Signed and numbered, this lithograph by Pablo O’Higgins will sell at a Wiederseim Associates auction Feb. 27. The print, which measures 22 by 16 inches, has a $50-$100 estimate. Image coutesy Wiederseim Associates.SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – An artist who turned his back on Utah at age 20 and forged a colorful career in Mexico – including a stint with famed muralist Diego Rivera – is getting a posthumous show in his native state.
Twenty-eight works by Pablo O’Higgins are now on exhibit at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah.
It’s believed to be one of the only solo exhibits ever of O’Higgins’ work in the United States.
Born in 1904 in Salt Lake City as Paul Higgins, he moved to Mexico City in 1924 and according to museum officials, briefly worked as Rivera’s assistant and later changed his name. His art career took off over the ensuing decades, including well-known depictions of Mexico’s working class.
He died in 1983. Most of the works on display at the museum are on loan from private collections in Salt Lake City.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
AP-WS-02-22-10 1339EST
Caption:
1375 …
ADDITIONAL LOT OF NOTE
This untitled painting by Pablo O’Higgins was in a private collection in New Jersey. The 7 1/2- by 9 1/2-inch oil on canvas painting sold for $1,500 in 2007. Image courtesy Rago Arts and Auction Center and LiveAuctioneers Archive.
LONDON (AP) – It only took eight minutes for a wiry sculpture of a striding man to make history.
After a brief but intense bidding war involving at least 10 prospective buyers, Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I sold at Sotheby’s in London for just over $104.3 million, by a hair the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction. [ACN Ed.- Skate’s Art Market Research wrote on Feb. 5, 2010 that, while reserving judgment, the Giacometti may or may not have set a new record, depending on which bank’s rate of exchange is used for the conversion.]
“We were euphoric when the hammer came down,” Melanie Clore, co-chair of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern department, said Thursday.
With good reason. More than a year after the global financial meltdown sent values plummeting, art masterpieces are again the commodity of choice for the world’s superrich, and jaw-dropping prices are back.
At current exchange rates, the sale price for Walking Man – which includes buyer’s premium – beats the previous auctionrecord of $104.17 million paid in New York in 2004 for Pablo Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice).
At the same Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday, Gustav Klimt’s landscape Church in Cassone sold for $42.4 million, almost double the expected price. Just over half the lots went for more than their highest pre-sale estimate.
On Monday, rival auction house Christie’s made a solid $121 million at its impressionist and modern sale, with Picasso’s Tete de Femme (Jacqueline) selling for $12.7 million, double expectations.
Christie’s said the results signaled “a buoyant market,” with previously reluctant sellers bringing masterpieces out of the woodwork and wealthy collectors eager to snap them up.
It all looked very different a year ago, when the hedge fund managers and private equity millionaires who had fueled the boom were reeling from the near-collapse of the global banking system.
On Sept. 15, 2008, Sotheby’s started a two-day auction of works by Britart star Damien Hirst that would generate almost $200 million and come to be seen as the end of an era. The same day, Lehman Brothers bank collapsed and the global economy tipped into crisis. The major auctions of contemporary art later that year generated at least a third less money than predicted and many works went unsold. Auction houses slashed prices as collectors held back from putting works up for sale.
Recently, there have been signs of a turnaround. Last November in New York, Sotheby’s sold Andy Warhol’s silk-screen painting 200 One Dollar Bills for almost $44 million, quadruple the pre-sale estimate. Overall, prices there and at Christie’s were stronger than a year earlier.
“I think that confidence will return even more with these big prices,” said Georgina Adam, editor at large of The Art Newspaper.
Experts caution that this week’s results don’t signal a return to the boom of the last decade, when even mediocre works sold for millions.
“I think it would be premature, and possibly stupid, to think that the art market is just going to race along,” said Judd Tully, editor at large of Art and Auction magazine. “I think it does indicate that there are at least a handful of ultra-rich individuals who want these world-class trophies.”
Sotheby’s attributed Giacometti’s high price to its rarity – the 1961 work is the only cast of the walking man figure created during the Swiss artist’s lifetime that has ever come to auction.
Sotheby’s did not identify the nationality of the work’s buyer, an anonymous telephone bidder. Speculation centered on what Adam called “the usual suspects” – Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who spent $120 million on two paintings by Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud in 2008; an American art-lover such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; or a collector from a Gulf emirate such as Abu Dhabi, currently building branches of the Louvre and the Solomon R. Guggenheim museums.
