M.C. Escher (1898 – 1972), Bond of Union, 1956, lithograph, 25.3 x 33.9 cm. Private Collection, M.C. Escher Image copyright of the M.C. Escher Co.
VERO BEACH, FLA.-The Vero Beach Museum of Art announced a new exhibition featuring the works of world-renowned graphic artist and arguably the most famous printmaker of the modern era, Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), M.C. Escher: Infinite Variations, will open at the VBMA on September 30, and will be on display through December 30, 2023. The exhibition will feature more than 100 works and showcases Escher's various groundbreaking techniques and subjects. The exhibition will display works throughout his career – from his early Italian landscape sketches, self-portraits, and book illustrations to his most iconic images of impossible spaces, tessellations, infinity, and his metamorphosis series. "Escher has to be one of the most recognized artists of the twentieth century. His mind- bending, reality-warping prints inclu ... More
Gaëtan Bruel, in the Atelier he commissioned. (William Laird via The New York Times)
by Wendy Moonan
NEW YORK, NY.- It was a surprising diplomatic event on New York’s Upper East Side — one that started with an auspicious “bonsoir,” and ended with an unexpected “au revoir.” Gaëtan Bruel, the director of French cultural services in the United States, gathered with dignitaries at Villa Albertine, its headquarters, on Sept. 20, to announce additional initiatives supporting increased French American cultural exchange. Bruel, with Laurent Bili, the French ambassador to the United States, and Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, offered up a greatly expanded model for artists’ residencies that would let even more French or French-speaking artists, scholars and artisans travel anywhere in the United States — or even, in one case, around the world on a French container ship. “This France is perhaps less polished, possibly less expected, certainly more diverse, younger, more daring, surprising,” Bruel said. He added, “Why ... More
Jacolby Satterwhite at The Great Hall of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Sept. 14, 2023. Bucking the rules, and the canon, Satterwhite remakes the Met’s Great Hall with his multimedia “A Metta Prayer.” It draws on Titian and video games. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)
by Ted Loos
NEW YORK, NY.- From the soaring Beaux-Arts architecture to the pristine flower arrangements, the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can be a humbling, even intimidating entry point for visitors. The artist Jacolby Satterwhite is having none of that. His new Great Hall Commission, “A Metta Prayer,” turns the museum’s solemnity into a funky, queer-infused love poem to the universe, set to an acid house beat. The installation, made of digital projections and a soundtrack, will be on view through Jan. 7. The piece will feature live performances on weekends in October and November, as well as opening night, Monday, Oct. 2. The video may be the only time Met visitors will hear a benediction like, “May we always keep our wigs on our heads.” Amen. Satterwhite, ... More
NEW YORK, NY.- A worker at the Deutsches Museum in Munich stole paintings from the collection, replaced them with rough forgeries, then sold the originals at auction, according to the judgment of a court in the city this month. The thief used the proceeds to finance a luxurious lifestyle, the judge said. The worker, who is identified in court documents by the initials S.K., in keeping with German privacy law, was convicted of stealing four paintings by early 20th-century German artists from storerooms over nearly two years and avoiding detection by replacing the artworks with copies. He then sold three of the pieces at auction; the fourth failed to find a buyer. Judge Erlacher of the district court in Munich sentenced the man to a one-year, nine-month commuted prison sentence and ordered him to repay the roughly $63,000 he got from the sale. The thief’s evident remorse and willingness to work with the court were given as ... More
An intricate family tree map of Christian Agostino Von Hassell’s family in his home in New York on July 20, 2023. (Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times)
by Chelsia Rose Marcius
NEW YORK, NY.- The 18th-century French writing desk that once belonged to Ulrich von Hassell, a German diplomat executed on the orders of Adolf Hitler, had sat for 12 years in a self-storage unit in Queens. The desk had been passed down five generations to Christian Agostino von Hassell, his American grandson, who had stowed it with hundreds of other heirlooms, some dating back centuries. They were tucked away with, among other things, roughly a dozen oil paintings of ancestors; an armoire, wall sconces and Persian rugs; and samurai armor from Japan, gifts Christian von Hassell received during his service in the U.S. Marine Corps. There were at least 1,000 books, most leather-bound and embossed with the von Hassell coat of arms. Many were from von Hassell’s great-grandfather, Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, who led the German navy under Emperor Wilhelm II during World War I. The desk — worth $39,000, but invaluable in emotional and historical significance — was stored with the other items in ... More
