Disney-Britton

CNN By Miriam Bouteba, CNN Style Abu Dhabi - You Want Fries With That?, 2019; Limited edition Pigment inkjet print on Canson infinity Rag 310gms Edition 4 + 2AP CM H 70 W 50 IN H 27.56 W 19.69 Sought-after photographer Mous Lamrabat is a master of hybridity, expertly splicing together symbols from his Moroccan heritage and Muslim faith with Western brands and pop culture in his bright and joyful portraits. The positivity his work exudes makes it not only irresistible, but slyly thought-provoking too. Lambrabat hopes his success lays the groundwork for the third-culture kids to come. "I love where I'm from. My life goal is to show that we are creative and we're moving with everyone else. We are here and we have the right to be ourselves." [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Sin: The Art of Transgression | Joost Joustra | 9781857096651 The depiction of sin has been fundamental to European visual culture for hundreds of years, especially – but not only – in Christian art. Addressing the mutable and often ambiguous representation of sin, this book highlights its theological underpinnings, the cultural afterlife, and contradictory and controversial aspects from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century. Drawing on paintings from the National Gallery and elsewhere, including pictures by Cranach, Velázquez , and Hogarth , as well as modern and contemporary works by Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, and Ron Mueck , this story of sin moves freely across countries and centuries. From paintings that explicitly explore theological ideas, such as the story of Adam and Eve and its aftermath, the seven deadly sins, and the Immaculate Conception, to moralizing or seductive depictions of ‘sinful’ everyday behavior, it blurs the boundaries between religious...

ARTDAILY Large Keith Haring Acrylic/Gold Paint Marker on Red Plexi, 31.5"h, 39.5"w; 33"h, 41"w frame. Estimate: $550,000 - $750,000. Image courtesy of Palm Beach Modern Auctions. WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.- Think back to the mid-'80s: you or somebody you know probably had a shirt from the Pop Shop emblazoned with Keith Haring's "radiant baby" across the chest. Haring's instantly recognizable symbols made him an icon of art and social awareness. He was on everything from the subways of New York City to the Berlin Wall and featured in galleries around the world. Keith Haring's 1983 painting will be up for auction on Saturday, May 2nd at  Palm Beach Modern Auctions  in West Palm Beach, FL as lot 176.  [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS By Katie White Have you been wishing lately that you’d actually taken up meditation instead of just thinking about it all those years? We’re feeling it too—as well as the anxious tension in our chests, the funky sleep patterns, and, yes, the sheer boredom of staring at the same four walls for yet another day. When you also remember that all the art you so dearly love is stowed away inside shuttered art museums, galleries, and studios, it makes you just want to cry. But despair not! The Rubin Museum of Art is here to help you stay centered (even while it’s closed) with a recently launched series titled the Daily Offering. An informative, 10-minute episode is posted on the museum’s Instagram page every Thursday through Monday (the days the museum would have been open). [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Tom Seymour El Camino, 2020. Photograph: Courtesy of Ryan McGinley Before he shot Brad Pitt and Beyoncé, McGinley captured the ‘like-minded weirdos’ he met in New York’s wildest gay bars. As a rare retrospective opens, he talks about those days – and going to church with his mum. It might not seem to square with his reputation, but faith has played a huge part in Ryan McGinley’s work. He was taught religious art at school in New Jersey and remembers staring at The Creation of Adam , Michelangelo’s depiction of God giving life to the first man, in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo’s worship of the human body is reflected in McGinley’s searing portraits of the “like-minded weirdos” he has met over two decades of life in Manhattan, which comprise the exhibition Pretty Free – originally due to be on show at London’s Marlborough Gallery this month, but now accessible online. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Su-Hyun Lee and Brett Sokol Visitors didn’t always observe social distancing when they went to the Lehmann Maupin gallery opening in Seoul last week for the artist Billy Childish. The show, “Wolves, Sunsets and The Self,” drew a chic black-clad crowd. Woohae Cho for The New York Times SEOUL — Art galleries remain shuttered around the world but in South Korea, they reopen — with contact tracing and masks. Welcome to the post-Covid-19 world. “I wouldn’t say things are totally back to normal,” explained Passion Lim, taking in the scene on Thursday at the opening for Billy Childish paintings at the Lehmann Maupin gallery. “But it’s a start,” he added. Indeed, if you ignored the face masks on about half the attending crowd, it might have been opening night at a blue-chip art gallery anywhere — anywhere before the coronavirus pandemic, that is. Now, as a steady stream of Mercedes sedans pulled up to the valet, disgorging their fashion-forward passengers, South Kor...

