Salvador Dali painted the ballet curtain for the 1943 production of ‘Labyrinth.’ Philippe Halsmann photographed Dali in 1959. Image courtesy of Galerie Bassenge and LiveAuctioneers archive.PITTSBURGH (AP) – Officials at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh want to display a ballet curtain designed by Salvador Dali that has been in storage since it was donated to the museum 33 years ago.
The curtain is more than 26 feet high and more than 49 feet wide. It depicts a struggle between the mythological characters the Minotaur and Theseus. Dali painted it for the 1942 production of Labyrinth, based on the myth of Theseus, that was performed at the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
The black oil painting is on beige canvas. Museum officials unfurled it for the first time since it was donated in 1976 on Monday, so it could be photographed. Museum officials want to evaluate the curtain’s condition and figure out where and how to display it.
DETROIT (AP) – Hundreds of miles separate New York and Detroit, and in one unique case: decades.
A painting created by American artist John Sloan 75 years ago and missing for 65 of them now hangs on a wall inside the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Sloan painted Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue in 1934 for the Public Works of Art Project, which was created to employ artists during the Great Depression.
Four years later, it vanished.
Here is the story of how a well-regarded piece of art went missing and was found, according to the DIA.
Works created by artists on salary with the Public Works project were property of the federal government and meant to be displayed in public buildings.
Sloan created two paintings during his time with the project. One was “The Wigwam, Old Tammany Hall,” which also is from 1934. That piece is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The other, Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue, hung in the office of U.S. Sen. Royal Copeland until the New York Democrat’s death in 1938. When Democratic Sen. James Byrnes of South Carolina took over Copeland’s office, the painting no longer was there.
In the early 1980s, congressional staffer Charles Terrill found the unframed painting in a pile of trash. Terrill was taken with it, but didn’t know of its importance.
He took it home and hung it on a wall. And there it stayed until Terrill’s death in 1987.
The painting then was given to his sister, who lives in Traverse City.
It wasn’t until another of Terrill’s relatives, a nephew, upon a visit to the DIA in the late 1990s, saw paintings by Sloan and made the connection that his uncle might have saved a special work of art.
The sister had the painting appraised a few years later and only then learned of its value.
The U.S. General Services Administration recovered the painting in 2003 and agreed to a long-term loan of the work to a museum designated by Terrill’s sister.
Cathie Terrill chose the DIA, which is showing it outside the exhibition titled “Government Support for the Arts: WPA Prints from the 1930s.” It runs through March 21.
“We are delighted to have this wonderful Sloan painting at the DIA,” museum director Graham W.J. Beal said in a statement. “The timing is especially fortunate in that it complements our current exhibition of WPA prints.”
Copyrighted logo of Alitalia airline used under fair-use rationale, as a logo is a unique entity. Low-resolution logo obtained through Wikipedia complies with Wikipedia content policy, logo guidelines, and fair use under United States copyright law. This is a logo of an organization that is otherwise protected by copyright and is possibly a trademark.
ROME (AP) – Nearly 200 paintings and drawings by contemporary Italian artists have been auctioned off to help pay creditors of troubled Alitalia airline.
The Finarte auction house said Thursday the sale fetched euro1.2 million ($1.77 million).
The artwork was among Alitalia assets taken over by a bankruptcy administrator, who has been selling them off to pay off some of the airline’s debts. A smaller version of the money-losing carrier launched last January after a group of Italian investors merged it with smaller airline Air One.
Georgia Bava of Finarte said the pieces had originally been displayed on Alitalia’s fleet. Recently, they were in storage.
An abstract painting by Lucio Fontana fetched the highest price, euro48,000 ($70,754).
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LONDON (AP) – A Scotland-based painter known for destroying his large-scale wall murals after they have been exhibited won Britain’s best-known art award, the Turner Prize, on Monday.
Richard Wright said he was surprised he beat three other finalists to win the annual 25,000 pound ($40,000) prize, which was announced at London’s Tate Britain gallery. The award was presented by British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
“I’m shocked – is there another kind of reaction?” the artist said. “I wasn’t expecting it, not at all.”
Wright is known for painting intricate, large-scale patterns on walls or ceilings, as well as for his insistence that his work be destroyed after the exhibitions end. He said he gave up painting on canvas because those paintings were “rubbish” and didn’t represent who he was.
Judges said they admired the “profound originality and beauty” of Wright’s work, saying his paintings were rooted in the fine art tradition yet “radically conceptual in impact.”
“Wright uses elaborate and labour-intensive methods to create transient works that respond directly to the architecture and context of a space,” they said in a statement released by Tate Britain. “His works come alive as they are experienced by the viewer.”
It was 49-year-old Wright’s last chance to win the Turner, awarded annually to a British artist under 50. The prize, which always inspires fierce public debate about the nature of art, is named after 19th-century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and was established in 1984.
