A leading Spanish museum has admitted it has lost a massive steel sculpture which weighs 38 tonnes. Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum bought the Richard Serra sculpture in the 1980s for more than $200,000 (£114,000). The museum says that in 1990 it put the sculpture in a warehouse belonging to a company that specialises in storing large-scale artwork. But when it sought to put the sculpture back on display a few months ago, no-one knew where to find it. The police are now investigating its disappearance.
Madrid ‘mislays’ Serra sculpture, BBC News.
The Henry Moore Foundation, at Perry Green, Hertfordshire, has suffered the loss of a large bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. Reclining Figure 1969-70 (catalogue ID: LH 608) was stolen at 22.13 on Thursday 15 December. The work weighs 2,100kg and measures approximately 360cm (length) x 200cm (height) x 200cm (width). It has a value of at least £3 million.
The sculpture was taken from the Foundation’s estate by a Mercedes truck and crane, which Hertfordshire police have since recovered. CCTV footage captured the entire incident and investigators are now examining it further.
The piece had until recently been on display in the extensive grounds where the artist lived and worked for over forty years. Tim Llewellyn, the Foundation’s director, comments, ‘The team here are extremely upset. This work is of great importance and to have it taken from us is devastating. We urge anyone with information to please contact the police.’
A reward of up to £100,000 is being offered subject to specific conditions. If you have any information please contact: DCI Mark Ross, Hertfordshire Constabulary – 0845 33 00 222 or Mark Dalrymple, Tyler & Co – 0207 377 0282 or email: info@tylerandco.uk.com
Reward Offered for Stolen Sculpture, Henry Moore Foundation.
Liberty holding up her ‘It’s not my fault’ flame is a familiar billboard image now to most Sydney-siders in the CBD. It is an invitation to explore the careers of the Kienholz (Nancy and *Edward), two of the most significant social commentators and installation practitioners to have exhibited on our fair shores. (*Edward Kienholz passed away 1994 RIP)
The exhibition is a political minefield, fitting to an art couple who emerged from LA’s Beat Generation … and whose cultural contributions ran parallel to the limelight stealing Andy Warhol, evolving like a massive, earnest shadow to Warhol’s focus-grabbing rendering of the Pop aesthetic.
Compare a pair of shiny silver stilettos to a taxidermically preserved and toxic King Kong (though, please note, none of the above artists were responsible for either of these images) – to get an idea of the very distinct creative dialogues expressed by artists who shared many synergies in their renderings, both conceptually and sociologically.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair, Fiona Prior, Henry Thornton
Dan Flavin‘s art is amazingly beautiful – but is it anything more? Certainly his installations are ecstasy for the eyes. Moving among these arrays of dazzling colour, these sheaves of glowing poles, this radiance drifting out across the gallery, light contained and then set lyrically free, you wonder how it is possible that so much pleasure could emit from such a dismal source: the cold fluorescent tubes of strip lighting.
Tubular Spells, Laura Cumming, The Observer.
The prize for pointless ingenuity, meanwhile, goes to Natasha Kidd, who pumps 25 gallons of white emulsion around the gallery so that the out-flow dribbles vertically down a large rectangular canvas. It’s quite fitting that a painting created according to the principles of a central heating system should resemble a radiator.
The Art Of White, Alfred Hickling, The Guardian.
Alex Danchev‘s recent biography of Georges Braque is wonderful to read: impressionistic and allusive, fizzily building up a portrait of a man who has been, until now perhaps, intriguingly absent from history’s gaze, certainly outside France.
Braque is most famous for being Picasso’s co-conspirator in the adventure that was cubism. The two names are perpetually intertwined, Braque’s as the follower, the validator: “pard” to Picasso’s Wild Bill Hickock, the feminine principal to Picasso’s masculine, anti-Picasso to Picasso’s Picasso.
Intriguing insights into the life of reticent cubist co-conspirator, Miriam Cosic The Australian, January 20, 2006
