#sarah cascone

[mtaartsdesign]

“Radiant Memories” (2020) James Little’s vibrant laminated glass artwork at LIRR Jamaica station, incorporates layers of colorful, intricate lines that together form flat, gradated blocks of color, creating a sense of movement and animation as the light shifts throughout the day. MTA Arts’ largest MTA LIRR installation to date brings a fresh aesthetic to the station and provides an immediate wayfinding signal to Brooklyn-bound commuters as they navigate their transfers.

James Little’s solo exhibition “Black Stars & White Paintings” is currently on view at Kavi Gupta in Chicago. In a recent studio visit, the artist told @artnet ’s Sarah Cascone: “In order to achieve simplicity, you have to understand a lot of complexities. My Black and White paintings both play with this idea – geometry and color each serve a very distinct purpose and, when integrated just right, you know it’s working.” Read the full article “See Inside James Little’s Studio, Where He Combines Pigment, Beeswax, and Varnish to Create Layered Geometric Abstractions” on Artnet News.

Photos: Sophia Little

[kvetchlandia]

Sarah Cascone      Gallery Visitor Onboard Red Grooms’ “The Bus”     1995

[blueiscoool]

Archaeologists in Armenia Discover an Ancient ‘Golden Tomb’

It's the latest find from a joint Polish and Armenian excavation effort begun in 2013.

Archaeologists at Metsamor, an ancient necropolis in Armenia, have discovered a tomb filled with gold pendants and more than a hundred amber and carnelian beads. Dating to the late Bronze Age (1,300 to 1,200 B.C.E.), the grave also held the remains of a man and a woman, who appear to have be buried at the same time.

“Their death is a mystery to us, we do not know the cause, but everything indicates that they died at the same time, because there are no traces of tomb reopening,” Krzysztof Jakubiak, an archaeology professor at the University of Warsaw, said in a statement.

Laid to rest in an eternal embrace, the couple was buried in a cist, a stone-lined chamber dug into the ground. Believed to have died in their 30s, one wore bronze bracelets, the other a tin wire ring.

The grave also included a wooden burial bed, a faience flask, and about a dozen ceramic vessels. According to researchers, the beads and pendants were originally part of three necklaces, and the flask would have been imported from the Syrian-Mesopotamian borderland.

The research project at the Ararack Valley is a joint effort the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw and Armenia’s Service for the Protection of Historical Environment and Cultural Museum-Reserves, led by Jakubiak and Ashot Piliposian. The partnership has been ongoing since 2013, according to the Greek publication Archaeology; an exhibition of their findings opened last fall at the Armenian History Museum in nearby Yerevan.

To date, archaeologists have discovered about 100 graves in the cemetery, but the newly found golden tomb is one of the few that were not looted prior to the start of excavations in 1965. The cist graves would have been covered with burial mounds of earth that have eroded over the centuries.

Because the ancient Armenians do not appear to have been illiterate, and left behind no written records, archaeologists know little about Metsamor society. The walled settlement was at its height from 4th to the 2nd millennium B.C.E., with temple complexes surrounding a central fortress.

“It was a very large settlement. Even fortifications made of huge stone blocks have survived to our times, encircling the so-called citadel on the hill,” Jakubiak said. “There was no other settlement in the region that could be compared in terms of importance and size.”

By Sarah Cascone.

[abwwia]

Emily Sargent (USA, 1857 - 1929) copying an Old Master painting at the National Gallery, London (ca. 1930). Photo courtesy of R.Ormond.

Emily Sargent, Untitled (Tropical Seascape). Collection of the Sargent House Museum.

Read: Emily Sargent, Not Just a Sister to John, Was a Serious Painter in Her Own Right. Her Watercolor Landscapes are Finally Entering Museums��and the Spotlight

John Singer Sargent's family has donated never-before-seen work by Emily to seven museums.

