Marc Chagall signed ‘The Angel of Judgment’ lithograph printed by Mourlot in 1974. From an edition of 5,000, this near-mint poster, 30 inches by 20 1/2 inches, is estimated at $3,850-$4,375. Image courtesy of Universal Live.
NORTHBROOK, Ill. – Universal Live will sell an estate collection of more than 400 museum exhibition posters at their online auction Sunday, Aug. 15. LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding. The sale will begin at 1 p.m. Eastern.
“There’s a theme here: great art posters from the four major art printing houses,” said Martin Shape, auctioneer and co-owner of Universal Live.
From Mourlot Arte Paris, which closed in 1962, is an original Raoul Dufy lithograph titled Paddock at Deauville. The colorful poster is dated 1960 and is one of an edition of 5,000. The poster is in near mint condition and is expected to make $2,200-$2,625.
A Chagall lithograph, The Angel of Judgment, by Mourlot Imprimeur/Freres, which was printed for an exhibition held at the National Museum in Nice, is signed and dated 1975. In near-mint condition, this poster has a $3,850-$4,375 estimate.
Ediciones Poligrafa, Spain’s equivalent to Mourlot, is represented in the auction by several posters featuring works by Joan Miro.
From New York’s Brand X comes a Helen Frankenthaler serigraph poster for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 2003. The auction catalog notes that the poster is printed in the same way as the original limited edition, but with “Lincoln Center Salutes Beverly Sills” at the bottom. With an edition size of 500, the colorful poster carries a $275-$350 estimate – “an exceptional purchase at a great price,” noted Shape.
Other artists whose works are represented at the auction include Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Jim Dine, Cezanne, Lichtenstein, Koons, Calder, Matisse and many more.
Picasso’s 1963 ‘La Grande Maternite’ is a rare lithograph purchased directly from the printer, Mourlot. It carries an $8,250-9,375. Image courtesy of Universal Live. French artist Raoul Dufy died seven years before Mourlot printed this original lithograph of his ‘Paddock at Deauville’ in 1960. From an edition of 5,000, the litho has a $2,200-$2,625 estimate. Image courtesy of Universal Live. This 1970 lithograph poster was produced for the presentation of a book on Joan Miro’s works. Published by Ediciones Poligrafa, S.A., Barcelona, the 30-inch by 22-inch litho is from an edition of 2000 and has an estimate of $375-$525. Image courtesy of Universal Live. Helen Frankenthaler’s 2003 ‘Flirt’ serigraph was printed in the same was as the original limited edition, but with the text added at the bottom. It is estimated at $275-$350. Image courtesy of Universal Live.
The Drawing Center will remain on the ground floor of this historic building at 35 Wooster St. in New York’s SoHo district. Photo by Sheila as part of the Commons: Wikipedia Takes Manhattan project, April 4, 2008.
NEW YORK (AP) – An independent museum that at one time had hoped to relocate to ground zero has decided to remain in its current location, in New York’s SoHo district.
The Drawing Center says the economy has made it reevaluate a move. The museum is solely devoted to drawing.
The small museum had been searching for a new home in downtown Manhattan since 2005, after a plan faded for a performing arts center on the site of the former World Trade Center.
Since then, the SoHo area with its many art galleries has grown as a popular destination.
Director Brett Littman told The New York Times that it was a good time for the museum to reinvest in the neighborhood.
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Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
A giltwood shadowbox frame products a French painted silk and bone fan, which will be sold at Susanin’s Collectibles 87 auction Aug. 31. Image courtesy of Susanin’s Auctions and LiveAuctioneers archive.
PARIS (AP) – Forget Balenciaga’s “Giant City” and the other luxury purses that vie for the title of “It Bag” of the moment. If two young Parisian fashionistas have their way, next season’s must-have accessory might just be a relic resurrected from a bygone age – the folding fan.
Eloise Gilles and Raphaelle de Panafieu left their jobs in fashion and invested their savings to rescue one of Paris’ last remaining fan makers, the long-dormant house of Duvelleroy.
Their first collection – 12 exquisite models concocted by hand from traditional fabrics like silk and feathers and state-of-the-art materials like carbon fiber – is to make its retail debut later this month.
“Fans are not only elegant and feminine but they’re also super practical. Whenever I go out, to parties, to restaurants and especially to clubs, I always have mine,” said Panafieu, a 28-year-old who says folding fans have been her trademark ever since her father brought her one from Asia when she was a kid.
