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- Our Editor Visits The Musée d'Orsay In Paris ~ Magnificent Collection Of Impressionist & Post-Impressionist Masterpieces
- Works by Russian Masters and Fabergé to Be Offered at Christie's
- Contemporary Arts Center presents Austrian Painter Maria Lassnig's first US Solo
- Prado Museum Honors the Committee that Safeguarded Spanish Treasures
- Christie's Announces Worldwide Sales of $2.57 Billion for First Half of 2010
- British Artist Claerwen James Debuts His Work in NYC at Flowers
- Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist #1 / Damien Hirst Down / Whitechapel Gallery Reassert Itself
- Tate Liverpool to stage a Halloween Homage to "Joyous Machines: Michael Landy & Jean Tinguely"
- Damien Hirst Refuses to Become an RA at the Royal Academy of Arts
- Amon Carter Museum aquires Landmark Charles Sheeler Painting
- Bonhams To Offer World's Most Expensive Female Artist's Painting at Russian Sale
- Daphne Todd Wins BP Portrait Award 2010 for Her Painting of Her Dead Mother
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Presents William H. Johnson
- Results Show Strong Demand for Fine Art Photographs at artnet Auctions
- Oona Grimes & Leslie Forbes at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art
- This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News
| Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:59 PM PST  On the left bank of the Seine in central Paris, close to The Louvre and the Palais de la Légion d'honneur, the Musée d'Orsay is housed in a former railway station (the Gare d'Orsay), an impressive Beaux-Arts edifice built about 1899. The Musée d'Orsay concentrates on French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces (the largest in the world) by painters such as Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Alfred Sisley, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. The original railway station was constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (which provided rail services to the South West of France). Designed by three architects, Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux (amongst the top architects in France at the time), it was completed in time for the 1900 "Exposition Universelle". However, by 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for trains that were then used for mainline services. After a period being used for suburban and commuter services the original railway building had a number of occupants (a theatre company, auctioneers, and the French postal service) as well as being used as a set for several films, including Orson Welles film of Kafka's "The Trial". The building survived an attempt to demolish it and build a modern hotel on the site, and in 1973 measures to protect the historic building started, though it took until 1978 to formally list it as a historic monument. In 1977 the French Government decided to convert the station into an art museum. Supervised by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, work was carried out between 1980 and 1986. The work involved creating 27,000 sq. m. of new floorspace on four floors, and on 1 December 1986, President François Mitterrand officially inaugurated the new Musée d'Orsay and it then opened officially to the public. The museum's square displays six bronze allegorical sculptural groups in a row, originally produced for the Exposition Universelle of 1878, these depict the 6 inhabited continents; "South America" by Aimé Millet, "Asia" by Alexandre Falguière, "Oceania" by Mathurin Moreau, "Europe" by Alexandre Schoenewerk, "North America" by Ernest-Eugène Hiolle and "Africa" by Eugène Delaplanche. Inside, the museum's specific exhibition spaces and different facilities are distributed on three levels and include temporary exhibition halls, a restaurant (installed in the dining hall of the former station hotel), the Café des Hauteurs, the museum shop and an auditorium. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.musee-orsay.fr  The Musée d'Orsay opened with a mission to show the great diversity of artistic creation in the western world (and, particularly, France) between 1848 and 1914. The initial collection was formed by combining appropriate artworks from three existing establishments. The Louvre provided works by artists born after 1820 or who came to the fore during the Second Republic (1848-1852). The Musée du Jeu de Paume, gave up its important impressionist collection and became the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume devoted to contemporary art. The third source for works in the original collection was the National Museum of Modern Art, which, on its move to the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1976, only kept works of artists born after 1870. Many of these works had originally formed part of the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg, originally devoted to living artists, but closed in 1937 and its collection dispersed to other museums (it has subsequently reopened as an exhibition venue). Far from stopping with the heritage it received from the Musée du Luxembourg and the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay's painting collection has steadily evolved. Year after year, gifts, acquisitions in lieu and purchases keep the collection alive and offer the public an increasingly complete, fresh appreciation of a lively, varied period, one of the most creative in the history of art. All such acquisitions have been based on firm principals, to reinforce the collections of Realist painting from 1848 to 1850, late Romanticism, the eclecticism of the Second Empire and the official art of the Third Republic, and to complement, balance and consolidate the collections to give a better understanding of this particularly rich period of art history. Much of the collection is available to view on-line, and the visitor can therefore plan their visit in advance. Note that the Musée d'Orsay does not contain its own collection of drawings, these can be readily viewed at the nearby Louvre. The Musée d'Orsay is presently between exhibitions, the next two both opening on March 8th 2011. From then until 29th May 2011, visitors will be able to see: "A Ballad of Love and Death: Pre-Raphaelite Photography in Great Britain, 1848-1875". In the second half of the 19th century, during the heyday of Victorian England, the aesthetic principles of the Pre-Raphaelite painters were frequently echoed by the photographers of the time who aspired to be recognized as artists in their own right. Like the painters, they too were influenced by the writings of John Ruskin, the leading theoretician of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He advocated a return to nature and to craftsmanship, and championed a very precise, exalted view of medieval Gothic architecture whose high moral qualities he considered to be under threat from industrialisation. The