Damien Hirst. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Damien Hirst is partnering with the Milan-based Fondazione Prada to sell a limited number of new photographic prints in an effort to raise money for Save the Children’s efforts in Italy.
Proceeds from the sale, which is on through through Sunday, September 27, will go to “Rewrite the Future,” the charity’s campaign to support children and their families in Italy who have been affected by school closures in recent months.
Georg Baselitz, “Maniera” (2019), oil and gold varnish on canvas, 64 15/16 x 35 1/16 inches (© Georg Baselitz, photo © Jochen Littkemann, Berlin, all images courtesy White Cube)
LONDON — There is a no-holds-barred, let’s-smash-up-the-kitchen-boys, bestial uproaringness about the early work of Georg Baselitz.
And much of this is in evidence in his treatment of hands and feet. The West German police seized an early painting called “The Big Night Down the Drain” (1962-63) — it was on display in his very first exhibition in West Berlin — on the grounds of obscenity.
And, yes, it is very easy to regard this early painting as obscene. It is offensive. It is ugly. It is nasty in the extreme. It is cocking a snook at any manifestation of refinement that might just happen along. It is tearing up the rule book. It is saying: the new art is like this, take it or leave it.
Wojciech Fangor: Forging the Scythes, 1954, egg tempera on plywood, approx. 9 by 24½ feet overall.COURTESY MUSEUM OF WARSAW
In 2013, curators at the Museum of Warsaw uncovered a hidden mural. Painted in 1954 by Wojciech Fangor (1922–2015), the composition shows three blacksmiths working together on a single scythe blade amid the smithy’s dark-red flames. Its depiction of collective labor was the sort of thing encouraged at the time it was commissioned, when Poland’s political and cultural life was dependent on Moscow. But the mural was covered with a thin plywood wall shortly after completion for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.¹ It had never been shown to the public.
The discovery came on the eve of a modernization project. The museum exhibited Forging the Scythes before it closed for renovations, and at the opening, Fangor put his signature on the previously unsigned wall. The artist posed for photographs in front of the painting, arms outstretched in a triumphant gesture. It was unusual for an artist in this part of the world—and for the museum—to so forcefully embrace old Socialist Realist work.
Cedrick Tamasala: Untitled, 2016, ink and graphite on paper, 27 1/2 by 39 1/4.COURTESY KOW, BERLIN
In another world, Black artist would be able to create, primarily, for audiences with whom they share a culture. But today, more often than not, they are assimilated into, and made legible within, the Western visual regime. This has certainly been the case for the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League (abbreviated CATPC for the group’s French name, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), a collective, established in 2014, of artists and agricultural workers who create sculptures made of chocolate; a number of them are employed on plantations owned by the multinational corporation Unilever, where they grow cacao. Their sculptures are made of material at once ready-at-hand and powerfully symbolic. The specter of the non-native cacao plant’s violent history haunts the region, and also the use of chocolate in CATPC’s work.
Damien Hirst ‘Cherry Blossoms’, 2020.PHOTOGRAPHED BY PRUDENCE CUMING ASSOCIATES/©DAMIEN HIRST AND SCIENCE LTD
Together with the Fondazione Prada in Milan, British artist Damien Hirst has launched a new charity campaign to aid Italian children whose education has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Hirst created four new limited-edition prints that were made available online today, with all profits from the sales donated to Save the Children, an international nonprofit dedicated to providing free access to educational, economic, and healthcare opportunities to children. In June, Save the Children launched the program “Riscriviamo il futuro” (Rewrite the Future), which today has established 90 educational spaces across Italy, in addition to providing financial support to vulnerable families.
Ayala Fishaimer, “Tough Negotiations” (2020), Israel
“It’s the circle of life and it moves us all,” the eternal lyrics of Lion King‘s opening song tell us. But if you look at the finalists of the 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, you’ll be reminded that the animal kingdom also has a humorous side.
The annual contest, founded by photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, celebrates wildlife with lighthearted images that capture animals in hilarious poses. The contest is supported by the wildlife conservation nonprofit the Born Free Foundation in the United Kingdom.
