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Islamic Art
Market: The Rite of Spring
By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley Watching the marquee spring evening sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York was like crossing a rope bridge in an action film: The fear of collapse yielded to the relief of avoiding the abyss. The shakiest moments came during Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern sale on May 5, when Pablo Picasso’s…
In Perspective
By: The Editors EXHIBITIONS Parade of piranesis: David Tunick spent more than 20 years assembling Giovanni Battista Piranesi 1720–78, an exhibition of the Venetian artist’s etchings that opened in May and will remain on display through the summer at Tunick’s Manhattan gallery. It includes the last available intact set of Magnificenze di Roma, a 1751…
Restoration Hardware
By: James Panero In September 2000 art conservator Marco Grassi was attending an estate auction in Paris with an old friend, a European private collector. In the warren of salesrooms at the Drouot Hotel, mixed in with the chipped crockery and worn sofas, was a small rectangular painting in a dusty glass case. It appeared to…
Talking Pictures: Revolutionary Road
“I should be photographing more steel mills or paper factories,” Edward Weston wrote in his daybook on Sept. 13, 1923, “but here I am in romantic Mexico … There are sunlit walls of fascinating surface textures, and there are clouds!”
Design: Wonder Child
“Suddenly, without any kind of warning, I found myself completely naked, in the heart of the city of Milan, on the morning of Oct. 24, 1907.” With this astonishment began the fantastic life of Bruno Munari, an artist and designer whose every moment was imbued with the wonder of a child emerging from the womb.
Traveling Collector: Hungarian Rhapsody
Many cities around the world have had the dubious fortune of living through “interesting times,” as the old saying goes. But what makes Budapest unique is that its tumultuous past is still writ large across the city’s face. Forged in 1873 from Buda and Pest, two separate towns that faced each other across a bend in the Danube, practically every vista in this beautiful metropolis seems to offer a lesson in cultural history.
Books: Venetian Finds
Perhaps it is just coincidence. Or maybe deeper forces are at work to cause two novels built around paintings by Giovanni and Gentile Bellini to be published at the same time—and by the same publisher. It’s not entirely baffling, though; if one were writing a novel about the fate of an Old Master painting, one would do well to pick a Venetian one.
Today's Masters: Sublime Wilderness
The large painting on the easel is still somewhat inchoate. But it already evinces an impressive form and scale. It is the jagged outline of a majestic summit in the Himalayas. “I was trekking for several weeks last November in Nepal and Bhutan,” says Richard Estes in his matter-of-fact way, not acknowledging that such vigorous activity is at all out of the ordinary for a 72-year-old.
Ancient Art, New Rules
The field of antiquities—the art of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East—has had some hard knocks lately. A spate of lawsuits and even a headline-grabbing criminal trial have focused the public eye on the pitfalls of the trade and on the international debate over whether or not it is ethical to collect ancient cultural objects. Yet demand and prices for antiquities remain strong. In part this trend is a testament to the fact that there’s no such thing as bad publicity—due to the news stories, more people than ever before are aware that antiquities exist, are beautiful and desirable and are for sale—but also, it reflects the fact that the antiquities trade has made important alterations in the way it functions.
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