| | The First Art Newspaper on the Net |   | Established in 1996 | Wednesday, March 6, 2019 |
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| | Cave of relics found under Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza | |
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The cave was found about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Temple of Kukulcan, the giant stepped pyramid that dominates the center of Chichen Itza. Photo Karla Ortega. Proyecto Gran Acuífero Maya.
MEXICO CITY (AFP).- Archaeologists have discovered a cave filled with hundreds of artifacts beneath the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico, the lead researcher on the project said Monday, calling the find "incredible." The massive cave is a "scientific treasure," Mexican archaeologist Guillermo de Anda told a news conference. He said it could help scientists better understand the origins, lives and beliefs of the residents of Chichen Itza, a stunning city of stone in the Yucatan peninsula that was founded sometime around 750 AD. The cave was found about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Temple of Kukulcan, the giant stepped pyramid that dominates the center of Chichen Itza. It sits about 24 meters (80 feet) underground, and contains multiple chambers connected by narrow passages -- often so narrow that researchers had to crawl or drag themselves ... More |
The Best Photos of the Day
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 | | Arata Isozaki of Japan wins Pritzker architecture prize | | Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction brings $122.8 million | | UK museum to return emperor's hair locks to Ethiopia | 
In this file photo taken on October 29, 2014 Japanese architect Arata Isozaki poses before a press conference at the "City Life office Tower", a skyscraper that was under construction in Milan. Giuseppe CACACE / AFP.
NEW YORK (AFP).- Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has been awarded the Pritzker Prize, considered architecture's highest honor, for a lifetime of work that found global resonance while mining local traditions. The 87-year-old's more than 100 built works range from the Palau Saint Jordi, built in Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Olympics, to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, his first international commission. His hometown of Otai, Japan is a showcase of his early work, including a medical hall and annex, and a prefectural library. "Isozaki is a pioneer in understanding that the need for architecture is both global and local -- that those two forces are part of a single challenge," the chair of the jury, US Justice Stephen Breyer, said as the prize was announced Tuesday. "For many years, he has been trying to make certain that areas of the world that have long traditions in architecture are not limited to that ... More | | 
Sale total: £93,205,800 / $122,835,924 / 107,932,591 well within the pre-sale estimate of £75.5 -104.5 million / $99.5-137.8 million / 87.4-121 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
LONDON.- In its auction debut, Lucian Freuds exquisite Head of a Boy (1956) sold for £5.8 million / $7.6 million / 6.7 million (est. £4.5-6.5 million), or £118,000 per square inch (49 square inches). Executed when Freud was just 34 years of age, works from the 1950s are incredibly rare to come to auction only 10 examples ever having appeared at auction previously. Head of a Boy achieved the highest price for a work by the artist from the 1950s. The painting is fresh to the market, having remained in the collection of the Irish cultural patron, the Hon. Garech Browne since its execution. Jean-Michel Basquiats encyclopaedic Apex (1986), sold for £8.2 million / $10.8 million / 9.5 million (est. £5,000,000-7,000,000) - last sold at auction in 1988 for £16,500 / $28,190 (est. £12,000-18,000). Three further works on paper by the artist exceeded their high estimates and achieved a combined total of £2.9 million / $3.8 million / 3.3 million. A further ... More | | 
'King Theodore taken soon after death, the original drawing done by me at Magdala', 1868. © National Army Museum, London.
LONDON (AFP).- A London museum said Monday it will return to Ethiopia locks of hair allegedly taken by British troops from an emperor who committed suicide rather than be captured over 150 years ago. The National Army Museum will repatriate the hair, cut from the head of emperor Tewodros II, following a formal request from Ethiopia last year. "We believe the Ethiopian government claim to repatriate is reasonable and we are pleased to be able to assist," said Terri Dendy, the museum's head of collections standards and care. She added it had reached the decision after spending "considerable time researching the provenance and cultural sensitivities around this matter". "(It) is very much based on the desire to inter the hair within the tomb alongside the emperor," Dendy said, adding that Tewodros was entombed in Trinity Monastery in northern Ethiopia. The museum noted it was returning the items on the basis they are "human remains". It acquired the two locks in 1959 -- one of which was ... More |
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| | | Retrospective exhibition of Franz West indoor sculptures opens at Omer Tiroche Gallery | | Exhibition at D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. explores the Shaped Canvas Movement | | Portrait of British military Officer who fought in America acquired by Colonial WIlliamsburg | 
Installation view.
