Art Thief Does A Runner

An Australian art restorer who said a Cezanne painting was among property stolen from him almost a year ago is still waiting for someone to be charged. A man had allegedly agreed to go to a police station to be charged after police found some of the restorers stolen property in the ceiling of a house on the Australian Gold Coast. Unfortunately, the Cezanne thief 'did a runner'. The angry restorer said the Cezanne was worth 50 million dollars, although art experts are questioning its authenticity.
Irish Art

Supreme Court to Art Gallery

The Singapore art scene will be getting a monumental boost in the form of a grand new venue. The government is converting its current Supreme Court and City Hall buildings into a fine art gallery of 11,000 square metres. It will display some of the best art from Southeast Asia enhancing the standing of Singapore as a global city of the arts.
Irish Art

Flowering Of Art

For Michael De Feo, the letter A stands for ant, a giant one, that he glued to a concrete wall in Manhattan. And B is for a beach ball, a giant one painted in primary colors, tacked on the side of a Dumpster. C is for cherries, hanging from under a chain-link fence, and D is for deer, frolicking in the plywood exterior of a boarded-up building.
Kids have long been the biggest fans of De Feo's street art, which he has been gluing to walls in Manhattan and other cities since his days at New York School of Visual Arts. He is known in the street art world as 'The Flower Guy,' for his signature flower - 15,000 of them tacked up all over New York.
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Irish Art

Ancient Rock Art

More than 250 prehistoric rock art carvings have been found in a remote region of England. The art works were discovered during two and a half years of research in the moorlands of Northumberland, close to the Scottish border.
Archaeological experts are trying to determine the origins and meanings of the abstract art carvings, believed to be the work of Neolithic and early Bronze Age people 6,000 and 3,500 years ago.
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Irish Art

Orpen's Art Revalued

William Orpen was automatically condemned by the 'intelligensia' - by those who consider a picture an object never to be looked at and enjoyed, but to be written about, puzzled over, confused or embarrassed by, or startled at. He was capable of sounding deep resonances with the art of the past, which increasingly counted for nothing as the critical tide of postwar Britain flowed towards modernism and away from visual erudition.

Today, however, when you look at the subtle paint surfaces of Young Ireland, the staged brio of The Dead Ptarmigan and the flawed ambition of The Holy Well, the din of debate pales, and images - by turns unsettling, irrelevant and insistent - glow in the mind. Imperial War Museum, London SE1, January 27-May 2. Then at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, June 1-August 28.
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Irish Art

Brits Turn Avid Art Collectors

A decade ago, the closest most people got to investing in art was splashing out on an poster of their favourite impressionist masterpiece. But now the public is demanding the real thing and is investing in affordable, original art in increasing numbers. Not only are galleries being forced to abandon any stuffy approach to art purchases but would-be customers are being offered interest-free loans and complimentary advice with tips on buying.
The Frieze fair in October sold more than 25 million worth of art in just four days. The annual London Art Fair, has seen purchases soar from 8 million to 12 million in the past three years. And that is without mentioning the Affordable Art Fair, next month's Art on Paper Fair and a clutch of events in cities such as Birmingham and Glasgow.
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Irish Art

The Art of Wyndham Lewis

This exhibition - 'The bone beneath the pulp' - features over 50 works by one of the key avant-garde figures in British art of the early 20th century. This is the first exhibition to consider Lewis's drawing as a distinct contribution to his art, despite the importance he attributed to the role of draughtsmanship in his own and other artists' work.

Described by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot as 'the most fascinating personality of our time', Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) is renowned as the leader of the Vorticist group in the years immediately before the First World War. The abstract works he produced early in his career were distinctive for their formal experimentation and acerbic wit, yet his diverse and experimental oeuvre also encompassed figure studies, portraits and works of imaginative fantasy. The exhibition ends with one of Lewis's last works completed in 1951 just before he lost his sight. Courtauld Institute Gallery, London until 13 Feb.
Irish Art

London Art Jungle

An exhibition in Tate Britain of around fifty paintings shows the largest and most impressive collection of Henri Rousseau's large-scale jungle paintings ever shown.

At the heart of the exhibition is the confrontation in Rousseau's work between the exoticism of his jungle subjects and the safety and harmony of his homeland pictures - French landscapes and daily life in the Parisian suburbs. A complimentary selection of allegories, portraits, modern fantasies and landscapes also feature. Ends 5 February 2006.
Irish Art

Ruben's Drawings Opens

The first major retrospective ever to be devoted to the drawings of Peter Paul Rubens in the United States will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 15, 2005. 'Peter Paul Rubens: The Drawings' will bring together 115 of the versatile Baroque master's finest and most representative drawings, including 12 recently discovered works that have never before been exhibited. Court painter, diplomat, and international celebrity, Rubens was one of the most influential artists of northern Europe in the 17th century.