Thomas Schumacher speaks during a press conference in Times Square in Manhattan, on Sept. 18, 2020. The longtime head of the Disney’s theater operations is becoming the division’s chief creative officer, relinquishing his role overseeing its business operations.(Jeenah Moon/The New York Times)
NEW YORK, NY.- Thomas Schumacher, the longtime head of Disney’s theatrical arm, a key force behind “The Lion King,” and one of the most powerful people on Broadway, is relinquishing his role overseeing the division’s business operations and stepping into a purely creative role. Schumacher, who is 65 and holds the titles of president and producer of Disney Theatrical Group, told his staff Thursday morning that he will take on a new role as the division’s chief creative officer. His two closest deputies, Andrew Flatt and Anne Quart, will now jointly run the unit as executive vice presidents. Disney has for three decades been the biggest corporate player on Broadway, and it remains an enormously significant factor in the industry. “The Lion King,” which has been running on Broadway for 25 years, regularly outsells its competitors — last week it was, as it often has been, the top-grossing show. Schumacher’s portfolio has included not only Disney’s Broadwa ... More
David Salle at his studio in East Hampton, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2023. Salle, one of America’s most thoughtful painters, hoped an AI program could nourish creativity. (Justin Kaneps/The New York Times)
by Zachary Small
NEW YORK, NY.- Of the many young artists David Salle has mentored, none were ever as challenging as his latest student, who cannot hold a paintbrush or a conversation. “The mountain looks too airbrushed,” Salle informed the algorithm that lives inside his iPad. The landscape painting it had produced, based on hundreds of his own artworks, was typically generic, lacking in depth. But the next one succeeded, depicting a valley stream with expressionistic wisps and a sense of volume. “The way it has rendered water looks more deliberate,” Salle, 70, said. “But it’s funny to call something deliberate when it has no consciousness, isn’t it?” For nearly a year, the painter — known for edgy images appropriated from art history and popular culture, as well as juxtapositions of voluptuous nudes and ham sandwiches — has attempted to defy conventional thinking about generative artificial intelligence by testing an AI program’s capacity to become a sophistica ... More
Jared Quinton, Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
HARTFORD, CONN.- The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art has announced the appointment of Jared Quinton as the Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. Quinton, the Wadsworth’s interim curator of contemporary art since November 2022, is preparing to open the forthcoming Rules and Repetition: Conceptual Art at the Wadsworth (October 26, 2023–February 18, 2024). The exhibition presents iconic works by Sol LeWitt and other pioneering conceptual artists of the 1960s and ‘70s who developed and embraced serial repetition and other conceptualist strategies alongside more recent acquisitions by artists who adopted the earlier approaches to address identity, environment, and politics. Quinton is also curator of Talia Chetrit / MATRIX 193 (opening October 6) and organized the three previous MATRIX exhibitions featuring Lisa Alvarado, Matt Paweski, and Stephanie Syjuco. ... More
Juri Markkula, Heaven - Rose, 2023, Interference Pigment Polyurethane, 75 x 50 x 5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ora-Ora.
HONG KONG.-Ora-Ora is is now presenting a new solo show by Finnish artist Juri Markkula, taking place in its Tai Kwun gallery in Hong Kong. The exhibition is titled: Heavens. The artist is presenting new works from his Heaven series, wall-mounted sculptures of industrial heft, and overwhelming, ethereal beauty. Each sculpture is titled with a colour. Yet each defies colour categorization, and is illuminated and guided by experience and instinct. The artist derives inspiration from the Swedish concept of himmel and the Finnish equivalent taivas. Each word holds a dual meaning, referring both to the paradise of an eternal afterlife, as well as the atmosphere and skies above us. This series therefore incarnates a physical and a spiritual realm. Speaking of Juri Markkula’s new solo show, CEO and co-founder of Ora-Ora Dr. Henrietta Tsui-Leung said: “Juri’s artworks are captivating to the widest ... More
Arshile Gorky (1904 – 1948), Abstract Composition, 1930. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm (19.7 x 15.75 in).
NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA.- Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Auguste Renoir, Alexej von Jawlensky, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Max Liebermann, Chaïm Soutine (to whom the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf is currently devoting a major solo exhibition), Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Henry van de Velde*: These and other outstanding representatives of the avant-garde movements in art are now being presented by the Osthaus Museum until January 07, 2024 in the exhibition "European Avant-Garde - Vision and Reality". On view are more than 80 works - 60 paintings, five sculptures, and a body of works on paper - by French, Belgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Austrian, and German artists from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Parallel to this, a second exhibition entitled "David and Vladimir Burliuk - Masters of Experiments" is showing more than 40 ... More
LOS ANGELES, CA.- Since the 1970s, Jenny Holzer has deployed language as her medium, mobilizing poetic, political and personal texts to speak to our experiences of power, violence, joy, despair and idealism. The renowned American artist is presenting new and recent paintings and robotic LEDs at Hauser & Wirth’s West Hollywood location, marking her first major exhibition in Los Angeles since 2012 and the first time she has employed artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in her text-based practice. Through her timely reflections on the American experience over the last four decades—including the country’s current shift into the latest phase of the Information Age, the burgeoning era of AI—Holzer has always pushed the frontiers of contemporary art and language, and this new group of works is no exception. Among the new works Holzer has created for the exhibition are two robotic vertical LEDs installed side by side, each display ... More
The Sycamore Gap tree, near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, England, in December 2021. (Andy Haslam/The New York Times)
by Jenny Gross
LONDON.- A 16-year-old boy was arrested Thursday on suspicion of criminal damage after one of Britain’s most famous trees, a sycamore that stood in a dip in Hadrian’s Wall, was cut down overnight in what authorities described as “an act of vandalism.” “We have reason to believe it has been deliberately felled,” Northumberland National Park said of the beloved tree, known as the Sycamore Gap tree, in a statement that was issued before the arrest. The teenager was in custody and was assisting with the investigation, the Northumbria Police said Thursday. Voted Tree of the Year in 2016 in the Woodland Trust awards, the Sycamore Gap tree, located about 100 miles southeast of Edinburgh, was several hundred years old and was featured in the 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. Sophie Henderson, a landscape ... More
Michael Gambon, left, and Eileen Atkins in a scene from “All That Fall” at 59E59 Theater in Manhattan on Nov. 5, 2013. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
by Benedict Nightingale
NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Gambon, the Irish-born actor who drew acclaim from both audiences and peers for his stage and screen work, and who won even wider renown as Albus Dumbledore, the firm but kindly headmaster of the Hogwarts wizarding school in the “Harry Potter” films, died Wednesday night. He was 82. Gambon’s family confirmed his death in a brief statement issued Thursday through a public relations company. “Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife, Anne, and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia,” the statement said. It did not identify the hospital where he died. The breakthrough that led actor Ralph Richardson to call him “the great Gambon” came with Gambon’s performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” at London’s National Theater in 1980, although he had already enjoyed modest success, notably in plays ... More
Quote I start from something considered dead and arrive at a world. Joan Miró
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Onstage, Michael Gambon's depth transcended the unspoken NEW YORK, NY.- Even in silence, he thundered. Make that, especially in silence. The last two times I saw the mighty Michael Gambon onstage, his characters didn’t have much to say, and in one case, nothing at all. Both the plays in which this British actor, who died Wednesday at the age of 82, was appearing on those occasions were by Samuel Beckett, “Eh Joe” and “All That Fall.” Few, if any dramatists, made better use of the resonance of the unspoken than Beckett. And few actors brought such profound visceral weariness — and agitation — to Beckett’s wordlessness. Even in performances that required him to bellow, quip or speechify, Gambon made sure we were aware of the gravitational force of mortality, tugging the men he played so commandingly toward a void beyond meaning, beyond will, beyond life. He was not an ... More
