NEW YORK – A spectacular musical instrument collection assembled by Sau-Wing Lam (1923-1988) will go on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning Dec. 18.
This is the first time that works from the renowned Lam Collection will be on public display in the United States. The instruments on view – nine violins and one viola – will include such masterpieces as the Baltic violin by Giuseppe Guarneri “del Gesù” (1698-1744), and the Scotland University and Bavarian violins by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737).
The opening date of the Sau-Wing Lam Collection of Rare Italian Stringed Instruments coincides with the 275th anniversary of the death of Antonio Stradivari.
The exhibition is made possible by The Amati, Friends of the Department of Musical Instruments.
In conjunction with the installation, four concerts will be presented in the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. The first of these programs will feature two guest violinists, Daniel Hope and Karen Gomyo, with the Salomé Chamber Orchestra in an all-Bach program on Dec. 22. Hope will perform on the Baltic Guarneri “del Gesù” of 1731 from the Lam collection. Additional events featuring the collection will be held on Feb. 2, April 12 (featuring Philippe Quint), and May 4.
The Sau-Wing Lam collection of violin family instruments is one of the most important private collections of bowed Italian stringed instruments ever to be assembled by a private individual. Sau-Wing Lam was born in Shanghai, China, where he graduated with a degree in economics from St. John’s University. In 1948, he moved to New York City and eventually became president of the Dah Chong Hong Trading Corporation Inc., an import-export business that established some of the most successful automobile dealerships in the United States. An amateur violinist and violist, Lam bought his first important violin in the 1960s and over the 25 years assembled his impressive collection of stringed instruments and bows.
The installation and related programs will be featured on the Museum’s website at www.metmuseum.org.
Artist Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny receives the Order of Honor from Vladimir Putin. Image from Kremlin.ru. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
MOSCOW (AP) – Better known in the West for promising to “bury” the capitalist world, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev is also remembered by Russians for banning works that didn’t conform to the Communist Party’s notion that art should be straightforward, realistic and appeal to workers and peasants.
Visiting “The New Reality” exhibition in Moscow in December 1962, Khruschev got so enraged with what he saw that he shouted obscenities at the artists, promised to deport them from the Soviet Union and ordered the exhibition closed down.
The exhibition’s shutdown marked the end of Khruschev’s “thaw” – the relative liberation of political and cultural life that reversed Stalinist-era purges. A subsequent crackdown got more artists blacklisted and drove whole genres of art underground – including folk singers, jazz and rock bands, a generation of avant-garde composers and filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky.
Fifty years later, some of the banned canvases are on display again at the same Manezh hall – at a time when critics compare Khruschev’s ban to recent charges against the band Pussy Riot and artists whose paintings have angered the Kremlin and Russia’s dominant Orthodox Church.
“Of course, there are analogies” between the ban and the charges, says Leonid Rabichev, whose schematic painting depicting a blue crib with his infant son surrounded by trees and newly built apartment buildings was part of the 1962 exhibition.
Frail and stooped by age, the 89-year-old Rabichev recalls the fear he felt after Khruschev yelled threats at him and other exhibition participants.
“As I am talking to you, your (foreign) passports are being issued, in 24 hours you will be stripped of your (Soviet) citizenship and exiled,” Rabichev recalls Khruschev as telling the artists.
“And there were yells around us, Politburo members yelled, ‘What are you doing, Nikita Sergeevich, they should be arrested.’ And (chief ideologue Mikhail) Suslov who stood next to me raised both fists in the air and shouted, ‘They should be strangled!’”
Rabichev got away with losing his job as an advertising designer and writing a repentance letter that was dictated to him by a Communist official. He subsequently returned to advertising – his designs for Aeroflot airlines and sparkling wines are now text-book examples of Soviet-era ads – wrote several books and is still active as an artist.
But fame and big money eluded him. He sold the 1962 painting for a mere $3,000 in 2008 because he needed money to renovate his apartment, he said, wearing a worn-out suit festooned with his World War II medals.
The ban has also changed the lives of half a dozen exhibition participants.
Sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, whose works Khruschev derided as degenerate and “distortions of Soviet people’s faces” emigrated to the West and found success in New York. Khruschev’s family later approached Neizvestny to design the Soviet leader’s sarcophagus at a Moscow cemetery.
