n">(Reuters) - Vienna's Leopold Museum will welcome naked viewers from the public in an after-hours showing of its controversial and popular exhibit "Naked Men", a spokesman said on Tuesday.

The Leopold, known for its unrivalled collection of works by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, was inspired to invite the public to get naked after an inquiry from a group of German nudists.

"There was a request by an association from Germany for a nude guided tour," the spokesman said. "We thought about it, and decided it would be a good idea to have a special nude viewing open to the public."

But he dissuaded any members of the public from dropping by just to gawk at the visiting nudists.

"If you are not a nudist you are welcome to come clothed. But we don't want voyeurs so it's better not to be clothed."

The exhibition, which has been extended to run until March 4, is designed to show the diverse and changing depictions of male nudity in art history.

Among its exhibits is a grotesque self-portrait by Schiele, and a photograph called "Vive La France" of three men of different races wearing nothing but blue, white and red socks and soccer boots.

Together with a special exhibition to commemorate the 150th birthday of Viennese painter Gustav Klimt, "Naked Men" helped boost visitor numbers at the Leopold by 17 percent to more than 364,000 last year.

"We noticed a large increase in young people attending the museum, about 10 percent more," said the spokesman. "Having both "Naked Men" and "Klimt: Up Close and Personal" brought a lot of people in this past year."

A German museum-goer was even inspired to imitate the art and strip naked while walking around the exhibition in December. Visitors appeared undisturbed, assuming he belonged to the show.

However, "Naked Men" has caused controversy among more conservative elements of Austrian society.

In October, the Leopold bowed to pressure and covered up the genitalia of the three nude male soccer players used on large publicity posters around the city after they caused outrage among parents and religious groups.

"Their reaction is not a part of liberal thinking in the 21st century," the spokesman said.

"This is an unprecedented exhibition of male nudity here in Austria, something no other country has done," he added. "Hopefully it will be replicated around the world."

(Reporting By Derek Brooks)

View the original article here

Christopher Marinello, executive director at the Art Loss Register in London, holds Henri Matisse's painting ''Le Jardin'' in this handout photo.

STOCKHOLM | Mon Jan 7, 2013 12:47pm EST

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A British art sleuth has recovered a painting by French artist Matisse that was stolen from a Stockholm museum 25 years ago.

Matisse's "Le Jardin", valued at about 6 million crowns ($916,200), was recovered by Christopher Marinello, an art recovery specialist at the Art Loss Register in London.

"It is fantastic that the painting has turned up again," said Kristin Ek, spokeswoman for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. "It was stolen so long ago that really we had almost given up hope."

The painting was stolen in May, 1987 when a thief smashed his way into the museum with a sledgehammer during the night.

The theft was reported to both Interpol and the Art Loss Register (ALR), the world's largest international private database of stolen, missing and looted artwork.

The painting was recovered after an art dealer in Britain checked with the ALR's register before selling the Matisse.

"We are happy the painting seems to be okay and in good condition," Moderna Museet's Ek said. "It was a good start to the New Year."

Marinello would not give details of how he got hold of the Matisse.

"No arms were broken and no payments were made," he said, adding the painting would be returned to the museum through Sweden's ministry of culture.

The Moderna Museet is still missing a painting by Georges Braque, after a theft in 1993.

Stolen art is a lucrative industry with $6-7 billion worth of thefts every year, and the current global economic downturn has led to a surge in crimes, according to Marinello.

Last year, for example, thieves made off with paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and other prominent modern artists from Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum worth tens of millions of dollars.

If thieves cannot collect a ransom from insurers or owners, the art is sold on the black market, often for a fraction of its real worth, or even exchanged for drugs or guns.

Of the 360,000 objects on the ALR's database, Marinello said there were several he particularly wanted to find.

The first is a hoard including paintings by Vermeer, Degas and Rembrandt worth $300 million stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990.

There is a $5 million reward for the paintings.

"Then there is a Rafael stolen by the Nazis in WWII that is pretty nice," he said.

Marinello, however, will have his work cut out. By his admission, only 5-10 percent of stolen art is ever recovered.

($1 = 6.5490 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Simon Johnson and Mike Collett-White)

View the original article here

Two gallery security guards pose in front of 'Unitled (heavy relief)' by Kurt Schwitters at the Tate Britain, central London, January 28, 2013.

LONDON | Tue Jan 29, 2013 10:29am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - Sheep bones, nails, pegs, a scrubbing brush, a metal toy - all, according to avant garde German artist Kurt Schwitters, are on a par with paint, and all appear in collages and sculptures in a London show dedicated to his time in Britain in the 1940s.