Best known for his paintings, this universal genius is among the most imaginative of draftsmen. His topics vary from engaging biblical scenes to alluring nudes, from animated and stately portraits to poignant animal studies, and from landscapes sketched from nature to complex allegories.
Irish Art

Early American Modern Master

Marsden Hartley is one of the most important artists from the American early modern period. Time magazine art called Hartley the most brilliantly gifted of the early generation of American modernists. Hartley's vivid hues, muscular paint handling, and pioneering modernism led Pulitzer-prize winner John Updike to praise his boldness, jubilance, freshness, and elan.

Marsden Hartley: American Modern presents thirty-seven paintings and sixteen works on paper, along with portrait photographs and sculptural busts. Early post-impressionist mountain scenes, pre-WWI abstractions completed in Paris and Berlin, Maine and New Mexican landscapes and still-life paintings from the 1920s and 1930s are examples of works included in the exhibition. From January 15, Tacoma Art Museum.
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Irish Art

FBI New Art Theft Team

Interpol say art theft is the no 3 world property crime. A new national FBI task force on stolen art hopes to learn more about the global trade - and how to tackle it - with the help of professionals and scholars in museums, as well as art and antiques dealers.
Worldwide, only 5 percent to 10 percent of artwork reported stolen is recovered. Most art stolen in the United States is taken during residential burglaries, the FBI said. But perhaps the bigger problem is the sale of art stolen offshore to eager US buyers, who may or may not sense their illicit history.
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Irish Art

Has The Art Market Peaked?

Collectors will buy more than $20 billion of art this year. Art prices are being driven up by speculators seeking alternatives to stocks. Prices of the top 25 percent of the most expensive contemporary pictures sold at auction more than trebled since 1996, according to Art Market Research. "You need strong nerves to be buying" after the trebling of Contemporary prices, they suggest.
The May 1990 sale of Vincent van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" for $82.5 million in New York marked the peak of the last art boom. Did the sale of Picasso's "Garcon a la Pipe," which went for $104.2 million in May 2004, signal the top for the current art rise? The best art bargains may be at sales or dealers outside of New York and London.
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Irish Art

Nude Man In Seattle Art Gift

Stu Smailes - a retired computer analyst from Seattle - has left the city about $1 million with the stipulation that it be spent on a new fountain for the city - to include at least one realistic, life-size naked man. His lawyer was unwilling, while negotiations were continuing with the city, to give any of the reasons why Smailes left his money for this project. Asked for some insight on his personality, Bradbury said Smailes was a great fan of the arts. "He was a very funny man," the lawyer said, with a "very strong sense of humor."
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Irish Art

Dali Art in Philadephia

Melting timepieces and eerie dreamscapes haunt the work of Salvador Dali, the Spanish surrealist with flared mustachio and a flair for self-promotion.

A comprehensive exhibition of his paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the headlining museum shows of 2005. Salvador Dali - which opens Feb. 16 after its initial showing in Venice - is the largest of several exhibitions to commemorate the centenary of the artist's birth.
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Irish Art

Art Museums Duped

An Italian antiquities trafficker running a thriving business out of Switzerland duped some of the world's most famous auction houses and museums with illegally acquired artifacts. Giacomo Medici, an Italian dealer, was sentenced last month by a Rome judge to 10 years.
Sometimes working through third parties, Medici sold works often dating back to several centuries, police said. Works traced to Medici ended up in New York's Metropolitan Museum, the J.P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Sotheby's auction houses, Tokyo's Antike Mittelmerkultur Museum and others.
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Irish Art

Swiss Art Basel

The 36th edition of Art Basel, the international art show, takes place in Basel, Switzerland, from June 15-20, 2005. The Art Basel Committee has selected 270 leading galleries from all continents to participate. They will be showing works by over 1,500 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Irish Art

Tate Liverpool's Cubism

This exhibition celebrates the Kahnweiler gift to the Tate of art by Picasso, Braque, Leger, Gris and Masson and others. Seen in part at Tate Modern, the display is expanded for Tate Liverpool. The Kahnweilers were significant collectors in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. The gift expressed the Kahnweilers gratitude to the country that had offered them asylum in the 1930s. The collection was strongly influenced by their Paris based brother - dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler - who represented the foremost Cubist artists - Picasso, Braque, Gris and Leger.

