Category Archives: Art

Christie’s says $850m auctions to go ahead as planned despite cyberattack

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Sales to proceed despite failing to regain control of its website as staff and cybersecurity scramble to fix issue

The success of New York’s spring art auctions was in jeopardy Sunday, a day after auction house Christie’s confirmed that its website had been hacked, potentially shutting out some bidders on $850m worth of art work going up for bid this week.

Yet despite failing to regain control of its website, Christie’s said that its auctions – the most important of the year in the art world – would go ahead in person and by phone.

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Guernica-style battle of Orgreave painting stars in miners’ strikes exhibition

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Bob Olley’s unsettling vision of clash between miners and police is part of 40th anniversary show in Bishop Auckland

Bob Olley was there 40 years ago at the “battle of Orgreave”. “I saw the violence,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was in a foreign country when I saw what the police did. It is hard to believe it happened in this country.”

The brutality he and others witnessed on 18 June 1984 as striking miners met 6,000 police officers on horses or wielding batons on foot will stay in the memory. It was in his head as, some years later, he embarked on his response to one of the world’s greatest artworks, Picasso’s Guernica.

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Frank Stella, influential American artist, dies aged 87

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His constantly evolving works have been hailed as landmarks of the minimalist and post-painterly abstraction art movements

Frank Stella, a painter, sculptor and printmaker whose constantly evolving works are hailed as landmarks of the minimalist and post-painterly abstraction art movements, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.

Gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, who spoke with Stella’s family, confirmed his death to the Associated Press. Stella’s wife, Harriet McGurk, told the New York Times that he died of lymphoma.

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‘We are showing the world what people do’: grim relics of Hamas attack go on display in New York

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Tents, debris and personal items from the Nova festival, where 364 people died on 7 October, form shocking exhibit on Wall Street

While New York was preoccupied with student protests over the US’s ­support of Israel’s war in Gaza last week, another aspect of how the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel is coming to terms with bloodshed in the Middle East was being prepared.

On Wall Street, a gruelling ­exhibition has opened detailing the horrific attack on the Nova music festival by Hamas terrorists on 7 October, in which 364 people were murdered, many wounded and 44 taken hostage.

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‘Massive and exciting impact’: show celebrates Spain’s first abstract art museum

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Exhibition explores how a Spanish-Filipino artist in 1966 opened a trailblazing cultural outpost in Cuenca’s ‘hanging houses’

In July 1966, as the Beatles were preparing to release Revolver and Spain was approaching the 30th anniversary of the coup that birthed the Franco dictatorship, a Spanish-Filipino artist called Fernando Zóbel threw open the doors of an improbable but visionary cultural outpost.

Based in a clutch of 15th-century houses overhanging a precipitous gorge in the small city of Cuenca, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, or Museum of Spanish Abstract Art, had a simple if daunting mission. As Manuel Fontán del Junco, the director of museums and exhibitions at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid and one of the curators of a new exhibition about the institution, puts it, “it was a museum for artists in a country of artists without museums”.

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‘George’s machines’: museum devoted to George Wyllie opens on the Clyde

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The Wyllieum will showcase work of ‘social sculptor’ who used humour to make serious criticisms of climate crisis and capitalism

He was the artist who sailed a paper boat past New York, set a straw locomotive on fire over the Clyde, and inserted a question mark into the word sculpture.

George Wyllie, a prolific, self-taught “social sculptor” who worked with steel, stone, wood and paper, used humour to make deeply serious criticisms of the climate crisis, capitalism and Britain’s industrial decline.

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Does mysterious painting prove blue denim was around 200 years before Levi’s?

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Woman Begging With Two Children, by an unknown artist, shows what appears to be a denim skirt in 17th-century Italy

The origin of the world’s most enduringly popular fabric is in ­dispute, as a new exhibition spotlights a claim that firmly links denim with 17th-­century Italy and takes its history back 200 years.

Blue denim, that all-American ­symbol of informality and a life lived on the open range, is already also contentiously attributed to ­southern France, while modern jeans ­mythology still has it that Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, first came up with the idea of making workwear out of this sturdy cotton in San Francisco 150 years ago.

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Artwork commemorating Indigenous Australian history triumphs in Venice

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Prize for best national participation goes to Archie Moore, who becomes first Australian artist to win it

The artist Archie Moore has won the prestigious Golden Lion for best national participation at the 2024 Venice Biennale – the first time an Australian artwork has won the prize.

With this year’s theme of “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere,” Moore won the award for his artwork, kith and kin, at the Australia Pavilion. The work, which has involved the artist mapping a sprawling genealogy in chalk, concerns 65,000 years of Indigenous Australian history and nonlinear concepts of time and place. Below the vast family tree covering the dark walls and ceiling stands a white table covered in records of First Nations deaths, including those in police and prison custody.

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Insider art: Vatican sets up Biennale pavilion at Venice women’s jail

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Pope Francis to attend installation that includes short film featuring Zoë Saldaña and Giudecca inmates

Originally a convent dating to the 13th century, and once a reformatory for prostitutes, the Giudecca women’s prison, set on an island in the Venetian lagoon, will this summer perform a quite different role: as the official pavilion for the Vatican at this year’s Venice Biennale.

Pope Francis is due to attend on 28 April – the first pontifical visit to the Biennale since it was founded in 1895. In the women’s prison he will see a work by Maurizio Cattelan, who notoriously created a hyper-real sculpture in 1999 depicting Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite.

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New York’s Vessel to reopen with steel-mesh safety measures after suicides

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Climbable sculpture in Hudson Yards in Manhattan closed in 2021 after four people died by suicide

The Vessel, the huge climbable centerpiece of New York’s upmarket Hudson Yards development that saw a number of suicides, is set to reopen later this year with new safety features, according to developers.