Inna Shmelyova and other participants of the New Reality group have for years worked in a desolate park outside Moscow – and had their works exhibited for the first time only in the late 1980s, during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika campaign.
“We made a breakthrough in art – and took a backseat with our breakthrough,” the bespectacled, 84-year-old artist said while clutching a booklet with reprints of her works.
The revival of the Manezh exhibition has coincided with another – much less brutal – crackdown on arts in Russia, amid what critics call the replacement of Communist ideology with Orthodox Christian dogma and nationalism promoted by the Kremlin.
In 2010, two prominent Moscow art curators who organized an exhibition titled “Caution: Religion!” were convicted of inciting religious hatred and fined. The 2003 show, which displayed an icon with Jesus Christ’s face replaced by a road sign and a photo of a crucified naked woman with the icon of Virgin Mary placed between her thighs, was closed after a raid by a group of Orthodox activists.
Another exhibition was closed in 2007 after a group of altar boys defaced many of the contemporary paintings – including one of Jesus as Mickey Mouse during the Sermon on the Mount. A Russian court banned the picture in 2011 as “extremist.”
Three members of the Pussy Riot band were sentenced to two years in jail after a February prank at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral – following a trial that drew international condemnation and was followed by a massive campaign on Kremlin-friendly television networks that portrayed the feminist punk rockers as “offenders of faith.”
The organizer of the new Manezh exhibition drew parallels between the recent trials and the 1962 crackdown.
“Today, half a century later, we show these paintings, some people like them, some people don’t, but no one gets enraged,” Grigory Zaslavsky said. “So, the main lesson of the exhibition is: let’s wait. Let’s wait for at least a year, take a pause – and maybe this will not be as offensive.” a
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, or redistributed.
AP-WF-12-06-12 1203GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Artist Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny receives the Order of Honor from Vladimir Putin. Image from Kremlin.ru. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Issue No. 1 of Marvel’s Daredevil comic book. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Jackson’s International Auctioneers and Appraisers.
NORTH HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – Anyone who knows Superman’s given name, the identity of Captain America’s assassin and who Grant Morrison is also knows Wednesday is the most important day of the week.
That’s because Wednesday is the day Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. dispatches a truck to DJ’s Sports Collectibles and Comics in North Haven, where, like any comic shop on any given Wednesday, you’ll find the newest issues of Spider-man, Superman and Batman. Unlike most shops, however, those new comics at DJ’s are stocked by a member of the state legislature.
State Rep. David Yaccarino, R-North Haven, opened his shop 21 years ago. Back then, all he sold were baseball cards and sports collectibles. But it wasn’t long until his customers began asking for comics, too. Yaccarino says he first started ordering 25 books a week, a decision that would, however unlikely, eventually lead to a political campaign that crossed partisan boundaries. Before long, Yaccarino says, those 25 books a week turned into hundreds.
Some might imagine DJ’s customers as pimply teenage boys, but the time when that stereotype might have been true is long over, and Yaccarino says he sells his comics to all kinds.
“I have surgeons, doctors, lawyers, ironworkers, businesspeople, some politicians, some attorneys – they read comics on a regular basis,” Yaccarino says. “When I tell that to people who don’t follow the business, they go, ‘Get out of here.’”
Since becoming a state representative, Yaccarino, in his second term, says he’s found some comic fans at the Capitol, too. Yaccarino’s vocation as comic shop owner acts as an icebreaker of sorts – he says he’s had politicians profess their fondness for the art form to him as if it was a guilty pleasure, that they “didn’t want to tell anyone.”
To that, Yaccarino says, “Why? Who cares?”
So what exactly is the allure of the comic book? Why have comics influenced modern popular culture so heavily, providing the basis for films like The Avengers and television shows like The Walking Dead? What draws the politician, the ironworker, and, yes, the pimply teenage boy, to the comic shop?
Yaccarino says it’s hope.
“Good always triumphs over evil,” Yaccarino says. “Most of the books are rooted in real-life issues, from either people being bullied, gender issues, cultural issues, race.”
He brings up the case of Spider-Man, the wimpy kid who gets pushed around before transforming into someone who can stand up against those doing the pushing. And then there’s Daredevil, the blind hero who turns his disability into his superpower, using his heightened senses to outperform sighted foes. And let’s not forget the X-Men, those misunderstood mutants whose arch nemesis is as much the threat of discrimination as it is the metal-bending Magneto.
