The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Sunday, May 7, 2023


 
Submerged island off Florida reveals secret: Civil War-era cemetery

An undated image provided by the National Park Service shows an unsigned watercolor painting depicting a hospital and cemetery on an island in the Dry Tortugas. (National Park Service via The New York Times)

by Livia Albeck-Ripka


NEW YORK, NY.- Joshua Marano was flying over the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2016 when he noticed a strange pattern in the water. Marano, a maritime archaeologist with the National Park Service, consulted some old nautical charts, expecting he might find the ruins of a lighthouse or beacon. Instead, he found a whole island. The island, about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida, had long since been submerged and eroded by rising tides and storms. But Marano’s research revealed that it had once held a quarantine hospital and cemetery for those stationed at Fort Jefferson, a Civil War-era military fortress in the Dry Tortugas National Park. “There was dry land here at one point. There was a structure on that island at one point,” Marano said in an interview. “When did it disappear?” ... More



The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
Installation view of the 'Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes' 2023 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring Archibald Prize 2023 finalists.





Janet Borden, Inc. opens an exhibition of works by Neil Winokur   Galerie Nathalie Obadia now presenting the photographic work of Seydou Keïta   American art leads Shannon's spring sale held April 27th


Pinecone leaning right.

NEW YORK, NY.- Janet Borden, Inc. is presenting Neil Winokur's Nature, a wonderful new exhibition for spring. Winokur, who is known for his deadpan studies of objects, humans, and dogs, took his camera outdoors to document the flora and fauna of his new suburban neighborhood. Being Neil Winokur, he then went indoors and photographed other more clearly representative objects. Although free of irony, a playfulness is evinced in all Winokur’s work. Winokur’s signature style of isolating objects against vibrant colors makes each object a representative of its genus. A rock against a pink background is somehow more emblematic of “rockiness” than when it is on the ground. The squirrel which is outdoors looks like it is a studio diorama. Is the cat any less natural for being indoors? Each item is posing in Winokur’s inimitable system. Green and blue predominate the palette, though he sneaks I some hot pink, ... More
 

Untitled (00656-MA.KE.105), 1953-1957, Tirage argentique posthume, 162 x 122 cm. Edition de 5 + 2 EA.

PARIS.- Galerie Nathalie Obadia is presenting its fourth exhibition devoted to Seydou Keïta (c. 1921-2001), who is considered to be one of West Africa’s most influential photographers. This exhibition brings together an exhaustive selection of works of this self-taught artist, whose rise to fame started off in a small studio in Bamako (Mali), which at the time was the capital of former French Sudan. The inventiveness of the mise en scene, the modernity of the photographs and the fresh approach to the subjects photographed, made Keïta a celebrity in his own country: thousands of Malians and travelers from West Africa came to have their photographs taken by Seydou Keïta between 1948 and 1962. Keïta retired in 1977 after having been the official photographer of Mali, which became independent in 1960. These ... More
 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Oil on canvas by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), titled Arbres Devant La Maison (1908), initialed, 7 ½ inches by 6 ¼ inches ($106,250).


MILFORD, CONN..- American paintings drove strong results in Shannon’s Spring Fine Art Auction held April 27th. The 139-lot sale was nearly 90 percent sold and grossed $2.6 million. Most of the lots offered came from private collections. The top lot was a colorful Boston beach scene by Maurice Prendergast. The dynamic composition sold for $162,500, topping the high estimate. Other classic examples of American art achieved stellar results. These included a John Fulton Folinsbee work titled Canal Lane that soared past the high estimate to finish at $81,250; and a classic snowy Guy C. Wiggins view of 5th Ave at 42nd Street that brought $62,500. Gorgeous 19th century American paintings also performed above their estimated ... More


A King who actually likes the arts   John Olsen, who helped revolutionize Australian art, dies at 95   Where should a King sit? A 700-year-old chair will do.