The Picasso painting of 'The Studio' 1955, occupied pride of place in the Kahnweiler sitting room. Exhibition ends 2 May.
Irish Art

Vast Art Space

Bentley Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona is one of largest commercial galleries in the world - 35,000 square feet - bigger than a football field. World-class works by American masters such as pop artist Jim Dine share the exhibition spaces with established and emerging artists. Customers can have coffee and lunch, buy a book, have their paintings framed - all on site.
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Irish Art

Food Art Pays The Bills

Jim Victor - a sculptor who studied in Europe and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts now sculpts bucolic, realistic scenes from farm life - in butter - to pay his bills. People watch him doing it through the windows of a refrigerated display case. Sometimes he tries new ideas. Santa Claus from Sorrento cheese with a spaghetti beard, cranberry and coconut hat and roasted red pepper coat, for example. He's also found new ways to use chocolate - heating and casting it in molds like bronze or spraying liquid chocolate on butter sculptures. He works food like traditional art supplies - chocolate behaving like plaster and butter like clay.
Recently at a farm show, Victor sat in front of a 70-pound block of butter, slicing off slabs with the wire tool potters use lift pots off a wheel. He threw the butter slabs onto the sculpture's plywood base and pounded the butter like Play-Doh. As he worked his feet tentatively shuffled across fat-slicked floors. It gets a little tricky sometimes maintaining balance in the world of butter art.
Irish Art

International Modern Art

A new sequence of displays from the Tate Collection - International Modern Art - will focus on international developments in modern art since 1900. The programme will follow a loose chronology, showcasing works from major international movements such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. These displays will include the work of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and David Smith. Until 21-Jun-2005.
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Irish Art

Venice Art from Ireland

Ireland's artists at the 51st Venice Biennale are Stephen Brandes, Mark Garry, Ronan McCrea, Sarah Pierce, Isabel Nolan and Walker and Walker. Sarah Glennie, the Republic's Commissioner for the Biennale said this was the largest selection of artists to represent Ireland, which in the context of the Northern Ireland's first participation at the Biennale, presents an important opportunity to bring to the attention of the international art world the depth, vibrancy and strength of the visual arts currently being made in Ireland.

For the first time, following its return from Venice, the Irish exhibition will show in Ireland in early 2006 in The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, which will also support the staging of the exhibition in Venice. The Venice Biennale of Art was founded in 1895. It is the most highly respected of the international visual art festivals.
Irish Art

Art Museum Con

A Manhattan judge yesterday sentenced a Whitney Museum of American Art employee to probation and community service for stealing more than $850,000 in ticket receipts. The prosecutors were furious - they urged the Supreme Court Justice to give her at least two to six years.
The judge disagreed, He said five years probation and 200 hours of community service would be sufficient because the thief repaid most of the money. Ms Wahlah - the museum's manager of visitor services - and her underling Rowan Foley, 24 - voided ticket sales and pocketed the money for almost two years. The museum has 700 to 1,000 visitors a day and takes $20,000 a day in cash through ticket sales.
Wahlah's theft was uncovered when Foley, of Queens, told museum officials that he suspected she was stealing money. Auditors then discovered that Foley, too, had stolen about $30,000. He pleaded guilty last year and got five years probation.
Irish Art

Art Study Benefits

Schools that go beyond basics and include arts studies produce better students. A study of 23 arts-integrated schools in Chicago showed test scores rising up to two times faster than in demographically comparable schools. A Minneapolis program showed integration has substantial effects for all students, but appears to have its greatest impact on disadvantaged learners. Gains go well beyond the basics and test scores. Students become better thinkers, develop higher-order skills, and deepen their inclination to learn. The studies also show art integration energises teachers.
Irish Art

Morisot in Washington

The only female artist to exhibit in the first Impressionist art show in 1874, Morisot studied under Camille Corot and maintained a close relationship Manet as model for several of his best-known paintings, eventually marrying his brother.

Her later work inclined toward pure impressionism in its rendering of light while retaining an unusual smoothness of brushwork. Her early subject matter included landscapes and marine scenes - later she most frequently painted tranquil portraits of mothers and children. Morisot's works have been particularly popular in the United States, and many important works are in American collections. In the winter of 1894-95, she died pneumonia, aged 54.
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington. Jan 14-May 8
Irish Art

Leonardo's Secret Rooms Found

Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence.
The workshop rooms contain frescos painted by Leonardo that have "impressive resemblances" to other examples of his experimental work. The frescos include a triptych of birds circling above a subsequently erased representation of the Virgin Mary that "constitutes a clear citation of the studies by the maestro on the flight of birds".
"The finds are particularly interesting as they will help us to understand the context in which Leonardo was working in these rooms exactly 500 years ago," said Leonardo scholar Professor Vezzosi.
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Irish Art

