Pop Art by Kaws

 

KAWS

Brian Donnelly also known as KAWS is referred to as "an American graffiti artist"

Due to the artist's popularity, he has amassed almost 4 Million Instagram followers.

The artist is known for creating works referencing Kanye and a host of other subjects including Covid. The artists works have been used in fashion or toys and other mediums. His works fetch high prices at auction. You can see an example of his work for sale here.

Feel free to leave or add comments about this artist or share any works you own by this artist.

One million dollar Russian art vandalized by security guard

 Art News: 2/9/22

A Russian security guard was found to have vandalized a Soviet-era avant-garde painting by drawing eyes on its faceless figures using a ball point pen. 

The art was insured for one million dollars. When asked why he did it, he said it was because he got bored.  It was his first day on the job. 

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Epic painting by Dan Twyman

"Epic"

by

Dan Twyman

30" x 40"

Original Acrylic on Canvas.

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The Arts

The arts are alive and well and millions of travelers are now visiting art galleries in New York, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Laguna Beach and more. While online sales for general goods has exceeded brick and mortar business, the art industry is quite different in that you really need to see a work of art in person to appreciate it. Art can be altered when uploaded to a site or blog, so seeing the art in person is important. If you have questions about art of any kind, I am a long time art consultant who has sold works by Salvador Dali, Picasso, Chagall, Miro, Warhol and many others including current popular living artists.  Email me

Art prints giclee on metal wood paper

Now these works are available on metal, wood, paper, tote bags, phone cases and more!

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Van Gogh to Rothko: World Class Art Arrives in Arkansas

by Alex Gladden

Van Gogh to Rothko,” an exhibit featuring the celebrated artist, Vincent Van Gogh, arrived at Crystal Bridges last Saturday providing art fans throughout the area an extra excuse to make the voyage to Crystal Bridges despite the wintery weather.  

While entrance to the permanent collection at Crystal Bridges is free, there is a small supplemental payment of $10 to enter the “Van Gogh to Rothko” exhibit. The exhibit showcases the multiple eras of art that make up what is called abstract art, said Beth Bobbitt, the Crystal Bridges media relations manager.

The exhibit includes work from 73 artists and 76 actual pieces, Bobbitt said.

“The exhibition marks the first time many of these works have toured in decades, and Crystal Bridges is one of only four institutions that will host ‘Van Gogh to Rothko,’” Bobbitt said.

The exhibit is a part of the collection at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and it spans art created over 150 years and 16 movements – including modernism, abstract expressionism, pop art and post-impressionism, according to the Crystal Bridges website. “Van Gogh to Rothko” will stay until June 31.

Some, like UA art history professor Leo Mazow, said they are very much looking forward to seeing the highly anticipated exhibit. Mazow praised the Albright-Knox Art Gallery as one of the most prestigious galleries of American art. The “Van Gogh to Rothko” exhibit adds to Crystal Bridges’ already impressive art collection, Mazow said.

Beth Owen, a nontraditional art history student, said she is also really looking forward to seeing the “Van Gogh to Rothko,” exhibit. Owen specializes in mesoamerican art history and said she really likes being able to see the comparisons between contemporary work and the pre-Columbian art work.

In particular Owen said she was really excited to see Rothko’s “Orange and Yellow.” Owen said she had previously not been impressed with his work until she took a studio class and attempted to imitate the art.

“I have now come to appreciate work of artists like Rothko,” Owen said. “I can not wait to have my previous doubts confronted and actually be proven wrong when I actually do get to see my first Rothko.”

Although many UA students have not been able to visit “Van Gogh to Rothko,” some students have been able to see the exhibit. Senior Andrew Schalk has been able to see the exhibit twice.

Schalk said he really admired how the museum really focused on education. The museum had commentary beside each piece to inform audiences about how each work influenced its time and even other works in the exhibit.

“Crystal Bridges balanced nicely the ability to make the viewer feel exuberantly overwhelmed and able to understand all at the same time,” Schalk said.

“Van Gogh to Rothko” is designed so that viewers can see how the different artists influenced each other. The exhibit also shows how the artists evolved.