Victorian Pre-Raphaelite photographers and painters knew each other. They tackled the same historical themes, inspired by Dante, Shakespeare, Byron and Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate. They also turned to modern life for their more socially aware and morally instructive subjects, with the result that many of the paintings by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Maddox Brown, and the photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Lewis Carroll and Henry Peach Robinson shared a common vision. This exhibition reveals the rich, productive dialogue that developed between painters and photographers. Running concurrently is and exhibition focused on the composer Gustav Mahler. Renowned in his time as an opera director, and a prodigiously talented conductor, today Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) is most famous as a composer. On the centenary of his death, this exhibition pays tribute to a great musician who worked at the time when Romanticism was moving towards Modernism. With the invaluable help of the archives department of the Musikverein in Vienna and the Mahler media library in Paris, the Musée d'Orsay takes a new look at Mahler as conductor and opera director. With a parallel study of his relationship with literature and nature, key sources for his work, the exhibition aims to put forward a more complete view of Mahler's life and his creative process.  Additionally from April 5th, a major retrospective will focus on "Manet, the Man who Invented Modern Art". This exhibition will explore and highlight the historical environment in which he worked, including the reaffirmed legacy of Romanticism, the impact of his contemporaries and the changes in the media at the time. Édouard Manet was also Modern in the way he challenged the ancient masters from Fra Angelico to Velazquez. This exhibition takes another look at the many links that the painter resolutely created and rejected within both the public and political spheres. For his modernity was also a question of balance between integration and resistance to what had gone before. The exhibition will therefore focus on the teaching of Thomas Couture, Baudelaire's support and encouragement, the reform of religious art, erotic imagery, the art of the fragmented, his relationship with women painters (Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès), the temptations of high society, his decision to remain outside the main Impressionism movement, and his complicity with the poet and critic, Stéphane Mallarmé. The reconstruction of Manet's original 1880 exhibition at the Gallery La Vie moderne at the start of the Salon, by the Musée d'Orsay, will raise the question finally of what "the freedom to create" meant to Manet. This means that "Manet, the Man who Invented Modern Art" will focus on many later works that are less well known and, more importantly, little-understood in his lifetime. This will be the first major exhibition devoted to Manet in France since 1983. Later in the year, a unique exhibition, "Under the Volcano" (opening on 5th October 2011) will chart the chaotic history of Mexico from its independence at the beginning of the 19th century to the revolutions of 1910 – 1920 through art. It will endeavor to create a dialogue between art and history and to show how the former contributed in part to creating an image of the nation. The pre-Hispanic past, the Indian question, the assimilation of foreign influences and the dialectic between nationalism and cosmopolitanism are some of the themes that inspired art and that illustrated to the Mexican nation its present day multiculturalism.
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| Works by Russian Masters and Fabergé to Be Offered at Christie's Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:58 PM PST
The picture section of the sale is led by Mikhail Klodt's Riverside Farm, painted in 1858, a rare masterpiece by one of Russia's greatest landscape artists (estimate: £700,000-900,000). It is likely that Klodt, confident that this singular work was of sufficient calibre to showcase his talent, selected the painting for submission as his graduation piece from the St Petersburg Academy of Arts for which he was awarded a gold medal of the first class and a significant travel bursary allowing him to spend the next three years studying and working in France, Germany and Switzerland. Zinaida Serebriakova's beautiful Reclining nude, executed in 1930, is a superb example of the deeply sensual nudes for which the artist is revered (estimate: £400,000-600,000). It has been suggested that the sitter for this work may be Mlle. Marie Evreinoff, a friend of the family who regularly posed for Serebriakova. The viewer is at the feet of the model and her expression is peaceful yet playful. The influence of the Italian Renaissance painters with their heady emphasis on the beauty of form is evident, while the draped textiles and beautifully rendered folds recall classical sculpture.  From aristocratic provenance is the delightful Portrait of the children of Paul Pavlovich Demidoff, second Prince of San Donato, by Alexei Harlamoff (1840- 1925 / estimate: £80,000-120,000). Portraits of Paul Pavlovich, 2nd Prince of San Donato (1839-1885) and of the Prince's four children from his second marriage to Princess Hélène Petrovna Troubetzkoy (1853-1917) were completed and subsequently exhibited at the Peredvizhniki ('Wanderers') exhibition of 1884-1885."Russian Man" by Boris Grigoriev was painted in 1920, whilst the artist was living in Berlin (estimate: £400,000-600,000). This work is part of Grigoriev's highly acclaimed series "Faces of Russia". Paintings from this series are represented in collections worldwide, including the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Prague National Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Russian man is a tribute to the artist's homeland and to the Russian people. Another important work in the sale is Aphrodite with Eros and Anteros by Nicolas Kalmakoff (1873-1955) (estimate: £200,000-300,000). Born on the Italian Riviera, the son of a Russian general, Kalmakoff's oeuvre reveals the heady influence of his childhood governess who, enthralled by fairytales and legends, would recount the tales of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffmann to her young charge. In this luscious depiction of Aphrodite flanked by her sons Eros and Anteros, Kalmakoff represents the Aphrodite Ouranos, born from the sea foam after Cronus castrated Ouranos. Aphrodite's serene stylized face is reminiscent of the limpid gazes affected by Alphonse Mucha's subjects. The eerily coiling tentacles however, perhaps alluding to the Goddess's rather unnerving origins, render the work a superlative example of Kalmakoff's characteristically dark interpretation of the Greek myth. The very strong Fabergé selection includes a rare and important