Tag: Arts and Culture

MIAMI,
FL.- The eighth edition of Art Basel Miami Beach closed on Sunday,
December 6, 2009. More than 250 galleries from North America, Europe, Latin
America, Asia and Africa exhibited works by over 2,000 artists.
With a program of special exhibitions, panel discussions, private
collection tours, and events featuring film, performance, and video, the show
attracted 42,000 visitors. Visitors included art collectors, museum
directors, curators and cultural journalists from all over the United States and
the rest of the world. A great number of artists also attended the event, among
them Chuck Close, Ingar Dragset, Claire Fontaine, Matthew Day Jackson, Kris
Martin, Marilyn Minter, James Rosenquist, Fred Tomaselli, Ai Weiwei, Pae White,
and Kehinde Wiley. Over 100 museum and institution groups also visited
the show, as did private collectors from the Americas, Europe and many emerging
markets of the artworld.

PORTLAND, ME.- As an abstract painter, Maine
artist Frederick Lynch (born 1935) uses a system of repeated geometries and
mathematical divisions to create his art. “Division and Discovery: Recent Work
by Frederick Lynch”, on view February 27 through May 16, 2010, will
feature 30 works in a range of media including paintings, works on paper, wooden
sculptures, and painted reliefs. Fred Lynch has lived in Maine for more than 35
years. He served as a faculty member of the Art Department at the University of
Southern Maine from 1981 to 2006, and has exhibited widely throughout New
England and beyond.

CHAMPAIGN, IL.- Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead
Pavilion will present Stranger in Paradise: The Works of Reverend Howard
Finster. A self-proclaimed “Man of Visions,” Finster was one of America’s most
widely known and prolific self-taught artists, producing over
46,000 pieces of art before his death in 2001. Born in rural Alabama in
1916, Finster went on to become a preacher, tent revivalist, and “master of 22
different trades” before building his roadside tribute to inventors, the Plant
Farm Museum. Later dubbed “Paradise Garden” by Esquire magazine, this rock- and
junk-encrusted wonderland was the focus of Finster’s life work. On view
29 January through 28 March, 2010.

ZURICH.- Monday’s « Swiss Art » Auction at
Sotheby’s Zurich realised CHF 5,862,875 (€ 3,878,878). The sale was 65% sold by
lot and 83.2% by value. In addition to landscapes and portraits by Hodler from
the private collection of his model Jeanne Charles, works by Ernest Biéler, Max
Buri as well as Giovanni and Augusto Giacometti also sold well under
the hammer of Dr. Claudia Steinfels, Director of Sotheby’s Zurich. Sotheby’s
Zurich holds « Swiss Art » auctions twice a year. The next one will take place
in Spring 2010.

HOUSTON, TX.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
will feature more than 80 paintings, watercolors, and drawings of seascapes and
coastal scenes from the early career of the pre-eminent late-19th-century
American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent (1856—1925), from February 14 to
May 23, 2010. Following a presentation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C., this fall, Houston´s showing is the final stop in the
United States before the exhibition travels to London´s Royal Academy. Dr. Emily
Ballew Neff, MFAH curator of American Painting and Sculpture, organizes the
Houston showing, which is complemented by Houston´s Sargents: a show of some 30
Sargent works from private Houston collections.

NEW YORK, NY.- McCaffrey Fine Art is showing at their
new gallery at 23 East 67th Street the first ever solo exhibition of Kazuo
Shiraga in the United States.He succeeded in creating paintings
of great innovation with his unique style that involved sliding, spinning,
and swirling his feet in mounds of oil paint on large sheets of paper laid
on the floor. By the time of his 1957 “performance painting” on stage,
Sanbaso–-Super Modern, Shiraga was amongst the most avant-garde artists
working anywhere and his work was drawing international attention. 
Kazuo Shiraga: Six Decades which continues through January 23,
2010.

PARIS.- After a
hugely popular four-day viewing in Paris – attended by 1300 people –
today’s sale of exceptional works of art from Africa and Oceania attracted
a packed Sotheby’s saleroom throughout, with ferocious
competition between telephone bidders and collectors in the saleroom.
The sale total of over €5 million ($7.9 million) represented a
selling-rate of 83% by value. Most of the top prices were paid by
private collectors and connoisseurs, predominantly European or American,
all seeking exceptional items in a variety of specialized fields.

LONDON.- Digitally growing plants and a mechanical
eye that mirrors the blink of a visitor’s gaze will be among the digital works
that will feature in Decode: Digital Design Sensations. The
exhibition will show the latest developments in digital and interactive design,
from small screen based graphics to large-scale installations. Curated
in collaboration with leading digital arts organisation onedotzero, there will
be works by established international artists and designers including Daniel
Brown, Golan Levin and Daniel Rozin as well as emerging designers such as Troika
and Simon Heijdens. On display at the Victoria & Albert Museum
from 8 December to 11 April 2010.