Art Newspaper

Canonical and universally acknowledged today, Spanish Golden Age painting (early 16th-late 17th centuries) was, for historical reasons, an unknown quantity in the rest of Europe until the end of the Napoleonic Peninsular War (1807-14), when paintings began to find their way to the markets and museums of London and Paris.

Once the Congress of Vienna established peace on the continent in 1815, Spain began to attract visitors. The British were encouraged by aficionados like Richard Ford, the author of the classic Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845), and William Stirling-Maxwell, the author of Annals of the Artists of Spain (1848). (Both were pioneers who turned on the steady flow of British Hispanists that later included Gerald Brenan, George Orwell and, in recent years, Nigel Glendinning.)

The French, too, were drawn to the country and the names of the first wave of French visitors and enthusiasts is a stellar roll-call of the 19th century: Madame de Stal, Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, Eugne Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Stendhal, Hippolyte Taine, Honor de Balzac and Prosper Mrime.

International loans

The German-speaking nations (pace Austria with its Habsburg connections) were otherwise occupied. Although the Prussian government collected systematically from 1815 onwards for what is now the Gemldegalerie (unusually, not a royal collection-based institution), precedence was given to Italian and Northern European art over French, English and Spanish works; these departments grew only after the Second World War.

The museums collection of Spanish art today numbers around 50 works  from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries (out of 3,000 Old Masters). The Gemldegaleries show El Siglo de Oro [the Golden Age]: the Age of Velzquez opens in July and will temporarily enlarge the museums collection with the addition of 100 paintings and sculptures borrowed from institutions worldwide, including the Prado, Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the National Galleries in London and Washington, DC.

Works by El Greco, Zurbarn, Murillo, Alonzo Cano and Velzquez allow curators to trace artistic developments in the principal centres of Toledo, Valencia, Seville and Madrid during the late 16th and 17th centuries.

The exhibition is sponsored by a large consortium that includes the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the Savings Banks Finance Group and the La Caixa Foundation. A catalogue is published by Hirmer Verlag (336pp, 49.90).

El Siglo de Oro: the Age of Velzquez, Gemldegalerie, Berlin, 1 July-30 October

Shapeshifters, a group show of shaped canvases that blur the line between painting and sculpture, opened Monday (until 12 August) at Luhring Augustine. The show, which includes 19 artists such as Elizabeth Murray, Joe Bradley and Richard Tuttle, also features historic work by Frank Stella, who was included in the 1964 Guggenheim Museum exhibition The Shaped Canvas, which was organised by Lawrence Alloway.

At David Zwirner, Sigmar Polke: Eine Winterreise (until 22 July) includes travel-related works by the German artist that range from light-hearted paintings of palms trees to abstract landscapes referring to hallucinatory journeys of the mind. The exhibition largely focuses on works that were inspired by an around-the-world trip that Polke embarked on in the early 1980s, when he subsequently began to use unconventional and sometimes toxic materials to render colours he had observed across various cultures.

It is also almost your last chance to see Martha Rosler: If you cant afford to live here, mo-o-ove!! at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, which closes next weekend (until 9 July). Organised by the art group The Temporary Office of Urban Disturbances, the show quotes the former New York mayor Ed Koch in its title and expands on a project that the American artist Martha Rosler initiated in 1989 titled If You Lived Here that dealt with gentrification, homelessness and urbanism.

For one night only, ten unusual London venues will host site-specific projects, installations and performances for Art Night (2 July). The first edition of the annual festival is organised by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, with plans for subsequent ones to be led by a different guest institution each year. A disused underground platform in Charing Cross station and a luxury flat on the Strand are just some of the locations that will house works by artists such as Koo Jeong A and Laure Prouvost. Open from 5pm until late, some events require booking.

Refreshingly frank, the exhibition David Hockney RA: 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life (until 2 October) at the Royal Academy of Arts shows just that: a series of paintings of friends and acquaintances, including art world figures such as John Baldessari and Larry Gagosian, and a single still life. After Hockneys 2012 show had more than 600,000 visitors, the RA is expecting long queues and is advising visitors to book their tickets in advance.

