DiCaprio Sits for Elizabeth Peyton, Curator Blasts SF Museums in Suit, and More

Published: April 19, 2013

– DiCaprio's Collection and Auction: In anticipation of his upcoming Christie's auction "The 11th Hour" benefiting his environmental foundation, Leonardo DiCaprio sat down with the WSJ's Kelly Crow to talk about, among other things, his collecting tastes — which range from dinosaur fossils to Basquiat and Urs Fischer — and his very, very early exposure to art: "My dad says he and my mom were visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, and stopped to look at a Leonardo da Vinci painting," he said. "My mom was pregnant with me, and I started kicking furiously, so my dad said, 'That is an omen.'" He also discussed his experience sitting for a new Elizabeth Peyton portrait which is included in the sale: "I had to be incredibly still for a long time — like two hours—which I'm not used to, but it was amazing to see her flip that switch as an artist." [WSJ]

– Lynn Orr Sues SF Museums: When the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums— the group that runs the city's De Young Museum and Legion of Honor— fired Lynn Orr in November of last year, the institution's longtime curator of European art was told she'd been dismissed due to her performance, but she's now suing the museums, alleging that she was let go due to her support of a labor union representing many of the institution's employees and for criticizing the museum's deliberate undervaluing of an artwork being sent overseas. Orr's suit, filed in San Francisco Supreme Court on Tuesday, accuses the museum of violating her freedom of expression. [San Francisco Chronicle]

– Cops Raid Chicken-Killing Performance Artist: On Thursday a student at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) slashed the throat of a chicken in the school cafeteria as part of a performance art piece, prompting students who weren't privy to the conceptual killing to call the Calgary police, who responded to the scene but did not arrest the artist. "He just decided to slowly slit its throat while it was wiggling and screaming and then drained it out, popped its head off, strung it up, washed it, plucked it," said student Breydon Stangland. The piece was to conclude with the killed and cleaned bird being cooked, though some fellow students had lost their appetite for the piece. "I did not feel this was art at all," said Charlotte Emmot, another student. "I didn't understand his statement." [Digital Journal]

– Prince Charles's Paintings Royally Panned: While former U.S. president George W. Bush may have won over a few critics with his intimate self-portraits and pet paintings, another retired political figure isn't fairing so well in his artistic ambitions: Prince Charles's watercolor landscape paintings, 130 of which were recently published online, were roundly ripped apart by Telegraph art critic Mark Hudson. "It isn’t that they’re outright bad," Hudson writes, mercifully. "In some respects they’re far better than I expected. But they are torpor-inducingly conventional." [Telegraph]

– Blockbuster Barnett Newman Heads to Sotheby's: The eight-and-a-half-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide, shimmering blue Barnett Newman painting "Onement VI" (1953) will be the star lot of Sotheby's contemporary art sale on May 14 in New York, with a pre-sale estimate of $30-40 million. It is said to come from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who acquired it in 2000 through a private sale. Last year a smaller work from the same series, "Onement V" (1952), set Newman's record price when it sold for $22.4 million at Christie's. [NYT]

– MoMA Buys Benglis Works: The Museum of Modern Art— with the help of Agnes Gund, the Fuhrman Family Foundation, and the artist — has acquired three Lynda Benglis sculptures spanning the late-1960s to 2007, bringing its total holdings of her works to 17 pieces. The acquisition includes the latex pour piece "Blatt" (1969), the globular lead and tin floor sculptures "Modern Art Pair" (1975), and the functional fountain installation "Double Fountain (Mother and Child)" (2007). [Press Release]

– LaChapelle’s Topless Angelina Goes to Auction: An upcoming sale of photographs at Christie’s London on May 15 will include a never-before-seen picture of a shirtless Angelina Jolie posing with a horse — an outtake from a 2001 shoot for Rolling Stone magazine. It’s expected to fetch between $38,325-$53,655, and will be sold along with a black-and-white print of a domestic Jolie and Brad Pitt taken by photographer Steven Klein for W Magazine in 2005. [HuffPo]

– London's Underground Goes Arty: London's Underground subway system has commissioned 15 artists — including Sarah Lucas, Melissa Gordon, MarthaRosler, FrancesStark, WolfgangTillmans, and LawrenceWeiner— to create a new series of posters that will debut in June as part of its Art on the Underground program to mark the Tube's 150th anniversary. "We are very proud that such significant artists have agreed to participate in this and are delighted with the variety of their approaches; ranging from the historical references drawn from London Transport Museum to a direct collaboration with one individual Tube traveler," said Art on the Underground chief Tamsin Dillon. "It seems particularly pertinent to mark this anniversary with a project which has resulted in our largest series of artists’ poster commissions ever." [Press Release]

– Collector Couple Expanding Private Museum: The collectors Emily and MitchellRales— he is also an incredibly successful industrialist — are beginning a massive expansion of Glenstone, their private museum in Potomac, Maryland, where some 10,000 visitors have seen works from their astounding collection (including pieces by EllsworthKelly, RichardSerra, Jackson Pollock, YvesKlein, and CharlesRay) since it opened to the public — by appointment only — in 2006. The Raleses are in the midst of constructing a second, $125-million museum building five times the size of the existing one. "Right now we have 800 works in our collection and that will double over our lifetime," Mitchell Rales said. "I don’t want anything buried in cellars." [NYT]

– Milwaukee Museum Hires New Curator: The Milwaukee Art Museum has named Tanya Paul its new Isabel and Alfred Bader curator of European Art. Her 2012 show, “Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst,” was organized for the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and later traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Paul will be leaving her position at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and taking over in Wisconsin for Laurie Winters, starting in June. [JournalSentinal]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Watercolor master Prince Charles at work