Jumat, 15 Juli 2011

Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art...

Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art...


Danziger Projects Shows “Africolor” Photography between Africa, Color, & Color Photography

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 11:19 PM PDT

artwork: Daniele Tamagni, a freelance photographer based in Italy, has won the 2nd Prize in the Arts and Entertainment Stories category with the series The Flying Cholitas in Bolivia: Lucha libre (Bolivian wrestling). The prize-winning entries of the World Press Photo Contest 2010, the world's largest annual press photography contest, were announced February 11, 2011.

NEW YORK, NY.- "Africolor" - the exhibition - looks at the connections in photography between Africa, color, and color photography. While Africa as a subject has attracted and inspired photographers since the invention of photography, because of the obvious financial and technical issues involved – photographing Africa in the 19th century was largely a European endeavor. By the middle of the 20th century, however, photography both as a business and a means of artistic expression was beginning to flourish across the African continent. With the advent of color photography and in particular with the acceptance of color photography into the mainstream of fine art in the 1980s, the vivid colors and bright light of the continent seemed to serve as inspiration for a wide range of photography from the indigenous to the imagined and from documentary to staged. Celebrating the diversity of color photographic expression, "Africolor" presents groupings of work that are a compelling (but by no means comprehensive) sampling. The exhibition is on view at Danziger Projects until September 10th.

The exhibition begins with a room of recent photographs by the Italian photojournalist Daniele Tamagni. In 2008, Tamagni traveled to the Atlantic coast of Africa to document the little known sub-culture of the sapeurs or La SAPE - a French acronym for La Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes. The sapeurs sport ostentatiously dapper suits and fedoras. They have made fashion their religion, living an elegant lifestyle in direct reference to the French colonialism that contributed to the poverty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sapeurism is a means of dealing with this past, by appropriating western style. A code of conduct dictates to sapeurs not to wear more than three colors in any outfit and to not only look but also to behave in an elegant manner.

This work resulted in Tamagni's debut book, "Gentlemen of Bacongo" which became a seminal style volume. (The designer Paul Smith based an entire collection around the book.) "My aim," said Tamagni, "was to produce a portfolio which might generate a critical reflection about the identity of these people who consider elegance their main reason for existence inside a social reality so different and distant from our society." In 2010, Tamagni received the ICP Infinity Award for Applied/Fashion photography for the work.

Samuel Fosso is another of Africa's most eminent photographers. Often described as "the African Cindy Sherman" for nearly 40 years Fosso has been using the camera to experiment with self-portraiture and identity dressing up (or down), posing in different guises, and recreating other famous pictures. Fosso started taking self-portraits to send to his mother in Nigeria, from whom he was separated as a refugee fleeing the Biafran war in the late 1960s. Although his initial aim was to show he was alive and well, his interest in exploring the genre grew steadily, and he continually experimented with new techniques and poses. In 1994, he was discovered by chance by the French curator and gallerist Jean Marc Patras who brought Fosso's work to a wider audience and into the limelight of international critical attention.

artwork: Autoportraits, 1997 by Samuel Fosso from Africa Remix / Contemporary Art of a Continent

Fosso's work has been shown at The Guggenheim and in major museums around the world, but his local community in Bangui, Central African Republic, remains unaware of Fosso's success, a situation Fosso is keen to maintain. He is happy to keep his costumes out of sight and continue his passport and portrait photography business. His neighbors assume he travels to Europe to take wedding photos.

The second room of the gallery presents a sampling of work by wonderful photographers three African and three European – whose work connects to Africa and color but differs in many of the ways the medium allows.

Malick Sidibe, the renowned Malian photographer, is noted for his pictures of local Malians which he began taking in the 1950s. In 1958, he opened his own studio (Studio Malick) in Bamako focusing in particular on the youth culture of the Malian capital. A naturally gifted artist Sidibe's reputation exploded when the first conferences on African photography were held in Mali in 1994. Sidibe's work is now exhibited worldwide. In 2003, he received the Hasselblad Award for photography, and in 2007, Sidibe was awarded the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion lifetime achievement award - the first time it had been presented to a photographer.

