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Posts published in “Fine Arts”

Basquiat Painting Fetches Record $48.8 Million in NY

By goodblacknews on May 16, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting titled "Dustheads" sold for $48.8 million at a May 15 auction. (Image courtesy of AP/NBC New York)
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting titled “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million at a May 15 auction. (Image courtesy of AP/NBC New York)

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting titled “Dustheads” sold for $48.8 million yesterday at Christie’s at a sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York, setting a new auction record for Basquiat.  His “Untitled,” a painting of a black fisherman, held the previous record when it sold for $26.4 million last November.  Also breaking world auction prices for artists were works by Roy Lichtenstein and Jackson Pollock.

Lichtenstein’s “Woman with Flowered Hat” fetched $56 million. A classic example of pop art, the 1963 painting is based on Pablo Picasso’s portrait of his lover Dora Maar.  An important drip painting by Pollock, “Number 19,” realized a record $58.3 million.  Christie’s says Wednesday’s auction brought in $495 million, the highest total at any art auction.

article via nbcnewyork.com

Basquiat Videos: Toxic, Macklemore And Al Diaz Speak On SAMO's Inspiration And Legacy (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on May 12, 2013

Basquiat VideosWhether seen in a market report, an art history book or a rap verse, the name Jean-Michel Basquiat is legendary. The dreadlocked young artist quickly rose to fame after taking up graffiti in New York City, becoming an incandescent art star before his untimely death in 1988 at only 27 years old.

Twenty five years later, the late artist is experiencing a massive global resurgence. In New York, his blowout Gagosian retrospective saw record attendance and his work is slated to appear later this month at Gagosian’s posh Hong Kong gallery for the first time ever. And yet, we often get so tied up in Basquiat the legend we forget he was a real person.
A new three-part video series released by Christie’s remembers Basquiat not only for his artistic genius, but also his energy, audacity and growing pains. The series begins with Basquiat’s high school friend and the other half of the graffiti duo known as SAMO, Al Diaz. “What we were doing was a response to everything around us…everything we were disillusioned by.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCHe7HCBF1s&w=560&h=315]
Next we hear from Toxic, Basquiat’s friend and contemporary, who paints a picture of the Haitian artist’s meteoric rise to fame.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-NvULWRxdw&w=560&h=315]
Finally we hear from Ben Haggerty, aka Macklemore — yes, the singer of “Thrift Shop” — for a surprisingly touching meditation on Basquiat as a source of inspiration in his work as he grapples with his own success. “When he got with Warhol it was like everyone just tore him down.” Macklemore continues, “That’s such a weird feeling as an artist to make something that’s pure, that’s from the heart, that is who you are, and have a group of people shit on you.”
In a conversation with the curator and critic Henry Geldzahler in Interview, the 23-year-old artist delivers a deceptively simple, thought-provoking line: “The more I paint the more I like everything.” The films above honor the mind and legacy of a star that burned too bright, too fast.  Basquiat’s collection will show at Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong from May 25 until August 10, and “Dustheads” (1982) is expected to fetch $25-35 million at Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 15.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJ82FqXn4g&w=560&h=315]
article by Priscilla Frank via huffingtonpost.com

The Whitney Museum of American Art Presents ‘Blues for Smoke,’ a Look at Blues, Jazz and American History

By goodblacknews on April 14, 2013

Charlie Parker

Beauford Delaney
Portrait of Charlie Parker, 1968, Oil on canvas
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York

The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibit, “Blues for Smoke,” features an exciting array of works by a wide range of contemporary black artists. But it offers so much more. A journey back in time, the combination of works, inspired by African-American music, slips you, with a heady mix of anticipation and foreboding, into a dark, back alley jazz club that would be easily at home in the ruins of Potsdam, Berlin, or along the steamy backwater canals of New Orleans. The mood of the show captures the feeling of folks gathered at smatterings of café tables as you enter, where you sit and listen to live jazz vocals in an atmosphere tinged with the bite of a gin cocktail and the halo of cigarette smoke.

Former Lover Reveals Wealth of Unseen Works by Basquiat

By goodblacknews on April 9, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)'
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)’ painting estimated at 7-9 million GBP is displayed at Christie’s in February in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? More to the point, is a sound only a sound if someone hears it? Without delving too deeply into the metaphysics, this riddle offers an imperfect analogy for the philosophical conundrum more relevant here, namely – is art only art if someone sees it?  TheGrio interviewed Alexis Adler, a New York University embryologist and former romantic companion of iconic Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, these and other tacit questions about how we evaluate, share and make meaning of art played mysteriously in the background.

