Disney-Britton

HYPEBEAST   By Ross Dwyer "Guernica" (2016) CINCINNATI---American artist Hank Willis Thomas is set to hold a mid-career survey at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Spotlighting racial justice, Willis Thomas’s powerful sculptures and photographs tap familiar themes like sports to examine America’s current cultural climate in a impactful-yet-digestible fashion. Spanning over 30 works, the assemblage’s standouts include 2016’s Guernica, a mixed media piece that combines memorable NBA jerseys from Dennis Rodman to Magic Johnson and Penny Hank Willis Thomas’s mid-career survey will be on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum from September 4 to November 8. Due to COVID-19 coronavirus related concerns, free tickets must be secured in advance. [ More ] 

APOLLO MAGAZINE  Among the 40 manuscripts in this display are works spanning the regions of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and China, covering subjects as diverse as science, religion, law, magic and philosophy. They include one of the first Jewish scientific works written in the Hebrew language, one of the few surviving copies of the Babylonian Talmud, and the First Gaster Bible, which dates to the 10th century. Together, these rarely seen and beautifully illustrated manuscripts shine a light on the exchange of knowledge between Jewish communities across the world, from the Middle Ages to modernity. Find out more from the British Library’s website. [ More ] 

YONHAP NEWS AGENCY Treasure No. 285, Gilt-Bronze Standing Bodhisattva (left), and Treasure No. 284, Gilt-Bronze Standing Buddha (National Museum of Korea) SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Yonhap) -- The National Museum of Korea (NMK) has purchased two rare ancient Buddhist statues that were recently put up for sale in the auction market but failed to attract bidders, according to the museum on Monday. The state-run museum has recently purchased two statues -- the Gilt-bronze Standing Buddha and the Gilt-bronze Standing Bodhisattva -- from the Kansong Art Museum that were put up for sale at an auction in late May but failed to attract bidders, NMK said in a statement. The Gilt-bronze Standing Buddha, dating back to the middle of the seventh century during the period of the United Silla, was designated as South Korea's Treasure No. 284 in 1963. [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Ernest Disney-Britton on our patio in Indianapolis with the newly installed plants with Max Whalen's "Kouros." This weekend, we began turning our empty patio into a sculpture garden . Inspired by our art-filled interior (45 works on display), we moved Max Whalen's "Kouros" from indoors to be our patio centerpiece. A Kouros is a nude statue of a youth used as a dedication to the Greek gods. What's next? Maybe sculptures by Quincy Owens (light) and Adam Russell (ceramics)? Shouldn't your outdoors reflect your indoor spirit? For more sculpture ideas, visit Max Whalen's website . Creating your own private sculpture garden during COVID-19 is our tip of the week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Dionne Searcey The artist Kehinde Wiley, who has been stationed in Dakar since February, said that watching what has been happening in America from across the Atlantic has “felt like a bit of a freak show.” Abdoulaye N'dao for The New York Times When Covid-19 started spreading across the globe in late winter and some nations began sealing their borders, the American artist Kehinde Wiley was abroad and quickly had to decide where he wanted to ride out the coming viral storm. He chose Dakar, Senegal, site of his spacious, magnificently windswept Black Rock studio complex on the sea. For the past year, the West African studio has been home to a revolving cast of painters, photographers, authors and others who were selected in Mr. Wiley’s first round of his residency program, designed to offer artists the time and space to pursue their craft. Watching from across the Atlantic as America roils, deaths from the coronavirus mount, protests swell over police killi...

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Jason Fargo Manet’s “Dead Christ With Angels” (1864), in which Jesus is seen hovering between life and death. Our critic calls it “one of the most staggering paintings in the whole museum.”  Edouard Manet, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art Talk about a spoiled birthday. For years leading up to its 150th anniversary the Metropolitan Museum of Art had been planning a swell of celebratory programming: an overhaul of its British Galleries, debuts of major gifts of photography and drawing, new cross-cultural displays, an international symposium on collecting, a Great Hall photo op with the mayor and a big cake. The Met in 2020 has the potential to be an exemplar of this relational ethics, and to place the Mangaaka statue, the Michelangelo drawing, the Marilyn Monroe photograph within a web of lived relations — where all of us, at all times, from all places, find our reflections in the art of all peoples. It is the only metropolitanism worth the name. [ More...

