The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Sunday, July 3, 2022

 
Artists scrutinize a collector's Nazi family past

Julia Stoschek, the billionaire heiress to a car-parts fortune, at her Julia Stoschek Collection, one of the world’s pre-eminent private institutions for media art, in Berlin, June 9, 2022. As word circulated of a link between the Stoschek family’s fortune and forced labor in World War II, some began questioning the ethics of working with the billionaire art patron. Gordon Welters/The New York Times.

by Thomas Rogers


DÜSSELDORF.- In early June, the Julia Stoschek Collection, one of the world’s preeminent private institutions for media art, premiered an ambitious new show here to celebrate its 15th anniversary: “Worldbuilding,” an exhibition focused on the intersection between art and video gaming that features works exploring issues like transphobia, gun violence and environmental degradation. Stoschek, 47, a billionaire heiress to a German car-parts fortune, owns the collection — one of the world’s largest holdings of “time-based art,” a term encompassing performance, film, video and digital works. “The young generation of gamers are raising awareness about serious subjects, like refugees, racism, the treatment of women,” Stoschek said of the “Worldbuilding” show, which runs through Dec. 10, 2023. The works were “made to engage with current topics,” she added. “It’s very of-the-moment and often political.” Aside from overseeing two ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Installation views of the exhibition Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities, on display March 4, 2022–July 31, 2022 at the Harvard Art Museums. Images: Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums; © President and Fellows of Harvard College.






An excavation in the sea depths recovers Hercules from the afterlife   Art, darling   Exhibition Powder and Light explores 19th-century pastels


Divers in Greece hoisting items from the shipwreck, whose remains included a marble head believed to be a representation of Hercules, the mythological hero of ancient Rome and Greece. Photo: Nikos Giannoulakis/Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece/Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

by April Rubin


NEW YORK, NY.- As myth has it, Hercules had to complete 12 heroic labors to be absolved of guilt and to become immortal. A recent discovery picks up the story, long after the Greek and Roman tales concluded, to tell us a new version of his afterlife. A likeness of the demigod of strength — who, the story goes, strangled a lion, decapitated a nine-headed underwater snake and captured a man-eating boar, among other feats — was lying at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. Or at least its head was. A team of experts searching through a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, an excavation effort that took place from May 23 to June 15, dredged up what researchers believe is the marble head of a Hercules statue from ancient Rome dating back ... More
 

Antwaun Sargent, since 2021 the director of Gagosian, the blue-chip mega-gallery, in Brooklyn, June 17, 2022. Nate Palmer/The New York Times.

by Ruth La Ferla


NEW YORK, NY.- Antwaun Sargent sat nursing a Negroni at Frankies Spuntino, his haunt in Brooklyn, as he described the perks of his multilayered career. “I had dinner with Madonna,” he said on a recent Friday. “Coming of age as a gay man in Chicago in the ’90s, you can imagine, I was excited. I was obsessed with her.” But within moments of their encounter last year, Sargent hit earth. Pulling out her iPhone, his erstwhile idol proceeded to show him artworks by Rocco Ritchie, her 21-year-old son with filmmaker Guy Ritchie, regaling him for nearly an hour about her hopes for the boy. “That made things real,” Sargent said. “Here was Madonna — a legend, an icon — asking for guidance, just being mom.” It seems the pop diva had known where to turn. Sargent, 33, a former kindergarten teacher turned artist and curator and vociferous champion of Black artists, had been appointed ... More
 

Baronne de Domecy, about 1900, Odilon Redon. Pastel and graphite, 24 × 16 11/16 in. Getty Museum, 2005.1

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Museum presents Powder and Light: Late 19th-Century Pastels, an exhibition tracing the evolution of pastels from Impressionism to Symbolism, featuring works from the Getty collection by artists including Edgar Degas, Odilon Redon, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and more. The exhibition is on view at the Getty Center March 15–August 14, 2022. “The medium of pastel, once considered stuffy and old-fashioned, experienced a surge in popularity during the last quarter of the 19th century,” says Emily Beeny, curator of the exhibition. “Shrugging off academic convention, European artists experimented with pastels in new ways, revealing its limitless aesthetic possibilities and an exceptional range of colors and textures.” Presenting examples from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century, this exhibition shines a light on a myriad of pastel styles used by artists dur ... More


A sculptor takes his craft to the skies   The Queen's Platinum Jubilee outfits go on display for the first time at the Palace of Holyroodhouse   London modern and contemporary auctions: A market minus the froth


