Augustus Saint-Gaudens, American (born Ireland), 1848 – 1907, ‘Diana,’ created 1892-93, Gift of the New York Life Insurance Company to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1932
PHILA., Pa. (AP) – A symbol of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is once again looking radiant in bright shiny gold after a yearlong restoration.
It’s the 13-foot-tall sculpture of the Roman goddess Diana in an archer’s pose, ready to fire her arrow.
The sculpture has long held a place of prominence and honor in the museum’s central hall.
The work by Augustus Saint-Gaudens originally crowned an early venue for New York’s Madison Square Garden, where it served as a weather vane starting in 1893.
After that building was demolished in 1925, the sculpture was put in storage _ its gilded surface severely worn down by the elements. The museum acquired it in 1932.
Museum officials said Thursday that 180 square feet of gold leaf was applied over the 700-pound work.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, American (born Ireland), 1848 – 1907, ‘Diana,’ created 1892-93, Gift of the New York Life Insurance Company to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1932
Estimated to bring $7000 to $10,000, this Continental armoire is richly veneered with oak, elm, and burl walnut, among other woods. John Moran image
PASADENA, Calif. – In stark contrast to Moran’s modern-leaning June 17th Antiques and Decorative Arts Auction, attendees at the Southern California house’s July 22nd sale will find the saleroom floor resplendent with the gilt detailing of Continental antiques, including a large selection of Louis XV and XVI furniture, urns, clocks, and wall mirrors, displayed beside Edwardian and Renaissance Revival-style furniture, European porcelain, bronzes, art glass, Continental and British paintings and sculpture, and American midcentury modern pottery and furniture. The majority of the July offerings were culled from just five important Southern California private collections, and as always the catalog boasts the fresh to the market pieces of the highest quality.
Internet live bidding during the sale will be provided by LiveAuctioneers.
Fine art consignments include works covering a variety of price points, highlighted by a number of very collectible works by noted European artists. The first, by Fernand Pelez (1843 – 1913 French), is a study for a larger work titled “Petit Misere ou Mendiant au Chapeau,” which recently sold at Sotheby’s Paris for an impressive price of $80,120, well over its pre-auction estimate. The study offered at Moran’s is conservatively estimates at $6000 – $8000.
A moody composition titled “Le Reveil du Coeur” (The Awakening of the Heart) by Anatole Vely (1838 – 18812 French) is one of the largest and most exquisitely detailed of the artist’s works to be offered at auction in recent history. The stunning oil is estimated to find a buyer for $10,000 – $20,000. Known for his maritime compositions, Jules Noel’s representative oil on canvas depicting figures by a group of docked boats is estimated to earn $3000 – $5000. A selection of Erté gouaches hailing from a private Southern California collection will also be offered, including “Midsummer Fair, Le Tir Les Tireurs,” “Venus et les Trois Graces,” and a work featuring an alluring gypsy dancer, all offered for estimates under $1000.
Fantastic selections from an impressive Montecito Estate offer up a number of highlights, including a selection of striking carved giltwood wall mirrors in varying sizes. A monumental carved gilt wood four-panel screen, covered with an antique Flemish tapestry, demands a grand space for display, not only for its size but its visually arresting quality and craftsmanship. The screen is estimated to find a new home for $20,000 to $30,000. An exquisitely decorated gilt bronze-mounted “boulle” marquetry and ebonized bureau plat, with a serpentine rectangular top inset with a gilt-tooled maroon leather writing surface is estimated to bring $5000 – $8000. A robust Continental marquetry armoire, veneered with oak, elm, burl walnut and other woods with scrolled motifs and columnar supports carries an estimate of $7000 – $10,000.
On a different note, select lots of modern American pottery are also to be featured, including work by Ojai, CA potters Otto & Vivika Heino and Claremont, CA potters Rupert Deese and Harrison McIntosh. One lot, a shallow Heino pottery bowl in mottled brown and black with blue and yellow-green splashes, is expected to bring $600 – $800. Carrying the same estimate and injecting a splash of clean-lined modern sensibility into the catalog is a striking pair of stoneware covered jars in dark brown with vertical cream stripes by Deese.