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Edwin Heathcote A detail of George Mayer-Marton’s mosaic and fresco before the latter was painted over. © The Estate of George Mayer-Marton On the wall of a shabby-looking church in suburban Manchester, there is – for the moment, at least – a mosaic of the Crucifixion executed in a Byzantine style. Christ hangs on the cross against the backdrop of a shimmering golden mandorla. Today, only this central element of the mural completed in 1955 by the Hungarian-Jewish émigré George Mayer-Marton is visible. Mayer-Marton’s epic work is found in the small Church of the Holy Rosary in Oldham, built in the 1950s, and now – with its congregation collapsed and no priests to minister to it – closed. A campaign is running with the support of Save Britain’s Heritage to have the mural listed, in an attempt to protect it from the threats of vandalism, theft or redevelopment of the unused church. [ More ] 

APOLLO MAGAZINE The Generosity (2010), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Tate. © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Looking a little ahead, Toyin Ojih Odutola’s first show in the UK is an exciting prospect. For this commission, the Nigerian-American artist has created a series of 40 drawings, which tell the tale of an imagined prehistoric civilisation, ruled by women, set in an uncanny landscape inspired by the rock formations of the central Nigerian plateau. Ojih Odutola is an artist who thinks deeply about both mark-making and myth-making – how her chosen mediums of pastel, charcoal and pencil can be called upon to construct fictive realities that reveal hidden truths. Spanning the 90-metre sweep of the Curve Gallery , this new cycle promises exactly the kind of immersion we’ve been missing. [ More ] 

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE By Peggy Fletcher Stack (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The LDS Church plans to remove three original paintings by LDS artist Minerva Teichert from an east Salt Lake City chapel, including “Shepherds of Bethlehem,” left, and “Three Women Encountering an Angel at the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea,” which has some local members concerned. When Tim Teichert entered the chapel earlier this month in his Cokeville Latter-day Saint meetinghouse, which had been closed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, to his horror, he spied empty spaces on the wall where two large paintings by his grandmother had hung. Famed artist Minerva Teichert, who lived most of her married life in the tiny Wyoming town, had hung two of her original works — “Cast Your Net to the Other Side” and “Handcart Pioneers” — there herself in the 1960s, even pasting them to the wall. In an instant, the grandson knew who had removed them: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ own H...

LUXURY TRAVEL MAGAZINE   By Magdalena Munao Detail of original work "St Hustle" 52"w X 60"h oils, charcoal, aerosol, on linens After his many years of living a rambunctious life of chaos, today, for contemporary artist Louis Carreon, maintaining a constant sense of individual evolution is imperative. But today, Carreon faces a new challenge ahead as he departs from his usual medium of painting and transitions into sculpting with his very first sculpture titled “David Reincarnated.” I “To me, exploring the value of redemption is everything,” Carreon says. “Most human beings feel bad when they do something bad and that alone in itself shows you that there’s something bigger than us or else we wouldn’t care.” To learn more about Louis Carreon, visit his website or follow him on Instagram. [ More ] 

Bill Staubi's collection of religious artifacts grew so large he eventually removed the bathroom door to make more space. (Francis Ferland/CBC) For Bill Staubi, it all started innocently enough with a statue of Jesus and another of St. Theresa, given unto him surreptitiously by a generous antiques dealer. From there, the collection of religious icons and artifacts in the spare bathroom of Staubi's Centretown apartment grew until it covered the walls, counter and shelves, and even filled the sink. Eventually, he removed the door, and with it any lingering pretence of privacy. 'The Grotto,' as it became known, was given its own Facebook page, and soon attracted a fervent following. So for a decade I welcomed people into my home to see this wacky art installation that I had in my bathroom," Staubi said. [ More ] 

APOLLO MAGAZINE   Mosaic of the Enthroned Christ and the Donor, Theodore Metochites above the entrance to the naos of the Kariye (Chora) Museum, Istanbul. Photo: Brad Hostetler (Creative Commons via Flickr) President Erdogan of Turkey issued a decree to allow the Kariye (Chora) Museum to be used as a mosque. The structure, originally the Church of Christ in the Chora Monastery, is decorated with frescoes that are considered masterpieces of Byzantine art. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the church was converted into a mosque; in 1945, it was declared a national monument. The move follows the ruling in November 2019 by the country’s top administrative court that the use of the building as a museum was unlawful on the grounds that it violates the Ottoman decree dedicating it to Muslim worship. The latest decree in turn follows one issued last month transferring the Hagia Sophia to the Religious Affairs Directorate and allowing it to be used as a mosque. [ More ]

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Gregory Disney-Britton holds a new Marsha Bailey's "The Temple" while standing in front of the Harmonist Labyrinth in New Harmony, Indiana. Simple pleasures are the utopian moments we have right now, but what about memorializing them with art? For Ernest's birthday , we headed to New Harmony, IN , an 800-person historic town with five art galleries, 12 works of public art, and 25 original buildings. Founded in 1814 by the religious group called Harmonists, the town designed to be a utopia. Yesterday, we purchased a watercolor by local artist Marsha Bailey that captures the iconic Harmonist Labyrinth for meditation. Memorializing simple pleasures makes New Harmony artists our tip of the week.

