Rare Bernini painting discovered in Vienna museum storeroom ahead of major exhibition. https://ift.tt/gRlbi80

A new painting by Renaissance master Gian Lorenzo Bernini has been discovered and will be unveiled in December at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, according to The Art Newspaper.

The painting, titled Portrait of an Old Man, a nearly life-size depiction of an elderly man with disheveled white hair and an intense, direct gaze, had been attributed to an anonymous 17th-century Roman artist and was moved into storage in 1989 for lack of a firm attribution. Bernini, primarily known as a sculptor and architect, never signed his paintings, and fewer than 20 are widely accepted as authentic.

The portrait entered the museum‘s collection in 1920 as a work attributed to Philippe de Champaigne, bequeathed by Viennese collector Richard Lieben, who had purchased it in 1900; nothing is known of its earlier provenance. Over the following century it was reattributed multiple times, to an anonymous Italian painter, to the French artists de Champaigne or Jean Jouvenet, to the Flemish artists Jacob Ferdinand Voet or Erasmus Quellinus the Younger, and more recently to Bernini‘s collaborator Baciccio.

Kunsthistorisches Museum curator Gudrun Swoboda now argues the work is Bernini‘s, dating it to around 1670 based on the sitter‘s clothing, collar, and hairstyle, which reflect Roman fashions of the period.

She points to the painting‘s sense of space and anatomical precision, along with parallels to Bernini‘s bust of Louis XIV, particularly around the mouth. Swoboda describes the paint handling in the face as sculptural, “building up and modelling a face in clay” with short, bristled brushstrokes, and sees further stylistic echoes in a Bernini self-portrait drawing in the U.K.’s Royal Collection dated 1675–80.

She believes the finely painted head and collar are Bernini’s work, while the more weakly rendered black garment and shoulder were completed by another hand, possibly one of his sons—a division a recent scientific examination has corroborated. Swoboda speculates the sitter may be Mario Chigi, a brother of Pope Alexander VII and Bernini’s most important late patron.

The attribution is contentious in part because Bernini is generally thought to have stopped painting around 1650, two decades before the Vienna work’s proposed date. Of the roughly 16 paintings currently accepted as his, only one dates from after 1640. If confirmed, the new attribution would substantially revise the timeline of Bernini‘s painting career.

Portrait of an Old Man will anchor “Bernini: Painter and Sculptor” at Vienna‘s Palais Lobkowitz, running December 2nd through April 4th, 2027, alongside loans including the Uffizi’s Bernini self-portrait and the Royal Collection drawing.

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5 New Restaurants in New York Where the Art Is as Impressive as the Food https://ift.tt/0qPTf6M

The worlds of food and art are colliding in New York City. In the past year, a handful of restaurants have opened with impressive culinary offerings that parallel the artwork inside.

While some are associated with art organizations such as Sotheby’s and the New Museum, others get their creative flair from the owners’ taste. The topic is becoming the talk of the town, including in Artnet’s recent podcast, The Art Angle, which features Annie Armstrong, food and culture writer for Caper Media. And it’s not just the art world that is creating buzz. Reviews in major outlets are also driving diners to these new artful haunts.

Whether you’re refueling after a museum visit or fancy your appetizers with a side of art, here are five of the best new restaurants in New York with art collections that are guaranteed to satisfy as much as the fare.

Oriana

174 Mott Street

What to see:

Tribeca gallerygoers, your new go-to restaurant is here. A short walk away to Nolita is Oriana, the latest spot from fine-dining institution Eleven Madison Park alumni chef Andy Quinn and sommelier Cedric Nicaise, who together also launched Noortwyck in the West Village in 2022. Dark browns fill Oriana’s stunning space designed by local architecture firm Modellus Novus, and are warmed by a wood-fired grill.