Fabergé silver and bowenite table lamp in the form of a dragon, by the workmaster Julius Rappoport (estimate: £80,000-120,000), made for the Nobel Family between 1899-1904. The exotic subject matter of a dragon reflects the strong influence of Japonisme on Fabergé's production. While Peter Carl Fabergé's large collection of Netsuke was well-known and served as an inspiration for the firm's hardstone animal carvings, animal subjects produced in Japan during the Meiji period (1868- 1912) clearly were just as much of an inspiration. The design is a direct copy of dragons found in Meiji bronzes, which were widely exported during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Further highlights include an unusual heart-shaped desk clock by Michael Perchin (estimate: £80,000-120,000); a red guilloche enamel snuff-box, inset with a gold rouble coin depicting Empress Catherine II (estimate: £80,000-120,000; an unusual hardstone model of a Turkey, by Henrik Wigström (estimate: £60,000 80,000), similar to a turkey in the British Royal Collection and with an extensive exhibition history. The Russian works of art section of the sale will also offer two very rare works by Princess Maria Tenisheva, who was an important patron of the arts in Russia and founded a school for folk art at Talashkino. Both lots are bronze and enamelled boxes, one in the form of a pigeon and the other in the form of a fish (each with an estimate of: £100,000-120,000). The boxes are from a series of seven animal figures executed in 1908 and exhibited in the Paris and Prague salons of 1909. The figures were so well-received by the public that the artist Nicholas Roerich published an article in the Russian art press, entitled Enchanted Animals (enamels of Princess M.K. Tenisheva), which praised the work of Tenisheva. | |
| Contemporary Arts Center presents Austrian Painter Maria Lassnig's first US Solo Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:57 PM PST
CINCINNATI, OHIO - The Contemporary Arts Center presents a solo exhibition of vibrantly colorful, dramatically intense oil paintings by Austrian artist Maria Lassnig. Initiated and organized by the Serpentine Gallery in London and curated by Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist in association with Rebecca Morrill, the exhibition features work made during the most recent ten years of Lassnigs career, as well as seven films made between 1971 and 1992. Maria Lassnig will remain on view through January 11, 2009 in the Rosenthal Center.  The prolific, 89-year-old Lassnig is recognized as one of Europes most inventive and influential artists. Raphaela Platow, CACs Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator, has spent many years studying Lassnigs work, visiting her studio and learning about the artists process, methods and extraordinary artistic production. Maria Lassnig has exhibited a fiercely idiosyncratic independence and has persevered in her autonomy consistently eschewing fashionable trends, while remaining oblivious to her standing in the art world, asserts Platow. Instead of responding to popular contemporary movements, Lassnig has developed her own stylistic and thematic approaches, giving her work a timeless quality and a cohesive aesthetic. Lassnigs gripping body-awareness paintings visually project the bodily sensations the artist is feeling. Lassnig wrote about her work in Artforum: "Figuration comes about almost automatically, because in my art, I start first and foremost with myself. I do not aim for the big emotions when I'm working, but concentrate on small feelings: sensations in the skin or in the nerves, all of which one feels." The results are striking, biologically deformed but familiar images that show heightened color and limbs and facial features out of place or shape, reflective of the body's inner sensitivities. Her most distinctive paintings are the body-awareness paintings, self-portraits that represent her internalized senses by depicting her figure in distorted, alternate-reality poses. She calls a separate group of works her "drastic paintings, describing their pure realism, a little embellished and uglified. A series of paintings of couples exemplifies her attraction to beautiful subjects and challenging textures, as the artist paints her models in loving embraces and playful poses, or enveloped in luminous plastic sheeting, focusing on the qualities of light and shadow that bind the figures. Maria Lassnig was born in Carinthia, Austria, in 1919, and trained in Vienna. She spent several years in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s where she was exposed to Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. She lived in New York from 1968 to 1980, making films that used her body-awareness as a basis for remarkably inventive and humorous narratives. On her return to Austria in 1980, she became the first female Professor of Painting in a German-speaking country at Vienna University of Applied Arts. Her work garnered acclaimed critical response when she represented Austria in the 39th Venice Biennale that year, and was featured in Documenta 7 in 1982. Lassnigs work was featured recently in Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 2008 and in the major touring survey Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2007, and has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including Museum of Modern Art, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna, 1999; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1995; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1994; and Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, 1985. Her work was included in The Broken Mirror, curated by Kasper Knig and Hans Ulrich Obrist, part of the 1993 Vienna Festival. | |
| Prado Museum Honors the Committee that Safeguarded Spanish Treasures Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:56 PM PST
This whole adventure was possible thanks to the Directors from several museums who formed in 1939 the International Committee for the Safeguarding of Spanish Art Treasures, and assumed the responsibility of organizing the shipment and care of the works of art. Seventy-one buses trucks crossed the French border with the treasures. The institutions involved in what the President of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has considered ''took part in the greatest works of art rescue operation in history'', were the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and History in Geneva, the Royal Museums for the Fine Arts in Belgium, the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery, Tate Gallery and the Wallace collection in London, the Museums of France, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. During the Spanish Civil War, upon the recommendation of the League of Nations, the museum staff removed 353 paintings, 168 drawings and the Dauphin's Treasure and sent the art to Valencia, then later to Girona, and finally to Geneva. The art had to be returned across French territory in night trains to the museum upon the commencement of World War II. Visit The Prado at : www.museodelprado.es/ | |
