ArtPourri

Auction News – Swann Galleries’ Printed & Manuscript Americana auction set a record for an uncolored Currier & Ives print.  The National Game.  Three “Outs” and One “Run.”  Abraham Winning the Ball (1860), in which Abraham Lincoln is depicted as a victorious baseball player with three defeated candidates looking on, brought $10,800.  Sotheby’s Russian Art auction was highlighted by Petr Petrovich Vereshchagin’s View of St. Petersburg from the collection of Mikhail Baryshnikov, which sold for $746,500 and will benefit the Baryshnikov Arts Center. At Phillips de Pury & Co., the photograph auction set over 15 world records and the top lot was Cindy Sherman’s Untitled at $242,500.

Art Featured – The Art Feature sector at Art Basel, Switzerland, from June 15-19, focuses on precise curatorial projects from artists of many generations and presents 20 projects.  Selected from 12 countries on three continents among 200 applications were the Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, NY; and Tilton Gallery, NY.

Hall of Fame Honorees Named – Since 1958 the Society of Illustrators has elected to its Hall of Fame artists recognized for their “distinguished achievement in the art of illustration.”  Named for 2011 were renowned fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block (1924-2009); award-winning expressive and symbolic illustrator Alan E. Cober (1935-1998); renowned ballet illustrator Robert Heindel (1938-2005); Fred Otnes, distinguished by combined assemblage, photo-transfer and collage techniques;  and popular watercolorist and children’s book illustrator Jerry Pinkney.

Forever Stamps Issued – The U.S. Postal Service has issued two new commemorative Civil War Forever Stamps, created using images of battles.  The Fort Sumter stamp is a repro of a Currier & Ives lithograph titled “Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor,” while the Bull Run stamp is a repro of a 1964 painting by Sidney E. King titled “The Capture of Rickett’s Battery.”  The two stamp designs constitute the first pane of a series, to be issued annually through 2015.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 21, No. 7 — May 2011