Artworks from the restaurant’s financier and building owner Kevin Ryan’s collection fill the walls, including pieces by Rashid Johnson, Alteronce Gumby, and Ming Smith. But the stunner is a site-specific mural by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones featuring the British artist’s characteristic vibrant palette with swirls of lush flora and fauna that draw from his Yoruba heritage. The rich blues and orange hues span 25 feet in the multi-panel work, gracing the large dining room with thrilling energy.

“We wanted the interiors of Oriana to reflect the deep artistic history and spirit of downtown New York by filling the walls with visual artists who inspire us as well as our guests,” said Christopher Omachi, who advised on the restaurant’s collection. “We knew Adeniyi-Jones’s paintings wouldn’t fade into the background—they bring a sense of depth, movement, and life to the restaurant, beckoning people in from the street and inviting conversation amongst guests.”

What to eat:

Adeniyi-Jones’s mural sets a spirited tone that is matched by the energy of the room. The menu centers around live-fire and open-grill dishes, with chic diners indulging in rich dishes like perfectly cooked hanger steak and smoky, roasted vegetables, as well as lighter fare like briny oysters and silky tuna crudo.

A highlight is the wood-fired salmon over a smoked butter sauce that pairs perfectly with maitake mushrooms. Each dish is packed with flavors and fresh ingredients like ramps and basil that add brightness to both the plate and the palate.

Oberon, New Museum

235 Bowery

What to see:

With the sleek design by architectural firm OMA and partner Shohei Shigematsu, it’s no surprise that Oberon inside the New Museum is stylistically impressive. Bathed in warm browns, including cork booths encircling the walls and a low, curved ceiling, Oberon feels like the inside of a cave or a coffee bean, a contrast to the metal surfaces throughout the museum.

Above the bar is an agentic AI digital installation by Ian Cheng that responds to the activity of the room. Diners can also play a game of virtual chess while sitting at the sculptural bar top, which was designed by artist Minjae Kim, who also created some of the cozy tables and resin-dipped fiberglass artworks floating over the booths. After dinner, guests receive chocolates with poems by Laurie Anderson.

“While we're an independent business with an independent entrance, we're still in and of the museum and its community. We wanted the entire space to reflect the community, which is by and for artists, and to feel creative rather than be a gallery,” said Henry Rich, managing partner of Oberon.

“Everything is meant to be integrated into the experience, not too distracting, and with an artist’s sensibility more than the discrete pieces you might see in the museum. This way people can tune into the art or just enjoy the experience.”

What to eat:

Oberon has refreshingly reasonable prices and an approachable menu of seasonal modern American fare, with staples like a burger and fettuccine, as well as dorade bursting with flavorful romesco and summer squash. A highlight was a generous serving of prawns with a zippy blend of salsa negra, jalapeño, and cilantro, which pairs perfectly with the bright dressing of coconut yuzu on the watercress salad.

Oberon’s audience isn’t just museumgoers. While the New Museum closes at 6 p.m., the restaurant stays open until 1 a.m., an enticing invitation to have a glass of wine while playing AI chess late into the night.

Bar Chimera

550 Madison Avenue

What to see:

Inside legendary architect Philip Johnson’s postmodern masterpiece (the former AT&T building), restaurateur Simon Kim has assembled a spectacle to match the building’s scale. Bar Chimera is the latest addition to Kim’s Gracious Hospitality portfolio, which includes Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse COTE.

Bar Chimera is three bars in one: martini, whiskey, and wine. Designed by the Rockwell Group, the room is carefully divided into distinct zones, from the gleaming chrome martini counter to the wood-paneled whiskey library and convivial wine bar. London-based artist Martin Creed’s neon signs, commissioned by ARTLINE, hover on the walls.

“We felt that Creed’s ability to bring people together aligned seamlessly with the values of 550 Madison: hospitality, community, and positivity,” said Ji Park Kwak and Rosa Suehyun Kim, the founders and directors of public art consultancy ARTLINE. “In striving to realize an artistically meaningful and innovative art program that stands apart from the typical large corporate midtown landscape, we were drawn to the sophisticated playfulness and embracing openness of Martin’s work.”

