| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Sunday, October 22, 2023 |
| | A Columbus letter dear to thieves and forgers brings $3.9 million | |
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A pamphlet used to spread news of Christopher Columbuss first voyage was auctioned at Christies. A rare pamphlet about Christopher Columbuss first voyage was auctioned by Christies, which said it had taken pains to ensure this one wasnt forged or stolen. (Christie's via The New York Times)
by Julia Jacobs
NEW YORK, NY.- The last time Christies sold a copy of a famed 15th-century pamphlet announcing Christopher Columbus first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was in 1992, and it did not end well. It later emerged that the document had been stolen, and it was eventually repatriated to Italy. That wasnt the only one. Since the early 1990s, four other examples of the Latin-translated document that came on the market were discovered to have been stolen and returned to libraries in Spain, Italy and the Vatican. Christies tried again Thursday, auctioning off another copy of the pamphlet for $3.9 million, including fees more than double the auction houses estimate. Christies said that it had investigated this copy, which it said came from an anonymous private collection in Switzerland, relentlessly to ensure it was neither stolen nor forged. That would be the first concern anybody would have, said Jay Dillon, a rare-books dealer based in New Jersey who was ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Installers with works that were to be placed on the walls at the de Young Open, a sprawling exhibition of Bay Area artists at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Sept. 11, 2023. Almost 8,000 pieces were submitted --- the 883 chosen works make up a dizzying, bursting-at-the-seams extravaganza of an exhibition. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
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| Christie's announces Joan Mitchell's Untitled will be a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale | | In Chloé show, an unseen legacy with quiet Jewish roots | | A visionary Brazilian artist is rediscovered | 
Joan Mitchell, Untitled (detail). Oil on canvas. Painted circa 1959. Estimate: $25,000,000 - 35,000,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2023.
NEW YORK, NY.- Christies announced Joan Mitchells Untitled will be a leading highlight in the 20th Century Evening Sale taking place live on November 9, 2023 at the auction houses Rockefeller Center saleroom. A seminal masterpiece by a pioneering figure of Abstract Expressionism, the work is estimated to achieve $25 million - $35 millionone of the highest auction estimates in history for a female artist, and the highest ever for a female Abstract Expressionist. It is poised to establish a new artist record. Sara Friedlander, Deputy Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie's, remarks, In the tradition of storied painters such as Sofonisba Anguissola and Artemisia Gentileschi, Joan Mitchell had to fight for the recognition that she was due as a female artist in a male-dominated industry. She succeeded with her forceful yet lyrical form of gestural abstraction grounded in memories and feelings of the natural ... More | | 
A photo provided by Chloé Archive, Paris shows a scene from a 1958 Chloé show at Brasserie Lipp in Paris. (Chloé Archive, Paris via The New York Times)
by Vanessa Friedman and Max Lakin
NEW YORK, NY.- For only the second time in its almost 120 years, the Jewish Museum is holding a fashion exhibition and it is the first in New York dedicated to Chloé, the French ready-to-wear brand founded in 1952 by Egyptian-born designer Gaby Aghion. Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé seeks to rectify both oversights, while introducing its founder, and her connection to her own Jewish identity, to the broader public. Born Gabrielle Hanoka in Alexandria in 1921, Aghion moved to Paris in 1945, after her marriage to Raymond Aghion, and opened Chloé named for a friend in 1952, at a time when designer-dictated couture (made-to-order clothes for the elite) still dominated the French fashion scene, and Jewish roots were kept relatively quiet. Though she wasnt formally trained, Aghion, ... More | | 
An undated photo provided by David Kordansky Gallery shows the artist Chico in 1972, holding up one of his paintings. (David Kordansky Gallery via The New York Times)
by Hilarie M. Sheets
NEW YORK, NY.- Francisco da Silva was one of the first Brazilian artists of Indigenous descent to achieve international fame. In the 1960s, his paintings of fantastical storybook creatures, interlocked in animated combat and hallucinatory fields of brilliant color and pattern, grew to be wildly popular in Brazil and beyond. One even decorated the cover of the telephone book in Fortaleza where the artist known simply as Chico lived and established a pioneering and controversial collective studio practice. By the time of his death in 1985 from alcoholism, Chico was destitute and dismissed by the art world, which had raised him up for his unique primitive vision only to then question the authenticity of his work. Now, a new wave of interest and scholarship is reassessing Chicos work ... More |
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| The good, and evil, of money at the Morgan | | The Holburne Museum opens the first retrospective of the artist Gwen John in 20 years | | The messy energy of turning life into art | 
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a 15th-century manuscript featuring St. Gregory the Great that is part of the Morgan exhibit Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality. Meticulously painted coins ring the text and art. (Janny Chiu/The Morgan Library & Museum via The New York Times)
by James Barron
NEW YORK, NY.- Is it ironic that the Morgan Library and Museum is opening an ambitious exhibition about money in the Middle Ages? Maybe, maybe not. Suitable was the word that Deirdre Jackson used. She is the on-site curator of Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality, an exhibition that follows the rise of the monetary economy in the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, long before J. Pierpont Morgan helped to cement the foundations of modern Americas financial infrastructure. But the setting for Medieval Money, which opens on Nov. 10, does seem appropriate. After all, Morgan, who owned the mansion now occupied ... More | | 
Gwen John, A Corner of the Artists Room in Paris, 1907-09 © Sheffield Museums Trust.
