Didn't snag one of the 50,000 tickets for the Brant Foundation's sold-out Basquiat show? Don't despair.

Eileen Kinsella, March 12, 2019 ArtNetNews

The Brant Foundation is already out of all 50,000 timed tickets to see its new Jean-Michel Basquiat survey in New York. But fans needn’t despair yet: Further uptown, Nahmad Contemporary is opening another Basquiat survey—also free—focused on the artist’s surprisingly masterful work made with xerox photocopies.

Like the Brant show, and the well-received retrospective that preceded it at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Nahmad show, titled “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Xerox,” was curated by Basquiat scholar Dieter Buchhart. “You have a great show uptown and a great show downtown,” Buchhart told artnet News. It was always the intention to organize the complementary shows at the same time, he said, though they are quite different.

© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

The works at Nahmad Contemporary range in date from 1979 through 1987 (the year before Basquiat’s death) and reflect the artist’s playfulness and penchant for experimentation. It opens with Basquiat’s first foray into the xerox medium, when he and his friend Jennifer Stein created a small series of colorful collages by incorporating photocopies of paint splatters, scrawled text, and detritus, including candy wrappers and newspaper clippings, into postcards that they then sold on the street.

Several of these diminutive works are displayed in a double-sided glass case that allow the viewer to see the “© Jean-Michel Basquiat” tag scrawled on the back. A standout of these small earlier works is a 1979 canvas with swaths of blue color, newspaper clippings, and a strip of diagonal black label tape that reads “He Was Crazy,” which is also the title of the work.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, He Was Crazy (1979). Photo by Eileen Kinsella.

In 1983, when collage became a defining element of his practice, Basquiat began using the photocopier extensively as a tool to create paintings. The process of photocopying became so integral to his practice that he eventually invested in his own Xerox machine for his studio.

In the early 1980s he “started joining separate panels because the elevator wasn’t big enough. That gave him the opportunity to play with the panels and exchange them,” Bucchart said.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, King of the Zulus (1984–85). Marseille Museum of Contemporary Art.

WATTS TOWERS by Sam Rodia
the Watts Towers Arts Center

history

Sam Rodia working on one of the towers - a photograph of the same spot - of the same tower - of which the original photograph - above - was taken of him at work.
photomontage © Lucien den Arend

THE TOWERS (1957; 12 minutes) is a documentary about Simon Rodia (1879-1965) building the Watts Towers (a very informative documentary, in spite of the narrator's 

In 1921, Rodia purchased the triangular-shaped lot at 1761-1765 107th Street in Los Angeles and began to construct his masterpiece, which he called "Nuestro Pueblo" (meaning "our town"). For 34 years, Rodia worked single-handedly to build his towers without benefit of machine equipment, scaffolding, bolts, rivets, welds or drawing board designs. Besides his own ingenuity, he used simple tools, pipe fitter pliers and a window-washer's belt and buckle.r />
Construction worker by day and artist by night, Rodia adorned his towers with a diverse mosaic of broken glass, sea shells, generic pottery and tile, a rare piece of 19th-century, hand painted Canton ware and many pieces of 20th-century American ceramics. Rodia once said, "I had it in mind to do something big and I did it." The tallest of his towers stands 99½ feet and contains the longest slender reinforced concrete column in the world. The monument also features a gazebo with a circular bench, three bird baths, a center column and a spire reaching a height of 38 feet. Rodia's "ship of Marco Polo" has a spire of 28 feet, and the 140-foot long "south wall" is decorated extensively with tiles, sea shells, pottery, glass and hand-drawn designs.

In 1955, when Rodia was approaching 75, he deeded his property to a neighbor and retired to Martinez, California to be near his family. A fire ruined Rodia's little house in 1956. within a few years the Department of Building and Safety ordered the property demolished. A group of concerned citizens, calling themselves "The Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts", fought successfully to save the Towers by collecting signatures and money and devising an engineering test in 1959 that proved the Towers' strength and safety.Bill Cartwright and Nick King purchased the Towers from Mr. Montoya for $3,000.00 in 1959. They founded The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts and saved the Towers from demolition with a “stress” or “load” test, designed by Bud Goldstone. The Towers proved stronger than the test equipment. Therefore, the test was stopped and the Towers were deemed safe, and preservation efforts began. The Watts community considered the Watts Towers part of their heritage and called upon the new owners to also invest in the community. Thus the Watts Towers Arts Center began.