China and porcelain are among the highlighted categories of the July 22nd sale. A pair of Royal Worcester porcelain candlesticks, dated to 1881 and each molded as seated Mandarin figures juggling spheres, carry a conservative estimate of $800 to $1200 for the pair. A figural group titled “Lessons in Love” by famed maker Meissen should earn a price realized between $2500 and $3500. A sensuous Riessner, Stellmacher & Kessel Amphora porcelain bust depicting a maiden in a yellow bonnet and dress with delicate gilt highlights is sure to charm bidders with the conservative $1000 – $1500 estimate.
Additional highlights include:
A carved marble statue of a boy and his dog by Samuel James Kitson, just over five feet tall (estimate: $7000 – $10,000).
Among a number of fine French clocks, a Napoleon III gilt bronze and marble mantle clock features a reclining classical female figure and children with various attributes representing the arts (estimate: $2000 – $3000).
A French patinated bronze figural group, cast from a model by French artist Alfred Boucher depicting three elegantly balanced male figures reaching into the distance, carries the title “Au But,” which translates to “Purpose” (estimate: $2000 – $3000)
For additional information on any item in the auction, call 626-793-1833 or email info@johnmoran.com.
View the fully illustrated auction catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
Estimated to bring $7000 to $10,000, this Continental armoire is richly veneered with oak, elm, and burl walnut, among other woods. John Moran image
A study for a larger portrait recently sold at Sotheby’s Paris, this naturalist composition is expected to earn between $6000 and $8000 at auction. John Moran image
A monumentally sized composition, ‘Le Reveil du Coeur’ by French painter Anatole Vely is offered with a pre-auction estimate of $10,000 to $20,000. John Moran image
These late-19th-century Royal Worcester candlesticks depicting whimsical Mandarin jugglers are in excellent condition and may reach $800-$1200 at auction. John Moran image
This marble sculpture, created in 1873 during noted American artist Samuel Kitson’s sojourn in Rome, could fetch $7000-$10,000. John Moran image
One of a number of quality consignments handpicked from an important Montecito estate, this Napoleon III gilt bronze and marble mantel clock is surmounted by children representing the arts, and a reclining female figure. Estimate: $2000-$3000. John Moran image
H.C. Westermann, ‘See America First,’ 1968, from the What Nerve! exhibition, Rhode Island School of Design Museum
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The RISD Museum explores an alternate history of contemporary American art this fall in What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present. The exhibition opens with a Design the Night celebration on September 18, and an afternoon of Critical Encounters gallery conversations with curators, art historians, and several of the featured artists on September 19. What Nerve! is on view from mid-September through January 4, 2015.
“The RISD Museum is exicited to present this ambitious exhibition,” said John W. Smith, Museum Director. “Both individually and collectively, the artists represented in What Nerve! have had a profound impact on contemporary art — yet, with few exceptions, they remain under-examined. I’m confident that this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will open up dynamic new conversations within our community and beyond, and bring these artists much deserved attention, scholarly and otherwise.”
What Nerve! traces a history of figurative painting, sculpture, and vernacular imagery that has been largely overlooked and undervalued relative to modernist abstraction and conceptual art. Since the 1960s, many artists working outside New York developed idiosyncratic forms of figuration, unsettling the strict rationales of dominant visual and theoretical trends. When confronted with a system that might seem impenetrable, outsiders often band together, and four important regional gatherings of artists across the nation generated powerful ripples in the art world and beyond.
At the heart of What Nerve! is a re-creation of these four crucial exhibitions, happenings, spaces, and groups: Hairy Who in Chicago, Funk in San Francisco, Destroy All Monsters in Ann Arbor, and Forcefield in Providence. These installations are linked together by six influential or intersecting artists who similarly grappled with figurative and expressive interests. Radiating outward as spokes of connection, these artists —- William Copley, Jack Kirby, Elizabeth Murray, Gary Panter, Christina Ramberg and H.C. Westermann — were markedly influenced by, or a crucial influence on, the four artist groups or hubs at the core of the exhibition.
“The groups and individual artists represented in What Nerve! were not naïve or unaware of the art world around them, they simply trafficked in an alternate history, which is explored in this exhibition and book,” said co-curator Dan Nadel.
