News from Around the Art World: April 2, 2018
London's Fourth Plinth unveiled: Michael Rakowitz’s winged bull sculpture made from date syrup cans
On a soggy morning in central London, a gleaming new public sculpture lit up Trafalgar Square. Even in pouring rain, the colours of Michael Rakowitz’s The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist shone from the Fourth Plinth, the platform that has become the city’s most prominent space for contemporary art.
The work recreates an Assyrian winged bull with a human head, known as a lamassu, created in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh in 700 BCE but destroyed by Islamic State in 2015. It wears what the artist has called an “armour” of colourful date syrup cans, which Rakowitz has worked with for many years and identified as a symbol of the Iraqi people and the refugees that have fled the country in recent years—dates are to Iraq what cigars are to Cuba, he has said.
By Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper
Lillstreet on track to emerge from bankruptcy protection
Lillstreet Art Center expects to emerge from bankruptcy protection after agreeing to pay $195,000 to settle a lawsuit verdict that triggered a Chapter 11 filing earlier this month.
The amount tops the maximum $137,050 Lillstreet agreed to pay under a 2015 contract with website designer Triology Interactive but is far less than the $762,318 Trilogy sought to recover after it sued Lillstreet. A Cook County Circuit Court jury in November awarded Triology $105,000 in the contract dispute.
By Steven R. Strahler, Crain's Business Chicago
Howardena Pindell Gets Her First Major Museum Survey
A survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago illustrates how the artist shifted from formalist painting to personal, political art.
By Claire Voon, Hyperallergic
Rare Picasso self-portrait expected to fetch $70 million
Hong Kong (AFP) - A rare Picasso believed to be a self-portrait created when he was under threat of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp is expected to fetch US$70 million at auction, Christie's said Friday as the work went on view in Hong Kong.
The oil painting "Le Marin" depicts a sad-looking man dressed in a blue and white striped sailor's shirt sitting on a chair.
"You have... a slightly dark sense around the picture. It's nervous, it's on edge and slightly gloomy," said Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of impressionist and modern art at Christie's.
Via AFP