Art
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TEFAF New York: Editor’s Top Picks
TEFAF NEW YORK SPRING 2017
The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), the Netherlands-based enterprise, will hold their Modern and Contemporary Art and Design Fair at the Park Avenue Armory from May 4th through May 8, 2017. This will mark the veteran art fair second showing in New York City since their début last October. Judging from the impressive list of exhibitors (Applicat-Prazan, DeLorenzo, Demisch Danant, Galerie Jacques Germain, Phoenix Ancient Art, Helly Nahman, Hans P. Kraus, to name a few) TEFAF Spring 2017 is a true showstopper. After an early preview of the show, here are a few exceptional highlights of the ‘Best in Show. -
The Best of AIPAD 2017
The Photography Show: A New Year, A New Space
A fresh look at AIPAD reveals that the iconic show organized by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, known as the longest-running and foremost show dedicated to the photographic medium, still holds the power to draw photo lovers from its previous location at The Park Avenue Armory to its new home at Pier 94.
With well over 100 galleries, book dealers, publishers, special exhibitions, AIPAD Talks, and photography-related organizations, this year show presented another great opportunity to discover new artists, explore new photographic techniques by surprisingly old artists, and getting re-acquainted with photographers like Robert Doisneau, Herb Ritts, William Silano, Man Ray, and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. While attending AIPAD Talks during the last day of the exposition, I finally got to meet the seasoned photography collector Artur Walther, after the discourse. What a moment that was.
Based on the reported attendance, and sales (the highest in AIPAD history; more than 15,000 visitors came to Pier 94, up from the 12,000 who attended last year’s Show at the Park Avenue Armory) the show was a success. As an art broker, I was enthralled with AIPAD’s new format. It is true that the new venue is less intimate than the Park Avenue Armory, but interestingly enough, that played to its advantage. Furthermore, I was thoroughly pleased to see how photography continues to have a significant amount of power in our busy day-to-day lives. MVSP
This story was originally reported by Vyna St. Phard at www.arteighty8.com.
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Eastern Treasures from Asia Week New York
Asia Week New York: More IS More
Asia Week New York, the yearly 10-day annual event where collectors, museum curators, designers, scholars, and art addicts, get to hunt down art treasures such as paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, bronzes, ceramics, jewelry, jade, even textiles, from all over Asia, officially started on March 9th and will continue until the 18. There is an expected open house weekend on Saturday and Sunday, March 11 – 12, 2017. Due to its growing popularity, this year, the organization opened its doors to the largest number of privately curated exhibitions from a total of 50 galleries – all featuring antiquity and contemporary treasures.
Asia Week New York will offer a non stop schedule of gallery open houses, auctions at Bonhams, Christie’s, Doyle, iGavel, and Sotheby’s. There will be lectures, symposium and special events. For more information on this now iconic New York event, visit www.asiaweekny.com.
In addition, there is a number of cultural events, and performances all over Manhattan. Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) held their 6th Annual Japan Week 2017 celebrating Japanese culture, travel and technology. The show is taking place at the Vanderbilt Hall at the Grand Central Terminal (89 E 42nd St., New York, NY 10017).
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Young Collectors Night at The Winter Antiques Show
Text and Photos by Rose Hartman
More than 800 young and stylish guests filled the Park Avenue Armory for Young Collectors Night at the venerable Winter Antiques Show, in-between admiring (and buying) the highest quality antiques and modern designs from Regency to 20th century works (including extraordinary jewelry) no wonder that this event is a must on anyone’s social calendar.
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Top Picks from The New York Ceramics & Glass Fair
Top Picks from The New York Ceramics & Glass Fair
The 2017 New York Ceramics and Glass Fair kicks off the art season at The Bohemian National Hall with a dazzling array of bottles, beakers, jewelry, jars, vases, and glass from 28 top-tier vetted participants from England, Europe, and the United States. Starting Thursday, January 19 through Sunday, the 22nd, a vast number of collectors, curators and design aficionados are set to experience a multitude of ceramics and a “profusion of other beautiful but fragile things that span 500 years—from 16th-century Venice, Italy, to 21st-century Venice, California.”
Deep into its 18th anniversary, the New York Ceramics & Glass Fair is the only exposition of its sort in the United States, bringing together the best of the best in glass, ceramics, pottery, and enamel.
Here are a few memorable highlights from the show: A Lisa Battle Sculpture, headed by a sculptress based in Rockville, Maryland. Like all of Battle’s hand-built sculptural pieces, “the artwork explores organic form and line, mimicking the curvilinear grace of natural objects. Standing almost two feet tall, the piece was fired in a noborigama wood kiln in 2011.” The ceramics and glass fair will also focus on thirty-three-year-old Michael Boroniec, an artist who resides and creates in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Michael started making art at a youngster, and had since gravitated to ceramics because it was a medium that celebrated the oldest material known to man: the earth itself.
