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ARTNEWS Christo Christo, who with his wife and partner, Jeanne-Claude, used sculpture as a means to dramatically shift people’s understanding of iconic structures and sites, has died at 84. According to a statement released by the artist’s office, Christo died on May 31 of natural causes. “Christo lived his life to the fullest, not only dreaming up what seemed impossible but realizing it,” the statement reads. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork brought people together in shared experiences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories.” [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Crucifixion" by Harmonia Rosales. Limited edition prints now available. Before COVID-19 , Black men in America were lynched and crucified . It continues today, and artists continue to tell their story. Listen to this week's " Take Your Knee Off Our Necks " by Jenifer Lewis, and the " The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed ," a choral work by Joel Thompson , where he quotes the final words of seven Black men before they were killed. The music in both is beautiful, and the impact is devastating. In solidarity with protestors of the killing of George Floyd  (May 2020, Minneapolis), " Crucifixion " by Harmonia Rosales is our art of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Nina Siegal Van Gogh’s “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” was one of two works by the artist stolen by Mr. Durham in 2002. Reuters AMSTERDAM — The televised security footage clearly showed the man smashing glass doors at the Singer Laren Museum, then walking out moments later with a painting by Vincent van Gogh under his arm. “Look at that,” Octave Durham said as he watched. “His gear is not even professional. If you’re a professional you’re fully in black. He’s got jeans and Nike sneakers on.” Mr. Durham’s exasperation is not that of some couch potato who has seen one too many crime shows. He’s a thief who 18 years ago stole not one, but two van Gogh paintings from Amsterdam’s famous Van Gogh Museum. [ More ]

THE YORK TIMES By Zachary Woolfe Jane Moss, who has guided Lincoln Center’s artistic programming for nearly 30 years, will step down in August, she announced on Friday. Ms. Moss, 67, said in an interview that the coronavirus pandemic presented the opportunity to make a decision she had been considering even before the outbreak, which has wiped out the cultural calendar for months and threatens to curtail the center’s budget and ambitions for years to come. “What this pause created was the space,” she said. “And now is the obvious time.” The center, America’s largest performing arts complex, is best known for its constituent organizations, like the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Bilal Qureshi Ramy Youssef, left, with Mahershala Ali in a scene from Season 2 of “Ramy.” Unlike with a lot of previous portrayals of American Muslims, Youssef’s character is unafraid to display his faith. Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu He’s a rudderless, sexually frustrated millennial. He’s also deeply religious. He’s Ramy, the Egyptian-American at the center of the comedian Ramy Youssef’s semi-autobiographical series, “Ramy,” returning Friday for a second season on Hulu. For fans, it’s the welcome return of a nuanced portrayal of a young New Jersey Muslim struggling with his identity — a wry blend of sacred and profane that earned Youssef a Golden Globe Award in January. But the freedom to work out one’s Muslimness on TV has only recently begun to be unburdened from the pressures to be a representative and palatable Muslim. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Robin Pogrebin A rendering shows how Sotheby’s plans to hold live auctions remotely beginning June 29. The auctioneer will be in London and bids taken from around the world. Sotheby's The Sotheby’s auctioneer, Oliver Barker, will be live, by video, in London, looking at screens showing his associates live in New York, Hong Kong and elsewhere, who will be on the phone with live bidders all over the world. But this digitally streamed live auction next month will allow Sotheby’s to proceed with its big-ticket biannual art sale that was supposed to take place in May but was delayed by the coronavirus outbreak. On Friday in a conference call, Sotheby’s executives announced that the first sale, of contemporary art, would be June 29 beginning at 6:30 p.m., immediately followed by its Impressionist and modern art evening sale. [ More ]

ARTNEWS By Claire Selvin Masks designed by Ai Weiwe: Single masks cost $50, a series of four is valued at $300, and a collection of 20 is priced at $1,500. COURTESY AI WEIWEI STUDIO Ai Weiwei , never one to shy away from getting involved in an activist cause, has turned his efforts toward supporting pandemic-related relief. In a new initiative launched as a collaboration with eBay, the artist and activist is selling limited-edition protective masks created in his studio in Berlin. All proceeds from the sales will go to Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. The mask artworks became available on Thursday and sales will continue through June 27. The cloth masks in the sale feature silk-screened images designed by Ai, including a middle finger, sunflower seeds, and feishu, a creature in Chinese mythology. [ More ]