These comics provide a common ground for DJ’s customers, something to talk about while browsing the shelves. Ben Gritz, Yaccarino’s only full-time employee, says the weekly Wednesday release of comics becomes a part of peoples’ schedules. DJ’s customers shop according to a regular cycle, so, when they come in, they’re likely to see familiar faces, likely to start forming friendships. Yaccarino describes his store as a throwback to the mom-and-pop shops of days gone by – the kind of place where everyone knows your name.
“I joke with Dave,” says Gritz, “this place is like Cheers.”
And it’s this Cheers-like environment that encourages conversation about more than just comics, Yaccarino says.
“I don’t know what it is. It always has. People bounce things off one another. Politics, sports, their life, their personal life, their professional life,” Yaccarino says. “People come and have coffee, they congregate here. I have a picnic table outside. Many times, people sit outside and we have really healthy discussions.”
Frank Tropeano, a Democrat from North Haven, once was just another one of those customers who would come to DJ’s for more than just comics. Now he works for Yaccarino a few days a week, helping with the Wednesday order and auctioning items on eBay.
“It’s just a really good place to come in and express ideas and opinions,” Tropeano says. “There are a lot of things that are happening in our government and our society today. You want to be able to bounce things off of peers.
“So, being able to come into the comic book store and talk about what the Congress did, or the Senate did, or what’s going on in state and local government, to complain and put out your ideas, to be the Monday morning quarterback for what you would have done if you were a senator or whatever, that’s what makes this place great. You could just talk about anything you would want to,” Tropeano says.
And from these conversations, Yaccarino, Tropeano and Gritz, a Democratically inclined independent, formed an unusual political partnership.
“I was a customer, and over the years I built a friendship with Dave, and we would chat about politics in the store, and Dave asked me if he thought it was a good idea to run,” Tropeano says. “He asked me to join his committee, and one thing led to another, and before I knew it I was a campaign manager.”
Gritz, who graduated from Boston College with a major in political science and history before going to law school at the University of California, Davis, became Yaccarino’s treasurer after he started working at the shop. Gritz says working on Yaccarino’s campaigns doesn’t conflict with his more liberal outlook.
“Personally, I feel like when it comes to local politics, the issues don’t matter so much as competency. And I think Dave is very competent. And I think he’s in it for the right reasons,” Gritz says.
Since Yaccarino became a state representative, he, Gritz and Tropeano agree DJ’s has become more than just a comic book shop. Yaccarino describes it as his North Haven office, a place people can stop by and talk about state affairs. Gritz calls it a political outpost of sorts.
“Parents will come, a lot of times kids will come in wanting Pokemon cards or comics,” Gritz says. “And then it’s like, ‘Oh, Dave’s here. What do you think about this law they’re passing?’”
Like any political forum, Tropeano and Gritz say the discussions sometimes heat up a little.
“I think because of how toxic national politics have become, it’s kind of poisoned everything below it, too,” Gritz says. “People have a lot of preconceptions going into arguments.”
But those true arguments are rare, Gritz says.
“We have a lot of conversations where people learn something. We have a lot of conversations where nobody learns something, but it’s still very civil discourse,” he said. “And, very rarely, you have the kind that get a little more elevated.”
Even if nobody’s mind is changed, a lot can come from a healthy political debate.
“We have our discussions and that’s how you learn,” Yaccarino says. “I think it makes me a better legislator because I can look at both sides. I can hear their side, and they hear my side, and we bounce it off.”
___
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten , or redistributed.
Information from: New Haven Register, http://www.nhregister.com
AP-WF-12-06-12 1754GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Issue No. 1 of Marvel’s Daredevil comic book. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Jackson’s International Auctioneers and Appraisers.
‘Young Woman with Junk Boat’ by Lee Man Fong (Indonesian 1913-1988), oil on canvas, topped the day’s bidding at $9,440. Michaan’s Auctions image.
ALAMEDA, Calif. – Sales highlights came from every major category of Michaan’s latest monthly estate auction, held Dec. 2. LiveAuctioneers.com provided the Internet live bidding for the sale.
An oil painting by Indonesian artist Lee Man Fong brought the highest dollar amount of the day. Young Woman with Junk Boat sold for $9,440, surpassing its low estimate of $8,000 (lot 015). Lot 004, a 19th century Continental School oil painting, Portrait of a Lady at a Spinet, managed to triple its projected high estimate of $700, selling for $2,655.