BATH.- The Holburne Museum, Bath, announced its presentation of the major exhibition, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris, curated by Dr Alicia Foster, in partnership with Pallant House Gallery and the Holburne, the first retrospective of the artist Gwen John (18761939) in 20 years. While the critically acclaimed show at Pallant House chronologically traces Gwen Johns 40-year career, placing her art in relation to the two cities where she chose to live and work, the Holburne show also focuses on the intense intimacy of the artists late work. As well as many of Gwen Johns major paintings, the exhibition in Bath introduces a significant number of her small works on paper, mostly from private collections and rarely seen in public. These tiny works demonstrate the artists fascination with the intimate minutiae of everyday life as well as with the mechanics of painting. The show follows ... More | | 
Barbara T. Smith at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles on Sept. 29, 2023. The museum is featuring more than 30 of Smiths Xerox pieces as part of her largest exhibition yet. (Magdalena Wosinska/The New York Times)
by Jori Finkel
NEW YORK, NY.- While still a California housewife with three young children, Barbara T. Smith began in the mid-1960s to take her own creative pursuits more seriously. Having volunteered at the Pasadena Art Museum, she was already hanging out with artists and trading artworks. Then, she visited Gemini G.E.L., a new printmaking workshop in Los Angeles, to see if she could make a lithograph there. But Gemini worked by inviting more established artists, so Smith took matters into her own hands. She leased a Xerox 914 photocopy machine and set up shop in the dining room of her Greene and Greene-designed home. She began eight months of intense experimentation, ... More |
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| Harry Bertoia leads Heritage's design event | | At museums and galleries, a spirit of togetherness | | The Holmdel Horn, a cosmic shrine in New Jersey, stays put | 
Harry Bertoia (Italian/American, 1915-1978), Untitled (Bush Form), circa 1965. Bronze, 13-1/2 x 11 x 11 inches. Estimate: $30,000 - $40,000.
DALLAS, TX.- "Is it a screen? Is it a chair? Is it a work of art? Harry Bertoia didn't worry so much about it. Art has the ability to have an impact on our everyday life, whether it's something that someone can wear or something that you come across walking through a city plaza or the chair that comforts you at the end of the day. All of those things Bertoia felt had a significant impact on our everyday lives." --Jed Morse, Chief Curator, Nasher Sculpture Center Just last year, the renowned Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas opened the major retrospective Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life. The exhibition showcased the artist's astonishing range and playful interdisciplinary practice; Bertoia was never one to be boxed in and he didn't think art should be, either. The highlights of the show were Bertoia's innovative and charming screens, his enigmatic bush forms (sometimes referred to as dandelions), and of course his pioneering sound sculptures. On full display throughout the museum w ... More | | 
At right, portrait drawings of patients at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital, where Henry Taylor worked from 1984 to 1995, on display in Henry Taylor: B Side at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Sept. 28, 2023. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)
by Lauren Messman
NEW YORK, NY.- The spirit of creative collaboration is on display in gallery and museum shows this fall and winter. Across the United States, exhibitions focusing on artists relationships with each other such as Henri Matisse and André Derain, and Toshiko Takaezu and Lenore Tawney and to their subjects like that of Il Guercino or John Singer Sargent offer new avenues for audiences to explore their work and contemporary impact. Here is a selection. The many subjects Henry Taylor has painted over his decadeslong career have included family members, celebrities and strangers, in a body of work that often examines the African American experience. This career retrospective of more than 130 works collects many of those paintings, as well as his drawings, sculptures and painted objects. Through ... More | | 
Caretaker Robert Wilson, a senior scientist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, at the Holmdel Horn Antenna facility and its Mass., in Holmdel, N.J., May 18, 2023. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
by Dennis Overbye