The artworks’ glowing text, like a yellow sign that reads “Don’t Worry,” are lighthearted statements visible from the street and throughout the grandiose space.

“We wanted Bar Chimera to feel like a sort of zen resting spot within the intensity of Midtown,” added Simon Kim. “The inspiration for the space came in part from ancient cities like Rome, where you might find a fountain just outside a busy merchant area, giving people a place to pause and rest after a bustling day.”

What to eat:

The drinks program is a suitably extensive highlight. The martini is the star, with ice made from filtered and re-mineralized water and a choice of garnishes ranging from pickled onions to blue-cheese-stuffed olives.

The menu here is a combination of New York brasserie classics and elevated bar snacks with Korean American flourishes. A perfect option for indecisive diners or people who like to try multiple dishes is the brilliant preset menu with seven small appetizers like red snapper crudo and wagyu bresaola with melon to accompany your choice of an entree.

The burger comes with peppercorn mustard and a brioche bun (with a side of fries, of course), yet there’s no need for any additional accouterments. Its flavors are remarkably complex, making it a strong contender for one of New York’s favorite arguments: the best burger in the city.

Zoli

Amant, 312 Maujer Street, Brooklyn

What to see:

There’s nothing unusual about a fish tank in a restaurant, but the tank at Zoli will catch you by surprise. With three large rectangular aquariums, the marine habitats are part of a work by artist Pierre Huyghe. The piece was commissioned by Amant founder and collector Lonti Ebers: The avant-garde artwork matches the atmosphere the adjacent art center is known for.

Unlike the tanks some restaurants have with creatures like lobsters that might soon become dishes, Huyghe’s are intentionally off-putting with alien-like crabs and GloFish (genetically modified to emit artificial hues) in murky water.

The aquatic triptych is inspired by nearby Newtown Creek, one of the most polluted estuaries in New York City. The water levels in the tanks rise and fall as if responding to an unknown tide, and the glass occasionally switches from opaque to transparent, adding a cinematic effect.

What to eat:

Zoli’s seafood-forward menu changes frequently, but the small plates are light and flavorful, making for a great shared experience and return visits. A surprising star of the menu is the “Olney salad,” whose ingredients change often, but are an assortment of fresh herbs and lettuces dressed in incredibly fine oil and vinegar.

Each dish is packed with bold and unexpected flavors, like the mussel dressing on the Romano beans with sungolds.

Marcel, Sotheby’s

945 Madison Avenue

What to see:

An endeavor between auction house Sotheby’s and the design firm Roman and Williams, Marcel is the French restaurant inside Sotheby’s headquarters, which opened last November. The Marcel Breuer–designed Brutalist building provides a dramatic setting, with soaring ceilings, large windows, and views of the sculpture garden.

Having two creative leaders at the helm, it’s no surprise that Marcel is expertly outfitted, from the tableware to the lighting fixtures in cast bronze and cast glass by Roman and Williams that complement Breuer’s signature circular designs overhead.

And, of course, there’s the art on offer from Sotheby’s. While an energetic Willem de Kooning painting and an abstract John Chamberlain sculpture might accompany your next meal, the selection will continue to change. The dining room, vitrines, lobby, stairwell, and garden terrace are packed with blue-chip fare, which at the time of publication also included works by Isamu Noguchi, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson, and others.

What to eat:

Diners can rub elbows with collectors, tourists, and salespeople alike. But not all is business and power lunches at Marcel, as the food entices as much as the art.

The high prices preclude a casual outing, but for a special occasion there’s a reliable selection of French-leaning continental cuisine and brasserie fare like confit duck, foie gras, and onion soup.

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Swedish rapper Yung Lean to present first major art exhibition in Stockholm. https://ift.tt/7urPql3

Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, the Stockholm-born musician better known as Yung Lean, will present his first visual art exhibition, “Collected Works 2016–2026,” at Torsgatan 22 in Stockholm from September 25th through October 11th.

