Mongolian Folk Art for UNESCO

UNESCO registered Mongolian traditional arts including national long song, Mongolian Tuuli (epic), morin khuur (horse head fiddle), biyelgee (Mongolian folk dance) and tsuur (bagpipe) and handed a confirmation for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural heritage in National Museum of Mongolia on May 24.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Center of Cultural Heritage; UNESCO National Commission of Mongolia and the National Museum of Mongolia opened jointly an exhibition to be named “Mongolian cultural heritage enrolled World” within the framework of measure to hand a confirmation in the National Museum of Mongolia between May 21 and 23.
There were so many different tsuur, morin khuur, rare photos and portraits of famous Mongolian morin khuur players and readers an epic in the exhibition. Also, there were books and videos about history of Mongolian national long song and biyelgee.

Presented by Bill Hood & Sons Art & Antique Auctions

Major collection of Art & Antiques from Boca Raton Estate selling unreserved. The items have been in the same collection for at least 75 years. Here is just a few of the art pieces illustrated now. See also ad in next weeks edition, 100 antique and contemporary paintings & Prints (see website for full list & images). French Empire couch & 6 chairs, French Empire round Table, 2 Verni Martin cabinets, 19th Cent. French ormolu mounted desk, French Empire Bronze Clock, Early Figural Capodimonte centerpiece, Marble Sculpture, Candelabras, Too much to list, do a friend a favor show them this. Bid through LiveAuctioneers or through hoodauction.com website 400 items will be sold at public auction. Consignments accepted for our Monthly Antique Auctions.
View Full Catalog & Pictures at: www.hoodauction.com Call Chris or Bill Hood for Condition reportsor
Questions. ph. (561) 278-8996 email info@hoodauction.com fax. (561) 278-8977. Absentee & phone bids accepted, also bid live on-line. Au 1082 Ab742

Paul Cornoyer oc Washington Square 18 x 24	Cesare Auguste Detti oil on panel 16 x 12
Paul Signac Watercolor 18 x 10	Henriette Ronner-Knip oc 36 x 30

‘Custer’s Last Stand’ Art Exhibit Now on Display at Whitney Gallery in Cody, Wyoming

"Brush, Palette, and Custer's Last Stand," featuring artists who depicted the Battle of the Little Bighorn, is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center's Whitney Gallery of Western Art in Cody, Wyoming.

Assembled from the Center's collection, several paintings, prints, and sketches will be on display for the next two years, offering a glimpse into those fateful days in the summer of 1876.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, appearing strong to the end, as painted by Edgar S. Paxson, from his oil painting of 'Custer's Last Stand.' (See below for a view of the entire painting). Edgar S. Paxson (1852 – 1919). ‘Custer’s Last Stand,’ 1899. Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 106 inches. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. 19.69

"Variously called the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Battle of Greasy Grass, Custer's Last Stand, Custer's Last Fight, and several other names depending on cultural and historical perspective, the Battle of the Little Bighorn remains shrouded in mystery," Acting Curator Christine Brindza said.

In 2008, Brindza shared her research in a presentation to the Custer Battlefield Historical Museum Association Symposium in Hardin, Montana.

"Some of these early artists served as historians, whether intentionally or not, revealing details of the battle in their work," she added. "Others merely created a work of art based on imagination. Regardless, as the public saw these early images, their views of the battle were shaped by the artwork, and therefore, helped create myths and legends that resonate even today."

On display near the Frederic Remington Studio in the Whitney Gallery, the exhibit includes works by William de la Montagne Cary (1840 - 1922), John Mulvany (1844 - 1906), Cassilly Adams (1843 - 1921), Edgar S. Paxson (1852 - 1919), Allan Mardon (b. 1931), Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), and Fritz Scholder (1937 - 2005).

Writing in the Summer 2010 issue of Points West, the quarterly publication of the BBHC exclusively for its members, Brindza notes that "Edgar S. Paxson's Custer's Last Stand, finished in 1899, became one of the best-known images of the event, both glorifying the battle and creating a so-called martyred Custer."

'Custer's Last Stand,' as painted by Edgar Paxson, is an action-packed depiction of the battle according to the artist’s imagination, containing more than 200 figures. not the least of which is Custer. Edgar S. Paxson (1852 – 1919). ‘Custer’s Last Stand,’ 1899. Oil on canvas, 70.5 x 106 inches. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming. 19.69

Paxson's oil on canvas is 70.5 x 106 inches (just under six feet by nearly nine feet) and is an action-packed depiction of the battle according to the artist's imagination. More than 200 figures are represented, and at least 25 portraits, including yellow-haired Custer.

"The Historical Center has 14 sketches which Paxson used for his mammoth painting Custer's Last Stand which he completed in 1899," Brindza added. "We also have a photograph of Paxson working on this piece and a number of his painting tools like brushes, charcoal holders, and paint boxes."

The Center also has in its collection Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass, an oil on linen which also is quite large - 76 x 136 inches (just over six feet by about 11 feet).

"In The Battle of Greasy Grass, Mardon included individuals mostly ignored or unheard of in other battle representations," Brindza wrote in Points West. "Though he did paint Custer and other well known people, Mardon incorporated others such as Kate Bighead, a Cheyenne woman who witnessed the battle from a distance."

Mardon's Battle of Greasy Grass was purchased for the museum with funds from the William E. Weiss Memorial Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon H. Barrows, and the Franklin A. West Memorial Fund.

The Paxson and Mardon works are situated across from each other with computer kiosks for more study. Earl Biss's General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, is nearby.

"Earl Biss (1947 - 1998), artist and member of the Crow nation, focused not on the battle, but on the most well-known individual from the battle, George Armstrong Custer," according to Brindza. "Biss, a renowned abstract expressionist, conveyed emotion through color and line in the portrait General Custer in Blue and Green, 1996, using strengths from both his cultural background and artistic training."

While the Center has many letters and drawings concerning the battle, they have been displayed in a variety of cases in various locations. This new "Brush, Palette, and Custer's Last Stand" exhibit is the first time everything has been brought together in one showing.

Committed to connecting people with the Spirit of the American West, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center weaves the varied threads of the western experience-history and myth, art and Native culture, firearms technology and the nature of Yellowstone-into the rich panorama that is the American West.

The Center, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is now operating its summer schedule, open daily, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m. For general information, visit www.bbhc.org , or call (307) 587.4771.

For more information on the Battle of the Little Bighorn, visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument's Web site at www.nps.gov/libi/index.htm. The national monument, near Crow Agency, Montana, is the site of the June 25, 1876 battle between the U.S. Army's 7th cavalry and several bands of Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho.

Let's Talk About Art: Inspired by woods and critters

Critter That Ate Penn Hills by Kathleen Zimbicki

Kathleen Zimbicki grew up in an artistically inclined family. While most of her siblings' talents led them toward music, she struggled to find a niche there. Ms. Zimbicki played second fiddle, violin, alto ocarina and sang alto but felt that she didn't quite measure up to her siblings.
Then she found art.
"Coming from a competitive family, I had to do something well," she says.
When she first began drawing, she preferred sketching images of women in pretty dresses and interesting outfits. Ms. Zimbicki says this interest blossomed because Barbie dolls had not yet been created. Soon she was drawing and painting all the time.
"I drew or painted on anything that was available, even Daddy's books," she says.

The environment she lived in as a child influenced much of her current work.
"Growing up in a small town in Washington County, with a wooded area on three sides, gave me time to play and dream," says Ms. Zimbicki, who now lives in Carnegie.
She says the woods and critters that surrounded her house still inspire some her artwork today. Pieces such as "No One Under 30 Eats Fish," "Green Rapture," "Midnight Circus," and "Jake's Lizard" are just a few of her nature-infused works.
In "Jake's Lizard," Ms. Zimbicki uses a variety of bright colors and intricate patterns to detail a close-up of a lizard. Her use of varied colors and patterns emulate through all of her work and illustrates a sense of playfulness in her art.
"Children love my art because it is childlike. Everything is usually pretty happy," she says.
Ms. Zimbicki is currently the proud president of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and is excited about this year's ARTrageous centennial celebration.

Land as art

Land Art redefines the boundary between art and landscape

Photo courtesy of David Shaner/Museum of Contemporary craft

Land Art: David Shaner
Museum of Contemporary Craft
724 NW Davis St
Runs through August 7

The work of a typical artist is hard enough, but compared to that of a land artist or earth artist sitting behind a canvas doesn’t seem too bad.

