| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |    | Established in 1996 | Sunday, October 29, 2023 |
| | Are 'Secret Room' drawings by Michelangelo? Now, visitors can judge for themselves. | |
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Francesca de Luca, the director of the Medici Chapels Museum, inside the stanza segreta, or secret room, in Florence, Italy, on Oct. 23, 2023. She noted similarities between the drawings on the wall and the work of Michelangelo. (Clara Vannucci/The New York Times)
by Jason Horowitz
NEW YORK, NY.- The narrow, arched room below the Medici Chapels Museum in Florence has some suspiciously virtuosic doodles on the walls. The hand is very fast, showing great confidence, it makes you think, Francesca De Luca, the museums director, said as she contemplated a muscular nude by the entrance. She pointed out the legs in another sketch and their resemblance to the powerful gams of a Michelangelo sculpture on a tomb upstairs. These have never been seen by the public, she said. Until now. Next month, the museums so-called stanza segreta, or secret room, where Michelangelo possibly hid and drew on the walls nearly 500 years ago, will open to the public. The sketches were discovered in 1975 by Paolo Dal Poggetto, then the director of the Medici Chapels, who was hoping to create a new exit for tourists. He and his colleagues ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Sandra Mujingaâs âSpectral Keepers,â 2020, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Oct. 24, 2023. In âGoing Darkâ at the Guggenheim, 28 artists explore urgent questions around what it means to be seen, and to see each other. (Clark Hodgin/The New York Times)
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| The good. The bad. The ugly. Inside Berlusconi's art collection. | | Artists call for boycott after Artforum fires its top editor | | Old Faithful is boiling, smelly and the perfect home for these living things | 
A painting of Napoleon purchased by Silvio Berlusconi. (Giuseppe De Gregorio via The New York Times)
by Jason Horowitz and Elisabetta Povoledo
ROME.- As his political fortunes sank, his legal and love life tangled, and his age caught up with him, Silvio Berlusconi stayed up late in his mansion outside Milan calling the hotlines of late-night art shopping television channels. It didnt really matter what the oil painting and antiques vendors hawked. Landscapes. Sculptures. Portraits. A fair share of nudes. Night after night, and then year after year, the octogenarian media mogul and former prime minister who wanted to have it all tried to buy it all, amassing an enormous collection of all the mail-order art he could lay his bleary eyes on. He had this project to build the largest collection in Italy, said Giuseppe De Gregorio, a televendor near Naples who sold thousands of paintings to Berlusconi. He didnt want important paintings. He wanted paintings. It was enough if they were painted with oil on a canvas. Now, months after Berlusconis death at age 86, his heirs are ... More | | 
Several artists have said they will stop working with the magazine after its response to an open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire.
By Zachary Small
NEW YORK, NY.- One day after Artforum magazine fired its top editor, David Velasco, because of an open letter it published about the Israel-Hamas war, another editor resigned and several prominent artists said they would boycott the publication unless Velasco was reinstated. Divisions over how to discuss the conflict in the Middle East have frayed yearslong relationships between collectors and artists. On Friday, Nicole Eisenman and Nan Goldin criticized the magazines owner for terminating Velasco, who had been its editor-in-chief for six years, and said they would no longer work with Artforum. I have never lived through a more chilling period, said Goldin, who is one of the most celebrated living photographers and signed the open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire. People are being blacklisted. People are losing their jobs. Nearly ... More | | 
Microbes under the microscope from a sample of Old Faithful water, made visible by fluorescent dye that was added to the sample. (Lisa Keller via The New York Times)
by Sarah Derouin
NEW YORK, NY.- Yellowstone National Park is a North American hot spot for wildlife. The parks mountains, forests and meadows are home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states, including the native bison and a restored population of gray wolves. Millions of visitors flock to the park each year, waiting for a glimpse of the diverse wildlife. It turns out that other popular features at Yellowstone hydrothermal springs, pools and geysers that steam and bubble are also a unique habitat for living things. Instead of charismatic mammals and birds, they are home to chaos-loving microbes. Scientists have long studied the hydrologic features of Yellowstones springs and pools, but nobody has ever studied the microbiology of a geyser, said Eric Boyd, a professor of microbiology at Montana State University. One reason ... More |
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| Ida Applebroog, whose art confronted relationships, dies at 93 | | Hidden art: A rhapsody for the soul, in 10 city corners | | Chiswick's Nov. 7 auction led by rare Aesthetic Movement cabinet that incorporates Dutch Old Master painting | 
