| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Saturday, November 23, 2019 |
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| | Exhibition at the Prado explores the meaning of Goya's sketchbooks and print series | |
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Image of the exhibition galleries. Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado.
MADRID.- On 19 November 1819 the new museum opened its doors to the public, at that date still a royal museum and comprising works from the exceptional collections of painting and sculpture assembled by Spains monarchs over more than 300 years. While Goya was still living in Madrid, three of his paintings - the two equestrian portraits of Charles IV and MarÃa Luisa de Parma and the Horseman with a Pike - were already hanging in the room that led into the Museums central gallery. Over the succeeding years the Museum would assemble the finest collection of Goyas work, comprising around 150 paintings, 500 drawings, all the artists print series and a unique body of documentation in the form of his letters to his friend MartÃn Zapater. This exhibition, which is the result of the remarkable richness of the Museo del Prados collections and of the work undertaken to prepare a new catalogue raisonné of Goya ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day The V&A opens an exhibition looking at the car as the driving force that accelerated the pace of the 20th century. The exhibition brings together a wide-ranging selection of cars that have never been on display in the UK, each telling a specific story about their impact on the world. (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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 | | Lark Mason Associates hammers nearly $160,000 for Old Masters, Modern and Contemporary sale | | UK men jailed for stealing Viking treasure | | More than 140 Nazca Lines are discovered in Peruvian desert | 
Bridge over Owl Kil by Anna Mary Robertson, Grandma Moses, an oil-on-panel.
NEW YORK, NY.- Lark Mason Associates sale of Old Master, Modern, and Contemporary Art, which closed on November 19 on the iGavelauctions.com platform, returned strong results for affordable middle-market works, with a total of $159,393 including buyers premium
for the forty works sold out of 59 offered. Spirited bidding accompanied many of the lots with the most interest for Guy Wigginss Snow Storn, 42nd Street, from the estate of Flora Crichton, the noted San Antonio philanthropist and collector, which hammered down at $23,125. Bidders also flocked to the 15th century Italian carved marble relief sculpture of the Virgin and Child, Tuscan School, which realized $13,750. Though significantly damaged, it had a provenance that dated back to a Parke-Bernet sale in April 1946 and the Soviet Art Treasures exhibition in Berlin in 1928. Additional sales included The Arrival in Saint Anne in the Port of Antwerp, ... More | | 
The hoard contained a mixture of intact ornaments, bullion and coins, which is typical of Viking hoards of the 9th and 10th centuries in Britain.
LONDON (AFP).- Two British men were jailed Friday for stealing a valuable hoard of 1,100-year-old coins and jewellery they found with metal detectors -- much of which remains missing. George Powell, 38, and Layton Davies, 51, failed to declare the find as required by law, and were sentenced to 10 years and eight-and-a-half years respectively. The hoard discovered in 2015 on farmland in Herefordshire, near the English-Welsh border, are believed to be Anglo Saxon items buried by a Viking around 878 or 879. Aside from their value, estimated at between £3 million and £12 million (3.5-14 million euros, $3.9-$15.4 million), they have helped reveal a new aspect of English history. Five of the 31 coins recovered are exceptionally rare, depicting King Alfred the Great of Wessex and a lesser known monarch, Ceolwulf II of Mercia, sitting together. They were previously ... More | | 
The newly discovered carvings, or geoglyphs, depict human forms and a broad variety of animals, including camelids, a group of mammals that includes llamas and alpacas; cats; fish; and snakes, according to the research group from Yamagata University.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- A huge carving of a monkey with its tail twirled in a spiral; vast, geometric images of a condor and a hummingbird; an immense spider the 2,000-year-old Nazca Lines in Peru have awed and mystified modern viewers since they were first seen from the air last century. Now, 143 more images have been discovered, etched into a coastal desert plain about 250 miles southeast of Lima, the Peruvian capital. The Japanese researchers who found them combined on-the-ground work with the most modern of tools: satellite photography, three-dimensional imaging and, in one case, artificial intelligence. The newly discovered carvings, or geoglyphs, depict human forms and a broad variety of animals, including camelids, a group of mammals that includes llamas ... More |
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| | Fossils provide clues to when snakes still had use for a pair of legs | | Met receives major gift of late 19th-century American decorative arts and paintings | | Original handwritten lyrics for Elton John's greatest hits to be offered at Bonhams | 
The skull of a snake nearly 100 million years old that belonged to the extinct group Najash, which retained hind legs. Photo: Fernando Garberoglio.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Snakes, with their sleek bodies and kaleidoscopic diversity, have long entranced humans. But we know very little about the evolutionary past of these legless lizards because of a scarcity of fossils left by snake ancestors that shared the earth with dinosaurs. Thats why recently excavated snake fossils from Argentina, described in a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, are such a big deal for serpent fans. The intricate fossils, mostly skulls, are nearly 100 million years old and belong to the extinct snake group Najash, which still retained hind legs. The fossils suggest that snakes lost their front legs much earlier than had previously been believed but also held onto their hind legs for millions of years. The find will also help to resolve mysteries over when snakes began their transition to their modern form. ... More | | 
Sanford Robinson Gifford (18231880). An Indian Summer Day on Claverack Creek, 187779. Oil on canvas. Promised Gift of Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore, in celebration of the Museum's 150th anniversary.