It makes sense that the beginnings of land art took place somewhere in the throngs of the ‘60s hippie movement. Originating mostly in the southwestern U.S., artists would make giant creations in the earth itself using tractors, bulldozers and whatever else was needed to put a new face to the earth. This artistic sect was started as a protest to the commercialization of art and the tools needed to create art.

At about the same time, artist, sculptor and craft maker David Shaner had his own way of protesting his increasingly expensive hobby. Shaner was always fascinated with clay, stating in a 2001 interview for the Smithsonian Institute, “Clay always felt good to me. Whenever I would start a project with a painting or a blank sheet of paper, there was always a certain fear about ‘what am I going to do.’ But with a piece of clay, it just seemed like it was automatic. You just started working and it was a wonderful thing.”

By shifting away from the use of synthetic means, Shaner set the motion for what would become a lifetime of work.

Shaner was wildly influential to the world of ceramics, leading both the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and garnering the first grant for ceramics from the NEA. Shaner settled down in Montana in 1970 where he worked on his projects before passing away in 2002.

The exhibit is a collection of work that spanned Shaner’s career as an artist. Not limited to solely ceramics, the exhibit also includes photographs and notes that provide greater insight into the complexities beyond the clay.

Shaner’s work itself is not particularly impressive to look at—unless you understand the difficulty of making ceramics—but the thoughts, emotions and questions that the work brings up are surprising. The work puts us back into our proper place in the planet—if even for a moment, we are once again an emerging superpower only beginning to understand our true potential.

A major theme of the exhibit is a celebration of the American west. The rich earthy tones of the dishes and molds remind us of the soils that we see around us, still rich in organic matter and full of nutrients. The red hues are uniquely western, bringing us back to the days of playing cowboys and Indians in the backyard. Shaner’s work is an embodiment of life and environment in the west: rugged, weathered and beautiful.

The Museum of Contemporary Craft is a partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art and is one of only a handful of places in the Northwest that devotes space to the exhibition of craft. Along with the exhibit, a book written by Peter Held on Shaner’s work, Following the Rhythms of Life: The Ceramic Art of David Shaner will also be available.

Yinka Shonibare’s Fourth Plinth, review

Yinka Shonibare’s work of art on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth sits high overlooking the square, joyful and enchanting.

It feels like a long time since we’ve had a substantial work of art on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth, but boy was it worth the wait for Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle.

Doing just what it says in the title, the sculpture consists of a perfect replica of Nelson’s HMS Victory inside a giant Perspex bottle. Fully rigged with 31 hand-stitched canvas sails set as they were on the day of the Battle of Trafalgar, the oak, hardwood and brass model is minutely detailed, right down to 80 tiny cannon and miniature lifeboats, varying from the original only in the artist’s use of his trademark African textiles instead of plain canvas for the billowing sails.

Shonibare’s last act was to cork the bottle, seal it with red wax imprinted with his initials, a giant knick-knack ready for display on the nation’s very own whatnot.
There it sits, high up on the plinth overlooking the square, joyful and enchanting, an object of delight for adults and children alike. But because the plinth is so high, it is difficult to see it close to. Even if you walk up the short flight of steps to view it from the balustrade in front of the National Gallery, you’re still too far away to take in the details.
So by far the best thing is to forget the detail and view the work from across the square, where suddenly you can see the vessel intact, from prow to stern, as though in full sail on the high seas.
Shonibare is much too thoughtful an artist for this to have been a miscalculation. I’m guessing that he determined the ship’s scale by calculating the size of an ordinary ship-in-a bottle in proportion to the height of a grown man, then adjusted the proportion to the height of Nelson’s Column (which is, after all, the reason why the work is in Trafalgar Square in the first place).
In his artist’s statement, Shonibare says that the use of African textile patterns refers to “the legacy of British colonialism and its expansion in trade and Empire, made possible through the freedom on the seas and new trade routes that Nelson’s victory provided”.
He asks us to consider the relationship between Nelson’s “historic victory and the multicultural society we have in Britain today”.
Now, there are so many dodgy ideas packed into those two short sentences that I’m not going to bore you by entering into a kind of futile, politically correct debate that became so fashionable about 20 years ago.
Whatever else it may be, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle is an exhilarating work of art that needs no excuse for raising our spirits in the gloomy days we’re living through right now.

Hitler's book of looted art uncovered

A lost photograph album detailing plans for a Nazi museum of stolen art has been discovered by a repair man after he visited the house of a former soldier.
John Pistone, 88, who was an American GI, never knew the significance of the heavy, green leather-bound volume titled "Picture Gallery Linz XIII," but took it as a memento from Hitler's mountain home in Berchtesgaden in 1945.
But the washing machine engineer, a history enthusiast, spotted the book at Pistone's home near Cleveland, Ohio, and made his own checks on the Internet.
He contacted Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, based in Dallas, which had been involved in the restitution of two other similar albums.
Robert Edsel, its founder, went to Ohio and realized the significance of the book.
Hitler, who was rejected from art school and wanted to become a great painter, was obsessed with his art collection, lecturing his staff each night even as the Allies were closing in on Berlin.
Every Christmas and birthday, he was presented with an album cataloguing looted Nazi art that he planned to install in a "Fuhrermuseum" he had designed for his home town of Linz in Austria.
Hitler envisioned the museum rivalling those in Dresden and Munich, and had helped draw up architectural plans, which eventually grew to include a theatre, an opera house and a hotel.
He collected 31 albums in total.
Photographs show him working on plans for his museum, while a model of Linz was moved to his bunker in Berlin.

Radar: Juventus vs. Fiorentina, Inside the Musician's Studio with Woodhands, LCD Soundsystem Afterparty, Keeping An Eye on Journalism, CATS

 
SPORTS | Soccer Showcase: Juventus vs. Fiorentina
Being the cosmopolitan city that it is, Toronto is home to soccer fans from all over the world. Though we've got our own team to cheer for these days, until Toronto FC becomes a winning team, many footie fanatics' real loyalties will remain with clubs from the Old Country (wherever it may be). Torontonians will pay big money to see their beloved teams and the city's become a prime destination for visits from world's big clubs, the latest being two of Italy's most storied franchises as Fiorentina squares off against Juventus today. There are some famous names in the line up including Italian master Alessandro Del Piero and French striker David Trezeguet, and while no one believes any of them will risk their million-dollar knees by throwing themselves all over the concrete pitch of the Rogers Centre to win a meaningless friendly, Sunday's match at BMO Field between Portugal's Benfica and Greece's Panathinaikos was passionate enough to descend into a bench-clearing brawl, so you never know.
Rogers Centre, 1 Blue Jay's Way, $59 - $99, 8 pm
MUSIC | Viewpoints: Inside the Musicians Studio
There's a pretty big show going down at the Kool Haus tonight, but some hot local talent is on display just down the street, where the Harbourfront Centre is hosting an intimate evening with a pair of homegrown masters of the electronic rock song. Woodhands is made up of Paul Banwatt and Dan Werb, two men whose energetic live shows and unironic use of the keytar have won them fans all over the world. They've just dropped their second album Remorsecapade and will be performing and discussing the record with the Toronto Star's music critic Ben Rayner as part of Harbourfront's Viewpoints series.
Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay, Free, 8 pm
PARTY | LCD Soundsystem Afterparty
A day after Victoria Day, trailblazing electronic punk-pop outfit LCD Soundsystem will be setting off some fireworks of their own on the shore of Toronto's harbour. After a much-hyped set at Kool Haus LCD's James Murphy and Pat Dahoney will head over to Wrongbar to spin tracks at an afterparty that will have inebriated partiers spilling into Queen Street til the wee hours of the morning. With Murphy doing a show and an afterparty in every town he visits, it's no wonder he looks twenty years older than all the other hip indie bands out there. Wait, what? He is twenty years older than them?
Wrongbar, 1279 Queen Street West, $10, 10 pm
PANEL | Keeping an Eye on Journalism
The media landscape is rapidly changing, and in an age when feedback on news stories comes as quickly as bloggers, wiki writers and critics can type it, does it really make sense for media organizations to be monitoring themselves anymore? A panel of the city's most esteemed journalistic minds tackle the issue of the increasingly irrelevant role of ombudsmen tonight in a forum presented by the Canadian Journalism Federation. No points for guessing what side of the argument CBC ombudsmen Vince Carlin will be on, but he'll have to argue his case against the Toronto Star's public editor Kathy English and the National Post's John Racovali. Like all gatherings of journalists and j-school nerds, there will be a post-discussion cocktail schmooze afterwards.
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, $15 general, $5 students, 6:30 pm
THEATRE | CATS
Before anyone gets alarmed, yes CATS is coming back to Toronto. But it's only for one week, so Yonge Street will not be jammed with crowds of tourists wandering around in Mr. Mistoffelees t-shirts belting out "Memory" at the top of their lungs like it was back in the 80s. Mirvish Productions is remounting the classic much-loved and much-loathed musical until Sunday, giving you a brief chance to catch one of the longest-running shows to ever hit Broadway. The eight-show run will be performed by the touring company from Cats-Eye, and is the only North American production of the play actually sanctioned by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Runs til May 30.
Canon Theatre, 244 Victoria Street, $30 - $84, Tuesday to Saturday 7:30 pm, Matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 pm