Christies are celebrating their 250th birthday with Defining British Art (until 15 July), an exhibition of British art and a rare chance to such a concentration of high quality works in the auction houses small exhibition space. Highlights of the show include a 16th century portrait of King Henry VIII by the Circle of Hans Holbein II and The Monarch of the Glen (1851) by Sir Edwin Landseer, alongside works from Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud.

With the spotlight on Hieronymus Bosch in the year of the 500th anniversary of his death, a Dutch specialist has raised an intriguing puzzle. Why is the prominent bagpipe player in the foreground of The Haywain holding his instrument incorrectly? The piper is the figure in blue, just to the right of the centre. He is seducing the nun with a sausage dangling on a string. The Haywain is now one of the key works in the Prados current retrospective.


Jos Koldeweij, a curator of the exhibition held earlier this year in s-Hertogenbosch (and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen), points out that the musician is playing as if he was left-handed. But if he was left-handed, then the position of the two hands should be reversed when holding the pipe.

Koldeweij believes the most likely explanation is that Hieronymus Bosch has taken the figure from a print, which might well show the image in reverse. The question is: what prints with bagpipe players might have been accessible to Bosch in around 1515, when The Haywain was painted. Readers are requested to send any ideas to: londonoffice@theartnewspaper.com

Bosch: the Fifth Centenary Exhibition is at the Prado, Madrid, until 11 September

Auguste Rodin died in November 1917 as war continued to rage in Europe. He had achieved acclaim and gained many friends in the UK, but because of the war, British mourners were unable to travel to France, so a memorial service was held in London. It took place at St Margarets Church, next to Westminster Abbey, on 24 November. From there, the mourners crossed the road to pay tribute at The Burghers of Calais, the multi-figure bronze sculpture standing in Victoria Embankment Gardens, close to the Houses of Parliament. Two wreaths were left by the distinguished group of mourners. One was from Her Majestys Government; the other, with lilies of the valley and carnations, was inscribed: To my dear master in friendship and deep homage from your model and friend, Julia.

Julia was one of the names adopted by the English actress Sybil Mignon Cooke, who Rodin had met in 1907. Then aged 66, he began a relationship with the 21-year-old Cooke (1886-1973). Their affair is revealed in letters that have just been acquired by the Muse Rodin in Paris. The papers came from her descendants, with the sale arranged by the London dealer Bowman Sculpture. Rodins love for the young actress is another reminder of the sculptors close links with Britain. Called Mignon by her family, Cooke was renowned for her lovely voice, striking looks and witty charm, according to Ben Hunter, who researched and handled the Bowman sale. Acting under the stage names Viola or Julia/Juliette, she performed in Berlin in 1907. Later that year she travelled to Paris, where she met Rodin, who was then Europes most distinguished sculptor.


Youth in all its beauty
Cooke quickly agreed to model. The result was at least seven drawings, either standing in the nude or holding a veil. These were kept by Rodin and are now in his museum. After the session, Rodin wrote to Cooke: Alas, my voluptuous memory does not manage to capture you; that adorable form of your youth in all its beauty which demanded my adoration as an artist and a man... I kiss your hands and very secretly your beautiful portrait.

Rodin gave Cooke two of his works. One was a drawing of a young woman opening her dressing gown, inscribed Hommage Mademoiselle Juliette. The Rodin specialist Christina Buley-Uribe (author of My Divine Sisters, a book on Rodins women) dates it to about 1900in which case it cannot depict Cooke. However, it would have been more likely for Rodin to have given the actress one of the drawings he made of her (the facial features in the one presented to her are not clear enough to identify the sitter). The second gift was a plaster maquette of a relief of a female bust, not based on Cooke. Rodin also gave her his photograph.

At the end of 1907 Cooke returned to Berlin and they kept in touch. She wrote to thank Rodin for his gifts: I still have in my bedroom your dear portrait [the photograph] and the small plaque... They are the most precious things that I possess. The following year Rodin sent her a telegram, saying he would be delighted to see her if she returned to Paris. Whenever Cooke travelled from Berlin to her parents home in London, she would stop in the French capital and pose for Rodin. Once in 1909 they spent the day together, including a lunch. In her diary Cooke described how they ate at a Duval restaurant like students.


