Arts news

• ‘Paintings untethered to notions of taste or intention’

  24-11-2016 22:00
  Westkunst, Kasper Koenigs sprawling, contrarian and magisterial show of paintings from the 1930s to the 1980s, was our introduction to late Picabia. In the giant exhibition hall where the show took place, Picabias slightly unhinged-feeling paintings of the 1930s and 1940s came as a shock to those who knew only his early Cubist paintingswhich is to say, nearly everyone in 1981. Picabia, if he was taught in the schools at all, was a footnote in the social history of the avant-garde; a sporti
  
  Read more

• London version of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe predates the bigger picture in Paris

  24-11-2016 22:00
  
  Conservators at the Courtauld Gallery in London believe that its version of Manets Le djeuner sur lherbe is not just a copy of the larger painting at Pariss Muse dOrsay, but a preparatory work for the picture in the French institution. This new theory contradicts the view of John House, the UK institutions expert on Impressionism until his death in 2012, who was virtually certain that the Courtaulds version is a replica, made after the big one was completed, and refining its arrangement in mino
  
  Read more

• London exhibition picks: Ruins of Modernism, Rembrandt-esque paintings, a nuanced Mapplethorpe and Elton’s vintage photos

  24-11-2016 22:00
  
  Alex Hartley: After You Left, Victoria Miro, Wharf Road (until 16 December)To my mind the bestand now most prescientwork of art to be associated with the 2012 Cultural Olympiad was Alex Hartleys Nowhereisland, a nomadic island revealed by a retreating glacier. He towed it from the Arctic to the south coast of England as a visiting island nation with citizenship open to all. Hartley is unravelling more utopian dreams at Victoria Miro, where he has memorialised (and satirised) the legacy of Moder
  
  Read more

• Art Basel in Miami Beach channels spirit of David Bowie

  24-11-2016 22:00
  
  Anchoring Miami Art Week, the 15th edition of the Art Basel in Miami Beach arrives at the Miami Beach Convention Center from 1-4 December with 269 galleries from 29 countries in tow, including 21 exhibitors who are new to the fairs US edition. This will be the first edition of the fair under the directorship of Noah Horowitz, the former director of The Armory Show (2011-15) who joined Art Basel a year ago. This year, a spotlight falls on younger galleries, eight of which have been promoted from
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The true story behind BMW’s Art Cars

  24-11-2016 17:22
  
  Thomas Girst, 45, is head of cultural engagement for the BMW motor car group. Educated in the US and Germany, while at NYU he wrote a PhD thesis that Donald Trump has suddenly made of more than academic interest. It deals with art and literature during an earlier episode of shameful xenophobia, the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
  A journalist, exhibition organiser and writer, Girst joined BMW in 2003 to develop its cultural role. With a strong emphasis of making th
  
  Read more

• Shakespeare's Stratford reminds us of a forgotten, morbid England | Jonathan Jones

  24-11-2016 14:22
  
  The cult around Shakespeare has led to the restoration of murals in Stratford-upon-Avon, whitewashed over by his father. They’re far from masterpieces, but they do show us an England in thrall to devils and deathStratford-upon-Avon is a town preserved not in amber but by language. The words of its most famous son have made this Warwickshire town a sacred spot ever since the great actor David Garrick staged a Shakespeare jubilee at Stratford in 1769. That date is significant. It’s in
  
  Read more

• President Putin and Pope Francis agree Vatican masterpieces show in Moscow

  24-11-2016 12:35
  
  An exhibition of 42 paintings from the Vatican Museums Pinacoteca including the 12th century The Blessing Christ and Caravaggios The Deposition (1603-04), are going on show at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow thanks to high-level diplomacy between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis.The official opening of the Vatican exhibition at the Tretyakov, called Roma Aeterna, was held yesterday (23 November) and will open to the public on 25 November (until 19 February). The Tretyakov
  
  Read more

• Oskar Schlemmer's ballet of geometry – in pictures

  24-11-2016 08:00
  
  With his geometric costumes and revolutionary spirit, Schlemmer hauled ballet into the age of modernism. A new exhibition celebrates his wild designs Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Inside the new Heath Robinson Museum

  24-11-2016 06:30
  The new building in Pinner, Middlesex, exemplifies the cartoonist’s plucky, industrious eccentricity
  
  Read more

• Heath Robinson Museum, Pinner, UK — review

  24-11-2016 06:30
  The new museum exemplifies a kind of plucky, industrious eccentricity
  
  Read more

• Reconstructing The Soundscape Of 18th-Century Paris

  24-11-2016 02:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Archaeologist of sound” Mylène Pardoen: “The houses were very tall, so the sound stayed. It … sound remained there and seemed thicker than it would today. It was not louder, nor was it less loud. It was denser. There were more sounds that collided with one another.” (includes audio)
  
  Read more

• How Scientists Are Replicating Ancient Places In 3D And Recreating Them

  24-11-2016 01:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “The man who led the facsimile project, a proudly dishevelled Englishman named Adam Lowe, was admiring the fake walls alongside me. Lowe prefers to call them “rematerialized” walls. He whispered, “Amazing—it looks just like the real thing, doesn’t it?” He is fifty-seven years old, and looks like what Paul McCartney might look like had McCartney never undergone restoration.”
  
  Read more

• Auction Houses See Steady Market (But Their Guarantees To Sellers Suggests…)

  24-11-2016 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  “Values can be inflated when auction houses offer competitive guarantees to secure major consignments. These guarantee can then be transferred to a third party, who will either buy a work at a sale, or be rewarded for their unsuccessful bidding. More recently, some third-party guarantors — called “irrevocable bidders” at Sotheby’s — have also been paid fees if they are the purchaser. These confidential arrangements, denoted by symbols in the catalog, can have
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUKnews on Twitter!