| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Saturday, September 16, 2023 |
| | Fernando Botero, artist of whimsical rotundity, is dead at 91 | |
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The Colombian artist Fernando Botero during the installation of an exhibition of his works at the National Museum in Bogota on April 30, 2004. Botero, whose voluptuous pictures and sculptures of overstuffed generals, bishops, prostitutes, housewives and other products of his magic-realist imagination made him one of the worlds best-known artists, died on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in Monaco. He was 91. (Carlos Villalon/The New York Times)
by Stephen Kinzer
NEW YORK, NY.- Fernando Botero, the Colombian whose voluptuous pictures and sculptures of overstuffed generals, bishops, prostitutes, housewives and other products of his whimsical imagination made him one of the worlds best-known artists, died Friday in Monaco. He was 91. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by a close friend, Mauricio Vallejo, a co-owner of an art gallery in Houston, who said the cause was complications of pneumonia. President Gustavo Petro of Colombia earlier announced the death on social media. As a young artist, Botero developed an instantly recognizable style and enjoyed great and immediate commercial success. Fans sought his autograph and were known to wait for him at airports. Its the profession you do if you wish to die of hunger, people used to tell me, he once recalled. Yet I was so strongly impelled to take it up that I never thought about the consequences. Botero was permanently a ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day The tenth edition of the POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair is open! Hangars 5 and 6 of Tempelhof Airport are inhabited by artworks from 45 countries, brought by galleries from 20 countries - and ready to find a new home! Some works have already been sold to public and private collections during the preview and evening opening ceremony.
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| When should a museum return looted items? It's complicated. | | National Gallery of Art acquires prints by 50 artists from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives | | Jane Lombard Gallery presenting solo exhibition 'The Monument' | 
The show Loot: 10 Stories at the Mauritshuis features a 1669 Rembrandt self-portrait that was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family and stored in a salt mine during World War II. Photo: Mauritshuis, The Hague.
by Nina Siegal
NEW YORK, NY.- Some museums contain artworks that were looted by the Nazis during World War II. Others have amassed collections of objects stolen by colonial powers. Yet others saw their own collections plundered as the spoils of war. The Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, has it all. Founded in the 17th century by a Dutch prince who governed a colony in what is now Brazil, the museum once held many so-called ethnographic objects in its cabinet of curiosities. During the Napoleonic era, the French army stole its entire painting collection. And the Mauritshuis still holds two dozen works identified as Nazi-looted art, for which rightful owners have not been found. The whole history of the museum is very closely related to war booty and looted art, said the Mauritshuis director, Martine Gosselink, which is why she decided to mount, Loot: 10 Stories, an exhibition running through ... More | | 
John Thomas Biggers, Family Ark Triptych (Color), 1992. Color offset lithograph on three sheets of wove paper. Overall: 74.6 x 125.8 cm (29 3/8 x 49 1/2 in.) sheet (.a): 74.5 x 35.6 cm (29 5/16 x 14 in. sheet (.b): 74.5 x 54.8 cm (29 5/16 x 21 9/16 in.) sheet (.c): 74.6 x 35.4 cm (29 3/8 x 13 15/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Funds from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation 2023.22.7.a-c
NEW YORK, NY.- In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, the National Gallery of Art has acquired a selection of more than 100 prints created there by 50 artists over its 50-year history. Made possible by a generous gift of funds from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, this acquisition underscores the workshops stylistic and conceptual reachamong the themes explored by BWA artists are cultural identity, political and social issues, portraiture, and landscape, as well as patterning and pure abstraction. Not only do these prints broaden the National Gallerys representation of works created in seminal printing workshops in the United States, they also enhance the collection by increasing the diversity of the artists it represents. The range of artists ... More | | 
Michael Rakowitz, American Golem, Detail. 2022. Found antiques, paper mache sculpture, granite, wood, metal base, 91 x 91.5 x 63 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo by Arturo Sanchez.
