The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, January 20, 2022


 
ARTBnk's Q4 2021 Market Report

Nicolas Party (b. 1980), Landscape, 2021. Pastel on linen, 109.2 x 91.4 cm. Pre-Sale ARTBnk Value: $381,419. Sold: $3,270,000, Christie's New York November 09, 2021.

NEW YORK, NY.- ARTBnk analyzed 2392 works prior to the sales held at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips in October, November and December of 2021 to evaluate the state of the fine art market today. Within this analysis, we break down how these works performed across market sectors by utilizing fair market value—ARTBnk Value—for each individual work of art produced prior to the sale. ARTBnk Value is determined through ARTBnk's proprietary AI valuation methodology which combines millions of quantitative and qualitative data points to determine comparable works that have sold previously at auction combined with both the repeat sales methodology and art market indexes developed by ARTBnk. This system allows ARTBnk to adjust prior auction sale prices to a current market to market price. In this report we provide a range of possible performance outcomes based on segments of the artists’ repeat sales return distribution. The range ... More


The Best Photos of the Day
Best Photos of the Day
David Zwirner is presenting Primary Colors, an exhibition of work by Josef Albers (1888-1976). On view at the gallery’s Hong Kong location, this is the first solo presentation of Albers’s work in Greater China.





Theodore Roosevelt statue removal begins at Museum of Natural History   Sotheby's to offer a collection of five paintings by Claude Monet   Seattle Asian Art Museum presents inaugural show by new Curator of South Asian Art


A crane lifts part of the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History as part of a removal process in New York, Jan. 19, 2022. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.

by Zachary Small


NEW YORK, NY.- It was past midnight when a crane descended on the imposing bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, lifting his upper body from the pedestal where it has presided at the American Museum of Natural History since 1940. The remainder of the sculpture, now surrounded by scaffolding, is scheduled to leave in pieces through the week. Flanked by representations of a Native American man and an African man on foot, the shadow of the president on horseback is diminishing by the day. A spokesperson for the institution said that the approximately $2 million removal process was conducted with historic preservation specialists and several dozen workers. It was approved by multiple New York City agencies. The New York City Public Design Commission voted last June to remove the statue; in November, its destination — the ... More
 

Massif de chrysanthèmes, estimated at £10 – 15 million, is one of four still-lifes devoted to chrysanthemums painted by Monet in 1897. Courtesy Sotheby's.

LONDON.- This March, Sotheby’s will present five works by Claude Monet painted during a formative fifteen-year period during his career, charting the artist’s pivot from an Impressionist painter to the father of Abstract Expressionism. Monet x Monet | A Distinguished American Collection paints a picture of how Monet approached the concept of capturing colour and light on canvas in an increasingly modern and abstract way, through a range of key motifs. From a flower-filled canvas that prefigures Monet’s celebrated late water lily paintings, to a rhythmic depiction of loosely bundled together grainstacks, and two landscapes painted under different weather conditions at opposing ends of the seasons, the works – all of which pre-date 1900 – encapsulate the ‘modern’ Monet that had such a profound influence on later artists and movements. With a combined estimate in the region of $50 million (£35 ... More
 

Installation view of Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time at Seattle Asian Art Museum, 2021. Photo: Natali Wiseman.

SEATTLE, WA.- The Seattle Asian Art Museum presents Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time (January 14–July 10, 2022), the first show curated by Natalia Di Pietrantonio, SAM’s Assistant Curator of South Asian Art. Featuring works from SAM’s collection and local loans, the installation features work from the third millennium BCE to present day in a range of diverse material including terracotta, wood, metal, painting, photography, and video. They all depict the human body and its possibilities for transformation. Di Pietrantonio joined SAM in July 2020 as the museum’s first-ever curator specializing in South Asian art; the position was created following the reopening of the reimagined Asian Art Museum as part of the institution’s vision of increasing its focus on acquiring and exhibiting works of art from the South Asian diaspora, particularly contemporary works. “For this, my first show at SAM, I wanted ... More


Ricardo Bofill, architect of otherworldly buildings, dies at 82   Roland Auctions announces Private Collector's Auction and Winter Wonderland Auction   Listen to keyboard music by Bach (no, not that one)