The show brings together a decade of paintings, collages, works on paper, sculpture, and dioramas—most never before exhibited—alongside a site-specific installation and a new narrative short film that Håstad executive produced and stars in. Rather than a standard gallery hang, the works are staged in different environments such as a salon, a television room, and a screening room.

Håstad, who is self-taught, organized the exhibition himself rather than working with an outside curator. It follows a recent live painting installation with Adidas Originals during Paris Fashion Week earlier this year, and several Instagram teasers released by the artist.

“Ever since I can remember I dreamed of colors,” he said in a statement. “I’ve made wooden sculptures and drawings and paintings since I was a kid. Just like my songs, the work is made through stream of consciousness. I go where the hand takes me.” Following the Stockholm run, a selection of works, primarily sculptures, will go to an international online auction in partnership with Bukowskis.

The exhibition arrives amid a broader run of musicians and actors staging their own visual art shows. Last summer, Ed Sheeran opened “Cosmic Carpark Paintings” at HENI Gallery in London, a collection of Jackson Pollock-influenced drip works made in a disused carpark and sold alongside prints for £900 ($1,224) each, with half the proceeds going to the Ed Sheeran Foundation. Sheeran was direct about the reference point and about his own standing as an artist: “It’s mostly just splashing colors on canvases, think Jackson Pollock... I am by no means ’an artist,’ but I do love making art.” Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody similarly opened “Made in America” at Eden Gallery in New York last year, his first show of new work in nearly a decade. The show featured large-scale mixed-media paintings and a sound installation of his own composition. Its opening also followed a $425,000 sale of a collage by Brody at the amfAR Cannes gala.

In Håstad’s case, his surreal imagery has run alongside his music since he emerged as the face of the Swedish rap collective Sad Boys and the cloud rap movement that rose to popularity in the early 2010s.

“My paintings mean nothing and also everything,” said the rapper of the exhibition “Here they are.”

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Why Women Bodybuilders Are Everywhere in Contemporary Art https://ift.tt/cOIhrmj

In Keerthana Kunnath’s photo series “Not What You Saw,” groups of brawny bodybuilders gaze potently into the lens as they bend and flex their muscles. But these depictions aren’t what you might expect of the physically demanding sport. Soaked in the golden southern Indian sun, wrapped in ornately embellished fabric, glittering jewelry, and flowers, these bodybuilders are powerful young women from Kerala.

Bodybuilding is an art form as well as a sport, celebrating shape and presentation as well as brute strength. These muscular celebrations, in art history, have usually been of men: from Frederic Leighton’s mighty and undeniably phallic 1877 sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python to Michaelangelo’s towering 16th-century marble masterpiece David. Today, the gym bro aesthetic is a key part of the “manosphere,” as it’s often called, with male politicians such as Pete Hegseth showing themselves working out on social media to prove their masculinity.

In this cultural climate, contemporary artists are looking to women bodybuilders to reimagine gender and beauty stereotypes, allowing their mighty female protagonists to be variously brave, monstrous, beautiful, and always in control. Rather than portraying women as meek and mild, these artists capture the glamour and sexuality of their women bodybuilder subjects, as well as their physical potency.

Pin Up from the Magazine Lady Face Man Body, No. 3, 2011
Cassils
Human Rights Campaign Benefit Auction

It’s not the first time that the gender implications of bodybuilding have been the subject of contemporary art. In Cassils’s 2011 project CUTS, the Canadian performance artist used bodybuilding techniques and steroids to put on 23 pounds of muscle in 23 weeks, resulting in a photo series that depicts the transgender artist as a masculine, yet glamorous, figure.

Kunnath likewise decided to focus on bodybuilding to explore the gendered standards of her childhood. She started her career in fashion photography in London. When she began photographing bodybuilders in southern India in 2024, she wanted to do something different: confront traditional expectations of how a woman should look and behave.