NEW YORK, NY.- Jane Lombard Gallery is now hosting a solo exhibition by gallery artist Michael Rakowitz, entitled The Monument, The Monster and The Maquette. Continuing his exploration of monuments, the artist will mount a new installation of this ongoing series for the first time in New York. Rakowitzs research-based studio practice is evidenced throughout this body of work, itself titled after a line of etymological inquiry. Scrawled across a mantelpiece at the base of the hybrid sculpture American Golem, the artist notes that Monument is derived from the latin verb monere, meaning to remind, advise, warn. Also derived from monere: demonstrate, remonstrate, monster. Rakowitz turns to the monument as a way to offer a renewed, transparent conceptual framework within which the dynamics underlying conventional history can be exposed as matters of power and rhetoric rather than of mindless ... More |
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| Julien's Auctions announce 'Brady Bunch and More: Eve Plumb's Jan Brady & Career Archives' | | 'Michael Brown: Sotto Voce' new paintings on view at Marc Straus | | Fifty newly created terra-cotta sculptures by Judy Fox featured in her exhibition 'Harvest' at Nancy Hoffman Gallery | 
An original teleplay from the production of the Brady Bunch episode "The Subject was Noses," one of the most iconic of the series.
BEVERLY HILLS, CA.- Its a sunshine day as Juliens Auctions presents 'Brady Bunch and More: Eve Plumb's Jan Brady & Career Archives' taking place online Monday, October 2nd, 2023. The exclusive auction celebration of the career of the beloved television star and artist, Eve Plumb, most famous for her iconic role of Jan on The Brady Bunch will showcase a very Brady collection of her career archives and personal memorabilia, such as Plumbs and the cast autographed original teleplays of some of the most famous Brady Bunch episodes, early career photographs, documents, personal items, as well as jewelry, a vintage Barbie watch and other Brady ephemera from the classic television series and enduring pop culture phenomenon that spawned a franchise that included spin-off series, feature films, an animated series, television ... More | | 
Michael Brown, Untitled (February 20, 2023), 2023. Oil on panel, 12 x 12 x 0.75 in (30.5 x 30.5 x 2 cm).
POUGHKEEPSIE, NY.- Marc Straus is hosting the artists fourth solo exhibition, 'Recent Works', with the gallery. Brown (b. 1982, , NY), who was originally trained as a sculptor, became well-known at a very young age for his stainless steel welded cracked mirrors and a series of works made with melted vinyl discs. More recently, Brown has turned to highly sculptural paintings, working with gold leaf and oil paint. Now he takes on painting at a smaller scale 12 x 12-inch square canvases where his soft, pastel driven color palette takes a sharp inward turn. These intimate, quieter works hark back to paintings by Agnes Martin, Giorgio Morandi, Etel Adnan, Miyo- ko Ito, to Shaker drawings and the transcendentalist movement. Brown has opted for both a limited color palette and reduced forms. His use of soft, predominantly warm hues such as amber, ochre, sun-yellow and mut- ed burnt-orange creates works ... More | | 
Judy Fox, Broccoli, 2023. Terra cotta, casein paint, 4 x 10 x 7 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- On September 7, Nancy Hoffman Gallery opened Harvest, an exhibition of some 50 newly created terra-cotta sculptures by Judy Fox, made in her studio in Rhinebeck, New York. The sculptures depict fruits and vegetables, dynamic in form and palette, a veritable organic feast. Ranging in size from 30 inches to 3 inches, the works are painted in exquisite detail with casein paint. Judy Foxs recent work emerged amid isolation in the lush rural environment of the Hudson Valley. She moved to Rhinebeck in 2020, after 40 years living in New York City, prompted by COVID-19. The pandemica collective experience that has confronted us with the perils of disease, age, and dissociationalso informed Foxs direction for this new body of work. Vulnerability emanates from the carefully crafted surface of each piece. Harvest continues a migration from the painted figures that ... More |
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| An arts center opens at Ground Zero with stars, onstage and off | | Treasures from the Adolphe & Philippe Stoclet's collections will be auctioned at Bonhams | | Bonhams appoints Bénédicte van Campen as International Specialist of Impressionist and Modern Art in Paris | 