The next test of the market will come next week, when the major London houses hold sales of contemporary art. Sotheby’s and Christie’s both predict they will make at least double last year’s tepid results.
Market-watchers are optimistic, but cautious.
“We had this extraordinary bubble in the art market, especially the contemporary art market, and I don’t think it has reinflated on the back of this one sale,” said Robert Read, head of art and private clients at insurer Hiscox.
“We have returned to normality, but we’d forgotten what normality was.”
___
On the Net:
Christie’s: www.christies.com
Sotheby’s: www.sothebys.com
AP-WS-02-04-10 1452EST
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Andy Warhol (American 1928-1987) Self-portrait photo screenprint, 1978. Warhol signed approximately 100 of the prints at the opening of the exhibition at the Kunsthall in Zurich. Most were used as advertising/ Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Creighton-Davis Gallery.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – Andy Warhol kept boxes upon boxes of soup cans, receipts, fan mail and many other items, including thousands of photos he later used as inspiration for his giant paintings.
Now more than 180 colleges and university museums, and galleries around the United States are benefiting. The New York City-based Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has donated to them more than 28,500 of Warhol’s photos, worth $28 million.
“This is a little-known body of Warhol’s work,” Jenny Moore, curator for the foundation’s “Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program” said. “I think most people are familiar with the paintings and even the sculptures and … we really wanted the chance to let a broader audience gain access to his photographic work, which is of course the basis of so much of his artistic production.”
Each of the public educational institutions has generally received about 100 Polaroid and 50 black-and-white photos from the 1970s and 1980s, Moore said. They have gifted a majority of the photos since they started the program in 2007 but are still giving out more, she said.
The photos include celebrity snapshots, couples, nudes, painting ideas, party photos, still lifes and outdoor scenes. He often used the photos as the inspiration for portraits, silkscreen paintings, drawings and prints.
Four colleges and universities in Wisconsin received photos, including the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Crossman Gallery. Gallery director Michael Flanagan said they received about 80 photos this month. He immediately put a few into their permanent collection exhibition, which ends Feb. 13. Warhol is by far the most recognizable name in their collection, he said.
“It’s nice for the students,” Flanagan said. “It’s a name that most of them recognize. Now they get to see the actual object.”
When Warhol died in 1987, he indicated he wanted the foundation to be dedicated to “the advancement of the visual arts,” Moore said.
“This is something he would have been very exited about,” Moore said. “For people to be able to see the kinds of things that interested him that made it into painting and prints.”
Moore said the foundation focused on institutions that could not acquire works on their own and those that could properly care for the photos. For those that already had Warhol in their collections, the foundation hoped to “enrich the breadth and depth of their holdings,” according to the foundation Web site.
“We’ve really tried to gift to kind of the smallest institutions all the way up to larger encyclopedic universities’ museums,” Moore said.
The museum at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson, New York, received 158 photos in early 2008 through the program. Marcia Acita, assistant director at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, said more than a dozen graduate students used one of Warhol’s Polaroids of Marieluise Hessel, who founded Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, for an exhibition last year.
Acita said they received nine Polaroids of Hessel. Warhol took them to help him come up with his acrylic on canvas silkscreen of Hessel in 1981, which the museum also owns.
Having such a famous artist’s work in hand enriches students’ experiences, she said.
Warhol published three books, one posthumously, featuring his black-and-white photos. There was Andy Warhol’s Exposures in 1979, America in 1985 and Andy Warhol’s Party Book in 1988. Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted 1503-1505 by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Oil on cottonwood, 30 1/4 inches by 20.87 inches. The painting is displayed in The Louvre, Paris.
ROME (AP) – The legend of Leonardo da Vinci is shrouded in mystery: How did he die? Are the remains buried in a French chateau really those of the Renaissance master? Was the Mona Lisa a self-portrait in disguise?
A group of Italian scientists believes the key to solving those puzzles lies with the remains – and they say they are seeking permission from French authorities to dig up the body to conduct carbon and DNA testing.
If the skull is intact, the scientists can go to the heart of a question that has fascinated scholars and the public for centuries: the identity of the Mona Lisa. Recreating a virtual and then physical reconstruction of Leonardo’s face, they can compare it with the smiling face in the painting, experts involved in the project told The Associated Press.
“We don’t know what we’ll find if the tomb is opened, we could even just find grains and dust,” says Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist who is participating in the project. “But if the remains are well kept, they are a biological archive that registers events in a person’s life, and sometimes in their death.”
The leader of the group, Silvano Vinceti, told the AP that he plans to press his case with the French officials in charge of the purported burial site at Amboise Castle early next week.
