Franklin Williams, Twins (Part 1 & 2), 1972. Image courtesy of Parker Gallery, Los Angeles.
PROVIDENCE, RI.-The David Winton Bell Gallery (The Bell) at Brown University announces the exhibition Franklin Williams: It’s About Love on view through December 8, 2024. Marking the first east coast institutional retrospective of octogenarian artist Franklin Williams (b.1940), It’s All About Love offers fresh insights into Williams’ vibrant, textured multimedia oeuvre created through a rigorous studio practice spanning sixty years. It’s About Love showcases 40 artworks, ranging from sculptures to complex multimedia canvases and works on paper, each bursting with color, texture, and organic forms. Often considered a precursor and contemporary of the Pattern and Decoration Movement of the 1970s as well as several other West Coast schools including California Funk and Nut Art, Williams’ work defies easy categorization. Painting and drawing incorporating the needlework, cr ... More
The sale includes several collections of some of the biggest names in British art, including Dod Procter, Louis Wain, Dame Laura Knight, Dame Elizabeth Frink, Duncan Grant, Julian Trevelyan, Mary Fedden and Ken Howard.
WISBOROUGH GREEN.- This week, Bellmans' autumnal auctions unite great art works from across the East West cultural divide. Asian Ceramics and Works of Art come under the hammer on Wednesday 20th November, presenting works spanning 400 years from the 17th Century to the 20th Century. A highlight of the sale is a large Chinese Blue and White Baluster vase from the Kangxi period. The 52cm high vase is painted with a continuous scene, an official seated at a table with attendants, further figures gathered in a fenced garden outside, and the lower register painted with figures in a boat and a seated figure with attendant. ... More
Highly sought-after Heddon 1904 ‘The Dowagiac Perfect Casting Baits’ in triple-partition box with stunning black bass graphic to underside of lid. Estimate: $25,000-$50,000.
DENVER, PA.- Fishing lure enthusiasts from coast to coast will be angling for the catch of the day on Monday, December 9 at Morphy’s live gallery auction of the Wayne Edens collection. The incomparable assemblage of lures – said to be the largest, most comprehensive and historically-important collection of its type ever to come to the public marketplace – is brimming with ultra-rare gems, not the least of which is one of the eight celebrated Heddon “factory board” frogs hand-carved in 1898. The all-original Heddon frog lure (or “bait”) was personally crafted by James Heddon, founder of the Heddon Company. It was subsequently exhibited on a display board at the Heddon plant in Dowagiac, ... More
Cass Art Prize 2024 winner Reuben Murray, Photo: Dave Bennet/Getty Images.
LONDON.- Rising British artist Reuben Murray has won the first ever Cass Art Prize 2024. The Prize has been created by leading art supply retailer Cass Art, continuing the Cass family’s monumental legacy of supporting artists for over 120 years. From art inspired by refugee camps and made in mental health units to National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award 2024 nominees – The Cass Art Prize’s 2024 shortlist was a celebration of British art’s diversity, resilience and impact. Work by the nominated artists, from across the length and breadth of the UK and Republic of Ireland, has been exhibited this month in a prestigious exhibition at Copeland Gallery, London. The awards were presented at a prize giving ceremony hosted by Cass Art Founder Mark Cass at Copeland Gallery on 14 November. ... More
Tuscan Hills in Gold - $10,000. Oil on board, 24 ⅛ x 36 ⅛ inches (61.3 x 91.8 cm).
