All posts tagged: Modernist

Was Jeffrey Epstein’s Copy of a Modernist Painting Sold on eBay?

Was Jeffrey Epstein’s Copy of a Modernist Painting Sold on eBay?

Published by José Betancourt

An eBay seller claimed to have Jeffrey Epstein‘s reproduction of a painting by Kees van Dongen, a Dutch painter who became a part of the Fauvist movement in France during the early 20th century. The work in question, it should be noted, was not a bona fide van Dongen. It was a print based on a ca. 1905 painting called Femme Fatale, which sold at Christie’s in 2004 for $5.94 million. At the time, Christie’s touted the work for demonstrating “in uncompromising fashion the artist’s penchant for exploiting shock value, here taken to an unprecedented extreme.” The painting depicts a green-faced woman with one breast spilling out from her shirt. Related Articles Epstein owned a giclée print of the van Dongen painting and hung it above his desk in his Upper East Side townhouse. And while this may not be a true van Dongen, Epstein appears to have held a fascination with the artist. A set of files related to the convicted sex offender by the Justice Department earlier this year include a document related …

When Brazil Built Its Capital on Modernist Principles: The Controversial Design of Brasília

When Brazil Built Its Capital on Modernist Principles: The Controversial Design of Brasília

Published by José Betancourt

When we think of mod­ern archi­tec­ture, we often think first of what’s called the Inter­na­tion­al Style, whose min­i­mal­ist, rec­ti­lin­ear, dec­o­ra­tion-free forms were cham­pi­oned by the likes of Wal­ter Gropius, Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Cor­busier. Though they did build projects all over the world, that isn’t exact­ly the rea­son for the name. In fact, the Inter­na­tion­al Style rep­re­sents an attempt to devel­op a cul­tur­al­ly neu­tral aes­thet­ic for all built envi­ron­ments, deploy­able equal­ly in Europe, Asia, the Amer­i­c­as, and every­where else besides. That pre­tense to uni­ver­sal­i­ty may count as the most utopi­an aspect of an avowed­ly utopi­an move­ment — and the one whose imprac­ti­cal­i­ty came soon­est to light. Before he became Brazil’s most famous archi­tect, Oscar Niemey­er sub­scribed to the prin­ci­ples of the Inter­na­tion­al Style. But then, as an acolyte of Le Cor­busier, he could hard­ly have done oth­er­wise. When the great man came to Rio de Janeiro in 1936 to design the new Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Health, Niemey­er was hired to work on the project. The expe­ri­ence seems to have done its …