Installation view of Signals: How Video Transformed the World, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from March 5 – July 08, 2023. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.
by Jason Farago
NEW YORK, NY.- Beauty is nice, elegance has its place, but sometimes I go to museums to be perplexed: to agree and disagree, to argue and reassess, to leave even less certain than I was before. I sure got my wish with “Signals: How Video Transformed the World,” which closes this weekend at the Museum of Modern Art — and which, screen for screen, hour for hour, stands proud as the most perplexing exhibition of the year. Maybe a dozen times since its opening in March, I have ascended to MoMA’s top floor for this ambitious, irregular exhibition of video art, the largest this museum has ever put on. I’ve swum through its panoply of screens and projections, broadcasting more footage than any one visitor could ever take in. Did I like it? I still have no idea after four months, though my feelings about “Signals” have settled into some unholy mix of admiration, bafflement, intellectual provocation, political fatalism and (in the case of one work) absolute fury. Given the r ... More
David Adjaye, lead architect of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, weeks before its opening in Washington, Sept. 8, 2016. (Justin T. Gellerson/The New York Times)
by Robin Pogrebin and Alex Marshall
NEW YORK, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem announced Thursday that it had taken the significant step of parting ways with David Adjaye, a charismatic Ghanaian British architect who is building its new home in Manhattan. A library project in Portland, Oregon, is moving forward without him. A sculpture park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, canceled a show of his work planned for fall. And other cultural institutions from Princeton, New Jersey, to Liverpool, England, expressed serious concerns in response to the allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against Adjaye that surfaced this week. “The actions being alleged are counter to the founding ... More
An Egyptian painted wood anthropoid coffin for the lady Irtwrw, Third Intermediate Period-Late Period, circa 25th-26th Dynasty, circa 747-525 B.C.173cm high. Sold for £406,800. Photo: Bonhams.
LONDON.- A rare Egyptian painted wood coffin came to auction for the first time at Bonhams Antiquities Sale on Thursday 6 July 2023. The elaborately decorated coffin for the lady Irtwrw, circa 747-525 B.C, in a remarkable state of preservation, achieved an impressive £406,800, against a pre-sale estimate of £80,000 - 120,000. Francesca Hickin, Head of Antiquities at Bonhams commented, “This was an exceptional and very rare piece in a fantastic condition. Egyptian painted wood coffins, complete with their full lid and back, rarely come up for auction and this one had excellent provenance as part of the remarkable Bodo Bless collection of Egyptian Antiquities. This was the best example of an Egyptian anthropoid coffin that we have had at ... More
Toots Zynsky, Untitled #11 Vessel, c. 1993.
CHICAGO, IL.- On July 27, Hindman will present Never Too Much, the spirited fourth installment of the firm’s fine art and design summer auction series inspired by a pop hit. “Never Too Much features so many outstanding examples of post-war production with cross category appeal,” commented Zack Wirsum, Vice President, Post War & Contemporary Art. “From complicated paintings by William Copley, Alfred Leslie, and Masami Teraoka to more restrained works from George Rickey and Sol LeWitt, there is no shortage of hits and rarities for collectors to tune in to and explore this summer.” “A range of iconic international design will be featured, including innovative works by Mario Minale, Jorge Pardo, Pierre Paulin, Archizoom Associati, and Florence Knoll, to name just a few,” commented Hudson Berry, Director, Modern Design. “We are also excited to see how a fresh-to-the-market collec ... More
Einstein: The Man and His Mind helps place in historical context Einstein’s ideas about time, gravity, quantum theory and cosmology. It’s for sale on Amazon, for $51.99 (new).