APOLLO MAGAZINE   By XXXX Jan Six XI in front of Rembrandt’s ‘Portrait of a Young Gentleman’ (1635) in ‘My Rembrandt’. Courtesy Dogwoof The central figure in Oeke Hoogendijk’s new documentary My Rembrandt is silent and his screen time is minimal. There’s someone who might be him in the background of a painting, but as no one’s sure who painted it, it might not be him at all. This silence doesn’t matter though; the film isn’t about Rembrandt. Rather his work is the McGuffin uniting the owners and would-be owners of Rembrandts who are the subjects of this engaging film. Although Jan Six’s quest is at the heart of the documentary, other owners of Rembrandts offer various insights into a club Six may be about to belong to. My Rembrandt is streaming and in cinemas from 14 August [ More ]

DAILY SABAH   Onur Hastürk The Lovebird And The Woman, 2020 Marbled paper cut and pasted on passe-partout 100 x 150cm The Anna Laudel gallery in Germany features the Turkish artist's exhibit 'Assimilation,' which also recognizes inspirational pioneers Henri Matisse and Andy Warho. Anna Laudel's Istanbul location on the old finance street of the late Ottoman Empire in Karaköy is a prominent gallery that provides a contemporary exhibition platform for the works of both Turkish and international artists. Aiming to expand its reach, the group opened its second venue in Germany’s ​Dusseldorf ​in 2019. The German venue, since July 30, has been presenting “Assimilation,” a feature of Turkish artist Onur Hastürk. The exhibition marks the largest display of Hastürk’s works to date and will be on display through Oct. 31. Hastürk is known mostly for his work combining the style of Islamic painting with contemporary art. [ More ] 

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Thomas Rogers The “art temple” of the Kunststätte Bossard, a museum in the former home of the Swiss artist Johann Bossard and his wife, Jutta. Gordon Welters for The New York Times JESTEBURG, Germany — In 1911, the Swiss artist Johann Bossard came across an empty property in the grasslands near this small town south of Hamburg. Since 1997, the site has been a museum known as the Kunststätte Bossard, and an off-the-beaten-path destination for fans of expressionist art and architecture. But in 2017, Alexandra Eicks, an employee on the site, made a discovery that threw the project in a more sinister light. Ms. Eicks was preparing for a children’s art class when she noticed a geometric shape on the studio’s mosaic floor that nobody at the museum had seen before: a swastika. Because the tiles had been installed after the Nazis’ rise to power, it raised the possibility that the Bossards held more troubling views than had previously been known. [ More ]

LION'S ROAR   By Andrea Miller “Amaterasu” Thangka Painting Amaterasu is the principal goddess of the Shinto religion. “When I started to paint thangkas, this was the most important goddess in my mind,” says Mayumi Oda, “so she was the first goddess that I painted.” When she was a child growing up, Mayumi Oda loved visiting an ancient shrine in Kamakura. Located in a cave, it was dedicated to the Hindu/Buddhist goddess Sarasvati, known in Japan as Benzaiten. Because Benzaiten is a goddess of wealth, people would wash their wallets and purses in the spring running through the cave, and they’d leave offerings of eggs for the white snakes associated with her. One day, the young Oda encountered a guardian of the shrine, a seer. With one skillful stroke he was painting a serpent, vibrating the brush to create scales. “Young girl,” he said, “you are going to be a successful painter.” Mayumi Oda , now aged seventy-nine, is known as the Matisse of Japan. [ More ] 

LEO WEEKLY   By Jo Anne Triplett  The Last Supper’ by Andy Warhol. 1986. Screen print and colored graphic art paper collage on HMP paper. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.1.2126. LOUISVILLE -- Of all the things commonly known about Andy Warhol — former commercial artist, compulsive collector, wig wearer — I have to admit I didn’t know he was deeply religious. Turns out he was a lifelong Catholic. The Speed Art Museum is reopening after its COVID-19 shut-down with “ Andy Warhol: Revelation ,” a revealing exhibition that’s the first of its kind to examine Warhol’s art through his faith. The show was organized by José Carlos Diaz, chief curator at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and features over 150 objects from its permanent collection. Warhol (1928-87) grew up in a devout Byzantine Catholic family. His relationship with the church turned awkward as he grew older and realized h...