Review: Some problems with contemporary ballet NEW YORK, NY.- As a genre, contemporary ballet can feel nebulous and far-reaching — for better or worse, anything goes. In the case of BalletX, a Philadelphia company formed by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan in 2005, the aim is to produce new works expanding the possibilities of ballet. It’s a noble cause. For its program at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan, which began Wednesday, BalletX offered a trio of recent works, including an older dance by Neenan and a pair of New York premieres, both from 2022, by Jennifer Archibald and Jamar Roberts. The choreography had a certain angle, a certain point of departure — even a certain splashiness — but it remained less than memorable. Two featured live music, including Roberts’ “Honey,” whose focus — as hinted at in the title — is love. After an opening section, the six dancers ... More
'Melissa Etheridge: My Window' review: Musings on life and music NEW YORK, NY.- In 1979, when Melissa Etheridge was an aspiring rock star getting ready to leave Leavenworth, Kansas, for music school in Boston, she got a 12-string guitar. Her father made a macrame strap for it — a sturdy, intricate piece of knot work that was a portable souvenir of his love. “And this is it,” his Grammy Award-winning daughter said during her Broadway show, turning around to give everyone a view of the strap that held up her instrument. It was a charming moment, and in our high-definition, multiscreen world, refreshingly analog: just Etheridge, life-size and in 3D, sharing the room with us. Share it she does, superbly, in “Melissa Etheridge: My Window,” which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theater, just one block east of where an earlier version of the show ran off-Broadway last fall. On Broadway ... More
Ray Johnson's elusive dream: 'I Want to Dance' NEW YORK, NY.- “I am now so very excited I cannot sleep,” artist Ray Johnson wrote to a friend after a visit to Chicago in 1949. “I have suddenly got the idea in my head that I want to dance.” Johnson, 22 and fresh out of art school, had immersed himself in books on modern dance subjects — Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham. “In Chicago we saw the wonderful dancer Sybil Shearer,” he wrote. “I was taken with her — respected her so much because she seemed such a complete artist in every way.” Johnson, the collage and mail artist whom The New York Times once called “New York’s most famous unknown artist,” did not go on to have a career in dance. But his animated letter raises an interesting question: What does dance have to do with his art? The recent discovery of a group of early Johnson collages sheds ... More
His music spanned classical and disco. Now a 'Lost' work sounds again. NEW YORK, NY.- Arthur Russell — former Midwesterner, avant-gardist in the making — moved to New York from San Francisco in the early 1970s to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where his teachers included composer Charles Wuorinen. It wasn’t a happy relationship. Call it a clash of uptown and downtown, when such a dichotomy existed: Wuorinen, a prickly modernist of the academy, versus Russell, a post-Cagean thinker from Allen Ginsberg’s circle who was into Indian classical music. Neither was likely to be a fan of the other, and things came to a head over Russell’s “City Park,” created and first performed in 1973. The piece blends texts from Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein with a nonlinear, modular score of repetitive phrases and Fluxus-inspired directions. Russell is said to have explained to Wuorinen that the ... More
Oppenheim Architecture wins competition for Albanian restoration and museum TIRANA.- Following a two-phase competition with over 40 entries, leading international firm Oppenheim Architecture has been awarded the contract for Besa Museum, Albania’s newest cultural institution. Oppenheim’s European office, based in Basel, Switzerland, has been working on a diverse set of projects in Albania, ranging from commercial and multifamily to hospitality, for over two years. Besa Museum represents one of its most prestigious yet, honoring the nation’s rich cultural heritage and welcoming spirit. With this latest institutional work, Oppenheim Architecture cements its place as the go-to firm redefining Albania’s architectural landscape. “We are honored to represent Albania through the Besa Museum,” states Director of Oppenheim Architecture Europe Beat Huesler. “Since beginning our work in Albania ... More
France-Lise McGurn and Rita McGurn featured in exhibition 'Matching Mother/Daughter Tattoos' NEW YORK, NY.- The story was, me returning home from a trip to NY and showing her my new black star tattoo I got to match hers. She was busy cooking, as per, and turned to me with an eyebrow raised. In her kinda cutting sarcasm she said ‘matching mother daughter tattoos? Charming.’ She was half smiling and DEEPLY unimpressed. Margot Samel is currently presenting Matching Mother/Daughter Tattoos a two-person exhibition featuring artists France-Lise McGurn and Rita McGurn. In spite of the warmth and succour that they provide, familial relationships are not without a degree of complexity. Nor should any account of them become so reductive as to obscure that. A defining paradox of any feminist approach is the necessity to speak both on behalf of a collectively disenfranchised group, and yet as an individual. This ... More
