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Tag: Art (1-3 of 3)

May 17 2013 09:33 AM ET

Nude Bea Arthur painting sells for $1.9 million

by Associated Press

Tags: Art, Bea Arthur

A painting of actress Bea Arthur topless has sold for $1.9 million at a New York City auction.

The painting is by artist John Currin and is titled “Bea Arthur Naked.” It sold at Christie’s auction of postwar and contemporary art on Wednesday. It had been expected to bring in between $1.8 million and $2.5 million.

Christie’s hasn’t said who bought it.

The 1991 oil painting depicts the late television actress nude from the waist up. Christie’s said Thursday the image was based on a photograph of her with her clothes on.

Arthur gained fame for her Emmy Award-winning roles in Maude and The Golden Girls in the 1970s and ’80s. She died of cancer in 2009 at age 86.

Sep 7 2012 01:02 PM ET

Obama 'Hope' poster artist fined and sentenced to probation

by Hillary Busis

Tags: Art, Barack Obama, Crime, Legal

A dispute between artist Shepard Fairey and The Associated Press was settled last year — but Fairey’s legal woes were just beginning. The man behind an iconic poster of Barack Obama has been sentenced to two years of probation and fined $25,000, the New York Times reports.

The case began in 2009, when the AP claimed that Fairey infringed on one of its copyrighted photographs to create his poster. In return, Fairey sued the news organization, saying he had used another photograph under fair use. But as the suit progressed, Fairey admitted that he had been mistaken — and that he tried to conceal his error by both destroying documents and fabricating evidence. He pleaded guilty to a criminal contempt charge in February 2012.

“My wrong-headed actions, born out of a moment of fear and embarrassment, have not only been financially and psychologically costly to myself and my family, but also helped to obscure what I was fighting for in the first place— the ability of artists everywhere to be inspired and freely create art without reprisal,” Fairey said in a statement after his sentencing.

Jun 21 2012 08:59 AM ET

Sports artist LeRoy Neiman dead at 91

by Associated Press

Tags: Art, In Memoriam, Sports

Image Credit: Bebeto Matthews/AP

Painter and sketch artist LeRoy Neiman, best known for evoking the kinetic energy of the world’s biggest sporting and leisure events with bright quick strokes, died Wednesday at age 91. Neiman was the official painter of five Olympiads and was a contributing artist at Playboy magazine for many years. His longtime publicist, Gail Parenteau, confirmed his death at a Manhattan hospital on Wednesday but didn’t disclose the cause.

Neiman was a media-savvy artist who knew how to enthrall audiences with his instant renditions of what he observed. In 1972, he sketched the world chess tournament between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a live television audience. He also produced live drawings of the Olympics for TV and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS. Neiman’s “reportage of history and the passing scene … revived an almost lost and time-honored art form,” according to a 1972 exhibit catalog of his Olympics sketches at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

“It’s been fun. I’ve had a lucky life,” Neiman said in a June 2008 interview with The Associated Press. READ FULL STORY »