ARTNEWS Tessa Solomon In a 1966 letter to the collectors John and Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko wrote that the chapel commission “is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for me.” Mark Rothko was known to be a perfectionist, but even by his own standards, creating the iconic abstract murals that now appear in a chapel in Houston, Texas, was a laborious process. Collectors John and Dominique de Menil had commissioned him to do the works in 1964, and according to some accounts, he dedicated a month to half an inch of canvas for the paintings for the chapel. He asserted so much control over the murals that, according to a 2018 biography of the Menils by William Middleton, his patrons never even got to preview Rothko’s work until 1967, when the painter invited them to see his paintings in progress. [ More ] 

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Glenn Kenny The artist Ursula von Rydingsvard with her work in “Into Her Own. Daniel Traub/Icarus Films This documentary portrait of the formidable sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard is, by dint of its brevity, more tantalizing than satiating. But it’s still a welcome cinematic account of her work. Her sculptures, carved or molded from cedar, are towering, surprising mammoths that seem like organic growths bursting from the ground. They intertwine the abstract with the figurative. Unlike the giant steel statements of Richard Serra, they don’t intimidate; rather, they invite close examination and even physical touch. In “Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own,” this artist, now in her mid-’70s, lean and filled with a youthful energy and concentration, says she wants the people around her art — which is mostly exhibited in public spaces — to put their mark on it. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Sophie Haigney Although the distribution is digital, it’s also a rare chance to see Mr. Ai’s work in person right now, said Alexandra Munroe, a curator at the Guggenheim who collaborated on the masks with Mr. Ai as an independent project.  One mask depicts a middle finger, stuck defiantly upward, silk-screened in black ink on a blue background. Others feature sunflower seeds, a surveillance camera or creatures from ancient Chinese mythology. All these masks are works by the artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. The assortment of masks, made of nonsurgical cloth, will be sold on eBay for Charity, from Thursday until June 27, to raise funds for humanitarian and emergency relief efforts around the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Ai said that the idea came to him late one night; he’s been working across time zones, with a team in Wuhan, on a documentary about Covid-19. “I wanted to do something,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “I didn’t want to just b...

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Catherine Porter Critics say Cree artist Kent Monkman’s controversial painting Hanky Panky depicts the sexual assault of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Postmedia News TORONTO — Many Indigenous activists in Canada consider Justin Trudeau, after more than four years as prime minister, as little better than the other white colonial leaders who have oppressed them for the past 150 years. His only Indigenous cabinet minister quit and his government approved pipelines across Indigenous territory, despite dissent and protests. Despite that, even some of Mr. Trudeau’s sharpest critics were appalled by a painting by the celebrated Canadian Cree artist, Kent Monkman. Titled “Hanky Panky,” Mr. Monkman’s painting depicts the prime minister on his hands and knees with his pants down as a crowd of Indigenous women looks on, laughing. Behind him is the artist’s alter ego, wearing knee-high stiletto boots and a long feather headdress. [ More ]

https://jamescohan.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room/4-tuan-andrew-nguyen-a-lotus-in-a-sea-of-fire/

THE CORSAIR ONLINE By Carolyn Burt The Sanctuary Exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada. (Image Courtesy of the Aga Khan Museum) On April 22, the Aga Khan Museum, located in Toronto, Canada opened its virtual doors for guests to enter “a window into worlds unknown” and experience #MuseumWithoutWalls. The museum, which opened in September 2014, is the first museum in North America dedicated to Islamic arts. It has a vast collection of both contemporary and historical art from Muslim communities around the world. Like many other museums around the globe, the Aga Khan Museum has gone online to help aid as an artistic distraction during this time. Each week the museum provides a schedule of events to take part in, including guided tours, video lectures, concerts, and Zoom-led art projects. The museum offers 3-D tours of some of its exhibitions, such as “Caravans of Gold: Fragments in Time”. [ More ]