NEW YORK, NY.- Best known as a dealer in Old Master Paintings, Robert Simon is featuring paintings by the contemporary land- and sea-scape painter Connie Simmons. Born in Texas but living in New York for many years, the artist finds inspiration from her travels in Tuscany, the Cayman Islands, and Venice – and the storms, waters, and skies that inhabit each locale. Simon remarks, “I have loved the work of Connie Simmons for many years, and it is with great personal satisfaction that we present this exhibition devoted to her paintings. Her ethereal visions of the effects of light on sea and sky are born from experience and observation and expressed through techniques drawn from the painters and watercolorists that she has studied and championed. Foremost of these are Francesco Guardi and J. M. W. Turner, whose work has been to her both instructive and inspirational.” This exhibition reflects the artist’s fascination with the vast, powerful, and thrilling effects and sensations of light, color, and ... More
MONACO.- In the centenary year of the founding of the Surrealist movement and the publication in October 1924 of its first manifestos by Yvan Goll and André Breton, this exhibition focuses on the legacies of Surrealism. As well as suggesting echoes and affinities in the work of artists working today, ‘Surreal Legacies’ highlights the work of earlier artists who were never formally part of Surrealism but who existed in its wider context. The influence of this movement is explored through the work of major reference figures and contemporary artists, including Ida Applebroog, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Hélène Delprat, Camille Henrot, Luchita Hurtado, Cathy Josefowitz, Allison Katz, Erna Rosenstein, and Anj Smith. The exhibition concentrates on the work of women artists, a strength of the gallery’s program and within Surrealism as it developed. ... More
Virgin of Solitude Attributed to Sebastián Herrera Barnuevo Oil on canvas c. 1665 Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.
MADRID.- When praising the wood sculpture of Christ of Forgiveness carved by Manuel Pereira and polychromed by Francisco Camilo, the writer on art Antonio Palomino (1655-1726) concluded with the following opinion: “Thus painting and sculpture, hand in hand, create a prodigious spectacle.” The unique importance achieved by the synthesis of volume and colour in sculpture of the early modern period can only be explained by the role it played as an instrument of persuasion. From the Graeco-Roman world onwards sculptural representation was seen as a necessity. Divinity was present through its corporeal, protective and healing image which became more lifelike when covered with colour, an essential attribute of life in contrast to the inanimate pallor of death. In the words of the Benedictine monk Gregorio de Argaiz in 1677: “Each figure, no matter how perfect it may be in sculpture, is a corpse; what gives it life, soul, and spirit is the brush, which represents the affections of the s ... More
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Vénus épiée par deux satyres. Toile. 70 x 95,5 cm. Estimate: 800 000 / 1 000 000 €.
PARIS.- On 26 November 2024, the French auction house of Ader, with the assistance of Cabinet Turquin, will be selling an early painting by Nicolas Poussin, Vénus Épiée par Deux Satyres (Venus Spied Upon by Two Satyrs). Estimated between €800,000 and €1,000,000, this large canvas measuring 70 x 95.5 cm, with its erotic subject matter, is completely different from the more classical works that one expects of Nicolas Poussin. The works of this artist are exceedingly rare on the art market, and this work, only recently rediscovered, is being sold in Paris at Hôtel Drouot. “One simply doesn’t find paintings by Poussin from this period, with this theme and of these dimensions on the market.” --French auctioneer David Nordmann This work, published by the historian Tancred Borenius in 1933, was once in the collection of Paul Jamot, chief curator of the Musée du Louvre and a specialist in Poussin, until ... More
Meg Onli by Bryan Derballa.
NEW YORK, NY.- The Whitney Museum of American Art has appointed Meg Onli as the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator. Formerly the Whitney’s Curator-at-Large, Onli will take on this enhanced role as a key member of the Museum’s senior curatorial team based in New York City, where she will contribute holistically to the contemporary vision of the Whitney. Onli will lead the Whitney’s painting and sculpture acquisition committee and will contribute regularly to the exhibition program, collaborating with colleagues across the Museum and thinking critically and creatively about how works are presented, interpreted, and shared in the galleries, scholarly publications, and digital resources. Recently, Onli co-curated the celebrated Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing. In 2026 Onli will co-curate the Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein exhibition with artist Alex Da Corte and the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, Scott Rothkopf. This exhibition will be the first Lichtenstein r ... More
Jason Evans, Simon Foxton, [no title], 1991. Tate.
LONDON.- This autumn, Tate Britain will present The 80s: Photographing Britain, a landmark survey which will consider the decade as a pivotal moment for the medium of photography. Bringing together nearly 350 images and archive materials from the period, the exhibition will explore how photographers used the camera to respond to the seismic social, political, and economic shifts around them. Through their lenses, the show will consider how the medium became a tool for social representation, cultural celebration and artistic expression throughout this significant and highly creative period for photography. This exhibition will be the largest to survey photography’s development in the UK in the 1980s to date. Featuring over 70 lens-based artists and collectives, it will spotlight a generation who engaged with new ideas of photographic practice, from well-known names to those whose work is increasingly being recognised, including Maud Sulter, Mumtaz Karimjee and Mitra Tabrizian. It will featu ... More
Gabriele Münter. Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, donated by Gabriele Münter, 1957.
