20th/21st Century Amsterdam and Milan November Season

Milan/Amsterdam – This November, Christie’s presents a series of live and online auctions dedicated to modern and contemporary art. In Milan, the 20th/21st Century Milan Evening Sale on 16 November will be dedicated to the works of Italian and international artists, including Enrico Castellani, Alighiero Boetti, Piero Dorazio, Tom Wesselmann, Maria Lai and Sam Francis. Running in parallel, the 20th/21st Century Milan Online Sale is open for bidding between 8 and 18 November, offering paintings, photographs, prints and multiples by the likes of Louise Bourgeois, David LaChapelle, Maria Lai, Sophie von Hellerman, Tracey Emin, David Bowie, Alighiero Boetti and Salvo. In Amsterdam, A Thousand Roads: A Private Collection in Rome offers works from an exceptional international collection in an online auction open for bidding from 9 to 23 November. The sale features renowned artists such as Georges Vantongerloo, Alexander Calder and Arnaldo Pomodoro. The cross-category season concludes with 20th/21st Century: Amsterdam, an online auction showcasing leading international artists of the 20th and 21st centuries such as Martin Kippenberger, Sam Francis, Arnulf Rainer, Daniel Richter and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Christie’s Amsterdam is also delighted to offer 29 works from the collection of the late Ernst Kaars Sijpesteijn. Bearing witness to the collector’s exceptional eye, highlights from the collection include works by Yayoi Kusama, Alex Katz, Georges Rouault, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Rob van Koningsbruggen. In MILAN 20th/21st Century Milan Evening Auction, Live, 16 November. Concetto spaziale by Lucio Fontana is a vision of luminous splendour from the artist’s celebrated series of Barocchi. Tiny constellations of holes – the artist’s signature Buchi – punctuate the glittering surface, with thick folds of impasto parting ways to reveal a dark cruciform abyss beneath. It was executed in 1957, the year Russia launched the seminal Sputnik 1 satellite, and the work was last publicly exhibited in 1977 as part of Fontana’s retrospective at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Fontana had long been fascinated by the Baroque era – for him, the period’s invocation of metaphysical movement and otherworldly extravagance offered an important precedent for humankind’s desire to conquer the limits of time and space (estimate EUR1,000,000/1,500,000).

20th / 21st Century – Evening Sale Including Thinking Italian, London is Now Online for Browsing

London. Christie’s 20th / 21st Century: Evening Sale Including Thinking Italian, London, coinciding with Frieze Week, brings together iconic works by artists from the 20th century whose defining influence can be seen on the artists and artistic movements that subsequently followed in the 21st Century. Together, across the two centuries, these artists radicalised artistic practice, challenging what had come before to continually diversify the trajectory of art throughout the last 140 years.Katharine Arnold, Co-Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s, Europe: “Frieze week is a time when London celebrates the best of 20th and 21st century art and we are delighted to be welcoming collectors back in person to the city and to Christie’s. In our galleries, we will be showcasing more than 70 years of art history, headlined by our 20th / 21st Century: Evening Sale Including Thinking Italian. The auction kicks off with Cecily Brown’s There’ll be bluebirds, 2019, fresh from her Blenheim Palace show and being offered as part of Artists for ClientEarth: a landmark new collaborative initiative between Christie’s and the Global Climate Coalition, designed to propel the art world in the fight against climate change. The sale continues with the fresh talent of Julie Curtiss, Shara Hughes, Hilary Pecis, Emily Mae Smith and Claire Tabouret. It also features three important British paintings by David Hockney, Peter Doig and Hurvin Anderson. These are placed alongside Italian masters Lucio Fontana, Alighiero Boetti, Alberto Burri and Piero Manzoni. Alongside our Day Sale and First Open auctions, we will also be presenting No Regrets: The Collectors’ Edition, an online sale with works starting at £100, making contemporary art fun and accessible to everyone. At the same time as our auctions, we are hosting a series of collaborative exhibitions: Aindrea Emelife has curated ‘Bold, Black & British’, a survey of Black British artists, spanning the 1980s through to recent graduates; Christine Eyene presents 1-54: Redefining the Trend – Histories in the Making, providing visitors with an overview of contemporary African art practise and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and artist Stanley Donwood offer an immersive experience at Christie’s with paintings, lyrics and digital artworks based on the album artwork from Kid A. It will be an exciting start to October and we look forward to welcoming everyone back to King Street.”

20th Century at Christie’s

Nicholas Orchard, Head of Modern British Art, Christie’s London and Will Porter, Head of Sale: “Launching ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, the Modern British Art Evening Sale totalled £17,477,500 / $21,986,695 / €19,592,278, with sell-through rates of 89% by value and 77% by lot. Registered bidders from 16 countries across 4 continents emphasises the global appeal for fresh to market works by artists that defined and shaped the development of art in Britain during the 20th century. The sale was led by Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man (Figure 8, The Bride), realising £3,838,250, while Elisabeth Frink’s Running Man (Front Runner) sold for a record price of £1,091,250. We witnessed great interest throughout the evening with Henry Moore’s Working Model for Oval with Points achieving £2,051,250. Barbara Hepworth’s Oval Sculpture drew lively bidding, to more than double its estimate (£1,451,250). Breton Boy in Profile by Roderic O’Conor from the Drue Heinz Collection realised £419,250, more than three times the estimate. ‘20th Century at Christie’s’ continues with the Modern British Art Day Sale on 18 June.”