THE ART NEWSPAPER  ARogier van der Weyden's The Descent from the Cross (around 1435) This will probably be one of the strangest Easter periods that the world has ever experienced: in the UK, the peak of coronavirus (Covid-19) cases is expected to coincide with the Christian festival that is known as much for its chocolate eggs as its profound religious significance, celebrated in a glory of Western art historical images commemorating the Passion of Christ. The weather in some parts is expected to be lovely, but many will experience the Easter holiday in lockdown, away from their families and their own cherished mini traditions. There is immense suffering around the world, yet this is also a time for empathy and hope.[ More ]

NEWFIELDS By Kjell M. Wangensteen, PhD Associate Curator of European Art Francisco Salzillo y Alcaraz (Spanish, 1707-1783), Saint Francis of Assisi, about 1775, parcel-gilt and polychrome wood, silver, gold, silk, A-C) installed: 24-5/16 x 8-5/16 x 4-3/4 in. A) sculpture: 15 x 7-3/8 x 4-3/4 in. B) banner: 7 x 4 x 3/8 in. C) staff: 14-1/4 x 1-7/8 x 1/8 in., Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Anonymous Art Fund in memory of Louisa A. Vonnegut Peirce, James E. Roberts Fund by exchange, Gift of Miklos Sperling by exchange To anyone seeking advice on buying a work of art, I would say this: never underestimate the importance of spending time in the presence of the object. A recent acquisition I made on behalf of Newfields is a case in point. On seeing it in person, I was convinced that it was a museum-quality object and a good fit for the IMA. One year later, I am pleased to have bought this sculpture, St Francis of Assisi , into our collection. In near-perfect condition, the 15...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Patrick Dougher's “We are funding our own oppression” (Black Disaster Capitalism III)-Collage/Acrylic on paper- 10” x 10” Before COVID-19 living on Zoom , we were already collecting faces. Not the awkward photos of Olan Mills , but impressionistic portraits that reveal an inner significance. We see it daily in the Heinrich Hofmann print in our Jesus Room, and we saw it this week in the portraits of self-taught artist Patrick Dougher . His Instagram is loaded with portraits, including recent collages of poised subjects masked with halos reflecting both their personal significance and the significance of this moment. Patrick Dougher's masked portraits are our collector tip  of the week.

KNOW YOUR OWN BONE By Colleen Dilenschneider Near-term demand to revisit cultural organizations is being redistributed toward some kinds of entities and away from others. People intend to visit cultural organizations again. Perhaps that’s the best news there is, regardless of your organization type. Here’s what’s changed in the last two weeks. We asked people the following question: On a scale of 1 to 100 where a response of 1 means “a significant decrease in my likelihood of visiting,” a response of 50 means “the same” or “no change in my likelihood of visiting,” and a response of 100 means a “significant increase in my likelihood of visiting”: How likely are you to visit a(n) [organization type] after the current coronavirus-related restrictions are removed and you are able to resume your normal activities? [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Joshua Barone A screen capture of members of the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra and chorus, which will perform at the At-Home Gala on Saturday. Metropolitan Opera “Is this enough light?” asked the baritone Peter Mattei. He was in the living room of his home outside Stockholm, speaking over Skype with a small group of Metropolitan Opera staff members who were giving him directions to prepare for the company’s At-Home Gala on Saturday — a worldwide relay of live streamed performances that, in contrast to opera’s usual grandeur, will be filmed using only household devices. With the Met closed to the public, its administrative staff has been busy with an emergency fund-raising campaign and, for the past two weeks, the At-Home Gala. [ More ]