In 1975, the committee, which had persevered the unique work of art for 16 years, gave the 'Towers and adjoining Arts Center building to the City of Los Angeles for operation and maintenance. In 1978, the Towers were deeded to the State, which undertook extensive restoration of the three main towers. . In 1985, continuing restoration responsibilities were given to the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and currently both the Towers and the Watts Towers Arts Center are under the operation of the Cultural Affairs Department.

while the Towers fall into no strict art category, international authorities and the general public alike have lauded them as a unique monument to the human spirit and the persistence of a singular vision. The Watts Towers, listed on the National Register of Historic Places are a National Historic Landmark, a State of California Historic Park and Historic-Cultural Monument No. 15, as designated by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission.

The Cultural Affairs Department, through the Watts Towers Arts Center, provides diverse cultural enrichment programming through tours, lectures, changing exhibits and studio workshops for both teachers and school children. Each year, thousands of people are attracted to the Towers' site for the Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival and the Watts Towers Day of the Drum Festival.

Courtesy Watts Tower Arts Center

The foundation is in the process of dispersing the entirety of its considerable holdings — some 1,200 works by more than 160 artists — to museums across the country. When it is finished, it may well have an impact not unlike that of the Kress Foundation, which from 1927 to 1961 gave more than 3,000 artworks to 90 museums and study collections.

The Met was the first of the foundation’s beneficiaries, receiving a gift of 57 artworks" by 30 artists in 2014. Now, the museum celebrates its fortune with “History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift.” A selection of 29 pieces, many of them rarely if ever shown, it is suffused by an electrifying sense of change.

Gee’s Bend collective, especially those of the Pettway family. There are also various assemblage reliefs and sculptures by Lonnie Holley and Ronald Lockett. And the most extensive conversation — in their endless intricacies and shared uses of fabrics, textures and the grid — is between the works of Dial, who died in 2016, and the quilters. The Dials start to seem like crazed, dimensionalized quilts, the quilts like flattened, more orderly Dials.

Nearly everything included is made from scavenged objects and materials, scraps redolent of the shameful history of black labor in the South — before 1865, of course, but also in the Jim Crow era — transformed by aesthetic intelligence and care into forms of eloquence and beauty. One of the most valuable lessons here is the works’ inherent formal and material sense of defiance, and of beauty itself as an act of resistance.

The foundation is in the process of dispersing the entirety of its considerable holdings — some 1,200 works by more than 160 artists — to museums across the country. When it is finished, it may well have an impact not unlike that of the Kress Foundation, which from 1927 to 1961 gave more than 3,000 artworks to 90 museums and study collections.

The Met was the first of the foundation’s beneficiaries, receiving a gift of 57 artworks" by 30 artists in 2014. Now, the museum celebrates its fortune with “History Refused to Die: Highlights From the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift.” A selection of 29 pieces, many of them rarely if ever shown, it is suffused by an electrifying sense of change.

Gee’s Bend collective, especially those of the Pettway family. There are also various assemblage reliefs and sculptures by Lonnie Holley and Ronald Lockett. And the most extensive conversation — in their endless intricacies and shared uses of fabrics, textures and the grid — is between the works of Dial, who died in 2016, and the quilters. The Dials start to seem like crazed, dimensionalized quilts, the quilts like flattened, more orderly Dials.

Nearly everything included is made from scavenged objects and materials, scraps redolent of the shameful history of black labor in the South — before 1865, of course, but also in the Jim Crow era — transformed by aesthetic intelligence and care into forms of eloquence and beauty. One of the most valuable lessons here is the works’ inherent formal and material sense of defiance, and of beauty itself as an act of resistance.

The German artist is donating 18 works to fund the initiative.