Wright said he sometimes felt a sense of loss at the destruction of his work.
“It is sad but it’s also a relief,” he said. “Other people make things that don’t survive. If you are a dustman or a reporter you do something that is consumed and passes.”
Wright beat bookie favorite Roger Hiorns, 34, who transformed a derelict London flat with thousands of liters (gallons) of crystal copper sulfate. The work, Seizure, drew thousands of art fans to a run-down housing estate in south London earlier this year.
The shortlist also includes London-based Enrico David, 43, an Italian-born artist who creates installations, sculptures and drawings inspired by everything from traditional crafts to 20th-century surrealism, and Lucy Skaer, 34, who works in London and Glasgow and creates drawings, sculptures and films.
Past winners include “Brit Art” upstarts such as transvestite potter Grayson Perry and shark pickler Damien Hirst.
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Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui contributed to this report.
On the Net: www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize
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SYDNEY (AP) – Australia was accused of censorship Tuesday after it denied visas to North Korean artists invited to a rare international exhibition of their work, saying their studio is a propaganda tool of their country’s communist government.
The co-curator of the exhibition said the works were nonpolitical, and that letting them be displayed while banning their creators from entering the country so they could talk about them did not make sense.
Five artists from the Mansudae Art Studio were invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in the eastern city of Brisbane to talk about their paintings and drawings that are part of the exhibition, which includes work from more than 100 artists from 25 countries in the region.
North Korea remains one of the most isolated countries in the world, with the average citizen prohibited from accessing the Internet as well as outside phone networks, radio and TV.
In recent years, cultural and sporting events have provided the best opportunity for “soft diplomacy.” The New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang in 2008, while North Korean athletes, from gymnasts to football players, have served as international ambassadors.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith rejected the artists’ applications for an exception to the government’s visa ban on North Korea, part of targeted sanctions in response to the country’s efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Smith’s department said in a statement that issuing visas for Mansudae studio artists would have sent the wrong message.
“The studio reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda aimed at glorifying and supporting the North Korean regime,” the statement said.
Some of Mansudae’s approximately 1,000 artists devote their time completely to painting portraits of Kim Il Sung, the late founder of the Stalinist state who handed power to his son and who is the subject of a government-fueled personality cult.
Nick Bonner, a Beijing-based British businessman and art dealer who helped curate the exhibition, said all art studios in North Korea – like most other things in the hardline state – were government organizations, but that did not mean every work was political.
One large mosaic depicting a scene in a steel mill is from the socialist realism that is often associated with the country, Bonner said. The rest, including portraits and landscapes in ink or oil paint, were the artists’ individual works.
“There’s no way on earth that any of the pieces we commissioned for the inks and oils can in any way resemble propaganda,” Bonner told The Associated Press. “It’s fine art we are talking about.”
The artists were extremely disappointed in Australia’s decision, after spending weeks getting North Korean authorities to approve passports, Bonner said.
“For an artist to produce a body of work and not be able to speak about it, that is censorship,” Bonner said.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies in Seoul, said the visit to Australia by the artists could have formed part of international efforts to draw out North Korea, and Canberra should not have banned it.
“I think Australia took that step because it was concerned the exhibition may turn into a site for their political propaganda,” Yang said. “But it’s too passive an approach on North Korea.”
Australia, one of the United States’ closest allies in the Asia-Pacific region, has diplomatic ties with North Korea, but they are prickly. Canberra froze relations in 2002 and imposed limited sanctions and the visa ban in 2006 in response to the North’s attempts to go nuclear. North Korea closed its embassy in Canberra last year, citing financial reasons.
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Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
AP-CS-12-08-09 0449EST
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MIAMI BEACH, Florida (AP) – The collectors are back.
That’s what Art Basel Miami Beach organizers and galleries are expecting. They say recent auctions and art fairs have indicated that collectors are again acquiring high art and that they are not afraid to reach into their pockets and spend money this year during the fair, which opens Thursday and ends Sunday.
“It was quite clear that the American collectors were back and participating,” Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, said. “So, there seems to be a lot of optimism.”
Dealers agree.
“I think they are buying again,” said Steven Henry, director of the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. “I wouldn’t say the market has rebounded in full. … I think what you are seeing is slightly more confidence in the economy.”
Henry will be bringing about 30 works from about 16 artists, including Sherrie Levine’s bronze Coat.
Jane Cohan of the James Cohan Gallery in New York says her expectations are very high since gallery sales are back up to prerecession levels.
“It’s been really growing over the course of the fall. The last three or four weeks have been really good,” she said. “I think the auction market really gave a lot of buoyancy to the market and has built consumer confidence. I think people are back at feeling OK at spending on art.”
