Picasso's Granddaughter Is Selling $290 Million Worth of His Art →

Marina Picasso. Photo: courtesy AFP.

A new cache of Pablo Picasso works from the personal collection of his granddaughter, Marina Picasso, said to be worth $290 million, are about to hit the market, reports the New York Post's Page Six.

Among the seven pieces allegedly for sale is a 1923 portrait of Marina's grandmother, Picasso's first wife, Olga Khokhlova. Titled Portrait de femme (Olga), it is thought to be worth $60 million. Dating from 1905 through 1965, the works being offered are also thought to include Maternité (1921), valued at about $54 million, and Femme a la Mandoline (Mademoiselle Leonie assie) 1911, worth roughly $60 million.

The artist's granddaughter was perhaps testing the waters for a potential sale when she presented a suite of his drawings and ceramics at a non-selling exhibition at Sotheby's Paris last spring. The auction house will not be involved this time around, however, as Marina has opted to sell the works directly, personally meeting in Geneva with interested parties.

Marina Picasso at her grandfather's Cannes villa, La Californie. Photo: courtesy AFP.

Also for sale is “La Californie," the Cannes villa Marina inherited from her grandfather, who lived there with his second wife, Jacqueline Roque. In recent years, the villa has become a museum and gallery dedicated to Picasso. In 2013, Marina presented "Picasso: Nudity Set Free," mostly made up of pieces from her personal collection, at the home.

Though Marina has certainly benefited from her grandfather's career as an adult, she has readily condemned the artist, who she alleges neglected her family when she was a child living on the brink of poverty. In 2001, she published Picasso: My Grandfather, which claimed that the painter “drove everyone who got near him to despair and engulfed them," and that her inheritance was “given without love." Marina's brother committed suicide, allegedly after Roque barred him from attending Picasso's funeral.

According to a friend of Marina's who spoke to Page Six, the upcoming sale “is about letting go of the past."

Introduction to Japanese Calligraphy →

Gyokusen-jo Via Google

The art of writing, or calligraphy, as it is commonly known, is an ancient art form that originated in East Asia. Today, many of us are familiar with the calligraphy of Japan; therefore, this article intends on outlining the provenance of that particular artistic sect in addition to describing its idiosyncrasies. 

Japanese calligraphy owes much of its existence to the Chinese. In the twenty-eight century BC, Chinese officials began to use pictographs as a means of record-keeping. Prior to this, the said characters were for religious purposes. As the need for a standardized method of archiving became apparent, Li Si, the prime minister during the Qin Dynasty, created a set of rules for calligraphic writing. The rules are as follows: 
 

• The script must be based on squares of uniform size and shape.
• All characters must be able to be written from eight strokes.
• Horizontal strokes are written first.
• The script is to be written from left to right and top to bottom.

This system worked out fairly well, as the method for writing was largely based upon the ideal of scraping a sharp object against another, softer object in order to leave a mark. However, many of Li Si's guidelines were ignored when paper, brush, and ink came into widespread use. While the block form and eight strokes method were retained, the writer was now able to express himself through the use of curves and graceful form. It was around this time that the Chinese brought paper, and the art of calligraphy, with them to Japan. 

As time progressed, Japan refined the Chinese style into something that was uniquely their own. Few works from the early times of the art are still in existence; many were destroyed during the Tang Dynasty's rule during the seventh century. However, some copies have survived; these include works by Wang Xizhi, a Chinese man who is referred to as the 'Sage of Calligraphy' because his bold style has had such a great influence on modern calligraphic technique. 

Like many other arts, Japanese Calligraphy had its own so-called Golden Age; this is when a particular art form flourishes, and many advances are made in its methodology. From 794 to 1185, Japanese calligraphers vigorously worked to shed off the Chinese techniques, but Wang Xizhi's remained the authoritative figure during the time. That is not to say that no progress was made, however, because the now traditional Japanese style of calligraphic writing emerged under the reign of one Emperor Saga. An 'assistant' of his said the following: “China is a large country and Japan is relatively small, so I suggest writing in a different way.” Before this time, Japanese calligraphers wrote in Chinese for the most part, which was not very convenient. Soon, this new style of writing was used for official record-keeping and became the primary writing style taught at calligraphy schools. 

