| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net | | Established in 1996 | Thursday, November 28, 2019 |
| | | Is it a '5' or a '6'? The answer could make an art fortune | |
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"Bathing Venus" by Giambologna or perhaps by an obscure bronzemaker a century later on display at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, Nov. 15, 2019. For years, Alexander Rudigier, a London-based art dealer, has been on a quest to prove that the bronze figure of a bathing woman discovered 30 years ago in the house of a Paris scrap merchant is by the venerated Renaissance sculptor Giambologna. The New York Times.
by Graham Bowley
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- For years, Alexander Rudigier, a London art dealer, has been on a quest to prove that a bronze figure of a bathing woman discovered 30 years ago in the house of a Paris scrap merchant is by the venerated Renaissance sculptor Giambologna. Look at the masters familiar flourishes, he said. He has documents found in Italian archives. And scientific tests, he insisted, support his conclusion. Yet Rudigier, who is a part owner of the sculpture, has been struggling to get the art world on his side. Though some art historians support him, other Giambologna experts believe the work is merely a clunky 17th-century copy of a marble Giambologna now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and thus probably worth millions less. But in September Rudigiers cause received a boost when the sculpture, Bathing Venus, was included in an exhibition of Florentine bronzes organized by the world-renowned Uffizi Galleries in Florence, where it was identified as being an original work ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day Visitors walk in a cobbled alley on November 25, 2019 in Pompeii. While treasure hunters regularly pillaged Pompeii down the centuries looking for precious jewels or artifacts, whole areas have yet to be explored by modern-day archaeologists. Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP
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| | German museum confirms 49-carat diamond among heist haul | | Rare Books Auction in Germany raises &euro1,050,000 for a Gutenberg Bible | | Artificial intelligence helps organise Denmark's largest art collection |
Forensic experts search the area within a police cordon in front of the Royal Palace that houses the historic Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) in Dresden, eastern Germany on November 25, 2019, after it was broken into. Sebastian Kahnert / dpa / AFP.
BERLIN (AFP).- A 49-carat diamond which analysts estimate to be worth up to $12 million was among over a dozen jewel-encrusted items snatched from a German state museum in a spectacular heist, the museum confirmed Wednesday. Publishing a list of the pieces taken in Monday's brazen raid, the Green Vault museum at Dresden's royal palace said the items stolen included a sword whose hilt is encrusted with nine large and 770 smaller diamonds, and a shoulderpiece which contains the famous 49-carat Dresden white diamond. Eleven pieces were removed completely, while individual parts of a further three items were also missing. The Dresden white is one of the most precious jewels in the collection of former Saxon ruler August the Strong. ... More | |
Biblia latina Fust-Schöffer-Bible, 2 volumes, August 14, 1462. Sold for: 1,050,000.
HAMBURG.- With total proceeds of more than 2.2 million, the auction of Rare Books at Ketterer Kunst in Hamburg on November 25 did not only yield an excellent result, it also set a new season record for the second consecutive time. The auctions undisputed star was the Fust-Schöffer-Bible from Gutenbergs printing press, which now is the most expensive bible in German auction history. Robert Ketterer, owner of Ketterer Kunst, expresses his enthusiasm: With the two seven-figure results realized for works by Wassily Kandinsky and Andy Warhol in spring, we now set a new mark in the millions in the Rare Books section. This once more underlines our position as Germanys number one auction house. Christoph Calaminus, auctioneer and head of the Rare Books department of Ketterer Kunst in Hamburg adds: This has been an excellen auction. The sale of the Fust-Schöffer-Bible was a rare ... More | |
SMKs new online collections allow visitors to explore approximately 40,000 digitised works of art from the museum, analysed and arranged into categories by means of artificial intelligence. Photo: SMK.
COPENHAGEN.- On 29 November, SMK launches a new, user-friendly online collection. Approximately 40,000 digitised works from the museum collection have been arranged into categories by means of artificial intelligence. At the same time, the museum releases the application programming interface (API) used to build the online collection, allowing everyone to use SMKs data as they wish for example to create their own apps. Art should be set free. This is one of the visions of SMK, which, being the national gallery of Denmark, houses a vast collection of art that belongs to the entire nation. Reflecting this ambition, the museum has been working on a digital project called SMK Open since 2016. Funded by Nordea-fonden, the project aims to make the museums collection and digital material ... More |
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| | Rago/Wright realize $1.4M in sales in inaugural co-branded auction | | Aurel Scheibler opens an exhibition of works by Carolin Eidner | | Hirshhorn presents acclaimed artist Pat Steir's largest suite of paintings to date |
Peter Voulkos, Snake River. Est. $50,000 - 70,000. Result $250,000.
