From the start, Elvis Presley had a thing for Cadillacs.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” was also the king of the road when he was behind the wheel of one of his many Cadillacs.
View “The Daily Bid” episode titled “Elvis and His Engines – A Private Tour of Elvis Presley’s Rare Car and Motorcycle Collection” to learn more about his love of motor vehicles. Angie Marchese, Director of Archives at Graceland, gives candid glimpse of Elvis and his penchant for fast cars and motorcycles, and the high jinks they led to on the streets of Memphis.
The video also pictures the last Cadillac that Elvis Presley bought for personal use, a burgundy and silver 1977 Cadillac Seville. This pristine Caddy, from the collection of Elvis super fan Greg Page, will be a highlight of the Aug. 14 Auction at Graceland.
Sebastian Errazuriz, ‘Magistral,’ 2011; wood, skewers, and glass; Image courtesy of Sebastian Errazuriz Studio. Photo: Ari Espay.
PITTSBURGH – Carnegie Museum of Art presents the first solo museum exhibition of Sebastian Errazuriz, one of the most enigmatic creative minds working today. Errazuriz’s work straddles and blurs the boundaries between art and design, tantalizing viewers with work that is simultaneously lyrical, macabre and eloquent. This survey, “Sebastian Errazuriz: Look Again,” presents the first-ever opportunity to see the scope of his practice from the last 10 years. The exhibition opens Sept. 6.
Through found and repurposed objects, unexpected interventions, and meticulously crafted interactive furniture, Errazuriz surprises, provokes and engages at every turn, asking viewers to rethink the everyday, to confront the transience of life and to question the status quo. “Look Again” offers a comprehensive examination of Errazuriz’s practice.
In CMOA’s Forum Gallery, furniture, products, sketches and prototypes underscore his meticulous craftsmanship and wit. Masterworks of contemporary design, Errazuriz’s functional cabinetry confounds and delights. One example, Magistral, guards its contents with tens of thousands of bamboo spikes; another unfolds with porcupine-like quills. A new kinetic cabinet, Explosion expands to the brink of stability while retaining beautiful geometric proportions, using mechanics so complex that they took more than a year to perfect. In the museum’s magnificent Hall of Architecture, a 107-year-old collection of monumental plaster casts, a selection of conceptually-driven works stand under the artist’s own cartoonish yet sobering reminder of mortality, a piano, suspended above visitors, from the hall’s 70-foot ceiling.
These absurdly beautiful memento mori invite serious contemplation as well as laughter. A floating coffin with an outboard motor suggests the ultimate act of personal agency: ending life on one’s own terms, with style and flair. A dramatic custom racing motorcycle fitted with a delicate taxidermy bird conjures the thin margin between life and death. A coffee table contains layers of flat artworks; peeling away to reveal a life-size photograph of the artist, positioned as though on a stretcher or autopsy table.
A video documentary selection of Errazuriz’s public art projects in Chile and the United States, shown in the museum’s foyer, will demonstrate some of the artist’s most visible attempts to tackle life’s weighty issues: mortality, war and violence, and social and economic inequality. Thrust onto unsuspecting viewers in everyday life, these murals and staged events insistently start conversations in the public sphere.
“Sebastian Errazuriz: Look Again” reveals the Chilean-born, New York-based artist and designer’s wide-ranging talent, and his ability to be shocking and irreverent, yet profoundly sensitive.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Sebastian Errazuriz, ‘Magistral,’ 2011; wood, skewers, and glass; Image courtesy of Sebastian Errazuriz Studio. Photo: Ari Espay.Sebastian Errazuriz, ‘Boat Coffin,’ 2009; wood, metal fittings, cotton, and stainless steel; Image courtesy of Sebastian Errazuriz Studio.
Image courtesy of IFAWWASHINGTON – The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW www.ifaw.org ) today – World Elephant Day – published a new investigative report finding that the auction industry does not have the safeguards in place to protect elephants. “Although many in the industry claim not to be part of the problem driving the elephant poaching crisis, investigators found almost no data that would support this assertion,” the report said.
