Tag: News

LONDON.- Now in its fourth year, the Catlin Art Prize has established itself as the annual showcase for graduates one year on from their degree exhibitions. The prize is recognised amongst collectors and artists alike as being one of the most exciting for British early-career artists. It is unique in the breadth of its scope and in providing the artists with the time and opportunity to develop their practice, encouraging them to demonstrate their progress by producing a new body of work. Curator, gallerist and art writer, Justin Hammond’s search for the most promising artists of tomorrow takes him the length and breadth of the UK, to graduate BA and MA shows. For the first time the forty exceptional talents uncovered through this wide ranging process have been documented in The Catlin Guide. The only guide to emerging art in the UK, this highly sought after limited edition book introduces the work and upcoming exhibitions

MEXICO CITY (EFE).- A 1000-year-old stele with the sculpted image of a Mayan ruler was found in the archaeological area of Lagartero in the southern Mexican state of Chaipas, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. In the bas-relief sculpture the Mayan ruler rises above an individual who lies at his feet, “a scene representing the seizing of power by one Maya group from another,” INAH said, adding that the archaeological area of Lagartero will be open to the public this year. INAH experts found the stone monument in late 2009 at the 10th section of Pyramid 4 in Lagartero, the source said. Archaeologist Sonia Rivero Torres, who heads the Lagartero archaeological project, said that the stele or commemorative monument – the first to be found complete on the site – measures 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) long, 55 centimeters (22 inches) wide and 6 centimeters (2 1/3 inches) thick. The stele was sculpted in metamorphic rock, known locally as “heart of stone.” “In the p

KODIAK, AL (AP).- A World War II relic that was displayed outside an Alaska bar for years turned out not to be a dud. Soldiers on Wednesday detonated the 1,263-pound aerial bomb. Radio station KMXT reports it lost some of its boom after 60 years, but it did go with a bang. The ordnance was recently donated to the Kodiak Military History Museum by a local resident, but the museum director determined it was more than just an interesting artifact. Soldiers from the Fort Richardson Explosive Ordnance detail inspected the bomb and determined it still had Dunnite, a highly explosive material also known as “Explosive D.” They recorded the detonation and salvaged a piece of the “Da Bomb,” as it was known, for display at the museum.

TEL AVIV.- An original sketch by Kees Van Dongen of the pianist Felicja Blumental was discovered in the Felicja Blumental Music Center in Tel Aviv amongst the late pianist’s memorabilia. While at a Beethoven festival featuring a solo performance of Felicja Blumental with the Pasdeloup Orchestra conducted by Heinreich Hollreiser at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris on the 27th of September 1959, Van Dongen, a close friend of the artist, sketched her portrait on the concert poster and presented it to her. The Music Center was founded in 1951 by the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education by well-known Israeli musicians and musicologists. In 1996, the Municipality named the Center after Felicja Blumental. Felicja Blumental (1908-1991) was a star pupil of Karol Szymanowski, and many works

NEW YORK, NY.- Gary Snyder/Project Space is showing a one-person exhibition of drip paintings and works on paper by Janet Sobel (1894 – 1968). She is best known as the self-taught artist whose drip paintings of the early 1940s influenced Jackson Pollock. Her work has been acclaimed both in the “high” art world of Abstract Expressionism and in the “Outsider” or “Folk Art” world of self-taught artists. Sobel was born in 1894 in the Ukraine, emigrated to New York in 1908, and married and raised a family of five children before becoming “one of America’s most talked about surrealist painters…” Completely untrained, Sobel first painted in 1937 at the age

LOS ANGELES, CA (REUTERS).- Oscar winning film director Steven Spielberg is to make a TV documentary on the rebuilding of New York’s World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11 2001 attacks. The Science Channel said on Thursday that Spielberg would executive produce the six-part documentary series “Rebuilding Ground Zero”, due to be shown in 2011. The series will chronicle not just the engineering and building of the new 1,776-foot (541-meter) high skyscraper, but will seek to honor those who lost their lives in the September 11 airplane attack. It will also examine the effect

NEW YORK, NY.- Stephen Haller Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by American artist Lloyd Martin. The exhibition, entitled “Shift”, opens January 14th and runs through February 20th. In this new body of work Martin continues his exploration of the transformative nature of time and use; the decay as well as revitalization of the urban landscape around his studio, which provides the primary inspiration for his rhythmically constructed abstract paintings. Critic Jonathon Goodman writes: “Martin takes on the vigor and grit of modern city life…the surface is gridlike but roughed up, as if the toughness of urban existence had made its way into the painting.”

LONDON.- The Royal Academy of Arts announced that Cornelia Parker was elected a Royal Academician in the category of Sculpture at the General Assembly held in December 2009 and that Julian Schnabel was elected Honorary Royal Academician. Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire in 1956 and studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1974-75) as well as Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975-78). She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000. She is perhaps best known for a number of large-scale installations including Cold

KANSAS CITY, MO.- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art today announced a promised gift of seven extraordinary works of African art from the private collection of longtime Museum patrons Adele and Donald Hall, in honor of the Museum’s 75th Anniversary. The gifts, each a superb example of African art, will greatly elevate and broaden the Museum’s range of holdings in this area. Among the gifts are an intricately carved ivory Salt Cellar from the late 15th to early 16th century and an outstanding example of a wooden carving by the Luba artist known as the “Master of the Cascade Coiffure.” The seven works will be on view in the exhibition Magnificent Gifts for the 75th

NEW YORK, NY.- In Anne Lindberg’s large-scale works, the artist creates meticulous, abstract drawings as rendered in discrete graphite lines on cotton board. The line’s pitch and modulation plays with one’s field of vision, creating a dynamic flux and a rich array of perceptions. This optical illusion of movement, albeit subtle, results from Lindberg’s variance in line density, alignment and mis-alignment, physical pressure and the drawings’ sheer scale. As one views the work, there is a reverberation, a sense of kineticism, of vertigo and of suspended time and motion. The systematic nature of the work also brings to bare reference to seismographic charts, waveforms, medical imaging and