Solo Women Travel

There are both benefits and negative factors to solo travel. One of the major benefits is that your time is your own to do what you want with. If you want to spend an extra hour looking around a museum, you can. If you want to spend an extra week in a town you’ve fallen in love with, you don’t have to discuss it with anyone. Plus, solo travel opens you up to meeting more people – maybe it won’t just be a town you fall in love with. You’ll get closer to your destination because one person travelling alone can often have experiences that aren’t open to groups.
A negative factor is that many women travelling solo experience loneliness. You don’t have anyone to share the experience with. But solo travel allows you to meet people along the way who you can share a day, a week or a month with… and some of these relationships will last a lifetime. Of course it’s important to keep in touch with people back home, and a good chat on the phone might alleiviate some of that loneliness.
It’s also important to consider security when women travel solo. Make sure you keep your belongings hidden and lock your bag with a padlock. Since you’re travelling alone, you don’t have anyone to watch your things, if for example you need to visit the bathroom. A bike lock can attach your bags to a handy post, or you could ask someone to keep an eye on them for you. You’ll have to become a good judge of character!
If you’re a woman considering solo travel, stop thinking about it and just do it! You’ll have a memorable experience that you’ll never forget – you’ll grow as a person, you’ll see things you never thought you would, and you’ll have a great time. Solo women travel is something you won’t regret.
The Indie Travel Podcast is publishing a solo women travel book, called The Art of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide by Stephanie Lee. It’s designed to help women travellers plan and enjoy their trips, because we want to see more women traveling solo.

Blacklight art show at Hemingway Gallery, June 4

Rick Anderson

We don't usually preview upcoming First Friday stuff, preferring to leave it in the capable hands of Ms. Wiebe and her crack team in their monthly hit list. However, this event popped up on Facebook, and it just begged to get pointed out. On Friday, June 4, at the Hemingway Gallery (19th and Baltimore), there will be a blacklight art show. All works will be blacklight reactive, including human canvases, as demonstrated by the photo on your right. The event organizers promise "No majik mushrooms, potleaf dragons, or velvet elvises here, y'all."

Scanography: Scanner Adds New Depth to Photography

Ashburn Calligrapher Tamara Stoneburner shares her fascination with the natural world through the art of scanography, offering a new way to view the bounty of the backyard.

 

Tamara Stoneburner

In photography, the quality of the work depends largely on the quality of the artist's equipment and finding the perfect angle for the shot. But now there's a new art form on the rise, one where the photograph is taken using office equipment that you may already have sitting around the office. Typically used for creating electronic copies of documents, scanners can also be used to make art. In 2007, Tamara Stoneburner read an article in Smithsonian magazine that changed her perspective. The author, photographer Robert Creamer, described how he had documented a collection of flowers and found objects by placing them directly on his flatbed scanner. The resulting images were highly detailed, and she immediately saw this as a way to build the gardening journal of her dreams.
So she gathered some items from the yard—leaves, grass, bugs, whatever she could get her hands on—and threw them on her own scanner. She was instantly hooked, and would never look at the world—or her scanner—in quite the same way again.
Tamara is classically trained and talented with pen and ink, but she is no stranger to bits and bytes. First and foremost, she is a reputable calligrapher—former president and active member of the Washington Calligraphers Guild—specializing in hand-lettered family trees, marriage certificates, and heirloom-quality work for treasured documents from her Gracestone Calligraphics Studio in Ashburn. But while some calligraphers may be concerned when today’s brides bypass artisans in favor of fancy computer fonts, Tamara sees the bright side. Technology has given her the time and the tools to explore additional artistic outlets, one being the fine art of scanography.
“Scanography has been around for approximately 20 years,” Tamara explains, “And it has come a long way from office Xerox antics and medical scanning to really developing into an art form.”

Orchid Num by Tamara Stoneburner

By using a flatbed photo scanner, light passes over the object, making it pop out in ways that traditional photography would not. In addition, the depth of field is very shallow because the light source is so close to the object. Combine that with the high resolution of the typical home scanner—300 or more dots-per-inch, compared to the 72 dpi of the average website—and the results are what Tamara calls “hyper-real.”
Botanists and etymologists appreciate scanography because it shows detail that that cannot see with the naked eye. Tamara loves scanography because it serves multiple purposes in her life: as an art form, as a means of documenting and journaling, and as a tool for honing her drawing skills by allowing her to see fine detail. She especially enjoys playing with light and exploring a new way to see the world around her.
“Orchid Nun,” Tamara’s entry in the 2010 Washington Gardener photography contest, recently won first place in the Small Wonders category. She patiently posed and scanned the orchid bloom approximately 85 times over a period of three days to get the composition and lighting exactly the way she wanted it.
Tamara encourages others to give scanography a try, advising, “You can scan just about anything: flowers, insects, lace, fabrics, fishing lures, shells, money, yourself. It is easier to get started than you would think. It is artistically addictive, and I promise that doing scanography will result in your seeing everyday objects in a completely different and fascinating way…This is a wonderful, inexpensive way to render macro and close-up photography that is tantamount to large-format studio photography. It is photography without the lens.”

Dead Ants Make for Strange Art Updated

For a painter in Claremont, Calif., ant is in the eye of the beholder.

That's not a typo: Chris Trueman, 31, has been known to use actual dead ants in his work -- 200,000 of them for one piece alone.

It's a portrait he calls "Self-Portrait With Gun," and features his younger brother dressed up like a cowboy holding his dad's 22-caliber rifle.

"It's based on a real incident," Trueman said.

The portrait is designed to look like an old-timey yellowed photograph, except with hundreds of thousands of harvester ants instead of photographic film.

Chris Trueman made a portrait using 200,000 dead harvester ants.

To Trueman, it represents how humans learn about things abstractly, only to have those impressions change "as we get closer to them."

How do ants fit into the picture?

"Ants are right on the line of what I consider intelligent life," he said. "We see them in the kitchen and we squash them, but if we look at them closely, they are fascinating."

What is also fascinating is how the portrait affected Trueman. The project took a few years to complete, in part because killing the ants made him, well, antsy.

"This is the first time since I was 5 that I deliberately tried to kill nature," Trueman confessed. "When I was that age, a friend of mine and I attacked an anthill for no apparent reason and ended up being bitten by red ants."

When Trueman decided to make his portrait, he initially tried to catch the little creatures himself, but that had its problems.

"Ants are really small in San Francisco, where I was living," he said.

According to FlashNews.com, Trueman decided to order them over the Internet, which played into the theme of not understanding things from a distance.

"I found a guy who raises ants and sells them as horned lizard food," he said. "The lizards need the folic acid. It's an artificial food source. If the lizards were in nature, they could get them from their own diet, but many of these lizards are kept as pets in cities like New York and San Francisco where they are hard to come by."

The man who supplied Trueman with his bug fix initially only sold the ants 1,000 at a time, but made a deal to sell him 40,000 at a time for $500 a pop.

"This wasn't cheap and I was between art projects at the time," Trueman said. "Still, I didn't know how many I'd need for the density."

True to the theme of the painting, Trueman said the idea of ordering the ants was different than when they actually showed up.