Titled “Bidding Against Survival: The Elephant Poaching Crisis and the Role of Auctions in the U.S. Ivory Market,” the report shows that only 1 of the 351 auctions investigated provided any documentation to authenticate the provenance, age, or legality of the ivory offered for sale.
Until this year, auction houses and other sellers have not been required to certify the ivory being sold,” said IFAW Campaigns Officer, Peter LaFontaine.”And although the vast majority of retailers may not intentionally traffic in poached ivory, there is no way to know if an ivory carving on the auction block is antique or chiselled from the tusk of an elephant recently killed by poachers.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data indicate that individuals and businesses in the United States import and export a significant amount of legal and illegal ivory. The legal ivory market provides a screen under which a parallel illegal trade can thrive.
“We know from U.S. government reports that thousands of illegal pieces of ivory are smuggled into the United States every year; and we also know that auction houses are selling huge amounts of ivory without documentation,” added LaFontaine. “It would be naive not to consider that some of the smuggled contraband ends up on the auction block.”
IFAW’s three-month investigation into the auction industry focused on data obtained from from 340 auctions hosted by 223 auctioneers and galleries.
The U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service began drafting new regulations in February which, if finalized and implemented as proposed, would require ivory sellers to prove their wares are bona-fide antiques, therefore reducing the number of elephants poached today for US buyers.
“Among the many dealers and auction sites investigated, only one made the effort to verify that its ivory was antique,” said IFAW Campaigns Director Beth Allgood.”Traffickers are known to smuggle large quantities of illegal ivory into the United States every year, and we welcome strong rules proposed by the Fish & Wildlife Service to stop the US role in the elephant poaching crisis and save elephants from slaughter.”
Julian R. Ellison, CEO of LiveAuctioneers, read the IFAW report and said he found it “eye-opening and sobering.”
“LiveAuctioneers has always had a zero-tolerance policy toward the sale of illegal ivory. The Agreement our auction-house clients sign in order to use our services clearly states that they must not offer for sale through LiveAuctioneers any product of an animal species that is protected as endangered, or threatened, under applicable national or local laws. The IFAW report leads us to believe we have not gone far enough, so we are reaching out to the IFAW and asking that they help us educate auction houses who use LiveAuctioneers. Based on prior input we’ve received from auctioneers, they would welcome such guidance. They have no interest in selling illegal ivory or unwittingly contributing to the extinction of an endangered species.”
A sculpture dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. will feature remarks from museum leaders, Lichtenstein Foundation representatives and community dignitaries.
Five Brushstrokes consists of five separate elements, the largest reaching 40 feet high, and had never been assembled. The sculpture, which took several days to install, is a prominent new addition to the campus, displayed in front of the main museum building.
The day of celebration will feature music by local DJs, food trucks and special programming for all ages. Visitors can play lawn games with an artistic twist, join a session of the IMA Drawing Club and add their own brushstroke to the Museum’s giant community painting. Visitors will also enjoy an exclusive sneak peek at upcoming programming, ticket giveaways and other surprises. The evening will conclude with a viewing of The Godfather, the final film in this season’s The National Bank of Indianapolis Summer Nights Film Series.
Block Party at the IMA is free and open to the public. Tickets for The Godfather are sold separately and cost $10 for the general public and $6 for IMA members. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling 317-955-2339.
Five Brushstrokes is considered to be Lichtenstein’s most ambitious work in his Brushstroke series. Consisting of five separate elements, the tallest of which soars 40 feet into the air, the sculpture features a striking collection of forms and colors and is one of Lichtenstein’s premier ‘scatter pieces’.