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Brin Boucher The central design of an AIDS quilt panel friends made to honor the memory of Tom Rauffenbart was inspired by a 1989 painting by David Wojnarowicz, his partner. In it, Mr. Rauffenbart’s silhouette encompasses a galaxy.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times Since the fall of 2019, six women, some from the art world, others retired social workers, had labored on two AIDS quilts devoted to the memories of the artist David Wojnarowicz and his partner, Tom Rauffenbart. The women converged from all over New York City on the neighborhood of Washington Heights, at the home of Anita Vitale, who had met Mr. Rauffenbart, a fellow social worker, in the 1980s. Then, in mid-March, in what you might call a sad cosmic coincidence, their work was interrupted by the arrival on the scene of another pandemic. [ More ] 

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Mya Phillips Layne’s character, Nile, goes from the U.S. military to the immortals’ army. Credit...Aimee Spinks/Netflix, via Associated Press In different ways and to varying degrees of success, “Watchmen” and “The Old Guard” know that these characters have a much more nuanced understanding of justice. Traditionally, superheroes fit a predictable mold: white males who stand as bastions of justice despite their vigilante status. In the riveting recent Netflix film “The Old Guard,” and the masterly Emmy-nominated HBO series “Watchmen,” Black women are the new kinds of heroes, not only breaking this mold but also allowing for a radical shift in storytelling.[ More ] 

THE NEW YORK TIMES   By Holland Cotter On the memorial’s outward-facing wall, the eyes of Isabella Gibbons, an enslaved woman at the University of Virginia, make a ghostly appearance in the stone, engraved by the artist Eto Otitigbe.  Sanjay Suchak for The New York Times CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In 2016, the school, through its President’s Commission on Slavery and the University, commissioned the present Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, with the Boston-based Höweler + Yoon Architecture (Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon) designing, in collaboration with Mabel O. Wilson, a professor of architecture at Columbia University; Gregg Bleam Landscape Architect; Frank Dukes, a community facilitator and professor of architecture at the University of Virginia; and Mr. Otitigbe. If, from afar, the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers doesn’t announce its theme and purpose, even looks somewhat impersonal and unresolved, that’s all right. With its amphitheater shape, stagelike plot of grass, and soon-evid...

APOLLO MAGAZINE  By Kathryn Murphy Noli Me Tangere (detail; c. 1514), Titian Photo: © National Gallery, London The challenge facing artists, then, is how to depict Mary’s longing for touch, and its repulse, kindly. How to signal love in an injunction not to touch, how to affirm bonds that cannot be ratified with a reach across the gap? Titian, as Nancy suggests, manages this beautifully. Christ gathers his garment out of Mary’s reach, but inclines his body and his gaze over her, withdrawing and protecting simultaneously. He softens the scene’s awkwardness by making of the two figures a dyad, a triangular compositional whole, which gathers up the internal dynamics of attention, yearning, separation, and care into a single arrangement. [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Ernest Disney-Britton at home in his Indianapolis master-bath with Kehinde Wiley's "Matar MBaye II" Plate (2014) by Artwear Editions, and detail of Hank Wills Thomas Plate (2007) by Artadia limited edition. Birthday month! Ernest. Our three moms. One sister. One niece and our dog are all born in August! As we celebrate, we decided to inject some Kehinde Wiley  into the mix. His oil paintings sell for the price of our home, but we still wanted one, and these functional reproductions were perfect. For Ernest's mom, the beach lover, we bought Wiley's "The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia" beach towel for $110 ( artist's website ), and last year we purchased his "Matar Mbaye II" dinner plate for $99 ( Artware Editions ). Bringing Kehinde Wiley home affordably is our tip this week.

APOLLO MAGAZINE   By Niru Rutman Niru Ratnam photographed in his new gallery. Photo: Damian Griffiths I had no intention of being brave, courageous, or ‘the intrepid Niru Ratnam’ – as I was described in a significant piece of press on the gallery. I see myself as many things – a centrist dad, highly opinionated with a poor sense of boundaries, for instance – but intrepid isn’t one of them. This approach certainly had no place in the business plan that I put together carefully last year. Instead I had outlined my idea of a small commercial gallery that would embrace a minority-majority perspective and be contextualised by the issues I had written about and made exhibitions around over the last 20 years. My opening show was planned for April with three artists – Kobby Adi, Lydia Blakeley, and Jala Wahid – and I had a schedule for exhibitions through the rest of the year. [ More ] 

MY MODERN MET By Margherita Cole  Plautilla Nelli, Detail of “The Last Supper,” c. 1560s (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]) It's no secret that the Italian Renaissance is one of the most influential movements in Western art history. We think of this time as being dominated by mostly male artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, but there were a few famous women painters who left their mark. Among them was Sister Plautilla Nelli (c. 1524-1588), the first woman to render The Last Supper . Nearly a third of recorded women artists in Renaissance Italy were Dominican nuns. Sister Plautilla's convent, Santa Caterina, was where she taught herself to paint in the style of other religious artists like Fra Bartolomeo. Her talent and passion for image-making lead her to become the head of an artistic workshop within her convent. [ More ] 