"The ants arrived in a large peanut butter jar -- just this huge mass of rising ants," he said. "It was weird. I couldn't set them free. They weren't native to the area and if they bit someone, they would leave welts, and I couldn't feed them, so I had to kill them."

He did this by sticking cotton balls soaked in fingernail polish into a bag holding the ant-rich peanut butter jar.

"They'd die in a couple of minutes and then I'd sprinkle them onto a flat piece of Plexiglas," Trueman said. "Some ants would break apart because they were dried out, and others would be in their full form."

Trueman used the broken-up bugs for large parts where detail wasn't crucial and saved the intact ants for parts that needed detail, applying them with tweezers and a painting resin called galkyd.

"It has a yellowish tinge, which made it look like a yellowing photograph," Trueman said.

Each batch of 40,000 ants took about two weeks to apply, and then Trueman needed a break to "mentally prepare" himself.

"At one point, I stopped for a year," Trueman said. "It took a lot out of me, but, ultimately, I went back to it because I didn't want that first batch to die in vain."

Despite the stress that came from making the portrait, Trueman is happy with the results.

"The way the image is created, you either see the boy in the cowboy hat or the ants, but not at the same time."

So is gallery owner Alexander Salazar, who is exhibiting the work at his San Diego gallery.

"Some artists do things for shock value, but this piece is pleasing to the eye," Salazar said. "Plus, I'm from Texas, so I relate."

But what raised his antenna was Trueman's story behind the portrait.

"At first, I thought he bought dead ants, and when I found out he had to kill them, the piece became about the journey -- the dance that artists go through when doing the painting."

Salazar says the ant portrait is getting raves from people, and, accordingly, has priced it at $35,000.

"The goal isn't that someone will buy it for themselves, but put it in front of the public," Salazar said. "That's why it is in my front window."

It is truly one of a kind and Trueman says it will stay that way.

"I don't want to kill any more ants," he said.

KLue Urbanscapes 2010: Art on canvas in the KLPac foyer!

Not long to go before it's 26 June, and time for Urbanscapes 2010! We guarantee it's going to be a blast. We've got bitchin' music acts and collaborations, a bazaar chock-full of swag -- and art in various shapes and forms!
We've got something potentially awe-inspiring planned for the foyer of KLPac: a massive, 4-foot-tall continuous canvas, girding the breadth of the space! We're in the midst of confirming participating artists -- but the list looks super-exciting, so far! Check it out:
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Shahril Nizam

Remember our Arts Issue, back in November 2009? Remember the awesome cover? That was Shahril Nizam's work.
Aside from minutely-detailed illustrations, Nizam is also a poet, having published a collection of verse, If Only, in 2007.

(Fulcrum, 2009)

Recently, he's visual style has evolved, dwelling on amorphous, organic charcoal/acrylic forms.
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Tan Zi Hao
A visual and performance artist, actor, and arts activist, Tan Zi Hao is certainly a talented individual! Most recently, he was one of the performers at Buka Mulut, a performance art event set in a restaurant. He was part of Five Art Centre's Emergency Festival in 2008, appearing in the play New Village People and Pineapple Rice.

Zi Hao himself grew up in Seri Kembangan, a New Village in Serdang. Just check out this Arteri Malaysia post he wrote about the township and its typography!
He also runs a children's art education programme called Projek Semai.
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Parking Project
Parking Project is a visual arts collective helmed by Roslisham Ismail. Better known as Ise, the artist is hot property in the Malaysian visual arts -- and no wonder!
Ise's art has tended to be a collage of media. Take, for example, Super Fiction: a show supported by the Japan Foundation that featured illustration, video, and text -- borne out of his experiences living briefly in Tokyo.

Lately, he has been pursuing more conceptual issues recently. HIs most recent show, Ghost, was an exhibition with a twist: there was no visual element. Instead, audiences were greeted with empty frames, soundscapes, and music!
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Chong Chin Yew
Author, visual artist and TV director Chin Yew quit his nine-to-five job to paint, turning out 40 pieces in the span of a month. He would later translate this virtuosity into a community project, 30dayartist, in which other artists, looking to build some discipline in their practice, challenge themselves to be similarly profilic in a month's time.

Chin Yew also writes, having illustrated and published The Boy Who Loved Clouds and
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The artists (there'll be more; we're in the midst of confirming more peeps) will be working on the day before Urbanscapes, as well as the day itself -- so you'll get to see these creators at work!
Also, at the end of the day, the big canvas work will be divided and disseminated via silent auction, with the proceeds going to charity. So these Urbanscapes works will live on! Awesome.

New Record for Work of Art

This time, there's no doubt.
Pablo Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, from the collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, sold for a record $106,482,500 (includes buyer's premium) on May 4 at Christie's in New York City, breaking the previous world record for any work of art sold at auction. The buyer, at press time, remained anonymous.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, from Picasso's 1932 series of paintings depicting his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, was referred to as the "lost" 1932 Picasso because it had never been published in color. It was acquired by the Brodys in 1950 for $17,000 from dealer Paul Rosenberg and had been exhibited in public only once since its purchase, at a 1961 exhibition sponsored by the UCLA Art Council.
(Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I sold at Sotheby's in London on February 3 for £65,001,250. Sotheby's used the HSBC mid-market exchange rate against sterling-1 GBP = 1.6050 USD-and claimed the price was $104,327,006, which topped Picasso's Garçon à la pipe as the most expensive work of art ever sold. Garçon à la pipe sold for $104,168,000 at Sotheby's in New York City in May 2004. Using the more conventional average Interbank ex-change rate for February 3-1 GBP = 1.59501 USD-Walking Man I sold for only $103,678,000, a phenomenal sum but short of Garçon à la pipe.)

Guerilla Art in Portobello

A Portobello resident has transformed a derelict fence into a piece of art

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

This example of guerrilla art in Portobello was sent in last week by an anonymous contributor, who wrote the following:
"There seems to be plans to build on this bit of waste ground. Kids play football here, people picnic and it's a nice patch of green by the beach. The owner of the plot can see a way of squeezing flats in so it looks like it's going to go. I'm sure a shabby fence in disrepair makes for an easier planning application so there's not been any interest in repairing the fence that borders the Promenade. I was sitting on the sea wall and noticed that the ugly fence cast interesting shadows and thought there might be some fun in repairing it. If flats go up here the shadows we'll get will be cast on over the beach.
"I put the planks up very early on Tuesday morning because the weather report said sunshine all day. The holes were pre drilled so's not to make too much noise and they went up quick. I honestly hadn't given too much thought to how they'd look from the grassy side of the fence with the sun rising behind them so it was a huge bonus to see them backlit like that. At lunchtime I sat on the wall with an Espy ginger beer and watched folk trying to read the backwards writing, walking round the fence and stopping on the prom to read the shadows.
"I walked past on the way to work on Wednesday and one of the planks had been knocked down. Poor workmanship on my part and a decent strike from a footballist I reckon. The fence has been slowly and systematically broken up for beach bonfires so I was expecting the planks to disappear at some point but I'd hoped they'd last longer than 24hrs. I didn't have time to stop so it was well after lunch when I went down with my screw gun, false beard and chunkier screws. Turns out that at some point during the day some excellent Porty resident had nipped in and put the plank back up.
Maybe someone else will come along and add another plank. There's a dot, dot, dot after 'seaside'."
Portobello guerrilla art. Photo: Paul Lambie

Tribute paid to patriarch of city’s art scene

KARACHI: The Central Institute of Arts and Crafts (CIAC) hosted Art Night – a tribute to Ali Imam, the late patriarch of Karachi art scene who was instrumental in making CIAC the foremost art school of the city in the 1960s and 1970s. Held at a local hotel yesterday, the event was also a call for funds for renovation and upgrade of the CIAC’s art facilities.

CIAC, founded in 1966 by a group of philanthropists, aimed to educate people in the field of visual art and graphic design and was the first art school in Karachi to offer a design programme. Ali Imam took over the CIAC in 1966 shortly after his return from London and worked enthusiastically to bring art education to everyone, no matter if they could afford it or not. He left the CIAC in 1970 and established the Indus Gallery.

The show began with messages from Ali Imam’s wife and children about their father and their fond memories of him. His friends Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, Saleem Asmi and Aftab Tapal along with his formers students Nahid Raza, Noorjehan Bilgrami, Tabinda Chinoy and Nargis Khalid also spoke lovingly of Ali Imam and his life. Nahid Raza, incidentally also Imam’s niece, spoke of how he was the reason behind she being an artist now and how he taught her to look at the world differently.

