Arts news

• When Scabby met Trumpy

  13-08-2017 23:00
  New Yorkers are well used to Scabby the Rat, a 15ft-tall inflatable that has been the protest symbol of unions for decades. This August, they made the acquaintance of Trumpy the Rat, an orange-skinned, blond-haired caricature. It was a nice coincidence that we got it just in time for his assholiness to visit New York, said Jeff Lee, co-founder of the gallery BravinLee Programs, which represents the artist who designed Trumpy, Jeffrey Beebe. That union rat was for me a big inspiration because Id
  
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• Leonardo DiCaprio becomes Leonardo da Vinci

  13-08-2017 23:00
  The Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a Modern and contemporary art collector, is set to play his Old Master namesake, Leonardo Da Vinci, in an eponymous biopic on the Renaissance polymath. The film is based off of Walter Isaacsons biography on Da Vinci, due to be released in October, which draws heavily on the Renaissance mans notebooks. As reported by Deadline Hollywood, Paramount Pictures snapped up the film rights to Isaacsons book on Saturday (12 August) after a heated bidding war wit
  
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• Latin American galleries launch a cooperative model in Los Angeles

  13-08-2017 23:00
  With galleries seeking alternatives to the pulverizing year-round mill of the fair cycle, the Mexico City-based dealer Brett Schultz may have come up with a viable option of going global without going broke. Ruberta, a new collaborative exhibition space in Glendale, California, brings five Latin American galleries to Los Angeles for a year-long residence. Coinciding with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the project launches in September with a group exhibition involving all the participating galle
  
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• Design auctions buck the downward trend

  13-08-2017 23:00
  The auction market for design is booming, aided by new online tools and record prices for the categorys most sought-after names.
  Sothebys seemed to take a risk in May by offering, within its flagship Impressionist and Modern evening sale in New York, a monumental bookshelf by Diego Giacometti. But the late 1960s commission for the Paris publisher Marc Barbezat, decorated with patinated bronze accents, sold for $6.3m with premiummore than double its top estimate and a record for the designer.The
  
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• Vermeer got up to his own painting ‘tricks’ | Letters

  13-08-2017 20:05
  Painters have always employed any mechanical means available to get a composition ‘right’, writes Libby Sheldon; plus, Susan Samuelson on the key to winning the NPG’s portrait awardI agree with Simon Jenkins (So what if old masters ‘cheated’. It’s how beautiful the art is that matters, 10 August) that artists’ “authenticity” should not be doubted because they used devices such as the camera obscura. Painters have always employed any mechanica
  
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• John paints Jennifer

  13-08-2017 16:32
  Plaudits have poured in for John Currin's painting of the screen icon Jenifer Lawrence which was commissioned by US Vogue for its prestigious September edition. The work, made for the 125th anniversary issue, shows the Silver Linings Playbook star in a Miu Miu patterned fur hat brandishing a green purse. "Ms. Lawrence is depicted in a Mannerist pose, unnatural but elegant. Perspective is minimised and a rococo palette competes with a hint of Dutch old master sobriety," according to th
  
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• John Currin paints Jennifer Lawrence for Vogue

  13-08-2017 16:32
  Plaudits have poured in for John Currin's painting of the screen icon Jenifer Lawrence which was commissioned by US Vogue for its prestigious September edition. The work, made for the 125th anniversary issue, shows the Silver Linings Playbook star in a Miu Miu patterned fur hat brandishing a green purse. "Ms. Lawrence is depicted in a Mannerist pose, unnatural but elegant. Perspective is minimised and a rococo palette competes with a hint of Dutch old master sobriety," according to th
  
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• From Arcade Fire to Angels in America, neon is having a moment in the spotlight

  13-08-2017 16:00
  Neon lighting has moved from vulgar Vegas to some of our most beloved art. Andy Warhol was right – it’s one of ‘the great modern things’Neon is up in lights, again. The gaseous element whose glamorous glow has been appropriated by one artist after another since the 1960s is now crossing from contemporary art into every cultural field going. It pulses in the National Theatre’s hit Angels in America, shines ethereally white in the artwork for Arcade Fire’s Every
  
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• Is Fear Of The Bard Killing James Ivory's Planned 'Richard II'?

  13-08-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yes, that's James Ivory of Merchant Ivory fame. "Despite 50 years of critical acclaim and Oscar recognition, plus British actors Tom Hiddleston and Damian Lewis lined up to star in his production, financiers are refusing to part with their money. 'They look at you like you’re crazy. ... There is an assumption that there is no money to be made from such an investment.'"
  
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• Transient Space review – tales of the city

  13-08-2017 09:00
  Parafin, London
  Taking its cue from Baudelaire, a fascinating show features artists in search of the fleeting urban moment, from car parks to parkourYou are in a multistorey car park. You don’t know where your car is. It must be in one of the four corners, on one of the seven levels, by one of those numberless pillars. But they all look the same. You can’t leave without the car and you cannot find it in the concrete labyrinth. This is the modern city.The familiar scenario is brillian
  
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• Tom of Finland review – glossy biopic of pioneering artist

  13-08-2017 08:59
  Pekka Strang gives a fine performance as Touko Laaksonen, whose leather-wearing fantasy men were an inspiration for generations to comeThe story of Touko Laaksonen, the artist who helped shape the tastes of a generation of gay men, Tom of Finland is almost as handsome and glossy as the drawings of luxuriantly leather-clad fantasy figures with which he made his name. Having served during the second world war with distinction, Laaksonen (a sober, watchful performance from Pekka Strang) returns hom
  
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• Is outing people really the remit of the National Trust? | Catherine Bennett

  13-08-2017 01:05
  The furore over Felbrigg Hall and LGBTQ rights shows an organisation far removed from its founding purposeAfter being dumped by Lord Byron in 1812, Lady Caroline Lamb re-evaluated her servants’ livery. She took a keen interest in livery. The new retainers’ outfits would feature specially engraved buttons inscribed (satirising the Byron family motto, Crede Byron) Ne crede Byron – don’t trust Byron.Latin, bespoke buttons, hand-sewn alterations: how much easier it is, nowada
  
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