Arts and Culture

Dutch art fair reports ‘record’ prices for Van Gogh, Picasso

  THE HAGUE, March 15, 2024 (AFP) – Europe’s largest art fair closed its doors on Friday with organisers saying that sales, including a rare Van Gogh and works by Picasso and Kees van Dongen, fetched “record prices”. Although a total figure of sale for some of the world’s most sought-after artworks could not be given, organisers of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) said that sales ran up to “tens-of-millions of euros”. “It’s impossible […]

‘Sacred job’: Iraq Kurds digitise books to save threatened culture

By Khazan Jangiz Huddled in the back of a van, Rebin Pishtiwan carefully scans one yellowed page after another, as part of his mission to digitise historic Kurdish books at risk of disappearing. Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, the Kurds are an ethnic group of between 25 and 35 million mostly spread across modern day Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. In Iraq, the Kurds are a sizeable minority who have been persecuted, with […]

Paris Picasso Museum reopens with new selection

By Sandra BIFFOT-LACUT PARIS, March 10, 2024 (AFP) – The Picasso Museum in Paris, which houses the world’s biggest collection of the Spanish artist’s works, is reopening on Tuesday with an overhauled display and a first-ever tribute to his ex-partner, the renowned painter Francoise Gilot. The new permanent collection will present a fresh selection of 400 works by Pablo Picasso across the museum’s 22 rooms. They have been drawn from some 200,000 items stored in […]

For ‘difficult’ creator, ‘Dragon Ball’ success provided acceptance

TOKYO, March 8, 2024 (AFP) – Akira Toriyama was already famous to comic fans in the early 1980s with “Dr. Slump” but he won manga immortality with the global sensation and Japanese success story that is “Dragon Ball”. But as his creation and his fame exploded when his creation won over kids the world over, Toriyama, who has died in Japan aged 68, shunned the limelight and preferred to focus on drawing. “‘Dragon Ball’ is […]

Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama passes away at 68

  By Tomohiro OSAKI, Natsuko FUKUE TOKYO, March 8, 2024 (AFP) – The creator of Japan’s hugely popular and influential “Dragon Ball” comics and anime cartoons, Akira Toriyama, has died aged 68, his production team said Friday. First serialised in 1984, “Dragon Ball” is one of the best-selling manga franchises of all time and has spawned countless anime series, films and video games. Toriyama died on March 1 because of a blood clot on his […]

Indigenous Bolivian women take up taekwondo against gender-based violence

By Esther MAMANI A violent attack by would-be robbers steered Bolivian Lidia Mayta towards the martial art of taekwondo. Three years later, she helps train other Indigenous women to defend themselves against rampant gender-based violence in the South American country. Mayta told AFP she would have died if neighbors had not come out of their own homes to scare off the assailants choking her outside her front door. They were trying to steal her wallet. […]

Underfunded & under-maintained: Eiffel tower workers strike for repairs, fair treatment

France’s iconic Eiffel Tower was closed for a fourth day on Thursday as employees extended a strike over the monument’s management, unions said. The stoppage at one of the world’s best-known tourist sites is the second within two months in protest of what unions say is insufficient investment. The tower’s operator, SETE, has advised ticket holders to check its website before showing up, or to postpone their visit. E-ticket holders were asked to check their […]

Iran’s long-lasting love for gemstones

By Menna Zaki and Ramin Khanizadeh TEHRAN, Feb 2, 2024 (AFP) – At a prominent Shiite shrine in southern Tehran, Qasem Ashgari was buying yet another gemstone ring in the hope it would help his prayers to be answered promptly. Asghari, in his 30s, who was already wearing several bands on each hand, had a specific ring in mind: a silver one, adorned with yellow agate and engraved with religious scripts. “The reward of one […]

App lets Indigenous Brazilians connect in own languages

By Mohamed RACHEDI For Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, getting online is a challenge. Now, a smartphone app is making it easier to connect by allowing them to use their own native languages. Hyper-connected Brazil has more cell phones than people — over 250 million, for a population of 203 million, according to communications consultancy Teleco. But even when they have smartphones and internet connections, the sprawling country’s 1.7 million Indigenous inhabitants have often […]

Art attack: masterpieces targeted by activists

The dousing of a glass-covered Mona Lisa in pumpkin soup is the latest in a string of cases of priceless artworks being targeted by environmental activists. Here are some of the other cases that have made headlines in the past two years: – Soup for “Sunflowers” – In October 2022, two activists from the Just Stop Oil group emptied cans of tomato soup over the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery. […]

Beyond algorithms: Sandra Rodriguez hacks AI tools for art

By Mathiew LEISER MONTREAL, Jan 19, 2024 (AFP) – Canadian artist and academic Sandra Rodriguez, by hacking artificial intelligence, hopes to demystify the novel technology topping the news of late, while showcasing its power and potential to brighten but also disrupt our lives. In a dimly lit Montreal art space, visitors interact with her exhibit — an AI trained on millions of online searches for erotica that generates a mosaic of pornographic videos that eventually […]

London police arrest second man after Banksy installation removed

LONDON, Dec 24, 2023 (AFP) – Police in London said on Sunday that officers had arrested a second man on suspicion of theft and criminal damage, after a Banksy artwork was removed from a south London street corner within hours of appearing. A man in his 20s arrested on Saturday over the incident the previous day has been released on bail until a date in mid-March pending further inquiries, the British capital’s Metropolitan Police Service […]