Cherished thoughts
On another occasion they went shopping, with Rodin buying her silk stockings, two blouses, gloves and a hat. Cooke wrote in thanks, saying it was so fun to choose these little items, signing off your devoted little Viola. Rodin gave her another photograph of himself, signed with affectionate homage and devotion. After another meeting, Cooke wrote to Rodin: These are hours I will keep always in my most cherished thoughts. In 1911 Cooke implored Rodin to visit her in Berlin: If you want to work with me, all my time would of course be dedicated to you if you wished. Maybe we could even do a little statue or statuette togetheror if not I could sometimes come and watch you workah, that would be so nice! Rodin spoke no English, so they communicated in French.

In June 1913 Rodin was visiting London for the installation of The Burghers of Calais, and Cooke invited him to her parents home in Argyll Lodge. Photographs of Rodin were taken in the garden. (We reproduce one for the first time.) It was their last meeting. In her final letter to Rodin, in 1917, Cooke recalled her visits to his studio as the happiest hours of [my] life. On 2 October 1917 she married Robert Hood. Six weeks later Rodin died.

We will never know the exact nature of their relationship. Buley-Uribe has described it as friendly intimacy and Hunter maintains that it is dangerous to assume anything about their relationship. But Rodin was enchanted by Cooke and adored her youthful body; she could hardly have been more adoring, pleading with him to allow her to pose. No doubt his fame and wealth attracted her, but it seems to have been deeper than that. Rodin is renowned for his affairs with models, including the sculptor Camille Claudel. It seems likely the aged sculptor and the young English actress probably did have some sort of affair.

After Cookes marriage, she had one son. Her married life appears to have been uneventful, at least compared with her acting career in her early 20s. She died in 1973, leaving the cache of documents to her son Robin. He died in 2010, and earlier this year the papers were bought by the Muse Rodin. Cooke never talked publicly about Rodin, but she nevertheless carefully preserved his letters. We do not know if this was in recognition of their historical significance or because of her intimate feelings for the great sculptor.


How War Defined Rodins affection for Britain
Rodins legacy in Britain was inextricably bound up with the First World War. In July 1914 Rodin was in London for his display at the Grosvenor House exhibition of contemporary French art. War then broke out and it seemed risky to return the 18 sculptures he showed. In September that year, Rodin managed to travel to London. A highlight was lunch at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A); he particularly enjoyed English beer in the grill room. Two months later Rodin presented the 18 sculptures to the V&A in tribute to English and French soldiers who were fighting side-by-side as brothers.

The war also affected the unveiling of one of Rodins most prominent public sculptures. Though the National Art Collections Fund (now the Art Fund) paid 2,400 to buy the huge bronze of The Burghers of Calais (cast in 1905) in 1911, it took some time to erect. First there were disputes about where to place the work and then, once it was agreed that it would stand just outside the Palace of Westminster, war broke out. It was placed in Victoria Embankment Gardens in 1914, but its official unveiling was then postponed. Only on 19 July 1915 did this finally happen. (As The Art Newspaper revealed in November 2011, the bronze had been donated to the governments Office of Works, and technically there was no owner when that body was disbanded after the Second World War. Following our report, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced it was assuming ownership of this extremely valuable work.)

Rodin eventually had numerous British friends, patronsand lovers. His first attempt to break into the English market came in 1877, when he submitted a design for a monument to the poet Byron that was to be erected on the edge of Londons Green Park. The commission went to the now forgotten sculptor Richard Belt (his statue is marooned on a traffic island at Hyde Park Corner).

Rodins first visit to London was in 1881, and the following year and in 1884 he exhibited in the Royal Academys Summer Exhibition. But in 1886 his work Ixelles Idyll (1885), a bronze sculpture of two kissing infants, was turned downmuch to his annoyance. In 1902 the first Rodin sculpture entered a UK public collection. St John the Baptist (1879) was acquired by the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), with Rodin crossing the Channel for a celebratory dinner at the Caf Royal in Piccadilly Circus.