The jewelry department also saw a sales surge in its 100 percent sell-through of Bakelite bangles, which often have a captive bidding audience.
The success of jewelry continued with a single lot of two unique diamond and platinum ring mountings. The Edwardian semi-mountings doubled their high estimate of $500 with a final selling price of $1,003. Department Director Rhonda Harness felt that many factors contributed to interest in the lot, saying, “These period pieces remain relevant to today’s buyer. The period look, quality craftsmanship and use of platinum are all strong selling points. Either ring would be gorgeous when set with a substantial diamond or colored stone.”
The Asian department saw multiple lots surpass high estimates in the sale. Two in particular doubled their high projections, with the first seen in a cast metal statue of Guanyin wearing a hooded garment and adornments of ruyi head jewelry (lot 524). Another item to double high projections was a scroll listed as lot 597. The sale of the ink and color artwork depicting a beauty proved it to be quite a collectable piece of classic artistry.
A variety of noteworthy furniture and decorative arts lots more than doubled high projections. Included were an assortment of silver flat and hollow ware (lot 663), an epergne with a collection of five cut glass bowls (665) and a Jaeger-Le Coultre Swiss Atmos table clock (878), which sold for $767. A standout piece was a Kazak rug (lot 745) that tripled its high estimate of $700, selling for a hefty $2,242.
For general information call Michaan’s Auctions at 510-740-0220 ext. 0 or e-mail info@michaans.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog, complete with prices realized, at www.liveauctioneers.com.
‘Young Woman with Junk Boat’ by Lee Man Fong (Indonesian 1913-1988), oil on canvas, topped the day’s bidding at $9,440. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Lot 004, Continental School (19th Century) ‘Portrait of a Lady at a Spinet,’ oil on canvas. Price realized: $2,655. Michaan’s Auctions image.
‘Self Portrait with Saskia, 1636’ after Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch 1606-1669), etching on paper laid to board. Price realized: $4,130. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Collection of three Bakelite bangles. Price realized: $129.80. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, dated with a signature ‘Yefo.’ Price realized: $1,003. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Silver-plated epergne with five cut glass bowls. Price realized: $885. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Kazak rug sold for $2,242. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Jaeger-Le Coultre gilt metal Swiss Atmos Clock. Price realized: $767. Michaan’s Auctions image.
Lot 108A Jan Wijga (1902-1978) Royal Dutch Air Lines, 1926. Estimate: £700-1,000. Onslows Auctioneers image.
STOURPAINE, England – Onslows has put together a fine and varied collection to suit all pockets and tastes for the auctioneer’s 28th Anniversary Winter Vintage Posters sale on Wednesday, Dec. 19. The auction of more than 320 lots will begin at 2 p.m. GMT (6 a.m. Pacific). LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
Onslows has a good collection of World War II home front posters coming recently from a London Council archive. They include a group of three simple but very effective designs encouraging the public to use “Less Light, Water and Gas.” Dating from 1940 they are estimated at £200-250 apiece. Another is for “Keep a Pig” and “Join a Pig Club.” This rare poster from 1940 promoted the only legal way in wartime to fatten a pig without the worries of the ration book. It is expected to make £200-300, certainly more than the cost of a pig in wartime.
An early and rare poster for Royal Dutch Airlines dating from 1926 and showing the Fokker Airliner is expected to sell for around £700. A classic 1950s poster for Quantas, advertising the route to Australia by Frank McNamara and showing a relaxing couple, is estimated at £250-300.
Onslows is well known for selling British Railways posters. Notable among the 200 examples are Tom Purvis’s Bridlington, £1,200-1,600; A.R. Thomson’s art deco design for the Flying Scotsman, £1,000-1,500; and a beautiful set of 12 posters by Pierre Fix-Masseau for the Venice Simplon Orient Express, £500-700. A set of six posters by Frank H Mason for East Coast fishing are estimated at £500-700 each. One of the finest golf posters for Cruden Bay on the LNER by H.G. Gawthorn dates from 1924 and bids of around £3,000 are sought to secure it. Rare original artwork by P.M. Hill for the Great Western Railway poster of Polperro, carries an estimate in excess of £800.
