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Monthly Archives:February 2021

Research reveals Edvard Munch wrote mysterious sentence on “The Scream”

Nearly a year into lockdown, Edvard Munch’s The Scream is a painting that has become more and more relatable. However, on the original version of the painting, there is a an eerie sentence written in pencil that has been more or less ignored until now. Ahead of the opening of the new National Museum of Norway, researchers examined the sentence and have determined that Munch indeed wrote the short inscription.

Four versions of the painting exist depicting a lonely figure cupping its face in what could be read as anguish. Swathes of colour sweep and pool around the figure offering Munch’s interpretation of a seascape with a looming red sunset. According to the artist, the painting was inspired by a blood-red sunset he once observed that felt like an “infinite scream passing through nature.”

The Scream has become synonymous with anguish and disbelief and was even transformed into an emoji. But, it’s the top left corner of the original 1893 version that’s creating a lot of buzz. There, a sentence scribbled in pencil reads “Can only have been painted by a madman.”

Detail photograph of a Edvard Munch's The Scream showing a sentence written by the artist
Infrared photograph of a Edvard Munch's The Scream showing a sentence written by the artist

The inscription was first clocked by a Danish critic in 1904 who observed the writing on the surface of the painting. Since its discovery, it has been unclear if the graffiti was by the hand of Munch or a cruel review left by a spectator. The National Museum of Norway, though, has settled that debate, announcing that the sentence was written by Munch around 1895.

Using infrared scanning, researchers were able to analyse the writing and compare it with notes and letters written by Munch during his life. That analysis, coupled with one particular event in Munch’s life, led researchers to believe that the words were definitely written by the artist.

In 1895, Munch exhibited The Scream for the first time in his hometown of Kristiania (now Oslo) where it was met with fierce criticism. The painting also sparked speculation over the artist’s mental state, which led to the incident thought to be behind inscription. At a discussion night held at the Students Association, a medical student remarked that the painting proved that Munch was not of sound mind. It is believed that Munch was present at the discussion, heard the remark, and soon after wrote the sentence on the painting. The 1895 incident would also become a recurring theme in his letters.

“It’s a combination of being ironic, but also showing his vulnerability,” Mai Britt Guleng, curator of the museum and a Munch expert, told The Guardian. “He is actually taking this very seriously and he is hurt because there is a history of illness in his family, and he was very anxious, but he showed himself be marked by it.”

His life was punctuated by illness and death. Munch’s father and sister suffered from depression and were eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. He watched his sister pass from tuberculosis as a child and later his mother also died of the illness, contributing to his obsession with disease.

In 1908, Munch was hospitalised following a nervous breakdown exacerbated by alcoholism.

The 1893 version of The Scream will go on view at the new National Museum of Norway expected to open in Oslo in 2022.

The TMF Artist Prize

International Deadline: April 18, 2021 – TMF Gallery is a Swiss gallery with international exhibition and display show venues. We offer emerging video artists, digital artists and photographers an online venue…

Black Art: In the Absence of Light review

The recently released documentary, Black Art: In the Absence of Light, simultaneously explores the challenges Black Artists continue to face in reaching mainstream audiences and the importance of their artwork in the narrative of American (United States) art history. The film takes a hard look at the significant role exhibitions, curators, and collectors play in perpetuating biases and breaking boundaries by underlining historical moments. 

Directed by Sam Pollard, the film introduces the foremost black artists working today and the artists that preceded them. The film begins with historical footage from the event that inspired the documentary, the landmark 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” According to the late artist and curator, David Driskell, this exhibition hosted by the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) was “the first major modern exhibition which brought the black subject, period, to the American Public.”

The film’s central theme is the black figure’s significance as a subject in artworks and black artists’ representation in museum collections/exhibitions. In a 1976 interview, Driskell warns against those critics and historians that group all artwork by black artists together under the label of “Black Art” because it isolates the black artists from the canon of American Art. The director and producer perhaps chose to underscore the stigma behind this label by using it as the title of the documentary.

Artist, Kehinde Wiley describes the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1994 exhibition “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art,” curated by Thelma Golden, as life-changing. “Here, for the first time, you are seeing black masculinity, not as something on television that’s menacing, that arm’s length, but rather artists embracing it as subject matter, another color on their palette. It was mind-blowing, an exhibition that really tore down the meaning of the black body itself.” 

While spaced sixteen years apart and on opposite coasts of the United States, what Driskell and Goldman’s exhibitions have in common is that they were controversial, provocative, and pushed the white envelope. Critics had a hard time digesting the content and taking an honest look back at the marginalization of artists of color in traditional art exhibitions.  