LONDON.- Omer Tiroche Gallery is presenting a retrospective exhibition of Franz West indoor sculptures. The featured works span three decades of his career - from 1980 to 2010 - and showcase the development of his legendary papier-mâché sculptures. From his early Adaptives, also known as PaÃstücke, through his progression into what he called Legitimate Sculptures, this exhibition serves as a mini survey to coincide with the retrospective being held at the Tate Modern. Internationally celebrated for his humorous and playfully ambiguous sculptures, Franz West revolutionised the concept of sculpture through his pioneering efforts that explored the relationship between art and the viewer. West was heavily influenced by various performance art movements of the 1960s, including the Viennese Actionists, which he reinterpreted into his interactive papier-mâché Adaptives series. With this breakout body of work, West redefined the spectators ... More | | 
Charles Hinman, Orange Sunspot, 1979, 45 1/2 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas.
NEW YORK, NY.- D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. is presenting The Shaped Canvas Movement, an exhibition of 1960s paintings by ten Hard-Edge artists: Charles Hinman (b.1932), Sven Lukin (b.1934), Neil Williams (1934-1988), Thomas Downing (1928-1985), Paul Reed (1919-2015), Al Loving (1935-2005), Alexander Liberman (1912-1999), Francis Celentano (1928-2016), Theo Hios (1908-1998), and Ralph Iwamoto (1927-2013). By the 1960s abstraction was firmly rooted in American art and the rectangular canvas that replicates the viewers field of vision was no longer necessary. The artists in our exhibition saw the shape and depth of their canvas as one more choice in their creative process, presenting color and form in a balanced and exciting new way. Lawrence Alloway brought attention to this movement in his Guggenheim Museum exhibition The Shaped Canvas (December 1964-January 1965). The exhibition ... More | | 
Joseph Wright of Derby, Captain Richard Bayly, 1760-1761. Oil on canvas. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, The Friends of Colonial Williamsburg Collections Fund. Photo courtesy of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
WILLIAMSBURG, VA.- The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has recently acquired its first portrait by the well-known, eighteenth-century British landscape and portrait painter Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797). Equally compelling is its subject matter as it is rare to be able to show the faces of those who were involved in events that lead to the American Revolution and especially those who spent time in the Williamsburg area. Captain Richard Bayly (d. 1764), an Irishman who served in America with the 44th Regiment during the French and Indian War, sat for this portrait circa 1760 after his return to Britain, in the uniform he wore in America. The faces of early Americas military officers are largely lost to time, said Ghislain dHumières, Colonial Williamsburgs executive director ... More |
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| | | Nohra Haime Gallery opens an exhibition of works by Carol K. Brown | | South African painter Peter Sacks opens second solo exhibition at Marlborough Gallery | | Garvey│Simon presents a new series of illuminated, sculptural works by Bentley Meeker | 
A Few Were Quite Loud, 2018 (detail). Watercolor & mixed media on wooden panel, 36 x 36 in.
NEW YORK, NY.- Down the Rabbit Hole, Carol K. Brown's 9th solo show with Nohra Haime Gallery, is on view from March 6 - April 6, 2019. The exhibition includes a powerful focal piece consuming an entire wall, surrounded by twelve mixed media paintings on board and three sculptures. At the heart of Carol K. Browns multifaceted practice, which has encompassed sculpture, painting, drawing, video and digital manipulation, there has always been an interest in creating similar structures with slight variations. The organization of these elements has served as a departure point to explore her concerns. Previously, those forms were figurative or anthropomorphic, however she has recently made a radical departure. Rather than literal representation, Down the Rabbit Hole engages with contemporary politics in an abstract sense by combining the poetic with political engagement. Seemingly decorative ... More | | 
Peter Sacks, Codex 57, 2018-2017, Mixed Media, 22 x 18 inches.
