| The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Sunday, March 13, 2016 |
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| | Sotheby's presents the most important Chinese object ever to be offered at auction | |
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The Seal of the Mandate of Heaven (Estimate upon request) is the largest and most powerful ever carved for the Kangxi Emperor, the greatest and longest reigning monarch of China. Photo: Sotheby's.
HONG KONG.- This Spring Sothebys Hong Kong will present the Most Important Chinese Historical Object ever to be offered at Auction. Bearing the inscription Revere Heaven and Serve thy People, the Seal of the Mandate of Heaven (Estimate upon request) is the largest and most powerful ever carved for the Kangxi Emperor, the greatest and longest reigning monarch of China. Two other important historic objects of the period will be offered to complement this extraordinary seal: the Yuanjianzhai seal, and one of only two existing copies of the personal record of the Kangxi Emperors seals, in which the exact impressions of both seals are recorded. All three lots will be offered in a dedicated themed sale titled Kangxi Emperorship and Power on 6 April 2016 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Nicolas Chow, Deputy Chairman, Sothebys Asia, International ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day NEW YORK.- Kang Contemporary Korean Art announces the special exhibition "Viewing The Past Thru Modern Eyes" from March 10th through 31st, 2016. In this image: Ran Hwang (b. 1960), First Wind - CL, 2013. Buttons, Pins, Beads on Wooden Panel, 83 x 142 in (210.8 x 360.7 cm).
| Zones of Disruption: Martin Gropius Bau opens exhibition of the work of Günter Brus | | MAC Lyon opens the first comprehensive retrospective of Yoko Ono's work in France | | Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei brings white grand piano to muddy refugee field | 
Günter Brus, Informel, 1960, 125 x 90 cm © Sammlung Heike Curtze; Foto: Max Spilke-Liss.
BERLIN.- Since Günter Brus (born 1938 lives in Graz) first appeared in public as an actionist in 1965 with his Wiener Spaziergang (Vienna Walk), he has created a manifold uvre. This is the artists first exhibition in Berlin, even though Brus lived there for a long period, and influenced the art scene in the city significantly. The comprehensive exhibition with the title Zones of Disruption leads through his complete oeuvre, but also focuses on special aspects. Starting with informal works, the actionist period is shown in films, photographs, documents and numerous drawings, as well as by giving a vivid impression of the artistic environment in which the art originated. At the beginning of the 1960s, Viennese actionism had expanded painting not only into the objective, but also into the physical realm. With his self-paintings, Brus played a decisive role in the performative shift in literature and ... More | | 
Yoko Ono, Painting To Hammer A Nail, 1961/1966. Photo : John Bigelow Taylor © Yoko Ono.
LYON.- MAC Lyon announce the first comprehensive retrospective of the internationally known artist, Yoko Ono, to take place in France. Ono is a rare individual, who emerged as an artist, fully formed. From the beginning, working with concepts and ideas, new ways of listening, new ways of making sound. Her education was philosophy, and the extraordinarily difficult times of war and displacement. She was born in 1933, in Tokyo, and visited the United States when she was 3 or 4, but was forced to return with her family to Japan when the war broke out. During the bombing of Tokyo, she and her brother were forced to move to the countryside, away from the destruction of the city, and it was there that she discovered sky and imagination, creating menus for food in the sky for her brother, and seeing the sky as a peaceful oasis from the hardship that surrounded her. By 1952, she had written a work titled The ... More | | 
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei helps hold a tarp over a young Syrian woman as she plays the piano under the rain. SAKIS MITROLIDIS / AFP.
IDOMENI (AFP).- Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei set up a white grand piano in a muddy, rain-drenched refugee camp on the Greek-Macedonian border Saturday, allowing a young Syrian woman to tinkle the ivories for the first time in years. Performing in the pouring rain under a plastic sheet held up by Ai and others, 24-year-old Nour Alkhzam, who is hoping to reach her husband in Germany, played for 20 minutes in a field at the Idomeni border camp, where 12,000 migrants and refugees are stuck in grim conditions. "This is our attempt to create an opportunity for this lady," Ai said at the end of the impromptu performance. "She has been victimised by these wars. She has not had the chance to touch a piano in three years. She and her husband have been separated for one-and-a-half years." He added that watching her play was "very touching". "It tells the world that art will overcome the war," he ... More |
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| Home of Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu opened to the public for the first time | | Exhibition explores the Oklahoma City Museum of Art's rich permanent collection | | National Portrait Gallery announces winners of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2016 | 
Visitors inside the former residence of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest March 12, 2016. The house was opened for the first time to the public, 26 years after the fall of the communist regime in Romania. DAVID MUNTEAN / AFP.
