Anish Kapoor defends his ‘awkward’ Olympic tower

Officials hope the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower, which looms 376 feet over the Olympic Stadium in east London and includes two viewing platforms and a restaurant, will continue to attract visitors long after the Games.

The sculpture, named after the Luxembourg-based steel company that provided most of its funding, is the tallest in Britain and 72 feet taller than New York's Statue of Liberty.

But its twisting loops of steel have divided art critics and Londoners alike.

"It is awkward," Kapoor admitted as he officially unveiled the tower. "It has its elbows sticking out.

"It is unsettling and I think that is part of this thing of beauty," added the sculptor, a previous winner of Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for art.

But Kapoor, who designed the tower with architect Cecil Balmond, criticized its $24.20 entrance price for adults, saying it was "a hell of a lot of money."

The artist said a "more democratic" ticket price should be introduced when the Olympic Park—which will be closed for a year after the Games end on Aug. 12—reopens.

Visitors are encouraged to walk down the tower's 455-step spiral staircase to admire the view after taking the elevator up.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, who has dubbed the sculpture "the hubble bubble" after its resemblance to a shisha pipe, said he hoped the site would boost economic growth in east London, which is poorer than the west of the capital.

"It's a beautiful work of art, let's be in no doubt," he told AFP. "But the objective here is economic and strategic as well. It's to drive jobs, to drive growth in this part of London."

He too defended the design, pointing out that many famous landmarks have met with initial opposition, only for the public to warm to them.

"The Eiffel Tower attracted a great deal of hostility when it was first created," Johnson said.

"This is a very sinuous and sophisticated, complex structure," he continued. "It rewards the eye. Walk around it and you see these great loops of steel twisting against each other, against the sky. I think people will enjoy it."

ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel company, is contributing up to $31.6 million toward the $36.6 million project, according to the

Jeff Koons retrospective debuts in Switzerland

BASEL, Switzerland (AFP) – Celebrated U.S. pop artist Jeff Koons made his Swiss debut on Friday with the launch of an exhibition of some of his most famous works including his Balloon Dog.

The Fondation Beyeler is hosting the show spanning the career of New York-based Koons, 57, and including about 50 pieces, among them a sculpture of the late Michael Jackson with his pet chimp, Bubbles.

The exhibition, which runs from May 13 to Sept. 2, is divided into three categories: "The New," "Banality" and "Celebration."

Francis Bacon painting sells for $44.9M at Sotheby’s

Bacon's Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror was one of the three pillars at the Manhattan auction and had a presale estimate of $30 million to $40 million.

After slow bidding, the hammer finally fell at $40 million, to which commissions were added to make the final price.

A Roy Lichtenstein close-up of a blonde woman titled Sleeping Girl, executed in the Pop art king's typical cartoon style, also fetched $44.9 million, including commission, a new record for Lichtenstein.

"She is beautiful," auctioneer Tobias Meyer said of the figure in the painting.

Meyer returned to that word after the auction, telling journalists: "The high end of the market performs beautifully."

It does. Even if world equity markets and governments across the West remain jittery over their financial future, the international art market is ingiddy form, leaving the fallout from the 2008 stock markets crash a distant memory.

Wednesday's auction brought in a total of $266.6 million, double the $128 million from the same May contemporary sale last year, Sotheby's said.

"That's a great indication for where the contemporary art market is moving," Alex Rotter, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's in New York, noted.

However, even Sotheby's couldn't match the fireworks at rival Christie's on Tuesday, when records fell in droves and Mark Rothko's Orange, red, yellow sold for $86.9 million, becoming the most expensive contemporary work ever auctioned.

One of the biggest draws at Sotheby's was billed as Andy Warhol's Double Elvis, which pictures the rock ’n’ roll legend as a cowboy gunslinger. It was estimated to go for between $30 million and $50 million and ended up selling for a respectable, if muted $37 million—nowhere near the Warhol record of $71.7 million.