ARTNEWS By Claire Selvin The past month has made obvious just how great a toll the coronavirus pandemic has been on American art workers, with major art institutions. But artists have suffered because of the pandemic alongside them, and a new survey from the initiative Artist Relief—offers data on how they have been adversely affected by various shutdowns as well. Following its first funding cycle, for which over 55,000 artists applied for $5,000 emergency relief grants, Artist Relief has released findings, co-presented by the the nonprofit Americans for the Arts, that paint a grim picture for artists. Relying on responses from more than 11,000 artists based in the U.S., the Covid-19 Impact Survey for Artists and Creative Workers reveals that 62 percent of artists in the country have become fully unemployed as a result of the crisis. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Vanessa Friedman Creativ Studio Heinemann/Getty Images Anna Wintour and the CFDA have raised $4.1 million to help small designers, stores and factories survive. Hundreds have applied. The revelation of the crisis in retail caused by the coronavirus and the global response has coincided with the close of the first round of applications for A Common Thread , American fashion’s self-rescue plan. The initiative was created less than a month ago to help the independent designers, stores and contractors that make up the fashion ecosystem. In the 10-day application period that began April 8, more than 800 companies and individuals from 38 states applied for a slice of what is currently a $4.1 million fund. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ben Sisario Live Nation outlined a new plan designed to address the concerns of ticket holders who said they encountered difficulties securing refunds for shows that are no longer being held due to the pandemic. Credit...Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times Live Nation Entertainment, the global concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, announced a program on Friday to offer refunds and coupons for canceled and postponed shows, after weeks of criticism online and growing pressure from lawmakers. According to Live Nation’s plan, which starts May 1, people can obtain refunds for canceled or rescheduled shows. Like another plan instituted this week by AEG Presents, Live Nation’s biggest corporate rival, refunds for postponed shows will be available for 30 days once new dates have been set. For events that already have new dates, customers’ 30-day refund window will start May 1. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By Andrew Dickson Out of hand? … packed press view of the National Gallery’s Titian: Love, Desire and Death exhibition. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA In the first week of March, New York’s Armory Show opened on schedule, as it has done for the past 26 years. Despite coronavirus concerns, gallerists and collectors from across the globe packed Piers 90 and 94 on the West Side of Manhattan for one of the ritziest art fairs in the calendar. Only a month later, the Armory Show looks like the last days of the Roman Empire. Days after it closed, European countries had gone into lockdown. An industry that has become synonymous with hyper-connectedness and global mobility is now, like the rest of us, at a standstill. The art market is idling. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER Adrian Cheng at Paris Fashion Week on July 2, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Image Prompted by soaring prices and scarce supply, the billionaire art collector and entrepreneur Adrian Cheng has announced plans to distribute for free medical-grade surgical face masks in 35 vending machines in 18 locations throughout Hong Kong. Managed by eight Hong Kong-based NGOs, the dispensers will initially provide 10 million face masks to vulnerable residents who can each claim a pack of five masks every week by pre-registering online for a “smart redemption card”. The card will eliminate the need for people to queue for their packs. Announcing the “Mask to Go” initiative on Instagram yesterday, Cheng says his teams “have been working tirelessly to make sure we have the ability to produce high-quality medical face masks here in Hong Kong”. [ More ]

ARTNET NEWS By Sarah Cascone Street artist Shepard Fairey has joined forces with Adobe to create a new series of works that celebrate the health care workers and volunteers on the front lines of the global pandemic. Titled “Honor Heroes,” the works represent essential workers of all stripes, from mail carriers and grocery store employees to teachers and sanitation works, as well as doctors, nurses, and first responders. One work, Fairey’s Guts Not Glory , depicts a medical professional armed with a stethoscope in his graphic, color blocked style. “Guts Not Glory is an illustration of one of the many healthcare workers whose selfless acts of compassion and service are always meaningful, but at this moment are especially heroic,” Fairey said in a statement . [ More ]

INSTAGRAM “We Are Funding Our Own Oppression” (Black Disaster Capitalism III)-Collage/Acrylic on paper- 10” x 10”. Image courtesy of the artist's instagram Born and raised in Brooklyn NY, Patrick Dougher is a self-taught Artist, Musician, Poet, Educator & Spiritual Activist. Patrick has played and recorded with Grammy award winners Sade, Chuck D (Public Enemy) and Dan Zanes as well as many other notables. He is the drummer on “Dub Side as the Moon” one of the best selling Reggae LP’s of all time. He has worked as a Teaching Artist in NYC public schools, as an Art Therapist working with HIV positive children and as the Director of community arts organizations. Through his art Patrick seeks to inspire and to celebrate the noble beauty and divine nature of people of African descent and to connect urban African American culture to its roots in sacred African art, spirituality and ritual. [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Valentina Di Liscia Kent Monkman, “kâ wâsihkopayicik (the ones who shine)” (2008), graphite on acid-free paper, 14 x 17 inches (all images courtesy Kent Monkman Studio) A 2018 study by Toronto Aboriginal Support Services Council (TASSC) found that there are between 45,000 and 60,000 Indigenous adults in Toronto — and 87% of them fall below Canada’s low-income cut-off. Kent Monkman , a Canadian artist of Cree descent, is auctioning an original drawing to benefit the advocacy nonprofit, highlighting the urgent needs of Aboriginal people during the pandemic and beyond. The sale is taking place entirely on Monkman’s Instagram account — no gallery, auction house, or intermediary. Interested potential buyers can place their bids directly on Monkman’s post in increments of at least $10. Since the sale went live on Monday, bids have steadily climbed, with the highest offer currently at $3,000. [ More ]