| Christie's Announces Worldwide Sales of $2.57 Billion for First Half of 2010 Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:55 PM PST
169 works of art sold for more than £1 million, compared to 201 sold during the same period last year. Sales totals include private sales of £182.7 million/$274.1 million, up 37% by £ on the same period last year. Strong results and sold percentages were also achieved across the regional markets and in the companion day sales that traditionally follow Christie's evening sales. Edward Dolman, Chief Executive Officer, Christie's states: "Global confidence in the art market has been evident throughout the first half of 2010 and we expect it to continue with our autumn sales. The power of great art sourced from notable collections has driven sales with Christie's successfully chosen to present the Brody, Crichton, Sonde Tang and Spencer Collections, among others, to the marketplace. Great works continue to inspire and prices demonstrate a sustained commitment to art as a store of value. "In 2009, the challenge of supply contrasted with buyer demand leading to consistent, high sold rates. In 2010 this has led to increased vendor confidence and at the higher end of the marketplace we have seen a number of key sales setting new price levels, most notably the Brody Picasso which established the new world record for a work of art sold at auction. "Our results also reflect the growing role of Asia in the marketplace. We continue to see significant return on our investment and leadership in the region. In addition, Christie's innovation and investment in technology, including a broader use of mobile platforms and continued appeal of Christie's™ online bidding, have generated increased involvement from global clients. "We continue to see strength and depth in both vendor confidence and buyer activity despite the broader economic context. After one of the most successful half years in our history, we approach the second half with cautious but optimistic expectations of continued art market strength." | |
| British Artist Claerwen James Debuts His Work in NYC at Flowers Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:53 PM PST
 "It is in the nature of any good portrait to withhold as much as it yields, carefully measuring out such information as it contains, keeping plenty in reserve, and thus entering into a new deal, or pact, with every viewer." This statement by Anthony Lane describes precisely what Claerwen James has done in this new series of paintings, mostly of girls and young women. Her work stands at a deliberate distance to the moments it explores. There is a watchfulness about the figures as they stare out of the picture: a muted privacy that suggests intimacy but gives nothing away. Among the images used are those from Claerwen James' own childhood as well as photographs of Alice Liddell, "taken not in Wonderland but through the ordinary lens of Lewis Carroll's camera," writes Lane. "We like to think of a photograph as an instant frozen in time, in which case the task of this particular painter is to thaw it out. The paintings remain very still and unexcitable, but that does not make them uneventful; they defrost their central figures and reanimate not just the moment to which the photograph bore witness but the broader span of life which the photographer, whether by chance or design, happened to interrupt." In 2006, Francis Spufford wrote that Claerwen James' subject matter is, in a sense, the photographic moment, when a point in time is snatched from the flow, "sealed into stillness and set in strange relationship to the continued life. . . which we do not see in photographs but which they always imply, giving the medium its mortal edge." Claerwen James, born in 1970, originally trained as a molecular biologist at Oxford University and Cold Spring Harbor, NY. She graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art in 2003 and has gone on to have two highly successful solo exhibitions in London's West End. She has won various awards such as the Prince's Drawing School Graduate Bursary, the Arts Club Excellence in Drawing Award; and most notably the Slade School's own Melvill Nettleship Prize for Figure Composition: previous winners include Gwen John and Gwen Raverat. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in the Netherlands. Visit Flowers Gallery at : http://www.flowersgalleries. | |
| Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist #1 / Damien Hirst Down / Whitechapel Gallery Reassert Itself Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:52 PM PST
In interviews over recent years he has championed smaller art galleries, which he says are important as well as major collections such as London's Tate Modern or the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. ArtReview, the publication which compiles the annual power ranking, said its 2009 edition reflected "a year of extreme change in the economic landscape." It "both reflects the fundamental changes in the international power structures of the art world and readdresses what power really means and how it is deployed." "Hans Ulrich Obrist ... is a tireless advocate for contemporary art who operates close to the center of a network of influential thinkers and agenda-setters," ArtReview said. It described Obrist as "one of the most active and well-networked figures the contemporary art world has seen." BIG MUSEUMS SLOWER TO CHANGE More established figures in the art world continue to hover just below the pinnacle, including MoMA's Glenn D. Lowry (second), Tate's Nicholas Serota (third) and U.S. dealer and gallery owner Larry Gagosian (fifth). "Diminished endowments and sheer size have slowed their ability to respond to change, leaving openings to the flexible and fast-moving," said ArtReview. Examples include Venice Biennale director Daniel Birnbaum (fourth), the team behind New York-based art information network e-flux and Iwona Blazwick, back with the re-launched public art space, the Whitechapel Gallery. 'The original East End gallery is to reassert itself as the centre of the most vibrant artistic community in Europe.' . . . The Financial Times Francois Pinault, the French businessman who owns the world's largest auctioneer Christie's, is in sixth position, and the highest ranking artist is Bruce Nauman of the United States, who lies 10th. Hirst, who with his company Science topped the list in 2008, slumped to 48th place in 2009, mainly reflecting a relatively quiet 12 months since he raised 111 million pounds at a single auction of new works just over a year ago. Charles Saatchi fell to 72nd place from 14th, while Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich and his art collector girlfriend Daria Zhukova dropped off altogether. The 2009 list is published in ArtReview's November issue and coincides with Frieze Art Fair, London's annual showcase of contemporary art that attracts many of the world's leading collectors, artists and curators. (Editing by Paul Casciato) / By: Mike Collett-White | |
