May 2018 Art News

Was your Art History class an endless succession of names and dates and movements? Art History doesn't have to be that way! We discuss new (and much more compelling) approaches the study of art. Learn more about Civilizations on PBS and how you can watch!: http://www.pbs.org/civilizations/home/

Christie’s Spring auction series in New York achieved a grand total of $1.79 billion across two weeks of sales, marking another crowning achievement in the company’s more than 250-year history.

BB-8, Yoda and an Ewok, along with more than 60 original costumes from the first seven movies in the Star Wars saga are some of the highlights of the exhibition “Star Wars and the Power of Costume” at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) May 20–Sept. 30, 2018. In addition, more than 150 pieces and sketches document the creative process, encompassing the essence of George Lucas’ vision and the exciting challenge of translating his iconic characters into a dynamic reality.

A fixture in modern art since 1954, Alex Katz’s radically cropped portraits and bold landscapes foreshadowed Pop Art. His wide brush strokes and meticulous composition combine abstraction and representation, with a style faintly reminiscent of woodblock prints. Approaching his 90th birthday, Katz began applying to unmistakable style to landscapes, diverging from the portraiture he’s known for. The resulting exhibition, Grass and Trees, explores three motifs: grasses, roads and trees.

René Magritte: The Fifth Season — presented exclusively at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from May 19 through October 28, 2018 — focuses on the latter half of Magritte’s career, from approximately 1943 to 1967, a period of remarkable transformation and revitalization for the artist.

“Happy City: Art for the People” will feature diverse perspectives from more than 10 local, national, and international artists. “Happy City” is under the artistic direction of Black Cube Nomadic Museum.

Pace Gallery is honored to present the first exhibition of Jean Dubuffet’s Théâtres de mémoire series in New York since 1979. Curated by Arne Glimcher, the founder of Pace Gallery, the exhibition evolved from the critically successful presentation of the series at Pace Gallery in London in 2017 and showcases several monumental paintings from that exhibition, as well as new loans from major museums including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the National Gallery.

Christie's continued a streak of record-breaking auctions at their Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on Tuesday. Kazimir Malevich’s "Suprematist Composition" led the sale, achieving nearly $86 million. The 1916 painting is one of his most iconic and is representative of the height of Malevich's Suprematist movement.

Aicon Gallery New York is proud to present an important Retrospective of work by the late Kerala-based artist Rajan Krishnan. A dear friend of the gallery and a frequent collaborator over the years, Rajan’s unexpected passing in 2016, left a void in the contemporary art world of Kochi - which he in large part helped to create - as well as in the broader landscape of South Asian art.

 

An astonishing number of materials have been used to create fashion, many of which are drawn from the animal kingdom. To learn more about some of them, we worked with colleagues at London’s Natural History Museum, exploring materials from very different sources – whales and jewel beetles – and their use in fashion.