NEW YORK, NY.- A radio telescope that discovered evidence of the Big Bang in 1964, revolutionizing the study of the universe, will remain in its original place on Crawford Hill in Holmdel, New Jersey, town officials announced last week. Rakesh Antala, a real estate developer, had proposed building a senior housing center on the site, a plan that drew opposition from residents and far-flung astronomy buffs. But an agreement between town officials and Antala seemed to augur the end of the cosmic controversy. The Holmdel Horn Antenna, as it is known, was built in 1959 by AT&T Bell Laboratories, the renowned research arm of the phone company, for an experiment called Project Echo that relayed messages by bouncing microwaves off giant aluminized balloons. In 1964, two young astronomers, Arno Penzias ... More |
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| Christie's Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale achieves $6,181,934 | | Museum of Glass opens 'A Two-Way Mirror: Double Consciousness in Contemporary Glass by Black Artists' | | Cameo was flying high until its wings melted | 
L.S. Lowry, Promenade (1965, price realised: £227,200). © Christie's Images Ltd 2023.
LONDON.- Christies Modern British and Irish Art Day Sale realised a total of £5,100,606 / 5,855,496 / $6,181,934 and was led by L.S. Lowrys Promenade (£227,200). In total, 14 works by the artist were offered throughout the auction with further highlights including Merchant Ship (£119,700), Footbridge at Droylsden (£113,400) and Street in Whitby (£47,880). Barbara Hepworths Three Forms sold for £182,700 while Mother and Child, also by Hepworth, achieved £94,500 against a low estimate of £60,000. Offered by the family of the artist, a group of works on paper and paintings by Edward Wadsworth were highlighted by Composition 1930 (£44,100) and Landscape, Grand Canary (£21,420). Three works on paper by David Hockney drew competition: Peter Reading more than doubled its low estimate of £30,000 to sell for £69,300, Cairo realised £32,760 (estimate: £18,000-25,000) and Portrait of Michael Horovitz achieved £32,760. Further ... More | | 
Therman Statom (American, born 1953). Ladder, 2012. Blown glass and mixed media; 76 Ã 15 Ã 6 3/4 in. Collection of Museum of Glass, gift of the Robert M. Minkoff Foundation. Photo courtesy of the artist.
TACOMA, WA.- A Two-Way Mirror is an exhibition of contemporary Black artists who have used glass to create work that deconstructs social, cultural, gender, and racial identity concerns. The artists range in background from African American, to British, to Puerto Rican. Each artist uses glass to reflect thoughts and bodies that have historically been fraught with exploitation. Due to its reflectivity and translucence, glass is an apt medium to interrogate identity constructs such as the theory of double consciousness presented by W.E.B. Dubois in his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk. In this exhibition, we explore the historical representation of Black people through the medium of glass, ranging from work that borrows the abstraction of African art by exploiting the sophistication of its planar shifts to the production of traditional glass fetish objects like ... More | | 
Steven Galanis, Cameos co-founder and chief executive, at the companys headquarters in Chicago on Oct. 17, 2023. (Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times)
by Erin Griffith and Sapna Maheshwari
NEW YORK, NY.- Kenny G opened a meeting with a saxophone serenade. Paula Abdul judged an American Idol-style talent contest. Hamilton cast members performed. Lance Bass was there, hanging out. And when Vanilla Ice sang his 1990 hit Ice Ice Baby, flanked by 10-foot sparklers, he pulled Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath onstage. This was Cameopalooza 2021, a company retreat celebrating the meteoric rise of Cameo, an app and website where regular people could buy personalized videos from minor celebrities for as little as $1. Attendees feasted on seafood towers and fondue fountains at an upscale restaurant on the Chicago waterfront and partied into the night at a Hilton penthouse suite, where Jack Harlow, a TikTok-famous rapper, performed a private ... More |
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Heji Shin: THE BIG NUDES | 008 | 52 Walker | EXHIBITION PREVIEW
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 Rare game consoles plug and play into Heritage's November Video Game eventDALLAS, TX.- Gamer forums and message boards are awash in debates about the best game consoles of all time. Is it the PS2 (released in 2000), or the Super NES (released in 1991)? Is it the Nintendo Switch (2017, and the best-selling console ever), or Sony's original PlayStation (1994)? All of them were, so to speak, total game-changers. All of them, along with their competitors, evolved alongside gamers' and game creators' increasing sophistication great games demand extraordinary performance and playability and consoles rise to the demand of the inventiveness and ingenuity of games themselves. From the get-go, the console maker's goal has been to meet this challenge, and every mega-popular console has its defenders. But each one is merely a marker in a long history that begins with the arcade and home ... More  Review: The Philharmonic welcomes back an old friendNEW YORK, NY.