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Monet painting to go on sale at Paris auction for first time in decades

By in Art World News

Monet painting to go on sale at Paris auction for first time in decades

PARIS, Nov 3 (Reuters) – A painting by French impressionist master Claude Monet, which has remained in private hands since 1948, is expected to fetch up to 3 million euros ($3.22 million) when it goes under the hammer later this month in Paris, auction house Ader said.

The landscape “Les Saules, Giverny” (“The Willows, Giverny”), dating from 1886, is reappearing on the French art market, where Monet’s paintings have become increasingly rare.

It is one of around three dozen lots at the upcoming Ader auction house’s sale of impressionist and modern art at Hotel Drouot slated for Nov. 24.

“Paintings of Claude Monet of this scale, of this dimension no longer really exist among French families. They’re found mostly in big museums or in foreign collections, but it’s very rare to find them in France,” Ader auctioneer David Nordmann told Reuters on Friday in a preview of the sale.

“It’s a big occasion for the French market,” he added.

Monet’s oil painting – measuring 73cm by 92cm (28.7 inches by 36.2 inches) – belonged to a family of Jewish origin, and was displayed in their luxurious flat in central Paris. The family’s grandfather purchased the painting from a gallery in Nice in 1948, and it has remained in the family’s hands since.

Though not as famous as Monet’s water lilies or the Gare Saint Lazare paintings, which can command prices reaching 100 million euros, “Les Saules, Giverny” bears the artist’s trademark style.

“It’s an oeuvre typical of Claude Monet, notably by the brush strokes and how he makes the light come out,” Nordmann said.

Monet found solace in Giverny, west of Paris, from 1883 until his death in 1926, transforming a pink stucco house into his permanent home and studio, and growing a Japanese-style garden of flowers and trees spread across a pond of water lilies, which inspired many of his paintings.

The auction also includes a work by American painter Mary Cassatt. “Portrait de Jeune Fille au Chapeau Blanc” (“Portrait of a Young Woman in a White Hat”) is estimated at 800,000 to 1.2 million euros.

($1 = 0.9324 euros)

Reporting by Clotaire Achi, Michaela Cabrera and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Rooms of their own: New exhibit at Springfield Museums celebrates 200-plus years of work by a broad range of women artists

By in Native

Rooms of their own: New exhibit at Springfield Museums celebrates 200-plus years of work by a broad range of women artists

Rooms of their own: New exhibit at Springfield Museums celebrates 200-plus years of work by a broad range of women artists

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    “Dancing on the George Washington Bridge II,” a 2020 quilt by Faith Ringgold, is part of the varied work in “As They Saw It.” Image couresy Springfield Museums

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    “Maremaid,” a 1815 watercolor by Mary Ann Wilson, a folk artist from New York state. Her piece made the case for female empowerment well before the term was coined. Image couresy Springfield Museums

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    “As They Saw It” at the Springfield Museums features work by women artists dating back to the early 19th century.  Staff photo/Steve Pfarrer

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    “Self-Portrait,” an 1885 oil painting by Massachusetts native Ellen Day Hale, features the artist’s self-assured and unabashed gaze, at a time when women were not expected to be assertive. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    “Victory Lap,” by photographer Amy Sancetta, captures the members of the winning U.S. Women’s 4 x 100 meter relay team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Staff photo

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    A Diné (Navajo) dress from the late 19th century, cinched with a sash belt made by D.Y. Begay, a contemporary Diné artist. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    Curators at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield ready a work for “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now.” Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    Text in “As They Saw It” is in both English and Spanish, something that has become a more common feature at Springfield Museums. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    “Black Barbie,” a 1996 quilt by Kyra Hicks, seems especially timely in the wake of all the media buzz about this summer’s “Barbie” movie.  Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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    “Untitled No. 10,” a photograph of a female teenage wrestler by Eve Fowler, is part of “As They Saw It” at the Springfield Museums.  Staff Photo/Steve Pfarrer

Staff Writer

Published: 11/3/2023 10:53:04 AM

Paintings that date to the early 1800s. Native American crafts and textiles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Depression-era photographs and ones taken just a few years ago. A quilt that offers interesting commentary on a pop culture topic that was all the rage this past summer.

What do they have in common? All these artworks are part of a new exhibit at Springfield Museums, “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now,” that offers a broad look at how female American artists have approached their subjects and worked to overcome numerous barriers — social, economic, cultural — to shape their stories.

With over 60 works on view, drawn from artists from a broad mix of racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds, “As They Saw It” is a collaboration between curators from the Springfield Museums, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston), and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

And the exhibit, whose work is drawn from all three museums, is part of a multi-year initiative at MFA Boston with four regional museums, including the Springfield complex.

