Category Archive 'Art'
25 Nov 2022

A List of Things Lost

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Eight actually survived.

Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) was another French Marxist termite, gnawing at the roots of Civilization and producing numerous volumes filled with pretentious jargon in the distinctive manière française.

Even a blind pig, as the saying goes, occasionally finds a truffle, and Lefebvre did produce the highly amusing, posthumously published, Les Unités perdue (2004), translated by David L. Sweet as The Missing Pieces (2014), 83 pages listing belle-lettres and works of art lost through the vagaries of time and chance.

One (partially erroneous) example:

The sixteen drawings offered by Amadeo Modigliani to his lover Anna Akhmatova were “smoked” by the Red Guards, who used them as cigarette paper.

19 Jun 2022

27-Year-Old’s Paintings Recently Sold for Seven Figures

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Anna Weyant.

As Spring Auction Sales reports come in, the art world is suddenly agog at Anna Weyant’s sudden ascent.

WSJ:

On the night artist Anna Weyant’s work debuted at Christie’s, the 27-year-old painter was too nervous to attend or even watch the livestream. Instead, Ms. Weyant holed up in her small Manhattan apartment and listened to a calming app on her cellphone until a friend texted with news.

“Summertime,” Ms. Weyant’s portrait of a woman with long, flowing hair that the artist had sold for around $12,000 two years before, resold for $1.5 million, five times its high estimate.

It has been a rocket-fueled rise to the top of the contemporary art world for Ms. Weyant—and far from her unassuming start in Calgary, Canada. Spotted on Instagram three years ago and quickly vouched for by a savvy handful of artists, dealers and advisers, Ms. Weyant is now internationally coveted for her paintings of vulnerable girls and mischievous women in sharply lit, old-master hues. Imagine Botticelli as a millennial, whose porcelain-skin beauties also pop one leg high like the Victoria Beckham meme or sport gold necklaces that read, “Ride or Die.”

Ms. Weyant’s oeuvre of roughly 50 paintings has already filtered into the hands of top collectors such as investor Glenn Fuhrman and plastic surgeon Stafford Broumand. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently exhibited her work in a group show, and former Venice Biennale curator Francesco Bonami said he predicts she will make her own Biennale appearance soon, which would be another career milestone.

As is, demand for her art outstrips her supply: The waiting list to buy one of her paintings, dealers say, is at least 200 names long. And last month she teamed up with the biggest art gallery of them all, Gagosian. … Read the rest of this entry »

03 Jun 2022

Portrait of Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes

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attributed to Marie-Denise Villers, Portrait of Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes, 1801.

First attributed to Jacques-Louis David and then Constance Marie Charpentier, this portrait is now believed to be the work of Marie-Denise Villers (1774–1821), who may have exhibited the painting at the Parisian Salon of 1801.

HT: Public Domain Review via Vanderleun.

09 Nov 2021

In Yorkshire, Historians Find ‘Lost Chamber’ of 15th-Century Wall Paintings During the Restoration of a Medieval Manor House

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Yorkshire Post:

Calverley Old Hall, between Leeds and Bradford, is currently subject to a major repair and renovation programme funded by the Landmark Trust, who have owned the building and run part of it as a holiday let since 1981.

The oldest parts of the hall date back to the 14th century but most of it is Tudor. It was the seat of the Calverley family for centuries until the 1750s, when they sold the estate and moved to Esholt Hall. Calverley Old Hall was then subdivided into cottages.

Ahead of the current restoration work, historians and conservation specialists were able to examine the fabric of the building and made an incredible discovery behind a 1930s fireplace. …

Dr Anna Keay, who worked at the site, said: “An exposed area of timber seemed to have something on it; reddish, greenish, and blackish stains on the oak. We thought they could just be the streaks and smudges of mould and dirt and decay. It looked to be wishful thinking that this was anything of note. But just on the off chance, ever cautious, we decided to ask the conservators at Lincoln Conservation to have a look. …

Two days were allocated… to remove the later plaster altogether and see how much remained beneath. I stopped in on the morning of day two, expecting them to have only just begun. When I walked up the stairs into the room I was simply overcome. The plaster had gone and there on all three walls before me was a revelation. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, a complete, highly decorated Tudor chamber, stripped with black and red and white and ochre. Mythical creatures and twining vines, classical columns and roaring griffins.

“Wall paintings were prized in grand Tudor houses, and from time to time patches of them are revealed. But never in my own 27 years of working in historic buildings have I ever witnessed a discovery like this. Hidden panelling, yes, little snatches of decorative painting, once or twice. But an entire painted chamber absolutely lost to memory, a time machine to the age of the Reformation and the Virgin Queen, never. …

“Suddenly, we are transported from a dusty, dilapidated building into the rich and cultured world of the Elizabethan Calverleys, a well-educated family keen to display their learning and wealth by demonstrating their appreciation of Renaissance culture. The Calverley paintings are very carefully planned, in a vertical design that uses the timber studwork as a framework. Teethed birds laugh in profile; the torsos of little men in triangular hats sit on vases or balustrades. When the fantastical figures and architectural elements are incorporated into dense vertical stacks as at Calverley Old hall, they’re known as ‘candelabra.’

“The whole chamber was probably originally covered in the scheme, a rich, dark, private space that must have been all the more impressive by candlelight.”