In mid-November, Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills brought in $43.8 million at auction at Sotheby’s, more than three times its highest presale estimate of $12 million. Meanwhile, at Christie’s, sales of postwar and contemporary art totaled $74.1 million, within its estimate of $66.9 million to $94 million. At the Frieze Art Fair in London in October, organizers said there were reports of “significant sales from new and established galleries exhibiting at the 2009 fair.”
Marc Spiegler, co-director Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, says it is always hard to predict sales. But indications are “pretty optimistic.”
“People were predicting that dozens if not hundreds of galleries would close and that hasn’t happened,” he said.
Museum curators are expected to come.
“The number of museum groups from all over the United States and the rest of the world is on par with last year and previous years,” he said. “When you have good art that’s available, there’s a market for it. … The art market is still part of the general economy and those people feel confident about their economic situation and those who want to buy art will buy art.”
Spiegler said this year’s fair is more streamlined, something that has been in the works for years, and not a repercussion of the recession. The younger galleries, which in the past have been placed in containers in a different section of Miami Beach, will now be in the main convention center with the older galleries to allow access to top collectors and curators.
Clearwater said the North Miami museum has bought at almost every Art Basel Miami Beach.
“We are looking for works that would be related to works already in the collection,” she said. “With the economy … the dust has kind of settled. I believe the general feeling is that we have passed the worst … feeling more confident about making these kinds of purchases.”
Isabella Maidment, gallery assistant at Pilar Corrias Gallery in London, said this is the gallery’s first time at the fair. It opened the same week the economy hit rock bottom.
“For us, it’s not a problem. … We think the strength of the artist’s work will hold out ultimately,” she said. “We’re hoping for a very positive response.”
They will be showing a solo presentation by Ulla von Brandenburg, which will include two handmade quilts.
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On the Net:
http://www.artbaselmiamibeach.com/
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This masterpiece by Titian (Italian, probably b.1488/1490, d. circa 1576), an oil painting titled Assunta, is a dynamic three-tier composition whose color scheme established the artist as the preeminent painter north of Rome. It took Titian two years to complete the painting, which is held at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari Church in Venice. Source: The Yorck Project.
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – The director of a Ukrainian museum claimed Tuesday that a portrait of a Venetian Doge in its collection is a work of Titian, even as an expert warned that it is art historians who are best placed to make that call.
Vladimir Ostrovsky said State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg conducted an analysis of chemical samples and X-rays analysis of the painting, proving Titian’s authorship.
The portrait is part of a collection of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in the Black Sea port of Odessa headed by Ostrovsky, where in July 2008 Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, also known as Judas’ Kiss, was cut from its frame and stolen. That painting is still missing.
“Now we are nearly 100 percent certain that God has compensated us for the terrible loss that we suffered last year,” Ostrovsky said in a telephone interview.
But Sergei Androsov of the State Hermitage’s department of western European art said that only art historians can determine whether the painting is Titian’s.
“The analysis shows that the canvas matches Titian’s historical period, that the paint used matches his paint, that certain technical attributes match up,” Androsov told The Associated Press. “But based on that it is impossible to judge whether the painting is a Titian. That is the work of art historians, not technical experts.”
Alexander Kosolapov, head of the Department for Scientific and Technical Examination at the State Hermitage, said the painting was given to the Odessa museum from the State Hermitage about 25 years ago.
“We know it is a 16th-century Venetian painting, most likely either by Titian or Tintoretto,” Kosolapov told the AP. “But right now it is not fully clear.”
Ostrovsky said they have invited art scholars from Moscow to further analyze the work. He did not allow the painting to be photographed in Odessa.
After the theft of the Caravaggio the museum is taking extra security precautions with the painting, but will still send it for exhibition abroad if its authenticity is confirmed, Ostrovsky said.
“Some people told us not to do anything with the Titian. But as they say, you can never stroll in the forest if you’re always afraid of wolves,” he said.
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The roof of Temple Beth Sholom at sunset. Photograph by Brian Dunaway, Creative Commons License. May not be reproduced or exported.
ELKINS PARK, Pa. (AP) – Did you hear the one about the rabbi and the architect?
Few people have. Which is why the members of Beth Sholom – who worship in the only synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright – are stepping forward to tell the story of how their landmark spiritual home was built.
Described as a symbolic Mount Sinai made of concrete, steel and glass, the iconic building somehow never received the attention of more famous Wright designs like Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum. But new public visiting hours might change that.
“It should be better known,” said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine. “The space itself is just magnificent. It’s exhilarating. Everything just soars.”
The synagogue marks its 50th anniversary this year by establishing a visitors center that will be open three days a week. Previously, appointments were required to see Beth Sholom, although walk-ins sometimes got impromptu tours if a guide happened to be in the building.
From the outside, the pyramid-like roof rises more than 100 feet above the sanctuary. The “shingles” are really panels of corrugated wireglass and fiberglass that filter natural light into the building during the day; at night, the illuminated structure is an ethereal, almost otherworldly sight for motorists driving by.