LAMBERTVILLE, NJ.- The first co-branded Rago/Wright auction, Masterworks of American Craft achieved a sales total of $1,436,345 on November 22nd. Masterworks of American Craft is a new auction venue for the recently merged firms; the concept makes the most of their combined expertise and audience paired with innovation and style to present more than 100 years of extraordinary craftsmanship. The highly curated sale featured 43 lots and explored a variety of mediums and fields with works by Harry Bertoia, Paul Evans, George Nakashima, Viola Frey, George Ohr, Tiffany Studios, University City, Wendell Castle, and Dale Chihuly, among others. The sale enjoyed strong interest with more than 100 bidders participating in house, by phone or live online using Wrights own bidding platform or third party sites. The top lot of the sale was Snake River, an impressive sculptural form by Peter Voulkos; after several minutes of competing phone bids, an online bid ... More | |
Carolin Eidner, Digital Grass, 2019. Pigmented plaster, mounted on styrofoam, wood 70 x 55 cm [HxW] (27,56 x 21,65").
BERLIN.- Aurel Scheibler is presenting the second solo exhibition by Carolin Eidner (b. 1984) at the gallery. Carolin Eidners artistic practice employs a wide range of techniques and materials, while the correlation between conceptual aspects and physical manifestation is one of the main features of her work. As an artist, she is constantly adopting new ways and approaches to disintegrate canonic structures and conventional viewpoints. In the recent years, Carolin Eidner has been producing the works using pigmented plaster, that depict, in a laborious process, kooky motives that blatantly reject the grandiose expressive and representative tendencies of painting. The technique combines the visual dimension of painting and the physical one of sculpture and fuses surface, code and message in one unified object. The title of the exhibition The Subtle Genesis of Emiliano Bruni evokes in a playful manner a reference to ... More | |
Pat Steir, Color Wheel at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 201819. Oil on canvas, 30 paintings, each 108 à 84 inches. Photo: Lee Stalsworth. Courtesy of Pat Steir and Lévy Gorvy.
WASHINGTON, DC.- The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is presenting the largest painting installation to date by the acclaimed abstract painter Pat Steir. Organized by Evelyn Hankins, the Hirshhorns senior curator, Pat Steir: Color Wheel is an expansive new suite of paintings by the artist, spanning the entire perimeter of the museums second-floor inner-circle galleries, extending nearly 400 linear feet. On view Oct. 24, 2019Sept. 7, 2020, Steirs immersive work transforms the museum into a vibrant spectrum of color. The 30 large-scale paintings, when presented together as a group, will create two overlapping color wheels formed by the shifting hues of each painting, with the pours on each canvas often in the complementary hue of the apparently monochrome background made up of five to eleven layers of color. We are honored to present this new ... More |
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| | 'Insurrection in the blood:' Brazil's theater legend Ze Celso at 82 | | Yves Saint Laurent jacket fetches record sum | | Sotheby's to offer one of the greatest Norwegian paintings ever to appear at auction |
Brazilian actor and director Jose Celso Martinez Correa, aka Ze Celso, 82, performs in the "Roda Viva" play in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 22, 2019. CARL DE SOUZA / AFP.
RIO DE JANEIRO.- Dressed in white and with hands raised in the air, Ze Celso crosses the stage, already reveling in the boisterous performance his troupe is about to deliver: at 82, this legend of the Brazilian stage still believes in the virtue of insurrection. He founded his theater company Teatro Oficina 61 years ago and it became an icon in the years of Brazil's military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. Despite the years, both Ze Celso and the company are still going strong. To stage their performance of "Roda Viva" ("Living Circle"), written by singer-songwriter and playwright Chico Buarque in 1968 and mixing dance, song, theatre and video, the 60-strong troupe had to rustle up buses to transport them for free from Sao Paulo to Rio, where they bunked up at friends' places and paid the costs of putting on the show through crowdfunding donations. From the outset, "there were a thousand problems, but the thing is to resist," says Jose Celso Martinez Correa, ... More | |
The jacket was part of Saint Laurent's 1988 spring-summer collection and was modelled on the catwalk by supermodel Naomi Campbell. © Christie's Images Ltd 2019.