All of the artists in What Nerve! ran against the modernist grain and its emphasis on theory. Rather than attempting to compete with mainstream modernism, their influences ran towards comics, folk art, and vernacular signage — as well as the vulgar, profane, and out-of-bounds. Instead of distancing their art through irony or institutional critique, they seized imagery and ideas from vernacular sources as diverse as comics and pottery, pulling and reshaping material from their environments to tackle a variety of subjects with equal doses of satire and sincerity.
Featuring more than 180 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and videos — as well as ephemera, posters, and other materials featured in reconstructed installations — What Nerve! and its accompanying book represent the first historical examination of the circumstances, relationships, and works of this increasingly important lineage of American artists, and the exuberance, humor, and politics of their artworks remain powerfully resonant.
“In going against the canon, the artists in What Nerve! devised distinctive idioms and created works that are sometimes narrative, often earnest, frequently transgressive, and always individualistic,” said co-curator Judith Tannenbaum. “Exaggerated forms call into question what we know about ourselves, both physically and psychologically.”
Inventor Nikola Tesla on the cover of Time Magazine, July 20, 1931 issue
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk has agreed to donate $1 million to help fund a new museum dedicated to inventor Nikola Tesla.
The organizer of a crowdfunding campaign for the new museum, Matthew Inman, made the announcement on his blog, weeks after publicly asking Musk for the donation for the center honoring the inventor who inspired the name for the electric car maker.
“Earlier this week I got to speak to (Musk) directly, and he promised two things,” Inman wrote on the blog Thursday. “He’s going to build a Tesla Supercharger station in the parking lot of the museum (and) he’s donating $1 million dollars to the museum itself…Elon Musk: from the deepest wells of my geeky little heart: thank you. This is amazing news. And it’s Nikola Tesla’s 158th birthday.”
Inman’s campaign raised over $1.37 million for the museum at the site of Tesla’s laboratory on Long Island, New York, but has since said $8 million is needed to get the museum built.
A Serbian-American, Tesla worked for Thomas Edison before branching out on his own to create new types of electric generators and devices.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Inventor Nikola Tesla on the cover of Time Magazine, July 20, 1931 issue
Among the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts is Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin,’ 1888. Image courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts via Wikimedia commons
DETROIT (AP) – Treasures in the Detroit Institute of Arts eyed for sale by some creditors in the city’s historic bankruptcy could be worth more than $4.6 billion, but likely would fetch a quarter of that or less in a forced liquidation, according to a new report.
The evaluation given this week to the DIA and the city by New York-based Artvest Partners LLC says a decline in the value of fine art in some sectors and other market forces might result in only $1.1 billion for the 60,377 pieces housed in the art museum.
“An immediate liquidation of the art collection will result in selling the DIA collection at a fraction of its fair market value,” according to the report.
Artwork in the museum has become a key part of Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings. Some creditors want it sold to satisfy some of the city’s debt. But the state, a group of private foundations and the DIA have pledged more than $800 million in a so-called “grand bargain” to ease cuts to retiree pensions while placing the art in trust — and out of the hands of creditors.
A prior appraisal by Christie’s auction house placed the value of 2,800 of those city-owned works at between $454 million and $867 million.
Flooding the market with art could decrease the overall value. Christie’s and Sotheby’s, listed as the two main houses for such an auction, also may refuse to sell the pieces in fear of damaging relationships with the broader museum community, according to the new report.
It also may be difficult to sell some of the museum’s most prominent pieces.
“There are several hundred works protected by donor restrictions and many of those are high-value works and those most likely would be eliminated by a sale,” DIA Executive Vice President Annmarie Erickson told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Some works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Renoir are among those considered “restricted.”
“This report verifies what we have said all along. It is very easy to talk about selling art, but it is very difficult to do it,” Erickson said.
Other obstacles include clearing title of some pieces in court and legal challenges to the sale of pieces donated to the museum. Litigation could take years to decide.
The city and DIA commissioned the report, which will be used as ammunition in Detroit’s bankruptcy trial scheduled to begin Aug. 14.
The city and the DIA received the report Tuesday, said Bill Nowling, a spokesman for state-appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who is guiding the city through the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Thousands of creditors, including banks, bond insurers and city retirees are voting on Orr’s restructuring plan for the city’s debt and face a Friday deadline to have their ballots received.
