Contemporary works by Salvador Dalí and Tom Wesselmann to iconic photographs of Marilyn Monroe from the pages of Playboy magazine sold in The Year of the Rabbit auction of more than 125 works from the corporate collection of Playboy Enterprises at Christies. In 1966 Playboy commissioned Salvador Dalí to paint “Playmate” and it appeared in the magazine’s January 1967 “The Playmate as Fine Art” pictorial. Until recently, the work depicting a reclining nude hung in Hefner’s bedroom in the famed Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills. It was expected to bring between $100,000-$150,000 but ended up gaveling for $266,500.
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus ‘Plate 1: Tabulae Sceleti Et Musculorum Corporis Humani, 1747
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus is perhaps best known for his monumental Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum Corporis Humani, which was first published in Leiden in 1747, largely at his own expense. The artist and engraver with whom Albinus did nearly all of his work was Jan Wandelaar. In an attempt to increase the scientific accuracy of anatomical illustration, Albinus and Wandelaar devised a new technique of placing nets with square webbing at specified intervals between the artist and the anatomical specimen and copying the images using the grid patterns. Tabulae was highly criticized by such scholars as Petrus Camper, especially for the whimsical backgrounds added to many of the pieces by Wandelaar, but Albinus staunchly defended Wandelaar. You can find a book containing all 80 of these beautiful illustrations here.
“On an August evening in 1933, in a quiet, working-class neighborhood in Paris, eighteen-year-old Violette Nozière gave her mother and father glasses of barbiturate-laced “medication,” which she told them had been prescribed by the family doctor; one of her parents died, the other barely survived. Almost immediately Violette’s act of “double parricide” became the most sensational private crime of the French interwar era—discussed and debated so passionately that it was compared to the Dreyfus Affair. Why would the beloved only child of respectable parents do such a thing?” A new book by history professor Sarah Maza chronicles the puzzling double parricide committed by Violette Nozière and through the dissection of case files elucidates any motivations and examines the societal impact of the crime during a moment of relative political calm and cultural ebullience. “It also makes an important argument about French society and culture while proposing new understandings of crime and social class in the years before World War II.” The official release date is May 11 on University of California Press. www.ucpress.edu
Rediscovering outstanding women Pop artists, POWER UP fulfills Dorothy Iannone’s combative promise after fifty years. The show aims at the reinterpretation of an art movement that until today has primarily been associated with male protagonists. Plastic, loud colors, reduced forms, and graphic contours – the nine women artists’ works on display resemble those of their male colleagues in many respects. Whereas their works appeal to the taste of the masses, these artists, as pioneers of Feminism, have remained belligerent and critical. They reveal the consumer culture’s superficiality, exposing the commodity myth as an empty shell like Christa Dichgans, ironically transforming everyday objects to oversized kitsch objects like Jann Haworth, or exploring mass media clichés and superstar constructions like Rosalyn Drexler. Like Sister Corita, a committed peace activist, they took a clear stand on the sixties’ social and political events such as the Vietnam War….The exhibition pursues its political perspective in those instances where the era’s current notions of what a woman is are revised by different views: Kiki Kogelnik and Marisol describe the corset in which the representation of women by themselves and by others is caught, while Evelyne Axell or Dorothy Iannone provocatively display the nude body, love, and sexuality, and, like Niki de Saint Phalle, attract the viewer’s attention with sophisticated modes of self-presentation. POWER UP: Female Pop Art is on view until March 6 2011. www.kunsthallewien.at
One of the better albums of 2010 has been the posthumous release of Ali Farka Touré’s album Ali & Tourmani.Ali and Toumani— “an album of duets from two of Africa’s most distinguished musicians, the late guitarist Ali Farka Touré and kora player Toumani Diabaté—was released on February 23, 2010, on World Circuit / Nonesuch Records.” It is the duo’s second album together. Touré was born on the banks of the Niger River; the tenth son of his mother and the only one to survive past infancy. Touré’s music can be described as a mix of blues and traditional African music.
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