The following year he was elected to succeed James Whistler as president of the London-based International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, set up to encourage Modern art. For the next few years he returned to England once or twice a year, including a visit in 1904 when he showed a large plaster of The Thinker (1904).

A year later he worked on a monument to Whistler, which was intended for Chelsea Embankment. Rodin did not produce a conventional statue, but an allegorical figure of a female muse climbing the mountain of fame. His model for the muse was Gwen John, the Welsh painterand his mistress. However, the monument was never completed; in 2005 a statue of Whistler by Nicholas Dimbleby was erected on the site.

Sales to Britain began to flood in. In 1904, Edward Perry Warren, an American collector living in Lewes, East Sussex, commissioned a marble version of The Kiss. Warren, who was gay, specified that Rodin should model the genitals as a Greek would have done. Commissions then came in from aristocrats (the Countess of Warwick, Lady Sackville and Lord Howard de Walden) and celebrities (George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Balfour). In 1908, Rodin won royal approval when Edward VII visited his Paris studio.

But The Burghers of Calais was undoubtedly his biggest break in Britainhe was reportedly greatly honoured by its acquisition. Meanwhile, just over a century later, his donation of those 18 works to the V&A, made as war tore Europe apart, remains the greatest gift to the museum by a living artist.

The verdict is in: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien will design the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, the presidents hometown. The husband-and-wife team beat out six other firms on the shortlist for the USs next presidential library. Most of the other contenders, including Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Renzo Piano and Snohetta, have won high-profile museum commissions of their own in recent years.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are best known for their divisive design of the American Folk Art Museum in New York, which was demolished in 2014 to make way for the expansion of the neighbouring Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). (The victory for Williams and Tsien might be made just a little bit sweeter by the fact that they beat out Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the firm in charge of MoMAs expansion.)

The Obama Presidential Center, built in collaboration with the University of Chicago on the citys South Side, will house the presidential archives and a museum dedicated to Obamas two terms in office. The institution carries a price tag of around $500m and is expected to be complete by 2021. Construction will not begin until after Obama leaves office in 2017, according to the Chicago Tribune. Williams and Tsien will work with the Chicago-based firm Interactive Design Architects on the project.

The architects presented the Obamas with early conceptual outlines during the selection process but a more detailed design is expected to take at least one more year to complete. The Obamas choice hinged on finding an architect with whom they had good chemistry, the president of the Obama Foundation told the Tribune. The couple and their advisers were also impressed by Williams and Tsiens interest in respecting nearby parks designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, a sticking point among local open-space advocates.

The New York-based architects are no strangers to sensitive, closely scrutinised assignments: they designed the new location for the Barnes Foundation in downtown Philadelphia, which opened in 2012.

It is a joy, an honor and a responsibility to create a place that reflects the optimism and integrity of the President and the First Lady, the architects said in a statement published on the Obama Foundations website. This has been a transformative presidency and we will work to make a Center that embodies and expands the Obamas vision.

The German collector Thomas Borgmann has donated more than 600 works by artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Paulina Olowska, Cosima von Bonin and Cerith Wyn Evans to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a move that augments on an international scale [our] holdings of contemporary art, museum officials say. A selection of the works is due to go on show in an exhibition planned for late 2017.

The composition of the gift matches the diversity of the art produced over the last twenty years, encompassing paintings, installations, collages, sculptures, photography, works on paper, and films. Of particular note is the large scale of many of the pieces, a museum statement says. Borgmann, who used to run a gallery in Cologne from 1969 to 1985 and again in 1993-94 with Gisela Capitain, explains why he opted for a Dutch museum, saying: I have closely followed the Stedelijk ever since my first visit in the 1960s; this museum felt like a natural home for these works.

The donation includes Canadian artist Jack Goldsteins complete canon of 16mm film works made in the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, Subject Driven, an installation by the US artist Matt Mullican, offers an overview of his entire body of work, created between 1970 and 2008 and includes more than 180 individual [pieces], according to the museum statement. Wyn Evanss neon installation One of the most notorious . (2008), Tillmanss 1995 work Deranged Granny (self) and Lucy McKenzies 2004 Untitled photograph will also enter the collection.