As the Golden Age came to a close, the Japanese government was largely taken over by a military regime. Despite this, the arts continued to flourish. New, much less rigid styles of writing developed, and calligraphy became appreciated as an art form by the masses. Two-hundred and fifty years of peace followed; this time is known as the Edo period. A policy developed in which the country isolated itself from outside influences; this allowed the previously conceived forms of calligraphy to mature into their own. During the middle of this time, the Japanese government relaxed the rules regarding isolation, and various forms of Japanese calligraphy were exported around the world, thus introducing the art to Western cultures. 

Today, calligraphy is still a thriving art form. The basics of the art are taught in elementary schools, and students may continue with it if they choose upon reaching high school. Also, some universities offer programs in calligraphy so that the handicraft can continue on to future generations. All in all, calligraphy is a unique East Asian art with a relatively simple history. The art has and will continue to fascinate people from around the globe, and offers a rich view into the culture of traditional Japan.

Art forever changed by World War I →

A scene from “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930. (Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures)

Along with millions of idealistic young men who were cut to pieces by machine guns and obliterated by artillery shells, there was another major casualty of World War I: traditional ideas about Western art.

The Great War of 1914-18 tilted culture on its axis, particularly in Europe and the United States. Nearly 100 years later, that legacy is being wrestled with in film, visual art, music, television shows like the gauzily nostalgic PBS soaper "Downton Abbey" and plays including the Tony Award-winning"War Horse," concluding its run at the Ahmanson Theatre.

"It created an epoch in art," said Leo Braudy, a USC professor of English and author of "From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity." "The question is, what was on one side and what was on the other?"

The simple answer as to what lay on the near side of World War I is Modernism, that slippery but indispensable term denoting a wide range of new sensibilities and aesthetic responses to the industrial age. Modernism took shape decades before World War I, but its clamorous arrival was vastly accelerated by the greatest collective trauma in history to that point.

From the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and John Dos Passos to the savagely critical paintings and etchings of George Grosz and Otto Dix, World War I reshaped the notion of what art is, just as it forever altered the perception of what war is. Although World War II racked up more catastrophic losses in blood and treasure, World War I remains the paradigmatic conflict of the modern age, not only politically but also culturally.

"Of all the wars, that is the one that seems to explain us best," said Michael Morpurgo, the English author of the novel "War Horse," about a Devonshire farm boy's death-defying bond with his noble steed Joey, on which the National Theatre of GreatBritain'sproduction is based.

Particularly in his country, he said, World War I resonates louder than the even greater cataclysm that followed it 20 years later. "The First World War for British people is very much a part of who we are," Morpurgo said during a visit to Los Angeles. "It's so deep in us; the poetry, the stories, the loss, the suffering is there in every village churchyard."

During and after World War I, flowery Victorian language was blown apart and replaced by more sinewy and R-rated prose styles. In visual art, Surrealists and Expressionists devised wobbly, chopped-up perspectives and nightmarish visions of fractured human bodies and splintered societies slouching toward moral chaos.

"The whole landscape of the Western Front became surrealistic before the term surrealism was invented by the soldier-poet Guillaume Apollinaire," Modris Eksteins wrote in "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age."

Throughout Western art, the grim realities of industrial warfare led to a backlash against the propaganda and grandiose nationalism that had sparked the conflagration. Cynicism toward the ruling classes and disgust with war planners and profiteers led to demands for art forms that were honest and direct, less embroidered with rhetoric and euphemism.

"Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates," Ernest Hemingway wrote in "A Farewell to Arms," his 1929 novel based on his experiences in the Italian campaign.