Mitchell Art Prize

Thomas Kren, curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has won the most prestigious award given to art historians, the Eric Mitchell Prize. Kren shares the 2004 Mitchell Prize with Scot McKendrick, his counterpart at the British Library, for their collaboration on "Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe," The Prize recognizes the exhibition catalog, a gloriously illustrated volume of nearly 600 pages that tells more about its subject than any other source.
Irish Art

Primitive Art Cops Sued

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas has filed a lawsuit against the city of Pilot Point and its police department, charging that they violated the freedom of expression of an art gallery owner by coercing him to remove a mural depicting the biblical story of Eve.
Because her breasts were bare in the mural, the local police repeatedly threatened, in writing, to prosecute under a criminal statute aimed at those who would victimize children by selling or displaying to them hard-core pornography. In response, the gallery owner covered Eve's breasts with "Crime of Scene" tape. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that simple representations of nudity are a constitutionally protected form of artistic expression.
Irish Art

German Art Trashed

A German museum is offering art appreciation lessons to Frankfurt's sanitation workers, after garbage collectors binned a public art sculpture which they thought was rubbish.
Made from yellow plastic sheeting used to encase cement, the item was actually a sculpture by Berlin artist Michael Beutler. It was part of a series of 10 sculptures commissioned by the municipal art society and exhibited around the city. In fairness to the quick-moving garbage-collection teams, they have previously avoided trashing outdoor sculptures made from everyday objects - including a car filled with sand and a bathtub tied to a tree with a leash.
Irish Art

The Art of Nude Baggage

Michael Hermesh's large epoxy-impregnated plaster statue of a nude man holding a suitcase amid 24 pieces of old baggage in Penticton, British Columbia is upsetting locals.
To make it more discreet they installed a square steel plate over the genitalia - but that only drew more attention to the figure's mid-section and made the work look ridiculous. The local council said they originally passed a model which was so small you couldn't tell if it was clothed or not.
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Irish Art

Hockney Art Theory Challenged

Computer analysis of a 17th-century painting shows the artist did not - as has been claimed - use optical devices to project a perfect image of the scene onto his canvas.
In his 2001 book 'Secret Knowledge', Hockney set out to show that the heightened realism of many Renaissance paintings was achieved by projecting images of the subject onto the canvas, which the artists then traced. This would have required artists to use a device such as a camera obscura.
But next week, Stanford University physicist and art historian David Stork, who has been a fierce critic of Hockney's idea, will present evidence that he believes show Hockney is wrong. Stork has used computer imaging software to analyse the shadows in Georges de la Tour's 1645 painting 'Christ in the Carpenter's Studio' in a bid to plot the direction and intensity of the light illuminating the scene. This allowed him to determine whether the candle in Christ's hand was the only source of light.
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Irish Art

Manchester's Big Art Bang

Manchester's landmark art sculpture B of the Bang was officially unveiled by Olympic champion Linford Christie last night, sparking a spectacular firework display. Hundreds of people attended the ceremony at Sportcity, next to the City of Manchester Stadium, in celebration of the work of art.

The opening was only given the go-ahead earlier this week following a series of safety tests after a 7ft spike fell off the 184ft sculpture - the tallest art in Britain. The sculpture takes its name from Christie's comment that he always aimed to leave the blocks in a 100 metre race on the "B of the Bang" from the starting pistol.
Irish Art

Vatican Art Move

A painting at the Columbia Museum of Art is being sent to the Vatican in Rome for an exhibition on the Immaculate Conception. "The Immaculate Conception," by Jusepe de Ribera, will be included in art from around the world in the exhibition "A Woman Dressed in the Sun: Iconography of the Immaculate Conception." The exhibit will run from Feb. 11 to May 13. The painting depicts Mary being carried into the sky by cherubs. The work was a gift from variety store owner Samuel Kress of Pennsylvania.
Irish Art

MoMA Uses Ears To See

MoMA in New York has an audio tour with an intriguing change. Now, in addition to providing erudite commentaries from curators, the museum offers descriptions of paintings and sculptures for visitors with visual impairments. "Visual Descriptions," the tour for the visually impaired, is a 45 minute expedition covering 22 stops, and in English only. Also new is "Modern Kids," four brief children's tours lasting 10 to 15 minutes, which tries to lure young children into liking art by using music, riddles and cutesy commentary.
Who knows how long it will take to complete MoMA's next experiment with technology - the multimedia tour. At the end of January, MoMA plans to experiment with an audiovisual guide that will supplement commentary from curators with images on a small video monitor.
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Irish Art

Fat Women Make An Impression

Fat naked ladies are all the rage these days in Singapore, where the largest ever international art exhibition of famed Colombian artist Fernando Botero's works are on display in all their corpulent glory.
The 72 year old Botero, known for oversized sculptures and paintings of ample-bodied figures, came to Singapore last month to launch the massive show of over 70 paintings and drawings and 36 sculptures spanning three decades.
It is all part of the Southeast Asian city state's lofty ambition to become a global art exhibition hub, and follows major roadshows of other well-known foreign and historical artists in Singapore.
Ten of the 22 monumental sculptures are for sale, costing between 700,000 and 850,000 US dollars each, and media reports said local buyers are interested in buying two of them.