Summer sunlight is filtered through the marble at the new Perelman Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan in New York on Sept. 1, 2023. (George Etheredge/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Cynthia Erivo sang (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. Ballerina Tiler Peck moonwalked, on pointe shoes, to a rap by Tariq Trotter. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo performed both parts of a duet from Mozarts The Marriage of Figaro, twirling from stage left to stage right with each character change. After more than two decades of imagining, planning, debating, fundraising, losing hope and fundraising some more, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened Thursday night at the World Trade Center site, which buzzed with politicians, celebrities and benefactors whose contributions allowed the once-foundering project to be realized. The first person to step onstage for a performance at the long-awaited arts institution was Amanda Gorman, a 25-year-old poet ... More | | 
Work by Daniel Buren
BRUSSELS.- Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr announces the auction of treasures from the Adolphe and Philippe R. Stoclets collections on Monday 23 October 2023 in Brussels. The Palais Stoclet is considered a pearl of Viennese Art Nouveau in Brussels. A work of art in itself, it was built in Brussels by architect Josef Hoffmann, and embodies the peak of the Vienna Secession, an art movement founded by Gustav Klimt. Designed in 1905, it was completed in 1911 for the Stoclet family, who then occupied it as their private residence. Adolphe Stoclet, Société Générales director, rail and coal magnate, art lover and patron, turned to Vienna when he decided to build his own private mansion and commissioned the architect Josef Hoffmann, the main driving force behind the Wiener Werkstätte. The mansion was located on Avenue de Tervueren, an area particularly favoured by the upper middle classes. Listed as a historic monument in ... More | | 
Bénédicte van Campen, as international specialist of Impressionist and Modern art in Paris. Photo: Bonhams.
PARIS.- Bonhams has appointed Bénédicte van Campen as International Specialist of Impressionist and Modern Paintings in Paris with immediate effect (August 2023). She will help the team in cultivating networks among collectors, dealers, curators and corporations in France and Europe and sourcing major consignments. Bénédicte's appointment marks the company's continued growth in Europe following the success of the first Impressionist and Modern Paintings sales in Paris in 2021. Bénédicte van Campen commented: "I am pleased to be joining Bonhams at this exciting time in its history. I look forward to using all my knowledge and experience to help the company achieve even greater success and develop sales of Impressionist paintings in Paris." Hannah Noel-Smith, Bonhams Global Head of Impressionist and Modern Paintings at Bonhams, said: "It is a ... More |
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| Multidisciplinary artist Burkinabé now on view at Friedman Benda | | Scottish artist Susan Philipsz opens exhibition at Konrad Fischer Galerie | | 'Winds of Yawanawa' by Refik Anadol and the Yawanawá, an Indigenous people of Brazil, debut in London | 
Hamed Ouattara Dioulassoba (Dioula's Town), 2022. Photo courtesy of Friedman Benda.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Friedman Benda presents its first solo exhibition of Burkinabé multidisciplinary artist and designer Hamed Ouattara, one of the most prominent voices in the world of contemporary African design. Bolibana marks his American debut by unveiling a new body of work and featuring a continuation of his characteristic modes of making. In the Bamana language of West Africa, Bolibana refers to the unusual end of a journey, a transformation. Known for upcycling discarded materials, such as his signature oil drums, into distinctively colorful works, Ouattara engages with industrial debris to tell an unusual end to the story of waste and global trade. Interested in the traces that tools leave on objects, Ouattara combines artisanal and industrial sensibilities into a series that is as culturally significant as it is visually striking. Due to limited supply and access to resources, all ... More | | 
KFG Installation View. Courtesy the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie Photos by Achim Kukulies.
DÃSSELDORF.- With her new work Sokol TerezÃn, the Scottish artist Susan Philipsz confronts the viewer with a sound and video installation that refers to her work Study for Strings, already presented at dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012. The sound installation, consisting of recordings of two isolated instruments - a cello and a viola - is accompanied by two video projections showing subtle shots of empty rooms of the former Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt. The work focuses on the sound of the two string instruments, which originally were part of the composition Study for String Orchestra by Czech-Jewish composer Pavel Haas (1899-1944). The piece was performed for the 1944 Nazi propaganda film Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet. The film does not show the German concentration camp in its reality as a collection and transit camp to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, ... More | | 
Winds of Yawanawa © Photo courtesy of Refik Anadol.