The new show might be the only one at which you’ll see an 1815 watercolor by a folk artist, Mary Ann Wilson, who lived openly in upstate New York with another woman, alongside photos by Dorothea Lange — or a quilt by Kyra Hicks, a contemporary African American fabric artist whose 1996 work “Black Barbie” is emblazoned with the words “America’s Doll was never intended for me.”

Or how about a varied display of late 19th/early 20th century baskets by Native Americans from Oregon and northern California, juxtaposed with work by mid/late 20th century abstract painters Alice Trumbull Mason and Emily Mason?

“We didn’t want to limit ourselves to one time period or one kind of genre,” said Maggie North, a co-curator of the exhibit and until recently the lead curator at the Springfield Museums (she’s currently in a doctoral program in art history at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia).

“The idea was to have these pieces be in conversation with each other,” North said during a recent phone call from Philadelphia. “I think that encourages us to look at art, to look at the world, in different ways.”

A collaborative show — this is the second full one Springfield Museums has done with MFA Boston — is also a good way for museums to “maximize the strength of our collections,” she said.

And, North noted, an important goal of what’s known as the Art Bridges initiative at MFA Boston — a goal shared by Springfield Museums, she added — is to build new exhibits along more inclusive lines, showing work from artists who haven’t received enough past recognition.

“One study we looked at from a few years ago showed that just 14 percent of exhibitions at 25 major American museums were of work by women,” she said. “So this exhibit is one way to address that.”

The show, in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, is divided into three sections. One includes self-portraits and other explorations of identity; a second features work examining themes of “sisterhood” and community among women, such as “Dancing on the George Washington Bridge II.”

This colorful 2020 quilt, by Faith Ringgold, shows over a dozen African American women floating along and just above the framework of the New York City bridge.

A third section looks at multi-generational relationships among women artists, and perhaps the best example is a red Diné (Navajo) dress, dating from approximately 1890, to which a contemporary Diné artist, D.Y. Begay, has added a sash belt.

“That’s the way the dress would have been worn,” said North.

Bucking convention

Though most of the artworks date from the 20th and 21st centuries, some older works stand out for the way they bucked social conventions of 19th century women.

Consider “Self-Portrait,” an 1885 oil painting by Ellen Day Hale, an impressionist painter from Massachusetts who lived and studied in Paris, London and Boston. In the work, Hale looks boldly at the viewer in a way considered unusual and perhaps rather daring for women of that era.

As exhibit notes put it, Hale’s “unabashed gaze” led one critic to declare that the artist displayed “a man’s strength,” which “he meant as a compliment.”

And Mary Ann Wilson, the New York state folk artist, in 1815 crafted “Maremaid,” a watercolor painting that depicted a mermaid-like figure clutching a weapon in each hand rather than a mirror and a comb. The painting stands out as a “visionary representation of female empowerment,” exhibit notes state.

North says she and her co-curators — all women, by coincidence — from the two other museums were also committed to showing work not just by women but by women of color and Native American women.

“Those artists have historically been even more under-represented,” she noted.

She added that the curating team had been mulling the inclusion of Kyra Hicks’ “Black Barbie” quilt when the much ballyhooed “Barbie” opened this summer. The resulting media crush about the film, North said with a laugh, “meant that we all said ‘yes’ to including it.”

And in one of the “conversations” North refers to in the exhibit, as well another pop culture reference, next to Hicks’ “Barbie” quilt is a photograph by Cara Romero, titled “Arla Lucia,” which depicts a Native American woman as Wonder Woman.

A member of the Chemehuevi Nation of southern California who also grew up partly around Houston, Texas, Romero did not see herself or her community reflected in popular culture or academia, exhibit notes state — so she opted to fill that void with her own photographs.

“As They Saw It” includes a number of other striking photos. A 1973 image by Nan Goldin, “Ivy in the Boston Garden,” captures a female-presenting person at ease at a time when LGBTQ people had far less visibility or acceptance.

And “Untitled No. 10,” a 1999 portrait by Eve Fowler, shows a determined looking teenage girl wearing wrestling gear, poised to strike — part of a series that Fowler, who’s also a filmmaker and multimedia artist, did on teenage girls playing boys sports.

North says she hopes the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 14 and moves in April to the Fenimore Art Museum, will appeal not just to women but to all manner of visitors — anyone interested in seeing a wide range of art arranged in an unusual context.

“I’d love to see mothers and daughters visit together,” she said. “But really it’s a great opportunity for anyone to consider how art is presented, and how museums can be more responsive to the community and be more equitable.”

