By Stacy Slinkard, About.com Guide to Wine
I recently had a chance to give this Pommery recipe a go and found it to be both delicious and unique, given the acai-blueberry vodka thrown in the mix. The "Starry Night" is a fun Champagne cocktail through and through and will certainly shake things up on the bubbly front this New Year's Eve. With a dash of Van Gogh Acai-Blueberry Vodka and a splash of Pommery's pretty pink Champagne you are ready to host and toast in no time at all! Check out the "Starry Night" recipe here.
http://wine.about.com/b/2009/12/23/starry-night-champagne-cocktail.htm
http://wine.about.com/od/mimosarecipe1/r/starrynightchampagnecocktail.htm
VAN GOGH MUSEUM CONCLUDES 2009 SUCCESSFULLY WITH 1.45 MILLION VISITORS
AMSTERDAM.- The Van Gogh Museum welcomed almost 1,450,000 visitors in 2009. This positive result is credited in part to the exhibitions Van Gogh and the colours of the night and Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks (which runs through 3 January 2010). The former exhibition is part of the Letters project launched in October, which attracted considerable media attention around the world. During the first two months of this year visitor numbers were down on 2008, bringing home the impact of the economic crisis on tourism. Thanks in part to the highly successful Van Gogh and the colours of the night exhibition (13 February to 7 June 2009), which atracted some 530,000 visitors, ticket sales recovered. In the summer months, too, the museum has booked good results with some peaks of around 40,000 visitors per week. The positive effects of the Letters project manifested during the final quarter of 2009, and figures once again were in line with 2008.
For comparison: in 2008 the Van Gogh Museum ended the year with approximately 1,470,000 visitors; during the previous year the museum welcomed 1,550,000 visitors.
Letters exhibition draws to a close
Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks will run through 3 January 2010. The exhibit features 120 original letters by Vincent van Gogh accompanied by the works he describes in his letters. These important documents are seldom shown due to their fragility and sensitivity to light. The combination of more than 340 works from the Van Gogh Museum’s own rich collection, including paintings, drawings, letters and letter sketches, presents a penetrating and comprehensive insight into Van Gogh as a letter writer and as an artist.
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=35201
ANOTHER SMALL RETAILER BEATS EXPECTATIONS
Posted by: John Tozzi on December 23
Another one of the retailers we’ve been tracking through the holiday season exceeded expectations. David Sasson of Overstock Art, an online retailer of replica oil paintings based in Wichita, Kan., told me Tuesday that he had just finished the best week in his company’s eight-year history, with sales more than double his previous record week.
“I don’t know if you can tell from my voice how tired I am,” he said. “We’ve been working around the clock for the last few days,” including Saturday and Sunday.
Overstock Art has seen consistent sales growth since August, including several months at 60% above 2008 levels. Sasson is projecting 2009 sales will top $4 million. He credits increased spending on search advertising and strong customer service that has brought repeat customers back, along with discounts as high as 35% or 40%. Demand outstripped Sasson’s expectations, and Overstock Art even ran out of some paintings they try to always keep in stock, like replicas of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/12/another_small_r.html
Vincent Van Gogh, "Le café de nuit", (The Night Café), 1888. Oil on canvas, (72.4 x 92.1 cm), 28 1/2 x 36 1/4 inches. Located in the Yale University Art Gallery.
YALE UNIVERSITY SAY SUIT OVER VINCENT VAN GOGH'S WORK IMPERILS OTHER ART
NEW HAVEN, CT (AP).- The ownership of tens of billions of dollars of art and other goods could be thrown into doubt if a lawsuit seeking the return of a famous Vincent Van Gogh painting is successful, according to a court filing by Yale University. The Ivy League university sued in federal court in March to assert its ownership rights over "The Night Cafe" and to block a descendant of the original owner from claiming it.
Pierre Konowaloff is the purported great-grandson of industrialist and aristocrat Ivan Morozov, who bought the painting in 1908. Russia nationalized Morozov's property during the Communist Revolution. The painting, which the Soviet government later sold, has been hanging in the Yale University Art Gallery for almost 50 years.
"Invalidating title to the painting would set U.S. courts at odds with the Russian government and cloud title to what Konowaloff concedes is at least $20 billion of art in global commerce," Yale's attorneys wrote in court papers filed Wednesday. It also would "imply the invalidity of title to countless billions of dollars more of other sorts of property expropriated and sold" by Russian authorities, Yale's attorney wrote.
