October 2013 - Page 4 of 25 - Auction Central News

In Memoriam: Groundbreaking art critic Arthur Danto, 89

Art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto. Image by D. James Dee. Courtesy of Wayne State University.

NEW YORK (AP) – Arthur C. Danto, a provocative and influential philosopher and critic who championed Andy Warhol and other avant-garde artists and upended the study of art history by declaring that the history of art was over, has died. He was 89.

Danto, art critic for The Nation magazine from 1984 to 2009 and a professor emeritus at Columbia University, died of heart failure Friday at his Manhattan apartment, daughter Ginger Danto said Sunday.

An academically trained philosopher, Danto became as central to debates about art in the 1960s and after as critic Clement Greenberg had been during the previous generation. Danto was initially troubled, then inspired by the rise of pop art and how artists such as Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein could transform a comic strip or a soup can into something displayed in a museum, a work of “art.” Starting in the ’60s, he wrote hundreds of essays that often returned to the most philosophical question: What exactly is art? Danto liked to begin with a signature event in his lifetime—a 1964 show at New York’s Stable Gallery that featured Warhol’s now-iconic reproductions of Brillo boxes.

“Is this man some kind of Midas, turning whatever he touches into the gold of pure art? And the whole world consisting of latent art works waiting, like the bread and wine of reality, to be transfigured, through some dark mystery, into the indiscernible flesh and blood of the sacrament?” Danto wrote in The Artworld, a landmark essay published in 1964.

“Never mind that the Brillo box may not be good, much less great art. The impressive thing is that it is art at all. But if it is, why not indiscernible Brillo boxes that are in the stockroom? Or has the whole distinction between art and reality broken down?”

Danto would refer to the show as the moment when art history ended and “progress could only be enacted on a level of abstract self-consciousness.” In such essays as The End of Art, Danto noted the progression of styles in the 19th and 20th century—impressionism, modernism, abstract expressionism, pop art. After the Brillo show, art had reached its ultimate expression and became a medium not of trends but of individuals—some brilliant, some ordinary, none advancing the overall narrative.

“When I first wrote about this concept, I was somewhat depressed,” Danto later observed. “But now I have grown reconciled to the unlimited diversity of art. I marvel at the imaginativeness of artists in finding ways to convey meanings by the most untraditional of means. The art world is a model of a pluralistic society in which all disfiguring barriers and boundaries have been thrown down.”

Danto would be praised by The New York Times‘ Barry Gewen as “arguably the most consequential art critic since Greenberg,” an “erudite and sophisticated observer” who wrote with “forcefulness and jargon-free clarity.” But his ideas were not universally accepted. Danto frequently had to explain that art wasn’t dead, only art history.

Rival critics such as Hilton Kramer questioned whether the story was over and whether Warhol deserved to be part of it. In an essay published in The New Criterion in 1987, Kramer likened Danto’s views to one of “those ingenious scenarios that are regularly concocted to relieve the tedium of the seminar room and the philosophical colloquium.” He also dismissed Warhol’s work as “a further colonization of the aesthetically arid but nonetheless seductive territory” of avant-garde art.

In What Art Is, a book published in 2013, Danto responded that his “effort was to describe art differently from that of the conservative taste of most of the New York critics.”

“From my perspective, aesthetics was mostly not part of the art scene. That is to say, my role as a critic was to say what the work was about—what it meant—and then how it was worth it to explain this to my readers,” he wrote.

Danto’s other books included Encounters and Reflections, winner of a National Book Critics Circle prize in 1991, Beyond the Brillo Box and After the End of Art. He was an editor of The Journal of Philosophy, a contributor editor to Artforum and president of the American Philosophical Association.

Arthur Coleman Danto was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and raised in Detroit. He served two years in the Army during World War II and was stationed in Italy and in North Africa. He then studied art and history at Wayne State University and received a master’s and doctoral degree from Columbia University, where he taught from 1952 to 1992 and chaired the philosophy department for several years. He was especially influenced by the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and drew extensively upon Hegel in his theory of art history.