THE HINDU By Georgina Maddox With art becoming a predominantly online culture during the pandemic, podcasts, live streaming, how-to-paint videos and more abound Author Millard Meiss’ 1951 book, Paintings in Florence and Siena after the Black Death — which analysed art made in the wake of the devastating Bubonic plague in Europe — is still considered path breaking. Now, in another period ruled by a pandemic, it would be interesting to see how art is being explored. The difference: it is an online culture now, with everyone house-bound. So it is a time of art blogs and podcasts, live streaming and virtual exhibitions, how-to-paint videos and short films. In fact, all this may have actually made art more accessible. [ More ]

ARTNEWS By Harley Wong Tuan Andrew Nguyen, A Lotus in a Sea of Fire, 2020. ©2020 TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JAMES COHAN GALLERY In Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s latest work, The Boat People (2020), a group of children search for objects left over from the ruins of human civilization. Led by a young girl, who we learn is the last woman on earth, the children call themselves the boat people, referring to their mode of transportation and reclaiming the derogatory term describing refugees who fled Vietnam by sea following the end of the American war in Vietnam in 1975. As the last survivors of the human race, the phrase becomes one of pride. To seek the stories of their ancestors, the children meticulously create wooden replicas of the objects they encounter—and eventually burn them, releasing their ashes into the ocean in a ritual unknowable to the viewer. [ More ]

ARTLYST By Revd Jonathan Evens Purgatory Salvador Dalí, The Divine Comedy, Purgatory Dante Purified, 1960, wood engraving Salvador Dalí was an enigma, perhaps never more so than in his engagement with religion. An exhibition currently touring the US demonstrates the divided and dualistic nature of that relationship. ‘Salvador Dalí’s Stairway to Heaven,’ features complete portfolios of Dalí’s illustrations for two of his most ambitious publishing projects—his artwork for memorable editions of Comte de Lautréamont’s ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’ and Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’. Each project comes from a different era in Dalí’s life. ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’, was an 1869 text rediscovered by the Surrealists in the 1930s. Dalí completed his 43 illustrations when he was still proudly identifying as a Surrealist. At the time, the subject matter – scenes of violence, perversion, and blasphemy – was ideal for Dalí. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Robin Pogrebin, Scott Reyburn and Zachary Small Suspended animation: Francis Bacon’s “Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus” was shown at Sotheby’s in London in March and estimated to sell for upwards of $60 million in the May Contemporary Art auction in New York. Sotheby’s has not said if the sale will be canceled or postponed. The Estate of Francis Bacon/DACS, London/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press Francis Bacon’s 1981 three-part oil painting, “Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus,” was supposed to feature in Sotheby’s marquee contemporary art evening auction in New York on May 13, where it was estimated to sell for at least $60 million. That live auction clearly won’t be happening now, in light of the coronavirus. But Sotheby’s has yet to announce what it plans to do with its May sales instead: Hold them online? Postpone them till late June, as its competitors, Christie’s and Phillips have...

THE GUARDIAN By Andrew Pulver A Regal cinema on New York’s 42nd Street remains closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/REX/Shutterstock US cinemas are no nearer reopening despite the publication of federal guidelines by Donald Trump at a coronavirus briefing on Thursday. The guidelines specifically mentioned movie theatres as among the types of venue that would be allowed to operate “under strict physical distancing protocols” in the first phase of the White House’s plan, titled Opening Up America Again. However, no timeframe has been set, and the president has reportedly said state governors will decide when and if to put the plans into operation. Box-office analysts also remain sceptical. [ More

ARTNET NEWS Vienna's Belvedere Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Museums and other cultural venues in Austria will be allowed to reopen in mid-May, the country’s government announced today. And when they do, they’ll be among the first major institutions in Europe to reopen their doors after going into lockdown to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus last month. As of today, Austria counts more than 14,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 431 deaths. The number of new cases has declined significantly since late March, when the country was experiencing nearly 1,000 new diagnoses each day. Mid-sized stores and other businesses will follow on May 1, while “presentation venues in the artistic and cultural field” and “definitely museums” will be given the go-ahead in the middle of the month, said Austria’s Vice Chancellor, Werner Kogler, in a news conference. An exact date for the proposed reopenings has not yet been set. [ More ]