ARTDAILY Takashi Murakami, I stare into your eye, 2020. Ø : 150 cm | 59 1/16 inch. Acrylic on canvas ©2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Perrotin. SEOUL.- Perrotin Seoul is presenting Healing , an exhibition of works –old and new– by Kaikai Kiki artists Takashi Murakami, Mr., MADSAKI, TENGAone, Kasing Lung, Aya Takano, Chiho Aoshima, Emi Kuraya, ob, Otani Workshop, Yuji Ueda and Shin Murata. The exhibition explores the multifaceted and eccentric universe that is Takashi Murakami’s Superflat and the far-reaching and deep influence of Japanese ceramic arts in the context of Bubblewrap 1. Where in the West art is predicated on the differences between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture, ‘original’ and ‘derivative,’ ‘art’ and ‘commodity,’ Superflat establishes itself as an independent lineage of Japanese contemporary art that roots itself in anime and manga. [ More ]  

HYPERALLERGIC By Sarah Rose Sharp An illuminated Timurid copy of the Qur’an, believed to have been produced in Northern India, at the the Walters Art Museum. This Qur’an is separate from the copy that was sold at Christie’s on June 25. (via Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts/Flickr) When rare book experts launch invective against each other, would you call that a book-burn? Annotations were flying this June, as scholars and bibliophiles engaged in civilized debate over the provenance of an extremely rare Qur’an slated for sale at Christie’s on June 25. The work, which was estimated to rake inbetween £600,000 and £900,000 (~$780,000-$1.2 million) subsequently sold for £7,016,250 (~$8.8 million). Aside from the beauty of the 15th-century Timurid Qur’an is the rarity of an edition copied on Ming Dynasty gold-painted colored paper — there are only four other similar Qur’ans written on Chinese paper. [ More ] 

CHRISTIANITY TODAY  By Andrew Walker Image: Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Europeana / Unsplash When I survey American evangelicalism, an issue plaguing our public engagement is the implied notion that Christian concerns over what is just and moral are inherently sectarian. In other words, our concerns for the world are only “Christian concerns” and not concerns about the world more broadly. Relatedly, what Christians consider as imperatives for engagement are often mediated through the politically popular. For example, there is no shortage of Christian enthusiasm to marshal our resources to combat sex trafficking. But the same quest for justice animating our excitement in one arena demands equal attention in others if we are to be consistent. Christian engagement cannot stand, or fall, based on what is popular. [ More ]

APOLLO MAGAZINE  By Linda Wolk-Simon The Transfiguration (1518–20), Raphael. Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City. Photo: Ian Dagnall Computing/Alamy Stock Photo Raphael died shortly after 10pm on 6 April 1520 – Good Friday – at the age of 37. Seizing on the anagogical significance of the date, one of the many stricken observers reporting on his death from the papal court remarked, with some chronological licence, that just as at Christ’s Crucifixion, the heavens willed a sign of profound grief, causing the walls of the Vatican palace to rupture. There is no doubt that Raphael was indeed genial, polite, sociable, and genuinely fond of and beloved by his many friends and associates. At the same time, he was ambitious, competitive, conspiratorial, and occasionally ruthless in his single-minded climb to the top – less attractive aspects of his character that have recently begun to come into focus. [ More ]

  ARTDAILY Lot 27 Northern Wei Dynasty, A Very Rare Stone Bodhisattva with Crossed Ankles. NEW YORK, NY.- Gianguan Auctions, known for two decades for offering Chinese religious art at accessible estimates, is poised to present an outstanding collection of devotional art, bronze, jade and ceramic statues in its Saturday, August 29 sale. With devotional art an integral part of the Chinese ethic and highly popular among western practitioners of Buddhism and yoga, Lot 27 is an exceptional offering. A Rare Northern Wei Dynasty seated Bodhisattva, with Crossed Ankles. The face with elongated eyes and serene expression, wearing a long flowing robe cascading over the pedestal-tiered base, leaving the feet exposed and crossed at the ankles, backed by a mandorla incorporating an ovoid aureole carved with lotus petals, the base flanked by two ferocious lions. ​[ More ]

THE ART NEWSPAPER By Gabriella Angeleti  A Shaker bench The Shaker Museum The Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, devoted to the culture of the mostly extinct religious sect, has launched a $15m effort to create a 30,000 sq. ft building for its collection, which spans more than 18,000 objects and archival materials. The museum, which manages the Shaker Village in Mount Lebanon , New York, a historic site where the largest congregation of Shakers settled from 1787 to 1947, was founded as a non-profit institution in 1950 by John Williams, an investment broker who traveled to active Shaker communities beginning in the 1930s and collected what he viewed as artifacts of a fading culture. [ More ] 