Ricardo Bofill in the 1990s at La Fábrica, a converted concrete factory in Barcelona housing his firm’s offices. Taller de Arquitectura via The New York Times.

by Fred A. Bernstein


NEW YORK, NY.- Ricardo Bofill, a Spanish architect behind some of the world’s most startling buildings, died Friday at a hospital in Barcelona. He was 82. The cause was COVID-19, his son Pablo said. Among Bofill’s best known works were public housing projects, most of them built in France in the 1980s, with vastly overscale classical elements, which were both derided as kitsch and hailed by critics as the long-awaited middle ground between historicism and modernity. He began his career with a series of smaller projects in Spain that followed geometric rules to sometimes mind-boggling extremes. La Muralla Roja, designed in 1968 and completed in 1973, in the coastal city of Calpe, re-imagined the North African casbah as a bright pink assemblage of walls and stairways as if arranged by M.C. Escher. Another housing project from ... More
 

Two Art Deco Oak Oval Table Vitrines, Vienna. Estimate: $2,000 - $3,000.

GLEN COVE, NY.- Following their highly successful New Year’s Day auction, Roland Auctions NY in Glen Cove, NY will now continue the celebration by presenting two days of auctions with their Private Collector Sale on Friday, January 28th at 10am, featuring over 300 Antique through Contemporary Frames, along with Fine Art, Furniture and Rugs, all from the collection of a prominent Manhattan art dealer, with no reserves. The very next day, Roland will host their Winter Wonderland Auction on Saturday, January 29th at 10am, featuring a large selection of fresh-to-market lots of Fine Art, Furniture, Antiques, Decorative Arts and Collectibles, all gathered from multiple estates in the tri-state area, including the Upper East Side estate of a prominent Interior Decorator and the estate of a well-respected New York/Florida collector of English and American antiques and Asian porcelain. Previews for the Winter Wonderland sale will take place on Th ... More
 

Marc-André Hamelin’s favorite page from his recording of music by C.P.E. Bach comes from this haunting rondo written as a farewell to a favorite clavichord instrument in 1781. Via IMSLP via The New York Times.

by David Allen


NEW YORK, NY.- The subject of pianist Marc-André Hamelin’s latest album is Bach — no, not that one. Hamelin — ever inquisitive in exploring the outer reaches of the repertoire, with recent releases of music by Sigismond Thalberg, Samuil Feinberg and Erno Dohnanyi — has now turned to the extraordinary range of keyboard works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian’s second surviving son. C.P.E. Bach was a prolific composer and an important pedagogue, a significant influence on Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. (Hamelin’s new album is a welcome companion to the three volumes of solo Haydn that he set down, with ideal panache, a decade and more ago on the Hyperion label.) But if he was more widely appreciated than his father well ... More



Exhibition explores printmaker who brought Audubon's vision to life   Megan Lykins Reich will lead Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art   Rare vintage character model maquettes steal spotlight at Heritage Auctions


John James Audubon (French, 1785–1851) Publisher: John James Audubon, London Printer: Robert Havell Jr. (American, b. England, 1793–1878) The Birds of America; from original drawings, Volume 1, 1827-30 colored engravings with aquatint University of Wisconsin–Madison Special Collections, Thordarson Collection Plate 98, Marsh Wren.

MADISON, WIS.- Before John James Audubon’s The Birds of America became one of the world’s preeminent records of natural history, there was the matter of printing this incredible ornithological study. The lengthy and laborious process—which took more than a decade—was taken on by Robert Havell, Jr., an engraver and printer in London. This early 19th-century collaboration is the subject of the exhibition Seeing Audubon: Robert Havell, Jr. and The Birds of America, which examines Havell’s incredible printmaking techniques and uncovers the dynamic, but underappreciated, collective effort to expand Audubon’s reach through the creation of crisp, beautiful copies of his illustrations. The exhibition ... More
 

Reich joined moCa in 2004, and has served as moCa’s interim executive director since June 2020.