The 150ft sculpture, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and built at a cost of $260m, was closed three years ago after four people jumped to their deaths. Besides overall criticism of its design – including descriptions of it as a giant gold shish-kebab rotisserie – the construction was grimly described to the Guardian as “staircase to nowhere”.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Revealed: the artwork sneaked into a German gallery by an employee – and the story behind it

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Technician, 51, who hung his own picture in an exhibition about art world glitches, has been sacked and given a three-year ban

The first picture that greeted visitors to the first-floor exhibition space in Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne gallery on 23 February may not have immediately grabbed their attention.

The 60cm by 120cm artwork was a retro-looking photograph of a family of four, with the background and parts of the faces and bodies roughly painted over in white. It was unassuming compared with the video- and photo-based artworks in the adjacent rooms, but only on closer inspection might visitors have wondered why there was no label giving the artist or the work’s title.

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‘Iconic’ Man Ray image sells for €120,000 at auction of 200 works

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Le Violon d’Ingres print produced under artist’s supervision was among friend’s collection auctioned in Paris

It is one of the most recognisable images of the surrealist movement: a black and white photograph by Man Ray of Kiki de Montparnasse with f-shaped sound holes painted on her back representing a violin.

Le Violon d’Ingres, which was produced in 1924 and signed by the US artist, set a record for the most expensive photograph when it sold for $12.4m (£9.8m) at auction in New York in 2022.

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German art museum fires worker for hanging his own painting in gallery

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Staff member put work on display at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne ‘in hope of achieving his breakthrough’

According to a quote commonly – if wrongly – attributed to the artist Andy Warhol, everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame. At Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne museum earlier this year, one technician and aspiring artist got to bask in the limelight for a whole eight hours.

The museum in southern Germany on Tuesday confirmed that it had fired a member of its technical services team after he was found to have hung one of his own paintings in a part of the gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary art, allowing him to share a space with works by pop art pioneer Warhol for an entire day.

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Manchester theatre restores cancelled Palestinian event after artists protest

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Home theatre apologises for upset caused by cancelling of Voices of Resilience

The organisers of a Palestinian literature event cancelled by a Manchester theatre last week, say they are “hugely grateful” the venue has agreed it can go ahead after a surge of support.

Home theatre apologised for the upset caused by cancelling Voices of Resilience, due to be held on 22 April, citing “recent publicity” and safety concerns for the organisers and those attending.

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Ukrainian sculptor who fled Kyiv accepted into Royal Society of British Artists

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Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Ukraine with his family when his studio was bombed during the Russian invasion

A Ukrainian sculptor who fled to the UK when his studio was destroyed has been accepted into the Royal Society of British Artists.

Alex Lidagovsky was forced to leave Kyiv with his wife, Dasha Nepochatova, and 16-year-old stepdaughter after the Russian invasion began on 24 February 2022.

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Piero della Francesca’s Augustinian altarpiece reassembled after 450 years

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Eight known components of artwork were housed in five different museums in Europe and the US before being reunited in Milan

Eight surviving panels of Piero della Francesca’s Augustinian altarpiece have been reassembled after 450 years, possibly solving one of its enduring mysteries.

The celebrated polyptych was created by the early Italian Renaissance master specifically for the church of the Augustinians at Borgo San Sepolcro (now Sansepolcro) in his home town near Arezzo and comprised 30 panels, the majority of which have gone missing.

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FBI returns 22 looted artifacts to Japan after discovery in Massachusetts attic

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Investigation of items that were stolen during the Okinawa battle began after family discovered them in late father’s belongings

The FBI has returned 22 centuries-old artifacts to Okinawa, Japan, after a family discovered them in their late father’s attic in Massachusetts.

Agents with the FBI’s Boston division on Friday announced that the return of the looted items followed a lengthy investigation that began when they received a call from a family who came across the items while sorting through their dead dad’s belongings.

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Artist defends Tate Britain’s display of ‘undeniably racist’ Whistler mural

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Keith Piper says engaging with offensive and traumatic imagery can be important in keeping a clear sense of history

An artist commissioned to respond to a mural in Tate Britain that has been sealed off from the public since 2020 because of its depictions of black and Chinese people, says viewing traumatic and racist images is crucial for us to truly grapple with our history.

Keith Piper was commissioned by Tate Britain in 2022 to create a work that reacted to the Rex Whistler mural, titled The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, which had been closed after Tate’s ethics committee decided it was “offensive”.

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Legal row could finally force mystery artist Banksy to reveal his real name

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Two art collectors are taking legal action against artist over his ‘refusal’ to confirm the authenticity of one of his famous images

His identity has long been a matter of speculation and investigation, but Banksy may be forced to reveal his real name if a dispute over a print of the late Queen Elizabeth depicted as a bejewelled primate ends up in court.

Two art collectors are taking legal action against the graffiti artist’s company, Pest Control, following its apparent refusal to confirm the authenticity of Monkey Queen. After three years of trying to get an answer, Nicky Katz and Ray Howse have lost patience and are suing Pest Control for breach of contract.

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Descendants of King William II’s killer want to donate triptych depicting death to UK museum

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Latin-inscribed artwork tells story of Walter Tirel, whose son killed British monarch

The Italian descendants of King William II’s killer want to donate a work of art partly depicting William’s death to a British museum.

The three-slab triptych is owned by the Tirelli family, whose aristocratic origins can be traced back to France, for over 400 years. They have said they believe it was made by a Norman artist in 1100.

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