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Artnet Select Photographs sale—now live for bidding through February 19, 2025—comes at just the right time for Valentine’s Day this year. From a fierce portrait of a power couple in Richard Prince’s Untitled (Couple) (2006) to an iconic kiss on a busy Parisian Street by Robert Doisneau, the Select Photographs sale contains numerous love and romance-filled images perfect for the romantic collector. We dive into just a few that might make the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Read more: https://bit.ly/40QXYqt #ArtnetAuctions

#OnView: The talents of British musician Pete Doherty, best known for fronting bands the Libertines and Babyshambles, are often eclipsed by his celebrity. The U.K. media has long been obsessed with his addiction struggles, constant parties, and association with Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse. So when, in 2007, he began exhibiting his “blood paintings”— made using his own blood and a syringe in a technique dubbed “arterial splatter”—his efforts were inevitably assumed to be just another provocation. One show in Paris in 2008 prompted the Daily Mail to ask, “is this the most disgusting art exhibition ever?” The article scoffed that the “so-called artist,” imprisoned at the time, had been unable to attend the opening, concluding “it will certainly be up for discussion whether those in the art world take Doherty’s gruesome creations seriously.” Undeterred, Doherty has never stopped making and exhibiting art. On Friday, he opened “Felt Better Alive,” a survey of 24 works on canvas and paper dating back to 2006, at Janine Bean gallery in Berlin. It remains on view through April 26. “Some of these pieces I’m amazed we managed to track down,” he said ahead of the opening. “I thought they were gone forever. Some we’ve had to buy back from various malign individuals who I gave them to as gifts and then they were flogging them online.” Read more: https://bit.ly/3CCrWGK Article by Jo Lawson-Tancred ______ Pictured: Pete Doherty. Photo: Ed Cooke.

#ArtnetNews: In April 2024, four striking monoliths rose from the undulating landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park, marking Huma Bhabha’s exhibition with the Public Art Fund. Titled Before The End, the sculptures—patinated bronze figures cast from carved cork and fragments of skulls—invite viewers to confront their monumental presence against the park’s greenery and the lower Manhattan skyline. These haunting forms, both alien and familiar, seem like cryptic emissaries, appearing to warn of an impending reckoning. The title Before The End is borrowed from the writings of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1184–1264). “His medieval imagination was full of apocalyptic visions—which is exactly what I was thinking about,” says artist Huma Bhabha. Her influences are varied and range from prescient images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1940s black-and-white cinema, 1980s sci-fi and horror, including films like Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987). Bhabha channels these references into the four works, where the figures emerge as “a visitation and a warning,” shaped by both her cinematic inspirations and the pressing anxieties of the contemporary world. Continue reading: https://bit.ly/4jR6iz7 Article by Shreya Ajmani ______ Pictured: Huma Bhabha, 2022. Photo by Daniel Dorsa. Courtesy David Zwirner Huma Bhabha: Before The End Mr. Stone, 2024 Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY. Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York City, Apr 30, 2024—March 9, 2025. Huma Bhabha: “Before The End” Feel the Hammer, 2024. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY. Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York City, Apr 30, 2024–March 9, 2025.

#ArtnetNews: Why has the Getty Museum acquired an A.I. photograph? The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired its first photograph generated with A.I.: an image by queer Costa Rican artist Matias Sauter Morera. The acquisition of Sauter Morera’s Cristian en el Amor de Calle was announced on January 31 by the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica and confirmed by the museum. It will be shown in an upcoming exhibition curated by Paul Martineau titled “The Queer Lens: A History of Photography.” Continue reading: https://bit.ly/4aZgHF4 Article by Adam Schrader ______ Pictured: Matias Sauter Morera. Cristian en el Amor de Calle (2024). Photo courtesy of Craig Krull Gallery

#OnView: Impressionism has always been a fan favorite, and when the French movement marked its 150th birthday last year, museums worldwide feted it with one exhibition after another. Loosely painted landscapes by Claude Monet, a leading founder of the movement, were all over the place (even more so than usual). Artworks by the other Monet? Not so much. In fact, the other Monet—Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, that is—has never had a solo exhibition in the United States (though she’s had a few in her native France). Only one public American institution, Ohio’s Columbus Museum of Art, has her work on view and the French museums that hold her landscape paintings mostly keep them in storage. Until now. When “Blanche Hoschedé-Monet in the Light” opens at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University on February 14, the show and accompanying catalogue will be the first monographic study of her in the U.S. Read more: https://bit.ly/4hvcKdD Article by Karen Chernick _____ Pictured: Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, The Small Grainstacks (Les Moyettes), (ca. 1894). Collection of Alice and Rick Johnson. Blanche Hoschedé-Monet, Morning on the Seine (Matinée sur la Seine), (ca. 1896). Collection of Alice and Rick Johnson. Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (French, 1865–1947). The Bank of the Seine (Bord de la Seine), ca. 1897-1910. Oil on canvas, 23 ¾ x 29 in. (60.3 x 73.7 cm). Collection of Gary J. and Kathy Z. Anderson Left to right: Takeko Kuroki, Claude Monet, Lilly Butler, Blanche Hoschede-Monet and Georges Clemenceau at Monet’s home in Giverny, 1921. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