A string of unsold works on Wednesday added to the slightly damper accent of the evening when compared to Christie's, which saw 14 artists' records broken.

Also, at Christie's, the night's total takings of $388.5 million were the highest ever for a contemporary art auction, a record last set in 2007.

But Sotheby's has its own record to celebrate from last week's Impressionist and modern sale.

The auction house sold the only privately owned version of Edvard Munch's The Scream for $119.9 million, the most ever paid for any work at public auction.

Rothko 'Orange' painting squeezes $86.9M at Christie's

Orange, red, yellow was as hot on the Christie's block as the colors on the bold, large-scale abstract canvas. A thicket of hands shot up to catch the attention of auctioneer Christopher Burge, bids leaping in increments of a million, sometimes two million dollars.

The hammer finally fell at a hair under $87 million, including final commission, breaking both the previous record for Rothko's most expensive work of $72.84 million and the record for any contemporary work of art at auction, Christie's said.

Collectors were in full cry all evening, knocking 14 artists' records down and repeatedly meeting or exceeding high estimates.

Total takings of $388.5 million were the highest ever for a contemporary art auction, a record last set in 2007, Christie's said.

Among the other stars was the spectacular FC1 by Yves Klein, which depicts the X-ray-like outlines of two nude models captured on canvas through a mixture of paint, water and flames.

It had been estimated to fetch up to $40 million. Although the hammer came down at the relatively flat $36.5 million, including commission, that smashed Klein's previous $23.6 million record.

One of the most breathless bidding wars was for Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild, which sold for $21.8 million, easily beyond the $18 million high estimate, and also a record for the artist.

Burge was at his best, cajoling, humoring and squeezing the super-wealthy players for every spare million.

"Absolutely not," he scoffed, when one bidder suggested a modest increase of just $50,000.

"No more messing around now," he chided playfully, as the price headed north from $16 million.

One of the most original, if fragile, works of the night, a huge candle in the form of an oversize wax sculpture of art collector Peter Brant, kicked off the night with a winning bid of $1.3 million, beating the high estimate.

The sculpture is designed to be lit and allowed to melt. But the buyer needn't worry: included in the price is the right to order more of the giant candles from the same mold.

The art world has certainly recovered from its own meltdown during the 2008 financial markets crash.

Last week, the only privately owned version of Edvard Munch's The Scream—one of the most recognizable paintings in history—set an overall world record for any work sold at public auction when it fetched $119.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.

Sotheby's holds its rival contemporary auction today.

Highlights there include Pop Art master Roy Lichtenstein's Sleeping Girl, estimated at $30 million to $40 million.

Hand-painted ads resurface as urban street art

NEW YORK (AP) – New York is sprinkled with barely visible old ads painted on the sides of buildings—remnants of lost eras of urban life. Now, they're making a comeback as a nostalgic art form.

Painters known as “walldogs” work on scaffolds, dipping brushes into a lineup of open paint cans. Then come the details, carefully brushed in gleaming color onto walls that are sometimes hundreds of years old.

“So it's like, ‘Make me a bucket of soup,’” says Art Pastusak, 61, a master mentoring apprentice walldogs. “Slap it on the wall, and let's crank.”

Paul Lindahl co-founded the company leading the comeback, Colossal Media. He hired Pastusak to teach what he's been doing for three decades to a younger generation.

Though computers have taken over, ad painting fascinates people, says Lindahl, who likens the craft to performance art.

“People really stop and they watch, and they want to know what's going on, and they want to know what it is that you're painting,” Lindahl says.

Apprentice Liam McWilliams, 23, says it's “very exciting” to work with people who have been doing this their whole lives “through the snow, the heat, day in and day out.”

On a recent day, they made a beautiful, red-lipped woman a brunette in an ad for the social network Badoo as they stood suspended five stories above the street.

Painting ads is one method of promoting products that dates to the 1800s, when advertising murals were painted by hand on blank brick side walls.

