modern art news stories on Newser

Modern Art Fever: Basquiat Fetches $16.3M

Kevin Spak — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:54:05 CDT

Well, it's no $120 million , but a Jean Michel Basquiat painting made a splash at an auction last night at Phillips de Pury & Company, selling for a whopping $16.3 million—an all-time high for the neo-expressionist. Coming just two days after a record-setting Christie's auction , the sale provided...

Modern Art Auction Shatters Records

Kevin Spak — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:46:27 CDT

The modern art market is boiling hot right now. For evidence, take a gander at the results from last night's Christie's auction, which saw a Mark Rothko painting sell for nearly $87 million, shattering the gallery's $35 million to $40 million estimate. The sale is a record not just for...

To Protest Budget Cuts, Museum Torches Art

Kevin Spak — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:11:26 CDT

An Italian art museum is so mad about the budget cuts coming its way that it has begun burning art works in protest. The Casoria Contemporary Art Museum's eccentric director, Antonio Manfredi, set fire to a painting by French Artist Severine Bourguignon yesterday, the BBC reports, and let it burn...

Damien Hirst Plastic Skull: Yours for $58K

Kevin Spak — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:19:05 CDT

We get it. You've always dreamed of owning Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted human skull , or maybe his diamond-encrusted baby skull , but you just don't have the scratch. Well if you swing by Damien Hirst's new exhibit at the Tate Modern, you can now have the next best thing: a plastic skull...

Iron Man Made of Urine Wins $13.5K Prize

Kevin Spak — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:29:03 CDT

When Wong Tin Cheung started peeing blood, he was inspired, and not in the time-to-go-to-the-hospital kind of way: A big Marvel comics fan, Wong realized that by combining the red urine with the normal yellow-hued sort, he could create a portrait of Iron Man, the unfortunately nicknamed Golden Avenger. The...

Crowd Gathers as Giant Rock Departs

Kevin Spak — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:16:05 CST

It's not every day you get to see someone move a 340-ton rock , so a crowd of more than 150 people showed up last night to see the "Big Rock" begin its 105-mile journey from a quarry to the Los Angeles County Museum, the LA Times reports. The rock was...

Artist Mike Kelley Dead in Apparent Suicide

Kevin Spak — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:32:44 CST

Influential American artist Mike Kelley was found dead yesterday at age 57, in what police say appears to be a suicide. A friend told investigators he had been depressed following a recent breakup, the New York Times reports. Kelley specialized in large-scale pieces, often incorporating sculpture, video, or performance, and...

Drunk Attacks $30M Painting

Rob Quinn — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:28:00 CST

A Denver woman, apparently incredibly drunk and not a fan of modern art, has been arrested for attacking a $30 million painting at a Denver museum. Witnesses said Carmen Tisch pulled her pants down, punched Clyfford Still's 1957-J-No. 2 repeatedly and then slid her bare butt down the painting, apparently...

Protesters Smash 'Piss Christ'

Kevin Spak — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:50:05 CDT

A pair of extreme Catholic protesters celebrated Palm Sunday this weekend by bursting into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France, and smashing Andres Serrano’s (in)famous photograph “Immersion Piss Christ,” and some other works of art they objected to, with hammers. According to a French report translated by the...