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The Headlines
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ON THE HUNT. Police in Boulder, Colorado said that they are seeking tips on the theft of five paintings—valued at more than $400,000—from a truck parked at a hotel in the city last month. The purloined pieces include a small bullfight scene by Elaine de Kooning and a sizable pastoral landscape by Jane Freilicher. (You can see images of all the works on Boulder’s rather handsome official website.) The theft is said to have taken place during the evening of December 14, with someone or someones cutting a lock on the vehicle and making off with the art and various tools.
POTENT QUOTABLES. Artist Jenny Holzer, who is set to receive the Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon award, chatted with the Guardian, which asked her what she would “say to her younger self about the future of the feminist movement.” Her response: “Don’t feel guilty for making it a constant, out-loud focus. Women are not horrible. We’re largely not the problem.” Painter Scott Kahn, who’s had a late-career rise, appeared on CBS Mornings (along with dealer Mary Boone), and talked about enduring financial precarity. “It was my path,” he said of being an artist. “I had no choice.” Last but not least, the storied Liu Kuo-Sung, now 90 and about have a show at the National Gallery Singapore, is in the Financial Times, saying, “I feel like art or culture should be borderless, that going forward it should all be global, not nationalist.”
The Digest
Paris’s Rodin Museum has pulled the plug on a plan to build a branch in the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands. The proposal had faced criticism there for its €16 million (about $17 million) price tag and the lack of a historical connection between the sculptor and the area. [Tenerife Weekly and The Times of London]
Officials at the Historical Museum of Northern Jutland in Aalborg, Denmark, said that they have unearthed a large Viking hall near the village of Hune that dates to between the ninth century and the start of the 11th. “This is the largest Viking Age find of this nature in more than ten years,” the dig leader said. [New York Post]
A new book looks at the album covers of the peerlessly experimental jazz musician Sun Ra, who created art for many of them. In some cases, he would even get band members together to draw atop covers for limited-edition runs of records. [Publishers Weekly]
Artist Louis Eisner—a veteran of the Still House gang—married actress and fashion giant Ashley Olsen in a ceremony in the Bel-Air area of Los Angeles. The two have been dating for at least five years, but have rarely appeared together. [Page Six]
The annual Silvers-Dudley Prizes, which honor writers, recognized two in the art field this year: historian T. J. Clark, who received $30,000, and Tausif Noor, who got $15,000. [The Associated Press]
Writer John-Paul Flintoff has penned a brutally honest essay about having his childhood dream of being an artist dashed, and how he suffered a psychological breakdown and then finally found a way forward—through art. [The Guardian]
The Kicker
DUDES, ROCK. Three men who spend their spare time looking for petroglyphs in southeastern Norway—an artist, a graphic designer, and an archaeologist—were profiled in joyous fashion in the New York Times . Though it is only a hobby for them, they have doubled the number of known prehistoric carvings in their region since they started in 2016. They go out late in the day since it is easier to spot the age-old artworks at night, and they have been known to return home as late as 3 a.m. “Yes, our families think we are crazy,” one of them said. [NYT]
Source: artnews.com