A presentation by Seema Tahir Khan, another former CIAC student, highlighted the years that Imam headed the CIAC with a montage of black and white pictures and music. The pictures provided a unique view of the thriving art scene in the 60’s and 70’s and provided a look at the younger selves of many famous artists today.

An exclusive exhibition by Tapu Javeri of Ali Imam’s portraits was also unveiled alongside black and white photographs provided by the CIAC Alumni. A silent art auction featuring the works of CIAC Alumni Shakeel Siddiqi, Nahid Raza, Imran Mir, Tabinda Chinoy, Omar Farid and Momin was also held.

Mel Gibson, ex-wife sell art collection at a loss

Melbourne: Actor Mel Gibson and his ex-wife Robyn Moore suffered loss on their multimillion dollar art collection that was recently auctioned due to the global economic slump.

The former couple auctioned their collection, while their divorce gets wrapped up.
However, the auction at New York's Christie's auction house saw unusually less biddings.
The pair faced a loss of 2 million dollars on their famous Maxfield Parrish Daybreak.
Moore had bought the 1922 oil painting four years ago for 7.6 million dollars. An anonymous buyer has now bought it for 5.2 million dollars.
Another of the Gibson's Parrish paintings, 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', was sold below its lowest sales estimate of 300,000 dollars. It fetched 2.2 million dollars.
The whole Gibson consignment sold for 10.1 million dollars, according to The Art Newspaper.
It had been expected to raise anything between 9.7 million dollars and 15.6 million dollars, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The couple had filed for divorce last April.

River of Art runs through South East

A 10 day celebration of the arts has kicked off in South East New South Wales, with the River of Art Festival.

The festivities started late last week in the Eurobodalla, with a fashion parade of wearable art, as well as music and dance performances.
Organisers say the festival has attracted new faces, with around 150 more people attending the opening gala than in previous years.
Festival Co-ordinator, Dawn Usher, says it was a successful opening weekend.
"There was lots of music, belly dancing and the Bay Theatre Players did some workshops," she said.
"One of the mythical sea creatures that was produced by the Narooma Oyster Festival Committee was brought up to Moruya and moored on the river.
"So that was pretty spectacular," she said.

Another art of the storyteller

India’s deities and legends radiate in Wellesley exhibits

“Kaag Bhusund Alights on Nag Devita’’ (2007) by Bhajju Shyam, from the exhibit of contemporary Pardhan Gond art. WELLESLEY — “Painted Songs & Stories: Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art From India,’’ a sparkling show at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, marks the first American exhibition highlighting the art of the Gond peoples of central India. Vibrating with brilliantly patterned mythological imagery, the exhibit also touches on familiar questions about the commercialization of indigenous art. Discuss COMMENTS (0) PAINTED SONGS & STORIES: Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art From India SEEING GOD IN PRINTS: Indian Lithographs From the Collection of Mark Baron and Elise Boisanté At: Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, through June 6. 781-283-2051, www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu Members of the Pardhan clan have been the storytellers, bards, and keepers of the mythology of the Gonds. Their tradition was an oral one. Indeed, the Gonds’ supreme deity is embodied by a musical instrument, a three-stringed affair depicted in the spritely painting “The Bana as Bara Deo,’’ by Rajendra Shyam. With snakes slithering across its frets and speckled birds roosting on either side, the instrument has an orange face with strong almond eyes and slightly bared teeth. The imagery in “Painted Songs & Stories’’ carries the potent charge of long told tales, but it’s only in the last 30 years that the Pardhan Gonds have picked up brushes and pigments, bringing narrative painting to the forefront of their expressive repertoire. Jangarh Singh Shyam was the patriarch of the clan’s artists. He was discovered by governmental scouts seeking talented tribal artists in 1981. Shyam, then 21, had dabbled in sculptures and murals, but he was making a subsistence living hauling dirt. The scouts liked his work and moved him to the big city, Bhopal, where they gave him a job and housing and launched his career. His art became wildly popular, and he developed an international following. Look at Shyam’s “Scorpion,’’ a dancing ink and watercolor piece. Hypnotically patterned sections make up the insect’s body. Lightning-rod zigzags in ink surround the scorpion’s legs. Its body glows with warm orange and pink washes and is surrounded by a rosy halo, textured by the artist’s trademark speckles. Pardhan Gonds consider the scorpion a sign of luck, and Shyam imbues this one with mesmerizing power. Family joined him, and he painted to support a small art colony under his own roof, encouraging other Pardhans to translate their stories into images. But in 2001, Shyam committed suicide in a Japanese museum where he was artist-in-residence. In the exhibition’s catalog essay, curator John H. Bowles quotes a friend of Shyam’s suggesting that the artist’s workload and family pressures, as well as city life, weighed on him. The artist’s nephew, Bhajju Shyam, has, like his uncle, garnered international attention. His “Kaag Bhusund Alights on Nag Devita’’ snaps against a bold black-and-white background: black sky, white sea, swarming with small fish and eels. Nag Devita, a snake god, writhes up from below and sneers in horror as Kaag Bhusund, a crow known as the Black One, mistakes his head for a place to land. The image pops with intricate patterning, undulating movement, and glowing contours.Continued...

Despite Tightening Up Of Society, Iranian Art Sees A Boom

An artwork by Nikoo Tarkhani, titled "This Is Not A Woman"

The Persian word for "love" is spelled out in Swarovski crystals and glitter, with a small footnote from the artist: "A picture is worth a thousand words and a word a thousand pictures." The estimate wasn't high enough.

When the acrylic painting on canvas sold at Bonhams in Dubai two years ago for a historic $1,048,000, the Iranian creator Farhad Moshiri became the first artist from the region to break the $1 million price barrier at auction.

It was a breakthrough moment -- not just for Moshiri -- but for Iranian art, which for the last few years has been going through what experts say is a "golden age." Largely attributed to the stabilization of the Dubai art market and strong ties between the United Arab Emirates and Iran, the boom is also being fuelled by a younger generation of artists attempting to push the boundaries of freedom of expression.

Lebanese-Iranian Rose Issa, a gallery owner and art dealer, has spent the last 30 years championing artists from Iran and the Arab world. These days, she says, there's "a real buzz" in Tehran.

The mass demonstrations that broke out following the disputed reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad last June are related to a growing demand for self-expression among Iranians, Issa says. She says it is no coincidence that since the protests, "many new galleries have opened" in Tehran, calling them "even trendier" and "more luxurious" than before. These galleries, she says, have started publishing catalogues, something she hasn't seen "for decades."

For Iranian artists, the growth of the Dubai art market over the last five years has been a boon. Iranian artists working inside the country now have the ability to network, exhibit, and sell their works in a fine-art market much closer to home. As a result, they have seen the value of their works steadily appreciate.

Sales of Arab and Iranian art in Dubai increased from $2 million in 2006 to $35.7 million in 2008. Iranian artists now represent 74 percent of sales of artwork in Christie's Modern and Contemporary Arab and Iranian auctions and 64 percent of sales at Bonhams.

Edward Lucie-Smith, a curator of Middle Eastern art (in which category Iran is often mistakenly placed), writes in an e-mail interview that currently Iran boasts "more artists, bigger talents, many [of them] still firmly rooted in Tehran despite the current political situation."

Dubai's high prices for contemporary Iranian art "obviously find an echo in Europe," Lucie-Smith writes, "not least because collectors feel that there is now an established market if they need to sell," but also because "Iran has the richest contemporary visual-arts culture in the region."

Forty-six new galleries have opened in Iran over the last two years -- 26 of them in Tehran, says Mahmud Shaloie, the director of the office of visual arts for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. There are about 300 art galleries in all of Iran.