For example, the Picasso featured at the exhibit, referred to as “La Toilette,” is a part of Picasso’s “Rose Period,” of art. This piece is very different from some of Picasso’s later work, which would fall into the category of art that Picasso helped to pioneer, cubism.  

The exhibit also includes information about the different artists attached by the artists’ work. By “La Toilette,” the museum included information about artists Picasso was influenced by, including the artist famous for his use of geometrics – Cezanne.  

As Picasso continued to develop his style into cubism, he based some of his technique off of Cezanne’s work.   

There are, of course, works of art by the artists for whom the exhibit is celebrated – Van Gogh and Rothko. The piece featured by Rothko is one of his celebrated pieces, “Orange and Yellow.”  The work presents two squares: one of orange and one of yellow. The piece that is included in the exhibit by Van Gogh is “La Maison De La Crau,” or “The Old Mill.”

Van Gogh did not rely so much on reality to complete “The Old Mill,” as much as he represented his emotions through colors, museum curator Manuela Well-Off-Man said.  

The colors Van Gogh used to paint “The Old Mill,” suggest happiness.  The colors in the work are mainly light and lead viewers to think on subjects of joy, Well-Off-Man said.  

“This is a theme that we will see throughout the exhibit today,” Well-Off-Man said. “Many of the artists featured used color to express their emotions.”

Mazow also highlighted on this theme when discussing the exhibit. The exhibit highlights a later work by Pollock called Convergence. Crystal Bridges has already acquired several of Pollock’s earlier works. Mazow said that this will allow audiences to see the artist mature.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends, and the museum is closed Sundays.

Trove of Still Lifes on the Auction Block Weldon Collection of Paintings to Be Sold at Sothebys

Adriaen Coorte’s “Wild Strawberries on a Ledge,” from 1704, part of the 

Weldon collection to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. CreditSotheby’s

Until recently, Henry and June Weldon’s Park Avenue apartment reflected a kind of passionate, obsessive collecting of a bygone era. Wood-paneled rooms featured cabinets stuffed with rare English pottery and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings hung cheek by jowl on every available wall. Asian sculptures were also scattered around the place.

“My father didn’t know when to stop,” said James Weldon, their son, shaking his head as he maneuvered through the cluttered spaces the other day. “He had an eye and understood what he was doing, for an amateur, that is.”

A prominent New York businessman who died in 2003, Henry Weldon couldn’t pass an art gallery or antique store without at least poking his head in; his wife, who died in October and was known as Jimmy, got a master’s degree in art history late in life. As a widow, she continued collecting with a vengeance — paintings, pottery and sculpture.


In 2000, the couple gave much of their pottery to Colonial Williamsburg. But the paintings — a group of about 70 works together worth more than $30 million — will be sold at Sotheby’s in New York. Breaking with the tradition of holding old master paintings sales in New York only in January and June, George Wachter, a chairman of Sotheby’s and an expert in old master paintings, said he decided instead to schedule the single-owner sale of the Weldon collection on April 22. “My idea was to hold it when New York is vibrant,” Mr. Wachter said. “It’s also at the same time as our magnificent jewelry sale.”

 

Included in the sale are tiny jewel-like still lifes by masters like Balthasar van der Ast and Adriaen Coorte; landscapes by Aelbert Cuyp and Jacob van Ruisdael; and three paintings by van Dyck that include a portrait of the artist Martin Ryckaert estimated to sell for $700,000 to $900,000. Highlights from the auction will go on view at the Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters later this month to coincide with the old master painting sales, which start Jan. 29. They will also travel to Los Angeles, London and Amsterdam.

 MUSEUM BUYS A DELANEY 

The Brooklyn Museum has acquired its first painting by the 20th-century African-American artist Beauford Delaney. A still life that Mr. Delaney created in 1945 when he was working out of a cold-water loft in Greene Street — years before most artists settled in SoHo — the painting, 

“Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit),” depicts a bowl of bright yellow fruit and next to it a Fang reliquary figure. A bird, hovering above the bowl, looks as if it were about to swoop down and devour the fruit. The painting’s original owner, Emanuel Redfield, was a celebrated civil liberties lawyer and counsel to the New York chapter of the Artists Equity Association. 