“Growing up, there were always so many ideas around what a woman should be and how much space she was allowed to take up,” the photographer told Artsy ahead of her first solo museum exhibition opening at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam on September 18th. “I was drawn to the women themselves; their individuality, confidence, and the fact that they had chosen a path so different from what we typically see women pursue from the region.”

Kiss of Fire, 2022
Ana Benaroya
Two Palms

Her subjects are photographed against a southern Indian landscape, dressed in a blend of traditional outfits from the region to create a juxtaposition with their built physiques. The images are also inspired by posters for vintage Malayalam films, where actresses would be shown as coquettish and pliable. “I wanted to borrow some of that visual language but turn it on its head,” she said. “I wanted the women to feel glamorous and powerful, but without taking away from their strength.”

Glamour is also a key part of the 2022 series “Core” by London-based photographer Celia Croft and art director Kate Kidney Bishop. In one image, a muscular woman stretches a pair of diamanté-encrusted bikini bottoms across her firmly toned glutes. Another photo is reminiscent of a devotional painting as it shows a woman gazing up into the light, her eyelids covered in icy blue eyeshadow, as her long acrylic nails stroke her clavicle.

Across the series, these women are physically powerful and enticingly glamorous. “The whole bodybuilding industry is about muscle, strength, power—and these women are redefining femininity and gender and finding a new space within that,” the pair said in an interview.

In this sense, women bodybuilders capture high femme sexuality as well as the physical strength usually associated with men. American painter Ana Benaroya revels in these two distinct aesthetics in her paintings of physically commanding women. Inspired by Michelangelo’s depictions of the body and contemporary photographs of bodybuilders, her female figures are flamboyant and frenzied, depicted in a palette of acid green, bright purple, electric blue, and hot pink. Their undulating muscles are enormous, creating the appearance of brawny goddesses.

They also have flowing hair, enormous breasts, and talon-like nails. In Spirit Colossal (2025), for example, two women are painted in vibrant red and blue, flexing against a natural backdrop of wildflowers and glittering night sky. “I love creating a balance between perceived opposites within my paintings,” the artist told Artsy. “I never want the women in my work to seem like one thing.”

Her works are also inspired by art historical depictions of women, where their sexuality is foremost. “Women’s bodies as objects of desire is something that is almost impossible to escape, but I am interested in harnessing that to my own end,” she said. “Yes, they can be ripped but they can also be voluptuous and do their hair and nails….They are powerful and monstrous, alluring and beautiful.”

Bodybuilder Beauty, 2023
Elsa Rouy
Larsen Warner

Spirit Colossal, 2025
Ana Benaroya
KOSAKU KANECHIKA

That ambiguity is also on view in the work of British artist Elsa Rouy. Her painted bodies merge together, variously muscular, bony, and bendy. In her 2023 painting Bodybuilder Beauty, a bald figure proudly holds their arms above their head. Their biceps ripple, ribcage flares, and breasts are pulled up near their chin.

“There’s an ambiguity and strength with the bodybuilder physique that I found interesting and wanted to explore,” Rouy told Artsy. “There’s a ferocity to it. I’m constantly trying to look into the push and pull of the body at breaking points and moments of intensity.”

For Bodybuilder Beauty, she was also inspired by a drawing by Jusepe de Ribera, who was known for his sinewy subjects. “Translating the contorted male body into one of a bold and confronting ambiguous figure was fun to do and a way of expressing my own ideas about alternate femininity.”

These vibrant depictions of physically extreme women create a new vision for preconceived notions of gendered behavior and appearance. As Kunnath told Artsy about the people in her photographs, “There is something really beautiful about seeing these women inhabit their bodies on their own terms, without trying to make themselves smaller or more conventionally feminine.”