The artist Desmond Lewis prepares for his fireworks show at Whittington Park in Greenwood, Miss., June 18, 2022. Timothy Ivy/The New York Times.

by Brenna M. Casey


GREENWOOD, MISS.- On Saturday night, June 18, Memphis, Tennessee-based artist Desmond Lewis was in a public park unloading cakes — bundles of fireworks connected by a high-speed fuse — from a pickup truck. On the other side of a nearby tree line waited about 150 expectant onlookers for the Juneteenth celebration in the city that is heralded as “the cotton capital of the world.” “The first rule of fireworks,” Lewis said as he stood over a large box of explosives in the lingering heat, “is don’t put any body part over the explosive that you don’t want to lose.” Lewis, 28, is lanky and bespectacled. He wears a pair of dark-rimmed prescription safety glasses because, as he puts it, “I am always doing stuff.” He gave a good-natured grimace as he raised the box to his chest. Primarily a sculptor, ... More
 

Her Majesty The Queen’s Golden Jubilee ensemble.

EDINBURGH.- The ensembles worn by Her Majesty The Queen for her two appearances on the Buckingham Palace balcony during the Platinum Jubilee weekend will go on public display for the first time from this Sunday (3 July) at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The outfits form part of a special display commemorating The Queen’s historic Platinum Jubilee, which will be included with a ticket to Edinburgh’s royal palace from Sunday, 3 July until Sunday, 25 September. Visitors will see a display of outfits worn by Her Majesty on occasions to celebrate the Silver, Golden, Diamond and Platinum Jubilees, as well as a selection of gifts presented during The Queen’s official engagements in Scotland throughout her 70-year reign. Watched by millions around the world, The Queen made her first appearance during the Platinum Jubilee weekend this year when she stood on the Buckingham Palace balcony to take the salute and watch ... More
 

Christie’s sale this week was led by Claude Monet’s “Nymphéas, temps gris” from 1907, which sold to a phone bidder for $36.9 million. Another Monet fetched the same price there. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022.

by Scott Reyburn


NEW YORK, NY.- This week, while some of the world’s top tennis players were in action at Wimbledon, and war continued to rage in Ukraine, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips held their traditional summer week of marquee modern and contemporary art auctions in the British capital. Headline auction prices quelled, for the moment, talk that London is losing ground to Paris as a hub for high-end art auctions: A sum of 30.1 million pounds with fees, or about $36.9 million, was paid twice in the same sale for two different Claude Monet paintings, and about $52.8 million purchased a Francis Bacon portrait of Lucian Freud. Last year, in the aftermath of Britain’s departure from the European Union, France’s share of global auction sales rose to 9%, ... More



Arnold Skolnick, whose poster embodied Woodstock, dies at 85   Drawing Room Hamburg opens an exhibition of works by Jean-Louis Garnell   Overlooked no more: Klaus Nomi, singer with an otherworldly persona


On short notice, he created the bird-on-a-guitar design that advertised the 1969 festival — and became a symbol of the era.

NEW YORK, NY.- Arnold Skolnick, who with only a few days to work designed what became one of the most familiar pop-culture images of its time, the poster for the original Woodstock music festival in 1969, died on June 15 in Amherst, Massachusetts. He was 85. His son Alexander Skolnick said the cause was respiratory failure. Arnold Skolnick’s poster design was a model of simplicity that both conveyed information about the festival — when and where it was, who was performing — and caught the sensibility of the moment. With an attention-getting red background, it had as its dominant image the neck of a guitar with a white bird perched on it. “3 Days of Peace & Music,” the big type read. Skolnick was 32 and doing freelance work for advertising agencies and other clients — “more ‘Mad Men’ than ‘Easy Rider,’” as The Washington Post described him 50 years later — when he got a call from John Morris, the ... More
 

Ohne Titel #3 2018, 2019. Pigmentinkjetprint auf Barytapapier auf Dibond, 100 x 67 cm. Courtesy: Der Künstler und Drawing Room, Hamburg. Photo: Jean-Louis Garnell, Paris.