“Delaney probably gave the painting to Redfield for services rendered,” said Teresa A. Carbone, curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The son of a Tennessee preacher, Mr. Delaney studied art in Boston before settling in New York in 1929. He became a fixture in the downtown art world, hanging out with a bohemian circle that included the writer James Baldwin, whose portrait Mr. Delaney painted several times. In 1953, Mr. Delaney moved to Paris, where his style of painting became less figurative and more aligned with the Abstract Expressionists.

The Brooklyn Museum bought “Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit)” from the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea for an undisclosed price, with money from the museum’s five-year-old African American Purchase Fund. “I’d seen the work a few years ago, but at the time we couldn’t afford it,” Ms. Carbone said. “It’s so powerful it stayed with me.” The painting fits well in two categories in the museum’s holdings — the first, its growing collection of 20th-century African-American artists, and the second, its strong group of American Modernist works that include paintings by Stuart Davis and Marsden Hartley. “Delaney and Davis were close friends,” Ms. Carbone added. “And this painting allows us to discuss traditional African-American art alongside Black Modernists.”.

“Untitled (Fang, Crow, and Fruit)” will go on view on Feb. 24 in the museum’s fifth-floor “American Identities” galleries.

‘DESIRE LINES’ AT THE PARK

The giant colored spools on three monumental industrial shelving units might at first glance seem to have been inspired by the coiled Con Edison cables that often dot the city, but the installation, which will occupy the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast corner of Central Park, contains 212 wooden spools wound with brightly colored ropes. In addition to coincidentally being the best-known Manhattan area code, 212 is the exact number of pathways that wind through Central Park, according to research conducted by the Italian-born, Paris-based artist Tatiana Trouvé, whose installation “Desire Lines,” which begins March 3, will be her first public art project in New York. Each rope is a different length, corresponding to the lengths of each pathway.

Tatiana Trouvé’s “Untitled”(2014), which will occupy the Doris C. Freedman Plaza on Fifth Avenue and 60th Street.CreditCourtesy of the artist, Johann König Gallery, Berlin and Gagosian Gallery, New York, Laurent Edeline

Like much of Ms. Trouvé's work, the installation deals with themes like memory, time and space. “It’s a site-responsive work,” said Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund, which organized the project, which will be on view through Aug. 30. “Besides the actual pathways, the project also is about the notion of our own mental maps.”

Ms. Trouvé, who is known for her meticulous research, went to great pains to measure every pathway she could find in the park. Her thinking behind the installation will be the subject of an exhibition, also opening on March 3, at the Gagosian Gallery’s Park Avenue space at 75th Street. On view will be drawings, models and small sculptures related to the project. “Although it’s a small show, it will have a lot of information,” Louise Neri, a director at Gagosian, said. “It will give the public a chance to see the thinking and work that went into the installation.”

NEW ROLE AT SOTHEBY’S

When Joshua Holdeman left Christie’s for Sotheby’s, where he started work last year, it was unclear what his new role would be. An expert in photography, 20th-century design and contemporary art, Mr. Holdeman has been dipping his toe in various departments without a specific role. But this week, Sotheby’s announced that he had been made worldwide head of Sotheby’s 20th-century design, photographs and prints.

Correction: January 10, 2015 

A report in the Inside Art column on Friday about the Brooklyn Museum’s acquisition of its first painting by the African-American artist Beauford Delaney misstated part of a comment by Teresa A. Carbone, curator of American Art at the museum. She said she believed the museum was the first to display African traditional art as art, in the 1920s, not that it was the first museum to show African-American art as early as the 1920s.

Cubans Get a Dose of Surrealism at Dali Exhibit

BY MARY MURRAY

HAVANA, CUBA -- Art appraiser Alex Rosenberg has spent decades hanging the forbidden fruit of Cuban art in New York galleries. This week, he opened the minds of Cuban art lovers by exhibiting a collection of the work of the surrealist painter Salvador Dali (1904-1989) in Havana. It is the first time a major collection of the Spanish-born surrealist has been shown on the island.