NEW YORK, NY.- Marlborough Gallery announced the second solo exhibition at the gallery of works by U.S.-based, South African painter Peter Sacks. The exhibition will include some 20 new paintings, including large triptychs, as well as 39 works on paper from the Purgatorio series. The show will open on Wednesday, March 6th, and will remain on view through March 30th. Peter Sacks reinvents the practice of collage utilizing a striking variety of materialscottons, burlap, lace, wood, cardboard. Often one will find text typed onto fabric by the artist using a manual typewriter visible just beneath the final surface of a canvas. The artist refers to his now signature technique as excavating in reverse. By incorporating pieces of fabric as well as actual fragments of clothing from Africa, India, Europe, Syria, and Asia, the paintings achieve a universal humanity, becoming richly textured, fluid views of worlds that are both ... More | | 
Bentley Meeker, Untitled, 2019 (BEM002), Resin, wood, canvas, LED lights, 21.5 x 21.5 x 8 in.
NEW YORK, NY.- Garvey|Simon presents Exploring Light, a new series of illuminated, sculptural works by Bentley Meeker. The exhibition will take place during Armory week at 517 W. 37th Street NY, NY 10018, a street level gallery space in the Hudson Yards district in close proximity to the fairs. The show will be open and on view Tuesday - Saturday, 11am-6pm, and by appointment. An artist talk will be held in the gallery on Saturday, March 16, at 2pm. This new work is the result of Meekers observations and research into visible light and its impact on the human psyche. The artists expertise comes from decades of experimentation, study and use of varying light frequencies via his studio practice, as well as his commercial career as a renown lighting designer. Meekers work is primarily focused around the essence and exploration of lights nature, its meaning to us, and the changes in our collective use of li ... More |
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| | | Outcry over Saudi funding plan for Milan's La Scala | | Tanya Bonakdar opens the first gallery exhibition in the United States of Brazilian artist Laura Lima | | Getty Museum announces donation of 105 holograms created by 20 noted artists | 
Milan's La Scala opera house. Photo: Jean-Christophe Benoist /wikipedia.org
MILAN (AFP).- A proposal to use 15 million euros in Saudi Arabian government funds for Milan's La Scala opera house came under fire on Tuesday because of anger over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The October killing of the Washington Post contributor in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul sparked international outrage. Riyadh denies any involvement and says the killing was carried out by rogue agents. In an interview on Tuesday in La Repubblica newspaper, La Scala director Alexander Pereira confirmed the historic theatre has negotiated a financing deal with the Saudi culture ministry. Pereira said the proposal was for a partnership of at least five years to raise three million euros a year. He said talks with Saudi officials were suggested by people close to regional Lombardy region president Attilio Fontana, a member of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini's nationalist League party. In December, at the start of the new La Scala ... More | | 
Laura Lima, Nomad, 2008/2019. Acrylic on shaped canvas, 32 1/2 x 25 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches; 82.6 x 64.8 x 3.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.
NEW YORK, NY.- Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is presenting the first gallery exhibition in the United States of Brazilian artist Laura Lima. Titled, I hope this finds you well. , this is the artists first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from February 21- April 4. Since the mid--1990s Limas practice has been a domain for transgressioncontinually escaping traditional classifications, her work attempts to visually articulate a personal glossary of concepts that the artist has worked and reworked over the course of her career. The conceptual structure of Limas work is underpinned by the equation Man=flesh/Woman=flesh. First conceived by the artist in a group of works by the same name, the concept of Man=flesh/Woman=flesh transcends hierarchies and explores the binary of the living and non-living. For Lima there is no ... More | | 
Larry Bell, Untitled, 1994 - 1999. H2 Hologram Dimensions: Plate: 11 5/8 à 15 1/2 in. Accession No. 2018.12.4 © 2018 Larry Bell / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of AMPC LLC through the auspices of Guy and Nora Barron.
LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today the acquisition of 105 glass plate holograms by 20 artists related to the C-Project, a collaboration developed in the early 1990s between a select group of internationally renowned contemporary artists and holographers who experimented with the hologram process. The acquisition is a donation by the Archival Master Plate Collection, LLC, through Guy and Nora Barron. Mr. Barron joined the C-Project shortly after it was formed in 1994. Coinciding with the donation to the Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute will receive part of the C-project archive, including research and correspondence, photographs, digital files, VHS tapes and films, and collages. The donation includes 89 non-editioned hologram ... More |
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Explore the Ancient Map to a God's Celestial Palace
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| | More News |
 Captain Marvel, a superhero with girl power to spareLOS ANGELES (AFP).- Iron Man, Thor, Captain America: scores of Marvel movies had superheroes taking turns to save the world on the big screen before a woman finally captured a leading role in the comic franchise's films. But "Captain Marvel" -- which hits screens around the world later this week -- is making up for lost time, firing girl power on all cylinders. There are women masterfully piloting war planes, at the front lines of important scientific experiments -- and of course, there's Carol Danvers, Brie Larson's mighty Captain Marvel. Larson, who won an Oscar in 2016 for her role in "Room," has until now been best known for her work on independent movies and her outspoken feminism. To play Danvers, Larson spent nine months in rigorous physical training. "I was able to push myself further than I ever thought possible," Larson said at the movie's premiere ... More Tallinn Art Hall opens exhibition of recent works by Liina SiibTALLINN.- Liina Siib's work pays acute attention to the minor narratives concealed in the shadows of our tense economic situation and accelerated way of life. Bringing together new and old works, this exhibition mediates intergenerational conversations between individual lives and complex, gendered histories of privilege and power. Siib's most recent work explores the ongoing regional economic migration through the eyes of Estonian women working in Finland. This contemporary polyphony of personal stories, desires and realities is reflected in the new installation Urban Symphony in E-minor III. The video and installation Augusta or Politics of Paradise focuses on the tragic fate of one woman in the local historical context. Both works featured in this exhibition continue Siibs lengthy artistic investigations into the entangled political and habitual claims to space, ... More Wright Gallery at Texas A&M University debuts "She Matters" art exhibitCOLLEGE STATION, TX.- The Wright Gallery in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University announces the second show of its 2019 season, She Matters. She Matters is a multidisciplinary exhibition that depicts the perspectives of women of color in todays society. The exhibit will be on display March 6 through April 26, 2019. She Matters chronicles eight female artists as they respond to the violence, discrimination, prejudice and misrepresentation often seen in the news and experienced on a daily basis by women of color. The title itself is a response - that these women and their stories matter. She Matters originated as a group show for the Art League in Houston titled How Do I Say Her Name? in 2017. Curated by Assistant Professor of Practice at Prairie View A&M University, Ann Johnson, the original group show included all of the same artists and was s ... More 2019 edition of The Art Show drew top collectorsNEW YORK, NY.- The Art Show, organized to benefit Henry Street Settlement by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), closed its 2019 edition on Sunday with ADAA members, collectors, museum leaders, and visitors alike voicing enthusiasm for the fairs thoughtfully curated presentations, intimate scale, and welcoming atmosphere. Mounted annually at the Park Avenue Armory by the ADAA, a nonprofit membership organization of the leading art dealers from around the country, The Art Show 2019 matched its unparalleled reputation as a distinct fair experience that encourages active conversations with gallerists and close looking at works of the highest quality by artists from the 19th century to today. Kicking off the spring art season in New York, The Art Show opened with the annual Gala Preview on Wednesday, February 27, welcoming some of the ... More Group show at Petzel investigates multifarious appropriation methodsNEW YORK, NY.- Petzel announces Strategic Vandalism: The Legacy of Asger Jorns Modifications Paintings. Situated in the context of the first thrift store paintings altered by Danish artist Asger Jorn, this group show of over 30 prominent international artists investigates multifarious appropriation methods spanning from the mid-1960s to the flourishing techniques of the 1980s, up to the present day. But flashback to Paris, 1959: Asger Jorn exhibits a group of paintings at the prominent Galerie Rive Gauche. Not only has he re-worked these found paintings with his own brush, modifying their respective surfaces, but he also writes a text describing his technique as a recovery of certain iconographic archetypes. Instead of making a mockery of these kitsch paintings, he articulates some of their inherent folk-art values. The exhibition is not well received. However, ... More Unseen collection of photographs by Francis Bruguière to be offered at auction in LondonLONDON.