CLEVELAND, OH.- Following a national search, the Board of Directors for the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa) has named Megan Lykins Reich its new Kohl Executive Director. The appointment was announced to staff and community partners by the board’s co-presidents, Joanne R. Cohen, Audra T. Jones and Stephen G. Sokany. Reich joined moCa in 2004, and has served as moCa’s interim executive director since June 2020. ‘‘We are thrilled to announce Megan Reich’s selection as moCa’s new executive director,” said Cohen, who served as chair of the search committee. “Megan is a leader who lives our artistic and programmatic mission every day, with a demonstrated commitment to helping moCa evolve as an institution. Although many candidates that we considered had strong skills, Megan’s talent, experience, and our first-hand knowledge of her capabilities made her our top choice. ... More
 

Pinocchio Animator's Maquette.

DALLAS, TX.- The names and faces are as familiar and beloved as any characters that can be found anywhere. From Donald Duck and Goofy to Aladdin’s Genie or The Little Mermaid’s Ariel, from Peter Pan and Tinker Bell to Buzz Lightyear – and of course, the immortal Mickey and Minnie Mouse – Disney characters are beloved around the globe. Those legendary characters are created in part through the use of Disney maquettes, the sculpted models that allow animators to view a character from all angles. These rare works of art never were meant to be anything more than three-dimensional tools used by the Disney animation department, each stamped “Return to Character Model Dept.” Predicted to be cast aside after the completion of each film, maquettes instead became coveted pieces of film making art. Animators sometimes took them home or received them as gifts after films that enjoyed significant success, or Walt Disney, himself, sometimes gave some ... More


Phillips to host online-only auction raising funds for women's reproductive rights   Works by Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo on view at Essex Flowers   Yvette Mimieux, who found fame in 'The Time Machine,' dies at 80


Lesley Vance, Untitled, 2021. Image courtesy of Phillips.

NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips announced an online-only auction in partnership with the nonprofit Noise for Now, which will raise funds and awareness for women’s reproductive rights in the US. Open for bidding from 15-23 February, the eponymous sale will feature works personally donated by contemporary artists such as Lesley Vance, Erin Shirreff, Mariah Robertson, David Mramor, and Sheree Hovsepian. Noise for Now’s proceeds will benefit two important 501(c)(3) charitable organizations — The National Network of Abortion Funds, which helps move financial and logistical barriers to abortion access, and The Abortion Care Network, which aims to create a network for independent providers across the country. Amelia Bauer, Executive Director of Noise for Now, said, “Access to safe and legal abortion in the US is under the greatest threat since Roe V Wade was decided 49 years ago. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Phillips a ... More
 

Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, Tracks & Bridges 2, 2020 (detail). Print with drawing and mixed media on paper, 24 x 36 inches.

NEW YORK, NY.- Essex Flowers is presenting Tracks & Bridges, a series of digital prints and drawings with mixed media on paper by Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo. Kabuya’s works in this series are homages to two major figures of the Harlem Renaissance, sculptor Augusta Savage and writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. Commissioned by the New York World’s Fair of 1939, and destroyed at its conclusion, Savage’s sculpture The Harp was inspired by the lyrics of the poem Lift Every Voice and Sing, by writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. “Tracks and Bridges is an ongoing theme focus in my work . . . to recognize human relations, defining purpose and progress in current moments. The select works for exhibition are tracks and bridges reflecting a journey of hardships since 2020, 2021 and beginning possibilities of choice to build better bridges for 2022.” Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo ... More
 

Playing fragile characters, she had success in the 1960s in “Where the Boys Are” and other movies before her acting career took a downturn.

NEW YORK, NY.- Yvette Mimieux, who found stardom in the early 1960s portraying delicate, fragile women in “The Time Machine,” “Where the Boys Are” and other films, died on Monday night at her home in Los Angeles. She was 80. Her death was confirmed by Michelle Bega, a family spokeswoman. She did not specify a cause. Mimieux (usually pronounced meem-YUH) was the starlet of the moment in 1960 playing opposite Rod Taylor in “The Time Machine,” based on H.G. Wells’ classic 1895 novel. Taylor, as the time-traveling gentleman-scientist from 1890s London, encounters Mimieux in the year A.D. 800,000 (802,701 in the book) as the character Weena, one of the Eloi, a gentle blond (or blondish) people so naïve, they don’t realize that their lives are blissful because they are being bred as food for the monstrous predatory Morlocks, who live underground. “The Time Machine” was not her movie debut. That was the juvenile- ... More