MY MODERN MET By Kelly Richman-Abdou Filippo Lippi, “Madonna With Child and Two Angels,” ca. 1460-1465 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]) Images of the Madonna and Child—a title that typically denotes a visual representation of the Virgin Mary and her infant son, Jesus—are among painting’s most praised motifs. Originally an ancient devotional practice stemming from biblical beliefs, artistically representing these figures has become a central theme in the canon of art history. Given its longevity, it is no wonder that the tradition has evolved over time, culminating in a host of works that range from divine icons to down-to-earth portrayals. Only by observing the motif’s role throughout history is one able to fully grasp its significance—both in Christian art and beyond. [ More ]

THE HINDU By Gowri S HL Haldankar’s Woman with the Lamp recreated by Hitakshi Purohit Sixteen-year-old art student, Serena Varshini, always felt a strong connection to Frida Kahlo’s paintings. “Her paintings are a reflection of her life, and I think it’s beautiful to paint one’s reality rather than fantasy,” says Serena. So, when an opportunity to recreate a masterpiece presented itself, she coaxed her cousin to model. She decided to recreate Kahlo’s Self Portrait Dedicated to Dr Eloesser. “I joined her eyebrows to resemble that of Frida’s and put her hair up in a braided bun. I used flowers from my garden for her hair as well. I used a jute rope for the thorn necklace and smeared some red eyeshadow on her neck,” she says. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Michael Hardy Social distancing was not a problem for Brad Cox and Cala Hawk at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Saturday, as they photographed “Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland” by Paul van Somer (1576-1621). Todd Spoth for The New York Times HOUSTON — They waited patiently in line in 80-degree heat, standing on large blue stickers placed six feet apart, to enter the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — the first major American art museum to reopen since the country went into lockdown in March. The 20 or so mask-wearing visitors who queued up on Saturday morning had already waited more than two months to visit, so what were a few more minutes? As visitors filed into the air-conditioned foyer, one group at a time, thermal imaging devices checked their temperatures. A green square around the person’s head meant they were in the clear; a red square meant fever. The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the wealthiest cultural institutions in the country, with a $1.3 bill...

SLATE By Rumann Alam Sheena Wagstaff. Image courtesy of Daniel Dorsa On this week’s episode of Working, Rumaan Alam spoke with Sheena Wagstaff, who leads the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s program of modern and contemporary art. They spoke about the job of a museum curator, how a major exhibit comes into being, and why it’s important to see art in person. This partial transcript of their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. "I’m not sure I can articulate this very fully," said Wagstaff, "but there is something incredibly consoling about the fact of the object, the direct relationship one has with something that is as physical as your own body and the fact that we are now going through this period of not even being able to touch one another, where our relationship to one another is through a series of screens. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Detail of Diane Kahlo's "Alma Venesa Cardenas Ramos" (2010) purchased from Mason-Nordgauer Fine Arts Gallery in New Harmony, Indiana. Our Lady of Guadalupe icon stands in for the portrait of Ms. Ramos whose face was never photographed.  Before COVID-19 , our plans for Memorial Day week focused on a crowded Indy 500 race and packed NYC  Broadway shows. Instead, we drove to tiny, isolated New Harmony , Indiana. There, we were introduced to the work of Kentucky-based sculptor  Diane Kahlo . Second-cousin to feminist icon Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Diane uses traditional Mexican religious iconography to create memorials to honor dead girls and women murdered in Mexico. We purchased her "Alma Venesa Cardenas Ramos," and that makes Diane Kahlo, our collector's tip of the week.