The massive exhibition was made possible by the Singapore government's pledge of more than 120 million US dollars over the next five years to the creative sector, in a bid to become a "global art city".
With a population of only four million but tourist arrivals of eight million per year, strategically located Singapore has much potential as an international showcase, making it an attractive venue for global artists eyeing Asia's growing ranks of collectors.
The Botero show comes in the wake of similar exhibitions of masterpieces from the Guggenheim Museum, Leonardo Da Vinci's works and Rodin's sculptures in Singapore, with more international shows in the pipeline.
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Irish Art

Northern Irish Landscapes

The Northern Irish inter-war landscape tradition - shaped in the main by the Northern painters such as Paul Henry, J.H. Craig and Frank McKelvey - is well represented at the Ulster Museum And art Gallery, Belfast.

This is also true of the post-Second World War generation , of whom Louis le Brocquy, Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, Dan O'Neill, John Luke and William Conor are perhaps the best known.
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Irish Art

Vita Activa

Vita Activa registers the everyday, worldly-orientated routine life of women - well organised and precise in detail. These common place routines, rituals and rites of passage can be interpreted as both comforting and constraining and are a way of navigating the complexities of life.
The artist, Abigail O'Brien lives and works in Dublin. She has had solo art exhibitions in the Galerie Bugdahn (Germany), the Rubicon Gallery (Dublin) and the Old Museum (Belfast). She has so participated in many group art shows. O'Brien has won many awards for her work and it is in both private and public collections, including The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, The Caldic Collection, Rotterdam and The Volpinum Collection, Vienna. At the Rubicon Gallery, Dublin Jan 20-Feb 26.
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Irish Art

Hungary for Art Growth

Buying contemporary Hungarian artworks is risky, but such investments promise high returns, gallery owners and investment advisors say.
Compared to international prices, the market of contemporary Hungarian artworks is underdeveloped. But it is predicted to see a boom within about a decade. The Hungarian auction indices of the past 25 years show an annual 20-30 per cent price increase. The Hungarian art market, which has annual turnover of approximately 28.2 million euro is a good investment target, according to experts. The high growth rate is partly because prices were kept low in the communist era.
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Irish Art

Branding Art Museums Expand

The Louvre and the Georges Pompidou Center are preparing to open branches outside Paris. This follows the international branding route chartered by New York's empire-building Guggenheim Museum, which has created the acclaimed Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and in Venice, Berlin and Las Vegas and is now looking to plant its flag in Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The Louvre will open a $100 million satellite in the northern French city of Lens in 2009 and will occupy a new annex at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for three years from 2006.
In contrast, while the Pompidou will inaugurate a new $68 million branch in the northeastern French city of Metz in 2007, it is also looking beyond France. It aspires to a new museum of modern art in Hong Kong, part of a proposed development known as the West Kowloon Cultural District. Guggenheim, has also signed up with a group bidding for this West Kowloon contract.
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Irish Art

Hanover Gallery Art Heritage

Erica Brausen founded the hugely influential Hanover Art Gallery in Mayfair which gave Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud their first one-man shows. Brausen challenged conventional thinking - a woman in a male dominated art market with a former Chanel model lesbian lover.
Next month, a series of sales at Sotheby's will sell about 240 lots from Jean-Yves Mock, who worked with her for 17 years.
Mock joined the Hanover in 1956 and bought Magritte's Le Corps Bleu for 5,000 pounds in the mid-'60s. Brausen left him another another Magritte expected to reach 400,000 pounds.

Two years ago, Mock started framing art stored in drawers and landed himself with a 100,000 pound framing bill - the resulting art, however is expected to fetch more than 2 million pounds.
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Irish Art

Kuwaiti Art Mystery

Art thefts from Iraqi museums have preoccupied the art world since Saddam Hussein was toppled, but one of the most enduring mysteries is the fate of art treasures stolen by the Iraqis after they occupied Kuwait in 1990-91. Most of the art looted from Kuwait's National Museum has been recovered - but almost all Islamic art taken from wealthy Kuwaitis by the Iraqis during the occupation has vanished. The overall value is several hundred million dollars.
The Islamic art taken by the Iraqi army in their ruthlessly well-organised looting operation may have been smuggled out of Iraq and sold off in the Middle East to help fund the present insurgency.
One Kuwaiti has a photograph of Saddam sitting by a porcelain vase that had once adorned his home in Kuwait. The Iraqi dictator has of course been found, but the vase is still missing. The Americans went into Saddam's palaces after the war last year - and they were completely empty.
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Irish Art