After the Warhol show, Danto pursued a definition of art that could be applied to both the Sistine Chapel and a Brillo box. He rejected the ancient Greek idea that art was imitation and the Renaissance ideal that art was defined by aesthetic pleasure. Danto was shaped by the 20th-century rise of “ready-mades,” ordinary objects turned into “art,” whether Warhol’s Brillo boxes or the urinal Marcel Duchamp submitted to galleries during World War I. In What Art Is, Danto concluded that art was “the embodiment of an idea,” defined not by how it looked but by what it had to say.

“Much of contemporary art is hardly aesthetic at all, but it has in its stead the power of meaning and possibility of truth,” he wrote in What Art Is.

Danto’s stature as a critic overshadowed his early career as an artist. He was an accomplished printmaker whose woodcuts were exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and elsewhere in the 1950s. He later donated his prints to Wayne State.

“When I became a critic, I met everyone under the sun. But I knew very few artists when I was an artist. Some printmakers, some second generation Abstract Expressionists. … They were the great figures of my world, like Achilles and Agamemnon in ancient times,” he wrote in a 2007 essay about his own work.

“The heroes today are very different, and so the artists for whom they are heroes have to be very different. I could never have been an artist shaped by such heroes, though as a writer, I like their art well enough. I am glad to see that my work holds up despite that. In a way, I feel like an old master.”

Danto was married twice—to Shirley Rovetch, who died in 1978, and since 1980 to Barbara Westman. He had two children, Ginger and Elizabeth.

AP-WF-10-27-13 1440GMT

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iPad art gains recognition in new Hockney exhibit

British artist David Hockney. This photograph. autographed by Hockney, will be sold by International Autograph Auctions Ltd. in London on Sunday, Nov. 3. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and International Autograph Auctions Ltd.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Happily hunched over his iPad, Britain’s most celebrated living artist David Hockney is pioneering in the art world again, turning his index finger into a paintbrush that he uses to swipe across a touch screen to create vibrant landscapes, colorful forests and richly layered scenes.

“It’s a very new medium,” said Hockney. So new, in fact, he wasn’t sure what he was creating until he began printing his digital images a few years ago. “I was pretty amazed by them actually,” he said, laughing. “I’m still amazed.”

A new exhibit of Hockney’s work, including about 150 iPad images, opened Saturday in the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, just a short trip for Silicon Valley techies who created both the hardware and software for this 21st-century reinvention of finger-painting.

The show is billed as the museum’s largest ever, filling two floors of the de Young with a survey of works from 1999 to present, mostly landscapes and portraits in an array of mediums: watercolor, charcoal and even video. But on a recent preview day, it was the iPad pieces, especially the 12-foot high majestic views of Yosemite National Park that drew gasps.

Already captured by famed photographer Ansel Adams, and prominent painters such as Thomas Hill and Albert Bierstadt, Hockney’s iPad images of Yosemite’s rocks, rivers and trees are both comfortingly familiar and entirely new.

In one wide open vista, scrubby, bright green pines sparkle in sunlight, backed by Bridalveil Fall tumbling lightly down a cliff side; the distinct granite crest of Half Dome looms in the background. In another, a heavy mist obscures stands of giant sequoias.

“He has such command of space, atmosphere and light,” said Fine Arts Museums director Colin Bailey.

Other iPad images are overlaid, so viewers can see them as they were drawn, an animated beginning-to-end chronological loop. He tackles faces and flowers, and everyday objects: a human foot, scissors, an electric plug.

Some of the iPad drawings are displayed on digital screens, others, like the Yosemite works, were printed on six large panels. Hockey’s technical assistants used large inkjet prints reproduce the images he created on his IPad.

Exhibiting iPad images by a prominent artist in a significant museum gives the medium a boost, said art historians, helping digital artwork gain legitimacy in the notoriously snobby art world where computer tablet art shows are rare and prices typically lower than comparable watercolors or oils.