RTWT

Wikipedia entry:

The hall was witness to dreadful violence in April 1605, when Walter Calverley murdered two of his sons, William and Walter, after drinking heavily. He was tried in York for murder, but refused to plead and was therefore pressed to death. Because of his refusal, his property could not be seized by the state, and passed to his surviving baby son. The murder inspired the Jacobean play A Yorkshire Tragedy, the authorship of which was attributed to William Shakespeare in the first printed edition (1608) but which is now thought to have been written by Thomas Middleton.

28 Aug 2021

Disimproved by Restoration

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Johannes Vermeer, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, 1657-59, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

Hyperallergenic:

The female figure in Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” (1657-59), art historians have long known, is not exactly alone in the room. As early as 1979, x-rays revealed a painting of a full-length cupid hanging on the wall behind her, partly shielded by a silky green trompe l’oeil curtain pulled to the side. This picture-within-a-picture, a hallmark of the artist’s opulent renderings of Dutch interiors, was further confirmed using infrared photography.

But until recently, experts assured us Vermeer had painted over the chubby amorini himself. In 2019, laboratory tests led to a shocking discovery: the cupid imagery was covered up by someone other than the artist, likely decades after its completion. Conservators at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) in Dresden, where the painting has resided for over 250 years, decided to return the work to its original state, removing the layers of varnish and overpaint concealing the original composition.

RTWT

Doubtless, the conservators’ decision to restore the painting to the artist’s original intent is an inevitable academic and institutional choice. Still, I find the heavy-handed symbolism of the result tedious and the composition cluttered when compared to the previous version. Sad.

11 Jan 2021

Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916)

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03 Nov 2020

Election Day

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George Caleb Bingham, The County Election, 1854, Engraving.

25 Aug 2020

Polish Surrealism

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Jacek Yerka, Bible Dam.

09 Aug 2020

Chinese-French Abstract Expressionism

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Sold 25 November 2017

CHU TEH-CHUN (ZHU DEQUN, FRANCE/CHINA, 1920-2014)
Poussée Cristalline (Unrevealed Crystal)

Price realised

HKD 22,300,000 ($2,899,000)

Estimate
HKD 10,000,000 – HKD 16,000,000

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Wikipedia:

Chu Teh-Chun or Zhu Dequn (24 October 1920 – 26 March 2014) was a Chinese-French abstract painter acclaimed for his pioneering style integrating traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western abstract art. …

Chu Teh-Chun was born in 1920 in the town of Baitu in Xiao County, which was then in Jiangsu province but now part of Anhui province. In 1935 he entered the National School of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, graduating in 1941. At the school he studied Chinese painting under Pan Tianshou and Western art under Fang Ganmin and Wu Dayu, who were prominent Chinese artists trained in France. …

In 1945 Chu became a faculty member of the architecture department of the National Central University in Nanjing, then China’s capital. With the communist victory in mainland China, Chu moved to Taiwan in 1949, joining the National Taiwan Normal University where he taught Western-style painting. He moved to Paris in 1955, where he lived for the rest of his life. He became a French citizen in 1980, and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1997. …

Inspired by Nicolas de Staël’s abstract landscape paintings, Chu abandoned figurative painting and adopted a unique style using bold strokes of colour which evoked Chinese calligraphy. His new style was immediately successful. In 1964, an exhibition of his works at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh brought him international fame. On 17 December 1997, Chu was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France, the first Frenchman of Chinese origin to be chosen. He was also made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2001. His paintings are now in the permanent collections of more than 50 museums all over the world. Major exhibitions of his work were held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2005 and Beijing’s National Art Museum of China in 2010.

08 Aug 2020

Chinese Artist Makes Costumes from Antique Porcelain Shards

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My Modern Met:

Chinese contemporary artist Li Xiaofang uses porcelain to make wearable art that pays homage to China’s past while looking toward the future. Xiaofang takes hundreds of shards of porcelain, some dating back to the Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and puzzles them together into magnificent porcelain dresses. His wearable art acts as both a coat of armor and a sculptural masterpiece.

Xiaofang sews together the shards using thin metal wire, and each is lined with a leather undergarment. Looking at the artist’s work, it’s impossible not to marvel at the precision and care taken, not only to find the exact shapes to form the curves of the dresses, but also how the pattern and color of the porcelain are used to create new shades and silhouettes. But Xiaofang doesn’t only limit himself to porcelain dresses, he’s also experimented with creating suit jackets, pants, blouses, and even a military hat.

The Beijing-based artist has seen his work exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has engaged in collaborations with fashion giants like Lacoste and Alexander McQueen. A visionary in his field, his work was by the rapid development engulfing Beijing. “These blue shards, bathed in the sunny skies of socialism and caressed by the contemporary cool breezes blowing from the west throughout the capital, assume a bewildering array of postures as fashion items entering the new century,” the artist once stated. “These are the blue-and-white costumes! These emanate the splendor once crushed! These are the illusions flowing with sorrow!”

RTWT

09 Jul 2020

Nighthawks Updated

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29 Jun 2020

Nice Vase

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Lot 132: DAUM Important tubular vase with conical neck on pedestal.

Est: €18,000 – €20,000
€18,000 0 bids

OGER – BLANCHET
July 2, 2020, 2:30 PM CET
Paris, France

DAUM
Important tubular vase with conical neck on ringed pedestal. Made in purple and white marbled glass. Decorated with violets etched with acid and entirely enhanced with natural polychrome enamel. Lower part and pedestal decorated with engraved leaves and insects enhanced with gilding.
Signed in gold under the base.
High. : 70 cm

Similar to model presented by Daum Establishments at the Nancy International Exhibition in 1909.

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I get lots of auction notices by email.

I’d buy this one for my wife like a shot, except not for €18,000, alas!

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