AMERICA MAGAZINE By Sarah NeitzX From left, clockwise: “The Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy” by Jen Norton; “The Visitation” by James B. Janknegt; “Mary, Undoer of Knots” by Annie Vaeth; and a traditional painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (iPhoto). About a year ago, I got married and moved in with my husband, and as we set up our apartment, one of the problems we faced was where to hang Creepy Jesus. If you grew up in a Catholic environment, you have seen Creepy Jesus before: the Sacred Heart of Jesus portrait, printed on cardboard with gold foil radiating from the head of a white man with improbably enormous eyes. My husband loves Creepy Jesus. This made me think of David Halle’s Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home (1993). Halle’s book made me realize that my objection to Creepy Jesus had little to do with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a lot to do with class. Placing religious art throughout the home supports your faith commitments, reminding you that y...

ARTNET NEWS By Tim Schneider Kamiar Maleki was named in new director of VOLTA in November 2019. Kamiar Maleki, the London-based director of the Pulse and Volta fairs, tells us about which artists he has his eye on. What was your first acquisition?  "Technically, a piece by Japanese photographer Tomoaki Makino from the now-defunct Museum 52, in London. But what I’d consider my first serious piece was a Ged Quinn painting, The Wintry Wind of the Bone, which I bought for under £8,000."   What was your most recent acquisition?  "A painting by a young Iranian artist called Amir Khojasteh, from a group show at Gazelli Art House." A version of this story first appeared in the spring 2020 Artnet Intelligence Report . [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Titian's ‘Pietà’ (1575–1576);  Oil on canvas; 153 in × 138 in; Location Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice In 1576, Renaissance master  Titian  died of the bubonic plague. One of his last paintings, Pietà , is  on loan  to the  COVID-19 closed  National Gallery in London. Week 5 of today's plague in  Indiana  ended with 545 deaths and 10,641 confirmed cases, and like London, we're shut down. However, there is good news too. Like millions of other Americans, we're  eating healthier  and we lost 20-lbs each. Like Titian, we're doing the things we can control. Collecting  prints online  is another act of control, and that's why Titian's  Pietà  is our art of the week.

