Todd Wanek, president and CEO of Ashley Furniture, speaks at the April announcement that his company will be opening a plant in Davie County.
Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. has begun hiring for its planned $80 million manufacturing and distribution center near Advance in Davie County.
The furniture maker, based in Arcadia, Wisc., has six positions posted on its website related to its new warehouse operations that were announced in April during the High Point Market. The positions advertised include a director of warehouse operations, returns & liquidation coordinator, shipping desk clerk and warehouse superintendent and supervisors.
The company is planning to employ up to 1,100 workers over the next five years at a 640-acre site on Baltimore Road that includes land that had been held by the Davie County Economic Development Commission and a former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company facility that until recently was owned by Asheboro businessman Jeff Schwarz.
The land from the economic development commission was given to Ashley Furniture after being donated to the organization last year by R.J. Reynolds. Ashley Furniture purchased the 311-acre parcel Schwarz owned on June 27 for $10 million, according to property records.
Todd Wanek, president of Ashley Furniture, said in April that plans call for 418,000 square feet of existing warehouse space to be put into use in October or November as a distribution center, followed by the construction of an additional 1.5 million square feet of space.
Owen Covington covers health care, commercial real estate, economic development, law/bankruptcy court, media/advertising, tobacco, state government and sports business.
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Constable painting The Lock sells for £22.4m - BBC News
Jussi Pylkkanen, of Christie's Europe, says the sale was "a historic moment"
John Constable's The Lock has become one of the most expensive British paintings ever sold, fetching £22.4m at auction at Christie's in London.
The full price of £22,441,250 for the 1824 masterpiece depicting Suffolk rural life places it joint fourth on the list of most-expensive Old Masters.
George Stubbs's Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey, fetched the same in 2011.
The Lock had been housed in Madrid's Bornemisza Museum.
Its owner, Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, said it was "very painful" to sell the work but that she had to because she had "no liquidity".
Museum trustee Sir Norman Rosenthal has resigned in protest at the sale, criticising the baroness - known as Tita - for putting one of its prize exhibits up for sale.
In his resignation letter, the former exhibitions director of London's Royal Academy said the decision "represents a moral shame on the part of all those concerned, most especially on the part of Tita".
Constable's six large canvases depicting the area around Flatford Mill in Suffolk changed the course of art.
Pictures such as The Lock might seem a bit traditional now, but in 1824 the artist's use of colour, expressive brushstrokes and contemporary subject was radical.
While The Lock hung in the annual exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Hay Wain - another painting from the series - was being shown at the Paris Salon.
Charles X gave it a gold medal, while artists Théodore Géricault and Eugene Delacroix responded by changing the way they approached painting.
Their Constable-inspired innovations led directly to Impressionism and the birth of modern art.
A former Miss Spain, the baroness is the fifth wife and widow of Swiss industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.
The Lock was part of the huge private art collection he left behind when he died in 2002.
While most of it was sold to Spain, 250 artworks are still in the baroness's private collection and have been lent to the country free of charge for the past 13 years.
Announcing the sale of the Constable painting in May, the baroness said she needed to sell because of the current economic crisis.
"It's very painful for me, but there was no other way out," she told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "I need the money, I really need it. I have no liquidity.
"Keeping the collection here is costly to me and I get nothing in return."
Francesca Von Habsburg, the baroness's stepdaughter and another museum board member, has also expressed disapproval over the sale.
"The baroness has shown absolutely no respect for my father and is simply putting her own finanical needs above everything else," she told the Mail on Sunday.
The first owner of The Lock was James Morrison, who bought the painting at the 1824 Royal Academy exhibition.
The son of an innkeeper, Mr Morrison became one of the wealthiest British merchants of the 19th Century and a prolific art collector.
The Lock remained in the possession of his descendants until 1990.
The top end of the art market has escaped many of the problems faced by the wider global economy, with new records consistently being set for individual artists.
Last month Joan Miro's 1927 work Peinture (Etoile Bleue) sold for more than £23.5m, a record for the Spanish painter.
In May Edvard Munch's The Scream became the most expensive art work ever sold at auction, selling for $119.9m (£74m) in New York.
The top price for an Old Master was reached in 2002 when Sir Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5m.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Is this our last look at Constable's masterpiece? Fears The Lock could vanish from public view after it sells for £22.4m - Daily Mail
- British museums couldn't afford to compete at Christie's auction
By Paul Harris
|
She is drinking in the beauty of one of the most celebrated images of the English countryside.