Retirees face cuts to their cost-of-living allowances — and for some — their pensions. Part of Orr’s plan includes the “grand bargain.”
Orr alerted DIA officials in early 2013 that city-owned artwork could be considered assets if Detroit ever went into bankruptcy. The city’s bankruptcy petition was approved in December.
Syncora Capital Assurance and Syncora Guarantee in March filed a motion in bankruptcy court seeking DIA records identifying works of art appraised or valued at more than $1 million and other financial records. The New York-based bond insurer is contesting Detroit’s bankruptcy and the city’s attempts to pay some creditors far less than they’re owed.
But a forced liquidation of the art would hurt retirees, Erickson said.
“When they look at the possibility of liquidating the collection … they would have to share,” she said. “Those proceeds would be divided among all creditors.”
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Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Among the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts is Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin,’ 1888. Image courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts via Wikimedia commons
Entrance to the Brill Building in New York City. Credit: Americasroof at en.wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
NEW YORK (AP) – Two painters are temporarily working out of an empty storefront at the landmark Brill Building, allowing thousands of passing pedestrians to watch them create scenes of Times Square.
Andy Hammerstein and Tom Christopher are painting each weekday until July 17. The artists, who are known for their New York cityscapes, have been working on the pop installation six hours a day since June 17.
The Brill Building at 49th Street and Broadway is famous for the generations of songwriters, including Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington and Carole King, who peddled their wares to music publishers there. The owner offered the vacant space to the artists free of charge.
“We’re de-mystifying the process to over 5,000 people per hour who pass by … more viewers than any gallery or museum,” Christopher said.
Most of the canvasses, some measuring 4 feet by 5 feet, will be completed back at the artists’ studios. For now, the artists are “getting the patterns and the energy and the electricity of the area into the work,” said Christopher, who has already produced eight canvasses.
“It’s an amazing place to work,” he added. “There’s so much going — jack hammers and lights and people yelling. It’s absolutely an insane place.”
Hammerstein said street musicians, artists and vendors sometimes congregate in front of the window because of the crowds watching them.
“It become its own little power spot. People stop and stay and we become only a part of what is going on,” he said.
“I’m amazingly inspired by the energy,” Hammerstein added.
Marianne Orbeson, of Denmark, said she stopped by “because it was fun to watch an artist at work.”
“The pictures he’s painting is the way we see the streets of New York,” Orbeson said. “It’s wonderful.”
Passerby Steven Chou, of Taiwan, described the work as performance but wanted to see more action.
“I thought the idea of painting, working inside of a storefront, letting everyone see what’s going on is more interesting than his work itself,” said the recent graduate from Columbia University.
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Associated Press photographer Kathy Willens contributed to this report.
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Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Entrance to the Brill Building in New York City. Credit: Americasroof at en.wikipedia, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
SHELBYVILLE, Ind. (AP) – A central Indiana museum is displaying numerous Native American relics belonging to a man from whom the FBI seized many artifacts this spring.
The display at Shelbyville’s Grover Museum includes arrowheads, pottery and tools on loan from Don Miller. FBI agents searched Miller’s rural Rush County home for several days in April, with officials saying he improperly possessed some items among his collection of thousands of artifacts from around the world.
Grover Museum director Candy Miller tells The Shelbyville News that she had been talking with Miller about the display before learning about the FBI investigation. WISH-TV reports the exhibit focuses on Indiana-related Native American artifacts and continues until Sept. 20.
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Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Despite the global embargo on elephant ivory that has been in place since 1990, the rate of elephant slaughter for tusks is at the highest point in a decade. In this picture, three female African bush elephants travel as a small herd in Tanzania. Photo by Ikiwaner, taken July 29, 2010, licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans in the House want to hold up new rules intended to crack down on ivory sales because it is becoming more difficult for owners of musical instruments, antiques and guns made with ivory to trade in such items.
A House Appropriations subcommittee acted Wednesday to block the rules as part of a measure funding the Fish and Wildlife Service. The legislation has a long way to go before it becomes law and the rules, announced in February, will stay in effect in the meantime.
The rules are aimed at combating elephant and rhinoceros poaching at a time when illegal trade in ivory is flourishing.