PARIS (AFP).- A richly embroidered jacket by Yves Saint Laurent inspired by Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" was sold at auction Wednesday for 382,000 euros ($420,000), a record for a garment from the celebrated French designer. The jacket, which was once modelled on the catwork by supermodel Naomi Campbell, had been expected to fetch between 80,000-120,000 euros at the Christie's sale. It was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. The bright yellow and orange jacket took haute couture embroiderers Maison Lesage more than 600 hours to stitch by hand, according to the Yves Saint Laurent museum's website. It was part of Saint Laurent's 1988 spring/summer collection. Only four of the sequined jackets, which are lined with silk, were ever made. Saint Laurent's 1988 collection also featured an equally detailed jacket honouring another flower-themed van Gogh canvas, "Irises". The blue and purple garment was auctioned for ... More | |
Harald Sohlberg (Norwegian, 1869 1935), Modne Jorder (Ripe Fields), signed Sohlberg lower right; titled in Norwegian on the reverse, oil on canvas, 73 by 116cm., 28¾ by 45¾in. Estimate £1,000,000-1,500,000. Courtesy Sotheby's.
LONDON.- One of the greatest Norwegian paintings ever to appear on the market will headline Sothebys sale of 19th Century European Paintings in London on 11 December 2019. Modner Jorder (Ripe Fields) by Harald Sohlberg is being presented at auction for the first time, having remained in the same private collection for more than seventy years. Estimated at £1,000,000-1,500,000, this seminal work announces the first full flourishing of the artists highly personal style and has long been recognised as pivotal in Sohlbergs career. Richard Lowkes, Sothebys 19th Century European Paintings Specialist, said: In some ways the opposite to his contemporary Edvard Munch, Sohlberg is a master of slow looking: he achieves his glowing, intense colour by applying layer upon layer of translucent glazes, and paints each leaf individually. At a formative stage in his career, with Ripe Fields Sohlberg ... More |
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| | Bang! Pow! 1960s Batman costumes up for auction | | Sotheby's New York announces inaugural Aboriginal art auction | | "Bilbo Baggins" pipe from "Lord of the Rings," Christopher Reeve's "Superman" cape head to Julien's Auctions |
Burt Ward played Robin.
LOS ANGELES (AFP).- Holy priceless collection! Batman and Robin's costumes from the iconic 1960s television series starring Adam West are set to go on sale in Los Angeles for an estimated $150,000 to $200,000. Burt Ward played Robin alongside West's caped crusader in 120 episodes of the camp cult hit "Batman" from 1966-68, battling flamboyant villains from The Joker to Catwoman. According to Hollywood memorabilia auction house Profiles in History, the sale will be the only known pair of complete costumes from the superhero duo. Other items from the show going under the hammer on December 17 include the bust of Shakespeare containing a secret switch to open the Batcave, and the Batmobile's famous phone. The pieces belong to the collection of John Azarian, described by the auction house as the "most important collection of classic TV and superhero artifacts in existence." The sale also includes tunics worn by ... More | |
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Untitled. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Bears Delmore Gallery catalogue number 0P01. 83 ½ in by 43 ⅜ in (212 cm by 123 cm). Estimate $250/350,000. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.- Sothebys will present the inaugural Aboriginal Art auction in New York on 13 December 2019. The first Aboriginal Art auction to be held outside of Australia or Europe by an international auction house, the sale features modern and contemporary indigenous Australian art dating from the 1950s until the present, including post-colonial and political art created by artists from the worlds oldest continuous culture. Sothebys has conducted standalone Aboriginal Art auctions since 1997, with sales held in Australia from 1997 to 2009, and in London from 2015 to 2018. Led by Tim Klingender, who has overseen all such sales since their inception in 1996, Sothebys has remained the continuous market leader in the field of Aboriginal Art for more than 20 years. The series ... More | |
An original cape worn by Christopher Reeve in his iconic role as the Man of Steel in Superman. The cape is estimated to sell at $100,000-$200,000.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Julien's Auctions has announced its star-studded event Icons & Idols: Hollywood to take place on December 16, 2019 at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills and live online at juliensauctions.com. This year end extravaganza offers over 400 items taken out of the vault and production archives of Hollywood's greatest films from the Golden Age of Hollywood to today's modern and new box office classics as well as important artifacts, rarely seen or coming to the auction block for the first time. The top coming attractions on the auction marquee are two original iconic props with tremendous provenance that were featured in two of Hollywood's biggest film franchises of all time: The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the original Superman starring Christopher Reeve. An original tobacco pipe used by Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert ... More |
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How the Wealthy of Pompeii Protected Their Valuables