King Charles III and Queen Camilla appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony after his coronation in London on Saturday, May 6, 2023. (Andrew Testa/The New York Times).

by Alex Marshall


NEW YORK, NY.- In 1987, Arthur George Carrick, a previously unknown 39-year-old watercolor painter, submitted a work for consideration in the Summer Exhibition, one of Britain’s most important art shows. Held annually at the Royal Academy in London, the exhibition gives amateurs a chance to see their efforts displayed alongside paintings and sculpture by world famous artists. Thousands of Britons submit works each year. Almost all of them are rejected. Carrick’s piece was simple and traditional — a tiny watercolor of farmhouses and a few trees beneath a pale blue sky — but the show’s curators clearly saw something special in it. They chose it over 12,250 other entries to go into the show. What the curators didn’t know was that they’d been deceived. “Arthur George Carrick” was a pseudonym. The real painter was the man who will be crowned Britain’s king Saturday. Throughout his life, Kin ... More
 

The last surviving member of a generation that defined his country’s modern art, he painted exuberant landscapes that changed the way Australia saw its environment.

NEW YORK, NY.- John Olsen, an artist who helped shepherd in Australia's postwar modern art movement and whose exuberant, vivid and abstract depictions of the Australian landscape redefined the way the country saw its natural environment, died April 14 at his home in Bowral, New South Wales. He was 95. His death was announced by his children, Tim and Louise Olsen, in a statement. Tim Olsen is also his father’s gallerist. A landscape painter who in his youth rebelled against the cultural establishment, Olsen was among the generation of artists who first defined Australian modern art. As the last surviving member of that generation, he was often called the country’s greatest living painter. “Olsen is literally the last man standing of that grand generation of Australian artists who created modern painting from the ground up: the men and women who quit the country to tour Europe and return home later with big ideas and matching ambition,” Andrew Frost of The Guardian wrote in 2016. ... More
 

Krista Blessley, Westminster Abbey's paintings conservator, performs restoration work on the Coronation Chair in London, April 2023. The Coronation Chair, on which King Charles III will sit for part of his ceremony on Saturday, is getting a touch-up. It hasn’t been used since Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. (Michael Whitley/The New York Times)

LONDON.- There is a piece of furniture so famous and so important to British history that it sits in its own chapel at Westminster Abbey, behind an iron gate so that onlookers may gawk at it but never touch it. The item, the Coronation Chair, was commissioned by King Edward I of England to accommodate the Stone of Scone, which was captured from the Scots in 1296. The chair was constructed in the early 1300s, and the stone sits directly under its seat. The Abbey says the chair is the oldest piece of furniture in Europe still being used for its original purpose, and that 26 monarchs have been crowned on it since the coronation of Edward II in 1308. Although scholars have questioned whether the chair’s original purpose was to be used in coronations, they agree that it has been a centerpiece of such ceremonies for centuries. ... More



New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain, gone 20 years, still captivates   For Bispo do Rosario, art could only be a divine calling   Bruce McCall, satirical illustrator who conjured a 'retrofuture,' dies at 87


Souvenirs and memorabilia dedicated to a rock formation known as “Old Man of the Mountain” in Franconia Notch, N.H., May 2, 2023. (John Tully/The New York Times)

by Jenna Russell


FRANCONIA NOTCH, NH.- In the annals of natural rock formations resembling human faces, New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain was an unrivaled specimen. Viewed from exactly the right spot on the ground below, the massive stack of granite ledges coalesced into the spitting image of a wizened man’s profile, from sloped forehead to jutting chin, an unlikely bit of magic treasured by generations of New Englanders. And yet beloved as he was, the Old Man, may he rest in peace, was a pile of rocks — until the wee hours of May 3, 2003, when the five slabs unceremoniously collapsed, victims of the same slow-moving geologic forces that had sculpted the human likeness in the first place. So why, 20 years later, is the stone face still mourned in New Hampshire like a fallen president, the subject of songs and poems, a Statehouse proclamation ... More
 

Arthur Bispo do Rosario, Untitled (Manto da apre­-sentação) (Untitled [Annunciation Garment]), date unknown.