Hand-painted wall advertising peaked in the early 1980s and faded in popularity as computers made large-scale vinyl printing possible. But “the respect for a hand-painted sign is still there,” Pastusak says.

So it's comeback time for a job that's not easy.

“At the end of the day you have to be able to meet a deadline, and you have to be able to make it look like it wasn't painted,” Lindahl says.

Fans like Frank Jump, author of the new book Fading Ads of New York City, says hand-painted wall ads are close to modern art.

“The best thing about a hand-painted sign,” he says, “is it's hand-painted.”

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-08-12 0726GMT

More Gerald Ford street art pops up in Grand Rapids

MLive.com reports the image of Ford in a swimsuit and towel was spotted recently on a river wall below the DeVos Place convention center. The graffiti just above the water line of the Grand River is similar to a photo of the 38th commander in chief taken at the White House pool.

The image is across the river from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. Ford's grave is on the grounds of the museum.

Several other stenciled Ford images were noticed last month along Interstate 196 in the West Michigan city. The freeway bears Ford's name.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-07-12 1055GMT

Pieces of fire-damaged Ind. courthouse to be auctioned

The county will hold a public auction at 4 p.m. May 16 at the county highway garage. The auction will take place four days before the third anniversary of the fire.

The auction will include items such as county vehicles and equipment, office materials and some charred remains of the courthouse.

“There's some things that I think people will be interested in for the historical value,” Commissioner Mark Cash said. “It might bring a few pennies, or it might bring more.”

Shortly after the fire, a contractor was hired by the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners to salvage much of the plaster moldings in the courthouse and to design new moldings similar to the originals. Meanwhile, volunteers and Historic Madison Inc. members helped collect much of the other charred items.

John Staicer, president and executive director of HMI, said the commissioners asked the organization to keep any items taken from the courthouse that it needed for historical significance or records.

“It was very difficult because it was pretty charred up,” Staicer said. “We tried to save as much as we could that told us something about how the dome and cupola was shaped, designed and originally built.”

Pieces of the scorched dome are still in storage at the Historic Madison Inc. warehouse on Elm Street in downtown Madison. The facility is used by HMI as an architectural salvage site.

The dome was original to the building, and it was constructed with small sections of metal crimped over one another.

Only hours before the fire, the dome was painted gold and looked to be in pristine condition. Much of the gold paint still remains on the charred remnants.

Several decorative plaster molds, which were taken from the old courtroom, have been cut into about half-foot segments and will be included in the auction. At a recent meeting, the commissioners said they envisioned the moldings being used by the public as possible bookends or simply purchased as keepsakes.

In addition, the auction will include parts of the clock, as well as several large pillars that feature detailed, ornate trim. HMI has pieces of three different versions—wooden, plastic and metal—of the clock faces that once served the courthouse. Each clock face was installed over the other.

“It was almost like archaeology,” Staicer said. “You had to peel back the layers to get to the original.”

___

Information from: The Madison Courier, http://www.madisoncourier.com

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-04-12 1415GMT

Munch's 'Scream' beats auction record at $119.9 million

Heated competition between seven bidders took the price to the highest for a work of art at a public auction in just 12 minutes, sparking applause.

"World record," announced auctioneer Tobias Meyer after bringing down the hammer.

The previous record was held by Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust," which sold in 2010 for $106.5 million.

"The Scream" is one of four versions of a work whose nightmarish central figure and lurid, swirling colors symbolized the existential angst and despair of the modern age.

It was sold by Norwegian Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend and supporter of the artist. He plans to establish a new museum in Norway.

On two occasions, other versions of the painting have been stolen from museums, although both were recovered. Copies have adorned everything from student dorms to tea mugs and the work has the rare quality of being known to art experts and the general public alike.

"We're delighted to say that this magnificent picture, which is not only one of the seminal images of our history, but also one of the visual keys for modern consciousness, achieved a world record," Simon Shaw, head of the Impressionist and modern department at Sotheby's, said.