The Civil Chamber of Spains Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on 21 June from the Gala-Salvador Dal Foundation in its lawsuit against a Barcelona exhibition producer, finding that the foundation does not have the legal standing to protect the artists image, according to Spanish media reports.

The foundations lawsuit, originally filed in Barcelonas provincial court, stemmed from an exhibition at the Royal Artistic Circle of Barcelona of the artists sculptural works from the so-called Clot Collection, organised by the production company Faber Gotic. It claimed that Faber Gotic and its owner Juan Javier Bofill Pellicer had infringed on the foundations trademark, intellectual property and image rights, and had used Dals name and image in advertising and for commercial purposes without authorisation. While the provincial court found that the trademark and intellectual property rights had been infringed, it acquitted Juan Javier Bofill Pellicer and found that the artists image rights had not been damaged.  

The Supreme Courts decision backs up the provincial courts ruling, which found that the foundation never had the legal authority to exercise protection of image rights. It also said that the foundations interest in the case was not to preserve the memory of the Surrealist painter, but rather to exploit the financial power of the artists image, since the defendants had refused to pay a fee to use Dalis name and photographs of the artist in its signage.

The court pointed out that in his will, issued in September 1982, Dal appointed the state of Spain as the sole and free heir of all his property, rights, and artistic creations, in order to preserve, spread, and protect his works of art. A year later, he established the Gala-Salvador Dal Foundation to protect and defend his artistic, cultural, and intellectual work, his property and rights of any kind, his memory, and the universal recognition of his contribution to the fine arts. Although the state ceded all its rights to the foundation, this did not mean it had the right to protect the artists image.

Since the lawsuit was filed well after Dals death in January 1989, aged 84, the court found that such circumstance implies that his fundamental personality rightsspecifically the right to his own imagebecame extinct with his passing, as death marks the end of the legal personality of natural persons.  

The 27-year-old Georg Baselitz was an angry man in 1965, says Eva Mongi-Vollmer, curator at the  Stdel museum and the co-organiser, with the former museum director Max Hollein, of Georg Baselitz: the Heroes. The young artist revelled inbut then rejectedthe path offered by the Western canon of 20th-century art to which he was exposed upon leaving East Germany for West, having lived up until his 20s under the Nazis and then the German Democratic Republic. The work he was making was completely out of time, Mongi-Vollmer says. There was, she adds, a German version of Pop art in the mid-1960s, but figurative painting, particularly this ugly form, was unusual then.  

Baselitz began the works, which all depict lone, dishevelled workers and broken soldiers in torn uniforms, during a fellowship in Florence, where he was exposed to Mannerism. Childhood memories were among his other influences, Mongi-Vollmer says.

The show is the first to concentrate solely and extensively on the Heroes (also called the New Types) works. It includes around 40 of the 60 existing paintings and 30 drawings. It is sponsored by Goldman Sachs.

Georg Baselitz: the Heroes, Stdel Museum, Frankfurt, until 23 October

The turmoil that has followed the UKs decision to leave the EU has affected global financial markets and the strength of the pound, now at its lowest level against the dollar since 1985. International art sales in the capital, however, seem to be a different story. Perhaps spurred by the search for a bargain due to the currency exchange rates, confident buyers buoyed the contemporary evening auctions at Sothebys and Christies, while sales at Masterpiece London, now in its seventh edition, were reported just a few hours after the fair opened to VIPs on Wednesday, 29 June.
 
The past weeks events have been such a shock that we didnt know what to expect, says Nazy Vassegh, the fairs director, but collectors are coming and theyre buying.

A striking piece of jewellery, made from a seven-and-a-half-carat diamond by the designer Joel Arthur Rosenthal, was sold almost immediately at Symbolic & Chases stand (C7) for a seven-figure sum. And the Old Master dealers Agnews (C19), had already sold Nose-diving on the City (1939), a painting by the Italian Futurist Tullio Crali, which they brought to Tefaf in March, with an asking price of around 300,000.
 