#ArtnetNews: The fate of Faith Ringgold’s rikers mural is more complicated than you think, the painting's unexpected journey is the subject of the new documentary, 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here.' As activists struggle against America’s crisis of mass incarceration, a new documentary relates the remarkable life of a painting created some five decades ago to give inspiration to imprisoned women. Paint Me a Road Out of Here (2024), directed by Catherine Gund, tells the story of that painting, by the renowned late artist Faith Ringgold, which was created for the notorious prison at New York’s Rikers Island, a facility that has has proven increasingly deadly as it has become disastrously overcrowded. Advocates for reform have for years called for the prison to be closed, and the story of the artwork, which has come in for dire mistreatment, mirrors in poetic ways the plight of the people imprisoned there. The film has its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York’s Film Forum on February 7. Read more: https://bit.ly/4hIaS0O Article by Brian Boucher _______ Pictured: Faith Ringgold, For the Women’s House (1971). Photo: David Grossman / Alamy Stock Photo.

#ArtnetNews: Beneath the melancholy hues of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto by Pablo Picasso, conservators have uncovered a long-hidden secret—an earlier painting of a mysterious woman, concealed for over a century. Using advanced imaging technology, researchers at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London detected the figure beneath the surface of the early Blue Period work, providing new insights into Picasso’s creative process and raising questions about the identity of the veiled subject. The discovery comes ahead of the painting’s inclusion in the upcoming exhibition “Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection,” opening at the Courtauld Gallery in London on February 14. Painted in 1901, when Picasso was only 19, this artwork marks one of the earliest pieces from his renowned Blue Period—a phase that lasted until roughly 1904 and was characterized by a monochromatic palette dominated by cool cerulean tones. It depicts Picasso’s friend and fellow Spanish artist Mateau Fernández de Soto. Read more: https://bit.ly/416Wz0j Article by Jo Lawson-Tancred _______ Pictured: Left: Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901). Photo courtesy Oskar Reinhart collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur, Switzerland. Right: Infrared image of Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by department of conservation at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

#ArtnetNews: Niki de Saint Phalle became an iconic artist largely through the strength and style of her imagery, especially her Nanas, the joyous, voluptuous technicolor sculptures of women for which she is best remembered today. Less widely known yet just as vital, however, is her indelible impact on the responsibilities of public art, the range of feminist practices, and the prominence of editions and multiples within contemporary art-making. Born Catherine Marie-Agnes Fan de Saint Phalle in 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine (a suburb of Paris), Saint Phalle led an itinerant life that spanned Paris, New York, Mallorca, and the south of France. She began her artistic career in the 1950s, becoming the only female member of Nouveau Réalisme, an art movement whose members included Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri, and Jean Tinguely, her second husband and lifelong collaborator. Continue reading: https://bit.ly/3CSKVwA Article by J. Cabelle Ahn ______ Pictured: Niki de Saint Phalle's L'Arbre-Serpents, exhibited in front of the Institut de France, in Paris, on October 15, 2024, as part of the Art Basel Paris 2024's Public Program. Photo by Luc Castel/Getty Images. Artist Niki de Saint Phalle pictured with two animals for a sculpture installation. Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Sygma via Getty Images. Niki de Saint Phalle’s Le monde at MoMA PS1, 2021. Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images.

#OnView: The Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972) has charmed the art world with her monumental, intricate installations made of threads and found objects. In an interview, the artist discusses her latest institutional exhibitions—”Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles” on view at the Grand Palais in Paris through March 19, 2025; and “Chiharu Shiota: The Unsettled Soul” on view through April 28, 2025 in Prague—life between two homes, and her wild guess as to exactly how many kilometers of thread she has used over the years to complete her intricate, spell-binding installations. Read the interview: https://bit.ly/3WTKQj8 Article by Vivienne Chow ______ Pictured: Chiharu Shiota at her studio. Photo: Sunhi Mang. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view of “The Unsettled Soul.” Credit: Vojtěch Veškrna, Kunsthalle Praha

#ArtnetNews: For the past five years, New York’s Hollis Taggart gallery has been championing the work of Michael (Corinne) West (1908–1991), a little-known Abstract Expressionist woman painter whose life’s work was fortuitously rescued from a city auction when her estate went unclaimed. Now, the gallery is presenting its most ambitious showing of West’s work to date, taking a deep dive into the artist’s archives to present reproductions of her writings and other documentation related to paintings on view in “Chronicling an Artistic Practice: Michael West Paintings and Archives From the 1950s to 1970s.” Read more: https://bit.ly/4jROjIQ Article by Sarah Cascone _______ Pictured: Michael (Corinne) West, Flowers (1952). Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York. “Chronicling an Artistic Practice: Michael West Paintings and Archives From the 1950s to 1970s” at Hollis Taggart, New York. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York. Michael (Corinne) West, Vietnam Summer (1963). Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York. A photo of Michael Corrine West with her painting Vietnam Summer (1963) at her solo show at Granite Galleries in New York. Photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York.