Daily art news

NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announced its upcoming Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 4 will include Pierre Bonnard’s Le petit déjeuner, an important interior scene from the artist’s last decade, a significant period of modernist innovation for the artist. Previously featured in museum retrospectives of the artist’s work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others, this radiant 1936 painting has been in the private collection of the late arts patron Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall since it was acquired more than sixty years ago. Thanks to increased scholarship on this mature period in Bonnard’s career in recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in Bonnard's late, great paintings and a re-appraisal of his importance within the canon of 20th century art. In the past 12 months alone, the world auction record price for any work by the artist has been broken twice, with the most recent price of US$ 11.4 million achieved for Terrasse à Vernon, sold at Christie’s London in February this year. Estimated at US$ 6-9 million, Le petit déjeuner is poised to become one of the artist’s top-selling works at auction. 

WASHINGTON (AP).- A woman accused of pounding on a painting by Paul Gauguin and trying to rip it from a wall at theNational Gallery of Art told police the post-Impressionist artist was evil and the painting should be burned, court documents show.
Susan Burns, 53, of Arlington, Va., has been charged with attempted second-degree theft and destruction of property following the attack Friday. She was being held without bail pending a mental health hearing Tuesday. The Gauguin painting, "Two Tahitian Women," valued at an estimated $80 million, was not damaged and will go back on view Tuesday, the National Gallery said in a statement. The picture is on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for an exhibit titled "Gauguin: Maker of Myth." The painting depicts two women standing next to each other, one with both breasts exposed and the other with one breast showing. According to charging documents, an investigator told Burns her rights and asked why she had tried to remove the painting. "I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it's very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned," according to the documents. 

AVERILL PARK, N.Y.- AMI Publishers announces the release of a new book entitled, "Homage to the Creative Spirit: The Paintings of Jenness Cortez" by Baylor University art historian Dr. Karen Pope. Robert Yassin, former director of both the Indianapolis and Tucson Museums of Art, wrote the book foreword. For centuries artists have been challenging their intellects and skills by paying homage to the painters who preceded them. Today, Jenness Cortez has emerged as the twenty-first century's most notable exponent of this facet of art history. Her masterful work gives Cortez solid footing in the colorful lineage of artists who have appropriated vintage images and woven them into their own distinctive, recognizable fabric.