Five Brushstrokes was originally commissioned by the Stuart Collection at the University of California San Diego in the early 1980s. Throughout much of 1983 and 1984 Lichtenstein worked on the commission, sketching his thoughts, creating color cut outs of each element, and then making a wooden maquette of the work. However, when the final full-scale specifications were produced, the sculpture’s huge scale prevented its fabrication. Following Lichtenstein’s death in 1997, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation was established with the purpose of increasing the world’s exposure to the artist’s work. The foundation funded the fabrication of two examples of the Five Brushstrokes in 2012: the artist proof being acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and an edition of one that is still owned by the foundation. The IMA acquired Five Brushstrokes through the generosity of the Lichtenstein Foundation and the late Robert and Marjorie Mann of Indianapolis, who established an acquisitions fund for contemporary sculpture through a bequest in 2011. The installation is generously being underwritten by Ersal and Izabela Ozdemir.
Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 – 1997) was born in New York City and had his first solo exhibition in the city in 1951. By 1962 Lichtenstein was showing at the prestigious Leo Castelli Gallery, where he exhibited his signature comic strip paintings. He made sculptural works as well in the early 1960s in the form of utilitarian-style objects and mannequin-style heads, both directly influenced by the representation of commercial techniques in his paintings. As his career progressed, the artist’s sculpture evolved with his painting. In the 1980s this convergence of media culminated in his monumental Brushstroke sculpture series. Evoking the movement and color of paint on canvas, these totem-like works suspend the artist’s sweeping brushstrokes in midair, balancing one on top of the other in a dynamic sculptural spectacle. Examples from the Brushstroke series are now in the collections of leading museums around the world, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC).
Bill Watterson and Stephan Pastis ‘Pearls Before Swine’ daily comic strip original art dated 6-5-2014 (Universal Uclick, 2014).
DALLAS (AP) – Artwork from Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson’s three-day return to comics has brought more than $74,000 at auction to benefit Parkinson’s research.
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions says the three comic strips sold Friday for a combined $74,040 to three collectors, all of whom wish to remain anonymous. Heritage had expected the strips to sell for more than $30,000 combined.
Watterson collaborated with Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis in June after a long absence from the funny pages.
The artwork was sold on behalf of Team Cul de Sac, a charity established in honor of cartoonist Richard Thompson, who has Parkinson’s. Proceeds will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Calvin and Hobbes ended in 1995.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-09-14 0057GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Bill Watterson and Stephan Pastis ‘Pearls Before Swine’ daily comic strip original art dated 6-5-2014 (Universal Uclick, 2014).
An early carved oak coat of arms panel. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Cottone Auctions. HITE OAK, Va. (AP) – Betty Hilosky goes treasure hunting every day, scouring thrift stores for items others discard.
She’s found some great deals: Waterford crystal, a Hummel angel figurine and enough oil paintings of nautical scenes (her favorite) to cover her living room walls.
But the prize the Stafford County woman recently brought home was more than a bargain.
It was a piece of family history.
Hilosky, 77, had scoured the Rappahannock Goodwill Industries store in White Oak, off State Route 218. She was carrying her daily deals to her red Toyota when something told her to go back.
She listened.
As Hilosky dug through a cart of items that had just been put out on the floor, she pulled out a hand-carved coat of arms.
“Oh, that’s pretty,” she thought.
Then she looked at the name etched in mahogany, and her heart almost stopped.
“If it had said Smith or Snellings or any other local name, it wouldn’t have surprised me, but HINMAN?” she wrote in an email. “That was my maiden name.”
She couldn’t wait to share her discovery with her brother in California.
He has a coat of arms carved by their great-uncle, probably 75 to 100 years ago in Warrenton, Va.
Hilosky and her brother exchanged photos of their pieces and are certain their relative also carved the one she found at Goodwill.
“I have no doubt that this is his work,” Hilosky said. “It’s just too similar to the other.”
The coat of arms features an animal perched atop a crest of roses and surrounded by ornate branches and leaves. Hilosky called the creature a griffin, a combination lion and eagle, but this one also has the chest, wings and tail of a dragon.
Her great-uncle was Edward Maurice Blackwell, and he was her grandmother’s brother.
“I knew him as a child,” Hilosky said. “He was quite a man.”