Sarah Cascone | February 6, 2023

[thomasmartinnutt]

Chance Encounters #007

https://www.mixcloud.com/thomasmartinnutt/chance-encounters-007/#

Gordon Mumma, Vladislav Delay & Eyvind Aarset, Ben Frost, Alial Straa, Charles Olsen, Graham Lambkin & Áine O’Dwyer, Félicia Atkinson, Feronia Wennborg, Yama Yuki, Permanent Six Flags, Sarah Davarchi & Sean McCann, Angus Carlyle, Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry, Charlie Morrow, AGF & Delay, Valentina Magaletti & Laila Sakimi, Geneva Skeet, Merzbow, Mats Gustafsson & Balazs Pandi, LFO, Michiko Hirayama, Eliane Radigue, Stephen Vitiello, Cia Rinne & Sebastian Eskilden, Felicity Mangan, Kim Cascone, Roméo Poirier, Francisco Lopez, Ganavya, Caroline Shaw & Attacca Quartet, The Australian Art Orchestra, Clara de Asis & Ryoko Akama, Paul Beaudoin

[suzilight]

“Its ancient creators carved the work from a single larch tree with 159 growth rings..”

“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late glacial to postglacial Eurasia,” Terberger tells Franz Lidz of the New York Times. “The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”

According to Sarah Cascone of Artnet News, the new findings indicate that the rare artwork predates Stonehenge, which was created around 5,000 years ago, by more than 7,000 years. It’s also twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, which date to roughly 4,500 years ago.

As Artnet News reports, the complex symbols carved into the object’s wooden surface indicate that its creators made it as a work of “mobiliary art,” or portable art that carried ritual significance. 

Source: Smithsonian Magazine March 25, 2021 

The Shigir Sculpture is the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world, made during the Mesolithic period, shortly after the end of the last Ice Age. The wood it was carved from is around 11,500 years old..

Source

[addictedgallery]

Getty Images is the the official photographic agency of the International Olympic Committee.

It’s the photographers who create the lasting images of the games, working tirelessly to capture every event.

Getty photographer Adam Pretty is a veteran of 12 Olympic Games.

Check out Adam's interview with Sarah Cascone (Senior Writer at ArtNet News) about the gruelling experience of shooting the 16-day event.

[whileiamdying]

Marina Abramović’s First Show in China Features Crystal Shoes and Telepathy Phones

Abramović claims her new crystal-based works can help you learn to communicate remotely.

Marina Abramović in 2016. Photo by Reto Guntli.

Sarah Cascone August 5, 2024

Marina Abramović is about to have her first museum show in China, returning to the nation where the performance artist famously walked the Great Wall to dissolve her partnership with Ulay in 1988.

The exhibition, “Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy,” will open at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai (MAM) in October. But while the 77-year-old Abramović is well known for performing inside museum halls, she is asking visitors to take center stage this time around.

“It’s completely 100 percent interactive,” Abramović said in a virtual press event announcing the show. “I’ve never had a show like this in my entire life.”

“This is perhaps the first time that Marina is encouraging the audience to be the performers,” MAM artistic director Shai Baitel added. “She’s asking the audience, be present. Remove your phone. Be with us. Stay with us.”

Marina Abramović, Shoes for Departure (1991/2017). Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery.

It’s the artist’s largest show to date with 150 works, roughly 75 percent of which are being shown for the first time.

That includes “Transitory Objects,” sculptures collectively made from over 6,600 pounds of minerals that invite visitor participation. Abramović—who also touts the anti-aging properties of minerals in pricey skincare products—believes that crystals contain transformative energy.

“Hematite really raises your blood pressure; the rose quartz work on your heart; the clear quartz work on your mind; tourmaline on your liver. All of these things actually have also medical property, scientific property and energy property,” she said. “It is up to the public to discover them.”

The works are made from copper, iron, wood, and Brazilian crystals. By sitting or standing on or beneath the pieces, museumgoers are meant to channel the minerals’ energy. (Trained facilitators will tell visitors what to do.)

Marina Abramović, Copper Bed for Human Use (2012). Photo: Fabrizio Vatieri, courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery.

“The audience can connect themselves and incorporate their physical being with the objects themselves,” Baitel said. “And they can improve themselves and enjoy the qualities and the goodness the minerals have to offer.”

“I’m using geodes 35 billion years old,” Abramović added. “You can sit on the little chair and look inside the geode like you’re looking inside the stomach of the planet.”

The artist cites her three-month walk across China, titled Great Wall Walk, China (1988) as an inspiration for the series, which draws on Tibetan and Chinese medicine, spiritualism, and healing.