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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Helen Marcus, Prolific Photographer of the Famous, Dies at 97

By in Photography

Helen Marcus, Prolific Photographer of the Famous, Dies at 97
image

One of the few women at the top of her field in book and magazine publishing, she was also a champion of her fellow professionals.

Helen Marcus, a late-blooming photographer whose evocative black-and-white portraits of literary figures and film and television personalities graced book jackets and magazine covers for decades, died on Oct. 1 at her home in Manhattan. She was 97.

Her death was confirmed by her sister, Irene Feuerstein.

Ms. Marcus’s photographs were disseminated in a wide variety of venues. Some were seen in annual corporate reports, and one was the model for an etching on a Swedish postage stamp honoring the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison. She also became a champion of her fellow professionals.

Her fame as a photographer, and her leadership role as a defender of her profession on issues of copyright and credit, were all the more notable because the field at the time was so overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Ms. Marcus founded the New York chapter of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (later the American Society of Media Photographers) in 1982 and served as its national president from 1985 to 1990. From 1998 to 2007, she was president of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, an organization, named for the celebrated photojournalist, that was established in 1979 to help independent photographers complete their projects.

Responding to a profile in The New York Times crediting George Lois, the Madison Avenue art director, with designing striking covers for Esquire magazine, Ms. Marcus complained, in a letter to the editor in 2008, that the article did not adequately acknowledge Carl Fischer, the photographer whose images loomed large in many of those designs.

“It is akin to publishing pictures of the Sistine Chapel and mentioning the pope who paid for them,” she wrote, “but not the painter.”

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See Hundreds of Photographs From Elton John and David Furnish’s Private Collection

By in Photography

See Hundreds of Photographs From Elton John and David Furnish’s Private Collection
The V&A Announces New Collaboration With The Sir Elton John Photography Collection Including Major Donation

Elton John and David Furnish pictured at home in their art gallery in Windsor, England, in 2019
David M. Benett / Getty Images for the V&A

Audiences know Elton John as a renowned pianist and popular entertainer, but they may be surprised to learn that he is also the owner of an impressive photography collection. Over the past few decades, John and his husband, David Furnish, have amassed more than 7,000 photographs, 300 of which will go on display next spring at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

Titled “Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection,” the new exhibition will feature rare prints from prominent photographers, most of which have never been seen by the public. 

These works will “[showcase] some of the most beloved photographers and iconic images from within our collection,” say John and Furnish in a statement from the V&A.

Dakota Hair

Dakota Hair (2004) by Ryan McGinley

© Ryan McGinley Studios

John started collecting photography after recovering from alcohol and drug addiction in the 1990s, according to the Associated Press. He and Furnish first met in 1993, and the couple has since built one of the largest private collections of photography in the world.

The upcoming show isn’t the first exhibition of works from the British musician’s collection. In 2016, the Tate Modern staged “The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography From the Sir Elton John Collection,” which featured photography from the 1920s to the 1950s. In the audio guide for that show, John described photography as “the love of my life, in art terms. I love surrounding myself with them,” per CNN’s Nick Glass.

“Fragile Beauty” will be a continuation of “The Radical Eye,” focusing on photographs from the 1950s to the present day. Billed as the V&A’s “largest temporary exhibition of photography to date,” it will feature works from over 140 photographers, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi and Ai Weiwei.

Simply Fragile

Simply Fragile (2022) by Tyler Mitchell

© Tyler Mitchell / Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

The show will be divided into eight thematic sections, such as fashion, reportage and celebrity. It will feature a number of portraits of famous actors and performers, including Marilyn Monroe, Miles Davis and Chet Baker. It will also showcase photographs capturing historical moments from the civil rights movement, the AIDS epidemic and the 9/11 attacks.

“We are delighted to be working with Sir Elton John and David Furnish to present highlights from their unparalleled collection: from the playful and surprising, to the contemplative and thoughtful,” says Duncan Forbes, the show’s curator, in the museum’s statement. “Whether through the elegance of fashion photography, the creativity of musicians and performers, the exploration of desire or the passage of history as captured by photojournalism, photography reveals something important about the world.”

“Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection” will be on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from May 18, 2024 to January 5, 2025.

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OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture Is a Shrine to Sound

By in Design

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture Is a Shrine to Sound

With his affinity for brutalist industrial design paired with a set of highly tuned ears and eyes geared towards vintage hi-fi components, Devon Turnbull and his company, OJAS have become regular collaborators amongst a who’s who of creatives spanning from the late Virgil Abloh to Byredo’s founder and creative director Ben Gorham. His latest project is as modular as it is musical, a semi-permanent installation within the USM Modular Furniture’s Soho, New York flagship store imagined as a temple of sound for audiophiles and the curious alike.