Schwitters remains a relatively obscure figure in his adopted country, where he fled Nazi Germany and remained until his death, aged 60, in 1948.

"Schwitters in Britain" at Tate Britain aims to bring his works to a wider audience, although he is already acknowledged in the art world as a major influence on Pop Art and on famous figures like Richard Hamilton and Robert Rauschenberg.

He was also part of the Dada movement and a pioneer of both installation and performance art, most notably in his "Ursonate" poem which he developed between 1923 and 1932 and which consisted of repeated sequences of "pre-linguistic" sounds.

Curators and journalists discussing the show, which opens on January 30, jokingly refer to Schwitters's art as "rubbish", and his use of everyday fragments was born out of a desire to create beauty from the ruins of German culture after World War One.

In 1919 he created the radical new concept "Merz", a one-man movement and philosophy which he described as "the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes, and technically the principle of equal evaluation of the individual materials..."

Works on display in the opening room of the show, designed to introduce visitors to his ideas and artistic career in Germany, include "Merzbild 46 A", or Merz Picture 46 A, a collection of wooden pegs and other objects stuck to cardboard.

"DEGENERATE ART"

His most famous work before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937 was probably "The Merzbau", an architectural concept that took up several rooms in Schwitters's Hanover home. It was destroyed by a bomb in 1943.

Schwitters was dismissed as "degenerate" by Hitler's Nazis and featured in an exhibition aimed at mocking modern art. He went first to Norway, and, when that was occupied by German forces, took the last boat out, arriving in Scotland in 1940.

As an "enemy alien" in Britain, he ended up in a prison camp on the Isle of Man where he joined other eminent artists, musicians and academics and painted portraits of several of his friends which hang in the Tate Britain show.

It was a prolific period for Schwitters, and included sculptures made out of porridge instead of plaster of Paris which produced an unpleasant smell and were covered in mildew. They have not survived, Tate curators confirmed.

On his release he met and exhibited alongside leading figures in British abstract and surreal art, but always struggled to make a living from his art.

In 1945 he moved to the picturesque Lake District in northwest England, where he sought to make ends meet by painting portraits of locals and landscapes in a period of his career looked down upon by some in the art establishment.

Several of his later collages featured brightly colored cuttings from magazines and food packets sent from the United States.

One, "En Morn", features the printed words "These are the things we are fighting for", an apparent reference to the contrast between perceived post-war plenty in the United States and a rationing system still in place in Britain.

His last sculpture and installation was the "Merz Barn", a continuation of his Merzbau project in which he attempted to transform a stone barn into a work of art by adorning its walls with natural materials from the surrounding area.

Schwitters completed only one wall of the planned grotto by the time of his death in 1948, and nearly 20 years later it was moved to a permanent home at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle.

* Schwitters in Britain is organized in association with the Sprengel Museum in Hanover where it will tour in June. Tate Britain tickets cost 10 pounds, and the show ends on May 12.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

LOS ANGELES | Fri Jan 4, 2013 10:56pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Prosecutors announced on Friday a major break in the investigation of an art heist from the Southern California home of financier Jeffrey Gundlach, charging six people with burglary and other offenses stemming from the caper.

The six, including two arrested in September when the 13 stolen artworks were recovered, pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles Superior Court to charges of burglary, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and being an accessory after the fact.

The paintings, along with pricey watches, bottles of fine wine and Gundlach's red Porsche sports car were taken from his Santa Monica home while the superstar bond-fund manager and CEO of DoubleLine Capital was away in New York.

The overall value of the stolen property was put at $3.2 million. But the bulk of the massive heist consisted of rare, one-of-a-kind works by contemporary painter Jasper Johns, who won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, the late Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian and several other artists.

Gundlach had offered a rewards of up to $1.7 million for information leading to the safe return of his art, which also included pieces by Frank Stella, Franz Kline, Guy Rose, Philip Guston and Hanson Duvall Puthuff.

The suspected burglar, Darren Agee Merager, 43, is accused of breaking into the Gundlach residence between September 12 and September 13 to steal the art collection, jewelry and wine, then returning hours later to make off with the Porsche.

Most of the partings were recovered about two weeks later from an automobile stereo shop in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena. The store's manager, Jeffrey Nieto, 45, is accused of helping conceal the stolen art and other items.

Merager's 68-year-old mother, Brenda Joyce, and two younger brothers, Wanis George Wahba, 29, and Ely George Wahba, 26, were charged as co-conspirators. Another man, Wilmer Bolosan Cadiz, 40, was charged with conspiracy and receiving stolen property.