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Eskenazi Museum of Art receives transformative estate gift of $5M for new Center for Education
BLOOMINGTON, IND.- The Indiana University Eskenazi Museum of Art has announced a transformative estate gift of $5 million from Bloomington residents and entrepreneurs Kimberly and John Simpson in support of the new Center for Education. Their generous donation will support the museums core mission of engaging students with original works of art. In honor of the gift, the center will be named the Kimberly and John Simpson Center for Education. The center is one of several new spaces for learning and engagement that have been established as part of a major $30 million renovation of the Eskenazi Museum, which began in 2017. A Grand Reopening celebration is scheduled for next month. The new Simpson Center for Education will play an essential role in providing IU students, other members of the IU community and the general public ... More
Rodney Graham's Spinning Chandelier descends in Canada
VANCOUVER.- Westbank announces the unveiling of Spinning Chandelier (2019) by renowned Abbotsford-born artist Rodney Graham. Grahams Spinning Chandelier is a kinetic sculpture in the form of a monumental 7.8 x 4.3 metre (25.5 x 14) faux-crystal chandelier. It has been installed under the Granville Street Bridge in the cathedral-like space of the bridges northern viaduct, directly over Beach Avenue. Spinning Chandelier is inspired by Grahams 2005 35mm film installation Torqued Chandelier Release, which depicts an 18th century crystal chandelier after it is wound up on a rope and released. Exceptional in both its innovative engineering and artistic ambition, Spinning Chandelier takes the subject of Grahams film and makes it physically manifest. Weighing over 7500 pounds, it is constructed of stainless steel, LED lamps and over 600 ... More
Visualizing Latino populations through art
LOS ANGELES (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Recently, my colleague Jose Del Real wrote about the role of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, the Mexican American community center and museum in downtown Los Angeles, in educating visitors about many of the lesser known and darker narratives from the citys history. In an exhibition thats open there now, artist Linda Vallejo aims to counter the fact that the perspectives of Latinos are still too often overlooked even if she knows she doesnt have all the answers to complex questions about identity and what it means to be a person of color in the United States. How I think about myself as a brown person, how I feel about myself and how the world sees me, Vallejo told me recently. I think we need a safe space to be able to speak about these things. Linda Vallejo: Brown Belongings, which opened this year, is the ... More
Miller & Miller announces results of the November 23rd Watches & Jewelry Auction
NEW HAMBURG.- An 18kt gold ring claw-set with a 4.25-carat solitaire diamond graded VS1 for clarity and K-L for color sold for $33,040 and a superb mens Patek Philippe 5110P World Time platinum wristwatch brought $29,500 at a Watches & Jewelry Auction held November 23rd by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd., online and in the firms gallery. The mens Patek Philippe 5110P World Time platinum wristwatch featured a deployant clasp, Guilloche center dial, skeleton caseback and marked 33 jewel movement. It came in the original mahogany presentation box with inlaid brass Calatrava lid. The 18kt gold ring claw-set with a 4.25-carat solitaire diamond exhibited good-medium cut and came with a certificate of appraisal. The sale 335 lots in all boasted luxury watches by famous makers like Omega, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Piaget, Omega, Tag Heuer and others, plus ... More
Nobel winner Mahfouz lives on in Cairo's alleyways
CAIRO (AFP).- The legacy of Islamic Cairo's most famous son Naguib Mahfouz lives on in its winding lanes more than three decades after he became the only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A mosaic of the bespectacled author overlooks a market teeming with children on bikes, waiters balancing trays of hot drinks and shoppers haggling with hawkers over the price of meat. It could be a scene straight out of a typical Mahfouz novel focusing on the minutiae of life in the Egyptian capital, with its satirically political overtones and timeless characters. After years in the making, a museum in the writer's honour opened in July this year. A new translation of previously unpublished Mahfouz work is also in print, underscoring 13 years after his death the mark he made both on world literature and on Egyptians themselves. In November, young writer Ahmed Mourad sparked ... More
The enduring power of the Detroit jazz collective Tribe
DETROIT (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Wendell Harrison sat at his dining room table on Chandler Street in the North End neighborhood on a recent Sunday afternoon, leafing through the pages of old Tribe magazines and dusting off copies of his earliest albums, which he self-released in the 1970s. Each LP and magazine was emblazoned with a striking insignia: two masklike profiles facing left and right, bisected by a spear. Letters spelling Tribe ran down the center of the logo in a twisting pattern, as if braiding the two faces together into a single shape. A saxophonist by trade and an organizer by nature, Harrison, 77, recalled when this table was the home base for the Tribe collective. Led by four jazz musicians, Tribes members put out their own records; published a widely influential, Afrocentric magazine with a circulation reaching 25,000; organized ... More
