Dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the Art World,” Dutch detective Arthur Brand has just recovered a stolen Picasso painting worth $28.2 million. Like the storyline of a heist movie, the 1938 painting Buste de Femme (Dora Maar)—depicting one of the artist’s mistresses—was stolen in 1999 from “a Saudi sheikh’s yacht on the French Riviera.” Brand (who spent four years on the hunt) says the painting was …
An incredibly influential figure in the contemporary art world, Okwui Enwezor has passed away at just 55 years old. Not only a curator and art historian, Enwezor was a poet and critic whose astute way of thinking pushed for a more global view of art. Born in Awkuzu, Nigeria, he moved to the Bronx as a teenager, and over his career he was the artistic …
In South Africa’s Blombos Cave, researchers have discovered what is believed to be the world’s earliest drawing. The drawing—a crosshatch made on one rock using another—predates other uncovered art by a whopping 30,000 years. Researchers claim, though, that this by no means makes the Blombos Cave people artists, rather it identifies their interest in “graphical designs,” says Chantal Tribolo from Bordeaux Montaigne University. The team admits …