But the Italian enthusiasm may be premature.
In France, exhumation requires a long legal procedure, and precedent suggests it’s likely to take even longer when it involves a person of great note such as Leonardo.
Jean-Louis Sureau, director of the medieval-era castle located in France’s Loire Valley, said that once a formal request is made, a commission of experts would be set up. Any such request would then be discussed with the French Ministry of Culture, Sureau said.
Leonardo moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I, who named him “first painter to the king.” He spent the last three years of his life there, and died in Cloux, near the monarch’s summer retreat of Amboise, in 1519 at age 67.
The artist’s original burial place, the palace church of Saint Florentine, was destroyed during the French Revolution and remains that are believed to be his were eventually reburied in the Saint-Hubert Chapel near the castle.
The tombstone says simply, Leonardo da Vinci; a notice at the site informs visitors they are the presumed remains of the artist, as do guidebooks.
“The Amboise tomb is a symbolic tomb; it’s a big question mark,” said Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in his Tuscan hometown of Vinci.
Vezzosi, who is not involved in the project, said that investigating the tomb could help identify the artist’s bones with certainty and solve other questions, such as the cause of his death. He said he asked to open the tomb in 2004 to study the remains, but the Amboise Castle turned him down.
As for the latest Italian proposal, Vinceti says preliminary conversations took place several years ago and he plans to follow up with a request next week to set up a meeting to explain the project in detail. This would pave the way for a formal request, he said.
The group of 100 experts involved in the project, called the National Committee for Historical and Artistic Heritage, was created in 2003 with the aim of “solving the great enigmas of the past,” said Vinceti, who has written books on art and literature.
Arguably the world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris, where it drew some 8.5 million visitors last year. Mystery has surrounded the identity of the painting’s subject for centuries, with speculation ranging from the wife of a Florentine merchant to Leonardo’s own mother.
That Leonardo intended the Mona Lisa as a self-portrait in disguise is a possibility that has intrigued and divided scholars. Theories have abounded: Some think that Leonardo’s taste for pranks and riddles might have led him to conceal his own identity behind that baffling smile; others have speculated that, given Leonardo’s presumed homosexuality, the painting hid an androgynous lover.
Some have used digital analysis to superimpose Leonardo’s bearded self-portrait over the Mona Lisa to show how the facial features perfectly aligned.
If granted access to the gravesite, the Italian experts plan to use a miniature camera and ground-penetrating radar – which produces images of an underground space using radar waves – to confirm the presence of bones. The scientists would then exhume the remains and attempt to date the bones with carbon testing.
At the heart of the proposed study is the effort to ascertain whether the remains are actually Leonardo’s, including with DNA testing.
Vezzosi questions the feasibility of a DNA comparison, saying he is unaware of any direct descendants of Leonardo or of tombs that could be attributed with certainty to the artist’s close relatives.
Gruppioni said DNA extracted from the bones could also eventually be compared to DNA found elsewhere. For example, Leonardo is thought to have smudged colors on the canvas with his thumb, possibly using saliva, meaning DNA might be found on his paintings, though Gruppioni conceded this was a long shot.
Even in the absence of DNA testing, other tests could provide useful information, including whether the bones belonged to a man or woman, and whether the person died young or old.
“We can have various levels of probability in the attribution of the bones,” Gruppioni said. “To have a very high probability, DNA testing is necessary.”
The experts would also look for any pathology or other evidence of the cause of death. Tuberculosis or syphilis, for example, would leave significant traces in the bone structure, said Vinceti.
In the best-case scenario – that of a well-preserved skull – the group would take a CAT scan and reconstruct the face, said Francesco Mallegni, an anthropology professor who specializes in reconstructions and has recreated the faces of famous Italians, including Dante.
Even within the committee, experts are divided over the identity of the “Mona Lisa.”
Vinceti believes that a tradition of considering the self-portrait to be not just a faithful imitation of one’s features but a representation of one’s spiritual identity may have resonated with Leonardo.
Vezzosi, the museum director, dismissed as “baseless and senseless” the idea that the Mona Lisa could be a self-portrait of Leonardo.
The painting is “like a mirror: Everybody starts from his own hypothesis or obsession and tries to find it there,” Vezzosi said in a telephone interview.
He said most researchers believe the woman may have been either a concubine of the artist’s sponsor, the Florentine nobleman Giuliano de Medici, or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a rich silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. The traditional view is that the name Mona Lisa comes from the silk merchant’s wife, as well as its Italian name: La Gioconda.
