| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Sunday, June 18, 2017 |
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| | Small team of researchers looking for Man's origins in a Bulgarian savannah | |
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Professor Nikolay Spassov shows a model of an isolated fossilised tooth with three roots was found in 2002, near the village of Rupkite, central Bulgaria, on June 07, 2017. A small team of researchers hopes to find proof of human origins in Bulgaria as they gingerly recover fossils from the clay of a dried-up river bed near the sleepy village of Rupkite in the June sunshine. NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV / AFP.
by Diana Simeonova
RUPKITE (AFP).- Seven million years ago the sunflower and corn fields in parts of southern Bulgaria were like an African savannah, roamed by gazelles and giraffes. And perhaps also, amazingly, by the oldest known human ancestor -- which most scientists have hitherto believed came from Africa. A small team of researchers hopes to find proof of human origins in Bulgaria as they gingerly recover fossils from the clay of a dried-up river bed near the sleepy village of Rupkite in the June sunshine. It all began in 2002 when the five-year-old grandson of local amateur paleontologist Petar Popdimitrov found what looked like a fossilised tooth with three roots. "The whole of it was of a blue-greyish colour. It looked very worn out, especially the chewing surface. We thought that it was an animal one," Popdimitrov, 76, told AFP. "But my son-in-law, who is a dentist, said in the evening that it might be human." He might be right, in a way, and the discovery could be nothing short of momentous, potentially prov ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day A woman visits an exhibition of legendary US pop artist Andy Warhol at the La Moneda Museum in Santiago, June 15, 2017. About 230 artworks of Andy Warhol are being exhibited in Chile. Martin BERNETTI / AFP
| Exhibition of photographs by Helen Levitt on view at Laurence Miller Gallery | | Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opens Marina Abramović retrospective | | Research project launched to study Spanish masterpiece 'Lady in a Fur Wrap' | 
Helen Levitt, NYC 1971. 13 ¼ x 9¼". Chromogenic print.
NEW YORK, NY.- Laurence Miller Gallery presents Helen Levitt: Pairs and Apples from June 14 July 21. The show highlights Levitts unique gift for capturing the way people communicate through body language, with special emphasis on one of her perennial interests: pairs of people sharing a moment in the streets and on the stoops of her native New York City. Helen had a singularly lyrical eye and, whether its two children dancing in the street or two nuns perched at the bank of the East River, her work never fails to show the playfulness that is at the heart of human interaction. Not surprisingly, Helen reveals this in animals as well, joyfully sharing two New Hampshire pigs in a barnyard kiss, from 1986. This 30 print show surveys these themes across her six decade career, featuring both her classic black and white work which began in the late 1930s, as well as her ... More | | 
Marina Abramović, Rhythm 10. Performance,1 time. Museo dArte Contemporanea Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy, 1973 © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives.
HUMLEBÃK.- Marina Abramović (b. 1946 in Belgrade) is one of the seminal figures of body and performance art and from Saturday 17 June Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents her works in the large retrospective exhibition The Cleaner. For fifty years the artist has been reacting to the world around her, and has inscribed herself in the history of art with physically and mentally demanding performances, ranging from the violent and risky actions of the 1970s to quieter exchanges of energy and encounters with the public. Louisianas retrospective exhibition fills the museums South Wing. With more than 100 works it spans from early concept sketches, paintings and sound works to presentations of the artists performances up to the present day. With her body and her energy as ... More | | 
Attributed to El Greco (15411614), Lady in a Fur Wrap.
GLASGOW.- Leading international specialists in the field of art history have launched a collaborative research project centring around one of Glasgow Museums most famous paintings, the Lady in a Fur Wrap, attributed to El Greco (15411614). The new research is being led by the University of Glasgow in partnership with Glasgow Museums, who own this well-known painting and related portraits in the important collection formed by Sir William Stirling Maxwell. Other key partners include the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, who are carrying out parallel research on comparative works in their collection, and the National Trust for Scotland, who care for Pollok House where the Lady in a Fur Wrap is normally displayed. The Lady in a Fur Wrap has fascinated viewers ever since it was exhibited in the Louvre, Paris, in 1838. Since then, the paintings fame has been linked to the rise in the international reputation of El Greco as ... More |
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| Exhibition at Schantz Galleries presents works by Dante Marioni and Preston Singletary | | Steven Kasher Gallery opens Teju Cole's first solo exhibition in New York | | Museu Fundación Juan March presents carefully chosen selection of works by Lyonel Feininger | 
Dante Marioni and Preston Singletary, Black Wolves, 2014, 16 x 15 x 13.5". Photo: Russell Johnson.
STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.- Schantz Galleries is presenting an exhibition of works by two contemporary artists working in glass. Having worked together on and off over the past 30 years, and maintained a friendship, the two men are each masters of their techniques and have developed extremely different thematic concerns. Each in their own time has studied and then taught their specialized techniques. Glassblowing is by nature a team endeavor, members moving in often-wordless harmony towards a single goal. Glass artists are the conductors, sometimes physically participating but always orchestrating the various participants around their vision. Though the production process requires a skilled and trusted team, the creative process is more often an individual one. When two creative forces come together in collaboration, however, a deep union of their spirits can blossom. Dante Marioni and Preston Singletary, friends and colleagues since high school, hav ... More | | 
Teju Cole, Beirut, 2016. Archival pigment print, printed 2017. 24 x 20 in. Edition 1 of 7; Signed and numbered by photographer verso. Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.- Steven Kasher Gallery is presenting the first solo exhibition in New York of acclaimed photographer, essayist and novelist Teju Cole. The exhibition accompanies the publication of Coles fourth volume, Blind Spot (Random House, 2017) with a foreword by Siri Hustvedt. The exhibition features over 30 color photographs from the series Blind Spot, each accompanied by Coles lyrical and evocative prose. Viewed together, these works form a multimedia diary of years of near-constant travel. In these photographs, we see what Cole has seen, from a park in Berlin to a mountain range in Switzerland, a church exterior in Lagos to a parking lot in Brooklyn; and we are drawn into the textswhich function as voiceoverswith which Cole complicates his already enigmatic images. At stake here is the question of vision, an exploration Cole began following a temporary spell of blindness ... More | | 
Lyonel Feininger, Old Gables [Hastiales antiguos (Lüneburg)], 1935. Tinta y acuarela sobre papel, 38,8 x 29,3 cm. Colección B. y J. Fels © VEGAP, Madrid, 2017.
PALMA DE MALLORCA.- With the title Lyonel Feininger: comics, toys, drawings and paintings, the Museu Fundación Juan March is presenting a carefully chosen selection of works by Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), one of the most unique figures within the early international avant-gardes. Feininger was born in New York but his parents, both musicians of German origin, sent him to Hamburg at the age of sixteen to complete his musical training. This dual German-American background would leave a permanent mark on his life and work. In Germany, Feininger decided to devote himself to art and focused on the emerging fi eld of comics, and his cartoons and comic strips were soon published in German and French magazines such as Ulk [Joke], Lustige Blätter [Funny Pages] and Le Témoin [The Witness]. In 1906, shortly before he moved to Paris, Feininger signed a contract with The Chicago Sunday Tribune, for which he created ... More |
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| Exhibition at the Gerald Peters Gallery highlights Harold Joe Waldrum's prolific, four-decade career | | TAI Modern exhibits masterpieces of Japanese bamboo art in New York | | Fahrelnissa Zeid's five metre masterpiece shown in UK for first time in over 60 years | 
Harold Joe Waldrum, (1934-2003), Adumbracion, 1982. Acrylic on linen, 34 x 34 x 1 1/2 inches. Image courtesy Gerald Peters Gallery, ©2017 Estate of Harold Joe Waldrum.
SANTA FE, NM.- The Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, is presenting an early summer exhibition of approximately 25 works from the estate of New Mexico legend, Harold Joe Waldrum (1934 -2003). Running from June 16 July 22, 2017, the exhibition was selected from over 600 works in the estate and contains acrylic paintings, drawings, linocuts, aquatint etchings and lithographs produced from the late 1970s through 2003. As the gallery's first project in conjunction with the Waldrum estate, this exhibition highlights the artist's prolific, four-decade career and his stylistic evolutions. Born in Savoy, Texas, in 1934, Waldrum settled in New Mexico in the 1970s. Following his initial move to Taos, NM, Waldrum left for a brief period to live and paint in New York. There he was influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. After returning to New Mexico ... More | | 
Tanabe Kochikusai, Bonfire, 2017. Madake bamboo, hobichiku and rattan, 17.50 x 12.00 x 12.00".