MADRID.- Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) was one of the founders of The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), the legendary group of Expressionist artists based in Munich which emerged in late 1911, to which Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, among others, also belonged. Münter is well known as an artist in Germany but it is only in recent years that she has started to enjoy greater recognition in the rest of Europe. The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, which has four of her paintings in its collections, is now organising the first retrospective on the artist in Spain, thus continuing its project of researching and highlighting the work of so many great women artists and the place they deserve in the history of art. Through 145 paintings, drawings, prints and photographs the exhibition aims to present not only Gabriele Münter’s artistic activities and the rich complexity of her work, but also an artist who rebelled against ... More
Hugo Erfurth, Hilde Wächler (painter), 1929. Cardboard, oil pigment print, 38,3 x 26,6 cm. Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Repro: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne.
COLOGNE.- Museum Ludwig announced its exhibition program in 2025. Children are the focus of this monumental exhibition that revolves around the thirty video projections of Children’s Games, in which Francis Alÿs (b. 1959 in Antwerp, based in Mexico City) shows playing children from all over the world. For over twenty years, Alÿs has been traveling to places as diverse as Congo, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Alaska, and Cuba to film children who are completely immersed in their outdoor playing, frequently using materials they have found. While some of the games have long traditions, others have been spontaneously invented by the children in reaction to their surroundings. Alÿs chose to turn the largest room of the exhibition—known as the “high hall”—over to the children of Cologne. Fifty schoolchildren between eight and thirteen—like the children ... More
Grada Kilomba. Opera to a Black Venus, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
MADRID.- The solo exhibition Opera to a Black Venus, devoted to the Berlin based Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba (Lisbon, 1968), assembles a selection of artworks, denoting the most complete presentation of her works to date in Spain. Kilomba is best known for her unique practice of storytelling, in which she gives body, voice, form and movement to her own writings, using: performance, staged reading, dance, video, sculpture, installation and sound landscapes. With a subversive and poetic imagery, her work draws on memory, trauma, gender and postcolonialism, interrogating concepts of violence and repetition. “What stories are told? Where are they told? How are they told? And told by whom?” are constant questions in Kilomba’s body of work. Her work has been described as a new postcolonial minimalism, in which multiple and complex languages blur the boundaries between disciplines. With a robust substructure in psychoanalysis and ph ... More
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Iconic 1973 Warhol Mao painting leads Heritage's Dec. 10 Modern & Contemporary Art Auction DALLAS, TX.- Heritage Auctions announced that the centerpiece of its December 10 Modern & Contemporary Art Signature® Auction is Andy Warhol’ iconic 1973 painting Mao. This example of Warhol’s portrait of Mao Tse-tung is one of the most desirable from the late artist’s iconic portrait series of China’s Chairman. Warhol’s decision in the early ’70s to take on such a loaded subject marked his return to form — evoking his silkscreened celebrities of the 1960s — but this time with a knowing impulse to turn our definition of “celebrity,” if not painting itself, into a challenge for an evolving art world that increasingly embraced the conceptual underpinnings of Warhol’s genius. The painting, awash in Warhol’s canny use of blue, burgundy, ochre and black, is arguably the most approachable and visually enticing of the entire series of 16 original paintings ... More
Gordon Lightfoot's 1967 Gibson sells for $350,000 at Heritage Auctions DALLAS, TX.- When the sun set Sunday on Heritage’s Gordon Lightfoot Estate Collection Music Memorabilia Signature® Auction, one of the revered singer-songwriter’s most beloved acoustic guitars had sold for $350,000. That should come as no surprise, as it was the 1967 Gibson B45-12 Sunburst that accompanies Lightfoot on the cover of his 1974 album Sundown, his lone chart-topping release in the United States and the record that spawned the smash hit of the same name. There were numerous guitars in this auction, among them a 1963 Gibson B45-12 Sunburst that realized $93,750 and a one-of-a-kind 1975 Ed McGlincy Custom Natural acoustic that sold for $55,000. But the 1967 Gibson sparked a prolonged bidding war befitting its place of prominence: Not only does it sit next to Lightfoot on the album’s cover like an old friend, but it was ... More