Other artists clung to the shards of classical culture as a buffer against nihilistic disillusionment. "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Waste Land" (1922).

In "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell argued that the rise of irony as a dominant mode of modern understanding "originates largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War."

Irony and dissonant humor permeated the music of classical composers such as Alban Berg and Benjamin Britten, a pacifist who parodied marching-band pomposity in his Piano Concert in D. In his 1989 film "War Requiem," based on Britten's non-liturgical Mass, British director Derek Jarman suggested a parallel between the indifferent slaughter of World War I and the neglect of AIDS-infected young men in the 1980s.

Bargue Plate I, 23 - Man's arm, bent Timelapse Video →

Did You Know? →

Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666.

Our modern understanding of light and color begins with Isaac Newton (1642-1726) and a series of experiments that he publishes in 1672. He is the first to understand the rainbow he refracts white light with a prism, resolving it into its component colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

This circular diagram became the model for many color systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. Claude Boutet’s painter’s circle of 1708 was probably the first to be based on Newton’s circle.

Introduction to Cityscape →

Within the context of art, a cityscape is a work that showcases aspects of cities. It is often known as the urban equivalent of a landscape. Cityscapes are reflected by such mediums as paintings, etchings, drawings, or even photographs. Cityscapes are differentiated by town or village scenes that are less urban in nature. Cityscapes reflect various aspects of cities including (but not limited to) buildings, urban parks, city skylines, and city streets. 

The city in art has a long history. Some early works date to ancient Rome, for example.  The Baths of Trajan, for instance, depict a bird's-eye view of the city. Cityscapes were also created during the Middle Ages; however, these works often served as backgrounds for views of portraits. By the seventeenth century, cityscapes became a celebrated genre of art, particularly in the Netherlands. A famed work from this era is the View of Delft painted by Johannes Vermeer between 1660 and 1661. Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem were also featured during this period. 

During the eighteenth century, cityscapes became popular in many other European nations, especially in the Italian city of Venice. Some of the most celebrated cityscapes date to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, groups like the Impressionists experimented with new techniques to showcase views of the city. The common thread between the various artistic genres in cityscape works is the representation of the city's physical aspects. 

The cityscape as a popular genre declined considerably during the nineteenth century as more abstract and works of modernity took center stage. Even so, some modern artists continued to reflect the city in their works. A few celebrated painters like Edward Hopper continued to incorporate cityscape elements into their works. Some contemporary artists focus on the city as the subject matter of their art today. For instance, Stephen Wiltshire is known for his panoramic city views. The artist Yvonne Jacquette is celebrated for her aerial cityscapes. 

The cityscape genre has been favored by many historic painters during their era such as Alfred Sisley, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, Giovanni Canaletto, and John Atkinson Grimshaw. While there is a plethora of world-renowned cityscape works collected by museums today, some particularly celebrated works include City by the Sea (c.1335 A.D.) by Ambrogio Lorenzetti; Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877) by Gustave Caillbotte; and Moscow (1911) by Mikhail Belyaevsky. Although cityscape paintings have declined in popularity during the past century, photographic cityscapes have become a popular genre of the art form.

The World's Best Museums are Coming to Your Smartphone →

A screen shot taken from Google's new Cultural Institute App
Photo: Google via Tech Crunch

Stuck at home this holiday season while your friends travel the world's museums? Despair not. The Google Cultural Institute has announced plans to develop an app, allowing users to explore some of the world's best museums right from their smartphones.

Thus far, 11 museums and cultural institutions have partnered with Google to showcase their collections, including the Museum of Arts et Métiers, MAO, GAM, Palazzo Madama, Musee Curie, Museum of Le Havre, Monnaie de Paris, MAGA, and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

The new mobile app utilizes Google's indoor street view technology to offer users 360-degree tours, so they can virtually view the museum's exhibitions from anywhere in the world.

The app also features extensive information for museum visitors such as descriptions, photos, and audio tours. The information is also available offline for travelers abroad without internet.