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Top Picks from The Winter Antiques Show
From January 20 to the 29th, The Winter Antiques Show will celebrate its 63rd year anniversary as America’s leading art, antiques and design fair, and we will be at The Park Avenue Armory to salute them. The fair will feature an array of fine art photography from Dennis Stock’s unforgettable portrait of Audrey Hepburn during the filming of Sabrina. The Tambaran Gallery will preview an impressive fang figure from Africa. There will also be a loan exhibition which will highlight a spectacular blanket chest of Johannes Spiltler from Virginia. This year, the prestigious antique show will feature over 70 distinguish experts in fine and decorative arts from around the world. All net proceeds from the fair will benefit the East Side House Settlement, a nationally recognized community-based organization in South Bronx.
To purchase tickets for the Opening Night Party on January 19, 2017, or Young Collectors Night on January 26, 2017.
The 2017 loan exhibition, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum: Revolution & Evolution, honors the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM), one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. The exhibition salutes the museum, which is the oldest continuously operating institution in the United States dedicated solely to the collection, exhibition and preservation of American folk art, commemorating its 60th anniversary in 2017.
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Ai Weiwei’s Platform at The Armory Show
This coming spring (March 2017), The Armory Show will début Platform, a new, curated exhibitor section that stages large-scale artworks, installations and site-specific commissions across Piers 92 & 94. The inaugural edition of Platform, entitled An Incident and curated by Eric Shiner, encompasses twelve artworks by internationally acclaimed artists from a range of generational perspectives.
Participating artists include: Abel Barroso, Patricia Cronin, Douglas Coupland, Olga de Amaral, Dorian Gaudin, Jun Kaneko, Per Kirkeby, Yayoi Kusama, Iván Navarro, Fiete Stolte, Lawrence Weiner and Ai Weiwei.
Participating artists and galleries: Abel Barroso (b. 1971 in Pinar del Rio, Cuba) | Pan American Art Projects, Miami. Patricia Cronin (b. 1963 in Beverly, Massachusetts). Douglas Coupland (b. 1961 in CFB Baden–Soellingen, Germany) | Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto. Olga de Amaral (b. 1932 in Bogotá, Colombia) | Galerie Agnès Monplaisir, Paris. Dorian Gaudin (b. 1986 in Paris, France) | DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin / Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, Jun Kaneko (b. 1942 in Nagoya, Japan) | Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Los Angeles. Per Kirkeby (b. 1938 in Copenhagen, Denmark) and Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942 in The Bronx, New York) | GALLERI SUSANNE OTTESEN, Copenhagen. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan) | Victoria Miro, London. Iván Navarro (b. 1972 in Santiago, Chile) | Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. Fiete Stolte (b. 1979 in Berlin, Germany) | albertz benda, New York. Ai Weiwei (b. 1957 in Beijing, China) | Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki.
“With my selection of artists, I endeavor to present a series of incidents that start to change our relationship with the art fair—a series of happenings, interactive works, objects and images that make the viewer take pause, think, refresh, smile, and remember that art, by its very nature, is meant to provoke, incite and challenge,” says Eric Shiner. “It is my hope that the artists and works included in An Incident will bring a new energy to the art fair model, encouraging visitors to share in the moment, and to enjoy the phenomenal offerings in vendors’ booths with gusto.”
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Art & Beauty Celebrated – For A Good Cause
While accepting the 2016 Trophée des Arts award at The Plaza hotel on Friday, October 28, the famed artist Jeff Koons noted “Growing up, I needed to have support and a place to learn about art … where I made things out of popsicle sticks or I would draw – and that came from their programs.” Koons of course was referring to FIAF’s programs. For him, art is a way to connect people in society and therefore needs to be accessible to everyone, which is one of the top priorities of The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF). He continues “When you are able to educate children through the arts, it connects them to all the humanities; it allows them to accept themselves as human beings; and once you accept yourself, you can go out into the world and you can accept other people. That really is what the journey of art is.”
“I always wanted to relate to the avant-garde.” – American artist Jeff Koons
at The Trophée des Arts 2016 Awards
“This year’s Trophée des Arts and Pilier d’Or recipients are pioneers and adventurers,” explained FIAF President Marie-Monique Steckel. “There is no doubt that each of them is a leader in beauty and exploration. Jeff Koons has reinvented contemporary art and created a conversation about new forms and ways to express artistic creation; Jean-Paul Agon has spent his career traveling the world for L’Oréal and exploring new expressions of beauty.”