NEW YORK, NY.- Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore have promised 88 superlative examples of American Aesthetic Movement and Gilded Age decorative arts and contemporaneous paintings from their collectionone of the preeminent holdings of late 19th-century American art in private handsto The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The gift is part of The Met's 2020 Collections Initiative celebrating the Museum's 150th anniversary. "In the Aesthetic Movement, art infused every aspect of one's home, and the incredible range of objects in this exceptional gift will enable The Met to evoke such an interior," said Max Hollein, Director of the Museum. "This gift also has particular resonance in The Met's 150th anniversary year, as the objects represent prime ... More | | 
Original handwritten lyrics for the Elton John song "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road". Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000. Photo: Bonhams.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Bonhams auction of Music Memorabilia will be highlighted by the crown jewels of the Elton John and Bernie Taupin songbook, six original handwritten lyrics for hits such as Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, Candle in the Wind, Bennie and the Jets, and Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting. The lyrics, from the Collection of Maxine Taupin, will be offered at Bonhams Los Angeles on December 9. Estimates range from $30,000 to $200,000. Maxine Taupin the inspiration for the song Tiny Dancer was married to Bernie Taupin in the 1970s and became privy to Bernies creative writing process. Maxine said: When Bernie had completed an album's worth of lyrics, we would pay Elton a visit; I was always amazed how prolific they were. When I heard the finished songs, I was instantly transported to that magical place these two creative forces have been taking us a ... More |
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| | Marvel Comics No. 1 sells for $1.26 Million at Heritage Auctions, is most expensive Marvel comic ever sold | | David Zwirner to represent Barbara Kruger in Collaboration with Sprüth Magers | | At the entrenched Met Museum, the new Director shakes things up | 
Marvel Comics #1 Windy City pedigree (Timely, 1939) CGC NM 9.4 Off-white pages.
DALLAS, TX.- The finest known copy of Marvel Comics No. 1, the 1939 comic book considered the Big Bang of the Marvel Comics Superhero Universe, sold for $1,260,000 million on Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019, at a public auction of vintage comic books and comic art held by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas. The sale set a world record for the most expensive Marvel comic ever sold at public auction and an auction house record as the most expensive comic book ever sold by the worlds largest comic book and comic art auctioneer. This is a historic copy of a historic comic book, said Ed Jaster, Senior Vice President at Heritage Auctions. Without question, this is the granddaddy of all Marvel Comics, without which we would not have the characters and stories we enjoy in todays comics and feature films. It was first purchased off a newsstand rack by a mailman in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, who purchased every No. 1 issue ... More | | 
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Shafted), 2008, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Carole Bayer Sager, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Photo © Fredrik Nilsen © Barbara Kruger. Courtesy Sprüth Magers and David Zwirner.
NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner announced the representation of American artist Barbara Kruger in collaboration with Sprüth Magers. Since the late 1970s, Kruger has consistently engaged with images and language as tools of communication, repurposing them to create works in a variety of scales, settings, and formats. Directly and powerfully addressing the viewer, Krugers collages, installations, billboards, and videos reveal and question established power structures and social constructs. Kruger rose to prominence in the early eighties, creating large scale black-and-white photo-based images often framed in red and overlaid with the languages of direct address. Her engagement with issues of value, gender, marginality, and the ... More | | 
Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the museum in New York, Sept. 4, 2019. Hollein, now one year into his tenure as director of the Met, is helping the museum rethink collections in dialogue with social, political and cultural shifts. Lelanie Foster/The New York Times.
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- When curator Denise Murrell was looking for a museum a few years back to help her develop an exhibition about black models who influenced art history, she struck out at one institution after another. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she recalled, never even responded. Murrell ultimately presented her show Posing Modernity: The Black Model From Manet and Matisse to Today at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, where it opened to rave reviews last year and was hailed for its scholarship on African influences in modern art. This week the Metropolitan Museum of Art will announce that it is hiring Murrell, who is African American, for the newly created full-time position ... More |
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| | Sotheby's to auction Paul Rudolph's 'Walker Guest House' - An icon of Modern American architecture | | Galeria Nara Roesler announces the representation of JR | | Togo turns ex-colonial palace into flagship art centre | 
The house will be sold with its original furnishings, Most of which were designed or selected by Rudolph specifically for the house. Estimated to sell for $700,000 $1 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- Sothebys announced that they will offer an icon of modern architecture, the Walker Guest House by Paul Rudolph, as a highlight of their bi-annual New York auction of Important Design on 12 December 2019. A carefully planned structure designed as a beach cottage overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, the Walker Guest House was commissioned by Dr. Walter Willard Walker in 1952 for construction on his familys land on Floridas Sanibel Island. The commission represented the first solo project for architect Paul Rudolph, following his split from the firm of architect Ralph Twitchell. The plan of the Walker Guest House is a groundbreaking study in the relationship between interior and exterior space, an integral tenet of Rudolphs body of work. Measuring 576-square-feet ... More | | 
JR, 2019.
RIO DE JANEIRO.- Galeria Nara Roesler announced the representation of acclaimed French artist JR. This announcement coincides with his first solo exhibition in Brazil, Patamar, at Galeria Nara Roesler | Rio de Janeiro. Widely known for his large-scale photographic interventions in the urban context, JR has exhibited his projects on building facades in the French banlieues, on walls in the Middle East, on bridges and trains in Africa and in Brazilian favelas. He has a longstanding relationship with Brazil, having exhibited in the 2016 Rio Olympics, besides being the founder and director of Casa Amarela, a social project which offers cultural activities to Morro da Providência residents in Rio de Janeiro. The project celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. According to the artist, "art changes people's perception - in a way, it is a manner to change the world (...) It might happen only for an instant, but an instant many times ... More | | 
Museum director Sonia Lawson poses at the former Palace of Governors of Lome has been converted into a center of art and culture on November 22, 2019. Yanick Folly / AFP.