Here are some highlights you should not miss when visiting the fair, which runs until 6 July:
 
Axel Vervoordt (C2)

Selection of works, price on request

The Belgian gallery Axel Vervoordt has brought a wide selection of works for their its time at Masterpiece, ranging from 5,000-year-old, but strikingly contemporary-looking, ancient Egyptian and Arabic alabaster sculptures, to Modernist paintings by the Gutai artists Kazuo Shiraga and Jiro Yoshihara, and a large wall piece by the Ghanaian contemporary artist and Golden Lion winner El Anatsui. The price for the latters work is on request, but similar sized pieces have held estimates of $600,000-$900,000 at auction. The gallery is also known for its design pieces and its carefully put together stands, and this one is no exception as it is fast becoming one of the talking points of the fair.

Dickinson (D2)

Van Dyck, Madonna, Child and St John (around 1627), around 1.2m

This newly-attributed work by Van Dyck has not been seen in public since 1887. This is an exciting addition to Van Dycks oeuvre, and we can trace its provenance all the way back to 1775, when it was purchased by an ancestor of the present owner during his Grand Tour of Italy. We enjoyed the process of piecing together the pictures history, which adds to its appeal, and the story of its discovery has been very popular with visitors to our stand, says Molly Dorkin, associate director at Dickinson.

Mayoral Gallery (B33)

Salvador Dal, Anatomies (1937), 2.2m
 
The Barcelona-based Mayoral gallery is staging a small exhibition of works by Surrealist artistsincluding Salvador Dal, Ren Magritte and Joan Mirinspired by dreams and the escape from reality. The point of departure for the show is the Surrealist poet Andr Bretons publication Trajectoire du rve (Trajectory of dreams), which was illustrated by Dal and Mir. We wanted to do more than just hang some works on a wall, says Eduard Mayoral, the director of the gallery, and this is a particularly unusual painting. Dals Anatomies (1937) is from a rare series that he painted in the late 1930s and in which the artist developed his recurring motif of substituting womens heads with flowers. The gallerys thoughts on Brexit? Last week was pretty uncertain, but the contemporary auctions were strong, so were not worried, Mayoral says.
 
David Ghezelbash (B11)

Head depicting the emperor Caligula, first half of the first century AD, price on request

This rare sculpture of the much-maligned Roman emperor Caligula who, throughout history, has been labelled a cruel, sadistic, insane tyrant, was discovered in Cordoba between 1936-39, in the foundations of the Bank of Spain. Whether or not we are to believe all that was said about Caligulathe only surviving historical accounts of him were written by his enemiesthe fact remains that sculptures of him are incredibly rare. He was so hated that, after his death, portraits and sculptures of him were widely destroyed, according to a representative of the gallery.

M&L Gallery (A9)

Enrico Castellani, Untitled (Superficie) (1961), around 700,000

Part of the more recent wave of Italian galleries that have set up shop in Londons Mayfair, M&L are taking part in the fair for the first time with a presentation of works by post-war Italian artists, including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lucio Fontana and Enrico Castellani. This green wall piece by Castellani, with its recognisable, monochromatic stretched canvas, won this years Masterpiece award for best work at the fair by a living artist and was sold almost immediately on opening day. Its a particularly rare and early work, says Matteo Lampertico, one of the gallerys partners, it has a much softer appearance and colour, before Castellani started using those brighter, more Pop Art tones that we are now familiar with. It has also never been seen on the market before.

DAG Modern (A39)

G.R. Santosh, Untitled (Tantra Series) (around 1930), around 158,000

For their first appearance at Masterpiece, DAG Modern, with spaces in New Dehli, Mumbai and New York, is presenting a wide selection of Modern Indian art, from the Benghal school to the Bombay Progressive Artists Group, at a wide range of price points. Were are in the business of commerce but we also want to educate the public, which is why weve put together a scholarly book for each work at the stand, says the gallerys head of exhibitions and publications, Kishore Singh. Our stands are usually bigger than this, and weve previously commissioned educational videos for all of the works that weve had on display at other fairs. This large, colourful Modernist work by the Kashmiri, self-taught artist G.R. Santosh applies a geometrical, orderly aesthetic to the Tantric image of a goddess, the fount of creation, and combines the essential male and female principles with vibrant yellow and red tones.