We also offer posters from London Transport, for Continental travel including skiing and many others.
For details telephone 01258 488838 or email bogue.onslows@btinternet.com.
Internet live bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers.com.
Portrait of President Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) in 1800. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) – A marble slab from the original tombstone of former President Thomas Jefferson, which has been stored for nearly 130 years at the University of Missouri-Columbia, will be sent to a laboratory that serves the Smithsonian Institution for restoration work, university officials said
Jefferson’s original tombstone was at his Virginia home of Monticello, but it was shipped to Missouri by Jefferson’s family in the 19th century because of concerns about vandalism from souvenir seekers. The tombstone was dedicated in 1885 at the University of Missouri, which was the first public university in the Louisiana Purchase Territory.
The Smithsonian will receive a marble slab that bears the epitaph Jefferson wanted on his tombstone. The piece has been stored for more than 100 years because of concerns about weather and vandalism, The Columbia Tribune reported Tuesday.
It was first housed at Academic Hall and was salvaged after that building burned in 1892. It’s been stored in Jesse Hall since 1895.
After Carol Grissom, a senior objects conservator at the Museum Conservation Institute, a research lab that serves the Smithsonian visited the university this fall, she decided to take on the restoration project.
“It’s irresistible,” Grissom said in a statement. “Thomas Jefferson himself wrote what he wanted written on the stone.”
Jefferson’s inscription, found by relatives in his notes after he died, identifies him as the “author of the Declaration of American Independence” and as the “father of the University of Virginia.”
“Scholars find it interesting that he left out the fact he was president, among other accomplishments,” Grissom said.
Missouri is working to determine the cost of sending the stone to Washington, D.C., where the Smithsonian will restore it without charge.
The restoration will involve Grissom and her team removing the marble slate from a wooden box it’s been sitting in since the 1890s and analyzing it to determine why the slab is deteriorating. They will use a scanning electron microscope and other analyses to examine the stone.
John Murray, the assistant director of business services who manages Jesse Hall, envisions architectural students designing a case to display the piece once the restoration is done.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-12-05-12 1950GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Portrait of President Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) in 1800. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
An example of a typical Egyptian sphinx. Egyptian Museum, Torino, Italy. Image by Tim Adams. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
ROME (AP) – An Egyptian granite sculpture of a sphinx that risked ending up on the black market for antiquities is destined instead for a Rome museum.
Maj. Massimo Rossi of the Italian Tax Police says the sphinx, perhaps as old as the fourth century B.C., was found on the outskirts of Rome last week. It was in a box hidden in a greenhouse near an ancient Etruscan necropolis.
Rossi said Thursday that the sphinx, which is roughly 2 feet tall and 4 feet long, likely adorned a first century B.C. Roman villa, in keeping with the fashion then for Egyptian sculpture as decoration.
He said an Italian and a Romanian are being investigated in the probe of suspected illicit trafficking in antiquities. Villa Giulia museum, which specializes in Etruscan antiquities, will host the sphinx.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-12-06-12 1533GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
An example of a typical Egyptian sphinx. Egyptian Museum, Torino, Italy. Image by Tim Adams. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Stencil by Lambros, Brooklyn, N.Y. Photo by Kelsey Savage.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Infamous for sneaking into the MET and MOMA, unbeknownst to the museum staff and hanging his own pieces for a personal exhibit, Lambros has planted a less subversive stencil on a wall in India Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Like his museum-planted pieces, which combine popular culture and iconic movie references (one of which, a portrait of Beyonce as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s created additional controversy thanks to its label denoting falsely that it was part of Jay-Z’s personal collection) this stencil references The Godfather.
Lambros states on his website that he believes stenciling offers him a more “intimate collaboration with a city wall.” Whereas wheatpasting covers up an area, stenciling requires the artist to interact with his canvas and adjust accordingly. The material behind the paint will inevitably be part of the creation and so although stencils ostensibly create identical imagery, the actual final product differs each time depending on the background.
Playing off the cinder blocks, the Godfather reference not only plays off the sternness of the concrete blocks behind it, the character’s dripping torso disrupts the clean lines of the stencil and adds to its presentation.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Stencil by Lambros, Brooklyn, N.Y. Photo by Kelsey Savage.Stencil by Lambros, Brooklyn, N.Y. Photo by Kelsey Savage.
