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Art Review Ltd and Modern Media Holdings Ltd are pleased to announce the acquisition of a majority shareholding in ArtReview, ArtReview Asia and artreview.com by Modern Media, China’s leading high-end communications group. As a result, ArtReview, ArtReview Asia and artreview.com will join a multimedia publishing organisation that includes The Art Newspaper China, LEAP, Modern Weekly, Nowness and Numéro, among other titles, and a group that can bring the magazines’ content to new platforms and new audiences worldwide.

Colombia’s renowned modern artist Edgar Negret did not imitate reality. He fed off it and created a language that invents new ways of presenting our surroundings. Edgar Negret (1920) lived in awe of the universe. “I lived on the verge of something - on the fringe of reality- happening,” he told journalist José Hernández. “I believe in my work I have searched for God always and everywhere.”

MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd, a company of the MCH Group in Basel (Switzerland), is selling its 25.1 percent stake in art.fair International GmbH in Cologne to Angus Montgomery (HK) Ltd and TFI Ltd in equal shares.

After the exhibitions showcasing Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, André Derain and Henri Matisse, the Centre Pompidou continues its re-examination of key 20th century works by devoting a major exhibition to Francis Bacon. The last major French exhibition of this artist’s work was held in 1996 at the Centre Pompidou. More than twenty years later, Bacon, In Words presents paintings dating from 1971, the year of the retrospective event at the national galleries of the Grand Palais, to his final works in 1992. Didier Ottinger is the curator of this innovative exploration of the influence of literature in Francis Bacon’s painting.

"By standardized beauty I mean the fact that nowadays you mostly have to lay all on the table, on videos, billboards, photos… Everything has to have a fast effect, eye catching moments to reach your primary sexual instincts because everything is about selling something to someone. The easiest way to do that is to bring different female body parts to the game. ...I think that my main goal has been to try to make the viewer feel the beauty instead of actually seeing it in a way".

It’s not sheer chance that great historical art centers such as Venice, Amsterdam and New York all became important commercial centers at around the same time. That is also part of Antwerp’s story. Antwerp is world renowned for its diamonds, its port, its fashion mecca as well as its international art center. In 1600 its Golden Age came to an end and a young Rubens walked through its streets.

"The ability to create is first perceived as a rare skill reserved for a few exceptional individuals, and is now considered a widespread and easily accessible phenomenon. This new conception of creation, referred to as the new word "creativity", has taken on such importance that it has now invaded all sectors of human activity".

ArtDependence Magazine is based in Antwerp, Flanders, where a regional election is about to take place. We asked the key players in the election to share their views on art and culture and to tell us when they last visited a museum. We also asked what they would be doing for art and culture if they win the elections.

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient cemetery near Egypt's famous pyramids in the Giza plateau near Cairo, said the country's ministry of antiquities. Wooden tombs painted in various colours and limestone statues were among the treasures found in the 4,500-year-old burial ground.

I M Pei, the architect behind buildings including the glass pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris, has died aged 102. Tributes have been pouring in, remembering him for a lifetime of designing iconic structures worldwide. Pei's designs are renowned for their emphasis on precision geometry, plain surfaces and natural light. He carried on working well into old age, creating one of his most famous masterpieces - the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar - in his 80s.

Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas was announced as the 2019 winner of the prestigious £30,000 prize at a special award ceremony at The Photographers’ Gallery, London for her first European retrospective Mediations at Jeu de Paume, Paris 2018.

Working mainly in video installations and sculptures, artist Elias Cafmeyer creates site-specific installations. His work is often inspired by and placed in public spaces that show a context with the city that contains them. Cafmeyer sees the city landscape as a metaphor for social construction and focusses on the traces of urban development and the signs and symbols that orchestrate our mobility within those environments.

Announcement made in conjunction with discussion “Preserving the Future: Conserving Contemporary Art in the Digital Age” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, held on the occasion of the vernissage of the 2019 Venice Biennale, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and F Trustee Vladimir Potanin.

The Van Gogh Museum has secured three new acquisitions for its collection: an Impressionist still life by Gustave Caillebotte, a landscape with a house by Gabriele Münter – the first painting by Münter to enter a Dutch museum – and a significant Vincent van Gogh letter, which he wrote to Albert Aurier in response to the art critic’s comprehensive review praising his work.

Multispectral scans, taken last week of a life-size canvas of the Last Supper, have revealed that Leonardo da Vinci very likely painted the beautiful face of the Apostle John. The scans, which were conducted at the Abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium where the painting has hung for more than 450 years, confirm the findings of a new book, The Da Vinci Legacy (Apollo Publishers, 2019), by art historians Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher H. Brown.

Ukrainian authorities discovered an oil painting by the French Impressionist Paul Signac, valued at 1.5 million euros ($1.68 million), which was stolen last year from a museum in France. Police chief Sergiy Knyazev said the painting was discovered at the home of a Kiev man who was also wanted on suspicion of murdering a jeweller.

"If science can become instrumental in rediscovering the true values of our cultural heritage, and using widespread modern technologies attract the interest and curiosity of new generations, then I can see a new renaissance for the role of art in the future. Hopefully, in the decades to come people will still feel linked to their past if it will be identified as fundamental for the creation of their identity".

The mural popped up yesterday night when protestors gathered at Marble Arch to celebrate the end of the ten day long demonstrations. The image showed a child clutching an XR sign while crouching near a plant, with accompanying words: ‘From this moment despair ends and tactics begin’.

In the sixteenth century, so the story goes, Iran imported glass from Europe, but it would arrive fractured and broken after its long journey. Artisans began using the shards to decorate mosques, creating the intricate mosaics known as aineh-kari, in which mosques' domed ceilings and fretted walls are transformed into sparkling arrays. Years later, the Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who died on Saturday in Tehran, used this technique as the inspiration for her distinctive sculptures and wall-hung works.

“How do you see this tree? said Gauguin at the Bois d’Amour: Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible”.