Melancholy Art In Paris

Do artists have to be miserable to produce great art? A new art exhibition in France suggests that a little inner darkness helps. "Melancholy - Genius and Insanity in the Western World," which has visitors lining up around the block at Paris' Grand Palais, is anything but depressing. "Melancholy is not only negative," curator Gerard Regnier said in an interview. "On the contrary, it was a positive energy that gave strength and genius to great artists throughout Western civilization." Among them: Picasso, Rodin, van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Edward Hopper, Goya, Delacroix, William Blake. Nearly 300 works are on display, including art masterpieces on rare loan from dozens of museums and collectors.
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Irish Art

Earl Takes Titian Away

A Renaissance art masterpiece by Italian artist Titian has been removed from display at the National Art Gallery, London so that its owner the Earl of Halifax can sell the painting. The painting, which has hung in the gallery since 1992 was "a significant loss to the public", the gallery said.

Discussions for a joint purchase plan with the National Gallery of Scotland took place when the owner, the Earl of Halifax, decided to put it up for sale. The gallery said despite "goodwill on all sides" no agreement was reached. A spokesman for Lord Halifax said he would be looking to sell the painting privately, rather than through auction.
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Irish Art

Christie's $400 Million Art

Rarely do three well-known art collections come to the auction block in the same season. Even more rarely does one auction house get to sell them all. Starting Tuesday, Christie's will offer several exceptional works, including a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a red-haired model, a 1954 Rothko inspired by Matisse's 1911 'Red Studio'; and an abstract de Kooning from 1977 that has had only one owner: the artist's lawyer, Lee V. Eastman. Experts at the auction house are trying not to gloat. Only 18 months ago, Sotheby's was in the limelight when it sold "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)," a 1905 painting from Picasso's Rose Period, for $104.1 million - the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. Now all eyes are on Christie's. In the next two weeks, they expect to sell $300 million to $400 million worth of art.
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Irish Art

Binge Art On Grant

The Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi - one-time Turner Art Prize nominee - gets a £5,000 art grant to down bottles of lager and then try to walk across a balancing beam. Audiences at the Government-funded Chapter Arts Centre in Canton, Cardiff, see Miss Takahashi arrive on stage in high heels and a smart black business suit. For the next three hours, they watch her drink bottle after bottle, periodically lurching towards her beam and seeing how much of it she can negotiate without falling off. Fortunately for her, it is only a couple of feet high, so she is unlikely to suffer more than a twisted ankle.
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Irish Art

Hockney's Art Under A Grand

Next Monday, Bonhams is holding the first sale ever devoted entirely to the work of David Hockney. Although Hockney's paintings can make millions, and there is one large 1998 pastel in the sale valued at £150,000 to £200,000, there are dozens of prints, posters and photographs estimated to sell for under £1,000. Perhaps the most unusual items are two costumes which Hockney designed for a performance of Maurice Ravel's L'Enfant et le Sortilèges, a one-act opera based on Colette's 1916 story. The costumes in the Bonhams sale were designed for children who played the parts of shepherds in the production. Consisting of a smock and a pair of trousers, made in thick wool and dyed according to very specific instructions. In his notes kept by the Royal Opera House, Hockney states: "The costume is green and must match exactly the wallpaper colour of the set." Estimated to fetch between £500 to £700 each, they are a test case for Bonhams which has never sold a Hockney costume before.
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Irish Art

The Art Of Slicing Kids

A giant egg slicer - bought at auction for £63,000 - is said to be big enough for a child to climb on to and is art from Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum. Slicer (1999) will be part of Choice: 21 Years of Collecting for Scotland, an art show in honour of the departing director of the National Galleries of Scotland. "What she tends to do is use ordinary, everyday things and dramatically change the size of them. They very often have an extraordinarily threatening edge to them", said Sir Timothy Clifford.

The senior curator at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, believes the work is an important landmark in contemporary British art. He said: "Her style is characterised by forms and materials that evoke feelings of intimacy and familiarity while simultaneously suggesting the possibility of danger. In Slicer, Hatoum massively enlarges an egg slicer so it is the perfect fit, not for an egg, but for a child. The sculpture alludes to the fragility of the human body."
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Irish Art

Tate Pays £20K For The Time

The Tate has acquired a £20,000 performance piece which involves members of the public standing in a line and asking each other the time.
David Lamelas' work Time "questions the environment of the museum and static objects". A photograph of a past performance was included in the price. It was among 14 works bought for the Tate by a collection of donors.
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Irish Art

Saatchi Gallery Eviction

A gallery belonging to art collector Charles Saatchi will be evicted from its London premises after a court ruled on Friday that the company running the collection had breached conditions of its lease. The High Court ruling ends an unseemly row between Saatchi, one of the world's best known art buyers who championed the hugely successful but controversial Britart movement. Saatchi had already announced he would move his collection to a new site in the south of the capital. Judge Donald Rattee ruled that the gallery had trespassed on parts of the building not leased to it, and that a magazine offer of two tickets for the price of one had breached a lease term whereby it would pay rent based on the gallery's profits. Although the gallery spent 1.2 million pounds refitting the premises, it had "displayed an attitude of deliberate disregard of the landlord's rights".
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Irish Art