LONDON.- Starting 13 September, Winds of Yawanawa, a large-scale digital work co-created by trailblazing new media artist Refik Anadol and the Yawanawá, an indigenous people of Brazil, premiered at Annabels as part of the Annabels For The Amazon campaign. The artwork was curated and commissioned by Impact One to raise funds to safeguard the Yawanawás lands and cultural heritage, and has already generated more than $3,000,000 through the sale of NFTs based on the work, making it one of the highest valued and most successful NFT sales of 2023. Known for his monumental digital installations created with the assistance of A.I. and generative algorithms, Anadol worked with the Yawanawá to connect their physical culture with virtual data to create the artwork series. Winds of Yawanawa harnesses real-time weather data sourced from the Yawanawá village of Aldeia Sagrada in the Brazilian state of Acre and ... More |
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Jules de Balincourt on Midnight Movers
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 The first solo exhibition in the Middle East by Josh Rowell on view at Firetti ContemporaryDUBAI.- Firetti Contemporary presents the first solo exhibition of Josh Rowell in the Middle East, titled MORAL CODES and curated by Celine Azem. The exhibition presents a thought-provoking trajectory of Rowell's work, featuring his renowned series such as "Painting Language," "Virtually Fragile," and "Mosaics." Opened on the 7th of September 2023, this exhibition delves into the realms of ethics, communication, and the evolving digital landscape, inviting viewers to contemplate the moral codes that shape our society. At the heart of the exhibition lies an installation of Rowells Painting Language series, inspired by Aesop's fables. These timeless tales, originating from ancient Greece, have traversed cultures and generations, imparting valuable lessons and moral teachings. Rowell's interpretation of these fables serves as a poignant reminder ... More  'Skin and Body: Crazed Vessels by Kodai Ujiie' currently exhibiting at Ippodo GalleryNEW YORK, NY.- Ippodo Gallery presents Skin and Body: Crazed Vessels by Kodai Ujiie, the avant-garde artists first solo exhibition in the United States. Ippodo Gallery is featuring 46 of his newest ceramics, including large jars, vases, and small vessels, now on view until October 2023. Each artwork relishes in the delight of living, converting clay into an analogy of vital fleshskin, blood vessels, and scaleswith a renewed sense of body image. Kodai Ujiie (b. 1990) wrests from clay an extraordinary vision of the physical body. Ujiies debut show addresses cataclysm and the value of imperfection, emphasizing the beauty in grotesque abnormality. Channeling a non-traditional spirit of kintsugi (mending with lacquer) on hand-built porcelain, Ujiie fuses together branching networks resembling veins and arteries in kanyuu (crazed furrows). ... More  'Mimi Chen Ting: The Sea Within Me' to open at Louis Stern Fine ArtsLOS ANGELES, CA.- Louis Stern Fine Arts is welcoming the start of the exhibition Mimi Chen Ting: The Sea Within Me today. The late-career abstract works of Chinese American artist Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) give material form to the accumulation of memories, images, and complexities which colored her life and experience. A painter, printmaker, and performance artist, Tings high-spirited practice integrated a mosaic of Eastern and Western aesthetic influences, producing lyrical works which ardently transcribe the nuances of navigating womanhood, belonging, and personal identity. Ting was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong, where she was compelled into stillness by a mother who feared she had too much fire in her. Her study of ballet, in which she excelled, was suppressed for fear that she might become overly muscular. Memories ... More  Langson IMCA announces recent acquisition of 25 artworks expanding its representation of influential artistsIRVINE, CA.- UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art announced the recent acquisition of 25 works of art this last fiscal year, including new commissions. Langson IMCAs acquisition strategy aims to diversify and deepen the permanent collection that spans 19th century California Impressionism and plein air paintings to Post-War modern and contemporary art. See the full list of artists below. Langson IMCA Museum Director Kim Kanatani said, We are delighted to be deepening and broadening our collection in meaningful ways and are profoundly grateful to our donors who support this mission to represent the art of California. These works across mediums are exemplars of artists ... More  With a pool and an airport hangar, an opera company gets nomadicNEW YORK, NY.