Function Magazine

Latin American art is a collection of work by South and Central America, Mexico, Caribbean and those who live in other parts of the world with an origin of Latin America.

Diego Rivera held a show at the Museum of Modern Art in November 2011. Auctions at prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury indicate an increased awareness and interest in Latin American art.

Christie’s handled $43 million worth of Latin American pieces in 2011. That is four times more than the sales of 2003. 23 Latin American artists were highlighted during the two-day Christie’s auction in November 2011.

Interest in Latin American art is increasing but there is long way to go. A silkscreen and stainless steel “Balloon Monkey Wall Relief” by Jeff Koons sold for $1.2 million. Compare this to Diego Rivera’s “Retrato de Julieta” which sold for $362,500 about the same time period.

As a reference point, LACMA, the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art, regularly add to its collection of Latin Art.

Latin American pieces are experiencing a rise in prices. There may be opportunities for art lovers throughout the world to pick up excellent pieces at below market prices for their collection.

Considered to be the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa is one of the most popular Da Vinci paintings in the art world that is on display at the Musée du Louvre, and is sought out by millions of visitors each year.

While there is much speculation that the painting of a seated woman with little or no facial expression is that of Lisa Del Giocondo, researchers are now searching for the tomb in which she was buried centuries ago.

And they intend to carry out this task by using a geo-radar device to track her body which might have been buried at the St. Orsola convent in central Florence. In being able to find skull fragments with this device, researchers hope to create a facial reconstruction that might finally put to rest whether the face on the painting belongs to Lisa Del Giocondo or is in fact, a combination of faces as suggested by many experts.

Thanks to the recent discovery of her death certificate which suggests that she might have been buried there, researchers might finally put an end to the question as to whether or not she was the model for one of Da Vinci’s highly regarded paintings.

Apart from attempting to conduct a facial reconstruction, the process of carbon dating might also come into play here only if the bones are in any state to be analyzed, and whose results will be compared with those of her descendants as well.

Researchers hope that they will be able to obtain positive results, and thus unravel the mystery that has surrounded one of the most recognizable faces for almost five centuries now.

With the popularity of the artwork known as “Obama Hope”, there was no doubt that the art world was unanimously behind a politician who displayed confidence, wisdom and hope and that would bring about change in the coming days as the President of the United States.

The creator of this portrait that has become so widely-accepted and popular in both its original form as well as the online world was Shepard Fairey, who on finding such success, became a regular visitor on every conceivable talk show. In short, he became a celebrity of sorts.

But this fairytale came to an abrupt end when it was discovered the Shepard had committed graffiti violations, and was arrested by the police at the launch of his retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

However, all this was completely overshadowed by the following controversy in which the Associated Press (AP) claimed that they had found the original photograph that one of their freelance photographers, Mannie Garcia, had taken and this led to demands of credit and financial compensation.

Of course, a few months later, Fairey, his partners and AP decided to finally settle matters while deciding to collaborate financially on merchandise that was based on the image of “hope”. At another level altogether, the National Portrait Gallery found itself in a spot of bother over a David Wojnarowicz video which was duly removed later, due to the fact that it found itself in a vulnerable position at Congressional budget meetings.

And while some directors considered it inappropriate to accept any federal funding, the Republican Study Committee announced its plan to reduce the budgets of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, and by this time, it was pretty clear that the art world was alienated yet again from the world of politics.