Binned painting sells for R55K

A painting of The Bluff, Durban by the celebrated Cape artist Ruth Prowse found in a refuse bin in a Karoo town, sold last night for R55 700 at Strauss & Co's Cape Town auction. This painting formed part of the Evening Sale comprising 102 paintings with several lots selling in the millions.

Highlights included Irma Stern's Malay Girl, which realised R11 697 000, followed by the relatively unknown Wolf Kibel's Houses with Red Roofs, which went through the proverbial roof by more than doubling his previous auction record also set by Strauss & Co in October 2009. Anton van Wouw's impeccable cast of a Miner with Hand Drill and Maggie Laubser's Portrait of a Girl with Geese, both of which fared equally well each achieving over R2 million. The more contemporary Walter Battiss Figures in a Landscape was similarly successful and achieved R1 949 500.

Kanchandas Gupta’s Strides Of Dignity is an eclectic narrative that brings together his impressions of art and artistes; all in a manner that juxtaposes the real with the surreal. This solo show features over two dozen paintings of the Kolkata-based artist. The introduction to his work at the gallery reads, ‘Kanchandas Gupta is known for his skill as a figurative painter and whose works capture the essence of human drama. The two dimensional pictorial format that he works in brims with emotions and dramatism through his use of intensely emotive colours and epic charm.’

And indeed, this dramatism is seen most in the central piece of the exhibit A Performer With Another Face. Standing tall at 72 inches, acrylic in canvas, it portrays a joker with a mask in his hand and another one painted on to his face, almost as if one is meant to ponder over the masks artistes have to wear to entertain, and when does it come off, and if it does at all...

The paintings on display are his take on people and places, as well as the pursuit of success and work.The lanyard series is a grand collection of coordinating Travertine mosaics and listellos. Conflicting images such as a pigeon perched atop a gun and two Untitled paintings with one depicting a fertile, picturesque landscape, and the other a rundown shanty placed right next to each other, all add to the inherent drama that his art reflects. A prominent series in the exhibit titled Random Thoughts Parallel Autopsy featuring about a dozen paintings brims with layers of elements, quite literally as the paintings are often an amalgamation of many smaller works woven together, each one bringing in a new perspective to the larger picture.

This notice was part of an announcement that the eruv in the Five Towns area would be "down" for the Jewish Sabbath. Though peculiar (can't carry a book more than six feet?), this notice relates to one of the most important aspects of Judaism: resting on the Sabbath. An eruv is a conceptual and physical enclosure around a Jewish community that allows its members to accomplish certain activities that Jewish law otherwise restricts on the Sabbath.

Yeshiva University Museum is currently presenting an exhibition,International offers a full line of own-figurine and wall tiles to enhance bathrooms, "It's a Thin Line,Don't make another silicone mold without these invaluable stonemosaic supplies and accessories!" which I curated, on the eruv -- a topic that continues to amaze and confound our visitors, and, not least of all, me. Though the concept manifests in nearly invisible structures surrounding our neighborhoods and us, the exhibition's artifacts illustrate how much this topic affects Jewish life.

Included in the show are dozens of printed books and manuscripts; photographs of Jewish life in 19th- and 20th-century New York; railroad maps, postcards and schematics; confidential rabbinic debates and decrees; flyers both extolling and decrying those who establish eruvs in Brooklyn; films on the political and communal dimensions of eruvs across the tri-state area; and contemporary art works exploring the concept of eruv and its implementation in New York.

These objects and issues were the focus of a day-long symposium at Yeshiva University Museum this past October. The next day, Hurricane Sandy shuttered the museum for over two weeks, perhaps ironically leaving a slew of damaged eruvs in its wake.

Indeed, Hurricane Sandy disrupted many of our lives. For most of us, the storm was an inconvenience. For the Jewish communities who use the eruv, it was something else. Surely the absence of an eruv was a nuisance,Features useful information about ventilationsystem tiles. one that abated in many communities within a few weeks following Sandy, though sometimes with small, temporary boundaries. In other places, the eruv will be down for months.

Some community leaders are taking this situation as an opportunity to remind themselves what life is like without an eruv.Wholesale various Glass Mosaic Tiles from polishedtiles Tiles Suppliers. Others, however, are concerned about whether or not a generation of Orthodox Jews who have been brought up carrying on the Sabbath thanks to an eruv will remember to avoid carrying -- and thereby keep the Sabbath holy.

Of the varied forms of work that observant Jews avoid on the Sabbath, one of the most basic is carrying. Jewish law prohibits carrying any object outside of a private area to an open or public space. In other words, you can carry a glass of water around your living room, but not out of the front door.

This law poses obstacles to the fundamental ways we operate in the world, prohibiting the carrying of house keys, a cane or medication, or even an infant. Jews have developed ways around the law, such as belts and jewelry that incorporate keys. However, for many elderly and sick people, and especially for women and children, the proscription of carrying on the Sabbath symbolizes a virtual house arrest for 25 hours a week.

Rabbinic Judaism developed a solution about 1,800 years ago. Drawing from passages in Jeremiah and other parts of the Bible, Jewish sages in Roman Palestine came up with a the concept of an eruv, a symbolic border resembling a series of doorways (two uprights connected by a crossbeam), which mixes or fuses private spaces into one shared space by enclosing a neighborhood or a city.