“I’m grateful he’s doing this because it opens people’s mind to the technology in a new way,” said Long Island University Art Historian Maureen Nappi, although she described Hockney’s iPad work as “gimmicky.”

Writing about the historic shift of drawing from prehistoric cave painting to digital tablets in this month’s MIT journal Leonardo, Nappi said that while iPad work is still novel, the physicality of painting and drawing have gone on for millennia.

“These gestures are as old as humans are,” she said in an interview. “Go back to cave paintings, they’re using finger movements to articulate creative expressions.”

Hockney, 76, started drawing on his iPhone with his thumb about five years ago, shooting his works via email to dozens of friends at a time.

“People from the village come up and tease me: ‘We hear you’ve started drawing on your telephone.’ And I tell them, ‘Well, no, actually, it’s just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,’” he said.

When the iPad was announced, Hockney said he had one shipped immediately to his home in London, where he splits his time with Los Angeles.

He creates his work with an app built by former Apple software engineer Steve Sprang of Mountain View, Calif., called Brushes, which along with dozens of other programs like Touch Sketch, SketchBook Mobile and Bamboo Paper are being snapped up by artists, illustrators and graphic designers.

Together, the artists are developing new finger and stylus techniques, with Hockney’s vanguard work offering innovative approaches.

“David Hockney is one of the living masters of oil painting, a nearly-600-year-old technology, and thus is well positioned to have thought long and hard about the advantages of painting with a digital device like the iPad,” said Binghamton University Art Historian Kevin Hatch in New York.

Hatch said a “digital turn” in the art world began about 25 years ago, as the Internet gained popularity, and he said today most artists have adapted to using a device in some way as they create art.

A similar shift happened almost 100 years ago with the dawn of photography, he said, when innovations such as the small photograph cards and the stereoscope captured the art world’s imagination.

And Hatch said there are some drawbacks to the shift to tablet art.

“A certain almost magical quality of oil paint, a tactile, tangible substance, is lost when a painting becomes, at heart, a piece of code, a set of invisible 1’s and 0’s,” he said.

Hockney, who created 78 of the almost 400 pieces in the de Young show this year, isn’t giving up painting, or drawing, or video, or tablets, any time soon. When asked where he sees the world of art going, he shrugged his broad shoulders and paused.

“I don’t know where it’s going, really, who does?” he said. “But art will be there.”

AP-WF-10-28-13 0636GMT

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Nova Ars auction celebrates modern Italian design Nov. 7

Venini ceiling lamp, blown glass elements supported by metal small chains, circa 1960. Estimate: €5,000-€6,000. Nova Ars image.

ASTI, Italy – An interesting collection of 20th century design and decorative arts will be sold at auction by Nova Ars on Nov. 7. Ceramics, furniture, lamps, chandeliers, glasswork and some interesting paintings will be offered. The focus is always on made in Italy, without forgetting talents from other countries. LiveAucitoneers.com will provide Internet live bidding. The auction will begin at 6:30 p.m. local, 9:30 a.m. Pacific.

Nova Ars specializes in objects of Contemporary Art, Modernism and design made in Italy during the 20th century.

Highlight pieces in the Nov. 7 auction include:

– Napoleone Martinuzzi and Vittorio Zecchin glass vase, 1930, blown blue glass vase with silver decorations. Estimates: €2,500,00-€3,000.

– Fini e Cocchia, Azimuth model floor lamp, 1971, 71.6 inches high. Estimates: €9,000-€10,000.

– Stilnovo ceiling lamp with 30 lights, circa 1955. Estimate: €6,000,00-€7,000.

– Venini ceiling lamp, blown glass elements supported by metal small chains, circa 1960. Estimate: €5,000-€6,000.

– Alessandro Mendini, Proust armchair, painted fabric and wood. Estimate: €45,000-€50,000.

For details email valeria@novaars.net or e.art.auctions@gmail.com or call +39 328 9667353.

