Old Masters Unite In Amsterdam

Amsterdam's two main museums will join forces next year for an exhibition which unites two European Old Masters Rembrandt and Caravaggio. The Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibition, jointly curated by the Rijksmuseum, will take place at the city's Van Gogh Museum from 24 February to 18 June.

The exhibition will mark the close of events celebrating the birth of Dutch artist Rembrandt 400 years ago. He and Italian contemporary Caravaggio dominated Baroque art in the 1600s. Twenty five masterpieces will go on display in an exhibition described by organisers as as artistic "confrontation".
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Irish Art

Reconsidering Matisse...

Matisse was not taught to paint; he just started doing it. His first two canvases, from 1890, are essentially consummate Old Master-ish still-lifes, the first one pretty good and the second, featuring opulent reds, a knockout. Digging this picture out of his father’s attic ten years later, Matisse said it came so close to containing everything he had done since then that it hardly seemed worth having gone on painting.
The key fact is his self-invention as a painter, entering art history from essentially nowhere, as if by parachute. Never having had traditional lessons to unlearn (unlike Picasso, with his incessant industry of demolishing and reconstructing the inherited language of painting), Matisse innovated on something like whim—a privilege, without guidelines or guarantees, for which he paid a steep toll in anxiety. There is even a touch of the naïf or the primitive about him, though it is hard to grasp, because his works quickly assumed the status of classics, models of the modern.
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Irish Art

Art's Fattest Wallet

It is hard to feel sorry for a man who has just been handed the job of running what is arguably the richest art gallery in the world. The abrupt departure of Deborah Gribbon, his predecessor in the post, ten months ago with complaints about “broad philosophical differences” with the board, amid mutterings about cuts in the acquisitions budget and a “toxic atmosphere” at the museum. There has even been criticism from the US Senate’s finance committee on the role played by Barry Munitz, the chief executive and president. He is under investigation by the California attorney-general’s office over allegations that his use of first-class air travel, his $72,000 Porsche sports car and $1.2 million (£668,000) salary package represent an abuse of the Getty’s charitable tax status. And if that was not enough, before Brand takes up his post in January there is a criminal trial in Italy of the Getty’s head of antiquities to be resolved...
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Irish Art

Foetus Art Withdrawn

As an ethics panel meets to discuss whether an artwork featuring a foetus's head should be on display, the owner weighs in on the controversy, swissinfo reports. Art collector Uli Sigg, a former Swiss ambassador to China, spoke after Bern's Fine Arts Museum withdrew the piece in response to a complaint, and set up the panel to discuss the work. Sigg said that the piece had been shown before—at the Venice Biennale in 1999—without controversy. Bern's Fine Arts Museum has temporarily withdrawn the work, which features a foetus head attached to a seagull's body, from a temporary exhibition of contemporary Chinese art.
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Irish Art

8 New "Scream" Suspects

Police in Norway are hunting eight new suspects believed to have been involved in the spectacular heist of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch's world-famous painting The Scream a year ago. The new suspects are in addition to five others who have already been arrested. In a dramatic robbery, two armed and hooded thieves burst into the Munch Museum in Oslo and threatened a member of staff with a gun as stunned tourists looked on. Grabbing the paintings off the walls, the robbers fled the scene in a stolen car driven by an accomplice. The paintings are still missing. The city of Oslo has offered a reward of $405,000 for anyone who helps recover the paintings.
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Irish Art

Gallery Shows Gay Batman

A New York gallery has been told by DC Comics to take down pictures depicting Batman and Robin kissing. "The colour pictures, which depict the superheroes in a number of homoerotic poses, were put on display in the gallery in February. Seven images from the collection were subsequently displayed on the Artnet site.
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Irish Art

10 Worst Paintings in Britain

The National Gallery, along with the Today programme, is searching for the best painting hanging in Britain. But not all artworks are so admired. The Guardian asked 10 experts to select the pictures they loathe...
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Irish Art

Curator Charged With Theft

The curator of a Copenhagen art museum has been charged with stealing 100 exhibits from the museum, worth a total of one million Kroner (£90,960). He allegedly stole the items while working at the Danish Museum of Art and Design between 1999 and 2002. Small "pocket-sized" porcelain, glass and metal items were taken, a museum spokeswoman said. The man, whose named was not released according to Danish law, was detained after a court appearance on Wednesday.
Founded in 1890, the museum is one of Scandinavia's main exhibition venues for Danish and international decorative arts and design.
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Irish Art