LOME (AFP).- Togo on Friday opened a flagship art centre in the former seat of colonial power after a multi-million dollar refurbishment aimed at making it a major cultural draw in West Africa. Built over a century ago, the Palais de Lome was home to both French and German colonial rulers until becoming the residence of the Togolese presidency -- but was abandoned in the early 1990's. Togo's government commissioned architects in 2014 to renovate the palace, venerated as a treasured historic monument in the tiny West African nation, which is seeking to attract visitors and boost tourism. "For the first time in its history, this place where power was exercised will be open to the general public so that they can discover its rich historical, cultural and environmental heritage," ... More |
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How This Painting Campaigned for WomenÂs Rights | TateShots
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 The Huntington names Janet Alberti as its Chief Financial OfficerSAN MARINO, CA.- Following an extensive nationwide search, Janet Alberti, currently the deputy director of finance and administration at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), has been named the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Huntington President Karen Lawrence announced today. Alberti will join The Huntington's senior staff in mid-January 2020. "As a highly respected leader at a top-flight museum, Janet is exceptionally well-suited to The Huntington," said Lawrence. "Mission-driven and a natural team leader, she comes with an outstanding record of brilliantly balancing the fiscal side of the institution with its cultural and programmatic priorities." At The Huntington, Alberti will oversee all aspects of the financial portfolioThe ... More EXPO CHICAGO announces 2020 Program Curators CHICAGO, IL.- EXPO CHICAGO, The International Exposition of Contemporary and Modern Art, today announced program curators for the 2020 edition (September 24 27, 2020) returning to Navy Pier's Festival Hall. Showcasing large-scale sculpture, video, film and site-specific works throughout Festival Hall, the 2020 IN/SITU program will be curated by Marcella Beccaria, Chief Curator and Curator of Collections at the Castello di Rivoli Museo dArte Contemporanea in RivoliTorino, Italy. Humberto Moro, Deputy Director and Senior Curator at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City has been selected to curate the 2020 EXPOSURE section, which highlights solo and two-artist presentations from galleries ten years and younger. Moro will curate a presentation focused on heralding emerging artists and exhibition programs, with council from the Selection Committee ... More Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art Holds Yearlong Exhibition of works by Katsushika HokusaiWASHINGTON, DC.- In commemoration of the centennial of museum founder Charles Lang Freer's death in 1919, and in celebration of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020, the Freer Gallery of Art will showcase a yearlong exhibition on the compelling career of Katsushika Hokusai. "Hokusai: Mad about Painting" will be on view Nov. 23 through Nov. 8, 2020. Well-known for his iconic painting "Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa," Hokusai (1760-1849) produced thousands of works across diverse mediums. Freer recognized the artist's unparalleled abilities before other collectors, motivating him to assemble the world's largest collection of Hokusai's sketches, paintings and drawings. Given the limitations of Freer's will, artwork does not travel outside the building, making this a rare chance to see the extent of the Freer Gallery of Art's Hokusai collection. ... More The first-ever production car and a flying car on display in the V&A's major retrospective on the automobileLONDON.- The V&A opens an exhibition looking at the car as the driving force that accelerated the pace of the 20th century. The exhibition brings together a wide-ranging selection of cars that have never been on display in the UK, each telling a specific story about their impact on the world. This includes the first production car in existence, an autonomous flying car, a converted low-rider, and a 1950s concept car. The V&As mission is to champion the power of design to change the world, and no other design object has impacted the world more than the automobile. This exhibition is about the power of design to effect change, and the unintended consequences that have contributed to our current environmental situation, says Brendan Cormier, Curator. Showcasing 15 cars and 250 objects across three main sections, the exhibition examines how the car changed ... More 20 years of travel posters at Swann pays off with 10 new recordsNEW YORK, NY.- After twenty years of conducting auctions of Rare and Important Travel Posters it was validating to see the sale turn in the best results in the last three years, noted Nicholas D. Lowry, Swann Galleries President and Director of Vintage Posters. The Thursday, November 14 auction saw a 75% sell-through rate, an industry-leading number as no other poster sales come close to this level of success, continued Lowry, as well as bringing ten new records for artists and images alike. Works from an exceptional private collection of American railway posters included images by Leslie Ragan and Walter L. Greene. Ragans 1939 Art Deco advertisement for The New 20th Century Limited was won by an institution for $11,250, and Greenes 1928 image for Storm King / New York brought a record for the poster at $9,375. American destinations ... More Map showing the impact of an AI device named best design of 2019LONDON.