. This is Bradleys first solo exhibition in a New York museum, her first foray off the single screen into three-dimensional space and the second in a series of collaborative exhibitions mounted by MoMA and the Studio ... More | | 
John McCracken, Untitled (Red Plank), 1976 © The Estate of John McCracken. Courtesy The Estate of John McCracken and David Zwirner.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner is presenting an exhibition of works by William Eggleston and John McCrackenthe first time these two iconic American artists have been featured together. On view at the gallerys East 69th Street location in New York, True Stories places Eggleston and McCracken into dialogue around their expressive use of color and light, and their distinct versions of American vernacular culture. Born within five years of one anotherMcCracken in Berkeley, California, in 1934, and Eggleston in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1939the two artists came of age outside of the dominant centers of the art world, internalizing the spaces and light of the American West and South. Working in sculpture and photography, respectively, each would go on to break with the practices of their contemporaries and challenge the traditional boundaries of their media in search of a new form of expression. Though both ... More | | 
Isohi Setsuko, Waxing Moon, 2017 Madake bamboo, rattan. 18 x 13 x 11 in.
SANTA FE, NM.- Ten Thousand Flowers pairs works of Japanese bamboo art with flowers in a nod to the longstanding relationship between the two. The works of bamboo art in our gallery do not need a flower arrangement to complete them gallery director Margo Thoma explains. I dont want to trivialize or distract from a work of art by adding flowers. Nevertheless, pairing flowers with bamboo baskets still feels very special to me. It brings the historical roots of Japanese bamboo art to the forefront, and I have found that putting flowers in a basket redirects my attention from the actual form of the basket to the shape and potential of the negative space it creates. It is another way of learning about this multifaceted art form. The association between flowers and bamboo baskets began in the 6th century when it was customary to place offerings of flower petals in bamboo trays before an image of the Buddha. Over time, arrangements of stemmed flowers replaced the original offer ... More |
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| British PM rules out return of Parthenon Marbles to Greece | | The First 5000 Days, sold for $69,346,250 to Metakovan, founder of Metapurse | | First NFT work registered to the Vastari exhibition platform | 
Visitors look at the sculpture of the Greek river god Ilissos at the State Hermitage Museum on December 5, 2014 in St. Petersburg. AFP PHOTO/OLGA MALTSEVA.
ATHENS (AFP).- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ruled out the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece in an interview published Friday, insisting the artefacts were legally acquired by Britain. "The British government has a firm and long-standing position on the sculptures: they were legally acquired by Lord Elgin, in accordance with the laws in force at the time," Johnson told Greek newspaper Ta Nea. He insisted that the 2500-year-old sculptures, popularly known as the Elgin Marbles, "have been legally owned by the British Museum's Trustees since their acquisition. The sculptures are the subject of a long-running dispute between the two countries. They were stripped from Athens' Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis by Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, known as Lord Elgin, in the early 1800s and shipped to Britain. Elgin sold the marbles to the British ... More | | 
Beeple, Everydays The First 5000 Days, NFT, 21,069 pixels x 21,069 pixels (316,939,910 bytes).
SINGAPORE.- Metakovan, the pseudonymous founder and financer of Metapurse, the largest NFT (unique digital assets) fund in the world, successfully bid and acquired EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, for $69,346,250 (~38474.82 ETH). This breaks the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold. Metakovan acquired the artwork during a single lot auction hosted by the 255-year-old auction house Christies, which opened for bidding on February 25th and concluded on March 11th at 10am EST. The final auction price of a staggering $69+ million USD was not the only record broken in relation to the sale. The artwork was minted exclusively for Christies, making Christies the first major auction house to offer a purely digital work with a unique NFT and to accept cryptocurrency, in this case, Ethereum (Ether). Around 22 million viewers tuned in to Christies.com for the final moments of bidding. Guillaume Cerutti, CEO of Christies said, ... More | | 
Lakoubay believes in crypto-art and NFTs as a new art movement.