___
Associated Press writers Deborah Seward in Paris and Ariel David in Rome contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) – Davenport’s old Carnegie library fell to the wrecking ball long ago, but a cherished piece of that building has returned home.
A 105-year-old frieze, cast from an original sculpture of cherubs by the Italian artist Donatello, has been cleaned up and reinstalled at the downtown Davenport Public Library’s special collections area.
The reproduction of Donatello’s “singing angels” was presented to the old library in 1905 by W.C. Putnam, a wealthy entrepreneur who was the godfather of the Putnam Museum. It was an expensive, imported piece for a wall of the children<s department in the library. But when the museum was razed in 1966, the plaster reproduction found a new home at the Blackhawk Hotel in downtown Davenport.
As restoration work began on the hotel this fall, developers Restoration St. Louis decided to donate the valuable piece of art back to the library.
“It takes us back to our roots as a Carnegie library,” said a grateful Amy Groskopf, the chief archivist for the library. “Since we don’t have our original building, it’s nice to have a significant piece of history we can put back in our facility to remind us of where we came from.”
Although it is a reproduction, it still is a legitimate and important work of art, said Nicole Grabow, a specialist with the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis who traveled twice to Davenport to assist in the moving and reinstallation project.
The plaster reproduction was made in 1904 by a company called P.P. Caproni and Brother of Boston. In the early part of the 20th century, such companies were granted access to world-class pieces of art and allowed to make direct castings, a practice that is impossible today, Grabow said.
The Donatello piece was created in 1439. Today, it is preserved at the Museo del’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
“The fact you can’t take those castings any more and the kind of workmanship that was required to do it in plaster makes it worthwhile,” Grabow said. “Part of the value is also in its history. It was given to the library by W.C. Putnam, who was a significant local historic figure. It’s become a part of the history of the library that’s pretty hard to put a price on.”
It also is one of the largest reproductions of its kind Grabow has ever seen. Companies like P.P. Caproni often made smaller sculpture reproductions for private collectors, but large pieces – in this case 24 feet long and 3 feet high – are rare.
“I’ve never come across one this large,” she said.
The cleanup and move was a delicate process, Grabow and Groskopf said.
It had to be moved in six sections, each about 4 feet wide and weighing about 100 pounds. After it was cleaned, it was reinstalled using the same mounting method used previously, consisting of 4-by-4 pieces of wood mounted to the wall and a metal shelf for support.
___
Information from: Quad-City Times, http://www.qctimes.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NEW YORK (AP) — An important Picasso painting accidentally damaged by a visitor last week will be repaired in time for a large exhibition of the artist’s works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in April, the museum said Monday.
The Actor, a painting from Picasso’s rose period, will be restored at the museum’s conservation laboratory, the Met said.
The accident has also led museum director Thomas P. Campbell to request a review of relevant policies and procedures, spokeswoman Elyse Topalian said.
The museum described the damage as an irregular 6-inch tear to the lower right-hand corner of the painting. Conservation and curatorial experts “fully expect” that the restoration “will be unobtrusive,” the museum said in a statement Sunday.
The artwork is nearly 6 feet by 4 feet and depicts a standing acrobat in a pink costume and blue knee-high boots striking a pose against an abstracted backdrop.
The restoration will be done in the coming weeks, and the piece will be displayed as planned in an exhibition of 250 Picasso works drawn from the museum’s collection, from April 27 to Aug. 1, the museum said.
The accident occurred in a second-floor gallery of early Picasso works when a patron participating in one of the museum’s art classes lost her balance and fell on the canvas, the museum said. She was one of 14 people in the guided group.
It happened during regular visiting hours when other visitors were in the gallery. People who attend the art classes typically roam through the museum in a group stopping in front of works of interest.
The Actor was donated to the Met in 1952 by art patron Thelma Chrysler Foy, the elder daughter of auto magnate Walter Chrysler. The museum said it had been included in many major exhibitions of Picasso’s works both in the United States and in Europe.
Picasso painted the work in the winter of 1904-05. It marked a transition from his blue period of tattered beggars and blind musicians to his more optimistic and brighter-colored rose period of itinerant acrobats in costume.
In 2001, another Picasso was accidentally damaged during a private showing of the artist’s “Le Reve.” The artwork’s owner, casino mogul Steve Wynn, was showing the work — a portrait of Picasso’s mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, to a group of friends in Las Vegas when he inadvertently poked a thumb-size hole in the canvas with his elbow.