HAMBURG.- In the work of Jean-Louis Garnell, here we have a photographic position that fits perfectly into the current Triennale of Photography. I'm sure you've all noticed that Hamburg is again endeavouring to claim the honorary title, “capital of photography”. For the eighth time, all of Hamburg's major exhibition institutions and museums, as well as countless galleries and initiatives, are presenting a wide variety of photographic exhibitions and projects. This year's guest curators of the Triennale – Koyo Kouoh and her team comprising Rasha Salti, Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo and Oluremi C. Onabanjo – have chosen "Currency" as the motto for this year’s festival. The term "currency" is broadly conceived, with each exhibition offering its own definition as a link to the overall concept. Although I don't want to apply the motto to this exhibition right now, there are ... More
 

His sound and look influenced everyone from Anohni to Lady Gaga. He also sang backup vocals for David Bowie.

NEW YORK, NY.- A wide range of musical genres fueled New York’s nightclubs in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including new wave, no wave, punk and post punk. Klaus Nomi, who performed during that era, defied being categorized under any of them. “I wouldn’t give it a label,” Nomi said of his sound in a Belgian television interview. “Maybe the only label is my own label: It’s Nomi style.” His music combined opera, infectious melodies, disco beats, German-accented countertenor vocals and undeniable grandeur. He influenced everyone from singer-songwriter Anohni to Lady Gaga; in 2009, when Morrissey was asked to select eight essential records for the BBC radio program “Desert Island Discs,” Nomi’s version of Schumann’s “Der Nussbaum” made the list. Nomi’s stage look was equally eclectic, and inseparable from his sound. The gender-fluid mix included dark, dramatically applied lipstick as well as nail polish, the ... More


Museum Tinguely presents Jean-Jacques Lebel "La Chose" de Tinguely, quelques philosophes et "Les Avatars de Vénus"   New exhibition now open at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust   Harvard Art Museums celebrate Brandywine Workshop and Archives with spring 2022 exhibition


Installation view of the exhibition Jean-Jacques Lebel with among others Jean Tinguely,
Pjotr Kropotkin, Philosoph, 1988 (front left) © 2022 Museum Tinguely, Basel; Photo: Daniel Spehr.


BASEL.- Museum Tinguely is showing Jean-Jacques Lebel's “La Chose” de Tinguely, quelques philosophes et “Les Avatars de Vénus,” an exhibition that grew out of Europe’s first Happening, L’enterrement de la Chose de Tinguely, which was staged by Lebel on July 14, 1960 in Venice and centred on a sculpture by Jean Tinguely. In addition to documents relating to that pioneering event, the show also features some of Lebel’s and Tinguely’s “philosophes” as well as Lebel’s late work, Les Avatars de Vénus. The Happening L’enterrement de la Chose de Tinguely took place in the wake of the second edition of Anti-Procès, a series of three “manifestations” staged in protest at French brutality in the Algerian War of Independence. The arc they trace began with anti-colonialist sentiment and ended with outright opposition ... More
 

Eva Holzer's Teddy Bear.

NEW YORK, NY.- A major new exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust opened this week. The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do offers an expansive and timely presentation of Holocaust history told through personal stories, objects, photos, and film—many on view for the first time. The 12,000-square-foot exhibition features over 750 original objects and survivor testimonies from the Museum’s collection. Together, these objects tell a global story through a local lens, rooted in objects donated by survivors and their families, many of whom settled in New York and nearby places. In keeping with the Museum’s mission to educate people of all ages and backgrounds on the broad tapestry of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust, the exhibition features countless beginnings, middles, and too many endings that make up the stories of The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do. Each room, and each object, contains ... More
 

Odili Donald Odita, American, Cut, 2016. Offset lithograph. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund, 2018.33.44. © Odili Donald Odita. Image: Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums; © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- The Harvard Art Museums celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives—a Philadelphia-based organization with a history of introducing printmaking to practicing artists and members of the surrounding community—in an exhibition that unites innovative works by 30 artists. Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities, on display March 4 through July 31, 2022, marks the first presentation of a group of works acquired by the museums in 2018 and honors the creative spirit of the workshop. Founded in 1972 by artist Allan Edmunds, the Brandywine Workshop and Archives is a nonprofit cultural institution celebrated for its engagement with the local community and educational programming. For five decades, ... More




A life less Ordinary: Art and Design with Marie-Louise Sciò



More News

Saddle up for John Moran Auctioneers Art of the American West Online auction
LOS ANGELES, CA.- For those that are longing a sense of adventure, but don’t want to leave the house, John Moran Auctioneers invites you to join their Art of the American West Online auction on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, at noon PST. Live vicariously through paintings of open skies, majestic mountain ranges, and warriors on horseback. Envision yourself on a bucking bronco in a rodeo as you enjoy the bronze sculpture, Eight Plus Two, by Sid Burns. When the time comes to mosey on out, accessorize in style from the wide variety of original American Indian jewelry, concho and leather belts, and your choice of cowboy hats! For fine art there will be masterful works depicting the American West in all its glory. One of the highlighted paintings, Sunset in May, is by Heinie Hartwig with an estimate of $2,000-3,000. Also offered is a bold ... More