Is it possible to return warming to below 1.5°C within this century?

The world community has agreed a global warming limit of holding warming below 2°C above preindustrial levels. Small island states and the least developed countries have called for warming to be brought back to below 1.5° by 2100. The 1.5°C warming limit is now under review for consideration next year by the UNFCCCC.Due to past emissions, and taking into account the most aggressive mitigation strategies, peak mean global warming in the 21st Century can limited close to 1.5°C, with warming dropping to below 1.5° by 2100. This means that the world is unlikely to be able to avoid impacts projected close to 1.5°C, including major damage to coral reef systems and the emergence of regular occurrences of unusual heat extremes of a over substantial land area. This is reflected in the World Bank’s “Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal” (TDTH) report and also in the press release launching it:Climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable because the Earth’s atmospheric system is locked into warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, the report said. Even very ambitious mitigation action taken today will not change this, it said. This does not mean, however, that long-term warming of 1.5°C is locked in, or that achievement of the 1.5°C warming limit, as called for by the vulnerable countries, is no longer possible. As is shown in the TDTH report, this message is a call for strong early action and a further warning that time is running out. Limiting warming below 1.5°C by 2100 is still feasible. Climate projections based on energy-economic emissions scenarios show that, in the best case, warming will peak close to 1.5°C by mid-century before slowly declining to below this level. With continuing negative emissions post 2100, warming levels would decline further.Limiting peak warming close to 1.5°C by mid century will still result in significant damage. At present levels of warming (about 0.8°C above preindustrial) the impacts of climate change are already being felt in many regions of the world. Climate change has left its negative imprint on crop yields, caused marine species to migrate to cooler waters; it has increased heat waves and drought, and placed pressure on water resources and damaged coral reefs.Even with the most aggressive mitigation action limiting peak warming close to 1.5°C, there will be substantial damages in the form of extreme heat events, damages to water resources, and risks to regional food security. Both the IPCC and the TDTH report show that risks to unique and threatened systems, such as coral reefs, are high at 1.5°C and sea-level rise would continue long after 2100. The example given in the World Bank’s press release illustrates the scale of the risk of warming even at 1.5°C for unusual heat extremes: for the three regions covered in this TDTH report and from 2013, unusual heat extremes, which are currently largely absent, increase to cover 10 to 60% of land area by the time global warming reaches around 1.5°C.

Maharaja. The splendour of India’s Royal Courts

London until 17/11/2009 Cromwell Road, Victoria and Albert Museum The V&A’s autumn exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, will be the first to comprehensively explore the world of the maharajas and their extraordinarily rich culture. It will bring together over 250 magnificent objects, many on loan to the UK for the first time from India’s royal collections. The exhibition will include three thrones, a silver gilt howdah, gem-encrusted weapons, court paintings, photographs, a Rolls Royce, Indian turban jewels and jewellery commissioned from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels in the 20th century. The exhibition will cover the period from the 18th century when the great era of the maharajas began to the end of British rule in 1947. It will show the changing role of the maharajas in an historical and social context and look at how their patronage of the arts both in India and Europe resulted in splendid and beautiful commissions designed to enhance royal status and identity. Many of the objects have never before been seen in the UK. The royal collections of Udaipur and Jodhpur are lending several spectacular paintings and objects. The V&A is reuniting four portraits from the 1930s by Bernard Boutet de Monvel depicting the elegant Maharaja and Maharani of Indore. One pair depicts them in Maratha dress and the other in modern Western dress. They will be shown together on public display for the first time. The exhibition will begin with a recreation of an Indian royal procession with a life- sized model elephant adorned with animal jewellery, textiles and trappings and surmounted with a silver howdah. The maharajas were also patrons of the emerging European avant-garde. The exhibition will include modernist furniture commissioned by the Maharaja of Indore for his palace in the 1930s and architectural designs for the Umaid Bhawan palace, an Art Deco style residence commissioned by the Maharaja of Jodhpur. (Maharaja)

There is No(w) Romanticism

Brussels Galerie Les filles du calvaire Boulevard Barthelemy, Kanal 2 Group show This project was born from an observation, the doggedness of a certain form of Romanticism (in its melancholic acceptance) in the contemporary and conceptual art of today. But doesn’t this doggedness come from the intrinsic foundation of our being, whose duality between reason and emotion creates melancholy? Have not the negation and denial of this natural inclination towards romanticism revitalised its very sense and existence?  Historically, Romanticism has been asserted as a rhetorical critic of an ideology based on the logic and material constraints of the period of industrialisation and beginning of mass society of the 19th century. It was a question of giving free rein to the spontaneous power of emotion versus the rationalism that dominated the period of Enlightenment to which the German political and literary movement of the second half of the 18th century – -Sturm und Drang-,1 the forerunner of Romanticism – was already opposed.
The definition of Romanticism proposed by Baudelaire in his text The Salon of 1846 covers the main basic principles: emotions, individualism, interiority, infinite, a fusion with nature becoming a reflection of the soul.2  (romanticism)