The British artist David Hockney returns to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, next week with a new show 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life (2 July-2 October). His last exhibition at the institution, A Bigger Picture (21 January-9 April 2012), was one its most popular shows ever with more 600,000 visitors. This more intimate showin the Sackler Wing rather than the main galleriesis of new works made since the last show and after the artist moved back to Los Angeles. This trailer is for the documentary Hockney (2014), directed by Randall Wright and released earlier this year in the US.


For more on the Royal Academy show, see David Hockneys whos who opens at the Royal Academy, and for details of the artists forthcoming retrospective, see David Hockney to get retrospective at Tate Britain next year.

An anonymous US collectors decision to withdraw the top lot an hour before Christies sale last night made for a jittery start in an already uncertain market. The 1994 Abstraktes Bild (811-2) had been estimated to sell in the region of 14m; its recall meant Christies had its lowest-value June auction since 2009.

But a run of good prices for artists including Sean Scully, Adrian Ghenie and Jean-Michel Basquiat helped banish Brexit blues and contributed to a solid result of 33.7m (39.6m with fees), well within the 26.3m to 37.7m estimate. The sell-through rate was a very strong 92%.

Edmund Francey, Christies head of post-war and contemporary art in London, said the work by Richter was withdrawn on the clients instruction. The Belgian collector Alain Servais said it was likely that the seller would not reduce the reserve, which meant there was little interest ahead of the sale. There is no direct relation to Brexit exceptas for the whole art marketwe are living in more uncertain times, Servais said. 

Of the 39 lots offered, ten went to collectors based in the UK, including Andy Warhols 1962 black-and-white dollar bill painting, which sold for 3.9m (4.5m with fees, est 4m-6m). Christies decision to reveal the breakdown of UK buyers is most likely strategic ahead of its 250th anniversary sale of British art tonight (30 June), but it is nonetheless striking given the dominance of US and Asian bidders this week, spurred on by a devalued pound.

An Asian collector bidding by phone through Elaine Holt, a Hong Kong-based director of impressionist and Modern art, bought one of two Basquiat paintings consigned by the actor Johnny Depp. Pork, a 1981 work painted on a door, fetched 4.5m (5.1m with premium, est 2.5m-3.5m), the highest price on the night. The other Basquiat, a self-portrait from the same year, sold to the New York dealer William Acquavella for 3.1m (3.6m with fees, est 1m-1.5m).

It felt as if there was a lot of US and Asian bidders last night. A lot of the expensive works were going to Asia, said the London-based art advisor Aphrodite Gonou.

Fears over Brexits effect on the art market have largely been allayed this week, but, as Gonou points out, the real litmus test comes next season. We will probably have a more realistic picture of what is happening with the market in the autumn. With this week's sales, the pound sank so low it attracted more people.

The Paris and Salzburg contemporary art dealer, Thaddaeus Ropac, has finalised plans to open in Mayfair in Spring 2017. The news, while long in the pipeline, gives a much-needed boost to Londons art market following last weeks Brexit vote. The investment comes at a time when other investors and businesses, including Vodafone, have threatened to pull out of the UK.

However bad [the Brexit situation] is, London is the quintessential centre of the art world, I am absolutely committed to it, Ropac says. The dealerwhose British artists include Antony Gormley and Tony Craggsays that he signed his first UK lease on Ely House, an 18th-century mansion on Dover Street, just before the results of the EU referendum came in. His only regret is the fall in sterling: If Id signed the lease a bit later I would have saved some money!

The impressive, five floor, 1,500 sq. m Ely House was built in 1772 by Robert Taylor and was previously the home of the antiques dealership Mallett. Malletts owners, the Stanley Gibbons Group, sold the lease and its adjacent building for 2.5m as part of a debt-restructuring programme.

Polly Robinson Gaer, previously a senior director at Pace gallery, will run the London space and Ropac has brought in the art markets architect-du-jour, Annabelle Selldorf, to redesign the building.
 