Millions in Dutch Art Stolen

Up to twenty 17th Century Dutch paintings and numerous silver items worth 10 million euros (7 million pounds) have been stolen from Westfries Museum in Hoorn, Netherlands. The security system at the 125-year-old museum had been checked on Thursday, its spokesman said. Employees discovered the art theft on Monday morning when they found smashed display cases, broken doors and empty frames.
The stolen art - which constituted the core of the art collection - are believed to be too well known to be sold on the open market.
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Irish Art

Anne Truitt Service

A friend writes about the memorial Service of Anne Truitt in Washington last saturday.
"The memorial service for the sculptor Anne Truitt was held on Saturday in Washington on a warm, overcast day. The service at an Episcopal Church was perhaps more a nod to her upbringing and not to her inclinations which were less 'brick and mortar' and more properly spiritual. However, Howard Kalke spoke and mentioned that they prayed together.
The church was nearly full and there were many different generations and kinds of people present. It is clear Anne Truitt had touched many lives and forged friendships with many kinds of people. Not surprising really as she was always curious about the world and curious how people lived in it. The odd thing was that the memorial was somehow not heavy nor sad. Perhaps not so odd - with so many ways to sense her presence - her books, her sculpture, and her works on paper and canvas. It will be hard to to believe she isn't here at all. And so, in way, she is." MR

Art Impressions Revisited

American Impressionist Childe Hassam traveled in the early 1900s - painting landscapes, waterscapes and street scenes in New York, Paris and Boston. He is best known for cross-sections of city life - pedestrians clad in black, horse-drawn buses and rainy skies. And he is famous for a series of American flag paintings, one of which, "Avenue in the Rain," hangs in the White House, next to the Oval Office.

A new exhibit at the Portland Art Museum focuses on a little-known aspect of Hassam's work - Impressionist renderings of peaks, stormy bays, frothy shores and big-skied deserts in the Northwest.
Altogether Hassam finished about 80 paintings in the Pacific Northwest - many of them landscapes, but also portraits and still-lifes. "We argued that he is really the leader of American Impressionism," said the Portland Art Museum. "He was the only American artist who studied in Paris who really connected with French Impressionism."
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Irish Art

The Art Of The Nipple

"When James Hall, the art historian, tackles Michelangelo, he is tackling a figure as gigantic and paradoxical as the artist's own David. Michelangelo's strength was one that many of his fellow artists and contemporaries would have considered a weakness - his sustained interest in the lone figure under stress, in crisis or transition.
His art was made for an age that was emphatically post-heroic, recognising bitterly and protesting that the age of chivalry was over. It was technically brilliant, erotically charged and inherently unstable.

Hall reads and thinks like a scholar but it helps that he writes with the confidence of a hack. "Michelangelo is the poet laureate of male nipples," he writes. "David's nipples are erect, and stand to electro-charged attention."
Yes, well...whatever. Better get the library ticket out then.
Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body, James Hall, Chatto and Windus 25 pounds.
Irish Art

Belgian Art Fakes

What stands out in the wood panels of the Flemish Primitives is the immaculate precision of detail and the translucence of light that survived centuries from the Middle Ages to this day.
Now, the Groeninge Museum - home to some of the greatest works of the 15th-century Flemish masters - wants you to take a closer look. Some of the Primitives may not be what they seem.
A stunning new art show, Fake or Not Fake, assesses the darker side of art restoration during the mid-20th century, when some great craftsmen stepped beyond the entrusted task of retouching and succumbed to "hyper-restoration" - and, curators say, even painted sheer art fakes.
Even if some may be outraged, a younger generation raised on digital enhancers may take it well in stride. "You would not know the difference," said one visitor. "I don't feel cheated." Fake or Not Fake at the Groeninge Museum through Feb. 28.
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Irish Art

DIY Art Promotion

James Burpee has painted hundreds of yards of art on canvas. Local galleries have given him art shows since the '60s, and companies have bought his art - but no museum collected him, and no galleries outside Minnesota have exhibited him in nearly 30 years. For the moment, Burpee's creative career sits shrink-wrapped in the form of a book titled "James Burpee: Paintings and Drawings, 1960-2004."