Molière, turning 400, can still surprise
PARIS.- “I’m in shock,” a teenage boy sitting near me declared when the lights went up on a recent performance of Molière’s “The Forced Marriage” at the Comédie-Française, France’s oldest theater company. “It was really sexual,” one of his schoolmates told her friends on the way out. “It’s not the kind of stuff you should show.” Does Molière, the 17th-century comedy master and doyen of French playwrights, really still have the power to surprise? As France celebrates the 400th anniversary of his birth, a flurry of new productions suggests that he can — and, equally, that his work can easily feel old-fashioned. The guilty party isn’t Molière. Wildly different takes on his work have been on show in the Paris region. While the Comédie-Française, whose 2022 program is entirely devoted to Molière, has invested in dark, offbeat productions, “Molière Month,” a yearly ... More

America, prismatic and distressed, seen through dance
BECKET, MASS.- Among the main attractions of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival is its bucolic setting here in the Berkshires. But the news this year is a return to the great indoors. In 2020, the twin blows of the pandemic and a fire that burned down one of the festival’s two theaters forced a cancellation of all performances. Last year, the shows were outside, weather permitting. The main stage — the barn that the festival’s founder, Ted Shawn, converted into the first theater in the United States dedicated to dance, 80 years ago — was undergoing necessary renovations. The Ted Shawn Theater is now open again for business, half of its exterior wood weathered and historical-looking, the other half clean and new. (The second theater has not yet been rebuilt.) The first program in the renovated theater, last week, was indicative of another change: ... More

In 'Corps,' running aspirational dance drills
NEW YORK, NY.- When you hear the words, “Snaps: Go!” you know that Milka Djordjevich’s “Corps” has begun. On Thursday at New York Live Arts, five women descended the stairs through the audience in a single-file line, walking and snapping in time. As they advanced across the stage, a second call — “‘No’-head: Go!” — sounded from the group. To their unison steps and snaps, they added heads turning from side to side. For the first half of this 75-minute work, which had its New York premiere on Thursday (after two pandemic postponements), the structure is something like that: Almost no movement or directional shift happens without an introductory command, and everyone sticks together, or tries. As they cycle through steps with names like high kick and pony — all cataloged in an accompanying “Drill Glossary” pamphlet — the dancers ... More

Is there anything funny about the war in Ukraine?
LVIV.- Some morsels of news are so grim and absurd that they sound like they were conceived in the warped imagination of bored satirists. Like the headline from Belarus a few weeks ago, reporting that 10th graders there were being taught how to aim rifles — using shovels. “What do you think about that?” asks comedian Vadym Dziunko. Dziunko is onstage with two other comedians and a well-known singer. All are seated and holding microphones, gamely trying to find humor in a place and at a moment when the tragic is trouncing the funny by a spectacular margin. It’s a recent Saturday night at the Cult Comedy Hall, a comedy club in downtown Lviv, near Ukraine’s relatively peaceful western border. Some 100 people have spent about $13 apiece to eat, drink and listen to comics riffing about whatever crosses their minds, which is often the latest news ... More

H.T. Chen, choreographer of the Asian experience, dies at 74
NEW YORK, NY.- H.T. Chen, who blended Eastern and Western influences in his choreography, and who with his wife, Dian Dong, established the Chen Dance Center, a cultural hub in New York’s Chinatown for more than 40 years, died June 12 in Manhattan. He was 74. Dong said the cause was lung cancer. Chen, who was born in Shanghai, came to the United States in 1971 and, soon after graduating from the Juilliard School in 1976, formed H.T. Chen & Dancers, a modern-dance company that has performed frequently in New York and toured extensively. Chen studied Chinese classical dance and the use of acrobatics, martial arts and dance in Chinese opera before arriving in New York, and at Juilliard he learned about Western modern dance techniques. “I combined them together to come out with my own movement vocabulary,” ... More

