Apr 14th, 2021 - In 1997, Christie’s put 58 works, including ones by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Eva Hesse, up for sale. All eyes were on a prized group of Picassos, however. At the time, the Spanish artist’s market was on the rise, but no one was sure just how well this cache of art would do—Impressionist art was still the top earner at auction, and Picasso’s market ascent had only recently been cemented. The Christie’s sale, which drew an astounding 2,000 people to ...

Apr 14th, 2021 - At the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, female artists throughout history are being given their due in a vital new exhibition I n art history, women have traditionally been pigeonholed as objects of desire – beautiful creatures that enchant, entice and inspire as “the muse”. But walk into the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston at the moment, and the male gaze has been replaced with women’s work rather than just their appearance taking centre stage. It’s part of the museum’s current ...

Apr 13th, 2021 - Plus, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts hires its first Black curator and critics are not impressed with Damien Hirst's comeback effort. Art Industry News is a daily digest of the most consequential developments coming out of the art world and art market. Here’s what you need to know on this Tuesday, April 13. NEED-TO-READ Cambodia Condemns Artist Who Edited Smiles Onto Khmer Rouge Victims – Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts has condemned artist Matt Loughrey for altering photos ...

Apr 13th, 2021 - A secret booklet appears to contradict claims made in a new documentary about the painting's attribution to Leonardo A row has broken out after a new documentary on the world's most expensive painting, the Salvator Mundi , claimed that the Musée du Louvre doubted the painting's attribution as a 100% autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci. Although the museum has not publicly commented on the film's assertions, an unpublished booklet on the Louvre's scientific examination of the painting has been ...

Apr 13th, 2021 - When the artist Matthew Wong was just starting his painting practice, in 2013, he said in an interview that he had no fixed schedule for going about his work—with one exception. "The only thing that takes place at the same time every day is when I get out of bed, I have to do an ink drawing before doing anything else, such as brushing my teeth or eating," Wong told the website Studio Critical . He sometimes experimented in a bathroom at his family’s Hong Kong home, he said later , "randomly ...

Apr 13th, 2021 - The recently rediscovered painting made headlines in 2017 when it fetched $450m at auction. Then it vanished again EVEN BY THE standards of blockbuster shows, “Leonardo da Vinci” promised to be one to remember. The exhibition, which ran for four months from October 2019, marked the 500th anniversary of the master’s death and was hosted at the Louvre, a museum which owns more of the painter’s work than any other institution. Two years earlier a recently rediscovered artwork of Jesus ...

Apr 12th, 2021 - Government does not want to repeat ‘export mistake’ of 1970s when another work by the Old Master ended up in the US Old Master specialists have cautiously welcomed the Spanish government’s decision to impose an export ban on a painting withdrawn from an auction in Madrid last week after Prado museum curators said there was “sufficient stylistic and documentary evidence” to suggest it could be an original Caravaggio. The piece was due to go under the hammer at Ansorena auction house on ...

Apr 12th, 2021 - A Google Doodle released on Tuesday (13 April) belatedly celebrates the Metropolitan Museum of Art's birthday with a rotating carousel of objects from the New York museum’s collection. The animation was slated to appear last year to coincide with the 150 anniversary of the Met's founding, but was postponed as the museum put most of its festivities on hold through the coronavirus pandemic. The work was produced by the San Francisco-based designer Erich Nagler, the lead art director for Google ...

Apr 9th, 2021 - Catch up on this week's news, fast. What’s Behind the KAWS Phenomenon? – On this week’s Art Angle podcast, Ben Davis discusses his theories behind the metoric rise of the street artist. A Could-Be Caravaggio – Authorities stopped the sale of a painting that experts now believe is a genuine work by the Old Master painter. Art Basel Slims Down – The megafair revealed that its Hong Kong edition will host a slew of "ghost booths" and will be half the size of its previous edition. Mutual ...

Apr 8th, 2021 - This Is a Robbery is the latest true crime documentary streaming on Netflix . Rather than focusing on serial killers or unsolved mysteries , the film is about one of the biggest art robberies of all time. In March 1990, two men dressed as police officers gained entry to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. They tied up the guards and stole an estimated $500 million of art, including works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Degas. To this day, none of the artworks has been recovered. The ...

Apr 7th, 2021 - Extract | The day Anthony van Dyck received 'wise advice from the words of a blind woman’—the 17th-century artist Sofonisba Anguissola New book by Jennifer Higgie gives astute insights into brilliant women artists shut out of art history "Until very recently, the idea that women have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have, and of course continue to do so, often against tremendous odds and restrictions, from laws to religion and convention, the pressures of family ...

Mar 25th, 2021 - PARIS (AFP) — One of the few paintings by Vincent van Gogh still in private hands, "Street Scene in Montmartre," was sold for over 13 million euros Thursday at auction after going on public display for the first time this week, Sotheby’s said. The painting — which emerged after a century spent in the same collection and has not been exhibited in public since it was painted in 1887 — fetched 13.091 million euros ($15.414 million), Sotheby’s said. Reaching well above the estimate of 5-8 ...

Mar 24th, 2021 - Agnes Gund, Patron and Advocate for Underknown Artists: ‘We’ve Caught Up With Aggie to Some Degree’ Decades before it became on trend for museums to collect work by women and artists of color, long sidelined from the canon of art history, Agnes Gund took a genuine interest in meeting little-known artists on studio visits and supporting their work in myriad ways. "I was aware of the many artists that have been excluded and didn’t ever think of them as being something I shouldn’t buy," ...

Mar 11th, 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. How a grasshopper got stuck—leaving its mark in Van Gogh's painting—on a summer’s day in Provence The new Nelson-Atkins Museum catalogue tells the full story of the Olive Trees Vincent van Gogh was ...

Mar 4th, 2021 - Researchers spotted the artist’s signature, among other clues to the 16th-century painting’s provenance, on the canvas For more than 100 years, a yellowed painting of the Last Supper hung largely unnoticed on a church wall in Ledbury, a town of almost 10,000 in western England. Most worshippers never gave the 12- by 5-foot canvas a second glance, though some did suggest that the parish "get rid of it," as Reverend Keith Hilton-Turvey tells the Hereford Times ’ Charlotte Moreau. Now, ...

Feb 28th, 2021 - More than 100 impressionist masterworks, including 19 Monet paintings, will travel to Melbourne from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston this year as part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Winter Masterpieces exhibition. NGV director Tony Ellwood announced the blockbuster exhibition on Monday as part of the gallery’s unveiling of its 2021 program – an announcement delayed by two weeks due to Melbourne’s snap five-day lockdown in February. Along with the Monet works, paintings from ...