Mark Rothko

A highly coveted painting by Mark Rothko has sold for $75.1 million at auction in New York. "No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)," which the artist created in 1954, didn't break a record, but it did command the second highest price ever for a Rothko, according to Sotheby's. The auction house had expected the painting to bring in between $35 million and $50 million. The painting had been in the collection of former Sotheby's president John Marion since 1982, according to the Wall Street Journal.

An early still life by Vija Celmins that has been hanging in its owners' kitchen for almost 50 years will go up for auction in May at Los Angeles Modern Auctions. "Untitled (Knife and Dish)," an oil on canvas from 1964, is a plain-looking painting of a knife balanced on a small white plate against a large brown background, rendered in a simple palette from a rather head-on perspective. Other deadpan works made by Celmins that year, during her time in Venice Beach, now belong to museums, including “Heater” (at the Whitney)

Works of art can do just about anything - except explain how other works of art work. That's one of the reasons many movies and books about artists fall short. They presume to tell us the truth about things they are in no position to explain, much less match the artistry of. Documentary films do not face this problem. Three recent ones work wonders because they allow their subjects to speak for themselves. More important, Matthew Akers' "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present," Corinna Belz's"Gerhard Richter Painting"and Neil Berkeley's "Beauty Is Embarrassing" do not reveal how Abramovic, Richter or Wayne White make their work.

The man who has admitted to defacing Pablo Picasso's painting "Woman in a Red Armchair" at the Menil Collection in Houston last year is in custody this week after surrendering to authorities near the U.S.-Mexico border. Uriel Landeros had been on the lam for six months since he spray-painted the work of art with stenciled images of a bullfighter, a bull and the Spanish word "conquista," or conquest. A witness captured what appeared to be the incident on camera and the video was uploaded to YouTube.

Police in London have charged a man with vandalizing a Mark Rothko painting Sunday at the Tate Modern museum. Scotland Yard said in a release that Wlodzimierz Umaniec, a 26-year-old Polish national, had been arrested in connection with the crime. Police said Umaniec also goes by the name "Vladimir Umanets" -- which was scrawled on the Rothko painting. The damaged artwork was part of Rothko's Seagram mural series created in 1958. The incident took place Sunday during normal public hours.

One of the Mark Rothko mural paintings that inspired John Logan's play, “Red,” which had a recent acclaimed run at the Mark Taper Forum starring Alfred Molina as the artist, was vandalized Sunday in its gallery at the Tate Modern in London. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that the Tate issued a statement confirming that on Sunday afternoon, “a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting,” and that police were investigating.

Following Sunday's opening night performance of “Red” at the Mark Taper Forum, theatergoers merely had to stroll down Grand Avenue to see eight Mark Rothko paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where the after-party took place.   The play is about the artist; the paintings are part of MOCA's permanent collection. The L.A. opening of the Tony Award-winning play, starring Alfred Molina and Jonathan Groff, was packed with celebrities, among them Leonard Nimoy, the artist, art collector and original Mr. Spock of TV's “Star Trek,” and Zachary Quinto, Mr. Spock of the 2009 and 2013 film versions.

As imagined by John Logan in his Tony-winning drama "Red" and portrayed by the galvanizing Alfred Molina, painter Mark Rothko is a man of fierce convictions and fiery words. His opinions about art are delivered like biblical proclamations, spoken in the Old Testament cadences of a burning bush. As he holds forth on the nobility of highbrow ambition and the ignominy of commercial frivolity you might momentarily think you've stumbled into a town hall on the fate of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In fact, you are at the Mark Taper Forum, where this sensational production from London's Donmar Warehouse (and later Broadway)

When I was younger, and poorer, I used to take pride in my aesthetic separatism. Art was the stuff I put on walls (even if I could afford only unframed posters), and useful objects (white dinner plates from the old Akron import stores, for example) were purposefully unadorned. I adopted a similar policy for art books; I bought only small paperbacks with negligible or nonexistent illustrations.

IN 1959, Mark Rothko proclaimed, "I hate and distrust all art historians, experts and critics. They are a bunch of parasites, feeding on the body of art. Their work not only is useless, it is misleading. They can say nothing worth listening to about art or the artist, aside from personal gossip, which I grant you can sometimes be interesting." But Rothko (born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Dvinsk, Russia) did not actively resist writing about his own work.

A drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael has sold for $47.8 million at an auction. The work, titled "Head of a Young Apostle," was featured in a Sotheby's auction in London on Wednesday.  The chalk drawing, dating from the early 16th century, is believed to have been an early study for Raphael's masterpiece "Transfiguration," which is located at the The Vatican.   Sotheby's had estimated that the drawing would sell for between about $16 million and $24 million. The sale was part of a larger auction of English paintings and Renaissance works.

Guy Fieri is known to most TV viewers as the louder-than-loud host of Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," cruising the country in a red '67 Chevy convertible and looking for spots serving good old-fashioned down-home food. But based on one major review of his latest restaurant, not even Fieri would park the car for a bite to eat. Guy's American Kitchen & Bar opened in New York City's Times Square in September, and on Tuesday, the New York Times published its review. And unlike most restaurant reviews, this one is making serious waves . The review, written by Times food critic Pete Wells, is a series of increasingly hostile questions directed at Fieri.

A highly coveted painting by Mark Rothko has sold for $75.1 million at auction in New York. "No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)," which the artist created in 1954, didn't break a record, but it did command the second highest price ever for a Rothko, according to Sotheby's. The auction house had expected the painting to bring in between $35 million and $50 million. The painting had been in the collection of former Sotheby's president John Marion since 1982, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Before Reykjavik became cool and clubby, before there were Björk and Sigur Rós and the cozy mix of musical genres found on the Icelandic record label and composer collective Bedroom Community, the only internationally known (and barely) Icelandic composer was a craggy individualist, Jón Leifs. He represented the Nordic island as seeming so fascinatingly remote from Europe and America that it might almost be on another planet. But the Reykjavik revealed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Concert on Tuesday night in Walt Disney Hall felt more like a bedroom community of L.A. and New York.

Police in London have charged a man with vandalizing a Mark Rothko painting Sunday at the Tate Modern museum. Scotland Yard said in a release that Wlodzimierz Umaniec, a 26-year-old Polish national, had been arrested in connection with the crime. Police said Umaniec also goes by the name "Vladimir Umanets" -- which was scrawled on the Rothko painting. The damaged artwork was part of Rothko's Seagram mural series created in 1958. The incident took place Sunday during normal public hours.

The person claiming to have scrawled on a Mark Rothko mural painting over the weekend at London's Tate Gallery remains at large, but the individual has spoken to various news outlets, including the BBC News and ABC News, saying that he is not a vandal and that his actions have actually improved the value of the artwork. On Sunday, a painting in Rothko's Seagram series was defaced with writing on its lower right corner. According to photographs published online, the scrawling featured the name "Vladimir Umanets" and a reference to "yellowism.

On Feb. 25, 1970, Mark Rothko was found dead in his New York studio, a pool of blood spreading out on the floor beneath him, his wrists slashed. Sixty-seven years old, he had been in declining health for several years, was separated from his second wife and living alone.

A painting by Mark Rothko valued at $2.5 million was destroyed when the moving van transporting it caught fire on the San Bernardino Freeway in Baldwin Park, sheriff's deputies said Friday. No one was injured in the blaze, which broke out Thursday about 9 p.m. in a van owned by Professional Packers & Forwarders Inc., a Los Angeles-based moving company that often ships paintings for art dealers.

One of the Mark Rothko mural paintings that inspired John Logan's play, “Red,” which had a recent acclaimed run at the Mark Taper Forum starring Alfred Molina as the artist, was vandalized Sunday in its gallery at the Tate Modern in London. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that the Tate issued a statement confirming that on Sunday afternoon, “a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting,” and that police were investigating.

Jonathan Groff, 27, who earned a Tony nomination for "Spring Awakening," squares off opposite Alfred Molina in the Mark Taper Forum's production of "Red," about the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Groff also joins the cast of Starz's original series, "Boss," as the assistant to Chicago Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer), which has just returned for its second season. It's interesting that you play an assistant- apprentice in both "Boss" and "Red," but the characters are pretty different.