Congo - Monkey Art Three paintings by the monkey "Congo" recently sold for more than $25,000USD. An American contemporary art collector "Howard Hong" bought the monkey paintings in London, at Bonhams auction house. The directory of modern and contemporary art at Bonhams said "We had no idea what these things were worth. We just put them in for our own amusement."
It has been reported that Pablo Picasso once hung a Congo the monkey painting in his studio. Congo the monkey died in 1964 of tuberculosis.
Aren't we all just monkys with a brush?  ¶ 7:39 PM 3 comments

  Munch Museum Reopens The Munch Museum in Norway is about to reopen, 10 months after it lost "The Scream" painting to masked thieves during a daylight robbery. The painting has still not been recovered, which is a pity, but the museums says it still has another thousand Edvard Munch works to keep the visitors busy. Oh, there's a £181,500 reward for the return of the stolen Munchs too, which seems quite small considering the value of the works could be worth £10.4m.
Scream theft museum set to reopen
"A pastel version of The Scream and a lithography of Madonna will be put on display at the museum instead.
Museum spokeswoman Jorunn Christoffersen said the replacements were a poor substitute for the real paintings, which have a combined value of £10.4m.
She said: 'The Munch Museum without these two paintings is not really the Munch Museum, but visitors will at least have the possibility to see a representation of them.'" BBC  ¶ 10:13 PM 2 comments

  Frank Lloyd Wright Birthday Logo Google is celebrating the birthday of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The creator of building like the Guggenheim Museum in New York was born on the 8th of June, 1867 and died on the 9th of April, 1959.
Here's some more Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Wikipedia.
"God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. If we wish to know the truth concerning anything, we'll find it in the nature of that thing." Frank Lloyd Wright Quote  ¶ 11:23 PM 2 comments

  Turner Prize Shortlist Four artists have been shortlisted for the Turner Prize at the Tate in Britain. The prize that has made itself famous or infamous for shock and controversy has thrown in another surprise : Traditional still life oil painting! It's quite a turn-around for the Turner to be choosing such an artist to be shortlisted for the 25 thousand pound prize.
Contemporary artists like Damien Hirst with his dead shark has been a previous winner, while Tracey Emin with her unmade bed installation has been shortlisted to win the Turner Prize.
Turner Prize Finalists for 2005 include Darren Almond (using mediums such as film, photography and sculpture), Jim Lambie (creating installation with found objects, glitter and colored tape), Simon Starling (transforms existing objects), and most shocking of all Gillian Carnegie (working with oil paints and traditional genres such as still life, landscapes and nudes).
Total prize money for Tuner Prize in 2005 is £40,000, with the winner receiving £25,000 and the three other finalists each receiving £5,000.
>> Art Competitions  ¶ 12:21 AM 2 comments

  Francis Bacon Painting from Iran Reclining Man with Sculpture, a work by Francis Bacon that has been in storage at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran (Iran) for the past 25 years will soon be on its way to Britain. The work will be exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, "Francis Bacon: Portraits and Heads".
Unshown Bacon portrait exported from Iran
"Reclining Man with Sculpture, 1960-1961 was owned by the British collector, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, but was sold to the wife of the late Shah of Iran in the 1970s who founded her own gallery. But many of the Western paintings in her extraordinary collection ended up in storage when the fundamentalists seized power in 1979 and took control of what became known as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art." The Independent  ¶ 7:59 PM 2 comments