| Tate Liverpool to stage a Halloween Homage to "Joyous Machines: Michael Landy & Jean Tinguely" Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:51 PM PST
Based on an interpretation of Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York, Young Tate and students from Liverpool Community College Arts Centre will transform Tate Liverpool into a fantasy crime scene where the city is almost completely destroyed and only relics and images remain. Guests are invited to come in costume and pick their way through the wasteland to uncover clues as to what might have happened. Among the ruins will be live bands including Man eats plane, The Ghost Ship, surprise electronic guests, and DJ/VJ sets by Jessie Beaumont and Mark Green. There will be a chillout space with food and drink, and drop-in workshops where guests are invited to create a Cloverfield-style report on the event with media artist Bert Byron. Visitors can also work with artist Joyous Machines to make jewelery out of parts of the foyer installation. The aim is that by the end of the party all that will remain of the Night of the Machine foyer installation will be the idea of it. The Chatterbabes, an arts and performance group formed through Find Your Talent in St Helens, will also be contributing to the evening's festivities. Make-up artists led by Irfan Ali and Rauf Rashidi will be on hand to spice up any costumes that need that little extra something. A prize will be presented to the person wearing the costume that best suits the theme. Jean Tinguely's famous work Homage to New York is the starting point for creating the event. This famous auto-destructive work of art was a 27ft high self-destroying machine that came to life for only 27 minutes during a performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1960. However, the machine failed to destroy itself completely, leaving only relics, some of which are on display in Joyous Machines alongside other kinetic sculptures and automatic drawing machines by Jean Tinguely. | |
| Damien Hirst Refuses to Become an RA at the Royal Academy of Arts Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:50 PM PST
Some artists who were formed in the 50s and 60s believed that the Royal Academy had become obsolete, but that has changed and the newer generations have supported the Academy. Membership of the Royal Academy is made up of up to 80 practising artists, each elected by ballot of the General Assembly of the Royal Academy, and known individually as Royal Academicians (R.A.). The Royal Academy is governed by these Royal Academicians. All RAs are entitled to exhibit up to six works in the annual Summer Exhibition. They also have the opportunity to exhibit their work in small exhibitions held in the Friends' Room and are occasionally invited to hold major exhibitions in the Sackler Galleries. Many Academicians are involved in teaching in the Schools and giving lectures as part of the Royal Academy Education Programme. Damien Hirst, the highest paid living artist and most provocative of the YBAs, is becoming a free agent. The art world's answer to Reggie Jackson says he will sell his latest body of work at auction, circumventing de rigueur gallery sales. "The world is changing," said Hirst, and as always, he's ahead of the curve. Hirst is a rare breed–both artist and salesman. This isn't the first time he's stunned the art world with his business savvy (and his dead animals). Back in November of 2003, the artist bought back 12 of his seminal pieces from benefactor Charles Saatchi for $15 million. By owning his key early work, Hirst sought to control his own market, deciding which pieces to hold on to or place in museums or collections. Were these works to be sold en masse, as Saatchi is known to do, the value of his works could have taken a substantial hit. This past February, Hirst also opened a store on High Street called Other Criteria, designed to "democratize" art–or at least commoditize it. | |
| Amon Carter Museum aquires Landmark Charles Sheeler Painting Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:48 PM PST
"This superb example of Sheeler's work is a vital addition to our holdings of this important and versatile artist, who until now has been represented in our collection by one drawing, five prints, and six photographs," says Dr. Ron Tyler, director. Sheeler, long recognized as a founder of American modernism, was inspired and influenced by the country's changing industrialism in the first half of the 20th century, nowhere more notably than in the Carter's new acquisition. With its crisp rendering and cropping and its absence of any allusion to movement, the painting juxtaposes transmission towers and wires against the backdrop of the Hoover Dam, which had been completed only four years before and was both the world's largest hydroelectric power plant and tallest concrete structure. A crystalline sky looms over two-thirds of the painting, which is rendered with extraordinarily controlled brushwork. It was prior to completing Conversation—Sky and Earth that the artist made a professional shift from photography to painting. His highly successful works, including a commissioned series of photographs of Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant (1927), served as the foundation for a series of later paintings. In 1938, Fortune magazine commissioned Sheeler to produce a pictorial essay that celebrated America's industrial power. To prepare for the series, Sheeler photographed power stations across the nation and chose subjects to reflect the power theme—a water wheel (Primitive Power, 1939), a steam turbine (Steam Turbine, 1939), the railroad (Rolling Power, 1939), a hydroelectric turbine (Suspended Power, 1939), an airplane (Yankee Clipper, 1939) and a dam (Conversation—Sky and Earth). These paintings, collectively known as "Power," were reproduced in color in a portfolio supplement to the December 1940 issue of Fortune. They now reside in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art (Suspended Power); Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (Yankee Clipper); The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (Steam Turbine); Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis (Primitive Power); and Smith College Museum of Art, Northhampton, Mass. (Rolling Power).  