Photo: Lauren Coleman

Set with USM Modular Furniture towering shelving system stocked with records, books, and audio components, the modular furniture’s utilitarian aesthetic makes for a fine pairing fronted by OJAS’ similarly audio-aesthete’s functionality. Created to invite listeners the opportunity to “experience a calming environment to contemplate music, liberated from the disruption of outside noise,”⁠ Turnball’s and USM collaborated to establish a listening room sharing the sensory focusing traits of a temple or shrine.

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture with large modular bookshelf system filled with books, vinyl records, audio components and other miscellaneous items, with turntable and two tube amps set across a rolling platform storage. Room is decorated in all neutral gray decor.

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture  – Devon Turnbull’s first semi-permanent listening room – integrates Kvadrat Acoustics Soft Cells acoustic panels on walls and ceilings with a bespoke audio system created by OJAS. Photo: Lauren Coleman

Two views of the three black and green floor seats with backs placed upon a tiered listening area along the back wall of the OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture. First image is from behind a turntable facing toward the front of the three chairs, second photo is from the side, revealing the tiered seating setup.

The OJAS speakers with USM Haller case goods are complemented with seating, and other furniture designs. Photo:Lauren Coleman.

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture shares similarities to Turnbull’s recent HiFi Listening Room Dream No. 1  (below) installed within London’s Lisson Gallery. But while that listening room dedicated to “a democratic, public listening space, where people could experience music through a high-quality stereo system without needing to own it” exhibited an almost desaturated minimalist atmosphere dominated by the monolithic stature of OJAS’ signature gray speakers, Turnbull’s latest Listening Room turns of the dial a bit in its retreat-like comforts with a few splashes of color across its sparse seating.

gallery view of large gray speakers and audio setup

Photo: Lisson Gallery London Limited

The OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furniture installation is open to the public and by appointments at USM Modular Furniture Soho, 28-30 Greene St, New York, NY 10013.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.

Discovering Surrealist Imagery With Artist And Photographer Ted Chin

By in Photography

Discovering Surrealist Imagery With Artist And Photographer Ted Chin
image

Ted Chin is a digital surrealist and photographer originally from Taiwan, now based in San Francisco, USA. He is widely recognized for his exquisite Photoshop composite art, which exudes a dreamy and surreal quality, occasionally touched with ethereal nature spirits.

“I am familiar with Ted’s work as he is well-known in the field of digital photomontage surrealism. Ted’s work is novel and innovative even in a cutting-edge art field. His ability to capture that intangible magical feel when creating his works gives him a unique and instantly recognizable style. When browsing the inspiration blogs I see his work and know it is him. One of his hallmarks is the way he scales animals. We can relate to animals in a photo, but the way he scales them creates something else entirely with an extra layer of magic to it,” says artist Erik Johansson.

With over eight years of expertise in digital production, Chin has catered to a wide array of international clients, including Grammy, Apple, Warner Bros, HBO, Meta, and Adobe, navigating the realms of fine art and the commercial industry. His exceptional talents were recently acknowledged when he was selected as the cover artist for the Adobe Photoshop 2021 splash screen.

“Ted’s accomplishments as a surrealist photo montage artist are a testament to his talents. Having his work featured on Adobe’s splash page is akin to winning a Grammy in the art world. Artists use Adobe every day and when they see the splash page, they pay attention to the artist. This recognition, bestowed by a tool used universally by artists, is a massive endorsement that signifies his position at the top of the food chain in the digital art realm,” offers artist Corentin Villemeur.

Chin’s boundless creativity is driven by a desire to capture and communicate the captivating wonder and beauty of the world, inspiring viewers with his imaginative artwork. Forbes sat down with artist Ted Chin to talk about his creative process, career and who he’d love to work with in the future.

Goldie Chan: What has been your favorite project to work on?

Ted Chin: One of My favorite projects that I’ve worked on was the splash screen cover for 2021 Adobe Photoshop – the Flamingo Cloud. It was a dream come true to have my artwork viewed by the whole world, and every single user that uses photoshop. There are many amazing fun projects that I worked on but this one will always be the most special one for me. It was the “I made it” moment. Still feels like a dream to me.

Chan: What has your career journey been?

Chin: Been challenging but exciting. I get work from different agencies and brand opportunities, but sometimes it’s not as stable as a 9-5 job. The first year was hard when I quit my first office job, but then I got to learn so much on my journey and got to work with many different brands and companies and met so many creative minds.

