US-ARTS Summary

DiCaprio, Christie's to hold auction to benefit environment

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the star of the new film "The Great Gatsby," and his foundation have teamed up with Christie's for a charity auction next week to benefit environmental causes. Thirty-three works, many created for and donated to the auction by some of the world's top artists, will go under the hammer on Monday in New York at The 11th Hour Auction, which aims to raise as much as $18 million to protect the last wild places on Earth and their endangered species.

New Soutine record set as Christie's meets Impressionist goal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A record was set for French artist Chaim Soutine on Wednesday at Christie's auction of Impressionist and modern art, which met expectations with a total of just under $160 million. The tightly edited sale of 47 works exceeded Christie's auction a year ago by more than $40 million, but the earlier evening featured only 31 lots. Still, an impressive 94 percent of the works on offer found buyers which officials said was its best sell-through rate since 2006.

Big numbers for Impressionist art as New York auctions kick off

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The spring auctions got off to a strong start on Tuesday with Sotheby's solid sale of Impressionist and modern art which took in $230 million, led by a $42 million Cezanne still life and a $26 million Modigliani portrait. A year after Sotheby's set the world auction record for any work of art with its sale of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" for $120 million, it managed a sale of works by Picasso, Rodin and Monet that saw 85 percent of 71 lots on offer finding buyers and came in just under its high pre-sale estimate of $235 million.

New York's Met Museum celebrates punk's influence on fashion

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With their black leather, studded jackets, ripped jeans, bondage trousers and messages of rebellion and anarchy, punks from the 1970s probably never envisioned that a major museum would be celebrating their influence on fashion 40 years later. But the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is doing just that with a new exhibition, "Punk: Chaos to Couture," that opens on May 9 and runs through August 14.

On eve of New York auctions, newer works seen driving the boom

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With a billion dollars worth of art on offer at their spring auctions in New York, Christie's and Sotheby's are looking to the post-war and contemporary works to drive the market this month. The sales of the newer works are expected to exceed those of the once-dominant Impressionist and modern field by anywhere from 50 to 100 percent, according to estimates.

Russia's new Mariinsky theatre woos the doubters

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Enlisting the drama of Prokofiev and the elegance of Tchaikovsky, St Petersburg's new Mariinsky theatre staged a gala opening on Thursday designed to silence critics of the starkly modernist building erected in the heart of Russia's imperial capital. The $700-million glass and limestone building, which critics have dubbed the "Mariinsky mall", glowed in the night sky, its glass and metal walkways humming with excited voices as the select crowd of 2,000 found their seats.

Painter Mark Rothko's Latvian hometown opens centre for his art

DAUGAVPILS, Latvia (Reuters) - Modernist painter Mark Rothko's hometown in Latvia devoted a new centre to the late artist's work on Wednesday. The Mark Rothko Arts Centre opened in the eastern town of Daugavpils, the Baltic country's second biggest city, with six paintings from the private collection of the artist's daughter and son, who were present at the launch.

Artist Richard Prince didn't infringe photo copyrights: U.S. court

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a closely watched case in the art world, American artist Richard Prince won a federal appeals court order Thursday holding that he did not infringe the copyrights of a photographer by incorporating his images into 25 paintings and collages. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed a lower court's finding that Prince must hand over artwork using the photos to Patrick Cariou, whose pictures of Rastafarians in Jamaica were incorporated into art, exhibited in 2007 and 2008.

Tate Britain releases shortlist for modern art's Turner prize

LONDON (Reuters) - An artist who paints portraits of imaginary people joined a French-born filmmaker, a British-German performance artist and a British multimedia artist on the shortlist for modern art's most prestigious and controversial award on Thursday. The portraits of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, the first black woman to be named a finalist for the annual 25,000-pound ($38,200) Turner Prize, appear traditional but are of imaginary people with invented histories, the Tate Britain museum said.

New Andy Warhol exhibit features the artist as subject

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than 30 years ago in the south of France, the camera switched its focus to the celebrity-obsessed artist Andy Warhol, who became the reluctant subject of a photo study that was then relegated to a storage cabinet filed under "W." Sometime last year, a friend of photographer Steve Wood happened upon the trove of 35mm slides and persuaded wood that the "lost" images deserved their Warhol-allotted 15 minutes of fame.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-arts-summary-060743203.html

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