Cadiz and Nieto originally were arrested as suspects in the break-in and theft, but police said then that the case remained under investigation and they were unsure who had committed the actual burglary.

Merager, who already was in custody in an unrelated case and has a history of felony convictions, faces more than nine years in state prison if convicted in the Gundlach heist, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office said.

Gundlach made headlines on Wall Street in 2011 when he emerged victorious in a court battle with TCW Group Inc., the asset management firm that had fired him December 2009.

(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; editing by Philip Barbara)

View the original article here

Glasgow-born artist Paul Emsley poses next to hisoil painting of Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, the first commisioned portrait of her, at the National Portrait Gallery in central London, January 11, 2013.

LONDON | Fri Jan 11, 2013 7:53am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - The first official portrait of Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, popularly known by her former name Kate Middleton, was unveiled in London on Friday, and opinion was sharply divided over an image many deemed unflattering.

The 31-year-old, who as a glamorous future queen is one of the world's most photographed women, is portrayed in the large canvas with a faint smile, long, copper-tinted hair and shadow under her eyes.

Award-winning artist Paul Emsley, surrounded by a scrum of international news crews at the National Portrait Gallery where the work was revealed, described the duchess as a "wonderful subject" and "generous as a person.

"The brief was that it should be a portrait which in some way expressed her natural self rather than her official self," he said.

"When you meet her, that really is appropriate. She really is that kind of a person. She's so nice to be with and it's genuine and I felt if the painting can convey something of that then it will have succeeded."

National Portrait Gallery staff said the duchess and her husband Prince William visited earlier on Friday and were "very pleased" with the outcome of a painting based on photographs taken at two sittings in May and June last year.

"Her family are also very pleased," Emsley said. "To me that's the ultimate test in a way, because they know her better than anyone else."

WIDESPREAD CRITICISM

Public reaction was less positive, however, with views on Twitter and newspaper websites overwhelmingly negative.

Many comments focused on how the image had aged the duchess, herself a graduate in art history, while others took the artist to task for portraying her smiling slightly.

One Daily Mail reader from Canada summed up broader opinion in an unnamed comment.

"OMG, how awful! Rather than being overly flattering as many royal portraits are, this one is the extreme opposite. She's barely recognizable! Poor Kate, forced to say she's 'thrilled' when in all likelihood, she is as horrified as the rest of us."

Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak called the portrait "pretty ordinary ... He (Emsley) made her look older than she is and her eyes don't sparkle in the way that they do and there's something rather dour about the face."

Glasgow-born Emsley, whose previous commissions included former South African President Nelson Mandela, knew he would be in the public eye when taking on a subject of the duchess's stature as a royal and global celebrity.

"It's probably the most important portrait I'll ever do, and when you realize that, you do start to think rather carefully about what you're doing perhaps more than you usually do, and that made me more cautious than I normally am."

The duchess has recently been in the headlines after spending four days in hospital being treated for acute morning sickness having announced she was pregnant.

The National Portrait Gallery commissioned the painting of its patron, and it was given to the gallery by Hugh Leggatt through the Art Fund.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

VIENNA | Sat Jan 5, 2013 11:24am EST

VIENNA (Reuters) - Vienna's Jewish Museum holds hundreds of books and works of art that may have been stolen by Nazis, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

A screening program that started in 2007, years after other Austrian museums began combing their collections for works taken from their rightful owners, has determined that about 500 works of art and 900 books are of dubious origin, Der Standard said.

It cited in particular paintings by Jehudo Epstein, who while abroad in 1936 entrusted 172 works to industrialist Bernhard Altmann for safekeeping.

Altmann fled the country in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and his factory was "Aryanised", the paper said.

The widow of Epstein, who died in South Africa in 1945, tried in vain after 1947 to track down the paintings, some of which were later routinely sold at auction in Austria, it said.

Several are now in the Jewish Museum's collection, it said, citing information it got from the museum after many requests.

It quoted Danielle Spera, who became director in 2010, as saying the museum had, despite tight finances, for the first time hired in December 2011 a part-time researcher to check the provenances of its artworks.

"Anything that was acquired illegally ought to be returned. There will not be a hint of hesitation," Spera told the paper.

Der Standard said leaders of Austria's Jewish community, whose collections are on permanent loan to the municipal museum, voted in October to return an Epstein painting called Italienische Landschaft (Italian Landscape) and a work in a separate museum to the painter's heirs, who now live in England.

