Author: Tessa Hollings
Jeff Koons’s “Banality” sculptures of the late 1980s are anything but ordinary: few can easily forget the sight of the Pink Panther embracing a partially naked woman, for one. But there’s nothing quite so out of the ordinary about the artist’s recent creations such as his 2016–21 sculpture Aphrodite, an eight and-half-foot-tall nude that made its public debut at Gagosian gallery in New York last week. Standing before it, I felt so unstimulated that I wished I were somewhere else entirely. A stainless steel goddess based on a porcelain figurine by the Royal Dux company, Aphrodite has an unnaturally smooth surface and a towering scale,…
Sotheby’s London will offer a restored early painting by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn that was discovered over a decade ago and reattributed to the artist. The painting has undergone extensive restoration, removing overpainting by other hands and revealing imagery that, experts say, may have articulated a message of religious tolerance in a moment of social tensions arising partly from a refugee crisis. Let The Little Children Come Unto Me (begun in 1627) comes to auction July 1 and is estimated at £8–12 million ($10.6–$15.9 million). The 40-inch-high painting is, per the house, the only known rendition of the subject by the Dutchman.…
MARILYN MONROE DEAD; PILLS NEAR read the front-page headline of the August 6, 1962, New York Times. Star’s Body Is Found in Bedroom of Her Home on Coast, the subheading continued. As an artist then sponging up ideas everywhere, from newspapers to the supermarket aisle, Pop artist Andy Warhol would have seen this coverage of the Hollywood star’s untimely death at age 36. The result was one of the emerging artist’s most iconic series. Beginning in August 1962, when Monroe’s death dominated the media, and for the next two years, Warhol created more than 50 paintings of her using a headshot taken by Gene Kornman…
Across a seven-decade career, David Hockney, who died earlier this month, created a singular body of work that encapsulated the feeling and the sensibility of the places he called home. Among the most famous of these are his images from the late 1960s and early ’70s of Los Angeles, capturing the sun-drenched pools of wealthy homes and the collectors who lived there. Later on, he would paint vistas of the Grand Canyon, East Yorkshire, and Normandy, to name a few. Hockney would also become known for his portraits, infusing his subjects with a rare pathos. His double portraits of couples,…
On the first preview day of the 2024 Venice Biennale, a torrential downpour sent artists, curators, journalists, and dealers scurrying for shelter. While others fretted about how the art on view would weather the sheets of rain, Yuko Mohri, the sculptor representing Japan that year, felt unusually relaxed. If all this water destroyed a new set of her installations making their debut in the Giardini, she didn’t mind so much. The raised building that houses the Japanese Pavilion was itself porous this time around—two skylights in the ceiling and an aperture in the floor were left open, and one sculpture was even…
Sotheby’s will stage a series of sales, starting in October, of over 900 works spanning antiquity to 20th century and including fine art and design, from an unnamed collector, with the total estimated at more than $60 million. The collection, which Sotheby’s is calling “Magnum Opus,” includes artworks by masters like Canaletto, Edgar Degas, Max Ernst, Francesco Guardi, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Luis Meléndez, Pablo Picasso, and Jacob van Ruisdael. Four New York sales, between October 21 and October 23, will bring some 600 works from the haul to auction. The rest will appear at various sales at Sotheby’s New York and…
Isabelle Sarre is a self-taught artist whose creative practice has evolved over more than 35 years of exploring different techniques, materials, and artistic styles. Her journey began in France, where she spent the first fifteen years of her artistic career painting and participating in artist groups in Dordogne and Haute Vienne. During this period, she exhibited her work in several French cities, establishing an important foundation for her evolving artistic practice. Her creative journey later took her to Asia, where she continued to develop her work and exhibit her art, notably in Malacca. Six years ago, Sarre relocated to New…
Since Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer sold for $236.4 million last November, clinching the title of second most expensive artwork to sell at auction, the secondary market’s mantra can best be summed up as “collectors will open their hearts and their wallets for exceptional work.” On Tuesday, Christie’s put that dictum to the test with its Old Masters Evening Sale in London, a 40-lot offering that landed comfortably within its pre-sale estimate of roughly £25 million to £37.5 million (excluding fees). In total, Collectors spent £38.9 million ($51.4 million) at Christie’s Old Masters Evening Sale in London on Tuesday, pushing the auction past its pre-sale high estimate…