According to Lawton, the Carter's Sheeler epitomizes the aesthetics of Precisionism, a style that until now had been under-represented in the museum's paintings collection. Sheeler effectively invented this crisp, clean and hard-edged style. Lawton notes that Conversation—Sky and Earth will resonate well with the museum's Chimney and Water Tower, 1931, by Charles Demuth. Both are on view in the upstairs paintings and sculpture galleries. Charles Sheeler Born in Philadelphia on July 16, 1883, Charles Sheeler studied at the School of Industrial Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he was a pupil of painter William Merritt Chase. Sheeler became friends with a fellow student, Morton Schamberg, and toured Europe with Schamberg in the early 1900s. In Paris, Sheeler was introduced to the then-new Cubist style of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and it would strongly influence his work. Sheeler established a studio in Philadelphia, where he supported himself as a commercial photographer. Though he felt that his paintings were more aesthetically important, Sheeler's photography was highly regarded. The clean lines of light and shadow in his photos would carry over into his paintings, which are known for their precise, geometric quality. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he focused on American subjects and not European subjects. Sheeler's favorite subjects tended to be urban or industrial structures, rural architecture or aspects of nature. His paintings and photographs are not emotional or sentimental, and his paintings rarely involved people. He died in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., in 1965. Visit the Amon Carter Museum at : http://www.cartermuseum.org/ | |
| Bonhams To Offer World's Most Expensive Female Artist's Painting at Russian Sale Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:47 PM PST
LONDON - Bonhams' Russian Sale on 9 June 2008 will feature an exceptional oil painting by the world's most expensive female artist. When it goes under the hammer in London at 101 New Bond Street. The Sailboat, by Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) is expected to fetch £1.5 – 2 million. Never previously seen at auction, the painting has an impeccable provenance. Emerging from the collection of the family of Sir John Rothenstein – Director of the Tate Gallery between 1938-1964 – it is highly likely that the work was given to Sir John by the artist in the 1950s. Most probably a painting of the late 1910s, it is believed that the artist gave the work to Sir John Rothenstein on one of his many visits to her Paris studio. Rothenstein was captivated by Goncharova and her husband Mikhail Larionov and through his patronage as Director of the Tate, he helped bring their work to prominence. Rothenstein even noted in his diary in 1955 that the couple had said that "my coming to their studio had been a turning point in their lives, like their meeting with Diaghilev ". Bonhams' Specialist in Russian Art, Sophie Hamilton, says: "Goncharova was exceptional in her lifetime: a pioneer of the Russian avant-garde which was well-ahead of its time, although interrupted by the Revolution. She is now receiving long-overdue attention on the auction market and is becoming a truly international name." Natalia Goncharova was one of Russia's most important 20th century artists. Together with Mikhail Larionov, she was a prominent figure in the pre-Revolutionary Moscow avant-garde, an artistic group in which women commanded an unusual degree of freedom and respect. Her work encompassed many styles from Cubism and Futurism to Neo-Primitivism and Rayonnism, and she worked in many forms, from oil painting to textile design. Some of her major work was for the theatre, designing sets and costumes for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Goncharova encouraged Russian émigré artists to look to their own heritage and create a truly indigenous Russian art. The artist was a radical both in art and in life. She and Larionov, who lived together for decades as an unmarried couple, were interested in pushing boundaries, for instance painting on their own and friends' bodies images, or offensive words or phrases, and then parading through the wealthiest parts of the city, or sitting in cafés. In spite of achieving fame in her own country, Natalia Goncharova has only now reached the level of recognition granted to other Western female artists, smashing all records when her 1909 painting Picking Apples fetched £4.9 million ($9.8 million) at auction, projecting her into the spotlight as the world's most expensive female artist. With the surge of interest in Russian art, Goncharova's work is highly sought-after by collectors and can be found in private collections and in many institutions around the world. The current exhibition at The Royal Academy of Art in London From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg features several of her works. Bonhams, founded in 1793, is one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. The present company was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son and Neale UK. In August 2002, the company acquired Butterfields, the principal firm of auctioneers on the West Coast of America and in August 2003, Goodmans, a leading Australian fine art and antiques auctioneer with salerooms in Sydney, joined the Bonhams Group of companies. Today, Bonhams offers more sales than any of its rivals, through two major salerooms in London: New Bond Street, and Knightsbridge, and a further seven throughout the UK. Sales are also held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston in the USA; and Switzerland, France, Monaco, Australia, Hong Kong and Dubai. Bonhams has a worldwide network of offices and regional representatives in 25 countries offering sales advice and valuation services in 57 specialist areas. For a full listing of upcoming sales, plus details of Bonhams specialist departments, go to www.bonhams.com | |
| Daphne Todd Wins BP Portrait Award 2010 for Her Painting of Her Dead Mother Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:46 PM PST
The second prize of £8,000 went to Michael Gaskell for Harry and the third prize of £6,000 to David Eichenberg for Tim II. There was, also for the third time, the BP Young Artist Award of £5,000 for the work of an entrant aged between 18 and 30. This has been won by Elizabeth McDonald for Don't Be Too Serious (Camillo Paravicini). First Prize: Daphne Todd (27.03.47) for Last portrait of Mother (oil on wooden panels, 650mm x 920mm) Daphne Todd, from East Sussex, has been selected for the BP Portrait Award exhibition for the third time. This is her first BP shortlisted portrait (though she won second prize in the Gallery's Portrait Award in 1984.) She attended the Slade School of Fine Art and was the first woman president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. She has chosen to portray her mother Annie Mary Todd on her death bed and thereby to create a devotional study. Daphne says her mother, who had just celebrated her 100th birthday having lived with the artist for her last 14 years, had given permission for her daughter to paint her.
