Jan 20th, 2020 - In 1948, the Museum of Modern Art bought the painting “ Christina’s World ” from the artist Andrew Wyeth for $1,800. Along with Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans ” and Vincent van Gogh’s “ The Starry Night ,” it is one of MoMA’s most enduringly popular paintings. It has been more than 20 years since it was loaned out for special exhibitions. MoMA has denied recent requests from Wyeth museums (the Brandywine in Chadds Ford, Pa., and the Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine), saying that it is too fragile to travel. I recently went to the newly renovated MoMA and discovered ...
Jan 20th, 2020 - AMSTERDAM – After years of doubts about its authenticity, experts in Amsterdam have confirmed that a Vincent van Gogh self-portrait was indeed painted by the Dutch master as he recovered in a French asylum from a mental breakdown. Van Gogh Museum researcher Louis van Tilborgh dispelled the doubts Monday, saying the oil-on-canvas painting of the anguished-looking painter was completed in the late summer of 1889 while Van Gogh was at the Saint-Remy asylum in southern France. Questions about the painting rose in the 1970s. The use of a palette knife to flatten brush strokes on Van Gogh's face ...
Nov 8th, 2019 - One of the works was looted by the Nazis from Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker, but is now being sold by his heir after restitution Only a handful of Van Gogh paintings come to auction every year, but Sotheby’s in New York has two on offer on 12-13 November. One is an early Dutch painting, with a relatively modest estimate for a Van Gogh work, and the other is from the artist’s more sought-after Paris period. The early picture, painted during Van Gogh’s stay in the remote province of Drenthe, in the northern Netherlands, dates from October 1883. Entitled Paysan brûlant de mauvaises ...
Oct 27th, 2019 - PARIS — An old painting found in the kitchen of an elderly French woman, who considered it an icon of little importance, has made her a multimillionaire. The work, a masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered earlier this year , sold for $26.6 million (24 million euros) Sunday. Dominique Le Coent of Acteon Auction House, who sold the masterpiece to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, said the sale represented a "world record for a primitive, or a pre-1500 work." "It's a painting that was unique, splendid and monumental. Cimabue was ...
Oct 25th, 2019 - Van Gogh and Germany: Frankfurt mounts best show on the artist in recent years Städel Museum tells the story of Germany's love affair with the painter, which ended in tragedy with Hitler’s rise to power The exhibition on Vincent van Gogh and Germany, which opened on Wednesday in Frankfurt, is one of the finest shows on the artist in recent years (other than those at the Amsterdam museum dedicated to the painter). The Städel Museum’s Making Van Gogh: A German Love Story focuses on Germany’s early infatuation with the Dutch artist. Although Van Gogh was almost unknown outside ...
Oct 23rd, 2019 - A leading Italian art historian attributed it to Raphael and associates before the sale A painting of the Madonna and child with the attribution “close to Raphael” sold for a hammer price of €1.27m at Vienna’s Dorotheum, more than three times the high estimate, after a leading Italian art historian suggested it is the work of the artist in collaboration with associates. The painting, billed as a discovery, was once in the collection of Adèle d’Affry, a 19th-century Swiss noblewoman and artist who married Carlo Colonna, the duke of Castiglione. It is not known whether the painting ...
Oct 22nd, 2019 - PARIS (AP) — Much about Leonardo Da Vinci remains an enigma: the smile of the “Mona Lisa”; why the world’s most famous painter left so many works unfinished; and more recently, who bought the contentious “Salvator Mundi.” A new exhibit at the Louvre, however, opening Thursday and marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian master’s death, tries to sketch out as complete a picture of the artist and thinker as possible. Drawing from the Louvre’s permanent collection and institutions around the world, the exhibit brings together some 160 works. They include Da Vinci ...
Oct 21st, 2019 - The Museum of Modern Art. Iwan Baan, Courtesy of MoMA. The New MoMA Is More of a Good Thing Subscribe The Museum of Modern Art was born almost a century ago, though it wasn’t until the 1930s that the place had a building to call its own. Edward Durrell Stone and Phillip L. Goodwin’s handsome edifice was a rebuke to West 53rd Street’s staid old townhouses, a work of modern art unto itself. Phillip Johnson added to the building in the 1960s; Caesar Pelli in the 1980s. Yoshio Taniguchi’s 2004 expansion honored all that came before, an architecture of truce. A new renovation—by Diller ...
Oct 21st, 2019 - Paul Gauguin’s portraits painted in Tahiti ‘expanded the parameters of portraiture’, but they were exoticised for a Western market. Now, modern artists are subverting this legacy. The backdrop to the portraits is Tahiti. The sitters are feminine, sensual, proffering ripe fruits and wearing flower garlands. The colours are bright: tropical yellows, hot pinks, mango orange and cobalt blue. This description applies to some of the paintings in a new exhibition, . It is, astonishingly, the first major show to focus on Paul Gauguin’s portraiture – strikingly odd as it often is, filled ...
