Category Archives: Art and design

‘A little bit cursed’: how stolen Van Gogh was a ‘headache’ for the criminal world

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‘Indiana Jones of art world’ traces lost artwork seized from museum during Covid lockdown

It was a masterpiece with a curse: an early Van Gogh worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m) stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago was being passed around the criminal world like a hot potato, according to art detective Arthur Brand.

“We knew that the painting would go from one hand to another hand in the criminal world, but that nobody really wanted to touch it because it wasn’t worth anything,” said Brand, who is known for retrieving stolen artworks. “You could only get in trouble. So it was a little bit cursed.”

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V&A to look after ancient Yemen stones found in London shop

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Museum agrees to care for stelae dating from second half of first millennium BC until it is safe to return them

The V&A is to look after four ancient carved funerary stones that were found by police in a shop in east London in a historic agreement with Yemen.

The stelae, which date from the second half of the first millennium BC, come from necropoli that have been looted in recent years.

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Artist captures the impact of climate crisis over 150 years on Mont Blanc

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Paintings from a climb that retraced an 1800s route on western Europe’s highest mountain reveals the extent of the peak’s melting ice

A British landscape artist who recreated a climb made 150 years ago to document the impact of the climate crisis on western Europe’s highest mountain says what he found was so grim it reminded him of the “dark paintings” of Francisco de Goya.

James Hart Dyke ascended Mont Blanc’s ancien passage north face, the route taken in 1786 by the first climbers to reach the summit. It was also the same one taken in August 1873 by French painter Gabriel Loppé, whose climb inspired Hart Dyke’s own.

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Three convicted after Met police sting operation recovers £2m Ming vase

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Detective from force’s specialist crime unit says cross-border operation was the result of four years’ work

Three men have been convicted after a £2m vase stolen from a museum was recovered in a police sting operation.

The Chinese Ming dynasty vase was stolen from the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, in Switzerland in June 2019. Three men plotted to sell it on for hundreds of thousands of pounds, but were caught in a Scotland Yard operation.

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Bye bye brutalism, hello Instagrammers: inside Geelong’s spectacular $140m arts centre

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Australia’s newest and largest regional arts centre features malleable theatres, Indigenous art and spaces especially designed to get your camera out

When Joel McGuinness was brought on to oversee the redevelopment of the Geelong Arts Centre, and subsequently run the venue as its CEO and creative director, he wanted to change more than the 1980s building’s brutalist aesthetics. He wanted to redefine its purpose, to open it up to people who may have thought they didn’t belong.

“I really wanted to challenge the notion of black box theatres that turn their back on the world,” he says. “To change the relationship between the art and the audience. Because when the baby boomers die out, maybe the institutions as we know them will die out too.”

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Owner ‘mortified’ Margate gallery was closed when Pedro Pascal turned up

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Hollywood star had come to see an exhibition featuring 17 images of his face, but found the door locked

The owner of an art gallery featuring an exhibition dedicated to Hollywood star Pedro Pascal said she was “mortified” the gallery was closed when the actor turned up for a visit.

Jessica Rhodes Robb, who owns and runs the venue with her partner, Gavin Blake, was bemused to discover Pascal, 48, had turned up to the Rhodes Gallery in Margate on Sunday to find the door closed.

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Outcry over loss of features on Bangkok’s landmark ‘robot building’

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Campaigners criticise renovation and call for better protection for the city’s distinctive architecture

A Bangkok landmark known as the “robot building” has been stripped of its identity, heritage campaigners have said, as they called for the city’s distinctive architecture to preserved.

The building – in the form of a giant robot made up of stacks of cubes and inspired by the architect watching his son play with a toy – has loomed over one of Bangkok’s busiest commercial districts for decades. Its design included oversized bolts and antenna, and windows shaped like cartoonish eyes.

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Archibald prize 2023: Noni Hazlehurst portrait wins people’s choice award

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Jaq Grantford’s portrait of the beloved actor and former Play School presenter wins $5,000 prize decided by the public

A realist portrait of television personality and actor Noni Hazlehurst has won the $5,000 people’s choice award for the 2023 Archibald prize, announced at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Wednesday.

It is a first-time Archibald win for Melbourne artist Jaq Grantford and the second portrait the artist has painted of Hazlehurst.

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Hidden meaning of Magritte uncovered as new image is found under painting

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Secret portrait of woman likely to be wife of Belgian surrealist found during examination of artist’s work

A painting by René Magritte has been discovered beneath another painting by the Belgian surrealist master – to the excitement of experts.

A portrait of a woman had been hidden under La Cinquième Saison (The Fifth Season), from 1943, now held in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB) in Brussels. She was discovered using infrared reflectography.

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Art dealer ordered to pay £111,000 over missing painting by Mexican artist

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Esperanza Koren told London court she didn’t know whereabouts of Bosco Sodi’s painting

An art dealer has been ordered to pay £111,000 over a missing abstract painting compared to a giant “burnt digestive biscuit” by a judge in a London court.

