modern art

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Sneaky Artist Hangs His Art Among Dali, Picasso, Loses Job

German artist lost his museum job, is being investigated for property damage

(Newser) - A museum employee fulfilled his wish of seeing his own art hanging among celebrated works from world-famous artists like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, though it meant he lost his job—which might not be the end of it. The German man, formerly employed in technical service at Munich's...

90-Year-Old Who Ruined Crossword Art Wants Copyright

Hannelore K. claims copyright to new version

(Newser) - A 90-year-old German woman says she didn't damage an $89,000 piece of art in the form of a crossword puzzle when she scribbled in a few answers —she actually increased its value. A lawyer for the retired dentist, identified only as Hannelore K., says she simply completed...

Woman Fills Out Crossword, Screws Up $89K Piece of Art

German woman, 91, was reported to police

(Newser) - Four letters, starts with Oo and ends with s: Some 51 years after avant-garde artist Arthur Koepcke completed his artwork "Reading-work-piece," which included a partially filled-in crossword puzzle and the suggestion "insert words," a museum visitor followed his instructions. The 91-year-old woman was questioned by police...

Eerie Sculpture of Praying Hitler Fetches $17.2M

Basketball in water sells for $15.3M at Christie's sale

(Newser) - The highly anticipated art auction season arrived Sunday with a specially curated sale that included Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture of a kneeling Hitler, which fetched a record price for the artist, and a ball suspended in a water tank by Jeff Koons. "Him," Cattelan's controversial...

Modern Art Installation Is So Trashy Cleaners Toss It

Cigarette butts, confetti, empty bottles, and shoes were strewn about

(Newser) - Art often imitates life—but sometimes it does so so convincingly that it's mistaken for the subject rather than art. And so it was in Italy over the weekend, when cleaning staff at the Museion modern art gallery in Bolzano, Italy, mistook the modern art installation "Where are...

Artist Finds Lost Warhols on Floppy Disk

 Artist Finds 
 Lost Warhols 
 on Floppy 
 Disks 
in case you missed it

Artist Finds Lost Warhols on Floppy Disks

YouTube video inspires new media artist to unearth doodles

(Newser) - What would Andy Warhol do with a primitive approximation of MSPaint? Now we know. An old video uploaded to YouTube sent one new media artist on a quest that culminated in the discovery of a variety of previously unknown Andy Warhol works, The Verge reports. After seeing a 1985 video...

NY Art Museum to Open Exhibit of ... Smells

Chandler Burr explains the world of 'olfactory art'

(Newser) - You won't be able to go and see the special exhibit the New York Museum of Art and Design is opening on November 13—but you will be able to go and smell it. The show, The Art of Scent: 1889-2012 is a first-of-its-kind exhibition of what Chandler Burr...

Art World About to Be Swimming in Warhols

Warhol foundation to auction off 20K works

(Newser) - We've got bad news for art collectors who've invested heavily in screen prints of soup cans: Their value might be about to plummet, because Andy Warhol's estate is selling out. The Andy Warhol Foundation is dumping its entire collection—more than 20,000 works—in a move...

Modern Art Fever: Basquiat Fetches $16.3M

It's a record price for the artist

(Newser) - Well, it's no $120 million , but a Jean Michel Basquiat painting made a splash at an auction last night at Phillips de Pury & Company, selling for a whopping $16.3 million—an all-time high for the neo-expressionist. Coming just two days after a record-setting Christie's auction , the...

Modern Art Auction Shatters Records

Rothko painting stars with $86.9M final price

(Newser) - The modern art market is boiling hot right now. For evidence, take a gander at the results from last night's Christie's auction, which saw a Mark Rothko painting sell for nearly $87 million, shattering the gallery's $35 million to $40 million estimate. The sale is a record...

To Protest Budget Cuts, Museum Torches Art

It calls burnings 'political, necessary, and compelling'

(Newser) - An Italian art museum is so mad about the budget cuts coming its way that it has begun burning art works in protest. The Casoria Contemporary Art Museum's eccentric director, Antonio Manfredi, set fire to a painting by French Artist Severine Bourguignon yesterday, the BBC reports, and let it...

Damien Hirst Plastic Skull: Yours for $58K

'Hallucinatory Head ' on sale at Tate Modern gift shop

(Newser) - We get it. You've always dreamed of owning Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted human skull , or maybe his diamond-encrusted baby skull , but you just don't have the scratch. Well if you swing by Damien Hirst's new exhibit at the Tate Modern, you can now have the next best...

Iron Man Made of Urine Wins $13.5K Prize

Wong Tin Cheung takes home $13,500 for rancid masterpiece

(Newser) - When Wong Tin Cheung started peeing blood, he was inspired, and not in the time-to-go-to-the-hospital kind of way: A big Marvel comics fan, Wong realized that by combining the red urine with the normal yellow-hued sort, he could create a portrait of Iron Man, the unfortunately nicknamed Golden Avenger. The...

Crowd Gathers as Giant Rock Departs

It takes an hour to make a single turn

(Newser) - It's not every day you get to see someone move a 340-ton rock , so a crowd of more than 150 people showed up last night to see the "Big Rock" begin its 105-mile journey from a quarry to the Los Angeles County Museum, the LA Times reports. The...

Artist Mike Kelley Dead in Apparent Suicide

Influential American reportedly depressed after breakup

(Newser) - Influential American artist Mike Kelley was found dead yesterday at age 57, in what police say appears to be a suicide. A friend told investigators he had been depressed following a recent breakup, the New York Times reports. Kelley specialized in large-scale pieces, often incorporating sculpture, video, or performance, and...

Drunk Attacks $30M Clyfford Still Painting
 Drunk Attacks $30M Painting 

Drunk Attacks $30M Painting

Woman punches iconic modern art piece, tries to pee on it: officials

(Newser) - A Denver woman, apparently incredibly drunk and not a fan of modern art, has been arrested for attacking a $30 million painting at a Denver museum. Witnesses said Carmen Tisch pulled her pants down, punched Clyfford Still's 1957-J-No. 2 repeatedly and then slid her bare butt down the painting,...

Protesters Smash 'Piss Christ'
 Protesters Smash 'Piss Christ' 

Protesters Smash 'Piss Christ'

Catholic activists hit it with a hammer in Avignon museum

(Newser) - A pair of extreme Catholic protesters celebrated Palm Sunday this weekend by bursting into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France, and smashing Andres Serrano’s (in)famous photograph “Immersion Piss Christ,” and some other works of art they objected to, with hammers. According to a French report...

Picasso Biographer: Lost Painting Stash Must Be Stolen

No way Picasso would part with some of these gems

(Newser) - Pablo Picasso’s biographer doesn’t buy Pierre Le Guennec’s story that the great artist just gave him 271 lost or unknown works in exchange for electrical work. The works must have been from a large collection Picasso was forced to remove from his Paris apartment when the French...

Electrician Reveals Trove of Lost Picassos

Legal battle looms over 271 previously unseen works

(Newser) - A retired electrician has come forward with a treasure trove of 271 previously unseen paintings and sketches from Pablo Picasso, which he says the master painter gave him after he helped install alarm systems in several of his homes, the AFP reports. There’s just one problem: Picasso’s heirs...

140 'Lost' Masterworks to Hit Sotheby's Auction

Paris art dealer's collection hidden since 1939

(Newser) - A stash of 20th-century artworks hidden for generations because of war and legal wrangling is finally seeing the light of day. The 140 artworks, including works by Picasso, Derain, and Renoir, had been placed in a Paris bank vault by influential art dealer Ambroise Vollard's assistant after Vollard's death in...

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