Sep 21st, 2021 - Art historians have known about the Cupid's existence since an X-ray analysis in 1979. Since 1979, art historians have known that Johannes Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (circa 1657-1659) featured an overpainted figure of a Cupid in the background. Most assumed Vermeer himself had painted over the figure. Now, thanks to a major restoration by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany, the overpainting has a been removed to reveal the Cupid. That process also revealed ...

Sep 21st, 2021 - CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Museum of Art is showcasing four works created by Vincent Van Gogh, as the wildly popular Immersive Van Gogh experience opens in Cleveland this week. Immersive Van Gogh will take place Sept. 22-Feb. 6 at a new venue, Lighthouse Artspace Cleveland, 850 E. 72nd St. Three miles away, at the Cleveland Museum of Art (11150 East Blvd.), original Van Gogh masterpieces will be on view, according to a press release. All four pieces are on view in the Nancy F. and Joseph ...

Sep 21st, 2021 - Bob Thompson died young, but his colorful jazz- and Old Master-inspired paintings speak to the ages WATERVILLE, Maine — Bob Thompson didn't want to be pinned down. He was a singular, secretive painter who kept a snare drum and a conga in his studio and was a friend of the great jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He wanted to keep improvising, to keep riffing — on the Old Masters, on his dreams, on the mysterious operations of shape and color. He wanted to go deeper and deeper, further and ...

Sep 20th, 2021 - The show includes student work to the final paintings she made before her death. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the late Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell is the subject of a major U.S. museum show, bringing together more than 80 canvases at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art . The show, organized with the support of the Joan Mitchell Foundation , opens with a pair of Mitchell’s student works, painted in a Cubist style right after her graduation from the Art Institute ...

Sep 20th, 2021 - The story of enigmatic artist Jacobus Vrel will be told in an exhibition scheduled for 2023 and in a book published this month An exhibition, planned for 2023, and a book published this month will reveal the story of Jacobus Vrel, an enigmatic artist whose work has fascinating parallels with that of his contemporary Vermeer. Until recently it was usually assumed that Vrel was a follower of the famed painter of Delft. But new research reveals that Vermeer worked some years later, which means ...

Sep 17th, 2021 - From an enormous roundup of Black American portraits to a two-city retrospective of Jasper Johns, the new art season is buzzing again — and as busy as it ever was. After the pandemic brought museum and gallery shows to a dead stop, last year’s racial justice protests lent new urgency to demands that institutions become more transparent, more representative and more diverse. While there’s certainly an uptick of shows featuring women and artists of color in this fall preview, there are also ...

Sep 17th, 2021 - Catch up on this week's news, fast. The Met Meets American Fashion - The long-awaited Met Gala took place in September this year, and we’ve got all the celeb-art lookalikes from the red carpet . Art History Prof Makes Mega Discovery - An art history professor visiting a church in Westchester spotted a canvas that is now being hailed as a rare Italian Baroque painting . Philadelphia Museum Carries Out Czech Restitution - The Philadelphia Museum is returning a looted ancient "pageant shield " ...

Sep 16th, 2021 - Why did Van Gogh, Manet and Cezanne worship this incendiary painter of everyday people? Because, as a new show reveals, his range and compassion were staggering Last modified on Thu 16 Sep 2021 13.09 EDT N ot many of the world’s greatest works of art can be called funny. Yet The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals has an undeniable cocky humour. A painting of this unknown man has hung in London’s Wallace Collection since the 19th century, his flamboyant upward turned moustache and tiny point of ...

Sep 14th, 2021 - The exhibition will span six decades and explore Ringgold as both an artist and political activist The New Museum in New York has announced that it will hold the first retrospective devoted to the pioneering American artist Faith Ringgold in February next year, titled American People (until June 2022). The exhibition spans six decades of her prolific career, from works created in response to the Civil Rights and the second-wave feminist movements to autobiographical pieces that tell stories of ...

Sep 12th, 2021 - A Deep Dive Into Matisse’s ‘The Red Studio’ In a coming exhibition, MoMA will feature the artworks within this famed painting. Two of them will be on public view for the first time in 50 years. When Henri Matisse painted “ The Red Studio ” in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1911, he not only let the viewer into his work space, with its box of crayons, ceramic plate and grandfather clock. He also captured tiny versions of his own paintings propped against the walls, and his ...

Sep 9th, 2021 - Is the $450m Salvator Mundi a fake? This film – featuring tearful sycophants, sneering experts, dodgy dealers and a secretive superyacht – may finally settle the great da Vinci controversy Last modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 10.24 EDT I t is almost exactly 10 years since Salvator Mundi was unveiled, this “lost Leonardo” instantly triggering astonishment around the world . Since those giddy days, the work has had a turbulent time. As well as becoming the most expensive painting in history, ...

Aug 31st, 2021 - After a French art historian began to raise concerns a year ago about the painting’s authorship, Tahitians , an unfinished canvas in the collection of the Tate Britain, has been downgraded from an authorized work by the painter Paul Gauguin to a fake . The new determination was reinforced by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s decision to leave Tahitians out of its recent catalogue of Gauguin’s work; however, since 1917, the Tate Britain has believed that the painting was authentic. ...

Aug 26th, 2021 - Artist Lynda Benglis became controversial in an instant, but her career has thrived for decades The National Gallery’s small but potent Lynda Benglis exhibition makes no mention of a 1974 work that rocked the art world. In November of that year, Benglis bought ad space in Artforum, and used the magazine to display a picture of herself naked, oiled, wearing sunglasses and clutching a generously proportioned dildo at her crotch. Several of the journal’s editors denounced it as cheap, vulgar ...

Aug 19th, 2021 - Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist. Published every Friday, his stories will range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries. Secrets of the two unknown Van Gogh Sunflowers One has been always been hidden away in private collections and will fetch a fortune when it emerges; the other was destroyed by an American bomb In August ...