Artist Ida Applebroog, who developed a varied but recognizable style in multiple mediums, at her studio in Manhattan, June 8, 2016. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)
by Will Heinrich
NEW YORK, NY.- Ida Applebroog, who confronted the violence, coercion and mortality that simmer beneath everyday relationships with a prolific stream of drawings, paintings, sculptures and videos, died Oct. 21 at her home in New York. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by her art studio. Applebroogs sui generis practice first came to notice in the mid-1970s, when she started mailing self-published booklets of her art, with fragments of cryptic text, to artists and writers she admired. Although the booklets drew on her background in commercial art and have been compared to comic strips, they had a stranger tone and a deeper bite than the average cartoon. Writing in The New York Times in 2010, Randy Kennedy called them funny in a way that skews toward weird without losing the ha-ha. But in their sometimes-willful blankness, the way they quivered with allusions while skirting overt statements, they also demonstrated Applebroogs comfort ... More | | 
The Holocaust Memorial (1990), carved into a marble corner of a court building by the sculptor Harriet Feigenbaum, features a chimney of flame and an aerial view of Auschwitz, in New York, Oct. 1, 2023. (Amir Hamja/The New York Times)
by Eric V. Copage
NEW YORK, NY.- When I emerge from an art gallery or a museum, the world around me looks different. Leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art late one afternoon, the color of the sunlight is amplified by my memory of the luminous gold in a peacocks tail rendered in a Japanese painting. Tire scuff marks on a curb near the Museum of Modern Art seem to recall the numinous power of Mark Rothkos untitled black on gray painting. Its not only deliberate encounters with art that I find transformative. In fact, the more random, the better. I love walking in New York because it encourages me to startle myself. I recently got lost in the warren of passages in the 34th Street-Herald Square subway station and stumbled upon a horizontal row of mobiles 14 paired red, nearly 5-foot-wide paddles balanced on metal poles stretching over what would be the top of the trains. When I got home, I Googled and found I had encountered Yab- ... More | | 
Aesthetic Movement cabinet, probably to a design by Thomas Jeckyll (1827-1881), from the London flat owned by Andrew McIntosh Patrick (b. 1934-), former director of the Fine Art Society. Estimate: £40,000-£60,000 ($48,440-$72,670). Image courtesy of Chiswick Auctions, London.
LONDON.- A rare Aesthetic Movement cabinet combining Japanese lacquer panels and a Dutch Old Master painting comes up for sale at Chiswick Auctions on November 7. Made circa 1875, probably to a design by Thomas Jeckyll (English, 1827-1881), it is expected to bring £40,000-£60,000 ($48,440-$72,670). Although entered in Chiswicks Asian Art Part 2 sale, the cabinet is very much a cross-culture object of the Victorian period. Mounted as doors within an English rosewood frame are four lacquer and mother-of-pearl panels (two in the side doors and two in the sides of the cabinet) of birds amongst stylized blossoms that date from Japans Momoyama period, circa 1600. Such panels (these probably once forming part of a religious shrine made for the Portuguese market) were known as nanban lacquer, a reference to the word the Japanese used for foreigners. A third door is in actuality a painting dated 1627 that depicts exotic and do ... More |
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| West End theatergoers grumble as prices for the best seats surge | | The estates of Fred Bentley, Sr. and Vectra Orkin Barnette will be sold bu Ahlers & Ogletree | | American Art Week at Bonhams in November | 
Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End district of London on Wednesday night, Oct. 25, 2023. The average West End theater ticket price in 2022 was about $66: high, but considerably less expensive than Broadway tickets. (Jane Stockdale/The New York Times)
LONDON.- When hundreds of playgoers lined up outside Wyndhams Theater in London this week, the mood was excited. They had come to see Kenneth Branagh, the revered Shakespearean actor, directing and playing the title role in King Lear. But some were still thinking about the price theyd paid to be there. Alan Hooper, 75, a retired teacher, said that, at the box office that morning, he was offered a seat in the first balcony for 200 pounds, around $240, or a standing place for a fraction of the cost. He chose to stand for the shows two-hour run time. West End prices, Hooper said, were out of control. Another audience member, George Butler, 28, said that he was overjoyed to have secured two tickets for 20 pounds (about $24) each, even if they were in the nosebleeds. Theater is becoming very elitist, Butler said. The minute theres a well-known person in a play, its unaffordable. ... More | | 
Pair of early 20th century French Empire dore 12-light figural candelabra, each depicting a standing winged victory (est. $20,000-$30,000).