“Riders of the Light” by Christy Lee Rogers Credit: Christy Lee Rogers
Among those who call “underwater photography” their specialty, Christy Lee Rogers stands apart.
Instead of immersing herself in water, she instead follows its movement and that of models dreamily wading, by shooting from above. “I think what I do differently than most underwater photographers is that I am shooting from above the water and I’m using (the) refraction of lights,” the Nashville-based photographer and filmmaker told CNN. “So you get this sort of bending (effect).”
Rogers has taken more than 15 years to develop her technique, earning multiple accolades along the way, including the Sony World Photography Award for Open Photographer of the Year in 2019. The “otherworldly” quality of her work comes from constant experimentation.
Tauba Auerbach, S v Z
The book form is well suited to considerations of time and dimensions. These are concerns that preoccupy artist Tauba Auerbach. Auerbach’s research-based practice explores scientific forms and patterns — for instance, geometric structures such as waves and helixes. These interests manifest in a precise design sensibility that is apparent in every aspect of S v Z, the exhibition catalogue that originally was meant to accompany her postponed survey show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, curated by Joseph Becker and Jenny Gheith. A simplified color palette of silver, light gray, and black (except for full-color art reproductions) cohere this book as an object, reflecting Auerbach’s signature marbled papers, which serve as end-pages for this book and adorn the page edges.
Mark Bradford: Q1, 2020, mixed medium on canvas, 72 by 96 inches; at Hauser & Wirth.© MARK BRADFORD. PHOTO JOSHUA WHITE/JWPICTURES.
End papers, small rectangular sheets of translucent paper that protect hair during the perm process, are the basis of Los Angeles–based painter Mark Bradford’s early artworks. While working in his mother’s beauty salon, Bradford began integrating the papers into abstract paintings, creating a layered scrim through which the paint emerges. The artist, guided by an interest in common materials, has incorporated items from around Los Angeles—including fragments of posters, broadsides, and billboards—to tackle issues of civil unrest. His painting Kingdom Day (2003), appropriating advertisements and other images, refers to the 1992 edition of the annual Los Angeles parade honoring the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In an attempt to help alleviate racial tensions, it recalls the first year a Korean-born parade grand master was appointed, following the fatal 1991 shooting of Black teenager Latasha Harlins by a Korean storeowner and the brutal police beating of Rodney King. A selection of Bradford’s end paper paintings is on view in a solo exhibition spanning two decades at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas through January 10, 2021. In conjunction with the show, Bradford created a billboard installation for the museum’s “Modern Billings” program in downtown Fort Worth. Displayed from early May to mid-July, the project featured three pictures of the late “Mr. LaMarr” from the photo archive of fellow hairdresser Cleo Hill-Jackson. Additionally, an online exhibition of Bradford’s quarantine paintings can currently be seen on the Hauser & Wirth website.
What initially prompted you to incorporate end papers into your abstract paintings?
I love being a painter! I’ve always been fascinated by the history of abstract painting, particularly how it relates to the New York scene in the 1950s.
Ileana Sonnabend’s Andy Warhol, Flowers (1965) was among the works was split between dealer consortium GPS Partners, Gagosian, and Christie’s.Courtesy Christie’s Images/© 2020 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Talk to art market insiders about great artworks that have made headline-worthy prices, and you’ll soon hear monikers that honor the deceased collectors whose estates are selling them on par with the artists who created them: the Ganz Picasso. The Stralem Picasso. The Pincus Rothko. The Rockefeller Rothko. Such top-notch collections are crucial to the auction market—and if the fate of one major estate is a harbinger of developments to come, the auction houses may have increasing competition for plum consignments.
Some of the splashiest recent successes at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips have been bolstered by collections that came to market with the first of the three Ds that generally fuel auctions—death, debt, and divorce. This past February, Sotheby’s secured 10 works, by marquee-name artists like Clyfford Still, Henry Moore, and Richard Diebenkorn, from the estate of Bay Area collectors Harry “Hunk” and Mary Margaret “Moo” Anderson, which brought a healthy $66.3 million on June 29, despite being the house’s first major sale to go all-digital as a result of Covid-19.