BUCHAREST (AFP).- The opulent former residence of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was opened to the public for the first time on Saturday some 26 years after the fall of his Communist regime. Ceausescu ruled Romania with an iron fist from 1965 until he was driven from power after a bloody uprising in December 1989 which saw him convicted of genocide then executed by firing squad several days later along with his wife Elena. During Ceausescu's rule, the couple lived with their three children in the Primaverii (Spring) Palace in an upmarket district of Bucharest. The residence "must be opened to the Romanian people who must make peace with their history and know about their past," said Violeta Alexandru, minister for civic dialogue and public consultations at the opening ceremony. Built between 1964 and 1965 to the exact ... More | | 
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 16061669). The Raising of Lazarus: Small Plate, 1642. Etching. Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Museum purchase from the Beaux Arts Society Fund for Acquisitions, 1965.019.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA.- In celebration of the extraordinary acquisitions that have made the Oklahoma City Museum of Art the premier collecting institution in central Oklahoma, the exhibition "Our City, Our Collection: Building the Museum's Lasting Legacy" opened March 12. "Our City, Our Collection" tells the story of the Museum's history as a series of transformative gifts, bequests and acquisitions. Beginning with the Works Projects Administration's (WPA) donation of 28 works of art to Oklahoma City in 1942, "Our City, Our Collection" explores the Museum's rich permanent collection as one of the community's most important cultural assets. "A great city deserves a great art museum," said OKCMOA President and CEO E. Michael Whittington. "Since before statehood, many people have been integral to the growth of what is now the Oklahoma City ... More | | 
Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) by Amy Sherald, oil on canvas, 2013. Frances and Burton Reifler © Amy Sherald.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery announced that Amy Sherald of Baltimore has received first prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2016 for an oil on canvas titled Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). The painting and 42 other works are included in the museums exhibition The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today from March 12 through Jan. 8, 2017. Sherald will receive $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living individual for the museums permanent collection. Second prize was awarded to Cynthia Henebry of Richmond, Va., who submitted an inkjet print titled Mavis in the backseat. Third prize went to Joel Daniel Phillips of Oakland, Calif., for his charcoal-and-graphite drawing Eugene #4. Commended artists are Jess T. Dugan from St. Louis, for her self-portrait photograph; Jessica Todd Harper from Merion Station, ... More |
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| Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin's eleventh solo exhibition with Tal R opens in Berlin | | Exhibition at Vito Schnabel Gallery features new paintings alongside works from the 1980s by Ron Gorchov | | Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions announces Ely House, Fine Furniture and Decorative Arts Sale | 
TAL R / TAL/C 37/192, "Garbage Man", 1989-2013 (detail). Collage on cardboard behind glass, 50 x 70 cm / 19 2/3 x 27 1/2 in.
BERLIN.- Contemporary Fine Arts is presenting the exhibition Garbage Man, with Tal R (*1967 in Tel Aviv, Israel) CFA Berlin's eleventh solo exhibition with the artist. Garbage Man could refer to Tal R himself as manic collector of what other people would perhaps refer to as refuse. Collecting and arranging of images is an integral component of his artistic practice and arises in its own manifestation from an inner necessity. The Yiddish word Kolbojnik (Waste, Remains) also runs through the work of the artist within the titling of many of his works. His collection, which can be found within the individual collages, consists of an eclectic mix of primitive tribal art, art history masterpieces, pornos, comics, private photos, childhood pictures, sketches and picture book illustrations, and was collected by Tal R over a period of 25 years. In 2013 he then compiled and arranged ... More | | 
Ron Gorchov, Leda 2015. Oil on linen, 65 1/2 x 55 x 13 inches (166.37 x 139.7 x 33.02 cm).