“It is extremely difficult to differentiate legally acquired ivory from ivory derived from elephant poaching,” senior Fish and Wildlife Service official Robert Dreher said in congressional testimony last month. “Our criminal investigations and anti-smuggling efforts have clearly shown that legal ivory trade can serve as a cover for illegal trade.”
Critics say the administration hasn’t made the case that shutting down trade in ivory items made from long-dead elephants discourages elephant poaching now or stops trade in illegal ivory.
The legislative effort is in in response to complaints that the rules are making it impossible in many cases for owners of objects made of ivory legally imported before bans imposed in 1975 and 1990 to sell such items, thereby undermining their value.
“The ban would make American owners of legal, pre-ban ivory potential criminals overnight, as well as strip their pieces of commercial value, adversely impacting the finances of millions of Americans,” a coalition of groups opposing the ban wrote the agency this spring.
Under the rules, interstate ivory sales are prohibited, except for “bona fide antiques” that are at least a century old. Sales of such ivory within a state are banned unless the seller can prove it was legally imported before the 1990 ban for African elephants or the 1975 ban on ivory from Asian elephants. In May, the government eased the rules somewhat for owners of musical instruments made with ivory.
Antique ivory has a variety of purposes. For instance, it’s often used for knife and handgun handles, as part of violin bows and parts of vintage guitars, antique chess sets and walking sticks.
Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Claire Cassel said the agency had no comment.
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Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Despite the global embargo on elephant ivory that has been in place since 1990, the rate of elephant slaughter for tusks is at the highest point in a decade. In this picture, three female African bush elephants travel as a small herd in Tanzania. Photo by Ikiwaner, taken July 29, 2010, licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
2009 photo of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in Brussels. Credit: Michael Wal, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and1.0 Generic license.
PARIS (AFP) – A French-Algerian man suspected of carrying out a deadly shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels has dropped an appealagainst his extradition to Belgium, his lawyer said on Friday.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, had filed an appeal against the June ruling that ordered his extradition from France, but his lawyer Apolin Pepiezep said he had decided not to go ahead with the challenge as he now considered the court’s decision “satisfactory.”
NEW YORK – An important, elaborately carved Roman urn of the first-early second century A.D.—one of the finest porphyry vessels to have survived from classical antiquity—has been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The acquisition was made possible in part thanks to a challenge grant from Metropolitan Museum Trustee Mary Jaharis.
Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Museum, stated: “This rare and beautiful vase is a superb example of classical craftsmanship at its best. The public will now have the extraordinary opportunity to see it within the context of other Hellenistic and Roman works in various media, and especially other sculptures made of porphyry, in the collection of the Museum’s Department of Greek and Roman Art, one of the major repositories of classical art in North America.”
Porphyry is a rare hard, purple-red stone that was highly prized in antiquity for its distinct color. Because purple was considered the imperial color, porphyry was regarded as a royal stone. Under Roman rule, the quarrying of porphyry in the remote eastern desert of Egypt was an imperial monopoly. The stone’s hardness made it difficult to quarry, and the need to transport the stone long distances added to its value as a luxury material.
The vessel measures approximately 10 inches (25.5 cm) in height and 9 inches (24.8 cm) in width. It was probably used as a cinerary urn (holding ashes after cremation), a practice that was described in contemporary writings. According to the Roman historian Dio Cassius (ca. 155‒235), for example, the cremated remains of the emperor Septimius Severus—who died in northern Britain in 211—were put in a “porphyry hydria” for transportation back to Rome.
The Metropolitan’s urn is of the utmost rarity, having retained the original polish as well as traces of burial deposits. Shaped like a situla—or wine bucket—the vessel lacks the two swing handles that are usually attached above the rim. Instead it has two ear-shaped handles and a large and impressive Silenus mask on either side. (Silenus was the companion and tutor to the Greek god of wine, Dionysus.) Each Silenus has pointed ears and wears a wreath with leaves and berries—all carved in exquisite detail.
The vessel may have originated in an Alexandrian workshop or in Rome, where it would have been made by immigrant craftsmen. It was in the collection of Arturo López-Willshaw (1900‒1962) in Neuilly, France, prior to 1961, and then that of his widow Patricia López-Huici de López-Willshaw (1912–2010). Described as “A Porphyry Mortar, Italian, probably first half of 19th century,” the vessel was sold at auction in Paris in October 2012.