- Chiswick Auctions have been appointed to sell an important private collection of photographic works by one of the most important photographers in the development of photography, Francis Bruguière (1879-1945). Works include unseen and unpublished photographic prints and negatives spanning the ground-breaking photographers career. They will be offered in a single-owner sale of Photographica on March 19th, 2019. Austin Farahar, Head of Chiswick Auctions Photographica department, said: This sale poses an incredibly rare opportunity to acquire some of the most exciting, experimental and thoroughly progressive photographic works by any visual artist in the early part of the 20th century. Seeing a broad selection of work from across such an important photographers career gives a fascinating insight into a man that was one of the most ... More Garage Museum of Contemporary Art offers a major review of key works by Pavel PeppersteinMOSCOW.- Garage Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Russian artist, writer, musician, and art theorist Pavel Pepperstein (b. 1966, Moscow). Introduced to the circle of Moscow Conceptualists as a child, since the beginning of his career Pepperstein has been one of the most prolific mythmakers in Russian contemporary art. He is an inventor of systems, universes, languages, cities, and political projects. Peppersteins solo exhibition at Garage reviews the key myths he has created since the 1970s: from imaginary countries for which he has developed detailed maps and national symbols to ecstatic or, on the contrary, ultra-logical visions of the future; from religions, cults, beliefs, and rituals to alternative realities that exist in parallel dimensions and modalities. The exhibition at Garage is organized as a sequence of galleries, each inhabited ... More Edwynn Houk Gallery exhibits Nick Brandt's first body of work in colorNEW YORK, NY.- Edwynn Houk Gallery is presenting This Empty World (2018), a new series by contemporary artist Nick Brandt. The artists first body of work in color, This Empty World is a blazoning exploration of the vulnerability of animals and humans in an era of environmental degradation. This exhibition, which marks the series U.S. debut, opened on Thursday, 21 February. Brandts vision communicates the urgency of environmental issues with undiluted conviction. By using color for the first time, this work amplifies the immediacy of todays environmental crisis, departing from the timeless classicism of black and white photography. Predominantly nighttime scenes, the series most saturated fields of color are the blinding artificial lights that illuminate the dark but also reveal the negative aspects of development, affecting both animals and humans. ... More Exhibition at Skarstedt presents a new body of work by David SalleLONDON.- Skarstedt opened an exhibition of a new body of work by David Salle (b. 1952) at the London gallery. Presented for the first time, these vibrant paintings showcase Salles continued preoccupation with composition - the process of establishing the relationships of everything in the painting to everything else - as both the engine of painting and its subject. All the elements of painting are relational, and their relations can either be fixed, or liable to shift. Salle has made the shifting, swirling, dynamic of pictorial/spatial relationships his arena. Un-equal, or un-stable relationships are one of the sources of humour in Salles work. Images and objects, as they are depicted in his paintings have a way of confounding assumptions; often one image will conjoin with another, or turn out to be something else entirely, according to the context. His paintings ... More Pollock-Krasner Foundation awards Pollock Prize for Creativity to Todd WilliamsonNEW YORK, NY.- The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has awarded the Pollock Prize for Creativity to Todd Williamson. The $50,000 award will be directed towards Williamsons exhibition Processional, a solo installation on view during the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, May 9 through November 24, 2019. In partnership with MAK Center for Art and Architecture and curated by MAK Executive Director Priscilla Fraser, Processional will be presented at the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pietà , located on Riva degli Schiavoni between St. Marks Square and the entrance to the Arsenale. Williamsons eight large-scale canvases will be displayed on the walls of a narrow chapel and will interact with the 18th-century churchs classically proportioned interior, challenging perceived order and tradition. The exhibition will explore contemporary ... More Treasure trove of near-complete first edition run of Beatrix Potter tale comes to auction at Ewbank'sWOKING.- A treasure trove of the near-complete first edition run of a Beatrix Potter tale will be auctioned on March 22 at Ewbanks in Surrey, UK. The author wrote The Tale of The Faithful Dove in 1907 for the children of her publishers, Frederick Warne & Co. It was just two years after her fiancé, Norman Warne, the youngest of the three Warne siblings, had died of pernicious anaemia, and she had developed a close and lasting relationship with the family. Potter had wanted to call the story the Tale of Jenny Crow, but Normans brother Fruing persuaded her to adopt the title eventually selected. However, she could not be persuaded to illustrate the story herself: Beatrix jibbed at the rather namby pamby pigeons, since they left little scope for pictorial variety it is too much pigeon over and over and she had never been good at birds, Fruing ... More |
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Flashback On a day like today, Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo was born March 06, 1475. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni or more commonly known by his first name Michelangelo (6 March 1475 - 18 February 1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. In this image: A portrait painting (ca. 1544) of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra hangs on the wall at the Michelangelo exhibit titled 'Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 13, 2017 in New York City.
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