In a video, Google Cultural Institute's Product Manager, Robert Tansley explained “The Google Cultural Institute works with museums and cultural institutions around the world to find new ways to reach people with cultural content."

He added, “I hope that this app will allow more and more museums to tell more and more amazing stories and reach more people than ever."

Famous Artist: Paul Klee 1879-1940 →

Cabeza Con Bigote Aleman (1920)

Born on December 18, 1879, in Münchenbuchsee, Paul Klee was a German-Swiss painter, draftsman, printmaker, teacher and writer. He is regarded as a major theoretician among modern artists,  a master of humour and mystery, and a major contributor to 20th century art.

Klee was born into a family of musicians and his childhood love of music would remain very important in his life and work. From 1898 to 1901 he studied in Munich under Heinrich Knirr, and then at the Kunstakademie under Franz von Stuck.  In 1901 Klee traveled to Italy with the sculptor Hermann Haller and then settled in Bern in 1902.

A series of his satirical etchings called “The Inventions” were exhibited at the Munich Secession in 1906. That same year Klee married pianist Lily Stumpf and moved to Munich. In 1907, the couple had a son, Felix. For the next five years, Klee worked to define his own style through the manipulation of light and dark in his pen and ink drawings and watercolour wash. He also painted on glass, applying a white line to a blackened surface. During this time Klee paid close attention to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting and became interested in the work of van Gogh,  Cézanne, and Matisse.

In 1911, Klee met Alexej Jawlensky, Vasily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc, and other avant-garde figures. He participated in art shows including the second Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) exhibition at Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, in 1912, and the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at the Der Sturm Gallery, Berlin, in 1913. Klee shared with Kandinsky and Marc a deep belief in the spiritual nature of artistic activity.  He valued the authentic creative expression found in popular and tribal culture and in the art of children and the insane.

Klee’s main concentration on graphic work changed in 1914 after he spent two weeks in Tunisia with the painters August Macke and Louis Moilliet. He produced a number of stunning watercolours and  colour became central  to his art for the remainder of his life.

During World War I, Klee worked as an accounting clerk in the military and was able to continue drawing and painting at his desk. His work during this period had an Expressionist feel, both in their brightness and in motifs of enchanted gardens and mysterious forests.

In 1918, Klee moved back to Munich and worked extensively in oil for the first time painting intensely coloured, mysterious landscapes. During this time, he also became interested in the theory of art and published his ideas on the nature of graphic art in the ‘Schöpferische Konfession’ in 1920. Klee also became interested in politics and joined the Action Committee of Revolutionary Artists, an association that supported the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Like other artists at the time, Klee had envisioned a more central role for the artist in a socialist community.

In 1920, Klee was appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar where he taught from 1921 to 1926 and in Dessau from 1926 to 1931. During this time Klee developed many unique methods of creating art.  The most well known is the oil transfer drawing which involves tracing a pencil drawing placed over a page coated with black ink or oil, onto a third sheet. That sheet receives the outline of the drawing in black, in addition to random smudges of excess oil from the middle sheet.

During his years in Weimar, Klee achieved international fame. However, his final years at the Dessau Bauhaus were marked by major political problems. In 1931 Klee ended his contract shortly before the Nazis closed the Bauhaus. He began to teach at the Düsseldorf art academy, commuting there from his home in Dessau.

In Düsseldorf Klee developed a divisionist painting technique that was related to Seurat’s pointillist paintings.  These works consisted of  layers of colour applied over a surface in patterns of small spots. His time in Düsseldorf however, was affected by the rise of the Nazis. In 1933 he became a target of a campaign against  Entartete Kunst. The Nazis took control of the academy and in April Klee was dismissed from his post. In December he and his wife left Germany and returned to Berne.