Panafieu’s quirky accessory of choice became her job after she met Gilles a few years ago and the two decided to invest in a fan-making house. They discovered Duvelleroy, among the few remaining survivors of France’s world-famous fan-making industry, and pooled their savings to buy the house from owner Michel Maignan, a retired auctioneer.
Two years ago, the two quit their jobs – Panafieu’s in marketing at a chic Paris women’s clothing label and Gilles’ as a brand consultant for French luxury labels – to throw themselves into resurrecting the house.
Founded in 1827 by Jean-Pierre Duvelleroy, it was long considered among France’s most prestigious fan makers, with a boutique on the tony rue de la Paix and clients including Britain’s Queen Victoria and other European royals. The house was passed down through the Duvelleroy family until World War II, when Maignan’s grandfather bought them out.
The postwar period was the beginning of the end for fan-makers, as women began to busy their hands with cigarettes, and nearly all of the French capital’s fan houses were forced to shutter.
Duvelleroy diversified – branching out into other small accessories and eventually fan repair – and outlived its contemporaries. But it has been largely dormant for decades.
Gilles and Panafieu plunged into the Duvelleroy archive, nearly two centuries worth of fan history, which Maignan had meticulously preserved in an attic.
“It was incredible. There were fans covered in sequins so tiny you couldn’t get a modern needle through them and others made from the feathers of birds that are now extinct,” said Gilles.
Still, the pair wasn’t aiming to replicate the styles that had cemented Duvelleroy’s reputation for excellence in the 19th century.
“We wanted something really contemporary – nothing that would look like a museum piece,” said Gilles. The pair hired stylists to help design their debut collection, which goes on sale in late August at Paris’ upscale Franck and Fils department store.
The result: 12 models that combine just the right dose of romantic, 19th-century elegance with clean-cut contemporary practicality.
In sequin-studded silk mousseline, the “Chiffon” is mounted on frames made of carbon fiber, an ultra-lightweight polymer used in jets and sports cars. The “Coral” combines dramatic red silk with a frame in an early plastic made from milk protein and formaldehyde. The “Bird of the Night,” a concoction of silk mousseline and deep purple ostrich feathers, mounted on a mother-of-pearl frame, is a shrunken variation on the massive feather fans that were all the rage in the 1800s.
Each fan requires at least 20 hours of painstaking labor, and some models, like the “Bird of the Night,” need much more than that. To make the process economically viable, Gilles and Panafieu broke down the production, seeking out specialized artisans throughout France and Italy who each handle a specific task.
A “plisseur,” or pleater – who normally works for Paris haute couture houses – starches and folds the silk just so. An embroiderer bedazzles it with sequins, while another artisan applies designs in gold, silver and copper foil.
Each fan passes through the hands of at least four artisans before winding up in the workshop of a master fan maker in the south of France, who assembles the parts. They say that’s much cheaper than having one person go through each separate step.
But the prices remain high. The line starts at $645 for the simplest model and climbs to $5,783 for the feathery ones.
“It does seem expensive, but when you compare it to other luxury items, like nice handbags of jewelry, it’s in that same range,” Gilles said.
In addition to their own line, she and Panafieu hope to manufacture fans for fashion labels. A collaborative line between Duvelleroy and zany French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac – known for his colorful, kitschy clothes – is coming out in February, Gilles said. They’d also love to work with Chanel, whose celebrity designer Karl Lagerfeld was rarely seen without a folding fan in the 1980s.
“This whole thing is super exciting for us,” said Panafieu. “We put all our money and all our hopes into this project and it’s amazing to see it take off.”
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Online:
http://www.duvelleroy.fr/
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SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) – Six murals created for a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s and 1940s at the University of Rhode Island and thought lost for decades have been rediscovered.
The murals, painted by Providence artist Gino Conti (1900-1983), were found last month during a $1.5 million renovation of Edwards Hall. The school announced the find Monday.
The colorful oil-on-canvas paintings were hung in the entryway of Edwards Hall, an auditorium. Ron Onorato, a URI art history professor, said it was not clear if the find includes all the work Conti did for the project.
He described the style of the works as late Cubist, including several abstract figures, and estimated the paintings were done between 1938 and 1941. Conti attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and Onorato said he was well-known in the middle of the last century. Conti was also a sculptor.
The school said the paintings were covered up in a renovation in the 1960s, but historians thought they were destroyed or misplaced.
The paintings were attached to the wall with wallpaper paste, and some sections are torn at the edges or had framing nailed to them, the school said. They will be removed and restored by the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Williamstown, Mass., the school said.
Once the restoration is complete, the school plans to return the murals to Edwards Hall, said Thomas Frisbie-Fulton, URI’s director of campus planning and design.
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