No old master is more masterly than Leonardo da Vinci. His Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world. And yet his oeuvre is small, no more than 15 works, some unfinished and all fragile. The rest is notebooks and legendry. He was supposed to be charming and eloquent, a wonderful singer and musician, well-informed on a wide variety of subjects – in short, a companion fit for princes, who willingly financed his aspirational lifestyle, no matter how little work he actually carried out. As a young man he was so beautiful that some think he is the model for Verrocchio’s David in the Bargello and for the angel in Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel. Certainly the best-looking boy in Verrocchio’s workshop would have been asked to pose as one or the other or both, but whether it was Leonardo is not something we can know.
Continue reading — How many experts does it take to prove Mona Lisa was not a man with implants?
It’s 1912, and Pablo Picasso is in Paris, thinking: All right, what’s next?
A few years earlier he painted a killer picture, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” People had thrown up their hands in alarm; his friends hardly knew what to say. Energized by the fuss, he punched out variations on the theme: paintings of sharp-elbowed, wood-brown nude women, their bodies all ax-cut facets, set in pockets of shallow space.
“Guitar,” made of newspaper, wallpaper, chalk and other materials, is one of the works in “Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914,” which opens Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art.
He’d changed history with this work. He’d replaced the benign ideal of the Classical nude with a new race of sexually armed and dangerous beings. He’d made art as much a problem as a pleasure. At the same time he left fundamentals unchanged. The human figure remained sovereign, abstraction unexplored. Painting was still a reflection of the world we knew, not an alternative reality with laws of its own.
Continue reading — Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914
A Christie’s employee poses with a 1905 painting ‘Bateaux a Collioure’ by Andre Derain on display at the auction house in London. The painting, last seen in public in 1965, sold at an Impressionist and Modern Art sale on Feb. 9 for £5,865,250 ($9,460,648).
A painting by Paul Gauguin, billed as the top lot at Christie’s auction of modern and impressionist works in London, failed to find a buyer on Wednesday.
The tribute to the artist’s friend Vincent Van Gogh, in the form of a still life with sunflowers called “Nature morte a ‘L’Esperance,” had been expected to fetch up to 10 million pounds ($16 million).
Continue reading — Paul Gauguin’s “Nature Morte a ‘L’Esperance,” Fails to Sell at Christie’s Auction in London
Seven months after the gavel came down at Sotheby’s in London, declaring the Getty Museum its proud buyer — for $44.9 million –- a prized 1839 painting by J.M.W. Turner is indeed finally “sold” and headed to Brentwood, where the museum expects to display it by the end of February.
An agent for the Getty picked up the export license that seals the deal for “Modern Rome — Campo Vaccino” from the British culture ministry at the opening of business Thursday, said David Bomford, the museum’s acting director, and a copy of the certificate arrived by e-mail in the middle of the night.
With that, the museum cleared a hurdle it had tripped over in failed attempts to complete past high-profile purchases from Great Britain.
Under British law, artworks of “special significance” that have been on British soil for more than 50 years can’t be sold and exported without a license — and if a buyer surfaces in Britain who is willing to match what the foreign buyer was willing to pay, that institution or individual gets to cut in like a suitor at a dance, and walk away with the object of affection. In November, the British culture minister said the license for the Turner would be held up at least through Feb. 2, and possibly until Aug. 1, to allow a domestic purchaser time to come forward.
Continue reading — Getty Museum’s $44.9-million purchase of J.M.W. Turner masterpiece is final as sale clears U.K. export hurdle
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam), Portrait of a man with arms akimbo, 1658. Oil on canvas, 42.25 x 34.25 in.
A Rembrandt portrait, one of the last works from the Dutch master’s late career still in private hands, will be offered for sale at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair later this year for $47 million.
“Portrait of a Man With Arms Akimbo” was under the auctioneer’s hammer as recently as 2009, when it fetched an artist record price of 20.2 million pounds, or $33 million, at Christie’s in London.
Continue reading — Rembrandt Portrait, Which Sold at Christie’s in 2009, to Be Offered for $47 Million
A 100 kilogram pile of ceramic sunflower seeds by Ai Weiwei is to be sold at an estimate of £80,000 to £120,000
Ever since Chinese artist Ai Weiwei opened his installation of 100 million (150 tonnes) ceramic sunflower seeds in Tate’s Turbine Hall, there has been speculation as to when a handful might turn up on eBay, and at what price.
So far the only sighting has been a single seed offered on Facebook for £1. So could the Tate installation really be worth £100 million?
Continue reading — Modern British Sculpture, at the Royal Academy of Arts
File photo of British artist duo Italian Gilbert Proesch (L) and George Passmore (R)
Telephone kiosks, tourist postcards, advertisements for prostitution and the urethra are the subjects of the latest art exhibition from British art duo Gilbert and George.
“The Urethra Art of Gilbert and George”, on show at London’s White Cube gallery, features a collection of prints made from telephone booth sex cards promising a “medical and fantasy specialist” and “two-way corrective massage that bloody hurts”, alongside tourist postcards of Big Ben and bulldogs wearing Union flags, arranged to form a stylised image of a urethra.
The immaculately dressed Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore who live, work and have breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day in the same cafe and restaurants near their east London home, are among Britain’s best known artists.
Continue reading — Artists Gilbert and George “Get Away with It” Again in New Exhibition at White Cube