The court heard that the piece by the Mexican artist Bosco Sodi – a round painting with a cracked surface built up using natural pigment, sawdust, wood pulp, natural fibres, water and glue – went missing after being loaned to the London art dealer Esperanza Koren in 2012.

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LGBTQ+ military charity backs proposal for Alan Turing statue on fourth plinth

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Trafalgar Square monument would stand in ‘stark contrast’ to treatment codebreaker received in his lifetime

An LGBTQ+ armed forces charity has backed proposals to erect a statue of the second world war codebreaker Alan Turing on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth – a high-profile platform for contemporary art commissions.

The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, originally made the suggestion in the House of Commons last week in response to an independent review into the service and experience of LGBTQ+ veterans who served under the pre-2000 ban on homosexuality in the armed forces.

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Pistoletto sculpture destroyed in suspected arson attack in Naples

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Venus of the Rags, one of the contemporary Italian artist’s most famous works, was burnt to cinders

One of the most famous works by Italian contemporary artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venus of the Rags, has been burnt to cinders in a suspected arson attack in Naples.

The installation, in which a statue of the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility stands next to a vast pile of coloured, discarded clothes, was destroyed where it stood on display near the town hall in the southern Italian city.

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‘It’s like a hostile environment’: London’s creative core at risk as artists in poverty quit

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UK capital as ‘huge generator of wealth’ under threat as a third of visual artists struggle to pay for studios

What makes Britain’s capital city so magnetic? Familiar landmarks? The nightlife? Or its financial, fashion and art trades? Maybe. But behind the glamour and money a network of artists is giving London the crucial appeal of a place where new things happen, while working on the edge of poverty.

A survey released on 13 July is to reveal just how close many of London’s visual artists are to giving up on a career that has pushed them to the bottom of the pile. Close to a third of those asked said lack of funds might force them out within five years. And just under half said they cannot afford to build savings or pay into a pension plan.

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Camera brings ‘unprecedented clarity’ to restoration of historic artworks

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Technology will allow conservators to use fluorescence to identify and remove ageing varnish with total accuracy

Scientists have developed technology that will revolutionise the restoration of historic works of art by allowing conservators to identify and remove ageing varnish with total accuracy.

A team at King’s College London’s department of physics has harnessed the power of fluorescence to bring “unprecedented clarity” to the conservation process, said Prof Klaus Suhling.

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‘Highly unusual’: lost 17th-century portrait of black and white women as equals saved for UK

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Exclusive: Unknown artwork was barred from leaving the UK after surfacing at an auction in 2021

A painting has been saved for the UK in recognition of its “outstanding significance” for the study of race and gender in 17th-century Britain, it will be announced on Friday.

The anonymous artist’s portrait of two women – one black and one white, depicted as companions and equals with similar dress, hair and jewellery – has been bought by Compton Verney, an award-winning gallery in Warwickshire.

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Germany’s return of sacred Kogi masks to Colombia may have health risks

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Wooden artefacts dating from 15th century and bought from indigenous people were treated with pesticides while in museum

Germany has returned two wooden masks of the indigenous Kogi community to Colombia but conceded that wearing the sacred artefacts in ceremonies may come with a health risk because they were treated with toxic pesticides during their time in German museums.

The masks, which date back to the mid-15th century and have been held in ethnological collections in Berlin for over a century, were handed over to Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, by his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a ceremony in Berlin on Friday.

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Banksy show officially authorised by elusive street artist to open in Glasgow

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Show at Gallery of Modern Art inspired by city’s Duke of Wellington statue with traffic cone on its head, says artist

An exhibition of work by Banksy is to open in Glasgow this weekend. The solo, show Cut & Run, taking place at the city’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), has been officially authorised by the elusive street artist.

It spans 25 years and will feature many of the stencils he has used to create his work. Banksy told the Herald: “I’ve kept these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage.

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Art dealer sentenced to more than two years for fake Andy Warhol paintings

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A 69-year-old Florida dealer is set to go to federal prison after a scheme involving the sale of fake artwork

A south Florida art dealer was sentenced on Tuesday to two years and three months in federal prison in connection with a scheme involving the sale of fake Andy Warhol paintings.

Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, was sentenced in Fort Pierce federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in February to a single count of money laundering, while prosecutors agreed to drop 16 other counts related to fraud and embezzlement. Bouaziz was fined $15,000, and a restitution hearing is scheduled for 16 August.

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Fears looted Nazi art still hanging in Belgian and British galleries

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Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection

In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.

Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.

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‘Man of 1,000 faces’ wins Deutsche Börse photography prize

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Samuel Fosso scoops £30,000 award for performative self-portraits of historical figures including Angela Davis and Mao Zedong

One of Africa’s most important living photographers and contemporary artists, who photographs himself in the style of leading historical figures including Martin Luther King and Angela Davis, has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2023.

The Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso was awarded the £30,000 prize – one of the most prestigious in the industry – at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on Thursday.

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