SGFARA

French Museum Calls Report on Vincent Honoré’s Suicide ‘Exploitation of a Tragic Event’

MO.CO. Courtesy MO.CO MO.CO, a contemporary art museum in Montpellier, France, accused a French art publication of “exploitation” on Friday after it ran a report on the suicide of Vincent Honoré, who formerly served as the institution’s head of exhibitions. Le Quotidien de l’Art reported last week that Honoré’s suicide had been determined a “work …

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Ben Vautier, Fluxus Artist Who Famously Proclaimed That ‘Everything Is Art,’ Dies at 88

Ben Vautier, 2023. Photo Clement Mahoudeau/AFP via Getty Images Ben Vautier, a French Fluxus artist whose humorous paintings and performances imploded the division between life and art, earning laughs and admiration alike from critics, has died at 88. Vautier, who often worked under the artistic moniker Ben, was found dead in his home in Nice …

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Basquiat Painting Sells for $12.6 M. at Phillips Hong Kong

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 work Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari. Jean Bourbon Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 work Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari sold for $12.6 million at a Phillips modern and contemporary art evening sale in Hong Kong this week. That figure, which includes premium, means the work sold for just above its …

Basquiat Painting Sells for $12.6 M. at Phillips Hong Kong Read More »

Following Calls to Remove ‘Unflattering’ Portrait from Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, Billionaire Gifted a Different Portrait of Herself

Vincent Namatjira with various portraits by him, including one of Gina Rinehart, third from left in the bottom row. ©Vincent Namatjira/Copyright Agency/Photo Iwantja Arts/Courtesy the artist and Iwantja Arts If you can’t beat them, join them—as the old saying goes—or, perhaps, give them something else to discuss. This seems to be the attitude of Australian …

Following Calls to Remove ‘Unflattering’ Portrait from Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, Billionaire Gifted a Different Portrait of Herself Read More »

MFA Houston Can Keep Contested Nazi-looted Bernardo Bellotto Painting: US Appeals Court

Bernardo Bellotto: Marketplace at Pirna, ca. 18th century. Museum of Fine Arts Houston A United States appeals court has affirmed a prior ruling that the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston can keep an 18th-century painting contested in a lawsuit by the heirs of its original German Jewish owner. Bernardo Bellotto’s The Marketplace at Pirna (ca. 1764), …

MFA Houston Can Keep Contested Nazi-looted Bernardo Bellotto Painting: US Appeals Court Read More »

Ace Gallery Founder Convicted, Court Settles Restitution Confusion with MFA Houston, El Museo del Barrio Reveals Details for Trienal, and More: Morning Links for June 4, 2024

Bernardo Bellotto: Marketplace at Pirna, ca. 18th century. Museum of Fine Arts Houston To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. THE HEADLINES EMBEZZLEMENT CONVICTION. Douglas Chrismas, the 80-year-old, notorious founder of Los Angeles’s defunct blue-chip Ace Gallery, has been convicted of embezzlement by a jury. The May 31 ruling in …

Ace Gallery Founder Convicted, Court Settles Restitution Confusion with MFA Houston, El Museo del Barrio Reveals Details for Trienal, and More: Morning Links for June 4, 2024 Read More »

In His Mardi Gras Suits and Beadwork Paintings, Demond Melancon Creates Compelling Tensions between Representation and Opacity

Big Chief Demond Melancon in the 2019 documentary All on a Mardi Gras Day. Courtesy the artist Before he considered himself an artist, Demond Melancon boiled lobster at the Louisiana chain restaurant Drago’s Seafood, washed dishes at Emeril’s, and poured concrete for Hard Rock Construction. He laid and smoothed the cement walkway in front of …

In His Mardi Gras Suits and Beadwork Paintings, Demond Melancon Creates Compelling Tensions between Representation and Opacity Read More »

15 Important Women Surrealists

The founding French Surrealists loved the subconscious. They also loved women—as muses, as subjects of erotic desire, as sources of inspiration, but not necessarily as artists at first. Women weren’t present at the birth of the movement when poet André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. But inevitably women were attracted to the movement …

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