View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Napoleone Martinuzzi, Vittorio Zecchin glass vase, 1930, blown blue glass vase with silver decorations. Dimensions: height 30 cm, diameter 25cm. Estimate: €2,500-€3,000. Nova Ars image.

Fini e Cocchia, Azimuth model floor lamp, 1971, 71.6 inches high. Estimate: €9,000-€10,000. Nova Ars image.

Stilnovo ceiling lamp with 30 lights, circa 1955. Estimate: €6,000,00-€7,000. Nova Ars image.

Alessandro Mendini, Proust armchair, painted fabric and wood. Estimate: €45,000-€50,000. Nova Ars image.

Scientists dig for fossils in LA a century later

Rancho la Brea Tar Pool. Restoration by Charles. R. Knight for Amer. Mus. (N.Y.) mural decorations 9' by 12' in hall of the Age of Man. One sloth (Mylodon, now Paramylodon) trapped, two guarding against Sabre Tooth (Smilodon). Condors (unidentified further, may be Teratornis or a California condor) waiting on McNabb's cypress. In the rear of pool which has yeilded much elephant material. San Gabriel range with Mt. Lowe center and Mt. Wilson at right of erect sloth. Old Baldy at right. The Jesse Earl Hyde Collection, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Department of Geological Scienceshttp://geology.cwru.edu/~huwig/

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Surrounded by a gooey graveyard of prehistoric beasts, a small crew diligently wades through a backlog of fossil finds from a century of excavation at the La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles.

Digs over the years have unearthed bones of mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and other unsuspecting Ice Age creatures that became trapped in ponds of sticky asphalt. But it’s the smaller discoveries — plants, insects and rodents — in recent years that are shaping scientists’ views of life in the region 11,000 to 50,000 years ago.

“Earlier excavations really missed a great part of the story,” said John Harris, chief curator at the George C. Page Museum, which oversees the fossil collection. People “were only taking out bones they could see, but it’s the hidden bones that provide clues to the environment.”

The museum on Monday celebrates 100 years of digging, which has recovered some 5.5 million bones representing more than 600 species of animals and plants, the richest cache of Ice Age fossils.

There’s so much left to do that it could easily take another century to complete. On a recent Wednesday, a volunteer in a white lab coat pounded away at a bison skull in the museum’s fishbowl laboratory where visitors can witness paleontology in action. Nearby, two workers hunched over microscopes, sorting bone fragments belonging to extinct creatures.

In the back storage, floor-to-ceiling shelves of wooden crates house bones that need to be cleaned, identified or labeled. The museum estimates it has 100,000 specimens to catalog and another million to scrub.

Long before skyscrapers towered over Wilshire Boulevard, giant beasts ruled the land. Back then, sagebrush scrub covered the basin, home to herds of mammoths, bison, camels and ground sloths. Mastodons hung out in the woodlands. Lurking were meat-eating predators including saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and giant jaguars.

Every so often, creatures would get bogged down in pools of water and asphalt that seeped from underground crude oil deposits, and die of dehydration or starvation. Stranded animals that appeared to be easy prey then became a trap for predators that also got stuck in the ooze.

In 1913, the predecessor to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County launched a two-year project to uncover only the best-preserved mammal bones, largely ignoring everything else. Though the early digs gave scientists a glimpse into the types of animals that roamed, there was still much to be learned.

After the early missteps, scientists in 1969 decided to focus on pulling everything out and revisited a tar pit dubbed Pit 91 to do a more detailed excavation. For nearly 40 years, work at Pit 91 dominated the Page Museum’s efforts as visitors gawked from a viewing platform.

Museum officials temporarily halted digging at Pit 91 several years ago to concentrate on an unexpected trove of Ice Age fossils that was found during the construction of an underground garage next to the tar pits, located some 7 miles (11 kilometers) west of downtown Los Angeles.