THE NATIONAL POST BY Jonathon Kay Aent Monkman is seen with a piece of his artwork at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary on June 15, 2017. As some of my regular readers know, I often like having a bash at the government-subsidized amateurs who populate the field of Canadian arts and letters. (It’s not their fault: when the government pays for something, you often get too much of it.) But Kent Monkman is very, very much not in that category. He produces big, colourful epics that dramatically mash up the visual idioms of Judeo-Christian historical tradition with Indigenous characters and narratives. And Monkman’s works well enough that he can charge $175,000 a pop, which is approximately $175,000 more than your average art-school grad. [ More ]

THE GUARDIAN Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, c 1450, Giovanni Bellini (1430/35-1516) Photograph: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham. The Barber Institute’s collection, owned by the Henry Barber Trust, is housed in a gem of an art deco building on the leafy university campus. Although modest in size, the collection is of remarkable quality and particularly well-balanced, with works ranging in date from Simone Martini (1320) to Frank Auerbach (1981-82). [ Take Quiz ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Jo Lawson-Tancred Queen Mathilde of Belgium and King Philippe of Belgium visit the permanent collection of the Old Masters Museum in Brussels, part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, on 19 May 2020, as the country eases lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: Daina Le Lardic/Belga/AFP via Getty Images The rapid succession of museum closures between January and March is still a recent event but, as major museums in Asia and mainland Europe start to tentatively reopen their doors, we are now getting early glimpses of the ‘new normal’. In the UK, museums can reopen no earlier than July, in the third phase of the government’s exit plan. The Art Institute of Chicago, for example, hopes to reopen on 1 July, while the Pérez Art Museum Miami, conscious of the quality of experience it will be able to offer, is aiming for 1 September. The institutions forced to wait, and keen museum-goers, are looking on apprehensively to ga...

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Holland Cotter Rafael Leonardo Black in his apartment in Brooklyn in 2013, the year he had his first New York gallery show. He spent years creating art but, he said, “just never made the effort to sell it.” Victor J. Blue for The New York Times This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here . Rafael Leonardo Black , a self-trained artist who spent more than 40 years creating elaborate pictorial mythologies steeped in art history and popular culture, and who had his first New York gallery show at 64, died on May 15 in Brooklyn. He was 71. The cause was complications of Covid-19, said Francis M. Naumann, the art dealer who represents him. Mr. Black’s debut, in 2013 at Francis Naumann Fine Art in Manhattan, consisted of collagelike pencil drawings of historically diverse figures and scenes brought together under umbrella themes. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Crucifixion" by Harmonia Rosales, detail courtesy of artist's instagram Before COVID-19 , we felt some sense of order and harmony in the world. That's been missing for 60-days of shelter-in-place (under Zoom conditions). On Friday, Indiana lifted travel restrictions , and we headed to New Harmony, Indiana, for a Memorial Day retreat. Another person seeking harmony is Chicago-based painter,  Harmonia Rosales . Her faith in harmony, while living in a world of racial and gender injustice, is reflected in her renaissance inspired paintings. That's why new limited edition prints of "Crucifixion" make Harmonia Rosales our collector's tip of the week.  [ Purchase ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Anya Strzemien 14 ways we’re getting through these terrible times … and even finding joy As one of the deputy editors of the Styles section, it’s part of my job to scheme and create special projects like I Quit, The Office and This Gen X Mess. As I started to plan for 2020, I wondered how we could most surprise New York Times readers. This was back in January (remember January?), when things felt so difficult — we were maybe going to war with Iran, Australia was burning, a mysterious virus was starting to spread around the world and a Senate impeachment trial was underway. It all felt so joyless, so why not create the ultimate counterprogramming: joy! [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Robin Pogrebin Sign at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as it prepared to reopen to the public on Saturday. (That’s Amedeo Modigliani’s 1916 “Portrait of Léopold Zborowski,’’ bemasked.) Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times You won’t be able to use the drinking fountains, check your coat or eat in the cafe. You will have to wear a mask, submit to a temperature check and agree to leave if you show signs of illness. These are the requirements set by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, when it reopens on Saturday, the first major arts institution in the country to welcome the public back since the outbreak of the pandemic. As several states begin to reopen, their museums are carefully doing the same, with new policies and protocols in place: The San Antonio Museum of Art on May 28; the Boca Raton Museum of Art on June 3; the Wichita Art Museum on June 23; the Cleveland Museum of Art around June 30. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Robin Pogrebin and Michael Paulson Cristina Daura It’s hard enough to Zoom with your mother. Imagine being one of the more than 200 arts leaders who for the past month have been getting on the same daily Zoom call seeking comfort, counsel and connection as they try to stave off a raft of institutional failures prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet on these calls, cultural organizations that span the city — some from Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue, others from unheralded blocks in Brooklyn and the Bronx — are trading tips for accessing federal funds, strategies for streaming and thoughts about summer programming. The big fish are helping the small, as they both absorb guidance from local and federal officials who periodically join the conversation. [ More ]