Exhibitions survey fifty years of William Leavitt's work LOS ANGELES, CA.- Sebastian Gladstone Gallery is presenting Gothic Electronica. A concurrent exhibition of work by the artist is on view at Marc Selwyn Fine Art at 9953 S Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Together, both exhibitions survey fifty years of the artist’s work. Leavitt has spent his career as an artist in Southern California, drawing endless inspiration from the architecture and mass media culture of Hollywood. By the time Leavitt began his artistic practice, Pop Art and Minimalism had begun to run their course. As an important figure in the first generation of California conceptual art, Leavitt was able to use these prior movements to synthesize his personal experiences and impressions of the California landscape. A writer and filmmaker himself, Leavitt’s works have always been rooted in narrative storytelling and intrinsically ... More
Christie's presents Science Fiction and Fantasy LONDON.- Christie’s presents Science Fiction and Fantasy, an online-only sale during Classic Week which will offer masterpieces by the greatest authors and artists in the science fiction and fantasy fields. Open for bidding from 28 November to 12 December, Science Fiction and Fantasy will explore the extraordinary history of the genres through the books, objects and artworks that continue to inspire new generations of readers and viewers. The sale is led by The Dune Bible, an extraordinary artefact from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune project (estimate: £250,000-350,000) in addition to an exquisite first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in a contemporary binding, with provenance linked to Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft (estimate: £250,000-350,000). Among the highlights is a stunning example of a true ... More
Christie's joins group of 5,000 companies to be SBTi approved for near and long term Net Zero targets LONDON.- Christie’s, the world’s leading art and luxury business, has had its Sustainability plans to reach Net Zero by 2050 approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the UN-backed regulator that sets industry benchmarks for the measurement of carbon emissions. In 2021, Christie’s set ambitious goals to become a more sustainable business, becoming the only international auction house to date to do so. Christie’s fourth Environmental Impact Report (2023) published in April confirmed that, based on current industry standards, it made a 57% reduction in carbon emissions last year against the baseline year of 2019. Guillaume Cerutti, Christie’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “The SBTi approval is a significant milestone in our commitment to climate leadership in the art market. Climate science shows it is still possible to limit ... More
Midcareer retrospective for internationally acclaimed artist Younes Rahmoun showcases his work NORTHAMPTON, MASS.- Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) presents the exhibition Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now from August 30, 2024, to July 13, 2025. This is the first career survey for multidisciplinary artist Younes Rahmoun and the first chance for audiences in the United States to view his work in depth. The multisite exhibition explores how Rahmoun has, since the late 1990s, found inspiration in a profound connection to the here and now and to the world around him. Foremost among the artist’s themes are nature, place and landscape; spirituality; and movement and migration. The exhibition spans multiple locations across Smith College: SCMA’s galleries and atrium façade, Lyman Plant House, the banks of Paradise Pond and the MacLeish Field Station in West Whately, MA. New site-specific commissions are exhibited alongside ... More
Sold for $2.52 million: Rare 1652 threepence coin COSTA MESA, CA.- A small silver coin about the size of a nickel, struck in Boston in 1652, set a world record today in an auction conducted by Stack’s Bowers Galleries, the world leader in auctions of rare early American coins and currency. Selling for $2,520,000 (with all included fees), the piece surpassed the previous world record price of $646,250 for an American coin struck before the American Revolution by nearly $2 million. The 1652 Massachusetts threepence also set a record for any non-gold U.S. coin struck before the founding of the United States Mint. Weighing just 1.1 grams, its silver value is $1.03 based on today’s market. Struck within weeks of the establishment of the first mint to be opened in the future United States, the New England threepence is the only example known outside of a museum. A holed specimen has ... More
In conversation: Genesis Tramaine, Alison M. Ginger and Alison Moss
Flashback
On a day like today, American clothing designer Calvin Klein was born
November 19, 1942. Calvin Richard Klein (born November 19, 1942) is an American fashion designer of Hungarian origin who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc., in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry. In this image: Fashion designer Calvin Klein is seen in New York, June 28, 1983.