- Its always a good sign when an orchestras players light up with smiles at a conductor. And on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall, that happened over and over, with grins passing between the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and its podium guest, David Robertson, throughout a beguiling, smart program. The concert began the Philharmonics festivities to celebrate the centennial of Hungarian Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligetis birth. Robertson led the U.S. premiere of Mifiso la Sodo, a short work for chamber orchestra that Ligeti wrote as a student in Budapest in 1948. He began revisions three years later, but never finished the job; the piece lay dormant until last year. With its punchy, fake Italian title, Mifiso is crammed full of little musical jokes, show-off brilliance and jovial accents. Ligeti gave it the subtitle ... More  Richard Diebenkorn's 'Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad' to highlight 20th Century Evening SaleNEW YORK, NY.- Christies announced Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, the seminal 1965 masterwork by Richard Diebenkorn, will be among the leading highlights in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 9, 2023. This painting, which heralds the artists iconic Ocean Park series, is estimated in excess of $25 million and is poised to reset Diebenkorns record at auction. Max Carter, Christies Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: Diebenkorn once told Wayne Thiebaud that in his painting he was trying to work out a combining of Matisse and Mondrian. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, which commemorates his visit to the Soviet Union in 1964 and the ideals of cultural exchange, represents the triumph of this vision. Its breathtaking color is worthy of Matisse. Its forms build upon the striking ... More  Kenneth Force, the 'Toscanini of Military Marching Bands,' dies at 83NEW YORK, NY.- Kenneth Force, who as the leader of the Merchant Marine Academy Regimental Band from 1971 to 2016 was one of the nations foremost experts in the art of military pomp, died Oct. 7 in Rye, New York. He was 83. A former student of his, Marianne Lepre, said the death, at a long-term nursing facility, was caused by respiratory failure brought on by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Military music arose as a means of communicating orders to troops, but it has long since become a ceremonial custom, with trumpet-tooting and drum-rolling tunes like Hail to the Chief and The Red, White and Blue. A military man might say that Force exerted full-spectrum dominance over this territory. At one time or another, he conducted the U.S. Marine Corps Band, which performs for the president; the band of the Black Watch, a Scottish ... More  Pushing the body to extremes to find serenityNEW YORK, NY.- Why do some people put their bodies through extreme acts? Why cross the Seine on a wire or climb a mountain during a thunderstorm? The reasons are probably the opposite of what you imagine: Peace. Calm. Serenity. In his evening-length Corps Extrêmes, choreographer Rachid Ouramdane works with acrobats, a climber and a modern tightrope walker, or highliner, to explore what lies behind the quest for thrills in such activities and the on-the-spot mental clarity that comes with it. When the body is pushed to its limits, when fear really sinks in, you must deal with every part of yourself, including your vulnerability, your fragility, Ouramdane said in a video interview from France. The notion of risk is always present. But its not a risk that you dont consider. Its almost the opposite, a risk that becomes ... More  In praise of the ever-evolving Lauryn HillNEW YORK, NY.- She is having so much fun onstage was the surprised thought that ran through my mind as Lauryn Hill kicked off her Ms. Lauryn Hill & Fugees: Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 25th Anniversary Tour at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday night. Having grown up in nearby South Orange, New Jersey, her joy was partly because she was at home, and partly because we were all there to celebrate that a quarter of a century ago, she made history with her 10-times-platinum multigenre album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Its 10 Grammy nominations yielded five wins, which was a record for a female artist, and Miseducation became the first hip-hop LP to take home album of the year. Perhaps Hill was also amped by the high stakes of the performance. Earlier this year, her Fugees group mate ... More  Marie NDiaye raises questions she has no intention of answeringNEW YORK, NY.