INSIDE PHILANTHROPY  By Mike Scutari As arts funders navigate the opening stages of what will be a prolonged effort to stem the impact of COVID-19, many are already looking beyond the pandemic. As A Blade of Grass Executive Director Deborah Fisher told me, “In the long term, I think that there are much bigger questions about how arts economies function and how they are valued. This is something that philanthropy and arts institutions can and should meaningfully address together.” What should this conversation look like? I recently broached this question to a cross-section of foundations, nonprofits and arts advocates. New York Foundation for the Arts executive director Michael L. Royce summed up respondent sentiment best: “The crisis only underscores how vulnerable our cultural infrastructure really is.” [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Arthur Lubo Ficre Ghebreyesus, “Solitary Boat in Red and Blue,” circa 2002-07, one of 700 paintings the artist — who was better known as a chef — left when he died. It is in a show of his work online at Galerie Lelong.Credit...The Estate of Ficre Ghebreyesus; via Galerie Lelong & Co., New York Ficre Ghebreyesus had no art gallery representation during his lifetime. Now his widow is working with Galerie Lelong in New York to show the work that summed up his search for identity. Mixing memories of his East African childhood with his day-to-day life as a husband and father in New Haven, Conn., Ficre Ghebreyesus conjured up an imaginary space of his own. He created this multilayered world in his studio, where, after his sudden death at 50 in 2012, he left behind more than 700 paintings and several hundred works on paper. And he performed a similar magic in the popular Caffe Adulis, where he earned his living by cooking hybrid recipes that drew on the culina...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By A.O. Scott Halina Dyrschka’s documentary “Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint” explores the artist’s life and work, which includes paintings like “Group X, No. 1, Altarpiece” (1915). Zeitgeist Films The career-spanning exhibition of the work of Hilma af Klint that toured the world a few years ago — including a sojourn at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan — upended the conventional narrative of modern art history. “Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint,” a documentary by Halina Dyrschka, provides a thoughtful survey of its subject. It’s enriched by the dazzling charisma of her art and limited by the scarcity of biographical material.She was drawn to the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and to the teachings of the Austrian spiritualist Rudolf Steiner, with whom she corresponded. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN By John Kampfner And you thought you had a lot to deal with ... detail from the Apocalypse Tapestry, Angers, France. Photograph: Tuul and Bruno Morandi/Alamy Stock Photo Hidden away in a chateau in Angers is the beautiful Apocalypse Tapestry, made after war and pestilence had killed millions in medieval Europe. It is, quite literally, a Revelation. Commissioned by Louis I, the Duke of Anjou, in the late 14th century, the 90 different scenes tell the story of the Book of Revelation, the Bible’s last gasp of horror, retribution and redemption. It hangs in the city of Angers, in a dimly lit modern gallery at the foot of the castle. The story of how it got there, and how it has survived, is almost as dramatic as the visions it depicts. Revelation was written by Saint John the Divine, who had been banished by the Romans to the Aegean island of Patmos (apparently after being plunged into boiling oil in Rome and suffering no injuries). It marks the final battle between good...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Katy Kelleher AFrancesco De Grazia recreating Caravaggio’s “Boy With a Basket of Fruit.” For weeks, people have been recreating works of fine art using household items and posting their tableaus on social media. At a time when museums are closed, galleries have shuttered and art education has largely moved online, these images have formed a living archive of creativity in isolation. Tens of thousands of recreations appear under the hashtags #mettwinning, #betweenartandquarantine and #gettymuseumchallenge. Some have been made by arts professionals, but many of them are the skillful works of amateurs. For a month, Anneloes Officier  has been collecting submissions and posting them on the Instagram account @tussenkunstenquarantaine (a reference the Dutch television program “Tussen Kunst en Kitsch,” whose title means “between art and kitsch”). [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS CREATIO (2019) Oil on canvas 46 x 64 innches. Private Collection. Patrick McGrath Muñiz is an American artist from Puerto Rico, that works primarily with oil paintings on canvas and retablos. His work is inspired after Renaissance, Baroque and Latin American colonial paintings while addressing issues such as colonialism, consumerism and climate change. The artist has shown at the Museo de las Americas, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Museo Convento de las Capuchinas in Antigua, Guatemala, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, The Fort Worth Community Arts Center, The Bronx Museum of Art, The Spanish Colonial Arts Museum in Santa Fe, The Albuquerque Museum of Art in Albuquerque, NM, The Station Museum and The Jung Center in Houston, Texas, among others.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Roberta Smith “Painting the Big Painting” (1993) has echoes of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”Credit...Roy De Forest Estate/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Venus Over Manhattan Sometimes viewing an art exhibition online isn’t so much an inconvenience as a comfortable buffer. Consider, for example, the irreverent, relentless visual cornucopia created by the great but under-known artist Roy De Forest (1930-2007), a large selection of which booms forth from the website of the Manhattan gallery Venus Over Manhattan. The show’s 37 paintings, drawings and assemblage wall reliefs span from 1960 to 2006 and constitute the largest De Forest show in New York since a 1975 survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art. De Forest’s artworks batter received ideas of taste and beauty no less today than they did when they were created. They eviscerate (perhaps definitively) the pejorative term “regionalist” with which New York art worlders used to label ...

THE GUARDIAN  By Dale Berning Sawa ‘Vernia was soft-spoken and generous. She had wonderful eye contact.’ Photograph: Robbie Lawrence In October and November 2017, the American writer Sala Elise Patterson and I travelled to the Low Country in Georgia. In recent years, politics has forced people to be polarised, but we figured that there would be a lot more contradictions, even in somewhere like rural Georgia, a place that was probably leaning Republican. We set out to interview people from both sides of the political tracks, and look for continuities, and the paradoxes of everyday life. The Low Country is sprawling swamp land along the Ogeechee River, or Blackwater River as it is known. We spent months researching beforehand. One of the places we reached out to was St Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in the hamlet of Burroughs. St Bartholomew’s is the last standing chapel of the Ogeechee River Mission and the oldest African American congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Geor...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By M.H. Miller In Los Angeles, from left: ULYSSES JENKINS, CHARLES DICKSON, BARBARA MCCULLOUGH, SENGA NENGUDI and the Brockman Gallery co-founder DALE BROCKMAN DAVIS. Photographed at Smashbox Studios on Oct. 30, 2019. Wayne Lawrence In the past few years, cultural institutions have been trying to create a more inclusive narrative of contemporary art history, one that contains more women and people of color — people who were denied successful careers a half-century ago simply because they weren’t white men. Today, it’s not uncommon to see black artists with solo shows at museums and galleries that just five years ago might have ignored them entirely. Despite this correction, black-owned commercial galleries remain rarities in America. For a brief period in the 1960s and ’70s, however, there was an alternative art world — first in Los Angeles, then in New York — that offered a view of contemporary art that was vibrant and welcoming. Five decades later, it’s even...