Marina Abramović, Great Wall Walk, China, Marina on the wall (1988). Photo courtesy of the artist.

“There were many different minerals that was in the ground. Each time I walk on that kind of minerals, I have the feeling different energy. I felt different,” Abramović said, noting that she encountered iron-rich hematite and red clay.

She doesn’t necessarily expect visitors to be in tune with the subtle effects of the minerals. The artist once watched a pair of Americans asking each other if they felt anything after 10 minutes with a crystal artwork. They agreed they didn’t, and decided to go get a hamburger.

“It’s very important to actually stay a long time with objects,” Abramović said. “If you want to get the muscles in gym, you don’t get muscles from one training. You get muscles by doing it every day.”

Marina Abramović, Great Wall Walk, China, Marina with people (1988). Photo courtesy of the artist.

The artist is especially excited about giving people the chance to train on sculptures she calls telepathy phones.

“Actually, it could take for anybody four years to learn telepathy, which is so much cheaper than using mobile phone. But nobody do, of course,” Abramović said.

Regardless of whether these pieces work in the way the artist claims, they represent a chance to leave behind works more lasting that an ephemeral performance.

“It’s not that I’m going to be able to perform when I’m 80, 90, 100, whatever,” Abramović admitted. “I have to find the system in which my mission and my legacy can go on. And this is exactly [what I do] with the ‘Transitory Objects.'”

Marina Abramović, Great Wall Walk, China, landscapes and portraits (1988). Courtesy of the artist.

The exhibition will also feature over 1,200 never-before-seen photographs of Abramović’s 1,550-mile journey to meet Ulay. It’s another reminder that decades later, the durational performance piece remains a formative experience for the artist.

“That was epic,” Abramović recalled. “I really fell in love with China.”

“Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy” will be on view at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai October 10, 2024–February 2025.

[rodreyes]

Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian, for sale from Perrotin at Art Basel Miami Beach. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

[kvetchlandia]

Sarah Cascone     Red Grooms’ “The Bus” (Interior Detail)     1995

[blueiscoool]

U.S. Citizens Arrested in Guatemala for Smuggling Ancient Mayan Artifacts

A raid of the couple's home uncovered archaeological objects, and significant works in jade and basalt.

An American ex-pat couple in Guatemala is facing charges of smuggling historic artifacts—which could mean five to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Stephanie Allison Jolluck first fell under suspicion on November 10, when she was stopped at Guatemala City airport, the Associated Press reported. Her luggage was quite heavy, triggering an inspection. Inside, officials found two large Maya stone carvings, dating to 600 and 900 C.E. Jolluck claimed to have purchased them at a market in Antigua, where she lives.

It now appears that those sculptures were just the tip of the iceberg. Three days later, police stopped Jolluck in her car, and found 166 more historic artifacts. (A judge had already released her from custody.)

Jolluck was with another American, Giorgio Salvador Rossilli, and both claimed the artworks were worthless reproductions. (Rossilli also claimed that he had restored some of the artifacts found in their car for their owner, and had been returning them when he was arrested.)

“They argued that, because they are foreigners, they cannot tell one piece from another,” prosecutor Jorge Alberto de León told the AP. “They told the judge that because they were pieces of stone they had seen sold at the markets, they never imagined that they were ancient archeological pieces.”

Guatemala’s Culture Ministry begged to differ, finding 90 percent of the objects to be Pre-Hispanic originals. The country believes the couple is operating a network for the illicit trafficking of Maya artifacts and other cultural heritage.

Nonetheless, Judge Sherly Figueroa released Jolluck and Rossilli on $6,400 bail on Monday, prohibiting them from leaving the country and requiring a biweekly check-in with prosecutors.

Then came the raid of their home, conducted by the Office of the Prosecutor for Crimes against the Cultural Heritage of the Nation. The search turned up an astonishing 1,222 archaeological artifacts, 722 significant works in materials such as jade and basalt, as well as 500 smaller pieces.

Other objects seized by the police include computers, books, and a vibrantly colored stuffed bird that may be a quetzal. The General Directorate of Cultural and Natural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture and Sports has taken custody of the artifacts for analysis, according to the nation’s Ministerio Público.

