Stolen Matisse Painting Reportedly Recovered After Almost a Decade

A $3 million missing Matisse painting that had been stolen nearly 10 years ago and swapped for a fake at a Venezuelan museum has reportedly been recovered by FBI agents posing as art collectors at the Loews Hotel in Miami Beach Tuesday. A man and a woman allegedly tried to sell Henri Matisse's 1925 "Odalisque in Red Pants" to undercover agents for $1.5 million... [more...]

More on Matisse... http://www.henri-matisse.net/

There is a marvelous biography called The Unknown Matisse by Hilary Spurling, a brilliant scholar. Second volume: Matisse the Master : A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954.

Marina: Provocateur

Watching HBO's documentary, Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present, for me, was a very moving experience, to say the least.  It's like going through withdrawals or some sort of spiritual exorcism.  Understanding and yielding to the silence and mysteries within is very painful. But stepping through that Door of Pain becomes transformative.  For Marina Abramovic, it's a way of life on which she built an entire career as a performance artist from the early '70s to the present.  Her intense beauty and haunting charisma will seduce you into another world - into her world.  And yet the world in which we live becomes more than just her world; she sends a universal invitation to challenge your soul in a way it's never submitted to before.

A pioneer of performance art, Marina Abramović (born Yugoslavia, 1946) began using her own body as the subject, object, and medium of her work in the early 1970s. For the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, The Museum of Modern Art’s first performance retrospective, Abramović performed in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium every day the Museum was open between March 14 and May 31, 2010. Visitors were encouraged to sit silently across from the artist for a duration of their choosing, becoming participants in the artwork. This comprehensive photo gallery contains a record of each participant. Please select “Show info” to see the date and duration of each visitor’s participation.” The Artist Is Present is Abramovic’s longest performance to date. [more...]