In 1935 Klee developed the first symptoms of scleroderma, a skin disease that he suffered with until his death. Despite his personal and physical challenges, Klee’s final years were some of his most productive times. Several hundred paintings and 1583 drawings were recorded between 1937 and May 1940.  Many of these works depicted the subject of death and his famous painting, “Death and Fire”, is considered his personal requiem.

Paul Klee died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on June 29, 1940. He was buried at Schosshalde Friedhof, Bern, Switzerland. A museum dedicated to Klee was built in Bern, Switzerland, by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Zentrum Paul Klee opened in June 2005 and holds a collection of about 4,000 work.

For more information, see the source files below.  The MoMA, site has a great in-depth biography including information on his working methods.

Woodlands group works to promote local artists →

Photo By Jerry Baker/Freelance
Spring student Sierra Kozlowski showed off her art skills as part of the Paint The Woodlands event held at Market Street

The Woodlands Art League, a longtime resource center and exhibition space for creative types in the area, is taking its mission to the streets - and inviting the community to join in the fun. 

The nonprofit hosted "Paint The Woodlands" and League members were scattered throughout The Woodlands - painting, sculpting, taking photos, drawing, creating mixed-media pieces and even crafting jewelry. 

The art created during "Paint The Woodlands" will be available for viewing and purchase during a live and silent auction at the reception. There will also be a "buy now" option. All proceeds will benefit the Woodlands Art League.

Kim Wallace, events director for the league, created wire sculptures along Woodlands Parkway.

"In The Woodlands, we're surrounded by beauty," she said. "We're putting out a call to our community, and we hope it becomes an annual event."

Wallace said she discovered the league when she was perusing the Market Street shopping center - where the gallery was housed before it relocated to Grogan's Mill two years ago. 

"I went to my first meeting, and I've been hooked ever since," she said. 

Wallace said that the group helped her make new friends in her new neighborhood. "By the end of the year, I felt like I had been here my whole life," she said. "The league has profoundly changed my art, my life and my friendships."

Abby Salazar, president of The Woodlands Art League, explained that the group originally formed in the 1980s to help develop local interest in the visual arts through teaching, demonstrations, exhibitions and community involvement. 

"We have a lot of people who have been in the art league for a long time," Salazar said. 

She said those long-standing members serve as guides for emerging artists. 

"If you have any type of art experience at all, you should come to The Woodlands Art League," Salazar said. "We can develop those talents. Even if you just want to tinker, we have programs for that."

The group meets regularly on the fourth Thursday of each month for demonstrations and to review the business of running the league. There are also several painting groups open to members - including the Monday portrait group, still life and plein (open) air painting group, Wednesday night portrait group, Thursday figure group and Thursday afternoon drawing group. 

Members also have the opportunity to show in the gallery, which is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. They also are invited to show during off-site events. 

Salazar said that members are required to pay a fee to show, annual dues and volunteer their time to run the gallery and teach techniques. 

She said that member dues are covering the cost of the lease for the league's gallery on Grogan's Mill. Before, the league had to rely on donated spaces to keep afloat. 

"We're celebrating our 33rd anniversary this year," Salazar said. "We've kind of bounced around, but we're making our own way now."

The league has also been expanded its youth programs and is working more with community partners like Habitat for Humanity and The Woodlands high School's Art Trust, Salazar added.

"I love being a part of a team that's working to make the world a better place," she said. "I believe that's what we're doing. I believe in this organization - and in helping people find their vision and find their voice."

'Early Mona Lisa' goes on public display for the first time →

A painting claimed to be an earlier version of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has been unveiled to the public in Singapore

Photo: Reuters

An "earlier version" of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has gone on public display for the first time in Singapore. 

Researchers into the provenance of a painting dubbed the "Early Mona Lisa" reported that they had identified an English noble who probably bought it in Italy in the late 18th century and a country house where it was found in 1911. 

A Swiss foundation holding it have argued that Leonardo painted it before the version that sits in the Paris Louvre. 