Any federal court invalidation of Russian nationalization decrees from the early 20th century would create "significant tensions" between the United States and the Russian Federation, Yale argues. Russia continues to possess, display and defend its title to many artworks that were nationalized, including against Konowaloff's litigation and threats of litigation in France and Britain, Yale says. Yale says the court does not have the authority to evaluate the legality of a Russian nationalization. The university says former owners have challenged titles to artwork and other property seized from them in Russia, but their claims were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court and state, federal and foreign courts.
Konowaloff's attorney, Allan Gerson, said in an e-mail that the argument was "ridicious" and that the lawsuit was not against Russia. He has argued that the court does not have to determine the lawfulness of the Russian confiscation of the painting, saying Yale cannot establish that it has good title. Yale received the painting through a bequest from Yale alumnus Stephen Carlton Clark. The school says Clark bought the painting, which shows the inside of a nearly empty cafe, with a few customers seated at tables along the walls, from a gallery in New York City in 1933 or 1934.
Konowaloff has filed court papers calling Yale's acquisition of the painting "art laundering." He argues that Russian authorities unlawfully confiscated the painting and that the United States deemed the theft a violation of international law. Konowaloff alleges Clark knew of the painting's ownership history and that "Yale engaged in a policy of willful ignorance" when it accepted the piece in 1961. Konowaloff wants the immediate return of the painting as well as damages.
Yale says the Russian nationalization of property, while sharply at odds with American values, did not violate international law. The university also says Konowaloff's claims should be dismissed because they are time-barred by a statute of limitations.
Konowaloff said he became the official heir of the Morozov collection after his father died in 2002, and he began to try to document the inventory. He said his grandfather did not try to do so "for reasons of personal security and due to the lack of any available judicial remedies at the time."
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=35244
FOUND: THE CLUE TO VAN GOGH'S EAR
The mystery behind the most famous mutilation in art history may finally have been solved.
A scholar has found evidence that a distraught Vincent van Gogh slashed his ear after learning that his brother, Theo, on whom he depended financially and emotionally, was about to get married.
Martin Bailey, who has written a book on van Gogh and curated two exhibitions of his work, devised his theory after meticulous detective work on a letter in a painting that the artist completed soon after he injured himself.
Bailey concludes that this letter was written by Theo from Paris in December 1888 and contained news of his engagement. This, he believes, tipped Vincent, who was already psychologically disturbed, into self-harm.
“Vincent was fearful that he might lose his brother’s emotional and financial support,” writes Bailey in the January edition of The Art Newspaper.
For years disputes have raged over what really happened to van Gogh’s ear just before Christmas 1888. Some have blamed his mental illness, others have said he was driven mad by lead in his paints. The breakdown of his friendship with Paul Gauguin, his fellow artist, has also been cited, although it is claimed that Gauguin made up this story himself.
Academics at Hamburg University argued recently that Gauguin, with whom van Gogh shared a house at Arles in the south of France, cut the ear in a quarrel over a prostitute called Rachel.
This theory was dismissed by the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and by Bailey...
...Bailey assembled his evidence partly from close study of van Gogh’s Still Life: Drawing Board with Onions. The work was completed at the beginning of 1889, just a month after his injury. It will be the star painting at a new exhibition opening in January at the Royal Academy around the theme of van Gogh and his letters.
It includes an envelope on a table. Bailey examined it microscopically and found the number 67 inside a circle. This was the official mark of a post office in Place des Abbesses, close to the apartment in Montmartre occupied by Theo, an art dealer who regularly provided money for Vincent.
The envelope has a special frank mark that says “New Year’s Day”. The Paris postal museum confirmed that in the second half of the 19th century such a mark was put on envelopes from mid-December onwards.
Bailey believes van Gogh deliberately put the envelope in the painting because of its deep significance.
Vincent usually received his allowance from Theo on or about the 23rd of each month, although sometimes he received two a month. It is known from a letter he wrote to Theo at the end of January 1889 that he had received what he called “the much-needed money” on December 23.
Bailey argues that the letter in the painting contained the news from Theo that he had proposed to his girlfriend, Johanna Bonger. The letter, dated December 21, is from Theo to his mother seeking permission to marry.
“Vincent would surely have been next to be told,” said Bailey.
Another letter, from Theo to his fiancée, mentions his brief visit to Vincent on Christmas Day after he had taken the train from Paris on hearing of the mutilation.
Theo wrote: “When I mentioned you to him he evidently knew who and what I meant and, when I asked whether he approved of our plans, he said marriage ought not to be regarded as the main object in life.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6968527.ece
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