Jireh, Jordan Casteel, 2014. Photograph courtesy of the writer. This artwork is featured in the documentary.

 

The documentary also explores the monumental importance of President Barak Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s portraits. Art Historian Maurice Berger describes the official paintings hanging in the National Portrait Gallery as a beautiful challenge and a dramatic departure from the past presidents’ boring or traditional portraits. “The stakes were different. When you have two centuries of straight, white men who were president, and then you have Barak Obama–that portrait better be different.” In painting the presidential couple, Artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald wanted to portray them individually as the people they were, as private citizens–a man, and woman of color, who continue to inspire people worldwide. 

While groundbreaking milestones punctuate the documentary, it also highlights all the work that still needs to be done. Berger reveals that in a survey of major American Museums, it was determined that 85% of their collections are made up of white artists. “If you break down the remaining artists of color in those collections (15%), it’s 1.2% black. If the people sitting around the curatorial table are all white, you are going to have a problem.” Clearly, having exhibitions that feature black artists is not enough. Their artworks also need to be acquired by these cultural institutions. 

The role of universities also requires fundamental change. As an art history student in the mid-2000s, I experienced how a limited scope can be damaging to our understanding of art history as humanity’s collective creative experience. The slides running through our art history survey classes’ projectors reinforced the interest in white male artists. This reigning group of people even dominated our photography, modern, and contemporary art classes. I hope that this academic approach has shifted across the United States, given the cultural reckoning we now find ourselves in. Students from across disciplines can also have agency in asking themselves critical questions around whose voices and work are missing from the narrative they’re being taught. They can challenge professors. 

The historical footage, expert interviews, and vignettes of artists at work merge to effectively and beautifully communicate how vital the representation of artists of color is in cultural institutions and the importance of enabling them to tell their own stories while also elevating their history. Black Art: In the Absence of Light will stream on HBO until March 17, 2021. You can also visit the website to experience a thoughtful curriculum and art activities inspired by the film. 

 

The Core Program

U.S. National Deadline: April 1, 2021 – The prestigious Core Residency Program awards residencies to highly motivated, exceptional visual artists and critical writers. $20,000 stipends, private studio…

“It’s Time to Shift the Power Inequities Among Arts Nonprofits”: What we’re reading

Toya Lillard wrote a piece in Hyperallergic that asks “the philanthropic, nonprofit, and education sectors to expand their circles of trust beyond white or white-adjacent executive leadership in order to water the roots.”

Lillard says “shifting power is one area that seems to go nowhere across sectors.”

The nonprofit sector must immediately lean away from the precedent of empowering white leaders to act on behalf of Black and Brown people. Period. All organizations must lean into rewarding, cultivating, and trusting, leadership within their respective stakeholder communities, and the communities being served. Change will feel snail-like as long as white organizational leaders, tenured professors, board members, and funders control and dictate, the pace of inclusion and the adoption of anti-racist practices.

Read here.

The Ongoing Impacts of COVID-19: A survey of NYC arts organizations and creative businesses

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) has launched a new survey of NYC’s cultural community that will build on DCLA’s report from last year, which captured the impact of the earliest days of the pandemic on NYC’s arts and cultural organizations.

The survey, according to the announcement, “follows up on key findings from that report and to dig deeper into how groups have responded to the Black Lives Matter movement and last summer’s calls for racial justice, as well as develop a greater understanding of impacts on organizations led by and serving BIPOC residents and other communities hard hit by COVID-19.”

The deadline to complete the new survey, created with and administered by Americans for the Arts, is by the end of Monday, March 1.

Take the survey here.

New Fund Alert! Joint Effort to Invest in Black Power-Building and Organizing in California

Philanthropic organizations and funders launched together the California Black Freedom Fund, a new $100 million initiative to provide abundant resources to Black-led power-building organizations in the state over the next five years.

Co-created with Black leaders and organizers, “the first-of-its-kind fund will ensure that California’s growing ecosystem of locally rooted Black-led organizing efforts have the sustained investments and resources they need to eradicate systemic and institutional racism,” details the announcement.

The press release explains: “By creating and accelerating a new statewide ecosystem of Black-led organizations confronting racism and anti-Blackness, this fund aims to effect the culture, policy and systems changes necessary to realize equity and justice in California.”