Not just a philharmonic residency: Daniil Trifonov is a New Yorker
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- When does someone become a New Yorker? Its sometimes said that it takes a decade. Or maybe its just when you no longer freak out when faced with a subway rat. For 28-year-old piano virtuoso Daniil Trifonov, one measure could be his season-long residency with New York Philharmonic, which begins Wednesday with an appearance as the soloist in Scriabins Piano Concerto. But this post is hardly temporary: Its a capstone of Trifonovs relationship with New York City and the Philharmonic, which has become something of a home orchestra for him. After making his debut in 2012, he has been a fixture with the ensemble, while also putting down roots in Lower Manhattan with his wife, Judith Ramirez, and their Yorkie, Ori. Why New York? Trifonov, who was born in Russia and came to the United States to study ... More
Dorothy Seymour Mills, uncredited baseball historian, dies at 91
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Dorothy Seymour Mills, who collaborated for more than 30 years on a landmark three-volume history of baseball with her first husband, Harold Seymour although he refused to credit her died on Nov. 17 in Tucson, Arizona. She was 91. Her friend Charmaine Wellington said the cause was complications of an ulcer. The Seymours work, which traced organized baseball from its roots until 1930 in the first two books, then detoured to a focus on amateur baseball in the third, has long been considered the first significant scholarly account of baseballs past. No one may call himself a student of baseball history without having read these indispensable works, John Thorn, Major League Baseballs official historian, wrote in Baseball Research Journal in 2010. Mills played numerous roles in the creation of Baseball: ... More
William Loren Katz, historian of African Americans, dies at 92
NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- The fountainhead of historian Bill Katzs immersion in African American culture was his fathers passion for jazz. Ben Katz had derived more pleasure from the music and its historical roots than from his day job as an art director for an advertising agency. Bill also inherited his fathers lust for learning and political consciousness. Before he was 10 he marched in a May Day rally to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine young African Americans falsely charged with rape in the early 1930s. His empathy for black Americans only grew. As a high school teacher and in some 40 books written under the name William Loren Katz, he awakened his readers to the integral roles that African Americans from rebellious slaves to cowboys who tamed the West had played in their nations history. He popularized their contributions in nonfiction ... More
Gerald Moore Gallery presents an exhibition of works by Patrick Altes
LONDON.- Gerald Moore Gallery is presenting Tolerance, an exhibition by Patrick Altes, curated by Middle Eastern art specialist Janet Rady (formerly of Sothebys and Lisson Gallery). Born in colonised Algeria and having lived in many countries - including South Africa under apartheid before settling in Britain in 2006, international artist Patrick Altess work is deeply informed by his own personal history and the diasporic experiences that have both defined his identity and fuelled his artistic exploration. A leading light in the emerging Franco-Algerian art movement, Altess first-hand experience of unjust, brutal and discriminatory societies fuelled a sense for the politically, socially and humanly acceptable which has become a thematic concern visible in all his creative work. With perilous journeys depositing migrants on European and now, British - shores, ... More
Wayne Thiebaud's Blueberry Custard sells for $3.2 Million at Heritage Auctions
DALLAS, TX.- Wayne Thiebauds Blueberry Custard, 1961 sold for $3,225,000 in Heritage Auctions Modern & Contemporary Art Auction to break the house record for the most expensive piece of Modern & Contemporary Art ever sold through Heritage Auctions. The painting was one of 16 lots sold that came from the private collection of the late Russ Solomon, founder of Tower Records, and boosted the total for the auction to $5,106,231. Blueberry Custard sparked bids from multiple collectors, and exceeded its high pre-auction estimate by 29%. Blueberry Custard was exhibited at Thiebauds first show at Allan Stone Gallery in 1962, said Holly Sherratt, Heritage Auctions San Francisco Director of Modern & Contemporary Art. It hung out of public view and appropriately in Russ Solomons kitchen ... More
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PhotoGalleries
Cars: Accelerating the Modern World
Somerset House
Mary Cameron
Treasures
Flashback On a day like today, French graphic artist Tomi Ungerer was born November 28, 1931. Jean-Thomas "Tomi" Ungerer (28 November 1931 - 9 February 2019) was an Alsatian artist and writer. He published over 140 books ranging from children's books to adult works and from the fantastic to the autobiographical. He was known for sharp social satire and witty aphorisms. Ungerer is also famous as a cartoonist and designer of political posters and film posters. Ungerer received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1998 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator.
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