ARTNEWS By Maximiliano Duron Titian, Pietà, ca. 1576. GALLERIE DELL'ACCADEMIA, VENICE How can artists creatively respond to a health crisis? Many are pondering this question right now amid a coronavirus pandemic, though it’s one that’s been asked for centuries. Titian , one of the High Renaissance’s greatest masters, was among the artists to mull it, and he did so as he made his final work, Pietà (ca. 1576), while Venice was ravaged by a bubonic plague outbreak. “The picture becomes an artistic testament of sorts in that sense, something that he intended to be associated with his afterlife,” said Matthias Wivel, a curator of 16th-century Italian paintings at the National Gallery in London who organized the museum’s “ Titian: Love, Desire, Death ” exhibition, now closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Zachary Small The San Francisco Art Institute will not accept students for the fall semester after almost 150 years in operation, ending the legacy of a once-storied school that produced famous artists like Annie Leibovitz, Kehinde Wiley and Catherine Opie. The institute announced Monday in a schoolwide letter that it plans to suspend classes after the spring semester. Graduating students will receive their degrees in May, but faculty and staff were told to prepare for mass layoffs. One senior official close to the decision-making process said the school was likely to close because of mounting debt. Like many art schools across the country, declining enrollment and financial hardships have plagued the institution for years. [ More]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Will Heinrich Sean Scully’s new “Dark Windows” paintings.Credit...Sean Scully; Elisabeth Bernstein For artists, the new pandemic reality means canceled exhibitions, day-job uncertainty, and fears of an industrywide contraction. Like everyone else, they’re trying to adjust. But those lucky enough to be working are also rethinking their practices, pivoting to new forms, media and colors to describe a troubled new world. We are checking in with some of them about what’s changing in their studios, starting with the Irish-American painter Sean Scully . With work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and London’s Tate, Mr. Scully is most famous for paintings of deceptively simple geometries, especially broad stripes. [ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Anna Somers Cocks The icon known as Mary, Salvation of the Roman People On 27 March, in a scene of great dramatic power, at dusk, under driving rain, and facing the vast emptiness of St Peter’s Square, Pope Francis blessed Rome and the world and prayed for an end to the pandemic. It was then that he said the words which have been much quoted since, “Our planet is gravely ill. Without hesitation, we have carried on, believing that we will remain healthy for ever in a world that is sick”. Against the columns behind him were two works of art, which for the purposes of this event were not works of art as we understand them, but images believed to have strong protective power. The pope paused to pray in front of both of them. Thus, what the pope is doing is praying to Christ, and to God through the intercession of Mary, as represented by the two works of art. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Robin Pogrebin Deborah Roberts, “Political Lambs in a Wolf’s World”(2018), mixed media on paper. Unusual shifts in scale and dramatic amalgams of several faces define her work. Arms hold a numbered placard, as in a police mugshot. Credit...Deborah Roberts and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Vielmetter Los Angeles Deborah Roberts could have given up long ago. With a mother who worked as a maid and a father who worked as an electrical lineman for the city of Austin, Tex., she grew up trading her drawings of cars, horses, dolls and airplanes for her classmates’ fat red pencils. Her parents did not understand her passion. “My daddy hated art and said it was never going to be nothing,” Ms. Roberts said. At age 57, Ms. Roberts is about to have her first solo museum exhibition — a big deal for any artist, but especially gratifying for one who, four years ago, was working in a shoe store to pay the bills. Ms. Roberts , who has a big personality and a bigger...