NEW YORK, NY.- Arthur Bispo do Rosario, a former Marine Corps signalman, boxer, tram cleaner and domestic worker in Rio de Janeiro, had no interest in defining his extensive activities as art. His unusual embroidered garments and textiles, ingenious assemblages and use of language had a higher purpose: Bispo was Jesus Christ, according to angels who visited him the night of Dec. 22, 1938, and instructed him to record, or possibly replicate, reality. Thus the title of his first retrospective in the United States, at the Americas Society in Manhattan: “Bispo do Rosario: All Existing Materials on Earth.” His claim of being Jesus led to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and a life spent in and occasionally out of mental institutions, primarily the notorious Colônia Juliano Moreira. (In 1954 he escaped and remained free until 1963, getting by on odd jobs while also making his artwork.) In 1964, he landed back at Juliano Moreira, where he remained until his death in 1989 at age 80, working co ... More
 

The illustrator Bruce McCall, famous for depicting a luminous fantasyland filled with airplanes, cars and luxury liners of his own creation, at his home studio in Manhattan on Aug. 1, 1997. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- Bruce McCall, whose satirical illustrations for National Lampoon and The New Yorker conjured up a plutocratic dream world of luxury zeppelin travel, indoor golf courses and cars such as the Bulgemobile Airdreme, died Friday in the New York City borough of the Bronx. He was 87. His wife, Polly, said his death, at Calvary Hospital, was caused by Parkinson’s disease. Borrowing from the advertising style seen in magazines such as Life, Look and Collier’s in the 1930s and ’40s, McCall depicted a luminous fantasyland filled with airplanes, cars and luxury liners of his own creation. It was a world populated by carefree millionaires who expected caviar to be served in the stations of the fictional Fifth Avenue Subway and car washes to spray their limousines with Champagne. “My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it,” McCall said in a TED Talk in 2008. He called it ... More


Mimicking the 19th century in the age of AI   Pierre et Gilles return to Brussels to exhibit at Templon   Turning 'ashes and sand' into art


Seth Price, BRRR, 2022. Acrylic paint, polymers and UV-print on aluminum composite, 95 x 78 x 1 inches, 241.3 x 198.1 x 2.5 cm.

NEW YORK, NY.- In 1434, the high-tech medium of oil paint allowed the Flemish master Jan van Eyck to infuse his sumptuous double portrait of the Arnolfinis with astonishing depth. He couldn’t resist showing off a little more: A convex mirror on the back wall contains a tiny self-portrait of the painter at work. Six centuries later, when the multimedia artist and writer Seth Price includes an illusionistic mirrored sphere in the upper left of “Thought Comes from the Body II,” a big, crackled black and Day-Glo painting on panel, it still signals virtuosity. In the reflection, you can make out two figures — one of them may be Price — crouching over a painting on a studio floor. Van Eyck had to eke out this illusion by hand. Price used an app. His latest paintings, on view at Petzel in Chelsea through June 3, highlight a question that’s easy to gloss over: Why are today’s technologically attuned artists using ... More
 

Pierre et Gilles, La promesse (Bogdan Romanovic), 2022. Photographie imprimée par jet d’encre sur toile et peinte | Ink-jet photograph printed on canvas and painted, 165 × 115 cm — 65 × 45 2/7 in. Unique.

BRUSSELS.- Pierre et Gilles are returning to Brussels for the first time since their spectacular 2017 retrospective at Musée d’Ixelles with their new series, Les couleurs du temps. The works are jointly created by the two artists, Pierre as photographer and Gilles as painter. The exhibition is firmly anchored in the contemporary world, opening with a piece in homage to Ukraine, La promesse, in the war-torn country’s colours. Contrasting with the seriousness of the message, Pierre et Gilles produce a gallery of portraits that are now playful, now unsettling. References to the sacred and religious icons abound. Carefully staged and more complex than ever, the portraits feature unknown as well as familiar faces, from Tahar Rahim to Silly Boy Blue. Together the artists invent new archetypes: young apollos surrounded ... More
 

Schloss Hollenegg. Photo: Federico Floriani.