ATLANTA, GA.- Ahlers & Ogletrees two-day, two-session auction planned for Friday, November 10th and Saturday, November 11th will showcase the remarkable estates of two prominent Atlanta area figures: Fred Bentley, Sr. of Marietta, Ga.; and Vectra Orkin Barnette of Atlanta. Both sales will be held online as well as in Ahlers & Ogletrees gallery located at 1788 Ellsworth Industrial Boulevard NW, both at 10 am Eastern time on their respective days. Fred Bentley, Sr., was a cherished Congressman, art collector, patriarch and philanthropist. His estate boasts an impressive array of American paintings and furniture, each piece steeped in history and charm. Included is his impressive collection of important American paintings as well as antique furniture, decorative arts, Chinese export porcelain, and antiquities from Rome and Greece. Highlights from the Bentley estate, being offered November 10th, include ... More | | 
Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914), Across the Common, 44 58 x 32 14 in. (113.4 x 81.9 cm.) (Painted circa 1894.). Photo: Bonhams.
NEW YORK, NY.- Bonhams celebrates American Art Week this November, hosting auctions for American Art, Western Art, and California Art across its US salerooms. The exciting slate of auctions features a wide array of historically significant works, from early 19th century to 21st century artists, and captures the breadth of these esteemed collecting categories. In New York, American Art is highlighted by an important 1971 painting by Ernie Barnes. While in Los Angeles, Western Art will be highlighted by an intricate New Mexico landscape by Ernest Martin Hennings, coming to auction for the first time. California Art will then feature quintessential West Coast artists including important works by Anna Althea Hills and Granville Redmond. A masterful and dynamic painting from 1971 by Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) titled High Aspirations will lead the American Art sale on November 7 in New York. Estimated at $500,000 700,000, ... More |
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| Sofia Coppola makes it look easy. It isn't. | | Paintings by Maud Lewis and Joe Norris share the spotlight in Miller & Miller's Folk Art auction | | (La)Horde: Dancing out primal impulses and resistance | 
Sofia Coppola in Beverly Hills, Calif., Oct. 16, 2023. The veteran film directors new release is Priscilla, about the young Priscilla Presleys tumultuous relationship with Elvis. (OK McCausland/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Sofia Coppola is so drawn to the idea of becoming that she sometimes finds it hard to grasp that she became. Over eight feature films including her latest, Priscilla, about young Priscilla Presleys tumultuous relationship with Elvis she has delved deeply into the liminal stage that is a young womans coming-of-age. So, you can hardly blame Coppola that after staying in that head space for so long, it comes as a surprise that 25 years have passed since filming her debut feature, The Virgin Suicides. Its weird to reflect back at having a body of work, she told me. Like, Oh, youre a grown-up now and actually established, not just starting off. It was a sunny October afternoon in Los Angeles, and we were sitting on a restaurant terrace at the Academy Museum, where the 52-year-old director had come to tout Priscilla and autograph copies of Sofia ... More | | 
Circa 1950s oil on board painting by Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (1903-1970), titled Two Birds in Winter (CA$44,250).
NEW HAMBURG, NY.- As expected, the acclaimed Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (1903-1970) dominated the list of top lots in Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd.s online-only Folk Art auction on October 14th, but this time she shared the spotlight with two other Canadian luminaries Joe Norris (1924-1996) and Joe Sleep (1914-1978). All three posted high dollars. Six original paintings by Maud Lewis combined to bring $184,680. They included a mixed media on Masonite from 1967 titled The Lobsterman ($53,100); a 1950s oil on board titled Two Birds in Winter ($44,250); a 1950s mixed media on scrap cardboard titled Dog Beneath Cherry Trees ($32,450); a circa 1967-1967 mixed media on Masonite titled Train Station ($27,140); a circa 1964-1965 mixed media on beaverboard titled Winter Sleigh Ride ($25,960); and a 1967 mixed media on Masonite work titled White Cat with Flowers, Butterflies and Yarn ($24,780). All prices quoted here are in Ca ... More | | 
Members of Ballet National de Marseille performing Lasseindra Ninjas Mood at N.Y.U. Skirball in Manhattan on Wednesday night, Oct. 25, 2023. The group, led by the collective (La)Horde, brought two programs to New York. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- The party was already going when people entered the theater for Rone and (La)Hordes Room With a View at NYU Skirball on Saturday night. A heavy beat pounded, and haze hung in the air around a set of huge, crumbling stone steps. In the middle of this hulking structure, electronic-music artist Rone was playing a DJ set, surrounded by dancers of Ballet National de Marseille. Below, two performers negotiated a private conflict, erotic and aggressive. Euphoria and danger mingled. Presented as part of Dance Reflections, a bountiful eight-week festival sponsored by Van Cleef and Arpels, Room With a View was New York Citys introduction to (La)Horde, the much buzzed-about team at the helm of Ballet National de Marseille. Operating as one entity, its three members Marine Brutti, ... More |