Jolluck, age 49, is a photographer and designer, while the AP described 62-year-old Rossilli as “a connoisseur of Mayan [sic] folk art.” She wrote on her website that she “has always been fascinated by Indigenous cultures. As a lover of ethnographic art, antiques, and handicrafts, I enjoy shopping markets around the world.”

By Sarah Cascone.

[abwwia]

Alice Guy Blaché, 1873 - 1968 - Cinema Pioneer

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché was a French #pioneerfilmmaker, active from the late 19th century, and one of the first to make a narrative fiction film.

She was the #firstwoman to direct a film.

From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only #femalefilmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.

She was artistic director and a co-founder of Solax Studios in Flushing, New York. In 1912, Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood.

That year, she made the film A Fool and His Money, probably the first to have an all-African-American cast.

The film is now at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute. Via Wikipedia

Born: Alice Ida Antoinette Guy, July 1, 1873, Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France

Died: March 24, 1968, Wayne, New Jersey, U.S

History’s First Female Filmmaker Has Been Rescued From Obscurity Thanks to an Enlightening New Jodie Foster-Narrated Documentary

Alice Guy-Blaché, the director of nearly 1,000 early films, created what may be the world's first narrative movie. By Sarah Cascone, August 20, 2019

Photo: Alice Guy-Blaché, La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy)(1900/1896), for Gaumont. Photo courtesy of Musée Gaumont, Paris.

Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/alice-guy-blache-pioneering-female-filmmaker-1629004

Watch also:

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, directed by Pamela B. Green

https://benaturalthemovie.com/

#BeNatural #GuyBlaché #AliceGuyBlaché #pioneer #femalepioneer #PamelaBGreen #CinemaPioneer

#AliceGuyBlache

#FirstFemaleFilmmaker #JodieFoster #Documentary #herstory #artherstory #retrocinema #OldHollywood #historyofcinema

[xtruss]

U.S. Returns $33 Million of Looted Antiquities to Turkey 🇹🇷! The Collection of 12 Items Included a Headless Bronze Statue Dating to 225 C.E.

— Teresa Nowakowski, Staff Contributor | April 7, 2023 | Smithsonian Mag

One of the 12 antiquities that U.S. authorities returned to Turkey last month Suleyman Elcin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

More than 50 years ago, farmers uncovered an archaeological treasure trove at Bubon, a Roman site in southwestern Turkey. The area, likely a shrine used to worship the emperor and his family, contained several rare bronze statues of Roman emperors and empresses.

“Had its contents not vanished, it would have been one of the most stunning archaeological discoveries of the 20th century,” writes Elizabeth Marlowe, director of Colgate University’s museum studies program, in Hyperallergic.

Rather than reporting the find to the government, as required by law, locals sold the statues, which were then smuggled out of the country.

“The looting back then was done as a commercial enterprise for the villagers,” Matthew Bogdanos, the head of the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s antiquities trafficking unit, tells the New York Times’ Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley.

Now, one of these statues is heading back to Turkey: Dating to 225 C.E., the headless bronze figure had been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2011. Experts think it depicts the Roman emperor Septimius Severus.

The work is one of a dozen artifacts repatriated to Turkey last month following investigations carried out by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The collection also includes a sculpture of a head dating to 290 C.E., as well as a bronze head of Caracalla, the eldest son of Septimius Severus, made between 211 and 217 C.E. In total, the items are valued at $33 million.

“Many of these pieces, which come from archaeological sites that have been the persistent target of looting, have been circulating across the globe for decades,” says District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. in a statement. “Now, they are finally being returned to Turkey, where they rightfully belong,”

Some of the farmers involved in the looting back in the ’60s are helping investigators, examining images from catalogs and museum websites to identify pieces they had stolen, reports the Times.

Of the items returning to Turkey, three came from the Met—including the Septimius Severus statue, valued at $25 million, which was seized in February. This year, the district attorney’s office has so far seized 17 items from the museum, reports Artnet’s Sarah Cascone.

Several other items were recovered during a criminal investigation into the collection of Shelby White, a philanthropist, art collector and Met trustee.