France seeks Interpol help after $125 million art heist

French forensic police conduct their investigation outside the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris where five works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Amedeo Modigliani worth 500 million euros ($620.8 million) were stolen the police and prosecutor said May 20, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Benoit Tessier

France has asked Interpol for help in tracking down five paintings stolen in a 100 million euro ($125 million) art heist at a Paris museum, suggesting the artworks have already left the country.
Interpol said Saturday it had alerted its 188 countries member countries about the major theft from the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris and added the works to its stolen art database.
Museum officials discovered the paintings, which included works by Spanish master Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani, missing Thursday after noticing a smashed window pane.
"The French authorities have made sure that police around the world now have the information they need to assist in locating and eventually recovering these stolen works of art," Interpol's Jean-Michel Louboutin said.
The stolen works are Picasso's "Dove with Green Peas," Matisse's "Pastorale," Georges Braque's "Olive tree near l'Estaque," Modigliani's "Woman on the range" and Fernand Leger's "Still life with candlesticks."
"These extraordinary paintings by these great masters are so recognizable that they will be difficult to sell," he said.
Experts have suggested criminal gangs trying to extort money from the museum or state, or who trade the works in the underworld for drugs or weapons, could be behind the robberies.
MARSEILLE ROBBERY
Another Picasso was stolen Friday from the home in southern France of an art collector, who was beaten up during a robbery, a police source said Saturday.
The most important work in the robbery was a lithograph representing a woman's face painted by Picasso, while the other works were by less renowned artists, the source said, without identifying the other artists.
A lithograph is an authorized copy of work created by the artist himself or another skilled workman. Depending on print quality or production numbers it can have significant value.
The robbery was another in a series in Marseille since December. Thieves stole about 30 paintings, including a work by Picasso, from a private villa in January. A drawing by French impressionist Edgar Degas was stolen from a museum in December.
According to Art Loss Register, which lists about 170,000 missing pieces, Picassos are the most stolen of all artworks worldwide.

Split the art gallery collections like London and Paris do

Instead of building a larger Vancouver Art Gallery to house its entire collection, a simpler and more economical plan would be to keep the existing heritage building for the more historical part of the collection, say that which predates 1945, and then to construct a new gallery for the more modern work. This idea is neither radical nor unique. Major art collections have been split in two of the greatest art cities in the world. In Paris, the Louvre moved its 19th-century artworks across the Seine to the Musee d'Orsay and later works went to the Pompidou Centre; in London, the Tate retained its old-master artworks and the contemporary works were moved into the Tate Modern.
As with the galleries in London and Paris, it would make little sense to abandon the current VAG facility, especially given the enormous financial investment which has already been made in creating it.
Moreover, the ambience of this prestigious, beautiful heritage building in the heart of the city could never be recaptured. With the modern art works moved to the new facility, much of the existing basement storage space could be converted into new exhibition space, effectively increasing the size of the gallery from four floors to five. All of this would have the effect of allowing the new facility to be built on a proportionately smaller scale and at a lower cost than what is envisioned.
The VAG often seems somewhat confused in its approach of trying to be both a historical and an avant-garde gallery.
No doubt there were many in Paris and London who argued against and lamented the splitting of their prestigious collections. Yet the new art galleries were able to be more focused with their collections and ultimately enhanced the arts scene in those cities.

Seven's art cost woman peanuts

Paintings from her estate will fetch millionTheodosia Dawes Bond Thornton had good taste.
Long before the Group of Seven came into vogue, the Montrealer assembled a collection of their work, for a relative pittance.
She bought Lawren Harris paintings for as little as $85, A.Y. Jacksons for the same amount and at least one Arthur Lismer painting for the princely sum of $37.50.
They've risen in value.
The $85 painting she bought from Harris in 1947, Lake Superior Sketch XXXIII, is expected to bring $200,000 to $300,000 at the Heffel Auction of Fine Canadian Art tomorrow at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Her $85 Jackson, Coal Miners' Houses, Canmore, Alberta, was purchased four months after the Harris, and has a pre-auction estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. The $37.50 Lismer, Forest Interior, bought in 1949, has an estimate of $20,000 to $25,000.
"She amassed a great collection with a total [cost] of $17,000 to $18,000," marvels David Heffel, who runs the auction house with his brother Robert. "It's in the millions now. It was a great investment."
That's an understatement. Three of the 37 works from the Thornton collection up for auction - Harris' Winter ($600 in 1962) and Arctic Sketch IX ($500 in 1959), and Albert Henry Robinson's St-Urbain ($165 in 1945) - have pre-auction estimates of $300,000 to $500,000.
Thornton died last Oct. 27, aged 93, and her collection has been put up for auction by her estate.
Heffel had met her and said her house had so many works of art, the living and dining rooms were set up like an art gallery, "with a gallery-type peg-board and broad lighting system in the dining room where she would rotate the works." She literally had a cupboard full of Harris paintings between the living and dining rooms, awaiting their turn in the rotation.
The works are on display through tomorrow at the Heffel Gallery.
The Heffel brothers, who have become a dominant force in the Canadian art auction market, expect the sale to be "one of the biggest we've brought to market, with total estimates of $12 to $15 million," said David Heffel.
The highest estimate is $1.5 million to $2.5 million for another Harris painting, Bylot Island I, painted in 1930, when Harris and A.Y. Jackson travelled to the Arctic.
At the last Heffel auction in November, the Harris painting The Old Stump, Lake Superior, sold for $3.51 million, the second-highest price achieved for a Canadian artist at auction in Canada.
The unknown buyer may be interested in a Lismer cartoon that shows Harris with an axe chopping down a tree to create the stump so he could paint it. It comes with the caption, "Well, that's that," and the stump is adorned with a "1st" tag, a reference to Harris winning 1st prize at an art competition in Baltimore in 1931.

Zaha Hadid's Maxxi art gallery in Rome: stunning building, terrible gallery

Zaha Hadid’s wildly curvaceous design for Rome’s new art museum is certainly spectacular – but not fit for purpose, says Ellis Woodman

How do you design a museum to house the art of a century that has yet to begin? That was the challenge faced by a group of architects who, in 1999, were invited to submit proposals for a museum of 21st-century art to be built in Rome.

Altogether the least experienced of the competitors was the London-based Zaha Hadid, an architect whose designs had earned her an unrivalled reputation for spatial experimentation but who, after 20 years of practice, had only a couple of modest completed buildings to her name.

Her Rome proposal gave plenty of indication as to why that might be: a frenzied intermeshing of gargantuan concrete forms, it would clearly be fantastically difficult to build, eye-wateringly expensive and impose some of the most demanding curatorial constraints of any gallery in the world. The jury was widely expected to admire it for the sculptural tour de force that it clearly was – and hastily transfer it to the reject pile.
And yet, in a decision that was surely motivated less by the aim of building the best art gallery than by that of rejuvenating this most ancient of cities’ public image, they gave Hadid the job. Ultimately, the Italian authorities decided to build only the largest of the five interlinked buildings that she proposed, but it alone has taken a decade to build and cost a cool 150 million euros. This week , under the voguish moniker Maxxi, it finally opens its doors to the public.
Only then will it be possible to tell what sense the curators have made of the building’s positively Piranesian interior, but a recent preview of Maxxi’s empty shell gave me an idea of the scale of the challenge that this institution faces.
Some of the problems can’t be blamed on Hadid, not the least of which is the building’s location. The centre of Rome doesn’t readily accommodate new buildings of any great scale, so Maxxi has been built in a largely residential district that lies a 20-minute bus ride from the edge of the historic city centre.
Imagine that, in choosing the site of its museum of modern art, the Tate had passed on Bankside power station and opted for a plot in the outer reaches of Docklands. That is the sense one has at Maxxi – not a fatal move but one that will certainly prove a constraint on the audience that it can attract.
Of course, what might prove a fatal move would be to build Tate Modern in Docklands and then to find that you didn’t have anything to show in it. Alarmingly, this too is the sense one has at Maxxi. Its collection is being assembled from scratch, which is no small task given the scale of the building.
To date, about 300 items have been bought, but the gallery is being coy about what they might be. The highlights offered on its website – a smattering of minor works by some of the big names of the past century packed out by purchases from the younger generation of Italian artists – do little to instil confidence.
Given time and an enormous amount of investment, these issues can be addressed, but it is less clear how the profound shortcomings of the building itself can be resolved. The basic element from which Maxxi is composed is a storey-high, snaking gallery which, in some instances, extends for as far as 150 yards. These forms are employed repeatedly, weaving together on each floor to establish a labyrinthine exhibition terrain.
The space’s consistently epic scale and wildly curvaceous geometry is certainly spectacular, but what kind of art can possibly benefit from being shown in such conditions? Richard Serra’s work at the Bilbao Guggenheim – the largest sculptural installation in the world – perhaps suggests a way forward, but the suspicion remains that those pieces survive that building’s similarly fluid interior rather than thrive within it.
And paintings? Surely even very large canvasses will be reduced to the presence of postage stamps. As if these constraints weren’t severe enough, Hadid has even banned the mounting of work on the building’s walls (just in case a curator gets the wrong idea, they are frequently tipped off plumb) and has instead restricted them to adjustable partitions that are suspended from the ceiling.
One looks forward to hearing what artists think of their work being choreographed like so many Busby Berkeley showgirls, decorative incidents at the service of Hadid’s grand vision.
Frankly, I can’t think that I have ever encountered a gallery that addresses its nominal function with such seeming cynicism. We may be only beginning to discover what the art of the 21st century looks like, and no doubt much of it will take forms that we can’t yet imagine. Such uncertainty calls for an environment that can be adapted in myriad ways. Hadid’s truly tyrannical building is anything but that.