NEW YORK, NY.- It’s been one hundred years since Albert Einstein gave his Nobel Prize lecture titled Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity, on July 11th, 1923. The centennial of this event is a reminder of the remarkable history of Einstein’s Nobel Prize and the address. Now, a book is available chronicling the life of the renowned physicist. Titled Einstein: The Man and His Mind, the one-of-a-kind, hard-cover, 4.4-pound book contains rarely seen photos of Einstein, as well as beautifully preserved letters, manuscripts, journals and even equations written in Einstein’s hand. The book helps place in historical context his ideas about time, gravity, quantum theory and cosmology. It’s for sale on Amazon, for $51.99 (new). The book comprises an astounding private collection of Einstein memorabilia owned by Dr. Gary Berger, with annotations and commentary ... More
Abdul Jabbar was awarded the Richard Mille Art Prize by Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2022.
DUBAI.-Lawrie Shabibi announced the representation of artist Rand Abdul Jabbar (b. 1990, Baghdad). Abdul Jabbar was awarded the Richard Mille Art Prize by Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2022. She received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University in 2014 where she was awarded the William Kinne Fellows Traveling Prize. Rand Abdul Jabbar borrows from the vestiges and ephemera of history to produce reconstructions of accumulations of past events as they intersect with personal experience. Exploring her relationship to place and landscape while in a state of displacement, Abdul Jabbar contests individual and collective memory while engaging with legacies of archaeology, mythology and material culture through extensive research within archives and museum collections. Employing sculpture, writing, video and installation as primary mediums, herwork unfolds through an experiential dialogue between recollection and re-imagination, inventing a s ... More
Arrangements and Other Photographic Maneuvers: Daniel Leftcourt Arranges the Trevor Traina Collection, installation view, Redwood Library & Athenaeum, Newport, RI.
NEWPORT, RI.-The Redwood Library & Athenaeum, the nation’s first purpose-built library, think space and public Palladian building, presents Arrangements and Other Photographic Maneuvers: Daniel Lefcourt Arranges the Trevor Traina Collection, now on view in the Redwood’s Van Alen Gallery through October 1, 20023. A joint curatorial effort between New York-based artist Daniel Lefcourt and Redwood curator Dr. Leora Maltz-Leca, head of the Redwood Contemporary Art Initiative (RCAI), the show brings together over thirty masterpiece photographs from the collection of San Francisco collector Ambassador Trevor D. Traina. Among Traina’s extraordinary collection of contemporary photographs are three of Lefcourt’s monumental Arrangements (2004-05), photographs that examine the processes of collecting, arranging and systematizing that underpin ... More
Anya Firestone, left, who leads custom tours of Paris for a starting cost of $2,400 per day, speaking before “The Romans in their Decadence” by Thomas Couture, at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, on June 26, 2023. (Hugues Laurent/The New York Times)
by Chantel Tattoli
PARIS.- On a recent morning at the Louvre, Anya Firestone handed out bottles of Evian. “Because ‘the art of drinking’ begins with hydration,” she said. Firestone, 34, a museum guide-conférencière (tour guide) and art integration strategist, wore rhinestone earrings in the shape of olive martinis, pink Manolo Blahniks, the Mini Bar clutch by Charlotte Olympia and a Marni dress printed with likenesses of Venus. She escorted Matt Stanley, her client, and his Parisian date, Salomé Bes, 30, past the long lines at the museum’s entrance and toward the Code of Hammurabi. The set of ancient Babylonian laws included “an eye for an eye,” she explained, and it also dealt with issues of alcoholic beverages, like watered-down wine and the people’s “right to beer,” as she pithily put it. “Pretty ... More
From a 1960 series of political campaign buttons known as the ‘JFK Big Four,’ which will be auctioned by Hake’s as four consecutive lots, this is a very rare ‘Democracy For Jack Kennedy’ portrait button. It is regarded as the anchor to the coveted set. Size: 3.5in diameter. Estimate: $20,000-$35,000.
