How is China’s Current Art Market?
$354.8 million That’s how much works by Chinese modernist painter, Zhang Daqian, who died in 1983 generated in auction sales in 2016. And before that, modernist painter Zao Wou-Ki’s artwork set an auction high at Christie’s by selling at $19.6 million. According to an article on Artsy in 2016, China surpassed the U.S. in auction […]
Meet Adrien Brody, the Artist
Yes, that Adrien Brody – the youngest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor Adrien Brody. At first, you may wonder if he is an actor playing the part of an artist or doing research for a role he is about to play. But then you see Brody with his work and realize […]
Charging Bull vs. Fearless Girl: Artist’s Right to Intangible Power
“My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.” – Arturo Di Modica In December 1989, Arturo Di Modica with the help of a friend, without the proper permits or permission, placed a 3.5-ton bronze bull sculpture in Manhattan’s Financial District as a symbol of freedom and […]
Art and Eroticism – Art and Nude Series: Part. 2
In Nudes, Prudes, and Attitudes, we ask: Why does art nudity occupy a special place in the cultural consciousness? Perhaps the fascination or rather, the tension we feel when faced with nudity in art is that many have a primal instinct to associate nakedness with eroticism. And that any nude body is always somehow a […]
7 Controversial Artworks throughout History
“Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.” – Yoko Ono It’s been said that true art is created to evoke emotion, positive or not. And over the centuries, that is exactly what some art has accomplished. Let’s take a look at 7 of the most controversial artworks that have shocked, amused, puzzled […]
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Quest for Wrapping
Christo began with his wrappings in the late 1950s when he would paint or wrap bottles and cans to oil barrels. By the summer of 1968, Christo and Jeanne-Claude gained international recognition with their 5,600 Cubicmeter Package, 60,277 sq ft inflated air package presented at the “Documenta IV” in Kassel, Germany. In a career that […]
Auction to Private Art Sales: Art Market Power Shift
There has been a noteworthy power shift in high-end art market eco-system in the recent time. Auction house that has been an unshakable power base to headline-making top-end of the art market throughout the post-war era to the recent decades, no longer seems to be a flag bearer of the highly lucrative secondary art market. […]
Story of Blue in Art
“Blue is the only color which maintains its own character in all its tones…it will always stay blue; whereas yellow is blackened in its shades, and fades away when lightened; red when darkened becomes brown, and diluted with white is no longer red, but another color – pink.” – Raoul Dufy, French Fauvist Painter (1877 […]
Isamu Noguchi and His Art During Japanese Internment Camp
“For one with a background like myself, the question of identity is very uncertain. And I think it’s only in art that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all.” – Isamu Noguchi It’s been 75 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt would sign Executive Order 9066 which relocated and incarcerated […]
New Art World and Changing Concept of Ownership
On February 7, 2017, The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a new policy known as Open Access, releasing large number of images of artworks from the museum’s 2 million collections in the public domain freely available for unrestricted use. These art images represent “the main body of collections” according to the museum’s director Thomas P. […]
Richard Prince vs. Ivanka Trump
It’s no secret that Ivanka Trump is an enthusiastic art collector who often shows off the contemporary art pieces from her collections on Instagram. One of the most recent was work by Richard Prince, the artist regarded as “one of the most revered artists of his generation” according to the New York Times and equitably […]
Land Art: How to Own an Earthwork
Land art was a term coined by Robert Smithson almost 50 years ago from those earthworks created in the remote areas of Navada, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona, a site-specific and ephemeral genre of landscape art. Smithson along with fellow artists Michael Heizer and Walter de Maria pioneered the land art movement in the 60s. […]