Latest Art News

This summer in Chicago, public art is being used as a call to action. Fifty-one 6 foot lighthouse sculptures that have been decorated by national and local Chicago artists, many with disabilities, are now on display on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Bonhams offered a number of high-quality furnishings, accessories, and art for their Home and Interiors Auction this morning. The total sale was £747,950, or $983,239 USD. Sets of silver candelabra from the Painted Hall in Greenwich were a highlight of the Auction. Commissioned in 1939, bearing the monogram of reigning monarch George VI, the meticulously cleaned and restored candelabra add elegance and grandeur to their surroundings.

Phillips Auction House has a new exhibition this summer that brings together fashion, art, culture, and charity. Curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Senior Curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Tongue + Chic features shoes designed by some of today’s most important artists, including KAWS, Kehinde Wiley, Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. Borrowed from private collections and museums, the objects on display show that shoes are a blank canvas with unlimited potential for expression.

This weekend marks the inaugural opening of FRONT International, Cleveland’s new Triennial for Contemporary Art. Centered around the theme “An American City,” FRONT seeks to push the boundaries of the traditional art fair by emphasizing “process, research, collaboration and long-term engagement with Cleveland and Northeast Ohio." While the theme gives the triennial a local focus, it all aims to engage larger social, political, cultural, ecological and economic issues, using Cleveland to serve as an example of how these issues function on a larger scale.

At their auction of English Literature, History, Science, Children’s Books and Illustrations yesterday, Sotheby’s broke auction records with the sale of the Original Map of the Hundred Acre Wood. A testament to the timeless of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, and the lasting impact of the work of illustrator E.H.

The upcoming sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art at Sotheby’s offers an array of paintings and drawings by Simeon Solomon. An inventive artist of the British Aesthetic Movement, Solomon upheld the creed of “art for art’s sake,” creating dreamy, sensual paintings even in the midst of personal tragedy.

What is sure to be a high point of a week of auctions in London, Christie’s Old Masters Evening Sale set several records on July 5. The top selling lot was Ludovico Carracci’s Portrait of Carlo Alberto Rati Opizzoni in armour, three-quarter-length, wearing the Order of the Knights of Malta, the city of Bologna beyond, which sold for $6.7 million, becoming the second highest price for the artist at auction.

A charm bracelet is like a portrait of a life, as personal as a family photo. When the charm bracelet of a well-known person comes to auction, the question is always, “Why was this very personal item allowed to leave the hands of the family?” Sometimes the answer is simply that the object has outlived all the family members. Presumably, that was the case of the unique Art Deco all-diamond charm bracelet seen here. Each of the nineteen charms is set with single-cut diamonds, with an estimated total weight of 9.50 carats. The charms depict nearly all the years between 1922 and 1940, with elements such as a palm tree providing clues as to the likely venue of the owner.

June 27th was another record-breaking evening in the art auction world. Bidding was fierce at Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London, which made 41% more than last year. One of the top achieving works, Francis Bacon’s Interior of a room (1935), was a highlight of the sale, going for $3,748,158.

Fiber artist Allison Morgan shares the inspiration behind her intricately beaded sculptural works.