YORK, PA.-Hake’s July 25-26 auction of pop culture memorabilia serves as an exciting virtual showcase of “firsts” – first appearances of comic book superheroes, rare first issues, and first iterations of classic action figures. The 1,930-lot sale encompasses dozens of categories of America’s most sought-after collectibles, from political and sports to Star Wars and Transformers, with bidding now available through Hake’s online platform. More than 300 CGC-certified comic books will change hands, including examples of nearly all of Marvel’s key Silver Age titles. “There are even multiple copies of some of the most desirable issues, so it’s definitely going to be a ‘collector’s choice’ auction,” said Alex Winter, president of Hake’s Auctions. Without question, the most buzzworthy comic book in the sale is a CGC 9.6 NM+ copy of Amazing ... More
NEW YORK, NY.-Lehmann Maupin are presenting THE CORPSING PICTURES, a new group of pictures by Gilbert & George. The exhibition marks their tenth solo presentation at the gallery. The exhibition comprises a suite of richly colored pictures starring the artists themselves in various poses of alarm and resignation as bones encroach in intricate patterns over their faces and bodies. Masterfully employing their signature use of bold color and symmetrical composition, Gilbert & George confront the subject of mortality and life itself with winking gallows humor, leaving each picture open to multiple interpretations. Gilbert & George met as art students in 1967 at Saint Martin’s School of Art, where they developed the concept of “living sculptures.” Meticulously groomed and dressed in suits, the artists’ legendary promenades through the streets of London, heads and hands coated in metallic powders, formed the ... More
LONDON.- Nocturnal landscapes and cityscapes illuminated by silvery, crescent moons, ruined cottages covered in tangles of undergrowth and anxious figures sheltering in shadowy woodlands and bombed-out streets – all hallmarks of British neo-romanticism.
A spotlight is being shone on this movement that produced some of the most innovative and captivating works of art in the mid-20th century in a free exhibition at the Fry Art Gallery in 2023. The Fry holds a collection of works by neo-romantic artists who lived and worked in north west Essex, and is joining forces with The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art to explore this movement through an exhibition of 30 works by artists Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), John Piper (1903-1992), Keith Vaughan (1912-1977), John Craxton (1922-2009), John Minton ... More
Vedovamazzei, Napoli da MorraGreco, 2023. Inchiostro su guanti di pelle, 24 x 30 cm, base bianca 110 x 50 x 50.
NAPLES.- GOAL! is a collective of ten Neapolitan artists of different generations who, through different languages and paths, have been invited, on the occasion of the victory of the Napoli team in the Serie A championship, to give their own reading of the action of the goal, celebrating the fate of the team and the involvement of the city in the occasion of the event at the Fondazione Morra Greco. From painting to drawing, from photography to installations, the works on display on the third floor of the Morra Greco Foundation trace a path of practices and research which together provide an intergenerational panorama of the work of some Neapolitan and Campanian artists. There are two aspects of the goal that I think are interesting. One is the coefficient of unpredictability out of any calculation that cooperates in its realization. The other instead is the spontaneous, immediate, equally unpredictable, positive or neg ... More
Gordon Parks, Untitled, Washington, D.C., 1942. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches, paper, 18 x 13 3/4 inches, image 30 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches, framed. Edition 2 of 15.