THE NEW REPUBLIC By Nick Martin The Cree artist has broken into mainstream success. His newest painting shows why that may be a problem. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on all fours, his shoulders grasped by a snarling woman in dark gray chinos, his ass cheeks being spread apart by a woman in a light blue tank top, her head thrown back in mid-laugh. There’s more to Hanky Panky , the latest controversial painting from Kent Monkma n, a renowned artist and two-spirit Fisher River Cree Nation citizen.... This literal marginalization of the scene’s Indigenous women, as well as the painting’s notion that sexual violence should be repaid with sexual violence, broadly defines the critiques voiced by art historian Rowan Red Sky and poet Jaye Simpson and others since Hanky Panky’s online release last week. Anticipating the backlash, Monkman included a content warning when he unveiled the work on Instagram. [ More ]

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE By Steve Johnson James Rondeau on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016 at the Art Institute of Chicago.(Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) For big cultural institutions closed by coronavirus, reopening is in the air. The Morton Arboretum in Chicago’s western suburbs Tuesday announced it will start welcoming visitors again June 1. The Cleveland Museum of Art that same day said it will reopen June 30, reportedly the first major American art museum to do so. With state and city officials recently outlining the rules for reopening in five separate phases, Chicago museums have a clearer view of what it might take for them to come back into public life. The arboretum, with an open-air, 1,700-acre campus, clearly has an advantage in allowing social distancing. But big museums, the thinking is, should be able to unlock their doors earlier than, say, theaters or music clubs because, they, too have open space — plus a clientele that can generally be trusted to follow directions. [ ...

UPSCALE LIVING The Sistine Chapel is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the pope, in Vatican City. Due to the spread of COVID-19, museums across the world are offering virtual tours of historical timepieces, from the comfort of your couch, or desk chair, or whoever else you are safely staying and social distancing. For those sick of binging a new favorite show, taking the same walk around your neighborhood, or zooming with friends, getting a little culture and education while confined is a great relief. Since you can’t go to the museum, these top museums – along with over 2500 museums and galleries who teamed up with Google Arts & Culture , according to Fast Company – around the world are bringing their expansive and impressive galleries to you. [ More ]

HYPERALLERGIC By Bansie Vasvani Angelina Pwerle, “Bush Plum,” detail Despite the million-dollar auction price for works by Aboriginal Australian artists in 2007, the controversy about whether or not Australian Aboriginal art should be included in the Western canon hasn’t been entirely resolved. But the new exhibition Marking the Infinite , comprised of several commissioned works by nine Aboriginal women artists from the Denis and Debra Scholl collection at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, should put these conundrums to rest. Marking the Infinite gives voice and equal footing to Aboriginal artists as artists the world over. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Steven Kurutz Another detail from “Transitions.”Credit...Rob Wilson Louis Delsarte, a noted artist who celebrated African-American history and culture through dreamlike paintings, drawings, prints and, above all, large-scale public murals, died on May 2 in Atlanta. He was 75. His wife, Jea Delsarte, confirmed the death, saying he had had a heart condition. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Mr. Delsarte created monumental murals throughout New York City. Among his best-known pieces is a 20-foot-long mosaic, “Transitions,” installed in 2001 inside the Church Avenue subway station in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Let the Children Come Unto Me  by Daniel Bonnell In today’s world we are all intricately connected and interdependent; an inescapable reality highlighted by the current spread and impact of the Coronavirus around the globe. What happens in one part of the world affects others far away. ​Humanity has become besieged by many ailments that continue to drag us down; injustices, hatred, exploitation, inequality, conflict and abuse. The deadline for submissions was 16 May 2020. A panel of judges will select 25 artworks for exhibition, with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Prizes awarded, plus an Honorable Mention. The exhibition will be showcased here on the CARAVAN website 15 June - 18 August, 2020. CARAVAN is recognized as a global leader in using the arts to build sustainable peace around the world.[ More ]