Reflecting the excitement, Sotheby's spokesman Darrell Rocha said there had been an "electric" atmosphere during the sale of a painting that had been estimated to fetch at least $80 million.

"A group of seven bidders jumped into the competition early, but it was a prolonged battle between two highly determined phone bidders that carried the final selling price to its historic level," he said.

"Scream's" success means there are just three other works that have sold for more than $100 million.

One is the Picasso nude, another is Picasso's "Boy with a Pipe" which sold for $104.1 million in 2004, and the fourth is Alberto Giacometti's "Walking Man" sculpture which fetched $104.3 million in 2010.

The version of "The Scream" sold Wednesday was executed in 1895 and is the only one not held by Norwegian museums. It also features a poem inscribed by Munch in which he explains his inspiration for the work, which depicts "the great scream in nature."

Olsen said he was "very pleased" and said he hoped "the publicity given by this sale will increase interest in Munch's work and awareness of the important message that I feel it conveys."

"The scream shows for me the horrifying moment when man realizes his impact on nature and the irreversible changes that he has initiated, making the planet increasingly [un]inhabitable."

The sale was the high point of the auction of Impressionist and modern works at Sotheby's. Rival Christie's held a more muted auction Tuesday.

Both houses turn to contemporary art next week, with Mark Rothko's 1961 painting "Orange, Red, Yellow" expected to sell for $35 million to $45 million at Christie's.

#   #   #

Marilyn Monroe statue to leave Chicago

The 25-foot-tall statue of the iconic actress is slated to leave its spot along Chicago's Magnificent Mile.

The bronze and stainless steel sculpture depicts Monroe in her famous pose from the film "The Seven Year Itch.'' In the film, a draft catches Monroe's dress as she passes over a subway grate.

As soon as the sculpture was unveiled in July, people began positioning themselves under the movie star's dress to catch a subway-level view and snap pictures.

Artist Seward Johnson says he's enjoyed seeing how people have reacted to the sculpture, which is slated to be removed on Monday.

#   #   #

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

World Trade Center becomes highest NY tower

Workers gently maneuvered a steel column into its base atop the skyscraper's skeletal current top, bringing the total height just beyond the 1,250 feet (381 meters) of the Empire State Building's observation deck.

Coming on the eve of the anniversary of the killing by US forces of Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the al-Qaeda attack that demolished the former World Trade Center, the moment was marked by a celebration of technical prowess and flag-waving patriotism.

Scott Rechler, vice chairman at the Port Authority, which owns the site, told a press conference that the "the most complex construction project in our history" had been "an act of passion and an act of patriotic duty."

One World Trade Center, already a gleaming, angular landmark on the city's skyline, will get still taller as construction winds up late next year, finally reaching 1,776 feet (541.3 meters) and 104 floors.

Not only will that dwarf the 1930s masterpiece of the Empire State Building, but it will be higher than the old Twin Towers, which both collapsed during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, in which almost 3,000 people died.

Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye joked the building was so tall that "if you really crane your neck, you can see Alaska" and that, once completed, "Asia may come into view."

Although the mammoth construction work to resurrect the Ground Zero area is at last nearing fruition, the project has been plagued by billions of dollars in cost overruns, as well as delays, bickering over designs, and worries over whether the office space will be profitable.

Just over half of the units have been rented, including a major deal with publishing giant Conde Nast.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg stressed the positive, underlining the city's relationship with ambitious architecture.

"The New York City skyline is, once again, stretching to new heights," Bloomberg said. "The latest progress at the World Trade Center is a testament to New Yorkers' strength and resolve -- and to our belief in a city that is always reaching upward."

"Today our city has a new tallest building and a new sense of how bright our future is," Bloomberg said.

Some experts quibble over which New York tower is on top, since the new listing giving One World Trade Center that honor discounts the Empire State Building's needle-like antenna. When the WTC reaches its full official height, the figure of 1,776 feet will include a broadcasting antenna.