Over the next five years, the California Black Freedom Fund will strategically increase the resources available to Black-led organizations throughout California, prioritizing the courageous and visionary grassroots advocates and organizers leading California as a whole toward systemic transformation.

Read here.

Real or Imagined: A National Juried Exhibition

U.S. National Deadline: April 23, 2020 – Highly regarded Attleboro Arts Museum announces an open call for artists for its upcoming national juried exhibition, “Real or Imagined”. Top gallery exhibition. Cash awards…

Field Projects Spring Open Call

International Deadline: March 27, 2021 – Field Projects announces our Spring Open Call! Emerging and mid-career artists are invited to submit applications for inclusion across our various exhibitions venues…

Art World Roundup: John Brandler buys Nottingham Banksy, D’Lan Contemporary launches new endowment, Venetian glass bead causes archaeological stir, and more

In this week’s Art World Roundup: Artfizz launches new art selling and buying platform that rethinks the secondary market, dealer John Brandler snags another Banksy, and D’Lan Contemporary announces a new endowment to support Australian Indigenous artists. Meanwhile, Dolly Parton has asked that Tennessee not move forward with a statue honouring her, the CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields steps down after a job listed sparks controversy and archaeologists have found Venetian beads that may have made their way to North America before Columbus. 

 

There’s a new arts platform on the block

This week, a new platform for buying and selling art was launched that’s rethinking the secondary market. Artfizz is a “community-driven ecosystem” making the art market more accessible for those looking to buy and sell contemporary art. Through Artfizz, sellers have the ability to curate their own auctions while those looking to buy “follow their own eyes and hearts.” Perhaps most exciting about the new platform is that artists will benefit from the sale of their works. According to Artfizz, artist will receive 50 percent of the platform’s 15 percent auction fee. Also, sellers can list works by more than 20,000 pre-approved artists (a number that will increase over times) without any listing or shipping fees. From submission to final listing, the process to put an artwork on Artfizz will take less than two weeks and there are be traditional bidding options as well as “Buy It Now” features. “For many artists, navigating the highs and lows of producing work and earning money is nothing short of an endurance sport,” Executive Director and co-founder of Artfizz Matthew Dipple said in a press release. “It’s one reason we want to always factor artists into what we do at Artfizz. The first step towards that is rethinking secondary market sales. Artists should profit from the entire lifespan of an artwork. It happens in other creative industries – why not the art world?” In November of last year, Artfizz was used ahead of its launch for “Show Me the Signs,” a benefit auction that supported the African American Policy Forum’s #SayHerName Mothers Network.

 

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Banksy has left the building and Nottingham

The Nottingham Banksy, which popped up on the side of a Rothesay Avenue property last October has been sold to art dealer John Brandler, who’s no stranger to buying a Banksy. The mural is a black and white stencil painting of a girl using a bicycle tyre, a nod to the Raleigh Bicycle Company founded in Nottingham in 1887, as a hula hoop. The elusive street artist chained a bike missing its back tyre next to the mural adding context and a little comedy. Banksy laid claim to the work on Instagram a few days after it appeared. According to Brandler, he purchased the mural for “six-figures” before it was cut from its brick wall surroundings this week. The artwork will now head to Scotland where it will undergo restoration. Banksy has been vocal about his disapproval of the sale of his artworks and told the Nottingham rejuvenation board, the Nottingham Project, that he hoped the artwork would remain in the city. He’s not the only one sad to see the artwork head out of the Midlands city. “It’s sad to see it’s leaving. I think it should stay in the area it was put in” Alex Mitchell-Messam, who owns a shop nearby the artwork and saw it being installed, said to the BBC. “Banksy travelled to Nottingham, he chose to put that artwork here when he could have chosen anywhere. It was great, bringing new faces to the area and having a vibrant effect.” Brandler plans to include the Nottingham artwork in a forthcoming exhibition of street art later this year that will be held in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

 

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D’Lan Contemporary establishes endowment to aid Australia’s Indigenous artists