ST. MORITZ.- Vito Schnabel Gallery presents a solo exhibition of work by Ron Gorchov titled Concord. The exhibition is the first solo presentation of the artists work in Switzerland, and will feature new paintings alongside works from the 1980s. The artist was the subject of the first solo exhibition that Schnabel curated in 2005. At that time, Gorchovs work had not been presented in over a decade, and the show led to a resurgent interest in the artists work, including a solo exhibition the following year at MoMA PS1. Gorchov is best known for helping to spearhead the shaped canvas movement with his bowed wooden frames, resembling saddles or shields, stretched with linen or canvas and marked with simple shapes of thin paint providing chromatic contrasts. As part of a group of artists in New York in the 1960s and 70s including Frank Stella, Richard Tuttle, Blinky Palermo and Ellsworth Kelly, Gorchov pushed painting to ... More | | 
A pair of Genoese commodes. Each with two drawers decorated 'sans traverse' with foliate scrolls and swags on a pale green background with the scroll legs terminating in gilt sabots (est. £30,000-50,000).
LONDON.- Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions announced Ely House, Fine Furniture and Decorative Arts, which will take place on Wednesday 23rd March at Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London W1. The sale will feature an impressive selection of exceptional 18th century English and Continental furniture as well as unique and unusual decorative arts. Estimates range from £200 to £80,000 and over 160 lots will be on offer. The pre-auction exhibition and the auction itself will take place in the sumptuous surroundings of Ely House - the Grade I listed Georgian townhouse which has been home to Mallett since 2012. The auction will present buyers with the opportunity to acquire attractively priced and highly desirable pieces. Auction highlights include a George II carved walnut settee with striking scrolling arm supports finely carved ... More |
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| A decade of style: Magnificent pre-war Mercedes of the 1930s leads Bonhams sale | | From court necklaces to boxwood root stand the words of Michelangelo echo throughout organic Chinese art | | Bronze Lou Gehrig "Baseball Hall of Fame" casting, fine jewelry headline Sterling Associates' March 23 sale | 
A rare 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Cabriolet, estimated at 6,000,000-7,000,000. Photo: Bonhams.
STUTTGART.- Bonhams Mercedes-Benz sale is led by fashionable automobiles of the sensational 1930s, headed by a rare 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Cabriolet, estimated at 6,000,000-7,000,000. The 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Cabriolet was displayed at the 1935 Paris Auto Show as a mere chassis, and despite its stripped down state, was purchased straight off the stand. This swift acquisition was down to some good-natured rivalry between friends, Dr. Charles Crocker, and Lawrence Copley Thaw, which resulted in Thaw purchasing a Rolls-Royce chassis, and Crocker the 500 K chassis. It was an exclusive and powerful chassis aimed at an equally exclusive and powerful clientele. With this in mind, and in a bid to outdo his friend, Crocker took the bare 500 K chassis to have a hand-crafted body built by one of the greatest and most fashionable coachbuilders of the time, Jacques Saoutchik, who was based in Paris. Saoutchik was a carpenter ... More | | 
Within the amber, an artisan saw a tea set with phoenix ewer and cups on lobed saucers. Just one of the carvings that test the imagination and create awe of craftsmanship in Gianguan Auctions March 19th sale.
NEW YORK, NY.- The words attributed to Michelangelo - within every stone there is a sculpture - will resonate throughout a superb collection of jade, amber and shoushan carvings in Gianguan Auctions March 19th sale. Natural quartz formations, scholars rocks, reed baskets, ancient glass beads and carved cinnabar boxes put Chinas natural history on display. The star item is a dramatic chao zhu (court necklace) fashioned of large amber beads, bits of coral, Tibetan dzi beads, ancient, painted Han glass and meticulously carved walnuts. The re-strung necklace is defined by five pendants radiating from a collar of amber beads. The center axis is comprised of graduated rounds of amber that culminate in a large stone offset by smaller ones. Long held to have protective and medicinal powers, amber is also believed to imbue its ... More | | 
Bronze plaque art of Lou Gehrig, circa 1939, designed/crafted by George Seaman and colleagues at Steinmeier Bronze Tablet Co., only known additional casting of the bas-relief art seen on Gehrigs National Baseball Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y. Est. $3,000-$5,000. Photo: Courtesy of Sterling Associates.