Kate Brown May 24, 2018

A major donation from Germany’s most famous—and most expensive—living artist, Gerhard Richter, will help finance the construction of 100 units of permanent housing for the homeless in the North Rhine-Westphalia of Germany, a region that encompasses Düsseldorf and Cologne.

The works—a special edition of color offsets from 2015 that are part of Richter’s ongoing series “Cage f.ff”—are available as three sets of six. They are being offered by fiftyfifty, a magazine and charitable organization for the homeless. The hand-signed works are priced at €420,000 ($493,080). They may also be bid on individually through fiftyfifty’s website.

All told, the sale is expected to generate €1 million to €1.2 million for the Housing First Fund, which seeks to provide people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing. Richter’s donation will be augmented by €424,000 ($497,477) in state funding, North Rhine-Westphalia announced on Wednesday.

Gerhard Richter’s Cage II, one of the 18 works the artists is donating. Courtesy fiftyfifty.

After fiftyfifty launched Housing First in 2014, it began buying up real estate in Düsseldorf to rent to homeless people throughout the city, giving them their own leases and helping them with furnishings. The organization has previously offered editions by artists including Andreas Gursky and Jeff Koons. Richter also donated works to the initiative in 2015.

The German artist is donating 18 works to fund the initiative.

Kate Brown May 24, 2018

A major donation from Germany’s most famous—and most expensive—living artist, Gerhard Richter, will help finance the construction of 100 units of permanent housing for the homeless in the North Rhine-Westphalia of Germany, a region that encompasses Düsseldorf and Cologne.

The works—a special edition of color offsets from 2015 that are part of Richter’s ongoing series “Cage f.ff”—are available as three sets of six. They are being offered by fiftyfifty, a magazine and charitable organization for the homeless. The hand-signed works are priced at €420,000 ($493,080). They may also be bid on individually through fiftyfifty’s website.

All told, the sale is expected to generate €1 million to €1.2 million for the Housing First Fund, which seeks to provide people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing. Richter’s donation will be augmented by €424,000 ($497,477) in state funding, North Rhine-Westphalia announced on Wednesday.

Gerhard Richter’s Cage II, one of the 18 works the artists is donating. Courtesy fiftyfifty.

After fiftyfifty launched Housing First in 2014, it began buying up real estate in Düsseldorf to rent to homeless people throughout the city, giving them their own leases and helping them with furnishings. The organization has previously offered editions by artists including Andreas Gursky and Jeff Koons. Richter also donated works to the initiative in 2015.

The case was intently followed by dealers and art historians alike.

Eileen Kinsella

That exhalation you just heard is the sound of art authentication boards and catalogue raisonné authors across the country breathing a sigh of relief.

In what is being heralded as a victory for scholars, a New York State Supreme Court judge has dismissed London dealer James Mayor’s claims against Pace Gallery president Arne Glimcher and the Agnes Martin catalogue raisonné committee for excluding 13 works from the artist’s catalogue raisonné, a decision he says cost him $7.2 million. In an unusual step, the judge also awarded the gallery and committee members the full cost of their legal fees, an amount in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for which Mayor Gallery is now liable.

Mel Leventhal, the attorney for Mayor Gallery, told artnet News via email: “We of course respectfully disagree with this opinion and judgment which prevents a full hearing on the issues and claims. There are a number of options available to The Mayor Gallery and we are still confident that ultimately our claims will receive a full hearing and be upheld.”

The case has been monitored with keen interest by those in the art trade. In recent years, artist foundations have become increasingly wary of offering opinions regarding a work’s authenticity for fear of being sued. Although such cases are almost always decided in favor of the scholar or foundation, the cost of defending them has led many foundations—including those of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring-to disband their authentication committees entirely.

When Mayor Gallery filed its lawsuit in 2016, many saw it as a sign that catalogues raisonnés—a scholarly publication that compiles all the known works by an artist—would become the next battleground for collectors unhappy with current authentication practices and experts’ opinions on the authenticity of their works.

“Authentication committees generally are very, very gun shy,” attorney Aaron Richard Golub, who represented Glimcher and the committee members, told artnet News. “This is a big movement on the road to validating authentication committees and what they do. They should be left alone to decide these things.”