Christie’s Adrien Meyer, auctioned off a magnum of Cheval Blanc (the wine ultimately went to the higher bidder – Larry Gaggosian). The bottle of wine set the atmosphere to raise record-breaking funds to support classes, programs and cultural exchange at France’s premier cultural destination in New York City, it was the Jeff Koons’ artworks in the live auction that created an unexpected artistic dialogue. One of the pieces was a Bernardaud vase (actually one of only two vases that Koons has made along with the Puppy) adapted from the Split Rocker sculpture he created in 2000 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France, originally made with 90,000 flowers. “Eventually, President Jacques Chirac made me a member of the Legion of Honor through the Split Rocker,” Koons recalled.
The first person who congratulated Koons for his Trophée des Arts award during the Gala was the other honoree of the evening, L’Oréal Chairman and CEO Jean-Paul Agon: “Congratulations, Jeff, because ‘You’re Worth it’.”
Like Koons, Agon emphasized the need for “creative cultural ties” and the importance of “cross-cultural dialogue and understanding,” two concepts that he has focused on as the leader of the number one beauty company in the world. Acknowledging “the stellar work,” Steckel and her team at FIAF have done to strengthen the cultural values shared by France and America, Agon added, “Beauty is multicultural, just like art is.”
Photo credit Amber De Vos (www.adevosphoto.com)
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Visual artist Jeff Koons to be honored with the 2016 Trophée des Arts
The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) is set to honor American visual artist Jeff Koons with the 2016 Trophée des Arts at The Plaza hotel on Friday, October 28, 2016. That same evening, the FIAF will also pay tribute to L’Oréal Chairman & CEO Jean-Paul Agon by awarding him with the 2016 Pilier d’Or.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Jeff Koons has been recognized as one of the most prominent artists working today. Since then, the world-famous artist has long contributed to the cultural life in France. He presented his extraordinary floral public sculpture, Split-Rocker, for the first time at the Palais des Papes, in Avignon. The famed artist subsequently had a notable solo exhibition in the gardens of the Château de Versailles, which opened its doors to a living artist for the first time, in 2008. A recent exhibition, Jeff Koons: A Retrospective was presented to great fanfare in 2015 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
“This year’s honorees are pioneers and adventurers,” explains FIAF President Marie-Monique Steckel. “There is no doubt that each honoree is a leader in beauty and exploration. Jeff Koons has reinvented contemporary art and created a conversation about new forms and ways to express artistic creation; Jean-Paul Agon has spent his career traveling the world for L’Oréal and exploring new expressions of beauty.”
The annual FIAF Trophée des Arts gala evening will raise funds to support FIAF’s educational and cultural programs and is co-chaired by Larry Gagosian, Kenneth M. Jacobs, William & Clémence Von Mueffling and Robert & Elisabeth G. Wilmers.
Created in 1992, the Trophée des Arts distinguishes artists who shows FIAF‘s mission of French-American friendship and cross-cultural exchange. It has been bestowed upon French and American artists and cultural icons, including: François Cluzet, Alain Ducasse, Jacques Grange, Marc Jacobs, James Ivory, Angélique Kidjo, Philippe de Montebello, Charlie Rose, Robert Wilson, and most recently Françoise Gilot.
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Friday’s Art Muse: Erté and The Art Deco Movement
Erté’s drawings at The Martin Lawrence Gallery in Soho
With the rise of the Art Deco revival in the 1960s, Romain de Tirtoff, known by the pseudonym Erté, from the French pronunciation of his initials, experienced a serious rejuvenation, which led to a high interest of his artwork and career. This creative path took the artist to Paris in 1907, where he discovered that he had a clear understanding for form and precision – and a love for art deco. These key principles were later visible as he worked with bronze, gouache, and when he started designing a number of jewelry collections. The artist also had a number of drawings of graphic arts, he created costumes and set design for films, theatre, interior decoration, theatre, and wearable art. The body of his work pushed the boundaries without ever losing elegance or function.
While visiting the Martin Laurence Gallery in Soho, we were delighted to learn that at last, Erté’s work will be seen as a major retrospective at The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia. The artist’s solo exhibition will be on view starting June 22nd. This will make the first time Erté has been the subject of a show in his birthplace.
In celebration of this significant occasion, the Martin Lawrence Gallery New York are currently exhibiting a number of Erté’s paintings (seen below), limited edition prints and bronze sculptures.
Romain de Tirtoff, aka Erté was considered to be one of the foremost leaders in the Art Deco movement.