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Louise Nicholson What Our Lord Saw from the Cross (1886–94), James Tissot. Brooklyn Museum, New York. Photo: courtesy the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco In the career-spanning ‘James Tissot: Fashion and Faith’, curated by Melissa Buron at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the artist comes across as focused, organised, ambitious and immensely hard-working. His carnet de ventes, discovered while the exhibition was being researched, records the sales of most of his works for three decades from 1857 to 1890. A key resource for the show and accompanying publication, it meticulously lists lost known paintings, unknown paintings, sitters for portraits, changes of picture titles to generate better sales and, of course, sale prices. 23 June - 13 September 2020 at Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France . [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Gregory Disney-Britton stands at home in Indianapolis (2020) in front of Niccolo Cosme's "The Matriarch," a painted color photograph (upper left corner). Does beauty get your attention?  Week three of our collection spotlights is the conceptual photography of Niccolo Cosme (b. 1980, Philippines). He blends erotic imagery with Christian iconography to catch our attention. Cosme dares to offend even while arousing the desire to lead a healthier (and sexier) life. We purchased his "The Matriarch" above in 2012, and we invite you to visit the artist's website here . Beauty gets our attention, and that makes Niccolo Cosme's art , our tip of the week.

LION'S ROAR This photo of a sculpture entitled “Buddha Shakyamuni, 12 century Central Tibet” appeared on the cover of the March 2018 issue of Lion’s Roar magazine. Just added to the Lion’s Roar store: six new, gorgeous prints from our “ Buddhas and Bodhisattvas ” collection. Featured are two statues of Shakyamuni Buddha: a twelfth-century Tibetan work and another from eighteenth-century Burma; and four bodhisattvas, including Guan Yin. All are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s wonderful collection of Buddhist art. Learn more about each one and order here. Your online purchase helps us fulfill our mission of making timeless Buddhist wisdom accessible to all, and provides a platform for artists and craftspeople dedicated to the dharma. [ More ] 

APOLLO MAGAZINE By Isabelle Kent The Return of the Prodigal Son (detail; 1660s), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Photo: © National Gallery of Ireland In 1649 plague struck the city of Seville. It had fair warning and could have shut its gates earlier, like nearby Cádiz, but whether through hubris, economic need or simple negligence Spain’s largest city had remained open for business. Within a year, a quarter of the population had died, and artists were not spared. Juan Martínez Montañés, the so-called God of Wood, and the young still-life painter Juan de Zurbarán both died, and many others fled the city. Floods and famine compounded the crisis. To all observers the situation was clear: the Almighty was punishing Seville. But from calamity came opportunity. As penance, merchants and New World heirs deployed their vast wealth for the glorification of God. And Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was perfectly placed to benefit from their patronage. [ More ]

ARTNEWS   By DUSHKO PETROVICH The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is discussed in Karl Whittington’s lecture on Islamic architecture. MORITZ WOLF/IMAGEBROKER/SHUTTERSTOCK Curricular changes rarely make headlines even in the confines of a college town, but after Yale University’s art history department announced plans to revamp its introductory survey courses with global offerings less focused on Europe and the United States, the news prompted a national outcry. As reported by the Yale Daily News this past January in a story that spread far and wide, the long-standing course “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present” would be replaced by a selection of thematic classes: “Art and Politics,” “Global Craft,” “The Silk Road,” and “Sacred Places.” The “Introduction to Art History” would return in a revised form, the department said, and the “Renaissance to the Present” would still be covered—just not altogether in an exclusive introduction to the field. [ More ] 

THE HINDU By Shiv Sahay Singh Paintings at the online exhibition titled "Tales of The Time" | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement During the pandemic, when most forms of artistic expression remain suspended, a unique exhibition creating awareness on COVID-19 is drawing a lot of attention. The online exhibition titled ‘Tales of Our Time’ features Pat paintings or ‘Patachitra’, a traditional form of scroll painting that uses vibrant natural colours, has been put together by Anwar Chitrakar, a well-known Patachitra artist. Displayed on the Emami Art Website (https://www.emamiart.com/), it comes with a touch of humour instead of oversimplified messages on wearing masks. [ More ] 