THE GUARDIAN "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorah" (1852) by John Martin  Which Biblical scene is this? The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle sets today’s quiz, which enables you to look at the collections of galleries across the UK closed due to Covid-19 while answering a few fiendishly difficult questions This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK, the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, home to an impressive collection of art and sculpture. Its exhibition programme brings the biggest names in historic, modern and contemporary art to the the north-east [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Gina Kolata A Sicilian fresco from 1445. In the previous century, the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe’s population. Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how? According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes. “When people ask, ‘When will this end?,’ they are asking about the social ending,” said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. The challenge, Dr. Brandt said, is that there will be no sudden victory. Trying to define the end of the epidemic “will be a long and difficult process.”[ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton “Distanced Figures 3” by George Condo was a perfect match for an art fair forced online by the coronavirus.  George Condo/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Hauser & Wirth Before COVID-19 , we gathered in church on Sundays ( a lot of us did ), and we gathered at art fairs too, like Frieze New York , Chicago's Expo, or our local Broad Ripple Art Fair. We'd spend hours inside talking to both dealers and artists, and we'd buy art . Both fairs in  Chicago and  Indianapolis are now postponed until 2021, but this week's virtual Frieze art fair was a surprising success . George Condo's fractured figurative   painting "Distanced Figures 3" sold at Frieze for $2 million, and that's why masked art  continues to be our collector's tip of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Aatish TaseeR A 19th-century Burmese illustration on parchment paper depicting the Buddha seated in padmasana, or lotus position. For the first six centuries after his death, the Buddha was never depicted in human form. He was only ever represented aniconically by a sacred synecdoche — his footprints, for example; or a parasol. How did the image of the Buddha enter the world of men? “In the omission of the figure of the Buddha,” writes Coomaraswamy, “the Early Buddhist art is truly Buddhist: For the rest, it is an art about Buddhism, rather than Buddhist art.” It begins with the Kushans, descendants of pastoral nomads who emerged like a wind out of the Eastern steppe around the second century B.C. They were heirs to a dazzling hybridity, which included the first ever confluence of Greece, China, Persia and India. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Will Heinrich An artwork in progress by Michael Cloud, in his studio in Chicago.Credit...Mike Cloud As the lockdown stretches into another month, we’ve checked in on artists to ask how quarantining is affecting their studio practice. For some, the present emergency has spurred unlikely new ways of working. For others, it’s grinding work to a halt, whether for logistical reasons or just for emotional ones. Mike Cloud, an abstract painter with a Yale M.F.A. who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, falls somewhere in the middle. Mr. Cloud is known for applying bold colors to unusually shaped canvases, as well as for discreetly provocative gestures, like his “Hanging” paintings, a series of triangular constructions draped with small nooses. He spoke to me by FaceTime from the Chicago home he shares with his wife, the artist Nyeema Morgan, and their two children. [ More ]

THE ATLANTIC By William Deresiewicz “Art” became a unitary concept, incorporating music, theater, and literature as well as the visual arts, but also, in a sense, distinct from each, a kind of higher essence available for philosophical speculation and cultural veneration. Pronounce the word artist , to conjure up the image of a solitary genius. A sacred aura still attaches to the word, a sense of one in contact with the numinous. Vision, inspiration, mysterious gifts as from above: such are some of the associations that continue to adorn the word. Art rose to its zenith of spiritual prestige, and the artist rose along with it. We were the new superpower; we wanted to be a cultural superpower as well. We founded museums, opera houses, ballet companies, all in unprecedented numbers: the so-called culture boom. Arts councils, funding bodies, educational programs, residencies, magazines, awards—an entire bureaucratic apparatus. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Naudline Pierre, The Thrill of Affection (2018). Photo courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian. Before COVID-19 , we'd marked Mother's Day as the 2009 death anniversary of Ernest's father and namesake. This year, we are celebrating it as an embrace of the women his father most loved: his wives, his daughters, and his mother. The paintings of new artist Naudline Pierre reflect that embrace. Through her unique pallet and androgynous figures, she reinterprets biblical narratives, as moments of loss filled with affection. While we wait for her Spring show at MoMA to be rescheduled , Naudline Pierre is our collector's tip of the week.