Waiting in frustration for the art world to recognize him, Burpee spent his own money on the half-inch-thick, full-color, catalogue-quality retrospective of his own artistic output. He's planning to pitch the art book to major art museums around the country and has organized a complementary retrospective art exhibition, opening at the California Building Gallery in Minneapolis.
This art exhibition was born through a visit Burpee paid to the California Building Art Gallery. One of the three owners of the art gallery, listened and opened the gallery for Burpee to create his own retrospective. The gallery owner was a kindred soul - an artist himself.
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Irish Art

Monet's London

The staff of St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts, Florida had to coax, plead, fret, travel and work long hours to pull together the massive "Monet's London" - based around one of the museums most prized art works - a Claude Monet painting of the Houses of Parliament.

The show of 150 art works includes a dozen paintings by the French impressionist, all but a few borrowed from 30 venues in the United States and Europe. Scoring a cache of works by an artist of Monet's stature, and supplementing them with important art including a James McNeill Whistler painting so fragile it rarely leaves its home, is significant and could elevate this areas status among art watchers. The art exhibition runs from Jan 16 - Apr 24 then moves on to the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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Irish Art

Lottery On Ice

Over 4 million pounds of heritage lottery money has been given to safeguard the finest example of ice age cave art in the UK - images of animals, dancing girls and female sexual parts.
Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire is a limestone gorge believed to mark the most northern explorations of ice age man. It houses Britains earliest cave art, discovered two years ago, and is said to have the world's most elaborately carved cave ceiling.
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Irish Art

Saatchi On The Canvas

Charles Saatchi is about to unveil his epic new collection - and there isn't a tent or a preserved animal in sight. Instead, the millionaire art collector has bought canvas after canvas.
"Painting has been out of favour with international curators for some time," says Saatchi. "They have been obsessively peddling video, photography and installation art. Their eyes dull over when they see painting. It's categorised as bourgeois. They are fashion victims, beyond help."
The Triumph of Painting is unlikely to please either the "I know what I like" traditionalists or the art-world spivs. It's a collection of artists, few of whom are publicly well known here. Their work is personal, aggressive and neurotic. It isn't what the pro-painters mean by painting, although much of it is very painterly and quite beautiful. "This first show," says Saatchi, "is for the artists I most often see admired and ripped off when I go round art schools."
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Irish Art

Irish Art - David Crone

Referred to by Dr S. B. Kennedy as "one the most vital artists working in Northern Ireland today" (exhibition catalogue, Fenderesky Gallery, Queen's University, Belfast, 1991, p.4), David Crone has been lecturing in fine art at the Belfast College of Art since 1985. He has been included in many prestigious, travelling group shows including The Delighted Eye (1981) and Divisions Crossroads Turns of Mind: Some New Irish Art (curated by Lucy Lippard, 1985-1987) and has had many one-man shows with the Northern Ireland Arts Council, the Tom Caldwell Gallery, and the Hendriks and Kerlin Galleries, Dublin.
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Irish Art

Art Reality and Hype

"A sad truth is that all too often in contemporary art, the reality simply does not live up to the hype. So you would be forgiven a modicum of suspicion on entering the latest art exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.
Ellen Gallagher is certainly one of the art worlds hottest, hippest, most hyped names. Lauded in all the right places, she rose to fame with mid-1990s New York art exhibitions. She was one of the stars of the 2003 Venice Biennale and later this month a major show of her work opens at the Whitney.

Is all the excitement justified? On the strength of this show, confounding even my own cynicism, the answer is a resounding yes. This is a complex exhibition, but persevere and you are in for a rewarding and enriching experience." Until Feb 13.
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Irish Art

A Strange Irish Art Story

James Miranda Barry - a close relative of the prominent 18th-century painter James Barry - died of dysentery, alone in a rented room in London. There was no post-mortem, and he was buried promptly, given the infectious nature of his final illness.
Two weeks later the person who had helped lay out the doctor, popped up with the bizarre assertion that Dr Barry was a perfectly formed woman.
This highly regarded army surgeon and humanitarian who had performed the first successful caesarean section known to British medicine and gave Florence Nightingale a piece of his mind, had fooled everyone.
He was born Alice Bulkeley, to an Irish family of greengrocers, a niece of the prominent 18th-century painter James Barry. Disowned and destitute, Alice and her mother threw themselves on the mercy of their rich relation. The artist became the first of three influential patrons who enabled the teenage girl to become a young man with the resources, education and contacts to become a doctor before women were welcome in the profession.
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Irish Art

Futuristic Carnegie Artist

Among all of the artists whose cutting-edge art works are included in the 2004-5 Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, one artist stands out like Jules Verne at a sci-fi writers convention - reclusive, 73 year old Lee Bontecou - one of the few women artists to achieve broad recognition in the mid-20th century.