- French writer Marie NDiaye likes a mystery. An admirer of detective novels, she has often felt a pang of disappointment at the resolution, no matter how brilliant, she said recently at her home in Paris. I hate to be taken by the hand. In her own novels, NDiaye cant be accused of spoon-feeding readers. Her latest book, Vengeance Is Mine, centers on a lawyer grappling with her own unreliable memory: A new client brings to mind a young boy she met three decades prior, when she was still a child. But is it really him? And was the afternoon they spent together a magical turning point in her life, or something more disturbing? Vengeance Is Mine, released this week in an English translation by Jordan Stump, provides no neat answer and neither does NDiaye. She doesnt want it to be a traumatic event, she ... More  The pianist Vikingur Olafsson on 'History's Greatest Keyboard Work'NEW YORK, NY.- Vikingur Olafsson calls it a workaholics sabbatical: The Icelandic pianist, 39, is dedicating almost all his performances this season to Bachs Goldberg Variations. Its an experiment, Olafsson said in an interview. How much can I extract myself, from the interpreters perspective? How much variety will I be able to discover throughout this year? Quite a lot, one imagines. Along with the tour comes a recording of the Goldbergs, released on Deutsche Grammophon this month. Flush with the joy of interpretation, it is a remarkable recording even for an artist who already has a number of remarkable recordings to his name. Listen to it, and you will find ample evidence that Olafsson is a pianist who wants to think about music, not just play it. I think were in a golden age of pianists, said Clive Gillinson, the executive and artistic ... More  Movement and memory: Dance love and dance rejection in IrelandNEW YORK, NY.- For some reason I wanted to be a dancer, Michael Keegan-Dolan said of his younger self. And then I realized I was really bad at it. Keegan-Dolan, a choreographer and director, was talking on a video call from his home in Dingle, a remote spot on the southwest coast of Ireland where he lives with dancer Rachel Poirier, and where his dance company Teac Damsa is based. I was this kind of tragic character. Sitting next to him, Poirier chuckled. I didnt see him dance then, she said, so thank God I dont need to comment. Keegan-Dolans dance-theater work How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons, which opens at St. Anns Warehouse in New York on Saturday, springs from the tension between this thing he loved beyond all others dance ... More  Eve Bunting, 94, dies; Tackled adult themes in children's booksNEW YORK, NY.- Eve Bunting, who published her first childrens book when she was 43 and wrote some 250 more over the next 50 years retelling whimsical fables from her native Northern Ireland and gently introducing her very young readers to grown-up subjects like war, racial prejudice and homelessness died on Oct. 1 in Santa Cruz, California. She was 94. Her daughter, Christine, said her death, in a hospital, was caused by pneumonia. Bunting, who worked with many celebrated illustrators and won a number of prestigious awards, described herself as the modern equivalent of the shanachie, the traditional Gaelic storyteller who went from house to house regaling listeners with legends. One of those legends inspired her first book, The Two Giants, which was published in 1971 after she submitted it to a publisher on her own, ... More Review: Ballet Theater revisits its past with a hit and two missesNEW YORK, NY.- American Ballet Theater opened its fall season on a high note: Alexei Ratmanskys Piano Concerto No. 1, the final dance in his moving, sometimes transcendent Shostakovich Trilogy. But two more ballets remained to be seen: The mawkish, melodramatic Petite Mort by Jiri Kylian and the parade of tutus and tendus that make up Ãtudes by Harald Lander. The program, part of the first New York season created by the companys artistic director, Susan Jaffe, gradually lost steam. Petite Mort (1991) is flimsier than ever. Ãtudes inches along its unmusical path, weighed down by inertia until the last few minutes, in which the stage displays fireworks in the form of pyrotechnic tricks. (By this point, it feels like youve been tricked into caring.) Devon Teuschers clean, classical elegance lent the overlong work a boost of grace and ... More |
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Gabriele Münter 
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Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, American artist Robert Rauschenberg was born October 22, 1925. Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993. In this image: Actress and singer Liza Minnelli poses with artist Robert Rauschenberg at the opening of Rauschenberg's silkscreen paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 1990.
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