CHICAGO, IL.-Rhona Hoffman Gallery is now presenting Gordon Parks’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, The Early Years: 1942 - 1963. One of the preeminent photographers of the twentieth century and committed to social justice throughout his life, Parks is best known for his documentation of African-American life, both in urban and rural environments, and his focus on civil rights. Many of the photographs in this exhibition were captured during Parks’ time as a staff photographer at Life magazine, where he was the first African-American to be hired in that position, in 1948. In this exhibition, the viewer is able to see Parks’s remarkably formal agility as he synthesizes multiple visual languages, drawing from his rural Kansas roots to the streets of Paris. These photos take in the myriad experiences and wide ranging histories of this tumultuous period while finding specific and poignant human moments ... More
Quote I refuse to have the surface impersonally painted. Robert Motherwell
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'The New Together' collective exhibition by Platform on view until the end of the July MILAN.- The Collective exhibition, conceived by Platform and curated by Luca Molinari and Simona Finessi, involves 140 architecture studios from all over the world and is being exhibited at the Scuola Grande di Misericordia in Venice. The New Together is the initiative that Platform is organising in Venice from 20 May to 30 July 2023, to coincide with the opening of the prestigious 18th Architecture Biennale, aiming to fuse together the characteristics that make Platform recognisable to an international audience: international cultural initiatives and networking. The New Together is an exhibition curated by Luca Molinari (Editorial Director of Platform) with the collaboration of Simona Finessi and a young curatorial team, which aims to investigate, through the projects of 140 architecture firms from all over the world, how the design of the spaces ... More
Jack Goldstein, a savior of Broadway theaters, dies at 74 NEW YORK, NY.- Jack Goldstein, a preservationist who in the 1980s reacted to the razing of several venerable Broadway theaters under a Times Square redevelopment plan by helping to organize a successful campaign to give landmark status to more than two dozen other theaters, died June 16 in Cold Spring, New York, in Putnam County. He was 74. The cause was a heart attack, said Tom Miller, his executor. Over 30 years, Goldstein established himself as an effective behind-the-scenes player on Broadway. He was the executive director of the nonprofit Save the Theaters, which was formed to prevent the future destruction of playhouses. He was an executive at Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union, and with the Theater Development Fund, where he initiated the design competition that led to the creation of a new TKTS discount ticket booth ... More
Vincen Beeckman, tiff 2023 and Meggy Rustamova currently on view at Fotomuseum of Antwerp ANTWERP.- The FOMU Fotomuseum of Antwerp houses one of the most significant photo collections in Europe, featuring both equipment and photo documents. Each year, the FOMU presents several temporary exhibitions by nationally and internationally renowned photographers. The museum’s displays which change every four months, is currently showcasing the photography work of Vincen Beeckman and Meggy Rustamova. Ping Pong is Vincen Beeckman's first major museum exhibition. Beeckman (°1973, Belgium) is a photographer who connects people. His life is filled with encounters. He invests time in building good communication channels by being repeatedly present - if only briefly. Chance meetings turn into long-term relationships. The Ping Pong exhibition provides an insight into four long-running projects that for the most part have ... More
The Carre D'Art's 30th anniversary to mark the beginning of an era for contemporary art in Nîmes NîMES.- The city of Nimes aims high when it comes to cultural offerings, and is possessed of a variety of cultural establishments, in which diverse areas of culture, savoir-faire and traditions are represented. In 2023, the city of Nimes will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Carré d’Art, inaugurated on May 9, 1993. Its building, designed by English architect Lord Norman Foster, makes a strong architectural statement. It presides over the heart of the city, on the site of the ancient Roman forum, in complete harmony with the Roman temple the Maison Carrée. Carré d’Art was created on the initiative of Mr. Jean Bousquet, Mayor of Nîmes and Mr. Robert Calle, the first director who thought up the prefiguration program and built up the collection before its opening. Located on an exceptional site, the mission of the Carré d’Art – Museum of Contemporary ... More
Clars Auctions to offer a variety of Fine Art, Asian Art, and Jewelry & Timepieces this July OAKLAND, CA.- This July with regards to Fine Art at Clars, we are pleased to offer an acrylic on canvas painting by American artist, Herb Jackson. Known for abstract and non-objective paintings, Jackson’s colorful compositions are in collections throughout the world, including in the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the British Museum in London. The work up for auction this month, titled Ancient Cycles, features bright earth tones and has a heavily textured appearance. This piece by Herb Jackson is estimated at $8,000–$12,000. Also to be featured in the July sale is a bronze sculpture by contemporary French artist, Christophe Charbonnel. Titled Homme a la Pierre, this statue depicts a male figure modeled in a style influenced by antique Greek and Roman sculpture. Charbonnel’s figures often echo Classical statuary but are modernized ... More