Adler, who lived with Basquiat before he was famous, recently revealed plans to share a previously unseen, thirty-year-old collection of art works and ephemera from the early career of the tragic and prolific creator. Produced during their relationship in an East Village apartment — some pieces on the apartment — these pieces have never been seen by the art world or the public.
“This is allowing the people who knew Jean to tell the world more about him, who he was, how I knew him, his warmth and interest as a person,” Adler told theGrio about her plans. “There is a range of work from that time, and it offers a pretty intense snapshot of his beginnings as an artist.”

Artist Kehinde Wiley Gains Attention for Exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum

By goodblacknews on April 3, 2013
New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley‘s current exhibit Kehinde Wiley: Memling at the Phoenix Art Museum is attracting national attention, most recently via a mention in Time Magazine’s ‘Pop Chart’ in the March 18 issue. Wiley’s eight portraits take their poses and contexts from the works by the legendary 15th century Flemish master Hans Memling but Wiley has substituted contemporary sitters for the historical figures. 

Beautiful Games: Oil Paintings by Ghanaian Artist Tafa

By goodblacknews on March 30, 2013

Painting by Tafa
Ghanaian artist Tafa has imbued his vibrant oil paintings with motion by stroking thick layers of paint across each canvas with a palette knife. Inspired by his West African heritage – especially the colors and patterns of Kente cloths and the rhythm of traditional drums – Tafa rose to prominence as an artist in his own country in the 1990s before moving to New York. His imagery encompasses sporting themes, as well as spirituality and music.
“I paint sports themes because they are a universal form of communication that is replete with powerful, multi-layered symbolism. Team sport fosters hard work, fraternity, excellence, and international understanding … It is an area of life that underlines Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision that people should be judged by the content of their character.”  To see more of his inspiring works, click here.
article via guardian.co.uk

HBCU Elizabeth City State University Opens a New Art Gallery

By goodblacknews on March 23, 2013

guitaplayerjones
“Guitar Player” by Leonard Jones

Elizabeth City State University, the historically Black educational institution in North Carolina, recently opened its new Kermit E. White Graduate and Continuing Education Center. The center houses the university’s art gallery.
One section of the gallery will display pieces from the university’s permanent collection of African and African American art. The other part of the gallery will exhibit a rotating selection or a visiting collection.
Professor Alexis Joyner, chair of the art department at the university, loaned eight pieces from his personal collection for the opening exhibit. In addition, works by Leonard Jones, a former professor at Virginia State University and Charles Joyner of North Carolina State University are in the opening exhibit.
The accompanying illustration shows one of the pieces in the exhibit, “Guitar Player” by Leonard Jones.
article via jbhe.com

Black History Collection Makes Its Disney Debut

By goodblacknews on March 17, 2013

Bernard & Shirley Kinsey

Bernard and Shirley Kinsey have entrusted their collection of African-American treasures to Walt Disney World Resort for the “Rediscovering America: Family Treasures from the Kinsey Collection” exhibit at Epcot. Take a look at a few of the pieces that have truly made their mark in Black history. (Photo: David Roark)
via The Kinsey Collection at Epcot | Black History Collection Makes Its Disney Debut | News | BET.

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the Wall at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

By goodblacknews on March 5, 2013

A portrait of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by artists Yuki Wang. (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)
What does Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. have in common with explorer Amerigo Vespucci, poet Allen Ginsberg , and actress Mary Pickford? They’re all new on the wall at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. In an e-mail to friends and supporters, Gates called the unveiling of his portrait “one of the most exciting moments of my life.”  The oil painting, done by artist Yuqi Wang, shows Gates standing beside a table with an African sculpture and books by W. E. B. Du Bois, Wole Soyinka, and Kwame Anthony Appiah on it. “The perfect portrait for the National Portrait Gallery is one that combines a nationally significant subject and the work of an exceptional artist,” Brandon Fortune, the Portrait Gallery’s chief curator, told us Monday. She said the painting was commissioned by Harvard and then offered to the Portrait Gallery. “It’s a long, drawn out process when we consider a portrait of someone who has not previously been in our collection,” Fortune said.

27-Year-Old Nigerian Artist Stuns With ‘Digital Photo’ Sketches (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on February 6, 2013

Mother Teresakevin okaforKelvin Okafor, 27, is wowing art critics around the world – one pencil stroke at a time.
The London native and Middlesex University fine arts graduate has received numerous awards and an outpouring of praise for his incredible drawings that resemble soft focus digital photos. His artwork, which takes approximately 100 hours to complete, has been valued at £10,000 ($15,738).
Using only graphite pencils, charcoal, black colored pencil and gray pastels, Okafor has created stunning images of Mother Teresa (left), Princess Diana, Beyonce, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nas and more.
“I want my drawings to prompt an emotional response, making viewers feel as though they are looking at a real live subject,” he writes on his blog.
Click below to see video of Okafor and more of his astounding works:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ykDeiMlQM&w=560&h=315]
article by Camille Travis via uptownmagazine.com