- Anatomy of an AI System, a research project and infographic map that brings to life the real-world consequences of voice assistants, has been named by the Design Museum as the overall winner of the Beazley Designs of the Year 2019 and the Digital Category. Have you ever wondered how your voice assistant is made, and the impact it can have on our planet? Taking the Amazon Echo as an example, the project includes a visual diagram illustrating the global impact of an AI device across its lifetime. It investigates the three main parts required to build and operate a voice assistant from the environmental effects of extracting rare earth metals and the wide disparity in workers income, to the data that these devices can gather without the users knowledge. Some of the key information highlighted by designers, Kate Crawford of AI Now Institute ... More Pi Artworks London opens an exhibition of works by London-based painter Selma ParlourLONDON.- Pi Artworks London is presenting Activities for the Abyss, London-based painter Selma Parlours second solo exhibition at the gallery. Selma Parlour is a prolific award-winning artist known for her oil paintings that look as though they are drawn, dyed, or printed. With over 30 unseen artworks from the last 2 years, Activities for the Abyss showcases the artists soft films of luminescent colour, her delicately-rendered pencil-like oil-made lines and sumptuously refined matt surfaces, her diagrammatic approach that stresses paintings two-dimensionality, her units of colour inlaid as though through a process of marquetry, her fascination with homeless representation, trompe loeil illusion, multistable perception, and cognitive completion, her emphasis on mise en abyme, repetition (with variation and displacement), and the material apparatus ... More Miller & Miller announces Advertising & Historic Objects auction, Dec. 7NEW HAMBURG.- An Advertising & Historic Objects auction featuring the collection of John McKenty the Canadian historian and author whose collection tells the story of the rise and fall of the Canada Cycle & Motor Company of Canada will be held on Saturday, December 7th, by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., online and in the firms New Hamburg gallery. Mr. McKenty will give a special presentation on Friday evening, December 6th, at 7 pm Eastern. Canada Cycle & Motor Company was one of the most recognizable Canadian companies of the 20th century, said Ethan Miller of Miller & Miller Auctions. When John McKenty stumbled across an old CCM catalogue while researching the history of a local hardware store, he was hooked. John has worked tirelessly to preserve a story that was in danger of being lost forever. Miller called McKenty Canada's ... More Trump honors legendary actor (and rare Hollywood supporter) VoightWASHINGTON (AFP).- President Donald Trump on Thursday honored Oscar winner -- and one of his rare public supporters in Hollywood -- Jon Voight, recounting fighting tears while watching one of the actor's films. Voight, 80, was among eight people given the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony, the highest state honor for artists. Later in the day, Voight accompanied Trump to Dover, Delaware where the president receive the bodies of two servicemen who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Voight said he was invited by Trump during the medal ceremony, and added that he did not meet the service members' families. The actor won a 1979 best actor Academy Award for "Coming Home," in which he played a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran alongside Jane Fonda. ... More 'Humour saved my life', says subversive director John WatersTHESSALONIKI (AFP).- Big smile flashing and pencil-thin moustache quivering, subversive director John Waters laughs heartily as he looks back at an improbable 40-year career that made him a trash film icon. "Humour saved me, saved my life," the 73-year-old sharp-dresser told AFP on the sidelines of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, where he was a guest of honour earlier this month. From a homemade horror stage in his garage, Waters went on to tear down barriers with transgressive fare such as "Eat Your Makeup", "Mondo Trasho", "Multiple Maniacs" and the scatological classic "Pink Flamingos" in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These films also introduced his childhood friend and muse Glenn Milstead, aka Divine, as one of the world's first drag divas. In the 1980s and 1990s, he became known to a wider audience with sixties musical hommage "Hairspray". ... More From Bardot to Diana, iconic Paris Match photos to go under hammerPARIS (AFP).- They are the defining images of newsmakers down the decades from Princess Diana to Brigitte Bardot to Pope John Paul II. And now some 130 of the most iconic pictures taken by the French magazine Paris Match are to be auctioned on November 25 in Paris for prices of between 1,500-4,000 euros ($1,660-4,400). The auction of the celebrated covers and double-spreads will mark the 70th anniversary of a publication whose trend-setting influence has always gone well beyond France. The pictures include powerful images from nature and conflict zones and also of politicians ranging from the deposed shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to Charles de Gaulle and late French president Jacques Chirac. But among the most unforgettable are those those of personalities who have shaped the zeitgeist of the last decades. Perhaps the most famous is the image ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco was born November 23, 1883. José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 - September 7, 1949) was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. Orozco was the most complex of the Mexican muralists, fond of the theme of human suffering, but less realistic and more fascinated by machines than Rivera. Mostly influenced by Symbolism, he was also a genre painter and lithographer. In this image: Mexican painter and muralist Jose Clemente Orozco looks over some of his drawings in his New York City apartment on Dec. 4, 1945.
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