The recent case hinged on 13 works that passed through Mayor Gallery between 2009 and 2015. They range in price from $2.9 million for a work titled Day and Night (1964), sold to the collector Jack Levy in 2010, to a work on paper bought by collector Sybil Shainwald in 2012 for $180,000. All 13 works were rejected by the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné LLC authentication committee. Without inclusion in the catalogue, no reputable auction house or gallery would likely sell the works.

Agnes Martin. Photo: © Chris Felver.

According to Mayor Gallery, the committee provided no explanation for its decisions, and he was left holding the bag. James Mayor refunded, or offered to refund, the four clients who bought the rejected works for a total of $7.2 million. (One collector, Pierre de Labouchere, said he would wait for the case to be resolved before seeking a refund.)

Although the committee in charge of Agnes Martin’s catalogue raisonné required petitioners to sign a contract pledging not to take legal action if they didn’t agree with a decision, Mayor Gallery took the novel tack of suing over “product disparagement.” The gallery argued that the works it sold had been unfairly devalued due to their exclusion.

Mayor sued Glimcher, the managing member of the committee, the director of the Agnes Martin Foundation, and the owner of Pace Gallery, which represents the Martin estate. The London gallery also sued the committee’s six anonymous committee members individually as well as Tiffany Bell, the catalogue’s editor.

In the lawsuit, Mayor claimed that Martin’s catalogue raisonné—which exists online and is updated on an ongoing basis—was potentially compromised because it was led by Glimcher, who also has a financial stake in Martin’s market. The gallery also cited “longstanding frictions and disagreements” between James Mayor and Glimcher that may have motivated the decisions.

In her ruling, Judge Andrea Masley said that Mayor did not manage to prove that the committee’s decision was the result of “malice.” Furthermore, she added, the committee was not required to provide an explanation for why it rejected the works. The committee “is not required to turn over any information other than its decision to accept or decline to include the submitted work by letter, and does not have to grant any person an opportunity to rebut its decision,” she wrote.

Attorney and art law expert Tom Danziger told artnet News: “It’s very unusual in a litigation of this kind for a defendant to be awarded legal fees.”

Golub hopes the ruling will set a new precedent and shield credentialed experts from having to defend themselves against bad-faith lawsuits in the future. Notably, several lawyers have been campaigning for years—but with little success—to revise New York’s state law so that successful defendants in art authentication-related lawsuits would always be awarded legal fees.

“This is an important victory for authenticators, artist foundations, and catalogue raisonné authors,” Dean Nicyper, an attorney with Withers Bergman and one of several who support the bill, told artnet News. Although he is hopeful that the New York state legislature will pass the bill this year, he said that “regardless, this court’s decision should embolden authenticators to continue doing good work.”

Courtesy ArtNews

Rome

A painting that spent more than a century in the storerooms of a provincial Italian museum will be attributed Wednesday to one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. The attribution to Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) has the backing of Keith Christiansen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the world’s leading expert on the artist. It means the painting, a wooden panel depicting Jesus’s resurrection, may be worth about a thousand times more than was previously thought: between $25 million and $30 million.

“It’s a wonderful surprise,” said Dr. Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Met. “An absolutely top-quality work by one of the defining artists of the early Renaissance.”

The painting, titled “The Resurrection of Christ” belongs to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, a city about 30 miles north of Milan. In March, its curator, Giovanni Valagussa, was preparing a catalogue of works dating from before 1500 when he was struck by the excellence of a dark painting on a panel about 19 inches high and 15 inches wide. The work long ago had been removed from the museum’s permanent exhibition. Dismissed in the 1930s by prominent art historian Bernard Berenson as a contemporary copy of a lost Mantegna, it had been insured for €20,000-€30,000 (roughly $24,000-$35,000), Dr. Valagussa said.

The painting newly attributed to Mantegna—'The Resurrection of Christ,' top —appears to have been separated from another painting by the artist, 'Descent Into Limbo,' bottom. The two paintings match up to show one large scene.

PHOTOS: ACCADEMIA CARRARA BERGAMO; SOTHEBY’S