Displaying items by tag: carved

The first carved woodblock prints by Wharton Esherick, an artist who was a major figure in American crafts, have just been republished. They illustrated "Rhymes of Early Jungle Folk," a book of children's verse, published in 1922.

Pieces by Esherick, known for his expressive, modernist furniture and wood sculpture, are now collected by major museums around the world. But he started as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, nobody wanted his paintings.

The woman, carved from limestone, sits with her arms resting on her pulled-up legs and looks enigmatically ahead. She is regarded as one of Romania’s finest modernist artworks, yet the Bucharest government’s refusal to say whether it wants to buy her has left the €20m (£15m) sculpture in a murky legal limbo, and its owners unable to sell.

The statue, "The Wisdom of the Earth" by Constantin Brâncuși, has a history that reflects the tumult in its creator’s native land. First sold in 1911, it was confiscated by the communists in 1957 and became the subject of a lengthy legal battle after the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, ending in 2008 with it returned to the family of its original owner.

A rare collection of African art assembled over nearly 30 years by a leading Genentech biochemist will go on display at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in late January, marking the first time the public has seen many of the carved forms and shapes.

The collection, "Embodiments: Masterworks of African Figurative Sculpture," was assembled by scientist Richard Scheller, who was taken by African art's "amazing forms," but fascinated when he began to learn what the sculptures represent.

An important, elaborately carved Roman urn of the first-early second century A.D.—one of the finest porphyry vessels to have survived from classical antiquity—has been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

The acquisition was made possible in part thanks to a challenge grant from Metropolitan Museum Trustee Mary Jaharis.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Museum, stated: “This rare and beautiful vase is a superb example of classical craftsmanship at its best. The public will now have the extraordinary opportunity to see it within the context of other Hellenistic and Roman works in various media, and especially other sculptures made of porphyry, in the collection of the Museum’s Department of Greek and Roman Art, one of the major repositories of classical art in North America.”

Drawings of mammoths, human footprints and other art carved on cave walls in southern France about 30,000 years ago have been inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

The U.N. cultural agency says that the Decorated Cave of Pont d'Arc contains the best preserved figurative drawings in the world.

Qiang Wang aka Jeffrey Wang pleaded guilty to smuggling artifacts made from rhinoceros horns from the United States to China. Wang, a 34-year-old antiques dealer based in New York City, was arrested in February 2013 as part of Operation Crash, a nationwide, multiagency crackdown on the illegal rhinoceros trade.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says Wang pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling conspiracy on Wednesday, August 7, 2013 in New York. Bharara added that Wang used fake U.S. Customs documents to smuggle packages containing libation cups carved from rhinoceros horns into Hong Kong and China. Wang will be sentenced on October 25, 2013 and could spend up to five years in prison.

Over 90% of the wild rhinoceros population has been slaughtered illegally since the 1970s, mainly because of the price their horns can bring. U.S. and international laws currently protect endangered rhinos.

The 2013 Spring Show NYC opened to the public on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. Organized by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America, this is the third edition of the Spring Show NYC, which features furniture, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, decorative arts, and much more.

This year’s show includes over 60 international galleries. Highlights from the fair include Ammi Phillips’ (1788-1865) Portrait of a Child from Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, French landscape painter Eugene Louis Boudin’s (1824-1898) Village aux Environs de Dunkerque from Rehs Galleries, and a set of eight George II carved mahogany dining chairs from Clinton Howell Antiques.

The Spring Show NYC will be ongoing at the Armory through May 5, 2013. Tonight, the fair will host Arts Night Out, allowing 30 young patron groups from New York ‘s top cultural institutions to visit the show. Proceeds from the event will benefit the ASPCA.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution, which is on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, traces the evolution of the North American quilt from the early 19^th century to the present day. The exhibition is guest curated by Jean M. Burke of Vermont’s Shelburne Museum and explores how the form, fashion and, function of quilts have changed over the centuries.

Beyond the Bed presents a wide variety of objects from bed coverings, wall decorations, and clothing to three-dimensional sculptures and furniture accessories. While, some of the quilts on view are traditional in pattern and construction, others are more progressive.

Highlights include a rare pincushion quilt attributed to a member of the Vanderbilt family; Ella B. Chase’s (unknown-1919) Pickwick Papers Crazy Quilt depicting characters from Charles Dickens’ Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; a tromp l’oeil quilt carved by Fraser Smith (b. 1971) from a 200-pound block of wood; and a free-standing quilted sculpture by Dominique Ehrmann.

Beyond the Bed: The American Quilt Evolution will be on view through June 16, 2013.

A major exhibition titled Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind is now on view at the British Museum in London. With works dating as far back as 40,000 years, the show presents ice age objects from across Europe alongside works by modern masters including Henry Moore (1898-1986), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The juxtaposition is meant to illustrate the fundamental human desire to explore life and oneself through art.

Many of the ice age-era works on view are made of mammoth ivory and reindeer antler and tend to be diminutive in stature. Highlights include a 40,000-year-old flute made from a vulture’s wing bone, a mammoth tusk carved to resemble a pair of reindeer, and a 23,000-year-old abstract ivory sculpture found in Lespugue, France that had a profound influence on Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) sculptural work of the 1930s.

The works, which range from 10,000 to 40,000 years old, will be on view through May 26, 2013.

On view at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey through January 20, 2013, Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land focuses on Georgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986) life from 1929 to 1953. During this time, O’Keeffe lived in New Mexico and found herself enthralled by her surroundings as well as the Native American and Hispano cultures of the region.

While O’Keeffe’s early career as one of the first American abstract painters and her relationship with American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) have been examined at length, O’Keeffe’s time in New Mexico has been less studied. The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum features over 30 paintings and works on paper depicting New Mexico’s local architecture and landscape. From 1931 to 1945, O’Keeffe created numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings of Kachina dolls (or Katsinam), which are carved representations of Hopi spirit beings. The exhibition includes 15 of these works, which are presented alongside actual Kachina dolls.

The Montclair Museum of Art will compliment Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico with a small presentation of three O’Keeffe works from a private collection including two oil paintings, Black Petunia and White Morning Glory 1 and Inside Clam Shell, and one pastel on paper, titled Pink Camellia.

The exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum was organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico and will travel to the Denver Art Museum (February 10-April 28, 2013), the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (May 17-September 8, 2013), and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona (September 27, 2013-January 12, 2014) after its run in New Jersey.