Sotheby's Presents: Masters Week 2022



More News

'The Kite Runner' is coming to Broadway
NEW YORK, NY.- A stage adaptation of the bestselling novel “The Kite Runner” will be presented on Broadway in July. The play, which began its life in California in 2007 and has been widely produced since, is planning a limited run, from July 6 to Oct. 30. The announcement is encouraging news for Broadway, which has been clobbered by closings as the coronavirus pandemic continues to roil the industry. But there remain many producers with the appetite and the financing to bring new shows to Broadway as others end their runs. The “Kite Runner” novel, written by Khaled Hosseini and published in 2003, is a coming-of-age story about a man born in Afghanistan whose life is haunted by his failure to protect a childhood friend. The novel, a surprise hit, has sold millions of copies worldwide, and was adapted into a film in 2007. The theatrical adaptation was ... More

Bonhams appoints André Bodson as Chief Transformation Officer
LONDON.- Bonhams has appointed André Bodson as Chief Transformation Officer. Bodson will further the company’s ongoing transformation into a digital auction house with a global footprint. He will also be responsible for the integration of the company’s acquisitions, starting with the recently acquired Swedish auction house Bukowskis – the leading auctioneers in the Nordic region. Bodson will be based in London. Bodson has more than 30 years’ international experience in finance, strategy, operations, sales, general management and government relations. He joins Bonhams from his 18-month role as advisor to the Minister in the French government for gender equality, diversity and equal opportunity, Élisabeth Moreno. During that time, he has counselled the Minister on all business, digital and economic matters. Prior to his work with the French ... More

'This Beautiful Future' review: Love glows in war's shadow
NEW YORK, NY.- In the tiny lobby of Theaterlab, on West 36th Street, you need to show proof of a booster vaccine before you can get your tickets. You have to wear a high-grade mask, too, though if you show up unequipped, the person at the box office will cheerfully hand one over. If the wartime teenagers at the center of Theaterlab’s current play, “This Beautiful Future,” could project themselves across the decades to our time, they might recognize that spirit of getting on with things, carefully. Not that Elodie (Francesca Carpanini), a 17-year-old in Chartres, France, has much patience for caution herself. It is August 1944, a critical point in World War II, but she is smitten with a boy, and that overrides everything big and scary that the grown-ups have set in motion in the world. Otto (Justin Mark) is 16 and new in town, bashful and awkward and easy ... More

American LGBTQ+ Museum names first executive director
NEW YORK, NY.- Almost five years exactly after its conception, the American LGBTQ+ Museum — which aims to open its doors in 2024 — has found its first executive director. The museum announced Tuesday that Ben Garcia, formerly the deputy executive director and chief learning officer of Ohio History Connection, would inaugurate the role in mid-February. At Ohio History Connection, a statewide history organization, Garcia managed more than 50 museums and historic sites, the state archives and the state historic preservation office. Before that, he worked as the deputy director at the Museum of Us in San Diego and the head of interpretation and operations at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California. “I’ve spent 20 years working in museums dedicated to ensuring that they are places that work for everybody’s ... More

Rhona Hoffman Gallery opens a group exhibition curated by Ben Gill
CHICAGO, IL.- Artists routinely face a critical impasse as they work to examine a difficult or thorny subject — Do they continue on the arduous journey of scrutinizing and extracting the specific idea or settle for a simpler and more facile version of their practice? This complicated examination of their subjects expose fissures of hard to reconcile internal contradictions or untenable cultural conditions. The artists in this show are unified by the inventive, skillful, and careful way they are able to navigate these difficult to reconcile cultural forms. Operating as if they are taking on the difficult section of a score or tough bit of prose, these artists navigate this Tricky Passage and emerge with complex, beautiful, and transcendent work. In the late eighties, Ken Ellis began making his quilted paintings with a portrait of John Dillinger, captivated with the simple idea of making ... More

Bonhams appoints Patrick Masson as Director for Europe
PARIS.- Bonhams has appointed Patrick Masson as Director of its European operation. Based at Bonhams’ rapidly growing saleroom in Paris, Patrick will spearhead the company’s expansion in Europe. Bonhams, which already has a strong network of offices and representatives across the continent, has recently acquired Bukowskis, the leading auction house in Scandinavia, which is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Patrick joined Bonhams in March 2020 as Managing Director of Bonhams UK. Over the past two years he has been central to the transformation of Bonhams in the UK, including steering the company successfully through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and pioneering innovative new sale categories such as The Male Form, The Mind’s Eye/Surrealist Sale, British. Cool and Pop x Culture. Patrick has also been responsible ... More