NJ artist, Marybeth Rothman exhibiting in 'Modigliani and the Modern Portrait' at the Nassau County Museum of Art ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- Wherever and whenever Amedeo Modigliani’s paintings go on view, crowds gather, experts turn out to debate, social media lights up and auction records fall. This Modern master personally changed the history of the portrait, adding the emotional and painterly power that has inspired generations since his untimely demise, the archetypal story of the doomed Bohemian genius. Curated by Dr. Kenneth Wayne, the world’s leading Modigliani scholar (founder of The Modigliani Project that researches the authenticity of works), this show now on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art features several spectacular paintings by the master, including the world premiere of two newly confirmed Modigliani paintings unveiled on this occasion. ... More
Arnolfini launches its summer 2023 programme with Threads BRISTOL.-Arnolfini launches its summer 2023 programme with Threads, a major exhibition featuring twenty-one contemporary international artists and makers, for whom textiles is their chosen medium. Celebrating material and making, these artists use the storytelling power of textiles to connect with past traditions, find commonalities between cultures, time and place, and to ‘breathe stories into materials’. Recognising the increasing attention drawn to textiles as an artistic medium, Threads encompasses weaving and spinning, rug-making, stitching and embroidery, print, knit, threading, mending and found materials, with materials and techniques handed down, reused and reinvented. Co-curated by leading textile artist Alice Kettle, Threads weaves throughout Arnolfini’s three floors, to reveal how textiles ‘remember’ , how memory is ‘embedded ... More
Hosfelt Gallery opens seventh solo exhibition by Lordy Rodriguez today, 'The Shape of Us' SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- For more than a quarter of a century, Lordy Rodriguez has utilized an ever-developing visual language inspired by map-making to generate drawings that direct our attention to complex social and cultural issues. From code-switching, to the disenfranchisement inherent in gerrymandered congressional districts, to tracing the history of political protests, Rodriguez reframes data — with his party-colored, pictorial renderings — to reveal inequity. In his seventh solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, Rodriguez presents two new bodies of work. In the first set of drawings, he foregrounds water. Investigating lakes Texcoco, Tulare and Karachay, the Ogallala Aquifer, the Citarum Watershed in Indonesia, and the city of Venice, he looks at the ways humans have shaped — sometimes purposefully, but more often not — the resource ... More
Praz-Delavallade is opening the exhibition 'Portals' by Thomas Linder and Liz Walsh today LOS ANGELES, CA.-Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is opening Portals, a duo exhibition with two Los Angeles based artists and their process-driven cosmologies. Thomas Linder’s cropped wall hangings of ephemeral and abstract swathes of color counterbalance Liz Walsh’s tableaux of plant and animal motifs. One artist creates spatial illusion through the use of color and materials, while the other skirts the edges of perception by connecting flora, fauna, and humanity through fantasy. They each consider the viewer in providing insight into their own environments and alternative universes. At first glance, it might appear as though the two present a strict contrast of approaches to the notion of reality and perception—Linder’s macroscopic view of the earth and its human intervention to Walsh’s symbolic introspection and minute observance of nature—but nothing’s ever that simple ... More
For Filipino audiences, 'Here Lies Love' offers emotional rip currents NEW YORK, NY.- The disco balls were spinning, the club music was pulsing, and on the dance floor, several Filipino audience members were near tears. It was a Saturday night, and at the Broadway Theater, “Here Lies Love,” a David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical about the rise and fall of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, the former first couple of the Philippines, was preparing for its Broadway opening July 20. In previews, it has drawn a growing stream of Filipino American theatergoers, reeled in by the chance to see their national — and in some cases, their family — history told onstage, close enough for them to literally touch. “I’ve never been in a play where I have a personal connection” to the story, said Earl Delfin, a 35-year-old Manhattanite. “I felt represented on a New York stage for the first time.” He got emotional in the opening scenes, he ... More
On a day like today, Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi was born
November 08, 1593. Artemisia Gentileschi or Artemisia Lomi (July 8, 1593 - c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In this image: Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene (detail). Oil on canvas, 81 x 105 cm ; 32 by 411/3 in. €865.500 - World Auction Record for the Artist. Photo: Sotheby's.
