This year an Irish pub installation has been crowned winner of the coveted Turner Prize. By translating their activism into artwork, Belfast-based activist group Array Collective won the £25,000 prize.
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Tag: Art news
NFT standard awarded top spot in ArtReview’s Power 100
ERC-721, the specification for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has nabbed the number one spot of ArtReview’s Power 100, a list of the contemporary art world’s most influential figures. This is the first time a non-human entity has topped the ranking, representing a bold frontier for the market.
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Constable painting up for auction with an estimate of £3-5million after being sold as a copy for £40,000 last year
An oil painting by the English Romantic landscape painter John Constable (1776-1837) sold in an auction in Cincinnati, Ohio, last year as a copy, making £40,000 against a pre-sale estimate of only $1,000-2,000. It has now been authenticated as being a genuine Constable. It will be sold in Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings December sale with an impressive estimate of £3-5 million.
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Dürer drawing purchased for $30 could be worth $50 million
A totally unknown drawing by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) has resurfaced and could be worth around $50 million. The drawing, The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bench (c. 1503) was purchased by the current owner for a mere $30 at an estate sale in Concord, Massachusetts in 2016, who considered the drawing to be “a wonderfully rendered piece of old art”. It then came to the attention of Agnews Gallery, who are selling the drawing on behalf of the owner, who wishes to remain anonymous.
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Most Significant Roman mosaic in Britain found in farmer’s field
Whilst rambling across his family farm during last year’s lockdown, Jim Irvine noticed something unusual on the ground. It looked like pottery, but none like he had ever seen before. Irvine quickly grabbed a shovel after looking at the satellite imagery and, to his amazement, there was a spectacular Roman mosaic and villa complex concealed beneath their field in Rutland.
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Lost for 70 years, the famed Hamilton Aphrodite reappears at Sotheby’s
Unseen since it was last sold in 1949, the famous Hamilton Aphrodite is to be offered in a dedicated sale at Sotheby’s in London. The larger than life-size Roman statue is now estimated to fetch between £2 million and £3 million.
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Frida Kahlo self-portrait smashes auction record set by adulterous husband Diego Rivera
Frida Kahlo’s (1907-1954) intimate oil painting has sold for a staggering $34.9 million (£25.9 million) at Sotheby’s New York, setting a new auction record for the most expensive artwork by a Latin American artist. It is significant as one of her final self-portraits, which candidly reveals the artist’s distress over her husband Diego Rivera’s (1886-1957) public affair with friend and famed actress Maria Félix (1914-2002).
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Small Scottish museum receives major Museums Association award
Rising from the ashes of a devastating fire, The Scottish Crannog Centre on Loch Tay has defiantly won a prestigious national museum award. “We’ve had brilliant support from partners to make this happen, so a big thank you to all and a big well done to everyone within the Crannog community,” reflected managing director Mike Benson.
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Prado museum curators latest to cast doubts on the attribution of the ‘Salvator Mundi’
Curators at the Museo del Prado in Madrid are the latest in a long string of scholars and other arts professionals to publicly announce their doubts about the attribution of the Salvator Mundi to Leonardo da Vinci. The painting was sold at Christie’s in 2017 as by Leonardo for a staggering $450m, however even prior to the sale there was considerable debate over this attribution.
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Possible Rembrandt returned forty years after it was stolen in East Germany
In 1979, five paintings were stolen from Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha, Germany. The works did not re-emerge for 40 years, and the event became communist East Germany’s biggest ever art heist. In 2019, however, the paintings were returned to Friedenstein, and new scientific analysis and research indicates that one of the portraits, previously attributed to seventeenth-century artist Ferdinand Bol, might be a lost masterpiece by Rembrandt.
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