Her sculptures look like something straight out of science-fiction novels. They appear to be old satellites or spaceships once built by some far-off civilization.
Irish Art

Spring is Sprung

Part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art Collection will open at Glor Gallery, Ennis, Co Clare on Friday 4 February 2005. 'Spring is Sprung' combines art by Irish and international artists and includes a series of prints by Sean Scully, sculpture by Siobhan Hapaska and paintings by Jack B Yeats and Peter Doig.
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Irish Art

New Zealand Art Boom

Art sell-outs even before the opening night. Art by both established and younger, emerging artists being snapped up by collectors at a feverish rate and gallery owners trying, frequently in vain, to keep speculators at bay. "Like the stock market, only prettier" - this how the current NZ art market was described recently.
It seems like the established collectors have now been joined by a new breed of younger, well-travelled and knowledgeable collectors who include art as part of a balanced investment portfolio. Sound familiar?
Irish Art

MoMA Sees All

Furious West 54th Street residents feel like unwitting art exhibits since the Museum of Modern Art in New York unveiled an all-glass facade that puts their private lives on display to 10,000 daily visitors. Museum-goers now have a clear views into living rooms and bedrooms.
MoMA was not giving much away. We have "an ongoing dialogue with the neighbors," they said.
Irish Art

The Art of Realism

Grant Wood, the American Regionalist painter, produced one the best-known and greatest works of American art, 'American Gothic'.

He went to Munich, Germany and there saw the sharply detailed art of 15th-16th-century masters like Holbein and Durer. He also admired the Holbein-influenced German painter Wilhelm Leibl and the art of his own contemporary, Otto Dix. In their attention to the details of everyday life and in the clean, hard quality of their paintings, Wood found the art technique for which he had been hunting. He abandoned impressionism.
His famous "American Gothic" caused a sensation when it was exhibited in Chicago in 1930. The hard, cold realism of the technique displayed in the painting and the honest, direct, earthy quality of the subject were unique in US art.
Irish Art

Painter With a Vision

Neo Rauch is one of Germanys most successful artists. He works in a Leipzig studio with no nameplate and no doorbell. The secrecy is intended for Rauch strictly limits the number of studio visitors.
Rauch favors bleached-out colors for his work - set somewhere between Surrealism and Social Realism. The prominent figures of his visual world often look like Communist, working-class heroes frozen in disastrous situations. They populate stage-like landscapes filled with empty military barracks, gas stations, abandoned factories and empty speech bubbles. There is an eerie, distraught atmosphere inherent in all of his paintings.

Rauch was born and reared in East Germany. When he was 4 weeks old, his parents died in a car accident. He could not recall many happy moments from his childhood. It was only when he became a student at the Academy of Visual Arts that he stopped feeling like an outsider. It was also here in the early 90's that he developed his distinctive painting style.
"It's this strange twilight zone between reason and irrationality where the artist hunts for prey," Rauch said. "If I could really explain this, I wouldn't have to paint it."
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Irish Art

Versace Art Sale

Donatella Versace will soon auction her collection of paintings, sculptures and jewelry, worth almost ten million. Some works belonged to her murdered brother Gianni Versace, founder of the Versace fashion dynasty.
Irish Art

Heavy Metal Pioneer

After working for Henry Moore, Anthony Caro developed his own style of abstract sculpture, influenced by the US avant garde and using materials often found in scrapyards.
Caro, who will be honoured by a large retrospective at Tate Britain this month, is renowned - as Picasso was - for the range and versatility of his work. His readiness to experiment with hitherto unimagined forms, wrought from unlikely materials, has established him as a one-man sculptural avant-garde, constantly capable of changing the method and direction of attack.

Greenberg the art critic Clement once wrote "I was overwhelmed by what you did... The recklessness of it... You are creating or recreating the medium."
Caro has maintained the position of an outsider in British art. He claims not to feel like a European artist at all. "New York had more influence on me than Europe", Caro says.
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Irish Art

Jasper Johns in Dublin

'Past And Present' is show at the IMMA, Dublin with some 90 works by the iconic American artist Jasper Johns. The exhibition explores the last 20 years work through a selection of related paintings, prints and drawings that demonstrate his continually evolving and innovative talent. Feb 9 - Apr 24 2005 at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Irish Art

Northern Irish Art

An Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition in Dublin shows part of the Irish Art McClelland collection. It highlights artists active in Northern Ireland during the middle of the last century - including Colin Middleton, William Scott, FE McWilliam, Daniel O'Neil and Gerard Dillon.
McClelland acted as their agent from the 1950s through to the 1970s when the McClelland Galleries in Belfast were closed down due to the 'Troubles'. Among works shown for the first time the drawings for the McWilliam 'Women of Belfast' series and paintings direct from the studios of Gerard Dillon and Daniel O'Neill. Ends Mar 6 2005.
Irish Art