“I can’t think of any other site that is as rich,” said Sarah George, executive director of the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Every time a foundation is dug, “more old blocks of tar filled with fossils came out of the ground,” said George, who used to work as a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Despite a century of digging, scientists still can’t agree on how the Ice Age beasts became extinct. Some suggested that the prehistoric predators may have competed with humans for similar prey and that carnivores ate carcasses out of desperation. But Larisa DeSantis of Vanderbilt University said dental studies of saber-toothed cats and other carnivores suggest they were “living the good life” before they became extinct.

Museum excavators plan to leave some fossils buried — in case better tools are invented to study them in the next century.

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Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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Dreweatts & Bloomsbury sale draws on noted illustrators Nov. 7

‘The Attorney-General's Charges Against the late Queen,’ 1821, collection of charicatures. Price realized: £22,320 ($36,157). Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

LONDON – Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions will present an auction of works by some of the most celebrated book illustrators, including Henry Alken, George Cruikshank, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, as well as illustrators Joseph Crawhall and Edward Gordon Craig. This single-owner collection comprises over 340 rare and wonderful fine color plate books from the “Library of a Gentleman.” The sale will take place on Thursday, Nov. 7, beginning at 1 p.m. GMT (5 a.m. Pacific). LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.

A selection of humorous caricatures include a rare complete set of the important satirical magazine La Caricature (Paris, 1830-35). Established in 1830 by Charles Philipon La Caricature was a fundamental part of the fight against the power of King Louis-Philippe of France, a battle that won Philipon six months in prison for “Contempt of the King.”

Illustrated by famous artists of the time (Daumier and Grandville to name but a few) and including about 100 hand-colored plates and an additional proof of plate 122, this set is expected to fetch £15,000-£20,000.

La Caricature is in very good company with another rarity found in The Attorney-General’s Charges Against the late Queen [1821], a collection of caricatures aimed at Queen Caroline. The lot includes 49 hand-colored etched plates, a few by brothers George and Robert Cruikshank, but the majority by Theodore Lane, one of which is pictured above. This highly collectible work carries an estimate of £4,000-£6,000.

George Cruikshank is particularly well represented throughout the sale and was clearly of great interest to the collector who amassed this outstanding library. A British born caricaturist and book illustrator, Cruishank was apprenticed to his father, Isaac Cruikshank, a leading caricaturist in the late 1790s.

He was well known in his early life as a social caricaturist of English life for mainstream publications, but later became renowned as being the illustrator of the first English translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales in 1823.

His political prints of the Royal family packed a satirical punch and in 1820, he reportedly received a bribe of £100 to ensure he did not depict King George IV in an immoral situation. In later life, his notoriety grew further when he was Charles Dicken’s illustrator for Sketches by Boz (1836), The Mudfog Papers (1837–38) and Oliver Twist (1838). In 1871 Cruikshank wrote to The Times claiming, as did several others, he wrote much of the plot of Oliver Twist, and the letter generated much debate.

The Wits Magazine, and Attic Miscellany (1818) is one of only a few works illustrated jointly by both George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. This copy is a complete set of the first and only edition and is the rarest item in the Cruishank collection. Only one copy has appeared at auction since 1923, set to fetch £3,000-£4,000. Also illustrated by Cruikshank are Albert M. Cohn’s bound collection of 12 songsheets, estimated at £3,000-£4,000, and a set of his Comic Almanacks for 1835 to 1839 with a reasonable estimate of £600-£800.

Thomas Rowlandson is unquestionably the most prominently featured artist in this library. According to R.V. Tooley, author of reference work English Books with Coloured Plates 1790 to 1860, one of the rarest of his books is the complete set of the first edition of The Comforts of Bath (1798). This exceedingly scarce item carries an estimate to match its exclusivity at £8,000-£12,000. One of the most important by Rowlandson, is Comparative Anatomy. Resemblances between the Countenances of Men and Beasts (1822). It is one of three known albums of original drawings and watercolours by Rowlandson, titled as such. This piece demonstrates the interest that Rowlandson had in the scientific developments of physiognomy and comparative anatomy, and how his humorous engagement with contemporary scientific thought influenced his drawings and watercolors. It is estimated to sell for £10,000-£15,000.

