Author: Darko Topalski

Seattle, WA– This Valentines weekend marks the 9th anniversary of
the Seattle Print Fair. This special annual event brings together
some of the best original print dealers in the U.S. and Canada. The Fair is open
to the public Saturday & Sunday, February 13th & 14th, and without
admission charge. This year the special Friday evening preview is being
sponsored by the Lenny Wilkens Foundation to benefit the Odessa Brown Children’s
Clinic.

Los Angeles – This winter the Hammer Museum presents a
retrospective of drawings by
Rachel Whiteread , the first large-scale museum survey of work on
paper by the British
artist. Organized by
Allegra
Pesenti, curator of the
Grunwald Center for the Graphic
Arts, this exhibition includes key examples of the
artist’s sculpture displayed alongside
her drawings. The exhibition features 155
drawings, 8 sculptures, and a vitrine filled
with roughly 200 objects selected by Whiteread. Although her
sculpture is well-known
and widely published, Whiteread’s work on paper has remained
largely behind the
scenes until now. On view January 31 through 25 April,
2010.

LONDON.- In April 2010 Haunch of Venison London
will present Forever Foreign – the first UK solo show of Bengali-American artist
Rina Banerjee, introducing the New York-based artist’s complex, seductive,
corporeal oeuvre. Banerjee’s drawings, sculptures and assemblage depict
mythical, visionary worlds, reflecting the artist’s Western and Indian
backgrounds with intense colours and hybrid flora and fauna. The fantastical
floating world Banerjee creates is reminiscent of Indian miniature
paintings. 

NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s International, the
world’s leading art business, today announced that 2009 sales totaled £2.1
billion/$3.3 billion, a 24% decrease in £ (35% decrease in $) over 2008
sales. Sales totals include private sales of £265.7 million/$417.2
million, a decrease of 1% by £ on 2008 figures, and reflect those brokered by
Christie’s as well as sales conducted by Christie’s wholly-owned subsidiary,
Haunch of Venison. In 2009, Christie’s achieved 56.4% global auction sales
market share against its main competitor and sold 61% of the works sold over $10
million and 60% of the lots sold over $5 million. Christie’s sold 4 of
the top 5 and 7 of the top 10 works of art sold during the year.

MADRID.- Fundación Telefónica presents the
personal project of one of the greatest creators of the XX century, made of more
than 300 painted pictures coming from his personal albums. The show
includes images from private collections and from the artist himself on which
Richter has worked since 1989 until the present. Gerhard Richter is considered
one of the most influential artists of our time without ever having limited
himself to one single style. His varied production includes sculptures and
paintings that range from landscapes to colourist abstractions and monochromatic
greys. Dragging the photos over wet paint, Richter creates new
images.

BUDAPEST.- In its exhibition the Budapest Museum
of Fine Arts will display selected masterpieces from the uniquely wealthy
collection of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The fifty-five works in the
exhibition provide an overview of French painting from the middle of the
nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. The show runs until the
middle of April and will greet visitors with prominent works of Impressionism,
Symbolism from the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the first
avant-garde movements bearing the stamp of the Fauves and the Cubists. The
period is conjured up through masterpieces by Courbet, Corot, Degas, Manet,
Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Lorrain, Cézanne, Matisse
and Picasso and others.

LOS ANGELES, CA  – James Cameron’s
science-fiction epic “Avatar”has passed his“Titanic”to become history’s highest-grossing
film, with a sizable boost from higher-priced tickets for 3-D and Imax
showings. Through Monday its ticket sales around the world
reached $1.86 billion, edging past the $1.84 billion in sales posted by
“Titanic,” which came out in December 1997, according to figures
released Tuesday by 20th Century Fox. Fox released “Avatar” around the world; it
split the distribution of “Titanic” with Paramount Pictures.