'Art of Living' for trauma-hit AI staff Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/news/cities/art-of-living-for-trauma-hit-ai-staff-27722.php?cp

Guru Sri Sri Ravishankar is all set to teach a specially designed Art of Living course to the trauma-hit Air India staff.

The course, which has been christened Art of Flying, will be taught to Air India personnel in the days ahead.

"Heavy food during night flights and inclination towards alcohol proves costly," Ravishankar told MiD DAY. "This has to be checked first. It will be part of our trauma-relief exercise for the Air India staff."

Sudarshana Kriya, a unique breathing technique that helps people develop a sound mind and body will be introduced to the Air India staff first.

Besides counseling, they will also be taught techniques, specially designed for aboard crew, to enhance their awareness and action capabilities.

The techniques that are expected to help in this regard, include Ujjayi breathing and Nadi Shodhana, besides meditation.

"We will begin trauma relief for families of victims, pilots and air hostesses," added Ravishankar.

"The process will enhance their awareness, help them with deep relaxation and help them act quickly and accurately, which can prevent disasters."

Ravishankar's unique tips include practicing pranayam, abstaining from alcohol, avoiding heavy food, simple exercises and deep breathing techniques that can be performed aboard.

"There is a belief that alcohol relieves stress among pilots," added Ravishankar. "This is what leads to a disaster. They should instead rely on simple yogic techniques that they will be taught."

AOL, which has started the process initially in Mangalore, plans to extend its training sessions across the nation in phases after talks with Air India.

"Air India employees have been full of negative emotions since the crash. This needs to be addressed," explained Dr Vinaya Hegde, the AOL volunteer overseeing the trauma relief exercise in Mangalore. "There are certain techniques that will relieve them of stress."

When dying for your art becomes part of the spectacle

The goring of a matador in a Madrid bullring last week reinforces why danger makes extreme sport and adventure so compelling

The danger inherent in bullfighting and extreme sports is often what makes them so compelling to take part in – and watch. Photograph: Hidemi Kanezuka/Getty Images

"It is amazing what some people will do in the name of their craft," I thought to myself last Friday as I was confronted with graphic images of Spanish matador Julio Aparicio being gored in the neck at Madrid's Las Ventas bullring.
Animal rights issues surrounding bullfighting aside, the nature of Aparicio's injuries not only serves to remind us how brutal this activity can be for the men and women involved, but also questions the motivation behind such dangerous activities – whether they be considered a sport, an art form, or simply an attention-grabbing venture in which people willingly place their lives in jeopardy.
We are well accustomed to reading headlines about daredevil stunts by the likes of Evel Knievel, as well as exploratory adventures, which are done as much as for the thrill as for the final outcome. Everest is a classic example of this: on Saturday, 13-year-old Jordan Romero became the youngest person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The previous week 22-year-old Bonita Norris became the youngest British woman to reach the summit. In spite of tremendous risks posed to life and limbs, ego is the clear motive behind such endeavours. Mastering such a huge feat, at any age, is in itself a great achievement. The knowledge that they would also be making history along the way must only have helped spur them on.
However, not everyone does it to be a record breaker. Sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson recently sailed around the world unaided, knowing from the very start that the World Speed Sailing Record Council would not officially recognise her voyage after discontinuing its youngest category in 1999 over fears for people's safety. Record or no record, for these intrepid young people, the high risks posed to their health and safety seem a small price to pay for the opportunity to realise their dreams.
In a similar way to bullfighting, a number of people have built careers around doing death-defying stunts. American illusionist David Blaine and French high-wire artist Philippe Petit are two such examples of stuntmen who blend high risk with artistry to create unique spectacles. Some have gone even further for their art. In December 2009, epileptic Portuguese performance artist Rita Marcalo provoked widespread concern for her safety when she announced the intention to self-induce a seizure on stage. Marcalo's extreme decision to give up anticonvulsant medication to facilitate the project – which received £13,889 funding from the Arts Council of England and a further £7,000 commission – was motivated by her desire to raise greater awareness about epilepsy. Despite ultimately failing to induce a seizure during Involuntary Dances at the Bradford playhouse, Marcalo's daring deed attracted crowds of people and did enough to champion her cause.
Aparicio may not have scaled Everest or sailed around the world solo, but every time he or another matador enters the bullring, they put their lives on the line. When I went to see a bullfight while living in Madrid, more out of curiosity than any morbid desire to see live bloodshed, I flinched every time a bull was gored. But the risk posed to the matadors themselves was arguably even more unnerving.
Although I do not condone the violence of this sport, there is no doubting that it is the very element of danger itself which has turned bullfighting into an artistic spectacle. Its cultural origins have always made it much more than just another extreme sport – it has become both a ritual and a vocation. It may not promote a cause (some would say quite the opposite) or break world records, but the profession gets as close as you can get to dying for your art.
As Aparicio lies in his hospital bed recovering, it is hard to think of anyone who has got much closer.

Art Institutions Need to Remember That 'It Can Happen Here'

The theft last week of priceless paintings, including works by Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani, from the Paris Museum of Modern Art was not only a large-scale property theft, but another reminder that our cultural property remains vulnerable to criminals with little regard for our history as a civilization.

High-value art theft is nothing new. In recent years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation created an art crime team to tackle the problem, a testament to its prevalence throughout the U.S. and around the world. Police agencies in Europe dedicate enormous resources towards recovering stolen art and antiquities, and INTERPOL has joined the fight with an online database of stolen art.

However, prevention of the theft of our priceless cultural treasures, not just the recovery of these artworks once they are stolen, is key.

To put the prevalence of art theft into perspective, in Massachusetts alone, nearly every major museum in the state has fallen victim to art theft. These thefts have included works by Rembrandt, Gaugin, Degas, Picasso, Manet, and Vermeer. Art is likely to remain an attractive target for criminals, who see art theft as a lucrative endeavor.

Ironically, history has proven that despite the high dollar values attributed to masterpieces, there's little, if any, money to be made in stealing art from museums. Thieves rarely think past the first step; they steal a priceless painting soon to find there's no market for it due, in part, to its high visibility and recognition that means it cannot be shown. Even the most brazen criminal or would-be collector is unlikely to pay ten cents -- or even a penny -- on the dollar for a $100 million painting that they can never display. If criminals recognized the minimal value of stolen art to them, perhaps there would be fewer art thefts.

So why does art theft still happen? One reason is that most people -- thieves included -- base their perception of art theft and the art underworld on portrayals they've seen in film or on television. Only after they have captured their stolen loot do they realize that there is no market for it.

Art thieves are not typically the glamorous, highly-skilled cat burglars of popular fiction. Art thieves are the bank robbers, stick up men, drug dealers, and amateurish miscreants common to every big city or town. Where there is a big city, there are usually museums and important private collections. In other words, art thieves are potentially everywhere.

In order to properly protect the public against further attacks on our cultural heritage, it's important that we understand who commits these crimes. Institutions need to realize that "it can happen here." At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which 20 years ago was the site of the biggest art theft in history, we know this all too well. That is why, even today, our security systems and procedures are in a constant state of improvement, utilizing the latest technologies and methods available to protect our unique collection. We're deeply committed to preventing another loss.

Rather than sit back awe-struck at the dollar amounts attributed to stolen art, it is essential that communities and institutions see art thefts such as these as a call to action to allocate resources towards and to remain vigilant in protecting our cultural heritage.

