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Artnet News 10/12/00 |
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SINGULAR TWIST AT FIAC 2000 In an interesting twist (leave it to the French), FIAC 2000 has gone solo -- nothing but solo exhibitions, that is. The fair's 196 modern and contemporary gallery participants are presenting 217 one-person exhibitions, Oct. 25-30 at the Pavillon du Parc, Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles. The shows range from homages and retrospectives of Modern masters to about 50 installations created specifically for the fair. Highlights include:
FIAC says the one-person limit was "enthusiastically received" by the dealers, though a dozen of them have decided to present a new individual exhibition every couple of days, a move that cynics might misinterpret as a way of circumventing the rules. For a complete list of the participants, visit the FIAC website. BOSTON MFA WINS 12-YEAR ART BATTLE The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has won a 12-year tug-of-war over a trove of 17 Impressionist paintings worth $7 million-$10 million, reports the Boston Herald. The works in question, which include paintings by Claude Monet and Emile Pissarro, were deposited with the White Fund Trust by Reverend William Wolcott back in 1911. Wolcott wanted the pictures to benefit the good (but museum-less) people of Lawrence, Mass. -- but the works ended up at the MFA for safekeeping until Lawrence could set up its own gallery (they're still waiting). In 1988, the trust sued to get the pictures back, claiming that 14 of the 17 paintings were languishing in storage. The trustees wanted to sell them and put the money into art education in Lawrence public schools. The MFA took the battle all the way up to the Massachusett's Supreme Judicial Court, which nixed the sale idea -- but did not rule out the possibility of moving the works to a public gallery closer to Wolcott's hometown, though the court said that both parties would have to agree on the destination. £8 MILLION MICHELANGELO DRAWING FOUND A previously unknown Michelangelo drawing valued at £6 million-£8 million has been discovered in North Yorkshire, England, during a routine insurance valuation by a Sotheby's expert. The study of a mourning woman is believed to have been drawn early in the artist's career, ca. 1500, and is similar in style to four other early figure drawings currently in museum collections. This is the second major Michelangelo drawing to be discovered in the past quarter-century, the previous being the late-period Christ and the Woman of Samaria, which sold at Sotheby's New York for nearly $7.5 million in 1998. SOTHEBY'S CONSOLIDATES ONLINE PRESENCE And speaking of Sotheby's, its two highly touted online ventures, sothebys.com and sothebys.amazon.com, are being consolidated into one site after being launched 18 months ago. The original plan called for sothebys.amazon.com to offer cheaper merchandise like collectibles and sports memorabilia, while sothebys.com would cover the usual high-end fare. But after sinking nearly $80 million into the venture, the distinction is becoming moot. What's more, Sotheby's has struck a deal with Amazon.com to make its website available on the popular bookseller's homepage, an arrangement that is said to cost millions. Both companies deny the decision is connected to Sotheby's guilty plea to antitrust charges. BEATLE PAINTINGS AT MATTHEW MARKS Lithos by former Beatle Paul McCartney go on view at the Matthew Marks Gallery, Nov. 2-9. New York Post columnist James Gardner calls Sir Paul (he was knighted in 1997) "good enough to be called a talented amateur" and cites the influence of Willem de Kooning, who was a friend of the singer through Linda McCartney's family. Three signed and numbered color lithographs in editions of 200 are available, with sales benefiting the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Garland Appeal. THE NEW NOW SOUNDS OF TODAY And reversing McCartney's singer-to-artist trajectory, the punctuation-challenged Art issues. Press is releasing its first limited edition CD, called "The New Now Sounds of Today!" The album features a collection of poems by 21 contemporary artists set to music by Magic Key Productions, a commercial sound studio in Utah specializing in vanity recordings. Among the soon-to-be hits: Mike Kelley's Anal Sadistic, sung in the style of Britney Spears; Joe Scanlan's Bob Dylan-inspired The Ballad of Ed Ruscha; and Alexis Smith's appropriated Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac poem Pull My Daisy performed in the style of Ice Cube. The CD comes free with a paid subscription to Art Issues magazine until Dec. 31, or it can be purchased from the publisher for $21 at their website. NEW CENTER FOR ART AND TECHNOLOGY AT U.C. The Irvine School of the Arts at the University of California is opening the new Beall Center for Art and Technology to the public on Oct. 17. The 3,500-square-foot gallery and research center for new media arts is named in honor of former Rockwell International Corp. CEO Donald Beall and his wife Joan after the corporation contributed $1.5 million to the project upon Beall's retirement in 1998. The center opens with "Shift-CTRL: Computer, Games and Art," curated by UCI studio art faculty members Antoinette LaFarge and Robert Nideffer, Oct. 17-Dec. 2. DESIGNERS HONORED BY BROOKLYN MUSEUM The Brooklyn Museum of Art is honoring designers Terence Conran and Harry Allen at the benefit preview for "Modernism: A Century of Art and Design" on Nov. 8 at the Park Avenue Armory. Conran receives the BMA/Modernism Design award for lifetime achievement and Allen receives the young designer award. The presentation is followed by a preview of the fair, which features 75 international dealers, Nov. 9-12. Call (718) 638-5000, ext. 327 for more information, or visit the fairs'site. WISH YOU WERE HERE Dieu Donné Papermill is holding its annual benefit in conjunction with "LandEscape," an exhibition featuring works on handmade paper postcards on the theme of landscape, Oct. 21-Nov. 16. The benefit is being held on Nov. 16, starting with a VIP live auction at 6 p.m. featuring twenty oversized postcards by artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Donald Baechler, April Gornik, Jane Hammond, Ed Ruscha and William Wegman. The evening continues with a silent auction at 8:30 p.m. of 300 further postcards by over 150 artists, with bids starting at $25 per card. VIP tickets are $100 for the entire evening and $25 of the silent auction portion. Dieu Donné, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the art of hand papermaking, is located at 433 Broome Street; call (212) 226-0573 or visit http://www.papermaking.org for more info. -- compiled by Giovanni Garcia-Fenech
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