"We feel these latest discoveries and new scientific analysis leave little doubt that it is Leonardo's work," said David Feldman, a Geneva-based auctioneer and vice-president of the Zurich Mona Lisa Foundation. 

"The vast majority of experts now either agree with us or accept that there is a strong case for our thesis," he said. 

However, according to the BBC, at least one expert has refuted the claims. Professor Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University and the author of several books on Leonardo, said: "The fact it's being shown in Singapore and is not getting an outing in a serious art museum [or] gallery is significant in itself. 

"Leonardo's landscapes always seethed with a sense of life. It's inert. 

"The drapery is inert, and what Leonardo did was he could always give the sense that even something static like drapery had a life to it, a vitality and an inherent movement in it, and this is a heavy-handed, static picture."

The painting shows what appears to be a younger Lisa del Giocondo, the Florentine merchant's wife who is the subject of the masterpiece in the Louvre, in front of a different background. 

According to scientific tests, it's possible that he began working on this earlier version in 1503, roughly 10 years before the Mona Lisa, but it remained unfinished. 

The earlier version, which is mentioned in several accounts from the early 16th century, came to light in modern times when British art dealer and collector Hugh Blaker found it in 1911 in a country house in southwest England. 

Blaker, who owned the painting for many years and made several unsuccessful efforts to have it authenticated, never identified the house or the previous owners, and his diaries of the key years have gone missing. 

A team of researchers say they have traced a work titled "La Joconde" loaned to an art exhibition in the town of Yeovil in 1856 and sold to a silver dealer two years later. 

Working back from there, they say they found a document declaring that a young Somerset noble, James Marwood, owned a painting by Leonardo known as "La Joconde" that he had probably bought on a visit to Italy around the 1780s. 

The team also established an implicit link to another local noble family who had a deep interest in Renaissance art and lived in Montacute House, today a major tourist attraction. 

The researchers say Blaker's brief references to the house where he found the work indicate that it was Montacute, whose owners by 1911 had fallen on hard times and had begun to secretly sell their possessions. 

The artwork will be on show until February at the Arts House in Singapore's Old Chambers of Parliament, before touring Hong Kong, China, South Korea and Australia.

Bronze: The History and Development of a Medium →

Rosetta "The Lion" Bronze 7" x 11.5" x 5.5" Edition of 100

Tin-based bronze came into existence late in the third millennium B.C. Bronze is a metal alloy that consists mainly of copper though other elements such as tin are added along with aluminium, phosphorus, and manganese. It is characterized by its hardness, but was known to be brittle. Its use became so widespread that the period of antiquity known as the Bronze Age was named for this metal alloy, a period of time particularly known for its skilled metalwork. Before bronze copper was the metal of choice, but the addition of tin gave way to the much stronger new metal. 

Bronze was used to make weapons, tools, and armor, but it was also used extensively in the creation of art; and indeed, even functional bronze items were often treated to artistically rendered decoration. The earliest tin-bronzes (an earlier bronze was composed with arsenic) originated in Susa and other nearby cities of Mesopotamia. Trade helped nurture the production of bronze since copper and tin ores were seldom found in the same areas.  

As an artistic medium, bronze was extensively used by artists and artisans. Bronze was famously employed in sculpture. An early example of bronze statuary comes from India’s Chola Empire in Tamil Nadu. Africa’s Kingdom of Benin famously produced bronze heads. The Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese of antiquity are also revered for their sculptures as well as other bronze art works. The use of bronze became widespread and the Bronze Age chiefly lasted until 1200 B.C. Many cultures influenced bronze casting with advancements during this period which also increased bronze usage for artistic purposes. 

Ancient bronze art is known for its great beauty. Many bronze artifacts were once used ceremonially especially in places like China. One early example of a Chinese bronze is a vessel that may have been created as early as 722 B.C. and depicts a pattern of interconnecting dragons. Other beautiful and intricately carved bronze vessels are some of antiquity’s best known works of art. As a medium, bronze allowed for great detail and sophisticated artistry. 