And let us hope this young art lover had a good, long look.
Last night there were fears that Constable’s masterpiece The Lock could disappear forever from public view after it was sold to a private buyer for 22.4million.
Beauty of a bygone age: A Christie's employee gazes at The Lock by English artist John Constable as it went up for auction yesterday
Too expensive for British museums: There are fears the landscape may never be seen in public again after it was bought by a private buyer for 22.4million
Experts had warned that cash-strapped British museums and galleries were unlikely to pay up to save it for the nation when it was auctioned at Christie’s in London.
And with no obligation for the new owner to keep it on display, it may be the last time we have the chance to see for ourselves the genius of each brush stroke.
The landscape, part of a succession Constable nicknamed ‘the six-footers’, and one of his favourites, was up for auction for only the second time in its history.
Back in 1824, MP James Morrison paid 150 guineas for it, the equivalent of around 20,000 today.
Keeping it quiet: Bidders on phones try to stay discreet. The painting went to an anonymous bidder after taking two minutes to reach its final price
Then in 1990 it was sold for 10.8million to Dutch-born billionaire Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his wife Carmen ‘Tita’ Thyssen, a former Miss Spain.
That was a record for a British work of art and it was not surpassed until 2006, when a view of Venice by Constable’s rival JMW Turner was bought for 20.5million.
Three months ago Edvard Munch’s iconic masterpiece The Scream became the most expensive work of art to be sold at auction, for the dollar equivalent of 74million.
Last night at Christie’s, The Lock took only two minutes to reach its comparatively modest price and was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder. The sale is a joint record for an Old Master at Christie’s, making the Lock one of the most expensive British paintings ever sold.
Quintessentially English: The Lock, like another of his great works, The Hay Wain (pictured), epitomises Constable's lifelong love of Suffolk and was the fifth of six landscapes he painted of the Stour Valley
Although its original price tag has multiplied nearly 140,000 times since it was first sold at the Royal Academy, counting on it for a massive return on the 1990 price was a gamble.
Some experts calculated that it has actually lost value in real terms over the last 22 years.
The Lock, like another of his great works, The Hay Wain, epitomises Constable’s lifelong love of the Suffolk countryside. The Lock was the fifth of six landscapes he painted of the Stour Valley.
It depicts a figure struggling to open a canal gate at Dedham Lock near Flatford Mill to allow a barge to pass.
After it was sold in 1990 to the Thyssen-Bornemisza family it had been housed in Madrid’s Bornemisza Museum. Last night art expert Godfrey Barker confirmed the painting had probably gone to a UK private buyer.
‘Constable does not cross borders,’ he said. ‘A sunbaked scene in Suffolk is too British for the international market. It is most likely to have gone to a British private buyer as our museums don’t have that kind of money.’
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
India's 'child Picasso' puts on his goggles and takes aim at the canvas - The Guardian
"I want to do some painting," said the small voice underneath the dining table. "But first I want to shoot someone." Kapow! A green foam ball pinged out from beneath the tablecloth, shortly followed by Shorya Mahanot, wielding a luminous pumpgun. Clearly pleased that he had hit one of his big sisters, Asia's youngest abstract painter ran off to get changed.
Dubbed a "child Picasso" by the Indian media, five-year-old Shorya hit the headlines last month when India's most famous cartoonist took him under his wing. RK Laxman, 90, welcomed the budding artist into his home in Pune, Maharashtra. He was so impressed, his father, Aditya Singh says, that he suggested the pair put on a joint exhibition in Mumbai next month.
Neemuch, a dusty town in central India is best known, if at all, for its opium production and the unusually high number of locals who donate their eyes after death.
One of Shorya Mahanot's abstract paintings. Photograph: Helen Pidd for the Guardian But if Aditya Singh's dream comes true, Neemuch may soon be famed as the birthplace and workplace of India's greatest contemporary artist; a south Asian Giverny; a place as synonymous with 21st-century abstraction as New York is for pop art.
Dressed in his painting clothes of splattered pyjama bottoms, cartoon-themed sandals and the sort of maroon collarless shirt favoured by the Indian independence leader Nehru, Shorya set to work.