Selma Feriani announces the January 2024 launch of a new large-scale gallery space in Tunis TUNIS.- Selma Feriani announces the launch of a new gallery space in January 2024, a few kilometers northeast of the Tunisian capital’s downtown area. The eponymous gallery, the first commercial space of its kind in North Africa, is designed by architect Chacha Atallah and spans 2000m2. It marks over a decade of growth for the gallery, at home and internationally, as celebrated with the inaugural exhibition of unseen work by Paris-based Tunisian artist Nidhal Chamekh. Running from 25 January – 7 April 2024, a substantial part of the exhibition will be produced in Tunis at the gallery’s L’Atelier space. Curated by Kathryn Weir (Paris) with the assistance of curator Salma Kossemtini (Tunis), Chamekh’s exhibition ‘Et si Carthage… / And what if Carthage…’ is inspired by French writer and theoretician Édouard Glissant’s poem dedicated ... More
Cody Choi, South Korean artist, is exhibiting second solo exhibition at Philipp von Rosen Galerie COLOGNE.-Philipp von Rosen Galerie inaugurated earlier this month its second solo exhibition with Cody Choi. In Animal Totem + NFT we will be showing data-based works on canvas that combine digital data print- ing with traditional painting techniques, as well as NFTs. Long before the mainstream media focused as intensively as it currently does on the subject of artificial intelli- gence, and long before it flooded the art world, Cody Choi (*1961 in Seoul, where he lives and works), who is not only a visual artist but also a theorist, had been exploring digital data and algorithmic processes as the basis for art. He had been researching concepts of data creation and digitization of masterpieces from 1997 to 1998 and was firmly convinced that digital data would replace imagination as a resource for creativity in the 21st century and that the algorithmically ... More
The International Center of Photography announces fall 2023 exhibition schedule NEW YORK, NY.-The International Center of Photography announced the fall 2023 exhibition schedule, featuring three concurrent exhibitions that present diverse aspects of ICP’s exhibitions program: Muriel Hasbun: Tracing Terruño; Immersion: Gregory Halpern, Raymond Meeks, and Vasantha Yogananthan; and Play the Part: Marlene Dietrich will be on view through January 8, 2024. “These three distinct exhibitions emphasize the diversity of imagemaking that ICP continues to champion, presenting in one season a wide range of artistic practices and forms of photography including experimental processes, documentary, commercial, editorial, and vernacular,” said ICP Executive Director David E. Little. “Together, they celebrate many strands of photography throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.” Muriel Hasbun: Tracing ... More
Craft Contemporary appoints Rody N. Lopez as new executive director LOS ANGELES, CA.-Craft Contemporary announced the appointment of Rody N. Lopez as the new Executive Director of Craft Contemporary, succeeding Suzanne Isken who successfully led the museum since 2011 and announced her plans to retire in May. Lopez started in his new position on September 25, 2023. “We are thrilled to welcome Rody to the museum – he brings with him a keen understanding of art and the nonprofit landscape, and his passion and vision will be critical as the museum enters this next chapter. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I’d also like to thank Suzanne for her extraordinary leadership for the past twelve years, under which the museum has grown immeasurably,” said Joseph Coriaty, chair of the search committee. Lopez has held numerous administrative positions at museums and nonprofits ... More
Learn about the four masterpieces from Bargello National Museum in Florence hosted by the DIA.
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Flashback
On a day like today, film star James Dean died in a road accident
September 30, 1955. James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 - September 30, 1955) was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were as loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955), and as the surly ranch hand, Jett Rink, in Giant (1956). Dean's enduring fame and popularity rests on his performances in only these three films, all leading roles. His premature death in a car crash cemented his legendary status. In this image: Actor James Dean is seen in a scene from the Warner Bros. 1956 epic, "Giant." Years after the making of the movie, teenagers are still trying for the cool that was James Dean, the poster boy for the tortured netherworld between child and adult.