Authorities officially returned the 12 items to Turkey at a ceremony last month. Reyhan Ozgur, Turkey’s consul general in New York, said that the repatriation “sends a clear and strong message to all smugglers, dealers and collectors that illegal purchase, possession and sale of cultural artifacts will have consequences,” per the Times.

The latest repatriation is part of a growing worldwide effort to return stolen antiquities to their rightful owners. In particular, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which launched its antiquities trafficking unit in 2017, has been intensifying its efforts to investigate these cases.

[indizombie]

As her following grew, Qamar was tapped to create works for Indian celebrity chef Floyd Cardoz’s Bombay Bread Bar in New York and the set of The Mindy Project, the television series created by Indian American actor and writer Mindy Kaling. But Qamar still had to stage her own art exhibitions, finding locations and installing works for herself—until she heard from Taittinger. “It was the perfect time. I was at a point of my career where I really just wanted to paint and get that work out,” Qamar said. “This is an industry that’s hard to get into, especially for someone who hadn’t gone to art school and didn’t have any connections in the field. It seemed impossible for me to enter that space.”

Sarah Cascone, 'How Maria Qamar’s Feminist Desi Pop Art Went Viral on Instagram, Charmed Mindy Kaling, and Broke Into the New York Art World, artnet News

[gagosiangallery]

[Originally published October 2, 2018]

#MaryWeatherford:  takes us on a tour of Mary Weatherford's "I've Seen Grey Whales Go By" at Gagosian West 24th Street, New York. In addition to a number of great installation shots, the article allows Weatherford to go into some detail about her working process and the perhaps unexpected narrative references that seemed to emerge as the exhibition came together: "Depending on how much water she uses, the paintings are essentially invisible to the artist as she is working, only emerging after the canvas has dried. 'Because the water reflects, I can’t really see what’s going to happen. It’s a quite a mystery,' Weatherford explained. 'As the water dries overnight and the pigment sinks into the painting, it’s like watching a photograph develop. I come in the next morning and the image is there.' .... Weatherford found that animals emerged as something of a recurring theme in this show. Upon closer examination, paintings that at first blush appear abstract reveal the suggestion of an eagle, a horse head, or the foot of a conch shell. 'The revelation in this exhibition is the figuration,' the artist said. 'There are many animals in this show. You might miss these on first glance.'"

http://fal.cn/VmjD

[merelygifted]

Inside Meret Oppenheim's 'Otherworldly, Witty, Whimsical' Show at MoMA, the Swiss Surrealist's First U.S. Museum Retrospective in a Generation | Artnet News

Meret Oppenheim, 1982. Photo by Harry Croner.

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Objet [Le Déjeuner en Fourrure]) (1936). Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Meret Oppenheim, Pair of Gloves (1985). Collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern, gift of Ruth von Büren. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Meret Oppenheim, X-Ray of M.O.’s Skull (Röntgenaufnahme des Schädels M.O.), 1964/1981. Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation. Kunstmuseum Bern. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Installation view of “Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition” on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her sculpture The Green Spectator (1959) blocks a doorway between galleries, a design choice envisioned by the artist in set of 1983 drawings for a possible retrospective of her work. Photo by Jonathan Muzikar, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Meret Oppenheim, Red Head, Blue Body (1936). Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Meret Oppenheim Bequest. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Meret Oppenheim, Stone Woman (1938). Photo by Sarah Cascone.

Meret Oppenheim, Ma Gouvernante (My Nurse), 1936. Collection of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

If you know the name Meret Oppenheim, you probably associate the artist with one thing: fur. A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, however, proves the Surrealist to be an artist of endless creativity and incredible versatility who drew, painted, and sculpted in a wide range of media and materials.

“She just had a remarkable imagination and unrivaled ability to get up in the morning and never do the same thing twice,” Anne Umland, the museum’s senior curator of painting and sculpture, told Artnet News. “It’s pretty radical that throughout her five-decade career, she managed to remain committed to a very otherworldly, witty, whimsical sensibility.”

The show, titled “Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition,” is the artist’s first U.S. exhibition in 25 years, and it features numerous pieces that are being shown in the country for the first time. It originated at Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Bern, which has the world’s largest holdings of the artist’s work, and is co-organized by the two museums and Houston’s Menil Collection.  ...