THE JERUSALEM POST By Hagay Hachoe A Giant Dream (Howard Fox) (photo credit: Courtesy) In a painting titled Ten Sefirot , Candian-Israeli painter Howard Fox painted winged angels hovering in a fantastic landscape, with structures caped with blue and gold domes and mountains. They carry gold hoops, held, for that brief moment, as the kabbalistic drawing of the Ten Sefirot. The qualities of the divine function in relation to one another and, according to mystical Jewish thought, are its nature and the hidden reality beneath the flesh of the world. It is a highly unusual depiction of the mystical concept and Fox is very much aware of it. Born in Toronto and raised in a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors, Fox had been painting and drawing cities since he was nine years old. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Hilarie M. Sheets Francie Bishop Good in her living room. On wall, from left, are her own piece, “Not Raining” (2020), and “Stadium” (2010), by Elisabeth Condon. On the coffee table are, from left, the orange pot by Jay Kvapil, figures by an unknown artist from the 1920s, and a houselike sculpture by Sally Saul. Winnie Au for The New York Times “The work that I’m drawn to collecting seems to correlate to my own work as an artist,” Francie Bishop Good said of the collection in the Upper West Side apartment where she and her husband, David Horvitz, live when they aren’t at their home base in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It’s very intuitive.” She and her husband, who have two children each from their first marriages, began collecting art together in the early 1990s. Ms. Good was largely attracted to work by women and artists of color long before that kind of focus became popular. "We had a group that came to our house once in Fort Lauderdale. We have Renée Cox’...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Incredulity" by Kelvin Burzon We are Easter people , and as we mourn the  20,614 deaths  from COVID-19 in the U.S., we also thank God. The last 40-days have been a period of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity ( VUCA ), but Jesus gave us one thing we could control through it all: Fasting . Lent teaches that everything changes, except Jesus. During these times of doubt about the art world,  vision ,  prayer ,  clarity , and generosity  moves us forward. In John 20:29 , Jesus blessed Thomas, who doubted, and that lesson makes Kelvin Burzon's "Incredulity" our art of the week.

ANCIENT ORIGINS A Bhutanese painted thangka of the Jatakas, conveys the stories of Buddha’s past lives. (Levels / Public Domain ) In Buddhism, a bodhisattva, in its most general sense, refers to a person who is on his/her way to becoming a buddha. More specifically, bodhisattvas are savior-like beings who forsake their own Buddhahood in order to help all creatures attain enlightenment. In addition, the bodhisattvas are believed to protect their devotees from all manner of harm. This concept of a bodhisattva is held especially in Mahayana Buddhism, one of the two major branches of Buddhism (the other being Theravada Buddhism). Due to their role as saviors, bodhisattvas have been highly revered in various Buddhist-dominated cultures. Countries where bodhisattvas are venerated include China, Japan, and Tibet. The list of major bodhisattvas varies depending on local tradition. What is a Bodhisattva? ‘Bodhisattva’ is a Sanskrit word that may be translated to mean ‘awakened truth’, ‘enl...

THE DIALOG Detail from Fra Angelico's "The Entombment of Christ" places us at the tomb as those who loved Christ and were loved by him prepare his body for burial. Christ's pallid body, cradled in burial cloths, is suspended off the ground between two men tenderly carrying his body toward the tomb. (CNS photo/courtesy National Gallery of Art) Fra Angelico’s “The Entombment of Christ” places us at the tomb as those who loved Christ and were loved by him prepare his body for burial. Here John stands devotedly behind her, and they support each other in their grief. Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his own tomb for Christ to be buried in, leads him into the door. Fra Angelico , (1387-1455) a Dominican friar led a simple and devout life in Florence, Italy. He was humble, a friend to the poor and when Rome offered him the seat of the archbishop of Florence, he refused the position. Painting was the way he lived out his vocation. He would never take up his brushes with...

THE NEW YORK TIMES Zoya Cherkassky’s “An Open Air Minyan” (2020), depicting men gathered for prayer with the requisite social distancing, is in a virtual exhibition at fortgansevoort.com. In quarantine at her home in Tel Aviv last month, the artist Zoya Cherkassky came across a YouTube video of a wedding ceremony held in a Jewish cemetery just outside the city during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. She learned that such “plague weddings” had evolved in the 19th century across Eastern Europe as a ritual to ward off cholera epidemics. The artist drew “Black Chuppah ” in response, a quick work on paper in ink of a sweetly somber bride and groom in black, holding hands under the Jewish wedding canopy erected amid tombstones. Every day since, Ms. Cherkassky has completed another melancholic vignette evoking pre-World War II Jewish life. [ More ]

T HE HINDU The Spirit Remains Unlocked is an online project launched on March 25th, the first day of the three week lockdown, by Gurugram-based art consultant and curator Lubna Sen. The commercial project initially had just 10 artists, but today has 30 from across the country. “Art has always been a cultural documentation of the time that it was produced. Through The Spirit Remains Unlocked we aim to create a snapshot of history through the life and work of these artists,” says Sen, who founded The Art Route, a platform that connects emerging artists with buyers. Once the lockdown lifts, Sen will exhibit the work in a gallery in Delhi. [ More ]