Dec 6th, 2019 - A former bunker in Bordeaux is being transformed into a permanent exhibition space featuring digital art installations on the venue’s walls and reflected in the water of its enormous basins. A s the hub of France’s famous fine-wine-growing region and one of the few historic urban areas to be recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site , Bordeaux is already an extremely attractive destination for people with varied interests.  When a permanent exhibition space dedicated to digital art installations opens in a former World War II submarine base in the port city, travelers will have yet ...

Dec 5th, 2019 - A banana duct-taped to a wall has sold for $120,000 at Art Basel Miami, the international art fair featuring works by acclaimed and emerging artists. Another edition of the concept art is expected to sell for $150,000. The humorous minimalist artwork comes from Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and is titled Comedian . Two editions of the banana-and-duct-tape art were presented by French contemporary gallery Perrotin at Art Basel on Wednesday, and both sold for $120,000 apiece. Artnet reports the first edition was purchased by a French woman and the second edition by a French man on Wednesday. ...

Dec 4th, 2019 - PARIS (AFP) — A rare canvas by French artist Paul Gauguin from his time in Tahiti fetched $10.5 million in Paris on Tuesday, nearly twice its estimated value, the auction house said. “Te Bourao II” (1897) by Paul Gauguin (Artcurial) The bidding had drawn keen interest amid growing controversy over Gauguin’s relationships with young girls on the Polynesian island and his depictions of them. The 1897 painting, “Te Bourao II” or “tree” in the local Tahitian language, had been expected to go for around five to seven million euros. The buyer is an “international collector,” ...

Nov 30th, 2019 - Yayoi Kusama’s fabled infinity rooms, and you’re having an experience unlike anything you’ve ever seen (or felt) before. That is, unless you’ve been inside another of Kusama’s immersive works. The 90-year-old Japanese woman, who came up through the New York art scene of the 1960s and was a contemporary of Andy Warhol, is the top-selling female artist living today. Her infinity rooms, groundbreaking art experiences that put the viewer literally in the center of the work, have been surging in popularity in the last few years. Rooms have been traveling the world, with months of ...

Nov 29th, 2019 - Revelations were made during research for the largest retrospective of the Dutch painter's work in the Netherlands Three discoveries have been made about the paintings by Pieter de Hooch, as a result of the first exhibition of his work in his hometown of Delft. Pieter de Hooch: From the Shadow of Vermeer runs until February at the Museum Prinsenhof Delft. De Hooch’s signature was found in A Woman weighing Gold and Silver Coins (Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, around 1664). Fragments of text were noticed for the first time on the bottom of the open window frame, probably reading ...

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 — 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 masterpieces, dozens of studies ...

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 ...

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 ...