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Why This Nigerian Collector Is Committed to Buying African Artworks that Feel Like Home https://ift.tt/L6EMDTy

For Dr. Myma Belo-Osagie, collecting art began with a simple goal: to fill her bare dorm room in law school. While at Harvard University, the Nigerian lawyer, collector, and arts patron wanted something to make her space feel less anonymous. Then she encountered a print of a portrait of an African man by Peter Paul Rubens.

“Something in his expression stayed with me long after I walked past it,” she recalled. “I think it was the first time an image really spoke to me and how I was feeling at the time and caused me to want to have it with me rather than simply admire it from afar.”

That encounter sparked an impulse to live with art that has remained at the center of Belo-Osagie’s art-buying ethos. Over the years, she has built a collection of more than 400 works spanning painting, ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and quilts. She places particular emphasis on artists from Nigeria, Ghana, and across the African continent, including Larry Otoo, Ehinomen Okoeki, and Ndidi Dike.

From private pleasure to responsibility

“I have always bought what I like and what I find interesting—not necessarily because a piece is ‘valuable,’ whatever that means,” she told Artsy. In the early years, that meant buying from artists who were young, relatively unknown, and sometimes struggling to make a living.

While that instinct remains, her understanding of what support entails has evolved. A collection of this scale, she has come to recognize, “comes with certain obligations: documentation that fully acknowledges the artists, proper care, and thinking about what happens to the works after me.” Collecting, she said, has evolved “from simply being a private pleasure to becoming something closer to a responsibility to our society.”

That sense of responsibility is particularly pronounced in Belo-Osagie’s approach to African art. “I am drawn to work that captures African life and identity—scenes and items that reference the way we live, the way we see beauty, the things we use on a daily basis, the things that feel like ‘home’ to me,” she explained.

Her interests are also material. A work does not have to be conventionally beautiful or immediately legible to hold her attention. She is intrigued by objects that make her wonder how they were made and why an artist chose a particular material. She points to a sculpture by Nigerian artist Jacob Jari constructed almost entirely from cornstalks, which she acquired because she found it fascinating “that something so ordinary and ‘basic’ could be used to create art.”

Her tastes, meanwhile, remain fluid. “My favorite [artwork] tends to shift depending on the day of the week and my mood,” she said. One work she repeatedly returns to is Moyo Ogundipe’s Three Lagos Socialites (2007), a densely layered painting depicting a familiar social scene in the Nigerian city. Belo-Osagie is captivated by its detail and by the way it takes a subject explored by other artists and renders it with distinctive complexity.

Building support for artists beyond the collection

As her collecting practice has expanded, so has her engagement with philanthropy. For several years, Belo-Osagie was part of an NGO that encouraged Nigerian companies like banks and corporations to buy and display Nigerian art.

In 2025, her four children launched the Myma Art Prize to celebrate her 70th birthday. The prize rewards early- to mid-career artists from Ghana or Nigeria with $5,000, a funded residency, an exhibition, and professional development support—reflecting Belo-Osagie’s belief that financial support alone is not enough to sustain an artist’s career.

“I began my collecting of African art at a time when many talented artists could barely survive on art sales alone,” Belo-Osagie explained. “But money was never really the entire issue.” Early promise can bring attention, she noted, but once the spotlight moves on, artists still need professional support to continue developing their practices.

The experience of the prize’s first winner, Omolola Coker, has affirmed how beneficial the multifaceted approach can be. During Coker’s residency with Nosona in Benin City, Nigeria, she requested to extend her stay. For Belo-Osagie, it suggested that Coker remained open to being “stretched and refined.” During the residency, Coker has expanded beyond her primary practice of painting and experimented with other media, including bronze casting.

Reimagining a history of patronage

The prize’s format reflects a broader conception of patronage rooted in African history. “Historically we have thought of patronage as wealthy families, individuals, or institutions supporting art and artists by commissioning works and funding artists,” Belo-Osagie explained. “In pre-colonial times, the Asantehene [the Asante kingdom in Ghana] and the Oba of Benin [the Benin kingdom in Nigeria] and their respective palaces were largely responsible for supporting the artists and gold and bronze casters.”