OPEN DEMOCRACY   By Selina Sheth Vikram Zutshi. All rights reserved. “Art is life and life is art,” says Lok Chitrakar, a Nepali folk artist and teacher whose smile lights up his face as he talks to the camera. What Chitrakar is trying to put into words, I imagine, is the unconscious act of ‘losing oneself’ in creative and spiritual joy, the mystical state of ‘bhakti’ or selfless devotion through which all ritualistic art is expressed and experienced. This notion lies at the heart of Darshan, a new film from journalist Vikram Zutshi and art historian Debashish Banerji that pulsates with a robust tribe of artists like Lok, painters, stone carvers, woodworkers, conjurors, acrobats and musicians, all of whom congregate at sacred sites to proffer their art to the fiery spirit Gods and multi-limbed Goddesses in residence. [ More ]

ALLOTSEGO.com By Jim Kelvin Michael Perekrestov examines a shroud that brightened solemn Holy Week services in 19th century Moscow. (Jim Kevlin/AllOTSEGO.com) JORDANVILLE – When you think of Russian art, you probably think: icons. “It goes far beyond that,” Michael Perekrestov, Russian History Museum executive director at Holy Trinity Monastery here. The museum’s new exhibit, “ Revealing the Divine: Treasures of Russian Sacred Art, ” proves it. The objects on display range from, yes, icons, to pendants, books, architecture, vestments and much more. The exhibit opened July 14, and will be on display at the monastery’s museum, just 18 miles north of Cooperstown, through the end of the year. Of course, Perekrestov, who put on the nationally known “Last Days of the Tsar,” artifacts from the Romanovs, in 2018 – the 100th anniversary of the massacre of the imperial family – has favorite pieces in this exhibit, too. [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS NEW YORK --  De Buck Gallery is pleased to announce In Solitude , a solo show featuring new works on paper by Hiba Schahbaz . In Solitude will be on display in De Buck’s virtual viewing room from May 14th to June 13th, as part of the gallery’s digital programming during quarantine. In Solitude, Schahbaz’s timely new body of work, considers what it means to be an artist during a period of global crisis. Responding directly to her surroundings, Schahbaz’s collection of narrative painting was created in a home studio space as she isolates during the COVID-19 quarantine in New York City. Forced to pause her large-scale works following the temporary closure of her studio, the works in In Solitude mark a return to her life-long practice of creating meditative works on paper. [ More ]

Q-SPIRIT  By Kittredge Cherry Kuan Yin, the genderfluid spirit of compassion in Buddhism, is sometimes thought of as a queer Christ figure or LGBTQ role model. Buddhists celebrate the enlightenment of Kuan Yin every year in July or August. This year the date is Aug. 2, 2020. Transcending gender identity, Kuan Yin appears in whatever form is necessary to help people in need: sometimes female, sometimes male, sometimes androgynous. Christians honor Christ as savior, and Kuan Yin is a type of Buddhist savior figure called a bodhisattva — an enlightened person who is able to reach nirvana (heaven) but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save others from suffering. [ More ] 

THE YORK TIMES  By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim Hagia Sophia’s rededication as a Muslim place of worship, after decades as a museum, threatens to cloak its extravagantly reverberant acoustics.  Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Footage broadcast around the world  captured some of these striking changes to Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral in Istanbul, which served as a mosque under Ottoman rule before becoming a museum in 1934. On the orders of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is now once again used as a mosque. But for a group of scholars, scientists and musicians, Hagia Sophia’s rededication as a Muslim place of worship threatens to cloak a less tangible treasure: its sound. Bissera Pentcheva, an art historian at Stanford University and an expert in the burgeoning field of acoustic archaeology, has spent the past decade studying the building’s extravagantly reverberant acoustics to reconstruct the sonic world of Byzantine cathedral music. Ms. Pentch...

THE SPECTATOR   By Carmel Thompson Stanley’s Spencer’s disconcertingly ‘chunky’ Christ, as Carmel described him. The new Holy Smoke episode is a significant departure from our usual formula. It’s a discussion about the profound and neglected meaning of Christian art. Professor Ben Quash of King’s College London is interviewed not by me but by Carmel Thompson – my sister. Carmel is a passionate enthusiast for exhibitions. Ben is a high-flying authority on art and theology. Ben Quash is currently building a hugely ambitious online resource, the Visual Commentary on Scripture, in which art historians and theologians seek to reconnect Christian art with the beliefs that gave rise to their creation. Obviously you’ll get far more out of this discussion if you can see what Carmel and Ben are talking about with such infectious enthusiasm. [ More ] 