The exhibit is entitled “Memories of Surrealism” and opened at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Viewers enjoying the "Memories of Surrealism" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. The exhibit comprises major works by the late surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.

“It is a very important exhibition because it illustrates the flexibility that Dali had”, said Rosenberg, who selected 95 lithographs and etchings from five different periods that span 50 years from Dali’s portfolio. Rosenberg’s goal was to give “the people here the opportunities to see the range of Dali´s work”, a man he describes as a “genius” and “personal friend”.

In the catalogue distributed at this week’s opening, Rosenberg reminisces about one of their favorite New York haunts, the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel where he first met Dali and commissioned original pieces. Rosenberg also published over 150 editions of original Dali prints.

Many of the Dalis displayed in Havana come from Rosenberg’s personal collection. He is also the president of the Salvador Dali Research Center, sponsor of “Memories of Surrealism”.

Wilfredo Benitez, of Cuba’s Ludwig Foundation, an organization that promotes Cuban art, believes this exhibit is a milestone for Cubans drawn to Dali’s work, especially because few people can afford the luxury of visiting museums in other parts of the world.

Kentucky exchange student Naomi Williams plans to see the exhibit this weekend. “After all the terrible news this week from the Ukraine and Gaza, I need to experience something that reminds me there is beauty in the world.”

Guggenheim Dali Liquid Desires

Birth of Liquid Desires (La Naissance des désirs liquides), 1931–32. Oil and collage on canvas, 37 7/8 × 44 1/4 inches (96.1 × 112.3 cm). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553.100 © 2013 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

By the time Salvador Dalí joined the Surrealist group in 1929, he had formulated his “paranoid-critical” approach to art, which consisted in conveying his deepest psychological conflicts to the viewer in the hopes of eliciting an empathetic response. He embodied this theoretical approach in a fastidiously detailed painting style. One of his hallucinatory obsessions was the legend of William Tell, which represented for him the archetypal theme of paternal assault.¹ The subject occurs frequently in his paintings from 1929, when he entered into a liaison with Gala Eluard, his future wife, against his father’s wishes. Dalí felt an acute sense of rejection during the early 1930s because of his father’s attitude toward him.

Here father, son, and perhaps mother seem to be fused in the grotesque dream-image of the hermaphroditic creature at center. William Tell’s apple is replaced by a loaf of bread, with attendant castration symbolism. (Elsewhere Dalí uses a lamb chop to suggest his father’s cannibalistic impulses.) Out of the bread arises a lugubrious cloud vision inspired by the imagery of Arnold Böcklin. In one of the recesses of this cloud is an enigmatic inscription in French: “Consigne: gâcher l’ardoise totale?”

Reference to the remote past seems to be made in the two forlorn figures shown in the distant left background, which may convey Dalí’s memory of the fond communion of father and child. The infinite expanse of landscape recalls Yves Tanguy’s work of the 1920s. The biomorphic structure dominating the composition suggests at once a violin, the weathered rock formations of Port Lligat on the eastern coast of Spain, the architecture of the Catalan visionary Antoni Gaudí, the sculpture of Jean Arp, a prehistoric monster, and an artist’s palette. The form has an antecedent in Dalí’s own work in the gigantic vision of his mother in The Enigma of Desire of 1929. The repressed, guilty desire of the central figure is indicated by its attitude of both protestation and arousal toward the forbidden flower-headed woman (presumably Gala). The shadow darkening the scene is cast by an object outside the picture and may represent the father’s threatening presence, or a more general prescience of doom, the advance of age, or the extinction of life.

Lucy Flint

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Lost Van Gogh found

More than 120 years after Vincent van Gogh's death, a new painting by the Dutch master has come to light.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the largest collection of the artist's work, announced Monday the discovery of the newly identified painting, a landscape titled "Sunset at Montmajour."

"A discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum," the museum's director, Axel Ruger, said in a statement.

Van Gogh is believed to have completed the relatively large painting in 1888, two years before his death and during "a period that is considered by many to be the culmination of his artistic achievement," Ruger said.

The picture depicts a landscape in the vicinity of Arles in the south of France, where van Gogh was working at that time, the museum said. Click image above for full story.