But there's no contest about which building is the tallest in the world. That's the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, measuring 2,717 feet (828.1 meters).

The old Twin Towers will always haunt the shiny replacement. Deep pools commemorating the dead have been built at the exact locations of each tower's old footprint.

#   #   #

'Spartacus' among nominees for Turner art prize

Spartacus Chetwynd, a performance artist previously called Lali, and Paul Noble, creator of fictional city Nobson Newtown, are among four artists nominated for the prize, which is known for backing challenging conceptual art.

Also listed are Elizabeth Price, who makes sci-fi-inspired videos including one dramatising the undersea existence of a sunken ship filled with luxury cars, and Luke Fowler, who has made three films about psychiatrist RD Laing.

The prize, awarded by the Tate gallery to British artists under 50, rewards work shown over the past year. Its winner will be announced on December 3 after an exhibition of all four artists at Tate Britain, which starts on October 20.

The winner will receive £25,000 ($40,500, 30,600 euros), while the other shortlisted artists get £5,000 each.

Chetwynd, 38 -- who says she lives in a nudist colony -- creates an "atmosphere of joyful improvisation" in her paintings, performances and installations, the gallery said.

Noble, 48, who has been creating drawings of the twisted imaginary city with residents made of human excrement for 15 years, was nominated for a show bringing together the "painstakingly detailed and engrossing drawings" at London's Gagosian gallery.

"Undercutting the precise, technical drawing is a dark satirical narrative which unfolds in the micro-cosmos of these monumental works," the gallery said in a statement.

Price, 45 -- who like Chetwynd and Noble is from London -- was listed for her trilogy of video installations, shown at BALTIC in Gateshead, northeast England.

Her latest work West Hinder uses motion graphics and synthetic voices to evoke a container ship of luxury cars corroding in the North Sea.

The BALTIC gallery describes the work as "a repressed psychic force, emanating from the deep."

Fowler, 34, from Glasgow, is an artist, filmmaker and musician who last year made All Divided Selves, about RD Laing, who died in 1989. It uses archive footage to delve into the meaning of psychiatry and the pain of mental illness.

The prize -- named for JMW Turner, the 18th- and 19th-century British painter who was controversial in his own day -- has often sparked a furor.

Tracey Emin's My Bed, a stained bed surrounded with detritus, drew criticism from the then-culture minister as a "shock" nominee in 1999 but attracted an average of 2,000 visitors per day.

Since 2000 the Turner show has often attracted protests from traditionalist art activist group the Stuckists, who want a return to figurative painting.

#   #   #

Follow the money: auction houses target Moscow

London-based Christie's and its US counterpart Sotheby's first descended on Russia in the 1990s as interest in post-Soviet kitsch soared.

But Sotheby's did not open its first dedicated office in the glitzy but risky and bureaucratic capital until 2007, while Christie's waited for the global financial crisis to blow over before following suit in 2010.

Yet unlike most Western capitals, Russia's holds an unparalleled concentration of the country's super-rich, with the 78 Moscow billionaires last counted by Forbes magazine worth a combined $334 billion.

The money has grown so big -- and the will to splash it around so prevalent -- that the auction houses are now swallowing the costs involved in bringing their latest Dutch masters to Moscow for viewings ahead of auctions in London and New York.

"There is money in Moscow, that's why Christie's and Sotheby's are putting in so much effort," said Irina Kolosova, director of the Russian Institute of Art and Antiques Business.

In mid-April, Christie's held a three-day viewing in an historic mansion that included works by Rembrandt, the contemporary British artist Damien Hirst and the Russian painter Pyotr Konchalovsky.

Last Tuesday, Sotheby's sold a painting by Ivan Aivazovsky -- the perennially popular 19th century Russian seascape master -- for a record 3.2 million pounds ($5.2 million) after showcasing it in Moscow last year.

"We see Russian collectors participating in eight to ten percent of our global turnover," spending as much as $5.7 billion on art in 2011, said Christie's Russia director Matthew Stephenson.