The Earls of Derby have a long tradition of cultural patronage, as this collection of essays Art, Animals and Politics demonstrates. Edited by the indefatigable Stephen Lloyd, it is the product of a conference that took place at Knowsley Hall in 2013, described by contributor David Starkey as a little bit like Knowsley itself a huge accumulation of various bits and pieces a statement of the variety of a great aristocratic house, all the things they get into and do.

In fact, the book is less piecemeal than Starkey suggests, as it focuses on four aspects of the Derbys cultural activities: power and performance in Tudor and Georgian England; early 18th-century patronage and collecting; the Thirteenth Earls patronage of Edward Lear in the 19th century; and the familys involvement in politics and foreign affairs from 1820-1900.

The most coherent section focuses on the methods and agents of Whig patron and collector James Stanley, Tenth Earl of Derby (1664-1736). The contributors have mined Knowsleys important archive, which reveals how the Tenth Earl sought to rebuild the Derby collection following the dispersal of the Stanley family heirlooms after the Civil War. Like other collectors of the period, notably James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos (1674-1744), Derby pursued the best paintings but depended on the connoisseurship of his agents, who did not always serve him well. This small number of trusted art advisers included his relation, the young lawyer Edward Stanley, and the painters John Green (active 1721-26), Hamlet Winstanley (1694/8-1756) and Thomas Wright (active 1723-49).

Derbys secretive methods sometimes led him to overpay for works of art when his agents unknowingly competed against each other, as Richard Stephens explains (for instance, at the posthumous sale of French artist Louis Chron in 1726). However, from 1722-28, Derby spent almost 9,000 on more than 200 pictures. Some of these were indeed masterpieces, such as Belshazzars Feast by Rembrandt, acquired for him by Winstanley and now housed in the National Gallery in London. Derby boasted in 1725: I verily believe I have as good pictures as any in England.

The solid scholarship provided by contributors Richard Stephens, Jonathan Yarker and Xanthe Brooke on 18th-century collecting sits at the heart of the book, but it contains other unmissable essays. Admirers of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts breathtaking portrait of Elizabeth Farren, later Twelfth Countess of Derby, painted in 1790 by Sir Thomas Lawrence, (a copy of which hangs at Knowsley Hall) will be fascinated by Gill Perrys account of the sitters role in linking theatre with aristocratic culture. Equally, Sir David Attenborough offers an erudite and touching description of Edward Smith Stanley, the Thirteenth Earl of Derbys (1775-1851) patronage of Edward Lear, complemented by Colin Harrisons essay on Lears magnificent landscapes in the Derby Collection.

In summary, if this volume is an omnium gatherum of various contributions, it succeeds in providing an overview of the strengths of a collection that has been built up by the Earls of Derby for more than 500 years.


Susan Jenkins is a curator and researcher into 17th- and 18th-century patronage and collecting. Her book, Portrait of a Patron: the Patronage and Collecting of James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos (1674-1744), was published in 2007

Art, Animals and Politics: Knowsley and the Earls of Derby

Stephen Lloyd, ed

Unicorn Press, 338pp, 60 (hb)

Two new curators will oversee the Kings Cross Project, an ambitious programme of commissioned temporary and permanent works for the redeveloped 67-acre neighbourhood in north London. The appointment of Tamsin Dillon, previously the interim head of exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, and Rebecca Heald, a tutor in curating contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in London, marks the beginning of the second three-year cycle of the nine-year programme.

The art project is part of a vast regeneration scheme in the commuter hub, which has shed its seedy reputation. The King's Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP)a private initiative funded by Argent King's Cross Limited Partnership and AustralianSuper, a pension fundruns the Kings Cross Project.

Michael Pinsky and Stephanie Delcroix were the project curators for the first three years. Their programme, entitled Relay, included the work Black Maria (2013) by Richard Wentworth, a timber structure located in the atrium of Central Saint Martins college.

Another temporary work, Across the Buildings by Felice Varini, comprised a series of geometric shapes projected on to a series of Victorian buildings around Granary Square in 2013. A permanent piece, IFO (Identified Flying Object) by the French artist Jacques Rival, was unveiled in 2011 in Battle Bridge Place near the rail and underground stations.