Gaskell, who has exhibited throughout Britain and was second prize winner at last year's BP Portrait Award is an artist from Sheffield, recently relocated to Leicester, who only got to know his sitter, Harry, when he agreed to sit for him. Having seen the sitter whilst he was out shopping with his family, Michael was persuaded to approach him by his wife. In the resulting portrait which was completed in a short burst of intense work over the winter of 2009-10, Gaskell tried to evoke a sense of what had drawn him to Harry, but he hopes that the image is also informed by what he gained from hearing about the sitter's experiences and aspirations. Third Prize: David Eichenberg (21.03.72) for Tim II (oil on 337 mm x 324mm) David Eichenberg studied art at the University of Toledo in his home town. While he has exhibited throughout the United States, this is his first BP exhibited work. His portrait shows his friend, the sculptor Timothy A. Stover, seated at a metal bandsaw in the fabrication shop in which he works, located directly below the artist's studio in an old warehouse in Toledo, Ohio. The artist wanted the painting to read like a work by Holbein, where every item in the portrait represents an aspect of the sitter such as the highlighted shape on the wall representing a map of Ohio, where Tim was born and living at the time of the sitting. Young Artist Award: Elizabeth McDonald (12.03.85) for Don't Be Too Serious (Camillo Paravicini) (oil on canvas, 635mm x 432mm) Elizabeth McDonald painted her portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Camillo Paravicini, in his studio in her home city of Glasgow. While they worked in the same building, in neighbouring studios, the two artists hardly knew each other. She says while the clothing Camillo wears in the portrait - a black jacket and tie and black rimmed glasses - is similar to that which he would normally wear, his posture was staged to accentuate the tension between youth and maturity. 'Through the sittings, and getting to know Camillo,' she says, 'I not only found myself examining his personal style but looking closer at other aspects of his personality. Perhaps most intriguingly, I began to see simultaneously the boy in the young man and the older professional gentleman the young man could become.' Visit the National Portrait Gallery at : http://www.npg.org.uk/ | |
| Smithsonian American Art Museum Presents William H. Johnson Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:41 PM PST  Washington, DC - "William H. Johnson's World on Paper" examines, for the first time, this artist's involvement with printmaking. Never-before-exhibited prints reveal the African American modernist to be as powerful with graphic media as he proved to be with oils and tempera, and bold, rough relief prints and lively, colorful serigraphs mark Johnson as one of the most experimental printmakers of his generation. The exhibition is on view through Jan. 7, 2007 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which holds the largest and most complete collection of work by William H. Johnson (1901–1970) and has done much in the past 30 years to preserve his art and establish his reputation. "Johnson left a legacy of paintings, prints and drawings that range from European-inspired modernism to his own distinctive rhythms," said Elizabeth Broun, the museum's Margaret and Terry Stent director. "His works on paper, in particular, testify to a restless imagination and powerful visual expression—hallmarks of an inspired American artist." More than 40 relief prints and serigraphs, drawn from the museum's permanent collection, provide an overview of Johnson's career, both in Europe in the 1930s and in New York in the 1940s. Among the varied subjects of his work are early landscapes of Denmark, Norway and North Africa; portraits of his neighbors in Denmark; scenes of life in Harlem and the rural South; religious subjects and scenes of black enlisted men and female volunteers of World War II. While in Europe, Johnson met artist Edvard Munch, whose experimental, symbolist woodcuts seem to have inspired Johnson to try new printing techniques. The uneven black areas of some of the artist's woodblock prints, such as "Jon Fisherman (2)," suggest that Johnson did not print with a press but instead applied pressure to the back of the paper with the bowl of a spoon or the heel of his hand to transfer the wet ink from the surface of the block. Johnson continued to make relief prints while at the same time investigating the relatively new technique of serigraphy. The experimental nature of the technique, as well as its capacity for composing with bright areas of color, appealed to Johnson. When he printed "Jitterbugs (II)" on newspaper, the images and type on the paper added to the sense of movement and urban vitality he sought to convey.
