While visiting American Fine Art in Old Town Scottsdale's Arts District legendary graffiti writer and tagger Cornbread leaves his indelible mark. Now proudly featured on the south side of the building is Cornbread's iconic tag "Cornbread The Legend 1965"

Cornbread's adornment of American Fine Art's exterior is no coincidence. The legend was in town to preview the collection of acclaimed street artist AtZ and write an introduction for the first ever catalogue raisonne book for the artist.

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Harmony of color and beauty of form come together in this exhibition of paintings, drawings and monumental sculpture celebrating the visionary Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. As a poet of daily life in Latin America and a pioneer of figurative art, Botero created art for more than 60 years, in a unique, sumptuous style that is immediately recognizable known as “Boterismo”. Experience the Maestro’s artistic creations in the Garden and in Dorrance Hall, with an expanded gallery space that takes an intimate look at his influences, motivations and working methods.

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Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist whose paintings peopled with full-figured members of the elite achieved international fame, opening doors for many Latin Americans after him, has died at 91.

Lina Botero, his daughter, told Caracol, a Colombian radio station, that her father died at his home in Monaco on Friday morning. He had been battling pneumonia.

Botero often said that he intended his work as a protest, not only against issues of the moment, but against centuries of colonization in Latin America.

“I don’t want to be colonized by anyone, to feel that Latin American art is being defined for me,” he said in the Artforum interview. “Art should be independent. This is the beginning of real independence; only then can one have independence in thinking, in position, in language.”

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Françoise Gilot, a painter whose career was overshadowed by her romantic relationship with a much older Pablo Picasso and whose 1964 memoir of their time together became an international bestseller, died Tuesday at the age of 101.

Born into a prosperous Parisian family, Her mother—who had studied art history, ceramics and watercolor painting—was her first tutor. Later, she took lessons with the Hungarian-French painter Endre Rozsda. Rozsda was Jewish, and he fled Paris in 1943.

“As his train steamed out of the station, the 21-year-old Gilot wailed: ‘But what am I to do?’ Her teacher, laughing, shouted: ‘Don’t worry! Who knows? Three months from now, you may meet Picasso!’” 

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Maya Widmaier-Picasso, the eldest daughter of Pablo Picasso, died of pulmonary complications on 20 December in Paris, aged 87. The news was confirmed by her son, the television producer Olivier Widmaier-Picasso. He tells The Art Newspaper that she “died peacefully, surrounded by her family”, including himself, his sister the art historian Diana Widmaier-Picasso and their father Pierre Widmaier, husband to Maya.

The Picasso Museum in Paris is currently showing two exhibitions, curated by Diana, which are dedicated to Maya's life and collection and which run until the end of the month. The first presents the works offered by Maya last year to the French state as “payment in lieu” of inheritance tax. She had selected six paintings, a sculpture, a sketchbook and a tribal statue, to complete the huge collection which founded the Musée Picasso after her father's death in 1973. “She was very attached to the idea that her inheritance should go to a museum,” Olivier says, “so I always thought I had a ‘little brother’ called the French public collection."

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Andy Warhol loved the holidays. 

Before he exploded into the public consciousness with soup cans, the artist worked as a successful commercial illustrator. One of his most important clients was Tiffany & Co. The luxury jeweler commissioned Warhol to create holiday cards from 1957 until 1962. 

Those cheerful, iconic images have endured and Tiffany is trotting them out once again. The jewelry company dipped into its archives this year to create a limited-edition home and accessories line, featuring hand-painted glass ornaments, bone china dessert plates, greeting cards, playing cards and an Advent calendar. All of these products are, of course, ridiculously expensive. But, the result is a joyous expression of Warhol’s whimsy and a reminder that luxury can be fun. (The company is even currently referring to it as its “Warholiday” season, and is punctuating it with in-store installations and immersive experiences.)

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A $149.2m Seurat studio scene and $137.7m Cézanne landscape led the 60-lot, white glove sale, while breathtaking Andrew Wyeth garnered six times its high estimate at $20m.

The historic evening took flight with Pablo Picasso’s petite, four-inch-by-six-inch oil, Quatre baigneuses from 1921 that hammered at $2.8m ($3.4m with fees) against an estimate of $600,000-$800,000, and Alexander Calder’s Untitled standing mobile (what he termed a “stabile”) from around 1942 made $6.5m ($7.8m with fees), well past its $3.5m high estimate.

A light-filled and undeniably sexy Andrew Wyeth painting, Day Dream (1980), executed in tempera on panel and depicting a sleeping nude under a mosquito net, took the saleroom by storm. It eventually sold for a hammer price of $20m ($23.2m with fees), a new auction record for the artist and more than six times its high estimate of $3m.

Remarkably still—and unusually for a dispersal of this magnitude—all of the net proceeds will benefit the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to support philanthropy “pursuant to Mr. Allen’s wishes”

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In the second collaboration between the Swiss watchmaking manufacture and the brilliant American artist Shepard Fairey, Hublot presents the Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey timepiece. A veritable titanium sculpture to be worn on the wrist, it symbolises the natural cycles of life and the unity between different cultures.

Hublot is staying true to its motto "Be the first, be unique, be different" by deepening its commitment to its "Hublot Loves Art" programme. After unveiling new collaborations with artists Takashi Murakami and Richard Orlinski, Hublot is today presenting its third watchmaking work of art of the year, the Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey.

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The Collaboration is a new stage production that explores Warhol's relationship with fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, specifically dissecting the history of their 1984 joint modern art exhibit.

Following its run at the Young Vic in London earlier this year, the Anthony McCarten-written production is set to begin previws at the Manhattan Theater Club on November 29. Opening night is scheduled for December 20.

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Andy Warhol: Cars
Works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection

Commissioned on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the motor car, Andy Warhol’s uncompleted 1986/87 Cars series was to include 80 pictures intended to record the history of the motor car from the Daimler Motor Coach and Benz Patent Motor Car, both dating from 1886, to the present day. The last series of pictures to be undertaken in his lifetime, only 36 silk-screen paintings and 13 drawings representing eight different Mercedes-Benz models were completed. Much like his previous work involving the iconography of branded consumer products and celebrities, Warhol managed to bring together the image of the automobile, and more specifically the Mercedes-Benz brand, within the context of high art.

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Margaret Keane, who has died aged 94, was one of the world’s most popular artists. Her paintings of children whose big eyes seemed to express a fearful innocence and vulnerability were so popular that they were hung in museums and galleries across the world, generated endless publicity and spawned an industry of countless reproductions. At the height of her success, in the mid-1960s, they also engendered a spirited debate as to whether this work, denounced by critics, could even be counted as art at all.

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Paris crowds bustling to see the Mona Lisa at the Musée du Louvre on Sunday were shocked to witness a man attempt to smash the protective glass case surrounding the famous portrait, before then smearing cake across its surface.

Videos shared on social media show the man being escorted out of the gallery by museum security. In French, he says: "Think of the planet… there are people who are destroying the planet, think about that … That's why I did it."

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Pittsburgh is already home to the Andy Warhol Museum and now the artist’s hometown is establishing a six-block Pop District in the surrounding neighborhood.

“The goal of this project is to make sure the next Andy Warhol doesn’t have to leave Pittsburgh to become Andy Warhol,” Sam Reiman, director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the new district’s lead funder, said in a statement. “The Warhol team’s innovative strategy will make Pittsburgh a national leader in creating new cultural models for American cities.… and a magnet to attract and retain young creative talent.”

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