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2023 Hong Kong Autumn Auctions | A New Chapter Begins
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 Joe Hill, swashbuckling South Street Seaport merchant, dies at 76NEW YORK, NY.- Joe Hill, a purveyor of maritime junk and jewels and a swashbuckling fixture in lower Manhattans South Street Seaport for decades, died on Oct. 17 in Huntington, New York, on Long Island. He was 76. His family said his death, at a hospice facility, resulted from complications of dementia. Until he had to abandon the store in 2000 because of rent increases, Hill was one of the last links to the South Street neighborhoods seafaring past, holding out against a tide of high-end retail outlets that were transforming a salty corner of Manhattan into an increasingly homogenized commercial landscape and tourist mecca. It was all an act, of course his pirates hat was as fake as the parrot on his shoulder, the patch over his eye and the aarhs and mateys with which he greeted customers at his nautical junkyard of a store, Captain ... More  Art of the samurai comes to life in Sworders' Nov. 2 auction of Dennison CollectionSTANSTED MOUNTFICHET.- The art of the samurai takes center stage at Sworders on Thursday, November 2nd. As part of the British firms autumn Asian art offering, a total of 150 lots of Japanese arms and armor will be sold for the family of the late Peter Raymond Dennison. A former marine mechanic with a deep interest in historical warfare, Dennison was a collector of Edo and Meiji period weaponry for many years and a well-known face in the collecting community. His wish was that the collection should be sold at auction, which is how most came into his possession. Many of the pieces in the sale date from the Edo period (1603-1868), when the city of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) became the center of Tokugawa shōgunate power. Although it was a time of peace, it was also the era of Bushidō The Way of the Warrior when moral and military values ... More  Calder, Botero, Haring and Anuszkiewicz lead Heritage's Modern & Contemporary Art eventDALLAS, TX.- Any artwork that emerges fresh from an artist's studio today rests on the foundation of the wild-and-wooly 20th century. Even new entries in video, digital, performance and mixed-media nod to earlier innovators; we can't understand today without yesterday, and the artists of the last century, working in the decades between and after two world wars and during social, political and philosophical upheaval, pioneered our re-conception of art. They gave us the works and the potentialities that we think of when we think of modern art, and now contemporary art. The enduring seduction of great painting and sculpture is a remarkable phenomenon amidst so much disruption and innovation, and yet: Here we are in 2023, with an art world that continues to honor and admire the strongest works in these familiar two and three ... More  Two paintings by Daniel Garber to be sold by John McInnis AuctioneersAMESBURY, MASS.- Two important oil paintings by the renowned Pennsylvania impressionist Daniel Garber (1880-1958) will be sold in a two-lot auction scheduled for Friday, November 3rd, at 1 pm Eastern time, by John McInnis Auctioneers, online and live in the Amesbury gallery at 76 Main Street. Internet bidding will be provided by LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com. The oil on canvas titled Ferry Road (A View of Old Stone Quarry Near the Delaware River) measures 28 inches by 30 inches and retains its original period carved and gilt Frederick Harer frame and bill of sale. It was exhibited at the 122nd Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1927 and is illustrated in Mr. Garbers Catalogue Raisonné, having provenance to the present owner (est. $300,000-$500,000). The oil on canvas painting of The Mary Maxwell House ... More  Frank Miller's cover introducing his Batman and Robin leaps into Heritage's November Comics EventDALLAS, TX.- One of the most famous images from Frank Millers Batman: The Dark Knight Returns never actually appeared in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The Dark Knight Returns had yet to debut when issue No. 31 of Comics Interview hit in 1986, bearing Millers early look at his hardboiled makeover of the Dynamic Duo. For most, the magazine cover was the first theyd ever seen of Millers hulking Batman and his new Robin, Carrie Kelly, who leaped off the cover in a mirror-universe homage to Batman No. 1. The artwork accompanied an interview Miller gave to the magazine while he was wrapping up the title that, along with his pal Alan Moores Watchmen, came to redefine the genre and reshape the industry. In that Q&A, Miller made his intentions clear: Batman only really works if the world is essentially a malevolent, ... More  Nohra Haime Gallery announces the addition of Nessim Bassan to their roster of artistsNEW YORK.- Nohra Haime Gallery announces the addition of Nessim Bassan to their roster of artists. Nessim Bassan was born in Panamá City in 1950. Bassan started exhibiting very early on, in 1968, where he found great success. His art was admired and valued by renowned art critics and curators such as Thomas Messer from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and Lester Cooke from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In 1970, Jos Gomez-Sicre, invited him to exhibit at the Organization of American States in Washington DC, which later lead to his participation in the 1981 Sao Paulo Biennial. After this astonishing start to his artistic career, he took a break from the art world and dedicated his time to his family, and began painting for himself. During the late 1990s, he started painting every day, and fully dedicated ... More  'Levee' by Adrianna Ault to be published by VOIDLONDON.