That transfer could take place as early as this month, it said.

The Jewish Museum is closed on Saturdays and no one there could be reached immediately for comment.

It contains, among others, the Jewish community's own collection, bequeathed in 1992, a Max Berger collection bought by the city in 1988, the Sussmann collection, on loan since 1992, and donations from a collection by Martin Schlaff.

Other Austrian museums have already had to grapple with the issue of returning looted art to the proper owners.

A painting by Egon Schiele, which was seized by the Nazis on the eve of World War Two, was shown in public for the first time in more than a decade last year after the Leopold Museum reached a settlement with claimants that cost millions of dollars.

The dispute was the second of two restitution cases the Leopold settled with the help of funds raised by selling another Schiele painting, "Houses with Colourful Laundry, Suburb II", for 24.7 million pounds ($39.6 million) at auction in 2011.

($1 = 0.6236 British pounds)

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Louise Ireland)

View the original article here

NEW YORK | Thu Jan 3, 2013 5:00pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait by Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino is expected to fetch as much as $18 million this month at auction, the highlight among top-priced paintings and antiquities that include works by Goya, Batoni and Rubens.

"Portrait of a Young Man with a Book," which auction house Christie's has touted as one of the most important Renaissance portraits remaining in private hands, dates to the early 16th century and is among Bronzino's earliest known portraits.

At auction house Sotheby's, the top lot in its series of sales is Pompeo Girolamo Batoni's "Susanna and the Elders," a 1751 work which is estimated to sell for $6 million to $9 million.

One of the very last portraits by Goya, "The Artist's Grandson," which has been in the same collection since 1954 and has been out of the public eye for some 60 years, is expected to fetch $6 million to $8 million, Sotheby's said.

Sotheby's is also featuring 16 paintings being sold by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to benefit its acquisitions fund, as well as property from other major U.S. museums.

Its sales, estimated to total from $90 million to $135 million, will be held from January 29 to February 1, with highlights on view at its New York headquarters starting on January 25.

At Christie's, where several days of sales are expected to take in anywhere from $75 million to about $115 million, top offerings also include a pair of Madonna and child paintings.

A rare, circular-format portrait by Fra Bartolommeo, which dates to the mid-1490s, is still set in its original frame and is being sold from a private collection, is expected to sell for $10 million to as much as $15 million.

Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist," known as "the Rockefeller Madonna" owing to its five decades in the collection of noted collector John D. Rockefeller, is estimated at $5 million to $7 million.

Both works will be sold at Christie's special January 30 Renaissance sale, devoted to European works from 1300 to 1600.

"The 'Rockefeller Madonna' is a rare and important example of Botticelli's mature style that now holds its rightful place in the canon of the great masters' work," Nicholas Hall, co-chairman of Old Masters and 19th-century art, said in a statement.

The sales took in a combined total of about $120 million at both auction houses a year ago.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Paul Simao)

View the original article here

Former director of the musical ''Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'' Julie Taymor poses at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 2011 Governors Awards in Hollywood, California November 12, 2011.

NEW YORK | Thu Jan 10, 2013 7:56pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Producers of "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" have for now resumed litigation with the Broadway musical's ousted director Julie Taymor after failing to reach a final settlement of their litigation, court records show.

The development comes five months after Taymor reached a settlement in principle with 8 Legged Productions, the producer, in her copyright infringement case.

The "parties' efforts to finalize a settlement have not yet been successful," Charles Spada, a lawyer for Taymor, wrote in a January 9 letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan. But he said both sides were "hopeful that a final settlement can be reached within the next few days."

The letter was made public on Thursday, and a trial is scheduled to begin on May 27.

The musical got off to a rough start in 2010 that included opening night delays, poor early reviews, injuries to actors and the firing of Taymor, who had previously won a Tony Award for directing "The Lion King." She sued 8 Legged Productions in November 2011.

Any settlement is conditioned on 8 Legged Productions reaching a separate agreement with Marvel Entertainment, a unit of Walt Disney Co, to extend its license to produce the musical in other venues, Spada wrote in a December 19 letter to the judge, also made public on Thursday.

At that time, Marvel and 8 Legged Productions had been close to finalizing such an agreement, the letter said.

Dale Cendali, a lawyer for 8 Legged Productions, said settlement talks were continuing, and both sides hope to settle in the near future. She declined to say why a final settlement has not been reached.

Spada, Taymor's lawyer, in an email, confirmed the "parties are still working together to try and resolve the matter."

A spokesman for Marvel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Shumaker)

View the original article here