Artist takes a soft approach to the divine [Sydney Morning Herald] “Few people would describe the Pope or the Scientology founder, L.Ron Hubbard, as cute and cuddly. However, in his exhibition Cupco Is God, the artist Luke Temby has turned them into hand-stitched plush dolls. He has made a Jesus doll, a Satan doll and various Indian gods. His Queen Elizabeth is the Church of England’s representative of God on Earth, and his Joan of Arc is listening to music from the Smiths on a melting Walkman…”
Kuzma Petrov–Vodkin‘s The Bath of the Horse is one of the several major Russian works that will not be shown.
Angry Russia cancels Royal Academy show [The Telegraph UK] “The chill in Russia’s relations with Britain reached the galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts today when Moscow cancelled a major exhibition of Russian paintings in London. The display of more than 120 masterpieces had been scheduled to open on Jan 26 and run until April. The collection, drawn from three museums in Moscow and one in St Petersburg, would have included works by Russian impressionists and post-impressionists including Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich…”
Stroke of genius as unseen Emilys go on display [Sydney Morning Herald] “For 15 years, the Holt family kept a million-dollar painting by one of Australia’s most successful Aboriginal artists rolled up in a storeroom on their remote cattle station in Central Australia. Like many of Emily Kame Kngwarreye‘s works, Kame – Summer Awelye 2 was painted on the verandah of the Holts’s homestead at Delmore Downs. Until she died in 1996, Kngwarreye lived next door to the Holts in the Aboriginal community of Utopia. She spoke almost no English and began painting on canvas only in her 70s, but her pictures, dubbed “Emilys” are regarded by many in the art world as works of genius…”
Finding Meaning in Grains of Salt [Washington Post]”In a dark basement room at the Arlington Arts Center, Young Kim has been sifting powdered red clay onto flattened piles of table salt. Lots of table salt. The artist, who teaches photography at North Carolina’s Elon University, estimates that he’ll have gone through 600 to 700 pounds of Morton salt by the time his installation is done. It’s called “Salt and Earth,” in a nod to both his raw materials and the preciousness of life (“salt of the earth” meaning of great worth). Ten photographic portraits — reproduced as silkscreens, where the “paper” is the white salt and the “ink” is the dark powder — sit on the gallery floor. Each is of a stranger Kim met on the street. The subjects’ eyes are closed, as if sleeping or dead. At the base of each work is an offering-like bowl containing one of 10 elements essential to life, according to one early Latin translation of the Bible. Cotton (for clothing) is in one bowl; wine, honey and flour are among the others…”
Southern California Art? Look It Up[The New York Times] “In Los Angeles, Lyn Kienholz is known within the art world as a hostess extraordinaire. Since 1974, the year after her divorce from the Pop sculptor Ed Kienholz, she has entertained and connected countless California painters, sculptors, writers, politicians, and museum curators at her home in the Hollywood Hills. Yet her target audience is often the world beyond Los Angeles, where she feels the work of California artists is underappreciated. Working through the California/ International Arts Foundation, which she set up in 1981, she has originated 13 shows of California artists and architects that have toured internationally, compiled dozens of artist interviews at her two Web sites, and helped organize and finance dozens of films, books, and shows…”
Art Basel Miami Slide Show “At Art Basel Miami – the annual festival – Karen Rosenberg says ‘the art is heavily scripted, raucously colorful, and monstrously proportioned. Parties and people-watching crowd the field of vision. Fortunately, serious art lovers can still find moments of transcendence while hopping from fair to fair, or even from fair to private collection to cocktails by the pool…'”