CLOSTER, NJ.- Rolex Bubble Back watch, fine jewelry, estate art, iconic sports memorabilia among quality offerings in Sterling Associates March 23 Spring Auction New Jerseys leading estate-auction specialist, Sterling Associates, made headlines with its January 11th sale of Alexander Hamiltons personally engraved powder horn. On March 23rd, the Bergen County, N.J., company will shine a spotlight on another great American hero, baseball legend Lou Gehrig. The star lot of their auction is a bronze bas-relief plaque adornment in the likeness of Gehrig that was designed and cast by artisan George Seaman and colleagues at the Steinmeier Bronze Tablet Co., in 1939, the year of Gehrigs retirement. As stated in a letter of provenance ... More |
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 Edward Cella Art & Architecture's first solo exhibition of new works by painter Mara De Luca opens in L.A.LOS ANGELES, CA.- Edward Cella Art & Architecture presents Driving Sunset, the gallery's first solo exhibition of new works by Los Angeles-based painter Mara De Luca. An MFA graduate of CalArts, De Luca explores the conceptual and expressive potential of process-driven abstract painting. Her works are informed by her study and re-appropriation of art historical conventions, her visual interpretation of literary sources, and the recurring visual tropes of contemporary high-end fashion advertising. Inspired by Los Angeles' stark contrasts, a place where beautiful natural landscapes coexist alongside endless freeways and countless billboards, De Luca reveals a depth in the superficiality of surface, and an emotive complexity in formal concision. The exhibition title, Driving Sunset, is a direct reference to Joan Didion's novel Play it as it Lays, in which its protagonist, Maria, ... More Michener Art Museum to spotlight a century of Philadelphia fashionDOYLESTOWN, PA.- In a special exhibition that opens on March 13, 2016, the James A. Michener Art Museum will showcase a stunning collection of clothing and accessories created, worn, and sold in Philadelphia from 1896 to 1994. Philadelphia in Style: A Century of Fashion from the Robert & Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, Drexel University illuminates the rich sartorial legacy of a city that has often been overshadowed by New York, but in reality has played a significant role in American fashion: Philadelphia has long been an influential design center, an incubator for leading fashion design talent, and a home to stylish women. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University, whose Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) will loan the items from its holdings of more than ... More Galerie Polaris presents works by Marcos CarrasquerPARIS.- French artist of Spanish origin, Marcos Carrasquer, was born in the Netherlands, of parents having fled the Francoism. Graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, he lives and works in Paris. If a big part of Marcos Carrasquer's works fascinates, , it is due to a strong originality, graphic as pictorial, but also to an overflowing imagination, on the strangest and most ironic representations of the contemporary History. Marcos Carrasquer show us, not without a lot of humor our own incredulity in the face of our contemporary history. Here the artist neither is an archivist, nor documents the history. He seizes and accumulates, without any limit, references of the contemporary History and those of his family, but without ever falling in the satire, and imagine when the collective madness seizes the man, another more optimistic end is still possible. If the stupidity ... More New body of work by Aspen Mays on view at Higher PicturesNEW YORK, NY.- Higher Pictures presents Tengallon Sunflower, a new body of work by Aspen Mays. This is the artists first solo exhibition with the gallery. Aspen Mays art is influenced by her experience working with astrophysicists as a Fulbright Scholar in Chile. In previous works, Mays has excised the stars from archival photographs of the night sky, leaving fragile documents of what we cannot fully know, and photographed fireflies held inside the body of her camera in a gesture that relates their immediate, gentle glow to that of the stars burning light-years away. She describes her new series, Tengallon Sunflower as a meeting of logic and sensuality, pointing to an enduring fascination with concepts, both complex and seemingly graspable, that elude our understanding beyond the experiential. Here, space between perception and knowledge is an underlying principle in an investigation ... More Brenda Hornsby Heindl is new head of Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates' Ceramics DepartmentMT. CRAWFORD, VA.- Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates Auctions announced the appointment of Brenda Hornsby Heindl as the new head of its Ceramics Department as well as coordinator of museum and educational services. She will be taking over the position previously held by Jill Fenichell. Brenda comes to JSE&A from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, NC where she most recently served as a Research and Curatorial Assistant. Prior to her tenure at MESDA she worked in the Ceramics and Glass Department at Colonial Williamsburg under the guidance of Janine E. Skerry and Suzanne Findlen Hood. Brenda is a graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Material Culture and an alumna of Berea College in Kentucky where she trained as a production potter. She plans to continue working with clay and to rebuild her wood-firing ... More Exhibition of new oil paintings by Michael Gregory opens at Nancy Hoffman GalleryNEW YORK, NY.