The accident occurred just after Wynn had negotiated a deal to sell the painting for $139 million.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) – A couple who gave their money and names to Michigan State University’s planned art museum are kicking in an extra $2 million toward its growing cost.
Michigan State says Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad and his wife Edythe have raised their pledge to $28 million.
The school said Wednesday it has raised about $33 million for the museum but says the estimated cost has risen to $40 million to $45 million from the original $30 million.
University trustees voted in December to build the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. The school plans to break ground March 16 and open the museum in early 2012.
London-based architect Zaha Hadid won an international design competition for the museum in January 2008.
___
On the Net: http://www.broadmuseum.msu.edu
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Detail of The Battle of Gettysburg as seen on the Gettysburg Cyclorama. Image courtesy of The Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) – Water is dripping onto the massive Cyclorama painting at Gettysburg National Military Park’s new $103 million visitor center.
Spokeswoman Katie Lawhon says the problem is merely “condensation” that occurs at various times of the year, but minutes from a park staff meeting say the roof of the new visitor’s center is leaking.
An internal report says the Cyclorama might have to be shut down for two to three months to fix the leak, but Lawhon says she can’t say if or when the park plans to shut down the painting.
The 124-year-old painting is 377 feet long and 42 feet high and depicts various aspects of the battle in a panoramic setting. The painting was restored as part of a five-year, $16 million project completed in 2008.
___
Information from: Gettysburg Times,
http://www.gettysburgtimes.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-01-21-10 0725EST
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Overhead view of the Gettysburg Cyclorama in its entirety. Image courtesy of The Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation.
Marble vase designed circa 1914 by Paul Manship and weighing 14,000 pounds, to be transported to the Park Avenue Armory for the Winter Antiques Show. Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery. NEW YORK (AP) – A marble vase weighing 14,000 pounds will be carefully moved Saturday to a New York City armory for display at the upscale Winter Antiques Show.
A moving team will use a heavy duty rigging machine to carry the crated vase into the Park Avenue Armory. The massive 9-foot tall artwork title Urn will be gently lowered onto a bronze pivot attached to a marble base.
Alice Duncan, director of Manhattan’s Gerald Peters Gallery, says the vase by American sculptor Paul Manship, who also created Rockefeller Center’s famed Prometheus, has a $6 million price tag.
The pink Tennessee marble vase was commissioned in 1914 by Ohio industrialist William Mather for his estate outside of Cleveland.
The Winter Antiques Show runs from Jan. 22 through Jan. 31.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LONDON (AP) – Young, handsome, regal, yet casual and relaxed.
Sounds good. It is no surprise that Prince William and Prince Harry are very pleased with the first official oil portrait showing just the two of them.
The artist has helped nature a bit, replenishing Williams’ already thinning hair, but used a realistic depiction of Harry’s nose, which was broken in a high school rugby match.
The new painting of the youthful princes in full-dress military uniforms and assorted medals and sashes has been put on display at the National Portrait Gallery alongside other royal portraits, gallery spokesman Neil Evans said Thursday.
The gallery commissioned the historic work, painted by London-based artist Nicky Philipps, after a series of sittings at her studio in the South Kensington neighborhood.
“It will be on display for at least six months,” said Evans.
A spokeswoman for the princes said they viewed the work before Christmas and were delighted with the way they are portrayed.
The work shows the princes having a casual moment outside the library at Clarence House, Prince Charles’ official residence, before reviewing the annual Trooping the Color festivities in 2008.
They are both depicted wearing the dress uniform of the Household Cavalry that they wore that day.
Philipps said she chose the moment to capture “a behind-the-scenes glance at the human element of royal responsibility and to emphasize their brotherly relationship.”
She said the princes – the sons of the late Princess Diana – were “very good company” during the repeated sittings.
Philipps also said she was pleased with the profile of Harry and the depiction of his nose, which was broken during a rugby match when he was being schooled in Eton.
Palace officials confirmed that Harry suffered the injury, which was never made public, when he was about 15.
In the portrait, William – second in line to the British throne – is wearing the sash and star of the Order of the Garter and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee medal. Harry, third in line, wears the queen’s medal and the medal he received for serving in Afghanistan.
The portrait has, predictably, divided London’s vociferous art critics, as was the case in 2001 when acclaimed artist Lucien Freud painted an extremely unorthodox portrait of the princes’ grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. But, Neil Evans told Auction Central News, the portait of the young princes is “already proving a big hit with visitors.”
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
