Features From March 2010 Issue

From the Editor: Wings of Eagles

March 2010

Take a look at the forbidding Aztec warrior at left, encased in an eagle suit, and then look at the Roman bronze eagle on page 70. Not exactly birds of a feather, art-historically and stylistically speaking. But according to the curators at the Getty Villa, they had a lot in common, at least in the minds of the 16th-century Aztecs and Spaniards who are the subjects of a fascinating exhibition that opens there late this month.

Passage to India

March 2010

A long lunch is ending on a short autumn day, as late sun streaks the dining room of London’s Chelsea Arts Club, where two monuments of Indian art are catching up on a decade spent apart. Syed Haider Raza, 88, and Maqbool Fida Husain, 94, go back 60 years to 1940s Bombay, where they pioneered modern painting in India. Their most recent works are hanging together again, first at a preview at Art London and then at a major exhibition in December, and the occasion is worthy of a reunion.

Market: The State of the Fairs

March 2010

By: Sallie Brady It’s a new year: Time to adjust the fair calendar. If you live in New York, you’ll find yourself making fewer trips to the Park Avenue Armory. A dramatic rent increase continues to claim the lives of smaller specialty fairs such as Sanford Smith’s Works on Paper, which usually runs in February, [...]

Market: Eastern Hospitality

March 2010

By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley Last year at this time, New York’s Asian art community was scrambling to deal with the cancellation of the International Asian Art Fair, which had become an Asia Week draw to match the auctions at the major houses. But so much is happening during 2010’s Asia Week, which takes place March [...]

Market: Garden of Delights

March 2010

By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley The European Fine Art Fair always opens in Maastricht, Netherlands, just weeks before the country’s famous tulips do. The 2010 edition, which takes place March 12–21, shows how the fair’s stewards are like master gardeners, always tending their creation to keep it fresh and vibrant. Hammer Galleries of New York, first-timers [...]

Record-Breaker: The Vivid Pink

March 2010

By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley It’s known as The Vivid Pink, but this five-carat pink diamond, which was unearthed as a 10-carat rough stone in a South African mine in 2006 and was cut by the London jewelry firm Graff, is formally known as a Fancy Vivid Pink potentially flawless diamond. That’s jeweler-speak for “My, oh [...]