ARTSY By Casey Lesser Portrait of Lou and Sandy Grotta outside their Richard Meier home. Photo by Tom Grotta. Courtesy of browngrotta arts. Atop a hill in Morris County, New Jersey, there’s a bright-white modernist house that’s no ordinary living space. The Richard Meier–designed, sundial-shaped structure is a jewel box of ceramics, tapestries, basketry, wood carvings, and other handmade gems. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, exemplary works by esteemed artists and designers abound—from Viola Frey and Peter Voulkos to Françoise Grossen, Sheila Hicks, and Lenore Tawney. This the home of Lou and Sandy Grotta, who have been amassing a collection of modern craft masterworks for over six decades. In the evenings, after Sandy goes to bed, Lou tends to his objects. He’s always on the lookout for new ways to do justice to his wares.[ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Ben Hubbard The actors Souad Ali, left, and Hayat al-Fahad, in a scene from “Um Haroun,” a popular Arabic TV drama airing over Ramadan. Al Fahad Establishment, via Reuters BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a mud-walled village in the Persian Gulf, a Christian woman sheds tears of love for a Muslim merchant. But he is stuck in a miserable marriage to a woman who longs for another Muslim man. But she can’t have him, because he is crazy about the local rabbi’s daughter. These tangles of interreligious intrigue unspool in a new blockbuster television series that has set off heated debates across the Arab world about the region’s historical relationships with Jewish communities and the shifting stances of some of its current leaders toward Israel. The show’s creators and distributors insist it has no relation to contemporary Arab politics. [ More ]

ARTNEWS By Alex Greenberger A recent Jan van Eyck survey in Belgium drew large crowds until it was unexpectedly closed early. The influence of Northern Renaissance artist Jan van Eyck has been so outsized, it is almost impossible to discuss oil painting without considering his impact. “Talking about Van Eyck is talking about the most powerful painter in the western hemisphere,” the painter Luc Tuymans once told Even magazine. “It is not Leonardo da Vinci. It is nobody else but van Eyck.” Such a pronouncement may seem strange. The 15th-century painter died in 1441, likely in his early 50s, and he left behind just over 20 known oil paintings. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Constant Méheut Mourners throw dirt into the grave of an 87-year-old man originally from Algeria who died of Covid-19 and did not have any relatives in France. They were following the traditional Islamic burial practices at a cemetery in Thiais, a Paris suburb. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times PARIS — The middle-aged men, some wearing masks and gloves, leaned over a freshly excavated grave and gingerly slid a coffin into it. Arching their backs and bending their knees, they were burying a 60-year-old French-Moroccan woman in the Muslim section of a cemetery in a town north of Paris. But it was more than 1,800 miles from where the woman had wanted to be laid to rest: Ifrane Atlas-Saghir, her home village in Morocco. The pandemic that has upended much of the world has halted the tradition of many French Muslim immigrant families of repatriating bodies to their country of origin. [ More ]

ARTSY By Daria Harper John Edmonds, Tête de Femme, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Company, New York. For artist John Edmonds, the way that we choose to present ourselves when we step into the world each day speaks volumes. Through his photo-based practice, he sets out to capture such multitudes. “It’s an epic gesture, I think, to try to synthesize all of these aspects of our being into a picture plane,” Edmonds said in a recent interview. He often photographs Black queer men, including friends, members of his creative community, loose acquaintances, and complete strangers. He portrays them in opulent scenes that explore desire, acceptance, and community, while drawing on references like studio portraiture of the Harlem Renaissance era, Surrealist images by Man Ray, and religious paintings. [ More ] 

BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY By Tom Seymour From his series "Soldiers," and comprising 22 staged photographs, the series consciously subverts the stereotype of the masculine Israeli man invoked in his mother’s songs. Growing up in the febrile atmosphere of manliness following Six-Day War, the Israeli photographer never felt he quite fitted in. Until he joined the IDF, embraced his sexuality and went to art college. This article was originally published in issue #7892 of British Journal of Photography. As a free gift to our community during the coronavirus lockdown, we are offering it as a free digital edition here. When he was a child, Adi Nes’ mother would sing songs that she had composed just for him. He remembers thinking how markedly idealised and heroic these songs were, evoking the early settlers who had fought to found Israel – strong, determined, powerful men. “I saw myself as a queer, weak, Mizrahi boy from the periphery, different from everyone else.” [ M...

ARTNEWS By Claire Selvin Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490-1500, oil on oak panel. The life and work of the Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, to whom 20 paintings have been definitively attributed, have long captivated audiences around the world. Considered one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance, Bosch is known for creating restlessly imaginative works rich in religious symbolism, allegory, and fantastical elements depicted in bustling scenes across expansive compositions. If his crowded proto-Surrealist paintings have been acclaimed by many, his early life and the origins of his work are still less widely known. [M ore ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES May 5, 2020 By Jenny Gross The $500,000 fund comes a year after black students said they had been subjected to racist remarks by employees and patrons at the Museum of Fine Arts. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston said Tuesday,  May 5, that it would establish a $500,000 fund devoted to diversity initiatives, a move that comes a year after a group of black middle school students said they had been subjected to racist comments while on a field trip there. The museum also said that as part of an agreement with the state, it would do more to engage with and support local communities, artists and young people of color, according to Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general. “Our cultural institutions play an important role in fostering and providing an inclusive environment for communities and people of all backgrounds,” Ms. Healey said. [ More ]

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Jillian Steinhauer “Jonathan” (2014). Lit by a nearby lamp, his body glows with patches of red, green and yellow. Jordan Casteel and Casey Kaplan, New York Jordan Casteel’s exhibition “Within Reach” is currently hanging on the second floor of the temporarily shuttered New Museum. The situation is somewhat paradoxical, given that the show’s most prominent theme is closeness — something that’s been severely disrupted by the coronavirus crisis. Yet that also makes it a good time to look at Ms. Casteel’s work however we can — in a digital walk-through and in the catalog — and think about the vision of community it offers. This is the artist’s first solo museum show in New York and it includes works from her noted series “Visible Man” (2013-14) and “Nights in Harlem” (2017). [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "Untitled" by Mous Lamrabat Before COVID-19 , we were enjoying a relaxing week in Key West at  Alexander's Guesthouse . We shared cabs, boat rides, breakfast tables, and a church pew with no social distancing. That final evening, February 24, we stood in a crowded airport watching the terrifying TV news  from China. Sixty-seven days later, our state announced July 4 as our return to normal. It's this idea of "normal" that attracted us to Mous Lamrabat's online exhibition opening on May 6. Mous Lamrabat's photographs ( $3K-8K ) are our collector's tip of the week.

CHURCH TIMES By Nicholas Cranfield Seeing God in Art: The Christian faith in 30 Images by Richard Harries This is a wonderfully enviable book. I wished that I had been commissioned to write it, as it made me realise just how leaden my own attempts are in trying to link the Revealed in art to the Lived in Christ. Challenged to choose just 30 images to tell the story, and to write no more than 900 words about each, Lord Harries has produced a profoundly theological and readable account of the Christian faith (Faith, 3 April). It is shot through with his note-perfect observations that made his contributions to Thought for the Day so vivid; Paul of Tarsus, characterised as a jihadist, “was not the kind of person you would invite in for a meal”. Indeed not; neither in Barnes nor in Blackheath, I heard myself say. [ More ]