NEW YORK, NY.- TAI Modern announces its exhibition, Masterpieces of Japanese Bamboo Art. TAI Modern has assembled an impressive collection of historically important bamboo artists as well as contemporary masters. Some of this shows highlights are masterworks by seldom seen artists Ito Nobukata and Ishakawa Shoun, an early large scale sculpture by Yako Hodo, a rare double banded sculpture by Torii Ippo, and an organic vessel in Tanabe Yotas signature style. Multiple generations of the famous lineages of Tanabe Chikuunsai and Hayakawa Shokosai are being represented, and is showing examples of work by all six of the bamboo artists to be named Living National Treasures. 2017 is an important year for Japanese bamboo art. It is the 50th anniversary of Shono Shounsai being appointed a Living National Treasure, becoming the first bamboo artist to receive this distinction. 2017 is the also the year that the Metropolitan Museum ... More | | 
Fahrelnissa Zeid (19011991), My Hell, 1951 (detail). Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection. Shirin Devrim Trainer and Raad Zeid Al-Hussein Donation © Raad Zeid Al-Hussein © Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.
LONDON.- Fahrelnissa Zeids masterpiece My Hell 1951, not seen in the UK since her solo exhibition at the The Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1954, is now on display at Tate Modern. Zeid pinned the 5.2 metre long painting across the corner of her studio while working on it a practical approach, which also fulfilled her desire to encounter painting as an all-encompassing environment. This monumental work, on loan from Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, emphasizes the power of geometry and colour to create a particular state of mind between order and chaos. Two black voids occupy a central position in the composition and diverse formations in red, white, grey and yellow emanate from these points, seemingly spinning and colliding in undulating waves. The repetition ... More |
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| Exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler presents works in a variety of materials exploring various shades of grey | | Exhibition reveals how artists integrate themes and imagery from Classical art into a contemporary context | | Moderna Museet opens major solo exhibition with the Swedish artist Marie-Louise Ekman | 
André Butzer, Untitled, 2010. Oil on canvas, 170 x 130 cm. Photo: Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris.
PARIS.- Galerie Max Hetzler is presenting Matière Grise (Grey Matter), a group show with works by Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Jérémy Demester, Günther Förg, Loris Gréaud, Raymond Hains, Liz Larner, Navid Nuur, Albert Oehlen, Charline von Heyl and Edmund de Waal. Matière Grise presents works in a variety of materials exploring various shades of grey that demonstrate the strong potential of this achromatic colour. Changeable and mysterious, grey can express both a presence and an absence. The colour also allows for a variety of usages and interpretations. The relationship artists have to grey in their work can often disclose much about their sensibilities and intention. Western art history for a while almost left grey aside despite the recourse to grisaille in ancient times. With regard to social representation, grey was seen at the end of the Middle Ages as the opposite of black and symbolised hope and happiness. The hue later often bore negati ... More | | 
Installation view.
STOCKHOLM.- Featuring a dynamic selection of artworks by Barry X Ball, Damien Hirst, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Claudio Parmiggiani, this group exhibition reveals how each of these artists integrate themes and imagery from Classical art into a contemporary context. Through varied references to antique sculpture, these four masters address issues pertinent to todays cultural and political discussions. Given his passionate appreciation for the human body, it is no surprise that Robert Mapplethorpe was attracted to Classical sculptureespecially works by the Italian Renaissance master, Michelangelo. But whereas Mapplethorpes iconic photographs of nude models accentuate the hard musculature of their physiques, his less well-known photographs of marble and bronze sculptures bring a sense of tenderness and suppleness to what we know to be hard cold materials. This is certainly the case in his artfully framed and dramatically lit late-career photographs of two Classical marbles: a reclinin ... More | | 
Marie-Louise Ekman, Lady and Wallpaper, 1973 © Marie-Louise Ekman Bildupphovsrätt 2017.