MASSIMODECARLO opens new group exhibition, What You See Is What You Get
MILAN.- MASSIMODECARLO opened its new group exhibition, What You See Is What You Get, running from June 30th to July 29th, 2022 at Casa Corbellini-Wasserman in Milan and from July 5th to 30th in Paris, at MASSMIODECARLO Pièce Unique. This exhibition is the third chapter in the gallery’s investigative series on painting throughout history. Following MCMXXXIV (1934) in 2019 and Portraiture One Century Apart in 2021, What You See Is What You Get brings together a curated selection of works by ten artists across generations, backgrounds and mediums, to address the state of abstraction today. Artists Pam Evelyn (b.1996 Guilford, UK), Günther Förg (1952 – 2013), Giorgio Griffa (b.1936 Turin, IT), Mike Henderson (b.1954 Independence MI - USA), Spencer Lewis (b. 1979 Hartford, CT - USA), Betty Parsons (1900 – 1982), Tariku ... More

Unbound through abstraction: Orlanda Broom debuts abstract show 'Shapeshifters' at Grove Square Galleries
LONDON.- British contemporary artist Orlanda Broom announces the first solo show of her new abstract works at Grove Square Galleries. ‘Shapeshifters’ showcases a powerful collection of new works by the artist, known for her richly saturated, dreamlike landscape paintings. The title of the exhibition evokes the idea of transience and the chimeric nature of what it means to be human, animal or even an inanimate object. Mystery surrounds this change and transition. In Shapeshifters, the artist becomes the ‘shape shifter’ in quite literal, non-mythological terms and is the creator of this metamorphosis, capturing the movement and warping of the resin on her canvas. Broom’s canvases burst with explosive movement, fluid ... More

A party crawl with Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova
NEW YORK, NY.- “I’m a super-introvert,” said Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of Pussy Riot, as the elevator zoomed to the Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center, where the NFT Now gala was in full swing on June 21. “But it’s a job. As an activist, you have to do it,” she said of the schmoozing. “You have to put your work out there.” The doors dinged and slid open. As Tolokonnikova, 32, strode toward the entrance, the cacophony of hundreds of voices grew louder. “But when I hear all this noise, my heart freezes a bit,” she said quietly, switching to Russian. She did not pause to collect herself. There was no time. Tolokonnikova, a musician, artist and activist who goes by Nadya, was in New York to mingle with the crypto crowd at a conference focused on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. Her schedule was packed ... More

In a powerful 'Hamlet,' a fragile prince faces his foes
NEW YORK, NY.- Many Hamlets I’ve seen are wily. Some kooky. Narcissistic, aloof, even pretentious. Less common is a Hamlet who is tender and romantic and achingly vulnerable, like a petal falling from the head of a flower at the end of its bloom. When Alex Lawther’s fragile Danish prince drags himself onstage in Robert Icke’s modern-dress production of “Hamlet,” which opened Tuesday night at the Park Avenue Armory, he recalls 19th-century poets Arthur Rimbaud and Percy Shelley, a brilliant yet dejected young man who seems resolved to his sorrow — and to a tragic end. In the past decade, Icke has gained prominence for his heightened and contemporary-inflected adaptations of classics. This “Hamlet” played in the West End in 2017, with the hot-priest-sized package of magnetizing charisma known as Andrew Scott in the lead. He was one ... More

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art presents The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions
MELBOURNE.- ACCA is presenting Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, the third edition of a multi-year partnership that supports the commissioning of ambitious new projects by leading contemporary artists. Like a Wheel That Turns reflects upon painting practices which extend beyond the frame and from the realm of the studio into the world at large, through the work of Nadia Hernández, Lucina Lane, Gian Manik, Betty Muffler, Jahnne Pasco-White, Jason Phu, JD Reforma and Esther Stewart. Acknowledging painting’s ability to speak across generations – to personal, social and familial connections and histories, as much as to cultural and artistic references and legacies – and to accommodate multiple modes of time and perception simultaneously, Like a Wheel That Turns brings together a diverse group ... More


PhotoGalleries

Brandywine Workshop @ Harvard Museums

Set It Off

Frank Brangwyn:

Marley Freeman


Flashback
On a day like today, American painter John Singleton Copley was born
July 03, 1738. John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 - September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. After becoming well-established as a portrait painter of the wealthy in colonial New England, he moved to London in 1774, never returning to America. In London, he met considerable success as a portraitist for the next two decades, and also painted a number of large history paintings, which were innovative in their readiness to depict modern subjects and modern dress. His later years were less successful, and he died heavily in debt. In this image: John Singleton Copley, The Fountaine Family, 1776. Tate.

  
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