LONDON.- Seasoned crypto-collector Fanny Lakoubay registered the first NFT-based artwork on the online exhibition loan database operated by Vastari, representing a new milestone for the growing non-fungible token industry . The work Imago 2k2 a.C. by artist duo Hackatao will now be accessible to museums for loan opportunities. Vastaris database facilitates the exchange of objects in private hands with museums who wish to exhibit them. Vastari facilitated over $2bn of (physical) content matches with venues in 2019-2020. But how are these digital artworks on a token meant to be exhibited within museum spaces? Do artists wish for their works to be shown within museum walls, or do they expect them to live in the ether? Is there a physical manifestation for these works? Vastari's team is willing to find out. "Our system is made for collectors to share works they believe are museum-worthy, and for museums to message them directly - so there's no ... More |
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| The Rubin Museum of Art opens 'Awaken: A Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment' | | Joy and anger in balance: The art of Lorraine O'Grady | | Simon Bisley's original Lobo No. 1 cover heads to auction for the first time | 
Installation view of Awaken: a Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment, organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, presented by the Rubin Museum of Art, March 12, 2021 January 3, 2022, Photo by David De Armas, Courtesy of the Rubin Museum of Art.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Rubin Museum of Art invites visitors to unplug and discover the possibility to free their minds with Awaken: A Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment, opening March 12. Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this traveling exhibition guides visitors on a journey toward enlightenment, showcasing the power of Tibetan Buddhist art to focus and refine awareness, and highlighting the inextricable relationship between artistic endeavor and spiritual practice in Tibetan Buddhism. The exhibition has been re-imagined and adapted for the Rubin Museums galleries and features 35 traditional objects, including 14 from the Rubin Museums collection, with two contemporary works by Nepal born, Tibetan American artist Tsherin Sherpa. ... More | | 
Installation view. Brooklyn Museum; Jonathan Dorado via The New York Times.
by Holland Cotter
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Back in the 1960s, some of us were taking drugs, scrambling genders and sampling global religions to shake ourselves loose from what we saw as Western-style binary thinking, a view of the world based on strictly held good-bad, right-wrong opposites: white versus Black, straight versus gay, us versus them. Five decades later, such thinking still rules in a red-blue nation, which makes the retrospective of Lorraine OGradys career at the Brooklyn Museum a major corrective event. The artist flags her own resistance to either/or in the very title of her show: Lorraine OGrady: Both/And. As, over a long career shes now 86 she has consistently shaped her art on a different model, one of balanced back-and-forth pairings: personal and political; home and the world; anger and joy; rock-solid ... More | | 
Simon Bisley Lobo #1 Cover Original Art (DC, 1990).
DALLAS, TX.- Lobo, DC Comics' bounty hunter from outer space, is the joke who was quickly taken very seriously. The snarling, cigar-chomping Main Man riding his Spacehog 'round the galaxy was introduced in 1983, in a comic book that wasn't exactly setting newsstands on fire, Omega Men No. 3, written by Roger Slifer and drawn by Keith Giffen. Lobo was just one bad guy among several, a killer and kidnapper whose attitude and appearance was intended "as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine bad-ass hero prototype," Giffen later told Newsarama. Which people adored. Admired. Loved. "Somehow he caught on as the high-violence poster boy," Giffen said of The Last Czarnian. "Go figure." Twenty-eight years later, he's nearly as much a DC mainstay as the holy Trinity or any other member of the Justice League. He's carried several titles of his own, from a mini-series to specials and spinoffs to a decent run under his own banner to countless guest shots in best-selling books. Only months ago ... More |
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| Time stands still at historic Cairo watch shop | | Holt/Smithson Foundation announces representation of Nancy Holt by Sprüth Magers | | A rift over art and activism ripples through the performance world | 
Samy Taha, a 63-year-old Egyptian watchmaker, repairs a watch at the Francis Papazian watchmaker's shop in the central Attaba district of Egypt's capital Cairo on February 23, 2021. Khaled DESOUKI / AFP.
by Emmanuel Parisse
CAIRO (AFP).- Time seems to have stood still at Papazian's, an Armenian Egyptian watchmaker whose almost 120-year-old Cairo shop has withstood the decades, surviving political upheavals and urban transformations. Sheltered from the hustle and bustle of the capital's unforgiving traffic and surrounded by street vendors in Attaba Square, the unassuming shop housed under the arcades of an old Haussmannian building is a time capsule of Cairo's rich cosmopolitan history. It is a rare museum-like site where old clocks, watches and timepieces are meticulously repaired. "I have spare parts from my grandfather's days," Ashod Papazian, the current 64-year-old owner who inherited the family business, told AFP. The shopfront with patinated wooden frames boasts an impressive array of pocket watches and wrist models with ageing ... More | | 
Nancy Holt on a NYC rooftop, October 1977. Photo: Leandro Katz. © Holt-Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA/New York.