NEW YORK, NY.- The fairy tale castle that Alice Stori Liechtenstein and her family inhabit in the hilly countryside of southern Austria is far from the hotbeds of contemporary design — distant both geographically (it’s a six-hour drive from Milan, for example) and stylistically (built in medieval times, with later Baroque and Rococo additions). But every May, Schloss Hollenegg, as the castle is called, draws design aficionados when the doors are thrown open for a group show of new work revolving around a theme of Liechtenstein’s choosing. This year’s exhibition, called “Ashes and Sand,” is devoted to glass and named for the two materials needed to make it. The exploration of glass began last summer, with a three-week residency for a handful of current and recent design students. The lucky young creators, who lived on the premises for the duration, were encouraged to wander the castle’s halls, poke through its 52 rooms and take inspiration wherever they found it. ... More




Grounded in Stone: Isamu Noguchi's The Family



More News

Julia Gutman wins Archibald Prize 2023 for portrait of Montaigne
SYDNEY.- Sydney-based artist Julia Gutman has won the Archibald Prize 2023 and $100,000 for her portrait, Head in the sky, feet on the ground, of singer-songwriter Montaigne. The 29-year-old first-time Archibald Prize finalist is one of the youngest winners in the 102-year-history of the prize. Gutman’s win also marks the 13th time the Archibald Prize has been awarded to a woman (11th woman to win) since it began in 1921. Gutman was delighted and amazed when Art Gallery of New South Wales director Michael Brand phoned to tell her that she had won this year’s Archibald Prize. ‘I’m so elated and overwhelmed to have won. Shocked, dumbfounded, but very happy. It’s honestly completely surreal. I’m so grateful to be working at a time when young female voices are heard’, said Gutman. ‘So much of my practice is devoted to revisiting, critiquing ... More

P·P·O·W announces representation of Grace Carney & Mosie Romney
NEW YORK, NY.- P·P·O·W announced the representation of Grace Carney and Mosie Romney. Referencing Japanese Shunga, Baroque and Renaissance painting, contemporary media, and her own body, Grace Carney’s practice eschews easy categorization with two self-contained bodies of work: her large-scale works on paper and her paintings. Featuring entangled limbs and contorting musculature, Carney’s drawings explore the physical experience of the human body, blurring the lines between anger and love; aggression and submission; movement and confinement. Similarly, her gestural oil paintings reflect an underlying interest in liminal spaces, embracing the ambiguity and messiness of the paint itself. Beginning each painting from a place of discomfort or constraint, often restricting her palette, Carney creates layered compositions that are ... More

6 takeaways from Ed Sheeran's 'Let's get it on' copyright case
NEW YORK, NY.- The music world turned its eyes to a federal courthouse in New York over the last two weeks, where Ed Sheeran defended himself against an accusation that his 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud” copied from Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On.” Sheeran emerged victorious Thursday, with a jury finding that he and his co-writer, Amy Wadge, had created their song independently. Here are scenes from inside the courtroom and takeaways from the case. 1. Sheeran’s victory maintains music copyright’s status quo. An opinion piece in The Washington Post called the lawsuit “a threat to Western civilization.” Sheeran’s lawyers were less hyperbolic but still argued that a loss would have a devastating impact on songwriters by privatizing parts of the public domain. ... More

Review: 'The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window,' uneven yet a powerful draw
NEW YORK, NY.- Lorraine Hansberry didn’t have the luxury of getting “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” right. In October 1964, days after the play opened on Broadway, a headline appeared in The New York Times: “Lorraine Hansberry Ill, Placed on Critical List.” She had been hospitalized before rehearsals started but was released in time to attend some of them. She saw previews; she attended opening night. Within two days, she was an inpatient again. A week later, another article: “Revisions Are Made in ‘Sidney Brustein,’” telling of “extensive script changes since its opening.” Then on Jan. 13, 1965, a report of Hansberry’s death the previous day, from cancer, at age 34. “She was unable to help fashion the last play as it took shape in rehearsals,” the obituary read. All of which surely helps to explain th ... More

Margot Samel Gallery opens the exhibition by Justin Fitzpatrick 'Mitochondrial Abba'
NEW YORK, NY.- Recently I have been reading about the dawn of multicellularity, and the different theories surrounding it, specifically Lynn Margulis’ Endosymbiosis theory. In looking at this subject I was thinking about where the locus of identity would sit in a multicellular organism. A single-celled organism is alive, has individual sentience and its own will. When it evolves from a single-cell to a multi-cellular organism, how does this singular ‘I’ become a ‘we’, and how does this ‘we’ resemble an ‘I’ to itself? How does my body, as a complex network of different cell groups have a sense of unity when it is in fact a community? As i was looking at this subject i was learning bass and playing along to ABBA videos slowed down half-speed on YouTube, which became a surreal and moving experience in itself. In one video in particular, SOS, the ... More