Russians' interest in the world's most expensive paintings seemed to catch fire when oil prices first took off nearly a decade ago, flooding Moscow with petrodollars and displays of extravagant wealth.

"We really saw a surge in our sales (to Russians) after 2004, primarily of Russian art," a phenomenon that helped return many masterpieces to their native country from all over the world, said Stephenson.

But Russian buyers are also showing a "rising interest in other regions, other cultures and works by foreign artists," he added.

The tastes of Russia's wealthy now seems to gravitate towards whatever is more expensive, said one art collector, with interest in minor artists dwindling at times when spenders have to slightly tighten their belts.

"Russian collectors buy it all. That's not to say whatever is out there, but all of the best," said collector Alexei Ustinov. "That includes Western paintings as well as the great masters of Russian art."

He added that many viewed art as a great investment, particularly with the price gyrations experienced by Russia's commodity exports in the past 10 years.

"On average, art increases in price by 15 to 20 percent a year," said Ustinov. "That is not very likely to happen on any stock market or with any other type of investment."

In a sign of a market picking up, Russian houses are also starting to auction off art for eyebrow-raising prices although the volume of their sales is still comparatively modest, said Kolosova, the Russian art institute head.

Moscow's Leonid Shishkin Gallery made headlines a year ago by selling a Konchalovsky for 20.9 million rubles ($615,700).

#   #   #

Swiss say Cezanne damaged in heist can be restored

GENEVA (AP) - A Swiss art expert says a $110 million painting by Paul Cezanne damaged following a robbery four years ago can be restored.

The director of the E.G. Buehrle foundation that owns the painting says the French impressionist's work "The Boy in the Red Vest'' suffered rips to its canvas after it was stolen from a Zurich gallery.

Lukas Gloor told a news conference in Zurich on Friday that the repairs will take time but he is confident they will restore the work to its former state.

Four men were arrested in Serbia earlier this month when a pan-European police operation led to the seizure of the painting, which was stolen from a Zurich gallery in 2008.

Masterpieces by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Degas were also taken in the heist but subsequently recovered.

#   #   #

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Wyeth's Pa. world opening to public for first time

"I AM WORKING SO PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB. I do not sign autographs," announces a small white sign at the entryway.

Now for the first time, the public will be able to get past that sign and venture into Wyeth's world.

Starting July 3, the studio will be open to the public for a handful of tours each day. Shuttle buses will transport a maximum of 14 people for the short ride from the museum to the studio for each tour. Timed tickets go on sale June 1.

"He did a great job of keeping the place under wraps," said Christine Podmaniczky, a curator at the Brandywine River Museum.

The fieldstone A-frame structure was built as a schoolhouse in 1875 and purchased by Wyeth's father, the celebrated illustrator N.C. Wyeth, in 1925 when the school closed. Andrew Wyeth married his wife, Betsy, in 1940 and the old schoolhouse became their home, where they raised their sons Nicholas and Jamie, as well as Wyeth's art studio. The family also spent many summers in Maine.

They moved to another house nearby in 1961 but Wyeth kept the place as his studio for the remainder of his life. He painted thousands of egg tempera paintings, drawings and watercolors there, from the dark self-portrait "Trodden Weed" to his hundreds of secret Helga paintings, which generated worldwide publicity and controversy when they were suddenly revealed in 1986.

After Wyeth's death in 2009, his wife donated the studio to the neighboring Brandywine River Museum. Extensive work was necessary before the building could open to tours.

"Structurally it was a mess," Podmaniczky said, noting that the wood-shingled roof needed replacing, the foundation had to be stabilized and the chimney was pulling away from the rest of the structure. Every piece of the studio's contents also was scrutinized, from the smallest paintbrush to the largest piece of furniture.

"We sent things out to conservators," she said. "Everything was catalogued and numbered, all the artwork was copied and the copies were hung in the exact same places as the originals."