STOCKHOLM.- This summer, Moderna Museet is featuring a major solo exhibition with the Swedish artist Marie-Louise Ekman. The exhibition includes nearly 350 works from the late 1960s until today, by an artist who for five decades has alternated freely between painting, sculpture, film and drama. In Marie-Louise Ekmans idiosyncratic oeuvre, characters are repeated in scenes where roles and relationships shift. The pictures, which are often based on personal experience, undermine social constructions and reveal our absurd everyday constructions, with the theatre as a recurring metaphor. In rooms covered with floral wallpaper, dreams, passions and disappointments are enacted in a heightened reality. Positions of strength and weakness are overturned, and Picassos female figures meet Daisy Duck. Marie-Louise Ekman has created art for over half a century, yet she feels more relevant today than ever. No other Swedish artist moves ... More |
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A portrait of the woman who inspired Picasso's most erotically charged works
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 John Avildsen, director of 'Rocky', dies at 81LOS ANGELES (AFP).- John Avildsen, the Oscar-winning director whose blockbuster films like "Rocky" and "The Karate Kid" championed the ascent of underdogs, has died. He was 81 years old. The filmmaker died of pancreatic cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times, citing Avildsen's eldest son. The 1976 hit "Rocky" -- an adrenaline-pumping story that captures the rise of a down-and-out boxer from working-class Philadelphia -- earned Avildsen an Oscar for best director. The tight-budget drama was a sleeper hit, propelling actor Sylvester Stallone to Hollywood fame and growing into a beloved franchise. Avildsen returned to direct just one of his original film's six sequels, Rocky V. The filmmaker also directed the box-office winner "The Karate Kid." Released in 1984, the film centers on a bullied teenager ... More New York exhibition asks what creation of world sounded likeNEW YORK, NY.- When the universe was born, what did it sound like? The question underlies an inventive and challenging new exhibition in New York that explores the fundamentals of sound and how they relate to the quest to understand the self and the cosmos. The Rubin Museum of Art, the 13-year-old institution devoted to India and the Himalayas, shakes off the visual bias of most exhibitions. Instead, visitors to "The World Is Sound," which opened Friday and runs until January 8, enter with their ears. While the exhibition showcases visual artifacts, such as an 18th-century trumpet made of human leg-bone played in Tibetan funerals, the focus is on sound, which can be felt powerfully by putting on headphones, touching wall panels or even walking the spiraling six-floor staircase. The highlight is a representation of "Om," the holy mantra of Hinduism and Buddhism ... More Two weeks until the start of London Art WeekLONDON.- London Art Week, summer 2017 will start on 30th June (special preview evening on 29th June, by invitation only) with a glittering array of special exhibitions hosted across more than forty of the capitals most prestigious galleries and three leading auction houses. With masterpieces from seven millennia and works ranging from priceless antiquities to the leading names in modern art, London Art Week presents the best the capital has to offer, complete with special events and art experts on hand to share their specialist knowledge and advice. Highlights from an outstanding selection of exhibitions include Master Draughtsmen of the Venetian Settecento: Drawings by the Tiepolo at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art; a once in a lifetime exhibition of 22 drawings by the great 18th century Venetian masters, Giambattista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, including studies ... More Cranbrook Art Museum hosts the U.S. debut of the exhibition "Alexander Girard: A Designer's Universe"BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICH.- This summer, Cranbrook Art Museum hosts the U.S. debut of the landmark exhibition Alexander Girard: A Designers Universe, the first major retrospective of this former Grosse Pointe resident known for injecting joy and humanism, history and handicraft, into environments that greatly enriched the visual language of midcentury modernism. The exhibition runs from June 17 through October 8, 2017. While figures such as Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Ruth Adler Schnee, and others are considered in the pantheon of mid-century modernism that was birthed in Michigan, Alexander Girard was less well-known but just as influential and important. Girard is the secret sauce in a new kind of modernism that would emerge at mid-century, a distinctly American one that embraced the handcrafted, ... More alt-facts: Postmasters Gallery opens group exhibitionNEW YORK, NY.- Alternative facts are lies. Fake news is propaganda. Both are indicative of the aestheticization of politics that Walter Benjamin warned against. The media is tightly molded and controlled, beginning in the White House Press Office and algorithmically landing in our feeds. The truth is exaggerated with ideological results in mind. alt-facts is a politically charged response to today's mediascape. Spanning both gallery spaces, the works therein propose that the politicization of aestheticspropaganda's oppositecan offer profoundly powerful alternative truths. Art condenses its message into objects; meaning is extrapolated. It lends itself to constructing fictions: Painting is illusion. Sculpture is fabrication. Virtual reality is unreal reality. In alt-facts, conceptual and material interventions produce fictitious narratives, alternative histories, objects ... More Exhibition presents work by over twenty black artists and collectives working in the UK during the 1980sMIDDLESBROUGH.