THE OBSERVER By Helen Holmes The 6th century object in the Met’s collection that many claim is incorrectly labeled. Public Domain, Metropolitan Museum of Art A controversy involving the Metropolitan Museum of Art flared up over the weekend, when a Twitter account representing the website stopantisemitism.org called out the museum for allegedly mislabeling a 6th century amulet from Egypt in its Islamic art department. According to the @StopAntisemites account and other commenters, the object in question is not an amulet, but rather a tefillin; these are cubic leather black boxes traditionally used in Jewish prayer and are considered extremely sacred. The accusation that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had mislabeled an item in its collection was also picked up on Twitter by Caitlin Hollander, a genealogist who works for Hollander-Waas Jewish Heritage Services. [ More ] 

THE NEW YORK TIMES  By Shalini Venugopal-Bhagat Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil outside his home in Gujarat, India, this month.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times In India, a Gay Prince's Coming Out Earns Accolades, and Enemies NEW DELHI — Born into a royal family that once ruled the kingdom of Rajpipla in India, he was raised in the family’s palaces and mansions and was being groomed to take over a dynasty that goes back 600 years. But then he gave an interview that prompted his mother to disown him and set off protests in his hometown, where he was burned in effigy. Since coming out as gay in that 2006 interview, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil has faced a torrent of bullying and threats, and was disinherited by his family for a period. But he has also earned global accolades for his L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy, becoming one of the few gay-rights activists in the world with such royal ties. [ More ] 

JEWISH WEEKLY   By XXXX Detail from “Do not forgive them, oh Lord, for they do know what they do! (after Luke 23:34)” by Arthur Szyk. (Courtesy Magnes Collection) Two large exhibits that had just opened at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley when the coronavirus pandemic began can now be viewed online. “In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Art & Human Rights,” a collection of paintings and drawings by the renowned 20th-century Polish artist, and “An Archive of Archives, Roman Vishniac’s Exhibition History, New York 1971-72,” a re-creation of a non-Magnes Vishniac exhibit, are in digital form on the Magnes website , along with other artifacts from the collections, videos of past events and more. [ More ] 

THE PRESS HERALD By Bob Keyes Carrie Moyer (United States, born 1960), "Humming at the Gate," 2020, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 90 x 108 inches. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York. Courtesy of Alan Weiner Photography © the artist Photo courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art The Portland Museum of Art has diversified its collection in recent years, with purchases of key works like “Ghetto Wall #2” by David Driskell and “A Distant Holla, Currency Exchange” by Daniel Minter, leading African American artists with strong Maine ties. This year and next, the museum will focus its collecting efforts on works by Emily Mason, Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, contemporary female artists. Moyer and Pepe are showing together through Aug. 16 with the installation “Tabernacles for Trying Times,” an exhibition that pursues justice and equality through religious symbolism. [ More ]

ARTNEWS   By Clair Selvin Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece , 1432. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Researchers at the University of Antwerp and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., have released a study supporting the restoration last year of the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Northern Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck. Critics of the restoration had called attention to work done on a central panel of the work depicting the “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.” Last year’s restoration effort left the lamb depicted in the work with new, human-like facial features, including what seemed to be new pairs of eyes and lips. The updated lamb shocked some in the art world at the time of its unveiling, but a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances asserts that the restoration of its appearance is consistent with its original 15th-century depiction. [ More ] 

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS Show Us Your Walls By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton   Ernest Disney-Britton stands at home in Indianapolis (2017) next to new photographer Kelvin Buzon's diptych titled "Ama Namin” (“Our Father" in Tagalog) and “Ina ng Gracia” (“Mother of Grace"), AP prints; top left and middle left; Doug Birkenheuer's "Evil Innocence," bottom left; and William Rasdell’s “Jews in the African Diaspora" collection, bottom right. How do you mark spiritual journeys? Week two of our collection spotlights looks at the photography of Kelvin Burzon . Born in the Philippines (1989), the Indiana-based artist uses the dramatic lighting effect of chiaroscuro , to explore the last days of Christ through the lens of a Gay-POC- Christian . Surrounding ourselves with art that celebrates faith and diversity is at the top of our list. Check out our Burzon collection below, and then visit the artist's website here . Marking spiritual journeys ma...

THE HINDUSTAN TIMES By Praveen Siddharth The Creation of Man by the British artist Glyn Warren Philpot shows a male figure in repose, two hands reaching down, and fire engulfing him from above. It combines new artistic influences from Philpot’s travels, and his internal struggle with his own homosexuality. Tucked away in a corner of the imposting Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India is a library. Inside are some old secrets hidden in plain sight. Over a fireplace hangs a painting titled The Creation of Man. It’s a naked male figure in repose,with two hands reaching down from the heavens towards his head, and fire engulfing him from above. It’s a distinctly odd choice for a Presidential library, especially considering that the painter, Glyn Warren Philpot (1884-1937) was an acclaimed portrait painter. Even more intriguing is that fact that, unlike most of the other art at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the paintings in the Library were commissioned for the bu...