- It was high noon in a disused hangar at Tempelhof airport, near the center of Berlin, and the Komische Oper was troubleshooting its new swimming pool. Director Tobias Kratzer, speaking into a microphone, stopped a group of extras and chorus members during a rehearsal of Hans Werner Henzes The Raft of the Medusa, which will open the Komische Opers season Saturday. And the raft, made up of benches designed to look like theyre floating in the water, was refusing to close on cue. This hangar, part of a complex built by Adolf Hitlers regime in the 1930s, has been used for art installations and sports since the airport closed nearly 16 years ago. Now, it has been outfitted with 1,600 seats and a 15-inch-deep swimming pool stage. And while the Komische Oper, one of Berlins three major opera companies, embarks on a ... More  Until A.D. 3183, This public sculpture is a work in progressWEMDING.- It could be mistaken for an abandoned construction site: a row of rectangular concrete blocks on a bare, square foundation. Yet on Saturday, a crowd of around 300 people gathered on a hill outside the town of Wemding, in southern Germany, as a crane lowered another block into place, alongside the first three. Some spectators had traveled from as far as San Francisco. They came to see the latest stage in the construction of the Time Pyramid (Zeitpyramide), a public artwork that Wemdings citizens are assembling at a rate of one 6-by-4-foot block every decade. There are 116 more to add before the Time Pyramid will be complete, when it will stand 24 feet tall. That wont be until A.D. 3183. Artist Manfred Laber, a Wemding resident who died in 2018, proposed the Time Pyramid project in 1993 to mark the 1,200-year anniversary of his town. ... More  Do studios dream of android stars?NEW YORK, NY.- Ive seen things you people wouldnt believe, to borrow a line from Ridley Scotts 1982 shocker, Blade Runner. But Im a movie critic, so of course I have. And one of my favorite unbelievable visions is that of walking, talking, thinking and often terrifying robots, like the kind that both thrilled and scared me in the original Westworld and especially The Stepford Wives. In the 1970s, these creepfests offered a far bleaker view of our future world than the robot sidekicks in Star Wars that would soon overtake the culture and the film industry. The movies have long been haunted by these fantastic machines, particularly those humanoid inventions that look unnervingly like us, be it the robot woman in Fritz Langs Metropolis (1927) or the duplicitous android in Scotts Alien (1979), ingenious creations that are virtually identical to a human, to borrow another quote from ... More  'Death, Let Me Do My Show' review: Rachel Bloom can't shake the dreadNEW YORK, NY.- Rachel Bloom came to perform her latest live show in New York, and she really wanted to do it as if it were 2019. That was the year when her musical-comedy series, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, ended its four-season run on the CW, and Bloom was getting ready to hit the road. But in 2020, some things happened. Now that shes finally able to face a live audience again, the writer-performer wanted to treat the coronavirus pandemic as a parenthesis: She was keen, as she put it at the Lucille Lortel Theater a few days ago, to go back to my old material unsullied by trauma. Some things, however, cant be brushed aside easily, even with the help of gleefully blunt songs, or a few jokes. Fate, life, inspiration, rumination, grief, time, a dark power greater than even the gods of comedy: Whatever you want to call it, something derailed Blooms ... More  Piano-playing hot-air balloon aerialists? Rochester Fringe Festival is back.ROCHESTER, NY.- Sweaty venues roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Eye-catchingly daft titles. Lampposts all but sagging under the weight of promotional flyers. Drunken Shakespeare mashups and earnest solo shows. Volunteers shooing audiences onto the street in order to air out those closet-size venues before the next performance, and the one after that, and the one after that. These are among the standard ingredients for fringe festivals, the multidisciplinary showcases that have become economic drivers in cities looking to replicate the pell-mell, Wait, did I sleep last night? energy of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. The Rochester Fringe Festival, which runs through Sept. 23 at 34 different venues, has all of the above features, with shows like Shotspeare, A Jewish Woman Walks Into a Maloca and A Nerdy Gay Juggling Show ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, Alsatian sculptor and painter Jean Arp was born September 16, 1886. Jean Arp / Hans Arp (16 September 1886 - 7 June 1966) was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper. In this image: Visitors look at Jean Arp's painting "Femme" (woman), right, exhibited at Drouot Gallery in Paris, France Tuesday, April 1, 2003. The painting is one among hundreds of art pieces from French surrealist writer Andre Breton's art collection which is being auctioned.
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