Like all the greats, he has assistants to do the boring bits – in this case his obliging older sisters, Shruti, 18, and Shreya, 20, and one of his dad's servants. Crouched down on a plastic mat, he surveyed his acrylic collection and told his minions which paints to open. "His hands are too little to handle the lids," explained his proud father, 47, who organised his first exhibition last year at Mumbai's Taj hotel.
After choosing an autumn palette of browns and oranges, Shorya set to work. Like a surgeon requesting a scalpel mid-operation, he demanded the biggest paintbrush be passed to him, and swept the bristles in wide strokes over the canvas. Each movement appeared deliberate but exaggerated, as if his painting were an unruly orchestra under his conduction.
He reached for his goggles, which lent him the air of a shrunken Biggles. Before long he was scooping his tiny hands into the paint pots and lobbing colour at the easel, overarm, as if bowling for India.
"You have seen Jackson Pollock's art?" said his father, filming the scene on one of the family's two iPads. "Jackson Pollock said that abstract art requires a lot of force."
Shorya's teachers agree he has a special talent, but add that it is the zeal with which Aditya was encouraging his son's creativity that they found particularly startling. "The other parents want their child to become an engineer or a doctors and do not see the value of creative fields," said sports teacher Sanjay Dikshit. "The education system in India is changing but for so long, all the emphasis has been on academic work," said Anju Salim, who teaches English. Aditya said he would love Shorya to become a successful artist, raising India's profile in the global art world. "But we don't pressurise him. He only paints when he wants to. As well as school subjects, he is also very good at yoga and cricket and basketball – he is dribbling very nicely. Sometimes he just wants to play on the Wii," said Aditya, gesturing towards a truly colossal TV set in the family's living room, where Shorya was lying down on the sofa watching cartoons.
It didn't matter if Shorya remained a penniless artist for years, Aditya insisted. "I will support him for as long as I can." He says his next task is to get Shorya gallery representation, giving him a channel through which to sell his works and gain further exposure.
Aditya, a successful property developer, disagrees that five is too young to be exposing his son to the media glare. "Harry Potter is very young! There are a lot of young actors, so why not artists too? Of course five is incredibly young, but if what Shorya is doing is good, it should be shown to the people."
Aditya puts an enormous effort into promoting his son's talents, to the extent that he had a heart attack following Shorya's first solo show.
Of course, there is no shortage of competition in the crowded child prodigy field, and Aditya keeps an eye on rivals. There's Aelita Andre, a Russian-Australian girl living in Melbourne who is nine months younger than Shorya and who, unlike him, has sold her work. Maria Olmstead was featured in the New York Times after making $40,000 by the time she was four.
Shorya's first inspiration were his two artistic sisters, but now the family often show him famous artwork on the iPad, as well as taking him to galleries.
Back at his easel in the afternoon sunlight, Shorya finished his autumnal canvas by chucking water over it, making the colours run into each other like a rainbow in an oily puddle. "That's part one complete. Don't you think he balances the colours perfectly?" asked Aditya, rhetorically.
After ordering his goggles to be cleaned, Shorya announced himself ready for the second stage. All of his current works are produced in two parts. When the colours have dried, he instructs his sisters to stick strips of Sellotape over carefully selected portions of the canvas. He then proceeds to whitewash the lot. When that is dry, the tape is removed, with the colourful chaos protected by the tape revealed, contrasting starkly with the geometric white patterns created over the top. "Only five and already he has a signature style," said Aditya. "Don't you think that's amazing?"
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
John Constable painting sells for $35.6 million - CBC
Christie's auction house says a painting by John Constable has sold for £22.4 million ($35.6 million Cdn), setting a record price for the English romantic painter at auction.
The Lock, finished in 1824, is one of six paintings from Constable's celebrated series depicting the Stour Valley. The painting, which came from the collection of Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, was the last of the series to remain in private hands, according to Christie's.
The painting had been on display in Madrid's Bornemisza Museum, but the baroness, a former Miss Spain and widow of Swiss industrialist Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, sold it because she needs the cash.
An anonymous bidder on the phone bought the work Tuesday night in London.
The auction house had called the piece "remarkable for its excellent state of preservation" and estimated it would fetch between $33 and $35 million.
George Stubbs's Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey, fetched the same price in 2011.
Source: www.cbc.ca
Both those paintings look like Thomas Kinkade pieces of tat...
- Damiana, Victoria, TX, USA, 04/7/2012 03:41
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