This Week in Art News
A Discovered Da Vinci, Revisiting Matisse's Odalisques & More
Each week, we scour the internet for the most significant, surprising, and outrageous art news—helping you stay informed (and sound smart). Have a suggestion? Let us know on social media (@meetmeural) with the tag #thisweekinartnews. (See all installments.)
After the $450.3 million sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017, any discovered work by the Renaissance master seems to beg the attention of the art world—even if it’s just a preparatory sketch. Experts at the Louvre seem to believe that a “charcoal drawing of a sideways-on semi-nude woman smiling” is by da Vinci, though it had been previously believed to be by a contemporary of his. It all comes down to handedness. It was thought the work was done by someone right-handed, but new discoveries imply the artist was a lefty—like da Vinci.
Though it might not technically classify as “news,” this piece by Lorissa Rinehart for Hyperallergic makes a damning case for our analysis of much of Matisse’s “Odalisque” paintings. Through a detailed history of the pose, Rinehart comes to a new exhibit at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena California, called Matisse/Odalisque. In short, she finds it lacking, specifically the curation: Cookie-cutter wall text only normalizes the narratives created and propagated by a culture of exploitation. If not to acknowledge the gargantuan problems inherently bound up in these depictions of female sex objects, then one, at the very least, might say something more interesting than the exhibition “contextualizes the painter’s distinctive interpretation,” as if we have not heard and seen that enough times already.
Talk about a cold case. In 1985, a work by Willem de Kooning, Woman-Ochre (1955), was stolen; or rather, it was literally cut from its frame. Though we still don’t know who did it, or how exactly it ended up back in the hands of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, we now at least know its whereabouts. Less about the theft than it is about how the museum is working to get the piece back to its original condition, the article will win over fans of art restoration.
Whenever PANTONE releases its color of the year, it gets picked up everywhere. Now we have more news to celebrate (though, it probably won’t reach as wide an audience). Partnering with the marketplace WeddingWire, PANTONE has announced four wedding “palettes” to help couples hone in on their perfect look: “Love in Bloom,” “Golden Hour,” “Paradise Found,” and “Stroke of Midnight.” As our community knows, we curate playlists around PANTONE colors; for a good intro, check out our take on PANTONE 14-0121 TCX.