Their support led to the creation of the renowned gold weights in the Asante kingdom and the world-famous Benin Bronzes. This form of patronage, Belo-Osagie explained, was significantly reduced during the slave trade and colonization.

With this model in mind, Belo-Osagie views her role as a collector with a keen understanding of the impact her support has on individual artists, as well as on the broader industry.

“Ultimately collectors help to create legacy and stability for the art world,” she said. “Certainly for Africa I feel one of the major responsibilities is to help develop an art ecosystem that works for the way we, as Africans, want to live today and furthermore, one that provides better understanding and context for not just the intrinsic value of works of African art but also for the economic value art brings to the creative economy and the GDP of our countries.”

Collecting as preservation

For Belo-Osagie, supporting artists also holds a deeper mission to remind future generations of what was lost in the arts due to colonialism and the slave trade.

“I see part of this responsibility as further rebuilding and reviving the awareness amongst a younger generation of the incredible talent, skill, and creativity Africa had in the arts, and restoring confidence in our ability to continue to create and innovate in this space,” she said.

Collecting, in this sense, becomes an act not only of preservation, but restoration.

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Major collection of cat-related art and collectibles heads to Bonhams auction this fall. https://ift.tt/150ry2p

This fall, Bonhams will present the Sandy Lerner Cat Collection, a two-part sale of one of the most significant private collections of cat-related decorative arts, books, and collectibles ever assembled. The first part of the auction will be hosted live at Bonhams New York on September 30th. The second runs online September 22nd through October 1st.

The auctions draw from the Ayrshire Farm estate of businesswoman, philanthropist, and feline aficionado Sandy Lerner. Bonhams will also present two additional auctions from Lerner’s estate, including furniture, paintings, and decorative arts from her Georgian Revival Virginia residence, held in Massachusetts, later in the fall.

Lerner, who co-founded tech company Cisco Systems and later founded the cosmetics brand Urban Decay, has spent more than three decades building the cat collection. She chronicled her collecting journey in the 2017 book Caticons: 4,000 Years of Art Imitating Cats. The collecting habit began, by her own account, during a period when she was “forced to be catless” because her then-husband was allergic; she has said her only criteria for acquisitions were “(1) is it a cat, and (2) do I like it?”

“These are objects I have personally chosen,” Lerner said in a statement. “They need to be rehomed, now, to others who will care for, cherish, and respect them as icons of the human achievement and—in the case of the caticons—affection that created them.”

The Sandy Lerner Cat Collection Part I will feature 66 lots spanning centuries and media. Highlights include Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita’s Chat et Chaton (1934) estimated at $30,000–$50,000; Diego Giacometti’s Tête de Chat (circa 1970) estimated at $20,000–$30,000; and Henri Matisse’s Visages et grenades (circa 1952) estimated at $10,000–$15,000.

Other artists represented in the sale include Rembrandt Bugatti, Édouard Manet, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Fernando Botero, and Henriëtte Ronner-Knip. The sale also includes feline-inspired jewelry from Tiffany & Co. and Boucheron, along with Asian works of art such as a Qing dynasty jade cat-form snuff bottle estimated at $30,000–$40,000.

Beyond cats, furniture, decorative arts, and paintings from Lerner’s collection will be featured in Ayrshire Farm: The Sandy Lerner Collection Part I, a live auction in Massachusetts on October 28th. Animal-themed works reflecting Lerner’s broader affection for wildlife appear prominently in that sale as well, including Walter Hunt’s Feeding Time, estimated at $25,000–$35,000. An online companion sale runs October 18th through 29th.

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American painter Mary Heilmann dies at 86. https://ift.tt/QMdbE3P

Mary Heilmann, whose insouciant, wobbly-edged abstractions upended the precision of Minimalism and Modernist geometry, died Friday at a hospital in Riverhead, New York. Her studio confirmed the cause was complications from a recent fall.

