Arthur Okamura, RIP

This morning I received an email from Stephen Beal, President of California College of the Arts, bearing sad news: FROM PRESIDENT STEPHEN BEAL Dear CCA Community, I’m very sad to report the death of Professor Emeritus Arthur Okamura. He passed away on July 10 near his home in Bolinas. He was 77. Arthur taught at [...]

Mona Lisa Revealed

An exhibit entitled Joconde: From the Mona Lisa to the Nude Gioconda is on display from June 14 through September 30, 2009, at the Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo’s birthplace. It features 5,000 paintings, sculpture and new media created over the past 500 years, inspired by Leonardo’s immortal portrait of Mona [...]

Yale, Van Gogh, Lenin and the Nationalization of Art

At first Chairman Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized private land and “redistributed” it to the Russian peasants. They nationalized the banks and industry. Personal property was confiscated for the state, including the art collections of the Russian industrialists. General Secretary of the Communist Party Josef Stalin sold off some of the “nationalized” art treasures [...]

Damien Hirst, Dead Cows and Cradles of Hope

“I have a really good business manager,” said Damien Hirst. “He told me a long time ago ‘You’d better make sure that you’re using the money to chase your art ideas rather than the art to chase your money ideas.’ Which is a very important thing to never forget.” That is sound advice coming from [...]

Hitler Paintings Sell At Auction

A British auction house sold a series of 13 watercolors on Thursday, April 23, 2009, painted by Adolph Hitler during the years 1908 and 1914, when the young man lived in Vienna. Richard Westwood-Brookes, of Mullock’s Auctioneers, speculated that had Mr. Hitler been “accepted into the Vienna Academy, which was where he wanted to be, [...]