The six-sided sanctuary represents the cupped hands of God. A multicolored Plexiglas chandelier – Wright called it a “light basket” – is suspended above the nearly 1,100 seats, most of them original. Wright also designed the eternal light over the ark, where the Torah scrolls are kept.
“The Synagogue lives and breathes; it moves with quiet grace and charm; its lights and shadows continually change with the coming of the sun and the passing of a cloud,” wrote Mortimer J. Cohen, the rabbi who commissioned the building. “Under the moon it is a silver tower. Sun-touched, it is a golden beacon of brilliant light.”
Cohen sought out Wright in 1953 as members of his North Philadelphia congregation increasingly joined the white exodus from the city and began settling around the leafy suburb of Elkins Park.
The unique synagogue design emerged from a combination of Cohen’s sketches and a long-shelved Wright design for a “steel cathedral.” But construction and financial problems – mostly stemming from the unorthodox design – plagued the project, at times driving Cohen to despair. It was finally finished in 1959, just a few months after Wright’s death at age 91. Cohen died in 1972.
The Conservative congregation never sought to promote the building, perhaps because it is an active house of worship and not a museum, said past president Herbert Sachs. But a few years ago, as the synagogue sought National Historic Landmark status, Sachs began to grasp the growing need for regular upkeep and realized the congregation might one day need public help.
Sachs, now president of the synagogue’s Preservation Foundation, said while members have done “an outstanding job” of conserving the facility, “it would be a shame for the future of the building to be relying on what the congregation could provide.”
Preservation director Emily Cooperman described the sanctuary as structurally similar to “an oversize greenhouse” that is expensive to heat and cool. Any major repairs to the irregularly shaped roof would cost a fortune in scaffolding alone, she said.
And repairs are needed. On a drizzly gray day just before the visitors center dedication, a blue plastic kiddie pool sat in the middle of a sanctuary aisle.
“It leaks,” Cooperman said, looking toward the roof. “They came back and retrofitted, but it’s never been perfect.”
That has been a criticism of other Wright buildings, in part because his designs were ahead of their time, Goldberger said.
“He tended to push the envelope of engineering,” said Goldberger. “Builders had trouble keeping up with him.”
The synagogue began work on the visitors center around the time it earned landmark designation in 2007. The center is a converted multipurpose room that was part of Wright’s original design.
The exhibits feature excerpts of years-long correspondence between the rabbi and the architect, timelines, sketches, touch-screen displays, oral histories of current synagogue members and a documentary. A gift shop offers souvenirs.
Cooperman expects tourism to increase with the new public hours; in recent years, about 5,000 tourists visited annually, most on bus tours, she said.
“That congregation is the custodian of one of the great treasures of American architecture,” Goldberger said, “and it’s great that they want to share it with more people.”
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If You Go…
BETH SHOLOM SYNAGOGUE: 8231 Old York Road, Elkins Park, Pa., just outside Philadelphia.
VISITORS CENTER: Open Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by appointment. Groups of 10 or more by appointment only. Tours are free to Beth Sholom Synagogue Preservation Foundation members. For nonmembers, admission is $10 for adults, $8 for students, seniors and individuals on group tours of 10 or more. Children under 10 get in free.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.bethsholompreservation.org or 215-887-1342 ext. 106.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Exterior of Temple Beth Sholom. Creative Commons License. May not be reproduced or exported.
Farm in the Landes (House of the Garde), painted between 1844 and 1867, by Pierre Étienne Théodore Rousseau. Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 39 in. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. (AP) – The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has acquired a landscape by a 19th century artist Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau, one of the prime examples of the Barbizon School of painting.
The artwork, Farm in the Landes, has until now has been held in private collections and has not been widely exhibited since 1946.
Senior curator Richard Rand says the work shows Rousseau’s “abiding love for rural life and unadorned nature.”
The 25-inch by 39-inch painting, started in 1844 and completed almost 25 years later, depicts a farm in southwestern France. The scene shows a dusty path leading between tall oaks to a farmhouse where a man repairs a wagon wheel, one woman feeds cows and another hangs washing.
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On the Web: The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, http://www.clarkart.edu
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BERLIN – A German auction house says it has withdrawn from sale a painting that the Max Stern estate claims was one of hundreds the Jewish art dealer was forced to sell off by the Nazis.
Karl-Sax Feddersen, responsible for legal affairs at the Duesseldorf-based Lempertz auction house, said the picture by Alexander Adriaenssen had been pulled from Saturday’s sale and its owner notified.
He said the painting is valued at $6,000 to $7,500.
Feddersen said the painting’s owner must decide how to go forward with restitution talks, but the auction house is “ready to facilitate negotiations.”
The estate claims it is one of some 400 works from Stern’s collection sold under duress between 1935 and 1937. It is working to recover all of them.
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