Although iron eventually supplanted bronze in many industries, bronze remained an important art medium. In fact, some of the most famous bronze art works date to the artist Rodin who lived from 1840 to 1917. While the ancients knew of a wax process used to mold bronze, it has been lost to time, but the production of bronze art works has continued into the present making the most of new technologies. Contemporary artists continue to produce bronze objects of art in all manner of artistic styles. 
 

Jim Carrey Is . . . a Painter? →

Jim Carrey in his studio.
Photo: Jim Carrey via Vulture.

Jim Carrey: actor, comedian, and…painter?

Recently Vulture published an article about Maurizio Cattelan's LA Art Tour. To artnet News' surprise, one stop he took was at Jim Carrey's painting studio. Who knew that the bona fide comedian is also an art lover?

Indeed in an interview with David Letterman, the actor says he owns a cabin in Canada with a "barn full of skulls…cause I do my arts and crafts up there, I make lamp shades. It's all organic."

The actor may or may not make lamp shades, but either way, Carrey has been drawing and painting since he was a young child. According to Vulture, the actor's studio is filled with portraits of women, self-portraits, and images of pop culture icons such as James Dean. He employs a technique in which he applies wet paint on top of an old layer that has dried, and then he scrapes off the new layer to create a silkscreen illusion. After that, the expressive Carrey slashes the canvas and sometimes stitches it back together.

Like a true entertainer, Carrey also sculpted a puppet of his Dumb and Dumber To co-star, Jeff Daniels, in his studio, and used the puppet to debut his ventriloquist skills on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show.

Saint Louis Art Museum Receives $5 Million for Sculpture Garden →

The St. Louis Art Museum has received five million dollars to begin construction of a sculpture garden. The gift comes from board president Barbara Taylor and her husband, Enterprise Holdings chairman Andy Taylor. David Hunn of the St. Louis Post Dispatch reports that the money will pay for the planting of 450 trees, installation of sculptures already owned by the museum, and establishment of a two-million-dollar garden endowment, among other things.

50 Paintings Stolen from Madrid Gallery →

The theft took place in the early hours, right next to the Puerta de Alcalá, a landmark right in the center of Madrid
Photo via: Madrid Guide

Three men broke into an art gallery in the affluent center of Madrid, near the Museo del Prado, and walked away with 50 paintings worth an estimated €400,000.

The thieves entered the Puerta de Alcalá gallery in the early morning hours of Thursday, December 4. They first broke into the adjacent premises, a former bar that has been closed for over a year, and then punched a hole through the wall that led to the gallery. They managed to deactivate the gallery's alarm system and proceeded to take the artworks.

According to reports, the heist was anything but subtle. The thieves spent almost three hours moving the paintings from the gallery to a van parked in the street.

In fact, a security guard from a construction site nearby spotted the men and asked them what they were up to. The men replied that they worked for the gallery and were transporting the large group of artworks to an exhibition. Satisfied with the answer, the security guard walked away.

A week later, there are still no leads as to the whereabouts of the paintings. “We think they might have been taken outside of Spain," Lola Moreno, from Puerta de Alcalá gallery, told artnet News. “The security guard said two of the three men had Eastern European accents, so the paintings might have been trafficked. The thieves also took our invoice books, so we fear they might try to pass any sales as legit," she continued. Initial reports claimed that 70 paintings were stolen. However, the gallery has subsequently lowered that figure to 50.

The gallery specializes in 20th century realist and impressionist painters from Spain. Among the stolen works are 14 paintings by the Sevillian artist Pablo Segarra Chías, which were meant to be shown as part of a solo exhibition. The exhibition opened last night despite the theft. Works by the Valencian painter Eustaquio Segrelles and Juan González Alacreu were also taken by the thieves.

“This has destroyed us," Pedro Márquez, who owned the gallery for decades before passing the baton to his son, told the Guardian. “It's left us in a really tough situation. Forty years of work and they just walked out with it."