- Amongst the unstoppable changing world, the chaos, the growth, the loss, the laughter, and tears there came to a point where I couldn't breathe. I felt as though I was drowning. I went out to the levee on the Mississippi River by my mother's house and walked with my camera. Photographer Adrianna Ault was raised in New Orleans where a 350 mile levee system controls and holds back flood waters. This project began as Ault attempted to better understand the landscape surrounding the city, but evolved over the course of 5-years to encompass her changing family, journeys they took and the processing of grief. The levee became a metaphor for the barriers built in an attempt to ward off inevitable decline, and the onslaught of time and nature. "I discovered how the surrounding city's waterways exposed the land to a constant ... More  Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town' to return to Broadway next fallNEW YORK, NY.- Our Town, one of the most revered and enduring American dramas, will return to Broadway next fall in a new production directed by Kenny Leon. Leon has become among the more prolific directors working in New York. Just this year he has directed a revival of Purlie Victorious, currently running on Broadway, as well as the summer production of Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park and the spring off-Broadway basketball-fan drama King James for the Manhattan Theater Club. He directed two Broadway revivals last season, the Tony-winning Topdog/Underdog as well as Ohio State Murders, and he has another one coming next spring, Home. Leon said he had long wanted to direct a Broadway production of Our Town, a 1938 play by Thornton Wilder. He has tackled the play twice in Atlanta, where he lives, first in 2010 with ... More  The Comedy Club was as intimate as a living room. Actually, it was one.NEW YORK, NY.- When Eitan Levine, whos been doing comedy for about 15 years, announced to his roughly 20,000 followers on Instagram that he would be holding a four-night stand-up comedy event called Apartment Fest in his two-bedroom Harlem home, he wasnt too surprised when 157 applicants submitted audition tapes. Good stage time is very hard to come by and bad stage time is also very hard to come by, so you take all of it, said Levine, 34, who was offering peers a highly coveted 10 minutes each. Ive applied to worse shows for less time. The event, which on some nights featured two 90-minute shows, complete with a headliner and six comedians, took over his apartment. On Oct. 19, as Levine pushed back a large sectional sofa, set up some 25 chairs and made sure there was enough beer and water for guests ... More  Heritage's Nov. 16 Silver Auction serves rare Tiffany & Co. 'Lap-Over-Edge' dinner service DALLAS, TX.- In an 1880 lecture titled The Beauty of Life, William Morris, a pioneer of the Arts & Crafts movement, issued a new rule for the days homeowners and decorators: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Later that year, with the introduction of its Lap-Over-Edge silver flatware pattern, Tiffany & Co. brought beauty and usefulness together in one exquisite creation. Designed by Charles Grosjean, under the directorship of Tiffanys lead designer Edward C. Moore, Lap-Over-Edge was the most elaborate of all of Tiffany & Co.s silver flatware patterns. Employing mixed metals and inspired by Japanese art, the fanciful and multi-motif design incorporated a variety of decoration all done by hand including etching, engraving and chasing, as well as applied, ... More  Rare Rabindranath Tagore landscapes come to Bonhams South Asian Art saleLONDON.- Two landscapes by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) lead Bonhams Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art on Tuesday 14 November at New Bond Street, London. Untitled (West Bengal Landscape) and Untitled (Dark landscape with cliffs and tree), are both individually estimated at £80,000 - 120,000. Priya Singh, Bonhams Head of Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art, commented: Rabindranath Tagore is best known as the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and yet his talents and his legacy go beyond his work as a poet and writer. Tagore was also a composer he wrote the national anthems for both India and Bangladesh a social reformer, a philosopher, and a painter. Tagore's landscapes offer us an intimate glimpse into his contemplative spirit, his deep appreciation for the natural world, and ... More |
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PhotoGalleries 
Gabriele Münter 
TARWUK 
Awol Erizku 
Leo Villareal
Flashback On a day like today, landscape architect Harriet Pattison was born October 29, 1928. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Pattison earned her B.A. from the University of Chicago. In 1958, she met architect Louis Kahn. Kahn played an instrumental role in Pattisonâs life, encouraging her studies in landscape architecture and fathering her son Nathaniel in 1962. Her broad-ranging oeuvre includes the master plan for the Hershey Food Corporationâs Pennsylvania headquarters. In this image: Harriet Pattison, 2015. Photo by Barrett Doherty, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
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