Nobel Prize won by Walter Kohn, Kindertransport survivor to be auctioned
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by Walter Kohn in 1998, unique not only for the scientific impact of Kohn's work, but also for his life experience as one of the children rescued from Nazi-occupied territories in World War II through the Kindertransport program will be auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Auctions on January 27, 2022. Kindertransport was established by the United Kingdom in 1938 immediately after the "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom in Germany, authorizing the safe passage of almost 10,000 children into the UK. The children were placed in homes throughout the British Empire, with Kohn ultimately placed in a home in Canada. Kohn and his sister Minna survived, but their parents perished in the Holocaust. In addition to his Nobel Prize, the lot includes three science books that Kohn purchased at the temporary internment ... More

The Dumbledore of clowning
ÉTAMPES.- It’s unlikely anyone alive has made more clowns cry than Philippe Gaulier. In a supposedly more sensitive era, hundreds of people regularly travel from all around the world to a small town an hour outside Paris to study clowning with Gaulier, a gruff 78-year-old éminence grise known for his blunt, flamboyantly negative feedback. Wearing a pink tie, beret and stern look over a bushy white beard on a recent tour of the school, he looked the part of the guru — a mischievous one. He pointed at a large photo of himself teaching in China and joked he was “Clown Chairman Mao.” In his office, sitting across from his wife, Michiko Miyazaki Gaulier, a former student who is now a colleague, he made no apologies for his pugnacious style, saying that students who are not funny have a choice: “You have to change or leave the school. You are boring. ... More

Christie's exhibits selections from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation
NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announced Witness to this Game: Selections from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, a non-selling exhibition of modern and contemporary graphics by African American artists. Running from January 20 to March 25 at Christie’s new San Francisco gallery at 49 Geary, the exhibition will comprise more than sixty works by Mildred Howard, Mark Bradford, Derrick Adams, Alison Saar, Kehinde Wiley, Romare Bearden and Robert Colescott amongst others. The exhibition is a testament to Jordan D. Schnitzer’s lifelong collecting journey, guided by the civic spirit he learned from his parents. He collects prints specifically with intention of sharing them with the public, inviting professional curators to organize exhibits at qualified museums in diverse communities. The numerous exhibitions ... More

As Broadway struggles, Governor proposes expanded tax credit
NEW YORK, NY.- As Broadway continues to reel from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to expand and extend a pandemic tax credit intended to help the commercial theater industry rebound. Hochul on Tuesday proposed budgeting $200 million for the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit, which provides up to $3 million per show to help defray production costs. “They were starting to recover before omicron, and then, as you have all seen, a lot of these performance venues had to shut down again, and those venues are critical for the economy,” the state budget director, Robert Mujica, told reporters. The tax credit program, which began last year under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was initially capped at $100 million. Early indications are that interest is high: Nearly three dozen ... More

Ahlers & Ogletree announces results of New Year's Signature Estates Auction
ATLANTA, GA.- A mixed media painting by Thornton Dial (American, 1928-2016) titled Struggling Tiger (1991) sold for $84,700, and a Tiffany Studios Favrile glass door from the 1920s titled The Sower, brought $51,425 to take top lot honors in Ahlers & Ogletree’s New Year’s Signature Estates Auction held January 14th thru 16th. There was no in-person bidding. The Thornton Dial painting – full title Struggling Tiger (The Tiger Penned In) – was a paint and mixed media on canvas backed with panel and titled on verso. The 60 inch by 60 inch painting was a spectacular example of Dial’s work. It also marked the fifth highest auction record for a work by Dial and the highest record outside of a New York auction. Dial came into prominence in the 1980s. Ten of his paintings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014. The Tiffany Studios ... More


PhotoGalleries

The Last Judgment

Golden Shells and the Gentle Mastery of Japanese Lacquer

Imants Tillers

Le Design Pour Tous


Flashback
On a day like today, French painter Jean-François Millet died
January 20, 1875. Jean-François Millet (October 4, 1814 - January 20, 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the Realism art movement. In this image: The Angelus by Jean Francois Millet.

  
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