Weekly Art Digest | Warhol’s Lenin, Kapoor and Gormley, The Chinese Girl, Ai Wei Wei, Rembrandt

Andy Warhol’s limited edition print of Vladimir Lenin.

(The Telegraph)
“Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky is to sell a portrait of former Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin by Andy Warhol as he tries to recoup losses from his failed court case against Roman Abramovich. The Times reports that Berezovsky, 67, will attempt to sell Red Lenin, a screen print by the American pop artist dating from 1987, as part of a wider retrenchment as he tries to pay off legal bills and debts to other creditors.”

(The Guardian)
“The Turner-prize-winning artists Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley are among a group of leading artists, writers and actors who have donated works to Labour to be auctioned at a new annual arts dinner to be hosted by Ed Miliband on Thursday. Among the prizes up for grabs, Sir Patrick Stewart is offering a private Shakespearean recital while the three-times Man-Booker-nominated author Sarah Waters will join the winner’s book group.”

(The Independent)
“The original painting of the Chinese Girl, thought to be the most reproduced print in the world, was sold for nearly £1 million today. The work by Siberian-born artist Vladimir Tretchikoff raised £982,050 – nearly double its expected price – as part of a sale of South African art at Bonhams auction house. Millions of reproductions of the picture, also known as the Green Lady because of the unusual blue-green skin tone of the subject, have been sold since it was painted in the 1950s.”

(The Art Newspaper)
“Ai is currently overseeing the production of the tents, each of which will be unique and able to house two or three people, in his Beijing studio. Visitors will be able to rent them for the night for “a low, symbolic price”, says the festival’s curator, Florian Matzner. “The idea is to let normal [sic] people participate, and their activities will give the… work its sense.” The installation carries numerical and conceptual echoes of Ai’s Fairytale People project at Documenta 12 in 2007, for which he brought 1,001 of his compatriots to the town of Kassel, encouraging them to interact with the city and record their impressions.”

Mystery painting is revealed to be a Rembrandt worth £20 million (The Telegraph)
“A painting that was thought to be by one of Rembrandt’s students has been revealed as a work by the great master himself. The portrait, which is dated 1635 and is of Rembrandt, aged 29, has been hanging at Buckland Abbey in Devon, a National Trust property and the former home of Sir Francis Drake. The National Trust was given the painting by the estate of the late Edna, Lady Samuel of Wych Cross in September 2010. It was previously owned by the Princes of Liechtenstein.”