She sow had a nose for art. Pigcasso, the wildly talented pig who sold over $1 million of her paintings and was hailed “the most successful non-human artist in world history,” has died at age 8. Joanne Lefson, the creative critter’s owner, recently announced the 450-pound visionary’s death due chronic Rheumatoid arthritis. Prior to her passing, the … Read more
New York City socialite Libbie Mugrabi says she’s the victim of an “art heist” — and is taking matters into her own hands, distributing “Wanted” posters around East Hampton and the Upper East Side to name and shame the high-powered financiers she claims did her dirty. “$10,000 reward given for returned painting,” read the flyers, which … Read more
By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia. The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state … Read more
Well, the good news is that it’s no “Gigli.” Jennifer Lopez’s much-anticipated new album “This Is Me… Now” — the sequel to 2002’s “This Is Me… Then,” which drops on Friday — once again revolves around her Hollywood love affair with “Gigli” co-star Ben Affleck. But just like that much-maligned romantic comedy did in 2003, … Read more
Guinness World Records on Thursday told Frenchman Richard Plaud that his 23.6 ft matchstick Eiffel Tower was a record height, a day after initially rejecting it for using the wrong matches to Plaud’s dismay. Plaud said he had been on an “emotional rollercoaster” this week, after spending 4,200 hours over eight years on building his … Read more
A film of and ahead of its time, David Schickele’s “Bushman” — first shown in 1971 and featured at New Directors/New Films in 1972 but never formally released in New York — is finally opening in a pristine restoration. Its status as a half-forgotten outsider of American independent cinema makes a weird sort of sense. … Read more
Lincoln Townley has gone from a seedy life of drugs and strippers to doing portraits of Jody Foster and schmoozing with Michael Caine. Celebrity paintings by Townley – besides Foster and Caine, he’s captured the likes of Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Lady Gaga, Matt Damon and others – sell for hundreds of thousands … Read more
Western television and anime localizers have recently come under fire for injecting “woke” language into English dubs not present in the original work, prompting some companies to implement artificial intelligence (AI) as a way of limiting human intervention or to remove them entirely. The use of AI in the industry is already well underway. On … Read more
That fact alone sets “Apolonia, Apolonia” apart from the deluge of subject-approved documentaries that have flooded the market and film festivals in the past several years. Those movies are frequently hagiographic, though not inevitably so. The intended audience is the famous subject’s fans, or those who wish to be. Thus these films come with a … Read more
Art can provide a stunning addition to your house and home — and it can also make you cash in the years while it hangs on your wall. Collectible art, just like any other investment, is not guaranteed to make you money. All investments have some risk involved, but this risk could be worth the future reward. … Read more
A sleeping cat hugs a fish in a picture seen from the air, picked out in sprouting rainbow seedlings in a rice field in Thailand to illustrate a traditional proverb about abundance. Farmer Tanyapong Jaikham and a team of workers planted the seedlings at various spots in the field in the northern province of Chiang … Read more
When the British filmmaker Steve McQueen was considering making a feature film about a free man who was captured and sold into slavery, his wife, the Dutch journalist and historian Bianca Stigter, suggested he start with a true story. She found a 1853 memoir by a New York man who was kidnapped, sold and enslaved … Read more
In 1989, Joe Simon, a film producer and art collector based in New York and California, bought Andy Warhol’s “Red Self-Portrait” silkscreen from a respected London art dealer for $195,000. Thirteen years later, he was set to sell the piece for $2 million when he hit an unexpected roadblock: the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board … Read more
It is the biggest party in the art world — and it usually attracts the most glittering stars. But as artists, collectors and A-listers descend on Miami for Art Basel this week there is only one question on everyone’s lips: Will Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez turn up? The Amazon founder and his fiancée are … Read more
A painting by the famous artist Sandro Botticelli — one believed to be missing for nearly 50 years — has been discovered. The masterpiece depicting the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus was discovered in a family home in the Italian town of Gragnano, south of Naples, according to CNN. The artwork is estimated to be … Read more
After decades of speculation, the elusive street artist known only by his pseudonym Banksy has revealed his name. When asked if he goes by “Robert Banks” in a lost — and recently rediscovered — BBC interview from 20 years ago, the graffitist admitted: “It’s Robbie.” The artist has remained largely anonymous over the years, despite his … Read more
Letting kids draw on the walls might actually be a good thing. A mother from Peru let her son draw on walls since he was just a baby — and believes that’s what led him to be a budding artist. Adianée Peña García allowed her son Santiago Daniel to draw on every wall of their … Read more
A former New York City dog walker thought he was going to get a $10 million payday when a painting he’d come to own by a famous artist — whose works sell for millions of dollars — went to auction this week. The retiree, who is living off Social Security, was devastated when the painting … Read more
If you can inflate it here, you can inflate it anywhere. Times Square’s largest-ever art installation was unveiled earlier this week as a beacon for New Yorkers and tourists alike, who are invited to “conjure” up their cathartic thoughts and feelings — and even hopes for the future. Standing at a massive 30 feet tall, … Read more
They’re making art on the run. New Yorkers are combatting the drudgery of marathon conditioning — or simply keeping fit — by using some of their training trots to draw numbers, letters and icons with their routes on the popular app Strava, which tracks and shares routes for runners, walkers, hikers and bikers. The hashtag … Read more