The ceremonial shield portraying Medusa, one of the three Gorgons in the Greek mythology, painted around 1600 by Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. The mystery surrounding the death of Baroque master Caravaggio may soon be resolved thanks to new DNA tests — as long as the right body can be found. What caused the [...]
An employee from Bonham’s holds the remarkable sketchbook containing over 80 stunning watercolours by Count Amadeo Preziosi. A remarkable sketchbook containing over 80 stunning watercolours by Count Amadeo Preziosi, who left Malta to spend his life in Constantinople (Istanbul), is one of the highlights of Bonhams next Travel and Exploration Sale on 16 September in [...]
The Queen’s Elm in London, once a renowned pub, has been turned by a group of artists into a temporary gallery. Three months ago Simon Tarrant, a 44-year-old painter here who has never had gallery representation and has had only two solo shows in his 15-year career, decided to try something different. He approached the [...]
Art objects inspire many reactions, perhaps most crucially acts of preservation or destruction. From 1979 to late 2001, destruction had the upper hand in Afghanistan. The Soviet-Afghan war, the ensuing civil war and finally the pernicious rule of the Taliban inflicted incalculable losses on active archaeological sites and ancient monuments and artworks. In March 2001 [...]
At first glance it seems a straightforward if animated photograph of Israeli soldiers in a mess hall: uniformed young men chatting, pouring, laughing, smoking at a set of utilitarian tables bearing metal bowls and nondescript food. But it doesn’t take long to sense that the scene is spiritually and sexually charged. The men are a [...]
In the art world, geography is destiny. The words “10th Street” are synonymous with gestural abstraction, just as the East Village is shorthand for ’80s neo-Expressionism. Eventually rents rise, neighborhoods are rezoned, artists migrate — and as they do, new styles and movements take shape. The Grey Art Gallery at New York University underscored this [...]
In the 1970s the African-American artist Adrian Piper donned an Afro wig and a fake mustache and prowled the streets in the guise of the Mythic Being, a performance-art version of a stereotype of the black male as a threatening mugger.She was turning fear into farce, punching a hole into such stereotypes while acknowledging their [...]