Australian gallery D’Lan Contemporary has announced the creation of The National Endowment for Indigenous Visual Arts (NEIVA). In partnership with actor Steve Martin and businessman Bruno Raschle, both of which are avid collectors of works by Australian Indigenous artists, the NEIVA was created with the aim of supporting Indigenous arts, fostering a more transparent primary and secondary market, as well as a sustainable market for Australian Indigenous art through a central trust fund. According to D’Lan Contemporary, the NEIVA will “centralise and distribute proceeds from Australian Indigenous art sales directly back to artists, art schools that educate Indigenous artists, and the broader Indigenous communities.” At the start of 2020, D’Lan launched the Voluntary Resale Royalty Initiative, through which sellers were offered to opportunity to donate two and a half percent of sale proceeds back to Indigenous artists. Donations of up to five percent were match by D’Lan Contemporary under this initiative. With the NEIVA, all funds accumulated this way will be funneled into the endowment and D’Lan Contemporary has committed to donating between two and a half and 10 percent on future primary and secondary sales. Funds from the NEIVA will be managed by a trustee company and distributions will be guided by Indigenous visual art leaders. “Art sales are often the primary source of non-government income for remote Indigenous Australian communities. The existing primary and secondary Indigenous art market, however, does not generate sufficient revenue to support both the artists and their broader communities. We want to change this,” D’Lan Davidson, founder of D’Lan Contemporary, said in a statement. “Our intent is to develop a market for a younger generation of Australian Indigenous artists and artist estates – both here in Australia and overseas – and to help support and develop the broader Indigenous art industry and their communities at the same time,”

 

Dolly Parton pumps the brakes on a proposed statue of her in Tennessee

Country music legend Dolly Parton has asked that she not be honoured with a statue in her home state of Tennessee, at least not yet. As Tennessee lawmakers debated on what to do with a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general, Tennessean, slave trader, and leader of the Ku Klux Klan, held at the State Capitol, a state House of Representative suggested replacing Forrest’s statue with one of Parton. Last month, those plans gained more traction receiving bipartisan support, but this week Parton asked that they not move forward. “Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time,” the singer and philanthropist said in a statement in which she thanked the state’s government for its consideration. “I hope, though, that somewhere down the road several years from now or perhaps after I’m gone if you still feel I deserve it, then I’m certain I will stand proud in our great State Capitol as a grateful Tennessean.”

Dolly Parton sits with conductor Zubin Mehta and William "Smokey" Robinson Art World Roundup
Conductor Zubin Mehta laughs with singers Dolly Parton and William “Smokey” Robinson during a reception for the Kennedy Center honorees in 2006. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons | Photo: Eric Draper

 

Director and CEO of Indianapolis museum steps down amid controversy

Following the publication of a controversial job advertisement for a position at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, the museum’s director and CEO, Charles Venable, has stepped down. In search of a new director, the museum listed an advertisement seeking a candidate who could “attract a broader and more diverse audience while maintaining the museum’s traditional core, white art audience.” The language of the job listing was immediately condemned by members of the community and cultural workers, alike. The museum issued an apology and changed the wording of the listing to instead read “traditional core art audience.” In a February 13th interview with The New York Times, Venable admitted that explicit use of “white” was intentional. “I deeply regret that the choice of language clearly has not worked out to mirror our overall intention of building our core art audience by welcoming more people in the door,” Venable said in the interview. “We were trying to be transparent about the fact that anybody who is going to apply for this job really needs to be committed to D.E.I. efforts in all parts of the museum.” However, an open letter signed by almost 500 cultural workers and Indianapolis community members called for Venable’s immediate removal.  The letter in part stated: “We will not stand for performative measures, social media apologies, disingenuous recants of statements, virtue signaling, or blame shifting to third party vendors.” On Wednesday, the museum issued a statement announcing Venable’s resignation.

 

Centuries old Venetian glass beat Columbus to North America

Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, as the mnemonic goes, a handful of blue glass beads from Venice may have made their way to North America. Mike Kunz of the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Robin Mills of the Bureau of Land Management published their findings in American Antiquity after researching glass beads they’ve found in Alaska. The beads, as well as a number of metal bracelets, were discovered in three different sites – including Punyik Point, a location along trade routes from the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean. A plant-based twine that wrapped one of the bangles was radiocarbon dated revealing that the plant was alive sometime in the 1400s. “We almost fell over backwards” Kunz told Artnet News of when they found that out. “It was like, Wow!” Ultimately, Kunz and Mills’ research has led them to think that the beads, estimated to be around 540 years old, were brought to Punyik Point between 1440 and 1480. Some 10,000 miles from their Venetian origins, what remains a mystery is how the beads might have gotten to North America over a decade before Columbus in 1492. Kunz and Mills have theorized that the beads were likely traded between Italy and China. From there, the beads may have travelled to Russia’s eastern coast before heading to what is today Alaska.

Blue Venetian glass beads found in Alaska Art World Roundup
Venetian glass beads uncovered in Alaska. Photo: Lester Ross. Courtesy of Robin Mills.