Of interest for city collectors is, Laroon’s Cries of the City of London Drawne After Life (1711) which depicts some of the earliest studies of 18th century street traders and performers of and is valued at £4,000-£6,000. Vernet’s Incroyables et Merveilleuses (Paris, c.1815), a volume containing a magnificent suite of 33 hand-colored engraved plates featuring the flamboyant costumes of the dandies and fashionable ladies of the empire, is estimated to achieve £8,000-£12,000.

One of the most prevalent artists in the sporting books selection is the famous English painter and engraver Henry Alken. A number of excellent pieces are included within the sale, such as A Cockney’s Shooting Season in Suffolk (1822), a clean copy in its original printed wrappers, and Ideas, Accidental and Incidental to Hunting and other Sports; Caught in Leicestershire (1829), the rare first issue in book form, set to fetch £3,000-£4,000 and £4,000-£6,000 respectively.

An extensive collection Joseph Crawhall literature includes several of the author’s own personal copies with additional sketches, watercolors and manuscript material, some inscribed by him. A presentation copy of The Compleatest Angling Booke … (1859), from the author, is bound in tan calf with relievo panel of two fish swimming among waterlilies by Fazakerley of Liverpool and estimated at £3,000-£4,000.

View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Police ask for help in identifying suspected jewelry thief

Police in Hyde Park, N.Y., are asking for help in identifying the suspect seen in this frame grabbed from a surveillance video.

HYDE PARK, N.Y. (ACNI) – A jewel thief is on the loose, but he may not necessarily fit the stereotype of a youthful cat burglar who can leap effortlessly from window to ledge.

Police in Hyde Park, N.Y., say they need the public’s help in identifying a suspect whom they believe stole jewelry valued at more than $8,000 from local antique shops.

Authorities say the suspect, who is middle-aged, is about 5ft 10in tall and 180-200 lbs., and has short or balding hair.

The Hyde Park Antique Center and the Beekman Arms Antique Market in Rhinebeck, N.Y., were hit by the same criminal on October 21st. Surveillance footage suggests that the suspect used either keys or a lock pick to open jewelry cases and steal contents at both shops. He may have left in a dark-colored sedan with New York license plates.

Anyone with information on the suspect’s identity is urged to contact Detective Jason Ruscillo at the Hyde Park Police Department. Tel. 845-229-2931.

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Graffiti artists turned loose on doomed Paris tower

PARIS (AP) – Condemned apartments covered in spray paint have probably never been in such demand.

An entire apartment tower on Quai d’Austerlitz in the eastern end of Paris has been turned over to 105 street artists from around the world, giving them a chance to turn each home into its own art installation during the building’s final days.

The artists had seven months to tag “Tour Paris 13” — named for the district where it’s located — coating apartments sometimes still filled with debris, trash and furniture. All their work will vanish by the end of the year, as the tower, which has nine stories and a basement, is demolished piece by piece after next week.

“I really wanted the artist to intervene on a whole space,” said Mehdi Ben Cheikh, the gallery owner who initiated the project. “I didn’t want the spectators to come and look at art. I wanted the spectators to come and enter an art work … which means there are things everywhere — we enter a room, and have to turn around in every direction to understand the surroundings.”

The result is a tower exhibiting a range of artistic styles. There’s a skull-inspired mural, Arabic calligraphy, a bloody bathroom, and a glow-in-the-dark cow crawling with snakes.

Would-be visitors have lined up for up to eight hours for a one-hour visit, with signs at various points around the block estimating their wait time. Only 49 people are allowed in at one time in the apartment block, which overlooks the Seine.

A handful of people are still living in the building and refusing to leave until the bitter end.

Some of the artists of Tour Paris 13 are participating in an unprecedented international urban contemporary art auction on Friday, with pieces created spur of the moment on Thursday standing alongside works from Keith Haring and Basquiat.