The prince with no throne
VIENNA.- Ferdinand Habsburg-Lothringen sometimes goes for runs around the 1,441-room Schönbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the Habsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He loves taking in the manicured gardens, the mazes, one of the world’s oldest zoos still in existence, and one of the largest baroque orangeries in the world. “I go there to wander around the beauty,” he said, as do the tourists who can visit for an entrance fee of $22 and up. But once in a while things can feel a little weird in a way that is unique to Habsburg. “There is a bedroom inside the palace that would have been mine if I was crown prince,” he said, noting that he knows which one it is. “The first time I visited this place on a class trip when I was 14, I just thought, ‘I would never arrange my room like that.’” ... More

Toledo Museum of Art makes impact investment with Upstart Co-Lab
TOLEDO, OH.- The Toledo Museum of Art has committed to invest $1 million in the new Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy launched by Upstart Co-Lab, a nonprofit impact investing leader that connects capital with creative people and companies in the creative industries delivering both social impact and financial return. This Strategy is the first of its kind in the U.S. TMA is the first museum to commit to the Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy and stands as a model other cultural institutions can follow as they align their endowment investment strategies with their values and mission. Returns from the investment will bolster TMA’s operating budget and help the Museum fulfill its mission. The Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy will invest in fashion, film and TV, video games, food, the creator economy, the visual art market, immersive experiences, ... More

Galeria Jaqueline Martins says "Welcome, Celia Hempton!"
SÃO PAULO.- Galeria Jaqueline Martins has announced the representation of Celia Hempton and present her first solo exhibition in São Paulo. Celia Hempton's work explores concepts of voyeurism in the post-digital age. In her paintings, performances and installations, she investigates the blurred lines of comfort and consent; desire and subjugation; visibility and opacity, seeking to deconstruct the ways in which humans engage with each other in a rapidly evolving age of hyper-mediation. For her first solo show at the gallery, Hempton presents new and existing works from across multiple long-standing series: an introduction of her wider body of work which traces over a decade of painting. Presented together, these works make visible a complex, interconnecting web of interest ... More

Sarah Stoltzfus appointed director of sales at Morphy Auctions
DENVER, PA.- Dan Morphy, president of Morphy Auctions, takes pleasure in announcing the appointment of Sarah Stoltzfus as the rapidly growing Pennsylvania company’s director of sales. Stoltzfus, who previously served as director of marketing at Morphy’s, will now oversee all aspects of external sales and consignor-outreach efforts, as well as manage consignment proposals, assist with lead generation, and offer support and guidance to the firm’s sales and marketing teams. The newly created position is a hybrid that combines the traditional duties of an auction house sales director with additional executive-level responsibilities that are ideally suited to Stoltzfus, a Lancaster County (Pa.) native who earned her BS degree in business from Millersville University. “I’ve always worked in a marketing or sales capacity. During my previous tenure with Morphy’s, ... More

Bowman Sculpture x Guerin Projects opens 'The Power of She: A Tribute to Women in the Arts'
LONDON.- Curators Marie-Claudine Llamas and Mica Bowman have curated a group exhibition a Bowman Sculpture featuring some of the most important 18th and 19th century, Modern and Contemporary women artists. ‘The Power of She: A Tribute to Women in the Arts’, is bieng presented by Bowman Sculpture and Guerin Projects at Bowman Sculpture’s iconic gallery space in the heart of St James’s, London, since 5th May to 16th June 2023. ‘The Power of She’ celebrates women in the arts and will bring together a diverse selection of artworks across different mediums. The exhibition will feature 15 artists from the 18th century through to the present day and will explore a multitude of themes from the silent history of female artists, women's current role in society, to humanity's relationship with nature and the human condition. ... More


PhotoGalleries

Gabriele Münter

TARWUK

Awol Erizku

Leo Villareal


Flashback
On a day like today, German painter Caspar David Friedrich died
May 07, 1840. Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 - 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. In this image: Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Giant Mountains, not dated, Oil on canvas, 73,5 x 102,5.

  
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