NEW YORK.- Sotheby’s autumn 2007 evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art totaled $269,741,000 and included the top price achieved this week, Paul Gauguin’s Te Poipoi (The Morning), one of the greatest Tahitian scenes by the artist remaining in private hands, which sold for $39,241,000. The painting, which for the past 62 years had formed part of the illustrious American collection of Joan Whitney Payson, was purchased by the Hong Kong collector Joseph Lau. Auction records were established for Franz Marc, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, for a sculpture by Pablo Picasso, a work on paper by Egon Schiele and a painting by Max Ernst. Ten lots sold for more than $10 million, 12 lots sold for over $5 million and 49 sold for $1 million or more. ... More
November 11, 1976 - American painter and sculptor Alexandre Calder died in New York shortly following the opening of another major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum. Calder had been working on a third plane, entitled Tribute to Mexico, when he died. Also known as Sandy Calder, he was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys and tapestry and designed carpets. On January 10, 1977, Calder was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Gerald Ford. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 10, 1925 - He was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Wales, near Port Talbot and grew up in a poor, Welsh-speaking household, the twelfth of thirteen children. He was at one time the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. Known for his distinctive voice, he was nominated seven times for Academy Awards for acting, but never won. These are but a few moments of the 20th Century Fox four hour spectacular epic 'Cleopatra' taken from film trailers and other media promotions representing the romance between Marc Antony (Richard Burton) and Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor). Also, it is a reflection of the Egyptian style and culture that seems to be making a comeback into our society. Some of the hairstyles, make-up and clothing of today have origins dating back to this era. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 9, 1853 - American architect Stanford White was born. He was a partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found to this day in places like Sea Gate, Brooklyn. His design principles embodied the "American Renaissance". He designed and decorated Fifth Avenue mansions for the Astors, the Vanderbilts (in 1905), and other high society families. His Washington Square Arch still stands in Washington Square Park, and so do many of his clubs, which were focal points of New York society: the Century, Metropolitan, Players, Lambs, Colony and Harmony clubs. Designed by renowned architect Stanford White, the Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College is considered by many to be not only a shining example of neo-classical architecture, but White's most significant work. More than a century after it was built, BCC is working to revitalize the 19th century treasure for full use in the 21st century academic environment. " In 1906 White was murdered by millionaire Harry K. Thaw, leading to a widely-reported trial.
November 8, 1793 - Upon the French Revolution, the royal Louvre collection (supplemented by the collections of the French Academy and confiscations from the Church and from émigrés) became the "Muséum central des Arts" and opened as such in 1793. The Louvre (French: Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is the most visited and one of the oldest, largest, and most famous art galleries and museums in the world. The Louvre has a long history of artistic and historic conservation, inaugurated in the Capetian dynasty and continuing to this day. The building was previously a royal palace and holds some of the world's most famous works of art, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, Madonna of the Rocks, Jacques Louis David's Oath of the Horatii, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People and Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo. Located in the centre of the city of Paris, between the Rive Droite of the Seine and the rue de Rivoli in the Ier arrondissement, it is accessed by the Palais Royal — Musée du Louvre Metro station. The equestrian statue of Louis XIV constitutes the starting point of the "axe historique", but the palace is not aligned on this axis. With 8.3 million visitors in 2006, the Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 7, 1929 - The idea for the Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mrs Cornelius J. Sullivan. They became known variously as "the Ladies", "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier American museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism. Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees. Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr Jr., a promising young protege. Under Barr's guidance, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Seurat. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 6, 1893 - Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died. He was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. While not part of the nationalistic music group known as "The Five", Tchaikovsky wrote music which was distinctly Russian: plangent, introspective, often modal-sounding. This video features Piano Concerto N 1, III Alegro con fuono, played at The Philharmonie Berlin on October 31, 1988 directed by Herbert von Karajan. Tchaikovsky wrote several works well known among the general classical public—Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 Overture and Marche Slave. These, along with two of his concertos and three of his latter symphonies, are probably his most familiar works, thanks in part to Tchaikovsky's considerable gift for melody, along with the emotional accessibility of his music. Tchaikovsky is well known for his ballets, although it was only in his last years, with his last two ballets, that his contemporaries came to really appreciate his finer qualities as ballet music composer. His final ballet, The Nutcracker, has become among the most popular ballets performed, primarily around Christmas time. He also completed ten operas, although one of these is mostly lost and another exists in two significantly different versions. In the West his most famous operas are Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 5, 1913 - Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, West Bengal, British India. She won two Academy Awards for playing "southern belles": Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played in London's West End. She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being a difficult person to work with, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, with which she was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 4, 1946 - American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was born in New York. He was known for his large-scale, highly stylized black & white portraits, photos of flowers and male nudes. The frank, erotic nature of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks. Mapplethorpe made most of his photographs in the studio. Common themes were flowers, especially orchids; portraits of famous individuals, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, and Patti Smith (Patti Smith's portrait was inspired by Durer's 1500 self-portrait) and nude works that include homoerotic imagery from classic nudes to sadistic and masochistic acts. Mapplethorpe is best known for his Portfolio X series, which sparked national attention because of its explicit content and the funding of the effort by the NEA, When it became known that Mapplethorpe was infected with HIV, the prices for his photos increased dramatically. In December 1988 his photos collected $500,000 each. Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother's grave, marked 'Maxey'. (www.wikipedai.org)
