On 28 Oct, 2010 With
The number of visitors, 3.000 people, who have visited Palazzo Cini and seen Kitsch Biennale 2010 during the first 20 days bear witness of the public appreciation and its success. The Kitsch Biennale is an international exhibition for figurative and narrative painting. This year, the jury consisted of Bjørn Li (The Nerdrum Institute) and the kitsch painters Odd Nerdrum, Helene Knoop, Jan-Ove Tuv and David Dalla Venezia. They have focused on applicants displaying the serious and earnest expression. This sets the exhibition concept apart from the general trend of contemporary figurative painting. Works with an eternal outlook have been preferred.
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On 28 Oct, 2010 With
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On 27 Oct, 2010 With
Marie-Thérèse Walter and Picasso (1927-1936) n 1927 Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977), a 17 year old who Picasso then lived with in a flat across the street from his marital home (while still married to Olga). Marie-Thérèse and Picasso had a daughter, Maya (Maria de la Concepcion) on October 5, 1935. (Picasso and Olga later separated although they remained married so Olga would not receive half of Picasso’s wealth — until she died in 1955. ) Picasso’s relation with Marie was kept from Olga until Olga was told of Marie’s pregnancy. Marie understandably became jealous when Picasso started to fall in love with Dora Maar in 1936, a year after Maya was born. It was Marie-Thérèse who was the inspiration for many of Picasso’s famous Vollard Suite etchings. …
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On 27 Oct, 2010 With
A rare self portrait by Edouard Manet’s has sold for more than £22 million at auction, in a record sale for the artist By Andrew Hough The painting, “Self Portrait with a Palette”, was bought for a record price by New York dealer Franck Giraud, who was bidding at the Sothebys sale, in central London. The Manet was among 51 lots in Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and modern works at the start of a series of auctions in London over the coming fortnight. Three lots sold for more than £10 million including the 1878 Manet, one of only two self-portraits he painted. It shows the artist dressed as a Parisian dandy, rather than as a working artist. It was created at a…
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On 27 Oct, 2010 With
Odd Nerdrum (born April 8, 1944, Sweden), is a Norwegian figurative painter. The themes and style in Nerdrum’s work, based onanecdote and narrative, and the major influence of the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio place him in direct conflict with the abstractionand conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway. Nerdrum creates six to eight paintings per year that have been categorized as: Still life paintings of small objects like bricks, portraits and self portraits whose subjects are dressed as if from some other time and place, and large paintings, allegorical in nature that present a sense of the apocalyptic, and again reference another time. Nerdrum claims that his art should be understood as kitsch rather than art as such. “On Kitsch“, a manifesto composed by Nerdrum describes…
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On 26 Oct, 2010 With
This wonderful work, engraved for Boydell’s Shakspeare Gallery, is esteemed among the best of Fuseli’s works. It is, indeed, strangely wild and superhuman—if ever a Spirit visited earth, it must have appeared to Fuseli. The “majesty of buried Denmark” is no vulgar ghost such as scares the belated rustic, but a sad and majestic shape with the port of a god; to imagine this, required poetry, and in that our artist was never deficient. He had fine taste in matters of high import; he drew the boundary line between the terrible and the horrible, and he never passed it; the former he knew was allied to grandeur, the latter to deformity and disgust. An eminent metaphysician visited the gallery before…
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On 25 Oct, 2010 With
Han van Meegeren (10 October 1889 in Deventer, Overijssel – 30 December 1947 in Amsterdam), born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the marvelous colours used by painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and later set out to become an artist himself. When art critics decried his work as tired and derivative, van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. Thereupon, he decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world’s most famous artists, includingFrans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. He so well replicated the styles and colours of…
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On 24 Oct, 2010 With
London salerooms produced a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just By Colin Gleadell After the buzz of expectation created by the London salerooms, they did produce a record series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions last week, but only just. Mid-way through the fifth and final session, the sales total crept past the previous record of £298 million, set in June 2008, finally ending up at £303 million. There were no celebrations, however, and a palpable air of disappointment pervaded. Strip away the auctioneers’ commissions, and the total was nearer £250 million, below the £300 to £450 million estimate for the series. Things began badly at Bonhams, which sold none of its top…
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On 23 Oct, 2010 With
Some counterfeiters try to enter the “soul and mind of the artist.” Some delight in the chemistry of baking paint and creating wormholes. Some start with real pictures and then “restore” them until they look as if they’re by a different artist. From ancient vases to conceptual art—if someone made it, someone else has tried to bamboozle the world with a copy. by Milton Esterow In Italy,” Salvatore Casillo, who founded the University of Salerno’s Museum of Fakes, recently commented, “if you’re a good enough counterfeiter, you eventually get your own show.” Casillo was right. Several good-enough counterfeiters have recently had their own shows. Icilio Federico Joni, who was known as the prince of Sienese fakers and specialized in Renaissance…
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On 22 Oct, 2010 With
The most expensive work from classical antiquity ever sold at auction 2007: The most expensive work from classical antiquity ever sold at auction: Roman-era bronze sculpture of Artemis and the Stag. Sold for $28.6 million.
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