I have worked with brands like Adobe, Honda, Apple, Grammy, Puma, Redbull, Warner Bros and many more different brands including sports and tech to design creative advertising and social media campaigns.

Chan: Describe your personal brand.

Chin: I’m a digital artist that focuses on creating surreal fantasy art and graphic design. Beside making fine art, I also help brands to make designs, and use storytelling to communicate a message or promote a service or product.

Chan: What do you love about surrealist art or surrealism?

Chin: It allows me to day dream and explore my mind.

As a child, storytelling always ignited a spark within me. When I was in graduate school, I struggled with limited resources and time, preventing me from exploring the world as much as I desired. The idea of traveling to new places, discovering unfamiliar cultures, and sharing stories remained a dream for me.

I realized that I could bring my tales to life through the art of photography and Photoshop, leveraging my imagination and skills to create surrealistic visual narratives that could transport viewers to other worlds. And thus, “Ted’s Little Dream,” a lifelong project, was born. By fusing my passion for storytelling with my love for photography and digital art, I strive to capture the essence of my dreams and share them with the world.

Chan: Which brand or person would you love to work with?

Chin: I would love to work with galleries like Avant Arte, Spoke Art or Pace Gallery, or explore opportunities to create installation art and sculptures. I want to break the 2D world and bring my art into real life scale and invite more audience to dream with me.

Chan: What are you working on now?

Chin: Currently working on live streaming art, education, and exploring of Ai technology. I have few exciting opportunities and gallery shows coming in 2024 and I look forward to it.

Chan: Who do you admire?

Chin: Artist Erik Johansson, I got to meet him and become friends 2 years ago, and I hope I will become a successful international well known artist, and get to show my art in actual museums one day.

Chan: Any career advice for this year?

Chin: Don’t be shy to try new technology and learn different ways to show your art. It is important to focus on your craft and become a better scholar and artist, but it is also important to find a way to let your voice heard by others.

Play Meets Ink in Roy Scholten’s Ongoing LEGO Letterpress Bird Series

By in Art World News

Play Meets Ink in Roy Scholten’s Ongoing LEGO Letterpress Bird Series

Common linnet. All images © Roy Scholten, shared with permission

Roy Scholten is wrapping up a years-long printing project with dozens of playfully rendered fowl. 50 Birds is an ongoing series that uses LEGO in place of lead type to create curved beaks, long tails, and rounded bellies. With only three species—hawfinch, reed bunting, and kingfisher—remaining, The Netherlands-based artist and designer has nearly a full flock of the letterpress creatures, all nested inside 6 x 6-inch paper.

“It’s been interesting to see how the experience from earlier prints feeds back into the following ones,” he tells Colossal. “In a way, because I got better at it, the more difficult it has become. More subtle color schemes and patterns resulted in a more painterly approach to printing.”

Scholten began working with the unconventional material about a decade ago in collaboration with artist Martijn van der Blom, and the pair recently released a bi-lingual book, Print & Play, the Art of LEGO Letterpress, documenting their process and projects during the last ten years. Their practice of inking and printing with the plastic blocks is known in printmaking circles as the “Hilversum method,” named for their studios’ location in the city of Hilversum.  Included in the book’s pages are some early works from the 50 Birds collection, along with van der Blom’s architectural typography, stylized dinosaurs, landscapes, and more.

Keep an eye on Scholten’s Instagram for the final avian pieces, along with larger species like owls, falcons, and hawks, which are next on his docket. You can also purchase prints on his site.

 

a block printed bird with a pink belly

Crested tit

a block printed bird with brown and black feathers

Pied flycatcher

a gray and white bird in blue

Sanderling

a flying yellow and gray bird

Skylark

a brown and white bird climbing a brown block like a tree

Treecreeper

an open book with four images of LEGO dinosaur prints

A spread from ‘Print & Play, the Art of LEGO Letterpress’

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Play Meets Ink in Roy Scholten’s Ongoing LEGO Letterpress Bird Series appeared first on Colossal.

Belmont Market gets colorful makeover by South Kingstown art students

By in Art World News

Belmont Market gets colorful makeover by South Kingstown art students

WAKEFIELD, R.I. (WJAR) — Belmont Market’s employee breakroom got a colorful makeover by South Kingstown art students.

Students from South Kingstown High School came to the market to paint a mural on Friday afternoon, Belmont Market officials said.

The students said they took the original Belmont logo and added their own twist for the mural.

“They do so much for the school, so we really wanted to give back,” said Kaitlyn Swint, a South Kingstown High School senior. “We just wanted to make this mural to give back and we’re really enjoying it.”

The students that painted the mural on Friday are Advanced Placement art course students at the high school.

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