Born Mary Ann Heilmann in San Francisco on January 3, 1940, she grew up between the city and Los Angeles in an Irish Catholic family. Her father, a civil engineer, died when she was 13; her mother, a nurse, once warned that a life as an artist would mean she’d “starve in a garret.” “In my mind, I thought, ’Yes!’” Heilmann recalled in an interview with Bomb magazine in 1999. “That’s exactly what I wanted.” She studied English literature at UC Santa Barbara, where she met the ceramicist Ron Nagle and took her first pottery classes, later pursuing ceramics and sculpture at San Francisco State University and at Berkeley under Peter Voulkos. After earning her master’s degree, she moved to New York in 1968, falling in with a downtown circle at the renowned Max’s Kansas City nightclub that included Robert Smithson, Carl Andre, Dan Graham, and Richard Serra, a friend from high school.

Heilmann’s sculptural ambitions stalled when she was excluded from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s landmark 1969 show “Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials,” of whose 22 artists only two were women (Dia Art Foundation would showcase Heilmann’s sculptures in the context of better-known male peers with an influential 2017 exhibition). She turned to painting instead, calling it, in her 1999 memoir The All Night Movie, “a rebellious move” into “the much-maligned practice.”

Her early paintings, including Little 9 x 9 (1973), made by wiping away pigment with her fingers, reworked the rectilinear grids of artists like Piet Mondrian and Sol LeWitt with off-kilter lines and dripping, high-key color. In 1978, after the deaths of the art dealer Norman E. Fisher and the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, she painted The End, a yellow rectangle marred by splashes of blood-red, calling it “a requiem” for those she had loved and lost. The following year, she painted Save the Last Dance for Me, an image of shrinking pink rectangles on black, a work she would consider the breakthrough that established her mature style. By the early 1980s, she felt shut out of the downtown scene: “My clothes were out of style. I’d lost my timing.” The spare paintings that followed, including Rosebud (1983) and Sea Wall (1986), are now considered among her finest.

Gallerist Pat Hearn gave Heilmann the first of seven solo shows at her New York gallery beginning in 1986; Swiss powerhouse Hauser & Wirth began representing Heilmann in the late 1990s. Describing her process in 1987, she said, “When I make a painting, I’m like a kid stacking blocks; I push the shapes around in my mind, I count.” She also became known for boxy plywood chairs with webbed polypropylene seats, begun in 2002. Dozens of her chairs were installed on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s outdoor terrace in 2015 to help inaugurate its Meatpacking District building, and reappeared inside a decade later in “Long Line,“ a show named for a 2020 painting enlarged across the gallery’s walls.

Heilmann only received widespread recognition late in her career. Her first American museum retrospective, “Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone,” opened in 2007, when she was 67, at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. The exhibition then travelled to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and New York’s New Museum. Later shows included the San Francisco Art Institute, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and London’s Whitechapel Gallery. “I have always worked from a sort of underdog position and got a lot of energy from that,” she told Whitehot Magazine in 2007. “So being ’top dog,’ now, is a little bit unsettling—I don’t exactly have the moves for that... but I’m gettin’ ’em!”

“The big boys just totally marginalized Mary because she was turning the whole construction of hard-edged geometry inside out,” the artist Marilyn Minter told the New York Times in 2008. Writing in Bomb magazine in 1999, Ross Bleckner said her paintings “contain a joy so contagious one smiles upon seeing them.” Heilmann herself was matter-of-fact about the sentiment running through her work: “I like to get at deep sentiments through sentimentality,” she said.

She never married and had no children; she is survived by two nieces and a nephew. Asked how she developed ideas for her paintings, she offered a characteristically unadorned answer: “I mostly just think. A lot of it is daydreaming. A lot of it is sitting.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/7oSaALF