Although Johnson attained success as an artist in this country and abroad, financial security remained elusive. Following his wife's death in 1944, Johnson's physical and mental health deteriorated; he spent the final 23 years of his life in a state hospital in Long Island, N.Y. More than a thousand paintings, watercolors and prints by Johnson were given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum by the Harmon Foundation after Johnson's death. Tour An expanded version of the exhibition that includes selected drawings and watercolors will tour to the Amon Carter Museum, in Forth Worth, Texas (Feb. 3 – April 8, 2007), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (May 20 – Aug. 12, 2007) and the Montgomery Museum of Art, in Montgomery, Ala. (Sept. 15 –Nov. 18, 2007). The Smithsonian American Art Museum collection began with gifts of art donated to the federal government in 1829 and has evolved into one of the world's most important American art holdings, with approximately 40,000 artworks in all media, spanning more than three centuries. Please visit the museum's award-winning Web site at www.americanart.si.edu or www.reynoldscenter.org | |
| Results Show Strong Demand for Fine Art Photographs at artnet Auctions Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:39 PM PST
Top Lots Sold Screen stars led the sale with spirited bidding for photographs of Hollywood legends Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe. The top lot sold was a rare 1956 portrait of Audrey Hepburn by Yousuf Karsh. This exquisite portrait, which had never been offered at auction, realized an impressive $12,650. Photographs of screen siren Marilyn Monroe also commanded top prices. Five of the top ten lots sold were portraits of the actress taken by Bert Stern. Among them, the stunning chromogenic print Marilyn Monroe: From The Last Sitting, "I Beg of You" , 1962 fetched $1,650, more than double the low estimate. Other top lots included a 1931 gelatin silver print of Greta Garbo by Clarence Sinclair Bull, which sold for $1,842 against an estimate of $800-$1,000 and Marlene Dietrich, by George Hurrell, which realized $1,760 against an estimate of $1,000-$1,500. Legendary Artists There was also strong demand for portraits of artists including Salvador Dali, Frank Stella and Pablo Picasso. Two 1970 portraits of Salvador Dali by Marc Lacroix sparked frenzied bidding; Dali and His Muse, Gala realized $6,053, 400% above the low estimate and Dali's Profile commanded $5,610, 370% above the low estimate. Other top lots demonstrated the appeal of subjects ranging from astronauts to country music stars. A rare 1969 photograph of the NASA Apollo 11 Moonwalk by Neil Armstrong realized $3,750, 90% above the low estimate while Mark Seliger's Johnny Cash, Hendersonville, Tennessee, 1992 sold for $3,025, 21% above the low estimate. | |
| Oona Grimes & Leslie Forbes at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:38 PM PST
London - Conversations with Angels is a new series of drawings informed by the life and work of John Dee (1527 - 1608) documenting 'actions' or seances mediated through his scryer, Edward Kelley. Locked in the secret interna bibliotheca of his house, Dee and Kelley pressed angelic spirits for the claves or keys that would enable them to decode the lost Enochian language. Enoch's Book of the Old Testament contained his own record of the language God taught Adam. Whoever discovered the Adamic language would rediscover the key of Divine Knowledge. A catalogue with a text by Iain Sinclair accompanies the exhibition.Alongside the drawings for Conversations with Angels, a separate room has been devoted to the correspondence in image and text between Oona Grimes and the writer Leslie Forbes. ABS NCES records the first two years of this collaboration, an unfinished journey that began at another exhibition in the summer of 2005 where Oona and Leslie met and expressed mutual admiration for each other's work. Oona then proposed an experiment: she would send Leslie an image, and to it Leslie would respond with words which would, they hoped, inspire Oona. When the correspondence proved interesting enough to continue, it was decided that there would be no deadlines set for the replies, no discussion of any map or direction that the travellers would follow. Characters emerged, a plot (its central mystery as yet unsolved), a theme...and a fractured timescale partly attributed to Leslie's epilepsy - which causes hallucinatory 'absence' seizures generated in her brain's left hemisphere - and above all, the freedom with which artist and writer have allowed the compass to swing freely between one hemisphere and the other. ABS NCES has also been published as a limited edition book. Oona Grimes trained at the Slade School of Fine Art and is a visiting lecturer at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University. Recent exhibitions include Uncanny Tales (with Paula Rego, Ana Maria Pacheco and Marcelle Hanselaar) touring throughout UK and Belgium; Pêche à la ligne, Brittany, France; Grotto, 1:1, London; Bounty, APT Gallery, London. Collections: New York Public Library; Manchester Metropolitan; Strang Collection, University College, London; The Governing Body of Macau; Lineker College, Oxford University; Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Born in Canada, Leslie Forbes has worked in London as a writer, artist and broadcaster for over twenty years. She is the author of four award-winning travel books. Her first novel, the international bestseller, Bombay Ice, was published in 1998 to huge acclaim. Her second novel, Fish, Blood and Bones, was nominated for the Orange Prize. For more information and images please contact Danielle Arnaud - danielle@daniellearnaud.com - t/f: +44 (0)20 7735 8292 Danielle Arnaud contemporary art - 123 Kennington Road London SE11 6SF UK - At : www.daniellearnaud.com | |
| This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:37 PM PST This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here .  |
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