Anthony Amore has been the Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts since 2005. For the past five years, he has also served as the museum's chief investigator into the 1990 theft of 13 priceless works of art from that museum.

Hong Kong Int�l Art Fair opens to acclaim

�Shape Shifting At The Entrance To The Forbidden City� by Matthew Carver will be exhibited by the Galerie Caprice Horn at the Hong Kong International Art Fair 10, May 27-30.

Asia's leading international art fair opens to the public Thursday in Hong Kong for its third annual meeting of curators, galleries, collectors and art aficionados. Twenty-nine countries will be represented in this 150 gallery-strong event also known as ART HK 10, promising everything from performances to masterpieces in its largest offering yet.

The three-day affair will see the sales of such works as Andy Warhol's "Myths" ― the event's most valuable item at $12 million ― and Picasso's 1936 portrait of Marie Therese from the Gagosian Gallery.

Other artists to look out for are Young British Artist Damien Hirst, Japan's Takashi Murakami and India's Subodh Gupta, while globally influential galleries such as the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris and White Cube in London will also have booths set up.

Fourteen galleries from Seoul will participate in the fair, including the established Gallery Hyundai, Kukje and Arario galleries. Gallery Hyundai will exhibit 30 works by 19 domestic and foreign artists, including works by the noted German photographer Thomas Struth, and British-American artist Sarah Morris. Kukje Gallery will be showcasing some 20 artists, including pieces by Jack Pierson, Rhee Ki-bong and Lee Hye-rim.

Many of the works will be shown in Hong Kong for the first time, and the global stage on which the fair is presented will be balanced between the old and the new.

The Michael Hoppen Gallery in London will exhibit roughly 15 pieces, including the vintage "Dovima and the Elephants" (1955) by fashion photographer Richard Avedon ― the first time it will be on sale in the Asian market ― as well as the technologically significant "Milkdrop Coronet" (1957) by Dr. Harold Edgerton. Contemporary names include Ellen von Unwerth and Sohei Nishino, who creates satellite panoramas of cities based on memories, rather than exact measurements.

"In principle, the photography market is very young in Southeast Asia," said gallery owner Michael Hoppen, who is well-known for his range and selection of contemporary photography. "So we decided to go back in a sense to the real fundamental foundations in photography and bring great works by great masters."

The fair has garnered attention from financial and other creative groups alike. Christie's will stage an auction for Asian contemporary art on May 29 to run in conjunction with the event, and a variety of top creative minds will join the festivities this year.

Baz Luhrmann will team up with portraitist Vincent Fantauzzo to perform a multimedia work that includes a narrative, oil painting and sound effects. Their show will be hosted by the 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. Sensation Noriko Yamaguchi will also perform a show as her character Keitai Girl ("mobile phone girl" in Japanese) for an invitation-only show the day before the fair opens to the public.

Though the event is in the international spotlight this week, the fair is not restricted to only professionals and art connoisseurs. Programs such as the "New to Buying Art Tour" will help out the novice, while others outside the industry are welcome to join. Tours will be given in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

For more information visit www.hongkongartfair.com. Tickets to the general show are $200, though discounts are available for students, seniors and children under the age of 16 accompanied by an adult.

Old Hotel integral to Othello’s history

Don’t forget to stop by the Old Hotel Art Galley, located at 33 East Larch Street, this weekend during Othello’s Centennial celebration. The structure, built in 1912, housed workers on the Milwaukee rail lines.
“A lot of the people here probably know the history of the hotel, but it is important to note we are almost 100 years old,” Sally Laufer, manager, Old hotel and Art Gallery, said. “It’s the only railroad associated structure left in Othello and the surrounding areas.”
The hotel also housed locals and the occasional travelers who ventured to town.
“It was the thriving place to be,” Laufer said. “The depot was located just across the street.”
In 1895, President Grover Cleveland awarded a patent to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company to build the hotel on the land it currently sits on. Ownership of the property exchanged hands five times over the next 11 years. In 1906, a man who went by the name of Sherman bought the site and adjoining land for seven cents and acre and sold it to the Spokane and St. Paul Land Company for $12 an acre.
Ten months later, the Western Townsite Company purchased the property and transferred it to the Milwaukee Land Company to use for a railroad right of way. In 1909, the Milwaukee Railroad was established in Othello and its tracks defined the western edge of Othello townsite.*
Events happening at the hotel during the centennial weekend include a free art class in the new children’s art center building for children and adults from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., an antique car club will line the parking lot and perimeter of the building with old cars, the Old Time Fiddlers will appear from 1 to 2 p.m. and the Andy Sulzman band will perform throughout the weekend.
The Old Hotel Cafe will also be serving samples of authentic railroad chili.
“We’ll give everyone a little taste …. Sort of an appetizer when they come in to eat,” Laufer said. “Linda Boothman and I will be cooking it. We got the recipe from a fellow who made railroad chili. He called it Ken’s authentic railroad chili. People would come from everywhere to eat it.”
People who come to the Old Hotel and Art Gallery will also be able to see the new organic garden recently planted.
“Master Gardeners Terri Rice and Linda Crossier did a marvelous job,” Laufer said.
The Old Hotel and Art Galley is open to the public, but is a not-for-profit business, so it depends on commerce conducted by those who visit.
“We can also rent out the art center for reunions or birthday parties and get togethers,” Laufer said.

Image of Paris art thief captured on CCTV "like cubist painting"

'L'olivier près de l'Estaque' by Georges Braque was also taken Photo: Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

But they are so poor that they resemble a ‘cubist painting’ and are unlikely to be able to identify him.

The problem with what one investigator described as ‘faulty CCTV’ is the latest in a catalogue of embarrassment for the city’s Museum of Modern Art, which underwent a pounds 15 million security refit just four years ago.

The problems included an alarm system which had been broken for almost two months and three ‘dozing’ guards who ‘saw nothing’.

With the alarm’s array of sirens and sensors out of action, the intruder was able to slip into the museum on Thursday morning and calmly remove a Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Modigliani and Leger in just under 15 minutes.

Now it has emerged that he stared into at least one of the internal closed circuit cameras for ‘a few seconds’.

‘It’s a terrible image,’ said the investigator, ‘It looks just like a poor cubist painting — disjointed and strange and with no overall meaning.

‘We’re trying to piece it together slowly but it is almost certain that we will not be able to identify the man from it.’

The investigator also revealed that the thief had expert knowledge of the Museum, picking out three of its 20 galleries after breaking in through the East Wing.

After taking four of the paintings, including the Picasso, from two, he walked to another to pick up the Modigliani. All of the works were removed from their frames and then rolled up into a single bundle.

‘We’re trying to find finger prints or even DNA samples on what he left behind,’ said the source.

Christophe Girard, deputy mayor of Paris, confirmed that the cameras were working but at some point ‘went opaque’.

An unnamed colleague of the deputy mayor, meanwhile, said that none of the works were insured.

“To put it bluntly — the town council will have to foot the bill,” he said.

Paris City Hall, which is run by the Socialist Party, was officially the manager of the permanent exhibition of 20th Century modern art from which the paintings were stolen.

They were: Pigeon with Green Peas by Pablo Picasso (1912); Pastoral by Henri Matisse (1905); The Olive Tree near Estaque by Georges Braque (1906); The Woman with the Fan by Amedeo Modigliani (1919); and Still Life with Chandeliers by Fernand Leger (1922).

In 2006 the museum reopened after what was supposed to have been a ‘state-of-the-art refit’ , which included the fitting of the Spie alarm system.

However, it had been broken for almost two months on the morning of the raid because of a missing part.

Both city hall and Spie are carrying out internal investigations, as police seek the raider responsible for the crime.

Confirming an ‘internal administrative enquiry’, Paris mayor Bernard Delanoe said ‘all have questions to answer.’

Nobody at either City Hall or the museum would make an official comment about the vexed issue of insurance.

Viscount Charles Dupplin, of Hiscox insurance, said he thought the criminals involved were ‘almost certainly enthusiastic amateurs’ who had decided to launch the raid after ‘getting excited’ about recent high prices for Picassos and other works.

America’s FBI estimates the stolen art market at being worth more than pounds 5 billion. The Art Loss Register lists more than 170,000 pieces of stolen and missing pieces.

Picasso is the world’s most stolen artist due to his prolific output and the value of his works. The Art Loss Register lists some 550 missing Picassos.