November 3, 1954 - French artist Henri Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84. Noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draughtsmanship. As a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing is apparent, in a body of work spanning over a half-century, and won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art. The first painting of Matisse acquired by a public collection was Still Life with Geranium in 1910, exhibited in the Pinakothek der Moderne. Today, a Matisse painting can fetch as much as US $17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, Reclining Nude I (Dawn), sold for US $9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 2, 1992 - American film and television producer Hal Roach died two months away from his one-hundred-and-first birthday at his home in Bel Air, California from pneumonia. Roach released his films through Pathé until 1927, when he went to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He would change again in 1938 to United Artists. He converted his silent movie studio to sound in 1928 and began releasing talking shorts early in 1929. In the days before dubbing, foreign language versions of the Roach comedies were created by re-shooting each film to create Spanish, French, and sometimes Italian and German dialogue phonetically. Laurel & Hardy, Charley Chase, and the Our Gang kids (some of whom had barely begun school) were required to learn the foreign dialogue phonetically, often working from blackboards hidden out of camera range. In 1931, with the release of the Laurel & Hardy film Pardon Us, Roach began producing occasional full-length features alongside the short product. Short subjects became less profitable and were phased out by 1936. The Our Gang series continued until 1938, when Roach sold the contracts of the Our Gang cast members and the series name to MGM. (www.wikipedia.org)
November 1, 1512 - The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is exhibited to the public for the first time after Michelangelo finished the last stroke one day earlier. In 1508 Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the vault, or ceiling of the chapel. To be able to reach the ceiling, Michelangelo needed a support; the first idea was by Bramante, who wanted to build for him a special scaffold, suspended in the air with ropes. But Michelangelo suspected that this would leave holes in the ceiling once the work was ended, so he built a scaffold of his own, a flat wooden platform on brackets built out from holes in the wall, high up near the top of the windows. He stood on this scaffolding while he painted. The first layer of plaster began to grow mold because it was too wet. Michelangelo had to remove it and start again, so he tried a new mixture of plaster, called intonaco, which was too resistant to mold. It was created by one of Michelangelo's assistants, Jacopo l'Indaco, and is still in use today. Michelangelo used bright colors, easily visible from the floor. On the lowest part of the ceiling he painted the ancestors of Christ. Above this he alternated male and female prophets, with Jonah over the altar. On the highest section Michelangelo painted nine stories from the Book of Genesis. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint only 12 figures, the Apostles. He turned down the commission because he saw himself as a sculptor, not a painter. The Pope offered to allow Michelangelo to paint biblical scenes of his own choice as a compromise. When the work was finished there were more than 300. His figures showed the creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Great Flood. (www.wikipedia.org)
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LONDON.-The Royal Academy of Arts presents Making History: Antiquaries in Britain , 1707 – 2007, on view through December 2, 2007. The exhibition explores the work and achievement of the Society of Antiquaries of London over the past three hundred years since its foundation in the early eighteenth century to the present day. The exhibition consists of 190 works, and ... More
Gahan Wilson - “Hansel and Gretel Remember” ( Pencil and watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the artist )
NEW YORK.- The Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met celebrate a unique collaboration between the Metropolitan Opera and The New Yorker bringing together artists from the magazine, plus special guests, for a colorful exhibition of original artworks titled “Hansel and Gretel” on Thursday, November 15, from 12:30pm to 1:30pm, at the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met at the ... More
MUNICH, GERMANY.- Galerie f5,6, Munich, Germany is proud to announce an exhibition by American Lawrence Schiller of his legendary Marilyn Monroe portfolio, accompanied by other historic images of the 60's. Lawrence Schiller was one of the most important magazine photographers in the 60's working for Magazines such as Stern, Paris Match, Life Magazine, Time, Newsweek ... More
LONDON.- Camden Arts Centre presents a new artist-curated exhibition, Steven Claydon has selected works from across the 20th-century examining the relationship between the art object and the institutions which display them. It includes photography, painting, sculpture, installation, film screenings and audio works by Alberto Giacometti, Claude Cahun, Francis Picabia and Elisabeth Frink. ... More
NEW YORK.-Public Art Fund is pleased to present a new exhibition of contemporary art at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn. Everyday Eden features 2 new commissions and 3 recent works by Jedediah Caeser, Tony Feher, Rob Fischer, Paula Hayes, and Nina Katchadourian. In a variety of ways, these artists' works intersect with the vocabulary surrounding today’s growing interest in ... More
LONDON.- New London art gallery focusing on Post War British and international art is to launch next February 28 at 11 Savile Row, W1. Delaye Saltoun will open with a major exhibition of spray gun paintings by radical British artist John Latham: all dating from the 1950s, this will be the first public display of the paintings since their sale by auction in a London pub in the 1960s. ... More
Sheldon Survey: An Invitational LINCOLN, NEBRASKA.-In its biennial invitational, Sheldon presents works by more than 20 contemporary artists who are contributing to the development of American art of our time. Artworks include paintings, sculpture, photography, and installations. Sheldon Survey continues the tradition of invitational exhibitions that were held by the Nebraska Art Association beginning in 1888 and continuing through 1964. The ... More
Alberto di Fabio - Vortices LONDON, ENGLAND.- Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Alberto di Fabio, on view Saturday, 1 December 2007 – Thursday, 31 January 2008. Di Fabio's work merges the worlds of art and science with themes of biology, ecology and nature. This particular series of works explores structures of the human body and brain. Large-scale paintings pulsate ... More
Emily Harvey Foundation Presents Programming Chance NEW YORK.- The Emily Harvey Foundation is pleased to announce the inaugural exhibition in its New York space, Programming Chance curated by James Fuentes. The unifying principal in the work exhibited is having been created by means of a computer or machine. Two of the works; Heart Beats Dust (1967) by Jean Dupuy and Studies in Perception I (1967) by Ken Knowlton were exhibited in ... More
PhotoGallery / Giorgio de Chirico and Greece: Voyage through Memory at The Onassis Cultural Center