“I’ve been following graffiti and street art for about 30 years and so this represents another step in slightly different direction,” said Martha Cooper, the famous street photographer who is documenting their work in progress. “Having an auction in Paris, in a big auction house, is pretty amazing.”

A 1986 Basquiat piece, “Monticello,” is estimated to sell at 600,000 to 900,000 euros ($828,180 to $1.2 million), and a 1984 acrylic of Keith Haring’s “Sneeze,” from 500,000 to 700,000 euros.

“We are the new artists. Graffiti art is the world’s biggest art movement,” said Mear One, an artist from Los Angeles who was painting live outside the Drouot Auction House on Thursday. “In the 1970s, art was so elite that only the upper level people could do art or appreciate. So it got boring … and now, we are in a situation where this is the art form.

“All that other art is cool, but it has roots in the past, and we are the here and the now.”

Click to view an extensive gallery of photos taken on 11 floors of Tour Paris 13 by kerouac2:

http://www.anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=arts&thread=6804&page=1

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Man owns $10 silver certificate valued at $500,000

This US $10 Silver Certificate was printed in 1934. It is from the North Africa series of U.S. Silver Certificates ($1, $5, and $10), issued to the United States Armed Forces in Europe and North Africa during World War II. They are distinct with a bright yellow Treasury Seal. This Silver Certificate is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Photo by Godot13.

ROYERSFORD, Pa. (AP) – A Pennsylvania man has perhaps the most valuable $10 certificate you’ll ever see.

Billy Baeder owns the 1933 silver certificate that an auctioneer says is worth at least a half-million dollars.

The bill bears an unusual inscription, “Payable in silver coin to bearer on demand,” and has the serial number “A00000001A.” It is perhaps the most valuable bill printed since 1929, when bills were shrunk to their current size.

Baeder told Philly.com that his late father, also a collector, bought the bill two dozen years ago for about the price of a compact car.

Matthew Quinn, assistant director of currency for auction house Stack’s Bowers, says the bill “would easily be worth about $500,000 and up.”

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EBay expands same-day delivery to more cities

NEW YORK (AP) – EBay is expanding its same-day delivery service to more locations and letting buyers and sellers create “collections” of products available on its site as it moves beyond its roots as an online auctioneer.

EBay Inc. said Tuesday that it is expanding eBay Now to 25 markets by the end of 2014. The service is live now in Chicago and will go to Dallas later this year and to London in early 2014.

To help advance the service, which promises delivery in as little as an hour, eBay says it has bought courier service startup Shutl for an undisclosed sum.

EBay’s “collections” are groups of products available on the site, as selected by celebrities, bloggers, regular eBay users or stores themselves. People can follow the collections, their curators or other users. The company is also taking a page from social networks and will let both buyers and sellers create profiles for themselves on the site.

EBay has been working on shedding its auction-site image, and says that more than three-quarters of what it sells is new merchandise, sold not to the highest bidder over several days but to buyers paying immediately.

Shares of eBay slid 11 cents to close at $51.83.

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Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame to close for construction

Sign at entrance to Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. Photo taken Aug, 2, 2010 by JL1Row, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) – The Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame will close next month to make way for construction, and is scheduled to reopen in April 2015.

The Hall of Fame, which is in the basement of the Lambeau Field Atrium, will be moved to make way for a new Packers Pro Shop, the Press-Gazette Media reported.

The new Packers Hall of Fame will be located in sections of the first and second floors of the atrium.

While the hall is closed, some of its artifacts and memorabilia will be lent to the Neville Public Museum. The team said details of that arrangement will announced later.

The new Pro Shop will be larger and located in a revamped ground level. The atrium will remain open for events throughout construction.

The construction is part of a $141 million project that’s being paid for in full by the team, with no public money.

Of the $20 million spent on atrium work so far, 97 percent has gone to Wisconsin businesses, the Packers said. That includes 42 percent spent on Brown County businesses.

The team estimates this phase of construction will employ about 1,500 workers over the next two years.

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