Top works fail at Christie’s contemporary auction

NEW YORK— Apart from two pricey casualties, Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary week opener brought an impressive $74,154,500, with 39 of the 46 lots selling for a crisp buy-in rate of fifteen percent by lot and eighteen percent by value. Twenty-one of the 39 lots that sold made over one million dollars. The results compared to the pre-sale estimate of $61,450,000 to $88 million, which had been reduced thanks to the 11th-hour withdrawal of Andy Warhol’s rare-to-market, back cover lot, Most [...]

National Museum of Wales delighted by capture of their Picasso gem

The first oil painting by the 20th century’s most influential artist to enter a public collection in Wales will go on display today. Pablo Picasso’s Nature Morte Au Poron, or Still Life with Poron, has spent several years in a private collection but has been acquired by the National Museum of Wales for more than £1.4m. Although painted after the Second World War, it references Picasso’s single most important innovation: the development of cubism in the first decade of the [...]

British art curator Nick Waterlow and daughter murdered in Sydney

A British art curator and his daughter were found dead of multiple stab wounds at a million-dollar home in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs on Monday night. The Australian art community was in shock over the gruesome deaths which were discovered after police broke into a house in Randwick and found the bodies of Nick Waterlow, 68, and his daughter Chloe, 37, a cookbook author. Three children were at the property when the bodies were found. One child, a three-year-old girl, [...]

Italian Couple Uncovers Raphael Copies in their Apartment

CIVITAVECCHIA, Italy—In 1972, Tarcisio and Teresa de Paolis decided that they wanted an extra bathroom for their apartment, which is located just outside Rome in a former medieval tower, and, being a handyman, Mr. de Paolis decided to handle the work himself. However, as he removed plaster from an apartment wall, he made a shocking discovery: an immaculate fresco. “First I came across Saint Peter’s sword, then his hand and arm,” de Paolis told the Agence France-Presse. After removing more [...]

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery given permission to use photos of Staffordshire Hoard to keep it in region

Official photographs and video clips of the greatest ever Anglo-Saxon archeological find can be exploited to boost the campaign to keep it in the West Midlands. The British Museum, which is currently valuing the Staffordshire Hoard, has given Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery permission to sell official images of the treasure, as long as the cash goes into the fund to buy it and keep it on show in the region. It is believed the pictures are of interest to [...]

Unearthly Art: Astronaut Alan Bean paints moon from unique perspective

SEYMOUR — There may be many artists, but only one can lay claim to having stepped on the surface of a heavenly body. Astronaut Alan Bean couldn’t be prouder of his career as an astronaut on the 1969 Apollo 12 moon mission, but that was then. Now, he’s an artist whose historic past achievements in space have made him a singular sensation in what he does best — painting. The result of his concentrated effort in that dimension, have just [...]

The art market: ‘When you have the right property … you get fireworks’

The autumn sales of Impressionist and modern art held in New York this week demonstrated that big money is still available on the right works of art but that the market will mercilessly reject the run-of-the-mill. The two evening sales were an exercise in contrasts. Christie’s offered a lacklustre selection of works of art on Tuesday and failed to find buyers for almost a quarter of the 41 lots, and its total fell short of expectations, raising just $65.7m, well [...]

‘The Young Archer’ sculpture is from Michelangelo?

The object in question is “Young Archer,” a life-size marble carving of a naked boy that might or might not be the earliest known work by Michelangelo. It is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum in the bright and airy Vélez Blanco Patio, where viewers are invited to decide for themselves what to believe. As is widely known by now, the boy with the missing arms and feet was displayed for many years in the rotunda of the Fifth [...]

101 Western painters you should know

1. PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) – Picasso is to Art History a giant earthquake with eternal aftermaths. With the possible exception of Michelangelo (who focused his greatest efforts in sculpture and architecture), no other artist had such ambitions at the time of placing his oeuvre in the history of art. Picasso created the avant-garde. Then Picasso destroyed the avant-garde. He looked back at the masters and surpassed them all. He faced the whole history of art and single-handed redefined the tortuous [...]

Art History, Styles & Movements of Western Art

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time – Karl Marx Since ancient age to modern art we have come across multiple art styles & movements. Most of them were new creation or transformation of one or other styles. Efforts by individual, group or brotherhood and schools lined up multiple art style in art history. This is my attempt to bring to light foremost & known art styles, movements [...]

The Art of the Steal: The Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation

“The Art of the Steal: The Untold Story of the Barnes Foundation” is a riveting — and tragic — documentary film chronicling the gratuitous ruin of a school outside Philadelphia that houses an incomparable art collection. It’s a classic story of destroying the village in order to save it. Except this little saga comes with an unexpected twist: “Saving” the Barnes turns out to have been a sham, as the title’s claim of artful theft implies. (Full disclosure: I was [...]

Christie’s Amasses $65.67 Million in a Sparse Impressionist Sale

NEW YORK — Christie’s scored beyond all hope on Tuesday night in a sale of Impressionist and Modern art that was alarmingly thin. Of the 40 paintings and sculptures offered, 28 realized an aggregate $65.67 million. In a market starved for goods, the modest signs of an apparent economic recovery in the United States stimulated art buyers. Artists represented by works currently in high demand consistently exceeded expectations. Pastel studies of ballerinas, seen by the general public as the supreme [...]

Museums Giving Unemployed Architects Something To Do

As the dormant construction sites all over the city can attest, with the bust of New York’s building boom, being an architect in this city has gone from being lucrative to depressing. The Bronx Museum of the Arts and MoMA are doing what they can to keep architects and urban planners busy, though, with two design programs to re-imagine forgotten or dilapidated sections of the city. The Bronx Museum just opened an exhibition of designs for the Grand Concourse, the [...]

An uncommon ‘Woman’ at the Portland Art Museum

In a brown-curtained, dimly lit room at the Portland Art Museum, mystery is on view: “The Woman with The Veil,” Raphael’s 1516 painting of a young woman who might have been his lover. Welcomed with modest pomp and circumstance, this painting of a perfect-skinned young woman dressed in silk and veil is the museum’s latest show and a rare event: the single-painting show. But expectations for “Woman” are the same as they would be for a show of 50 paintings, [...]

When does art become child porn?

Not far from the strip joints of Soho is an image of a child having sex with an adult that can be seen for nothing any day of the week. The child is a boy of about 10 or 11, completely naked, his backside raised and partially turned to the viewer. The adult is a young woman, also naked. She is slipping her tongue into his mouth; he is squeezing her right nipple between his fingers. Not only is the [...]