SANTA FE, NM.- Nancy Holt (1938-2014) recalibrated the limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her time. A pioneer of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. Her rich artistic output spanned concrete poetry, audio, film, video, photography, slideworks, ephemeral gestures, drawings, room-sized installations, earthworks, books, and public sculpture commissions. Across five decades Holt asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world, investigating systems of perception and expanding understanding of place. The partnership between Sprüth Magers and Holt/Smithson Foundation launches with a presentation this month at Art Basels Online Viewing Room: Pioneers that pairs the work of Nancy Holt with Hanne Darboven. Solo exhibitions in the gallerys Berlin and Los Angeles spaces foll ... More | | 
Choreographer Emily Johnson makes a land acknowledgment while speaking at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan, June 8, 2018. Dolly Faibyshev/The New York Times.
by Brian Seibert
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- At a conference of performing arts presenters, in January 2020, Jedediah Wheeler, the executive director of Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey, introduced the choreographer Emily Johnson. Wheeler called himself the luckiest person in the room to be commissioning her to make work. Johnson, 44, an Indigenous artist of Yupik ancestry, is known for performances that draw on her heritage, ceremonies that might last all night out under the stars, gatherings in search of healing and social change. Wheeler, 71, founded Peak Performances in 2004, making Montclair State an unlikely home for the avant-garde. The series has gained attention producing and presenting work by artists like Robert Wilson and the Italian provocateur Romeo Castellucci before it ... More |
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'The Community Creates the Art': A$AP Ferg Talks Keith Haring
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| More News |
 New exhibition, Making Space, opens at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia HALIFAX.- A new exhibition from Art Gallery of Nova Scotias permanent collection, seeks to bring visitors to the intersection of art and architecture. Making Space looks to the attributes of the built environment as a thematic point of departure. The exhibition explores the physical and philosophical constructs of the space and structures in our lives to expose a range of present-day concerns. This exhibition delves into the relationship between people and the structures we build says David Diviney, Senior Curator and curator of the exhibition. The included works examine such tensions as the boundaries between public and private spaces and the shift from urban to suburban environments. Making Space features a multidisciplinary mix of artistic practice from photography and sculpture, to works on paper which reflect upon architecture and its ability to generate and communicate ... More  Vast 'Indian Land' sign draws visitors to Desert X art festivalPALM SPRINGS (AFP).- The giant, white letters standing astride a California mountainscape look a lot like the Hollywood sign, but their message could hardly be more different -- this is "INDIAN LAND." The monumental work is part of Desert X, which Friday became one of the first large-scale art festivals to reopen in the pandemic, welcoming visitors to outdoor installations scattered across 40 miles (65 kilometers) of the Coachella Valley. Indigenous Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin placed his project "Never Forget" at the entrance to Palm Springs -- a playground getaway long favored by movie stars -- as a reminder of Hollywood's role in whitewashing US culture. The 45-foot-high structure is identical in scale and material to the Los Angeles landmark, which originally spelled "Hollywoodland" and was a 1923 "real-estate advertisement for white-only ... More  Targeted in protests, Chile removes general's statueSANTIAGO (AFP).- The statue of a 19th-century Chilean general was temporarily removed from a Santiago square Friday after being repeatedly vandalized during protests. The likeness of General Manuel Baquedano on horseback -- burnt, painted and dented in months of demonstrations -- was lifted from its pedestal in the early morning hours as military veterans paid their respects. Nearby, a dozen protesters were detained. Baquedano and his statue was not a specific target of protests that started in Chile in October 2019 against social inequality, corruption, and the rising cost of living. But it got drawn into a symbolic tussle between protesters and authorities for control of the central square named after him. The protests have continued, though on a much smaller scale, despite a referendum last October -- a key demand ... More  Museum of Russian Icons reopens with "Painted Poetry: Alexander Gassel"CLINTON, MASS.- The Museum of Russian Icons presents Painted Poetry, a retrospective exhibition of contemporary works by Russian-born American artist and designer Alexander Gassel. Blending the avant-garde with traditional Russian iconography, combining ancient symbols with contemporary subjects, Gassel creates extraordinarily vivid paintings that reflect his cultural heritage alongside his life experience in America. Artist, conservator, and writer Alexander Gassel's work combines ancient icon painting techniques with Biblical, mythological, contemporary, and deeply personal narratives. His distinctive style is a synthesis of Art Deco designs influenced by Erté, narrative genre scenes evoking Chagall, saturated color schemes recalling Kandinsky, and complex formal structures reminiscent of Malevich, all combining to make for a highly ... More  Lyndon B. Johnson signed official printing of a landmark Civil Rights bill sold for more than $85,000 BOSTON, MASS.- A Lyndon B. Johnson signed official printing of a landmark Civil Rights bill sold for $85,332, according to Boston-based RR Auction. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. Signed into law by President Johnson at the height of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was designed to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. It is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the United States: by the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered. The ten-page document signed as president, signed "Lyndon B. Johnson, August 6, 1965," August 6, 1965. Official printing of the landmark Voting ... More  Book owned by Ada Lovelace is for sale, in honor of Women's History MonthNEW YORK, NY.- The Manhattan Rare Book Company is celebrating Womens History Month by offering for sale a historically significant first edition copy of a mathematical text from the personal library of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), the renowned British scientist and mathematician (and daughter of the equally renowned poet, Lord Byron). The price is $135,000. The book, titled An Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus, was originally published in French, in 1802, having been written by French mathematician Silvestre François Lacroix (1765-1843). It was translated into English in 1816, by Charles Babbage and two other students at Cambridge University. The book is Lovelaces copy from that first English edition. The volume is also Lovelaces personal annotated copy, with at least 35 ink annotations in her hand, plus ... More  Richard Saltoun Gallery opens an exhibition of works by Peter KennardLONDON.- Since the late 1960s, Peter Kennard (b. 1949, UK) has been equipping his audiences with a deeper understanding of the violence, inequalities and injustices in our society, while actively protesting against them. Kennards subjects have ranged from The Vietnam War, apartheid, the nuclear arms race, and ecological crisis to name but a few of the campaigns to which he is committed. His preoccupation with the deceptions and cruelties of wealthy industrialised nations stems from his frustration with their domestic and foreign policies, which have real consequences for our daily lives. The solo exhibition The Concept of History links Kennards work to the political thinking of Hannah Arendt through their shared belief that history is a construct managed and controlled by those in power. In chapter two of Between Past and Future, Arendt ... More  James Cohan opens an exhibition of new works by Michelle GrabnerNEW YORK, NY.- James Cohan is presenting an exhibition of new works by Michelle Grabner, on view from March 5 through April 3 at 291 Grand Street. This is Grabners third solo exhibition with the gallery. Michelle Grabner is known for her broad perspective developed as teacher, writer and critic over the past 30 years. The site where it all comes together is the studio. Her artmaking is driven by a distinctive value in the productivity of work and takes place outside of dominant systems. Central to the work is process. Grabner references Penelopes clever ploy of weaving by day and unweaving at night, which kept the suitors at bay in Homers Ithaca. Like Penelope, Grabner finds a generative space for mending, healing and woolgathering within her unique system of de-weaving and filling in. Like Penelope, who used the coded language of shroud-making ... More  The captivating delight of birds is explored in new exhibition UTICA, NY.- The captivating delight of birds is explored in the exhibition, More Than a Tweet: Birds, Art, and Culture, March 12 through August 1.in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art. Elusive creatures of wonder and delight, birds have long fascinated artists and designers. More Than a Tweet explores the use of avian motifs and the colorful meanings associated with these mesmerizing creatures interpreted by artists including Georges Braque and John James Audubon. The exhibition is made up of artworks from the Museum of Art collection spanning two centuries, and features 22 paintings, works on paper, photographs, and various decorative arts, with many on view for the first time in decades. Birds inspire us as symbols that connect us from the naturalist to the enthusiast, and from those who ponder the mysteries of life to those ... More  Rare early Charlie Chaplin poster from 1913 to be offered at auction FULLERTON, CALIF.- One of the earliest and rarest Charlie Chaplin posters to ever come to market, a collection of paintings by Burt Procter (Calif./N.Y., 1901-1980), and a beautiful Art Deco 18kt white gold multi-diamond antique engagement ring are just a few of the expected highlights in a live online auction slated for this Sunday, March 14th, at 12 noon Pacific time, by Appraisal & Estate Sale Specialists, Inc. Overall, 633 lots are scheduled to come up for bid. Internet bidding will be facilitated by LiveAuctioneers.com. Bidders can click and bid here. The catalog is packed with fine art, jewelry, antiques, furniture and Hollywood memorabilia. Lots 119-551 are from a single-owner antique dealer estate, while the more than 100 lots of Hollywood memorabilia, spotlighting dozens of stars from stage and screen, start at lot 516. This auction features something for everyone, ... More  London Art Week announces an impressive line-up of insightful and lively talks LONDON.- Last October London Art Week introduced a new series of interim online events: Art History in Focus. Another impressive line-up of insightful and lively talks will be taking place this March. 16 March The Female Artists, Actresses, and Playwrights of Strawberry Hill Theatricals: This webinar will explore the role of female artists, actresses, and playwrights involved with theatre at Horace Walpoles Strawberry Hill; present illustrations of Walpoles scandalous gothic play The Mysterious Mother by the artist Diana Beauclerk and the closet built to house them at Strawberry Hill and will also touch on Walpoles literary executor Mary Berrys play Fashionable Friends, performed at Strawberry Hill with sets designed by her sister Agnes and with herself and the sculptor Anne Damer in the leading roles. Damer had a close relationship with the ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Mental Escapology, St. Moritz 
TIM VAN LAERE GALLERY 
Madelynn Green 
Patrick Angus
Flashback On a day like today, French painter Georges de La Tour was born March 13, 1593. Georges de La Tour (March 13, 1593 - January 30, 1652) was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight.
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