The rooms are both austere and cozy, lacking in decorative flourishes but filled with cherished mementos and personal collections that shed light on Wyeth's inspiration and interests.

Charming family photographs are interspersed with celebrity friends like Henry Fonda and Errol Flynn. In one photo, Wyeth is fencing with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; in the next room, fencing masks line a windowsill and phone numbers are jotted down on a wall next to the telephone. There are collections of World War I uniforms and helmets, Sheperd Paine dioramas, shelves upon shelves of art books, stacked film canisters and 1,250 military figurines — some from Wyeth's childhood and subjects of his earliest drawings.

An old film projector in what was once the living room points to the wall where the family frequently watched the epic World War I silent movie "The Big Parade," Wyeth's favorite film. Its landscapes and other imagery made their way into his paintings.

In the same room is a recreation of the little cordoned-off workspace, created by a then-teenage Jamie Wyeth with a couple of black fabric partitions, where he would paint his famous posthumous portrait of John F. Kennedy in 1967, among other works.

"A lot of what we relied on is oral history," Podmaniczky said. "They were not a family who took a lot of photographs."

The main space where Wyeth did his actual painting is the most bare in the house. The unpainted plaster walls are adorned only with sketches and studies for his paintings and a few photos, while the dominant features are a huge mirror, paint-stained apron, round stool and brushes.

Long cracks run along the ceiling and a plywood sheet covers one window, concentrating the sunshine through the north-facing windows that brought the best light.

"He was very unassuming," Podmaniczky said. "The trappings didn't matter. He just wanted to paint."

Next to an artist's palette sits an egg crate for making his signature medium — egg tempera, a thick mixture of yolks, pigment and distilled water. Mary Nell Ferry, a guide who will be walking visitors through the site, said the famous artist's preferred eggs came from a local convenience store.

"He always used Wawa extra-large eggs for his egg tempera," she said. "They had to be white eggs because he thought brown eggs had an oilier consistency."

At the Brandywine River Museum, a companion exhibit brings together works featuring architectural elements and objects visitors will recognize after touring Wyeth's studio.

On the Net:

http://www.brandywinemuseum.org

#   #   #

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

'Scream' set to make noise at New York art auction

Picasso's portrait of Dora Maar, estimated to sell for $20 million to $30 million at Sotheby's on Wednesday, and Cezanne's "Joueurs de Cartes," estimated to fetch $15 million to $20 million at Christie's on Tuesday, are other highlights of the Impressionist and modern sales.

"The Scream" is one of four versions of a work that symbolized with its nightmarish central figure and lurid colors the existential angst and despair of the modern age.

Simon Shaw, head of the Impressionist and modern department at Sotheby's, said it was "very hard to estimate" the value of the work being sold by Norwegian Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend and supporter of the artist.

Some believe bidding could go beyond $80 million, taking the work into the company of just eight other paintings in that price range.

On two occasions, other versions of the painting have been stolen from museums, although both were recovered. Copies have adorned everything from student dorms to tea mugs and the work is one of the few known equally to art experts and the general public alike.

The following week will see post-war and contemporary sales. Among the highlights will be Mark Rothko's 1961 painting "Orange, Red, Yellow" at Christie's on May 8, with an estimate of $35 million to $45 million.

A Jackson Pollock work, "No. 28," also from the collection of philanthropist David Pincus, is estimated to sell for $20 million to $30 million. Christie's says "there has not been a Jackson Pollock of this quality or scale at auction since 1997."

On May 9, Sotheby's will offer a strong focus on Pop Art, with Roy Lichtenstein's "Sleeping Girl" from 1964 estimated at $30 million to $40 million, and Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" estimated at $30 million to $50 million.

The headliner, though, could be Francis Bacon's "Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror" from 1976.

Sotheby's said the painting, estimated at $30 million to $40 million, is "one of the artist's most important paintings ever to come to auction, and is a summation of his simultaneously painterly and intellectual genius."

#   #   #