- The Place is Here, shown across Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and the South London Gallery, presents work by over twenty black artists and collectives working in the UK during the 1980s. The exhibition spans painting, film, photography and archival material from this pivotal decade in British culture and politics. The Place is Here evokes some of the debates taking place between black artists, writers and institutions in the UK in the 1980s. Across two venues the works and archives on display show how a new generation of practitioners were responding to a range of discourses and politics: Civil Rights-era Black art from the US; Margaret Thatchers anti-immigration policies and the resulting uprisings across the country; apartheid in South Africa; and black feminism. This group of artists were also reworking and subverting ... More Driscoll Babcock Galleries opens second survey devoted to Judith LauandNEW YORK, NY.- Driscoll Baabcock Galleries presents Judith Lauand: Brazilian Concrete Abstractions, the gallery's second survey devoted to this renowned artist, and an opportunity to examine the enduring contribution of this distinguished figure of postwar abstraction and Latin American art. Lauand (b. 1922, Pontal, São Paulo) was a formative participant in the longstanding Brazilian constructivist project, which included the remarkable careers of her female Brazilian contemporaries, particularly Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Mira Schendel, all of whom have attained international critical attention. In a similar light, Lauand has emerged internationally as an artist who negotiated the social constraints of her position as a woman and the innovative painterly strategies she defined in the rational discourse of Concretism. Lauands abstractions are a carefully ... More Pop-up Trump Twitter library opens in New YorkNEW YORK (AFP).- Donald Trump's tweets antagonize, insult and drive headlines around the world. Now, they're on display at a tongue-in-cheek presidential Twitter library a stone's throw from his New York home. Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" hosted by Trevor Noah, emboldened by soaring ratings since Trump took office, put together the one weekend only, free of charge pop-up exhibition to lampoon the president and make visitors think. From Friday until Sunday, members of the public are invited to stroll through The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library, soak up some of his most notorious tweets, and fire off one or two of their own from a golden toilet. "He is a damn fine Twitterer," South African comedian Noah told reporters. "Never before has a president been so transparent, and at the same time so opaque." Many Americans may already feel saturated ... More Bidding war as rare Easter Uprising order of surrender doubles estimate at Bonhams Book Sale in LondonLONDON.- A typed Order of Surrender from the 1916 Rising, signed by the leader of the rebellion, Patrick Pearse, sold for £263,000 at Bonhams Fine Books sale in London today, 14 June after fierce bidding in the auction room, on the phone and on the internet. It had been estimated at £80,000-120,000. Bonhams representative in Ireland, manuscript specialist Kieran OBoyle, said, The Order of Surrender is one of the most significant documents in Irish 20th century history, and I am not surprised that it was so keenly sought after, nor that it sold for such an impressive amount. The Order of Surrender ended the abortive attempt in April 1916 by Irish Nationalists in Dublin to overthrow British rule in Ireland, and establish an independent Irish State. The nationalist uprising, which broke out on 24 April, Easter Monday, under the overall leadership of Pearse, was ... More Lee Seung-Jio's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong on view at PerrotinHONG KONG.- Perrotin Hong Kong is presenting Lee Seung-Jios first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Nucleus. Born in 1941 in Yongcheon, a village in North Pyeong-An Province, Lee studied painting at Hongik University in Seoul and came to be known as the pipe artist or the nucleus artist, nicknames given by the first generation of art critics in Korea such as Lee Yil and Oh Kwang-Su. Nucleus is the title he gave to all the paintings he produced from his debut in 1963 until his death in 1990. He subtitled each painting according to its production year and sequence number, in a manner similar to Dansaekhwa artists. While he shared with his contemporaries an interest in abstraction, what particularly characterizes his paintings between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, is his use of optical illusions to create tensional balance between two-dimensional flatness ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Italian architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammanati was born June 18, 1511. Bartolomeo Ammannati (18 June 1511 ? 13 April 1592) was an Italian architect and sculptor, born at Settignano, near Florence. He studied under Baccio Bandinelli and Jacopo Sansovino (assisting on the Library of St. Mark's, the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice) and closely imitated the style of Michelangelo. In this image: The Jesuit College in Rome, 1582-84, was one of Ammannati's later designs
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