- On March 10 an exhibition of new oil paintings by Michael Gregory, Here and There, Far and Wide, opened at Nancy Hoffman Gallery and continues through April 16. For the past decade Gregory has focused on the American iconic landscape, including a barn or farm community, a silo, telephone poles, fences, fields of hay, cloud or star-filled skies. His point of departure is love of the land, particularly the West that John Steinbeck described in his books. The artist does not seek a photoreal representation of the land and sky; each painting in oil on canvas is a reimagined vision of what he has seen as he drives through vast stretches of the Western land and skyscape. Half of the paintings are long horizontals, evocations of driving through a rich and varied landscape, capturing its essence in memory; half measure 6x5 feet. Most embrace ... More Chemould Prescott Road exhibits the work of Desmond LazaroMUMBAI.- Desmond Lazaro was born into an Anglo Indian family in Leeds, England. His parents on the other hand migrated from Burma to Leeds in 1957 and Lazaro's great-grandfather hailed from Madras in the 1800s. When Desmond moved to India to do his MFA at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, he never really went back to England, and now lives with his family in Pondicherry, in the very state of Tamil Nadu where his ancestors originated. Living in India meant that he had to avail of a PIO card. In order to do that, he had to prove that he had traces of being Indian, which meant that Desmond needed to trace his ancestry. Once again a long and arduous search lead him to discover baptism certificates of his great-grand parents, in a tiny cupboard of church records at the St Marys Catholic Church, Armenian Street, Chennai. With this unique personal migratory history and complex ... More The Memory Box: Exhibition of works by Bruno Cattan opens at Palazzo DucaleGENOA.- What is a Memory Box? It is a place to fix places, faces, bodies and feelings firmly in the memory, assimilate them and preserve them all forever in this imaginary and mysterious box. One can grant all these things their original shape and presence just by opening this box, an arcane mystery that stimulates the sense of awareness. Photography is the magnificent accomplice of this Memory Box; right at the instant that the shutter clicks we have immortalised a fragment of our life. Sandro Parmiggiani writes, It can certainly never be overlooked that photography in that moment aspires to steal away a fragment of life and reality from the unstoppable rushing of time, in all reality the image is hardened like a bone and given to us, an irreplaceable splinter of time. It is clear with this photographic research that Bruno Cattani started some years ago based on his memories of his city ... More Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins to battle it out in the Spink auction roomLONDON.- The Academic Collection of English coins assembled by Lord Stewartby over a long and very active lifetime will be dispersed by Spink in a series of auctions over the coming months. The first part containing Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins, taking place on the 22nd March 2016, will give collectors the opportunity to acquire some extremely rare pieces at affordable prices. Many of the coins were also acquired from some of the great collections of the past so they come with impressive provenances; in his own words, Lord Stewartby said: The only sad thing about a collection such as this is that it would be impossible for an interested amateur, as I was, to put it together today. An interest in coinage was developed at a young age when, as a small boy, clinging to his mothers hand in the war-torn Barnet, he noticed a copper coin in a jar on the counter of a grocers shop ... More XL Catlin Art Prize 2016: Finalists announced LONDON.- The finalists for the XL Catlin Art Prize 2016 have been announced. Celebrating its 10th year, this curated exhibition is now firmly established as an influential showcase for the most outstanding artists from UK art schools. This years finalists are: Rory Biddulph (Slade School of Fine Art, MA Fine Art), Jude Crilly (Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture), Jamie Fitzpatrick, (Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture), Christopher Gray (Goldsmiths, BA Fine Art & History of Art), Jane Hayes Greenwood (City & Guilds of London Art School, MA Fine Art), Hamish Pearch (Camberwell College of Arts, BA Sculpture) and Neal Rock (Royal College of Art, PhD Painting by Practice). Selected from the annual XL Catlin Art Guide for their potential to make an impact in the art world over the next decade and beyond, each finalist is commissioned to produce an ambitious new body of work. A panel of judges ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Russian painter Alexej von Jawlensky, was born March 13, 1864. Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (13 March 1864 - 15 March 1941) was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association (Neue Künstlervereinigung München), Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group and later the Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). In this image: Employees hold Alexej von Jawlensky's "Schokko mit Tellerhut" or "Schokko with Wide-Brimmed Hat", at Sotheby's in London, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008. The painting is expected to realize 6.5-8.5 million pounds (US $12.8-$16.8 million; euro 8.8-11.5 million) in a Feb. 5 sale.
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