Blackwell was a naval commander who loved to carve wood. A family history he wrote shows a photo of him in his den, surrounded by carvings and curios.
His sister – a Hilosky’s grandmother – got married in 1897 when memories of the Civil War were still fresh. Their father had fought for the South while the father of the prospective groom fought for the North.
Some relatives of Hilosky’s grandmother threatened to shoot her Yankee suitor, so the two eloped.
Uncle Maurice, as he came to be called, helped his sister with the spur-of-the-moment wedding and became “the closest of family friends” with his sister’s husband, according to Hilosky’s brother, Wilbur Hinman III.
He lives in California and inherited the coat of arms after his and Hilosky’s parents died. Neither of them knew that their great-uncle had carved a second Hinman crest. They can’t imagine how it ended up at a Goodwill store.
“I don’t know who owned it, but it surely was carved by Uncle Maurice,” Hinman wrote in an email.
“It’s a real mystery” that Hilosky would like to solve. She asked that anyone with information about the carving call her at 540-220-1827.
“Hinman is not a common name,” she said. “For me to just happen to go back into Goodwill and find it is kind of spooky.”
Hilosky visits almost every Goodwill store in the region daily. She sells most of what she buys at her consignment booth at Two Times New, off State Route 3 near Big Lots.She’s partial to anything stitched, sewn, carved or painted as a labor of love. She can’t bear the thought of a handmade item winding up unwanted.
Hilosky makes enough money to pay the rent on the booth, but it’s clear the searches for bargains are strictly business.
“Every day is a treasure hunt,” she said. “You never know what you’re going to find. It’s a wonderful outlet, and I think it’s kind of harmless.”
“She’s a good, good shopper,” said Jennie Sullivan, a cashier at the Goodwill behind Carlos O’Kelly’s in Spotsylvania. “She finds a lot of good stuff.”
Information from: The Free Lance-Star, http://www.fredericksburg.com/
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-10-14 1440GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
An early carved oak coat of arms panel. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Cottone Auctions.
Lynnewood Hall is a Neoclassical Revival mansion designed by architect Horace Trumbauer for industrialist Peter A.B. Widener and built between 1897 and 1900. It’s considered the largest surviving Gilded Age mansion in the Philadelphia area. Image by Shuvaev. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A dilapidated 110-room, 70,000-square-foot estate is back on the market, but an architect says the $20 million price tag doesn’t include the tens of millions more it needs in repairs.
The 34-acre Lynnewood Hall estate in the Elkins Park neighborhood has been in decline since the original heirs sold it in 1944, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday. The home, completed around 1900, once held one of the nation’s largest private art collections. In its heyday, the house was dripping with silk, velvet and gilded moldings, the rooms furnished with chairs from King Louis XV’s palace, Persian rugs and Chinese pottery and the halls crammed with art by Raphael, Rembrandt and Donatello.
But members of the Widener family who owned the property died or moved away. The estate was first sold to an association that wanted to build a Protestant university. Then it was sold to a housing developer followed by a seminary and another church. The property went through decades of bankruptcy proceedings and was repossessed, auctioned and sold for pennies to creditors – all while descending further into disrepair.
But those who have seen the interior in recent years said most of the house’s fine, historic fixtures are still there, even though some of the rooms are destroyed by water damage and broken windows.
Mary DeNadai, an architect who specializes in historic restoration, said it would take about $50 million to restore the home to its former glory, but time is running out.
“If it continues to be neglected as it is, it will be beyond salvage” within five to 10 years, she said.
David Rowland, president of the Old York Road Historical Society, said he has seen possible buyers come and go over the years.
“It was always loved more by the people who’d never been inside it than by the people who actually lived there,” Rowland said.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-10-14 1926GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Lynnewood Hall is a Neoclassical Revival mansion designed by architect Horace Trumbauer for industrialist Peter A.B. Widener and built between 1897 and 1900. It’s considered the largest surviving Gilded Age mansion in the Philadelphia area. Image by Shuvaev. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
