Friday, 31st October 2008
2:45pm
Léger painting returned to France
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has returned a $2.8m painting by Fernand Léger to a family in France after detective work concluded that it was looted by the Nazis in the 1940s. Smoke over the Rooftops (above), painted in 1911, has been given back to the French heirs of a Jewish collector who died in 1948. In 1997, the museum received a letter claiming that the painting had been taken from Alphonse Kann, a legendary French collector. Much of Kann's art was returned to him after World War II, but the Léger painting was...
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Tuesday, 28th October 2008
2:15pm
Whenever I was taken to the local library as a small child I would always take out the same picture book that was so densely illustrated I found something new each time I opened it. I hadn’t thought about this book for decades until I experienced something of a Proustian recollection earlier this week when I saw advertisements for the latest exhibition at the Design Museum, ‘The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes’, a retrospective of illustrator and graphic designer Alan Aldridge.
The book of my childhood was Aldridge’s The Butterfly Ball and The Grasshopper’s Feast (1975), illustrations from which are...
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Friday, 24th October 2008
2:13pm
Getty wins in battle for bronzes
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, has acquired two 18th-century bronze casts after the British Cultural Ministry failed to raise funds to keep them in the country. The London dealer Daniel Katz, who bought the bronzes privately in 2005 after they failed to sell at a Christie’s auction, sold the bronzes to the museum for an undisclosed price. Made in 1724 by Florentine sculptor Pietro Cipriani, the life-sized versions of the ancient sculptures known as the Venus de Medici and the Dancing Faun, were commissioned by George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield,...
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Thursday, 23rd October 2008
11:27am
For the first time in over 50 years Titian’s Diana and Actaeon has left the National Gallery in Edinburgh, where it has been on loan from the Duke of Sutherland since 1945. Unveiled today in Room I of the National Gallery, London, this great masterpiece is in a sense returning to its old home, as it forms part of the Bridgewater collection, which from the early 19th century until World War II was on view to the public in the gallery at Bridgewater House, overlooking Green Park in London, having been bought by the Duke’s ancestor, the 3rd Duke of...
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Friday, 17th October 2008
11:47am
Last weekend Manchester Art Gallery unveiled the first international exhibition in over 40 years about the life and work of the Pre-Raphaelite master William Holman Hunt. Writing for Apollo Muse, curator Jan Marsh discusses The Awakening Conscience, one of the highlights of the exhibition.
According to the critics, it was ‘an utterly disagreeable picture’, illustrating ‘a very dark and repulsive side of modern domestic life’. Yet today’s viewers find The Awakening Conscience the most fascinating of all Holman Hunt’s paintings (above).
It shows a young woman dallying with her lover – they are playing popular music in the middle of...
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Tuesday, 14th October 2008
4:56pm
After the unprecedented success of his groundbreaking £111m sale at Sotheby’s, London – which would have stolen headlines even without the current financial context – how could Damien Hirst fail to rank as anything but no.1 in ArtReview’s annual list, published tomorrow, of the art world’s ‘Power 100’?
There’s also an air of inevitability that Science – the company responsible for the team of studio assistants that produce, market and publicise the works that have turned Hirst into a superbrand – is the only corporate institution on the list this year. UBS and Deutsche Bank, key art sponsors who ranked...
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Friday, 10th October 2008
4:36pm
Tate secures Rubens for the nation
A Rubens sketch for the ceiling of the Banqueting House, Whitehall, is to remain in the UK after Tate successfully raised £5.7m by the final day of the deadline. The Apotheosis of James I was produced by Rubens during the course of his diplomatic mission to England in 1629 and has been described as ‘a unique treasure in the history of British art’. The sketch was at risk of being sold abroad by its owner, Viscount Hampden, who imposed a funding deadline of 30 September. On the final day the asking price was...
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Thursday, 9th October 2008
1:22pm
The Tate’s annual Turner Prize exhibition opened last week with a shortlist of artists that, for once, has stirred interest beyond its tributes in journalese. The list includes two key figures whose work is already recognised within contemporary art in Britain as a key influence to a younger generation.
Glasgow-based, Cathy Wilkes has evolved a language through building sculptural installations that combine objects and materials from spheres of public and private ritual. I Give You All My Money (2008; pictured above) is a checkout tableaux that gathers the inanimate clutter of the shop floor within a constellation of domestic...
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Tuesday, 7th October 2008
5:00pm
In the news this week it has been reported that as the U.S. presidential campaign reaches its climax, the Obama Victory Fund is hoping to raise millions of dollars through the sale of a set of limited edition prints.
Given that the art market appears so far to have remained immune to the global economic crisis, the ‘Artists for Obama’ project seems a shrewd move. Organised by Gemini G.E.L., the Los Angeles artists’ workshop and print-publisher, 13 high-profile American artists (John Baldessari, Jonathan Borofsky, Frank Gehry, Ann Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marsden, Julie Mehretu, Ken Price, Susan...
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2:33pm
Christie’s unwittingly sells stolen miniatures
Fourteen portrait miniatures stolen from Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, in 2006, inadvertently went under the hammer at Christie’s King Street saleroom on 10 June. The loss, including miniatures by Richard Cosway and John Smart, had been reported with Trace, a computerised database of stolen art, but images had not been supplied. This caused difficulties for the police and it was only after the sale that it was realised the works were stolen. The lender is expected to return insurance money in exchange for the recovered miniatures.
Brueghel painting discovered by Dutch Antiques RoadshowContinue reading...
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The Lower East Side, once home to immigrants and aspiring artists, is no receiving the uptown treatment.
The National Trust's plans to acquire Seaton Delaval Hall are a tribute to a genius who has inspired writers and artists for centuries.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating the centenary of the directorship of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell with an exhibition that makes clear that he was in many ways the first modern museum director.