While known as a black and white photographer, Sidibe has often presented his photographs in colorfully hand painted glass mounts and it is these "decorated" works, reflecting a particular palette and form, that are being shown.

The Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel's pictures are both a dream of Africa and a meditation on the role of color in a racial as well as pictorial sense. Van Empel is known for taking digital manipulation of photography to a new level. He photographs professional child models in his studio along with detailed images of leaves, flowers, plants and animals. The pictures are then mixed and composed into Rousseau-like edenic settings using Photoshop. Mixing truth and fiction, innocence and danger, van Empel's work contains complex pictorial and political underpinnings while bursting with color.

Lolo Veleko, a 33 year old South African, came to attention in ICP's 2006 exhibition "Snap Judgments" - a show of contemporary African photography. In Veleko's ongoing series "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder" her photographs capture the street fashion of today's Johannesburg youth in small but vibrant full length portraits.

Veleko's portraits show her subjects to be highly individualized and independent and suggest an implicit collaboration between artist and sitter. There is nothing haphazard in the choices of dress or pose or in the execution of the photographs which present a vivid counterpoint to the traditional western photographic depiction of Africans and a reminder of the freshness and quality of work coming entirely from the African cultural tradition.

Africa would seem to be a natural subject for Martin Parr. With his trademark acid color palette and boundless energy, Martin Parr has come to be seen as one of the freshest and most original voices in photography. Thus a fashion story for Rebel Magazine commissioned in 2001 became an opportunity for Parr to shoot high end clothing and accessories in the streets and on the locals of Dakar. For Parr, an ironist and a humorist as well as a colorist, fashion transcends geographic boundaries. In switching his focus between the refined creations of haute couture and the real world, Parr reminds us that no-one is immune from the influence of fashion and globalization.

Mickalene Thomas is a New York artist best known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel. Thomas was trained as a photographer and returns frequently to the medium influenced by sources as varied as the work of Seydou Keita and pinup posters. Thomas's pieces in "Africolor" were directly inspired by Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry and continue her colorful exploratory mix of classical portraiture and pop culture.

artwork: Photo by Mickalene Thomas. -  Photo: Courtesy Danziger Projects, NY

Considered one of the freshest voices of the contemporary art world Mickalene Thomas has had exhibitions at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit; The Studio Museum in Harlem; and P.S.1/MoMA. She is currently the artist in residence at The Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program in Giverny, France.

The show concludes with a large single piece by JR, the street artist who has mounted his guerilla-style installations of photographs all over the world. The piece we are showing records a project, "Women Are Heroes", where JR photographed women living in Kenya's Kibera slum. He returned a month later with enormous blow-ups of their faces printed on waterproof vinyl material which was then applied to dilapidated railway trucks and leaky tin roofs, ensuring that his art intervention had a practical purpose.

In 2011 JR received the TED prize - awarded in the past to figures like Bill Clinton, Bono and the biologist E. O. Wilson. He is using the $100,000 to create a large-scale participatory art project where people are encouraged to make black and white portraits and send them in to insideoutproject.net. The digitally uploaded images are then made into posters and sent back to the creator to exhibit in their own communities wherever and however they want. The installations will then be documented, archived, and put on view on the web.

Jake and Dinos Chapman Open New Exhibition at White Cube, London

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 10:53 PM PDT

artwork: Jake (R) and Dinos Chapman pose for photographs with part of their new exhibiton at the White Cube Gallery in central London July 14th. - Reuters

LONDON.- White Cube presents a new exhibition by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Jake and Dinos Chapman began their artistic collaboration after graduating from the Royal College of Art in London in 1990 when they created We are Artists. Since this self-defining anti-aesthetic manifesto was first stencilled onto a mud-splattered wall at the ICA London in 1992 they have developed their own shared discourse as 'sore-eyed scopophiliac oxymorons' with, as they put it at the time, 'a benevolent contingency of conceits'. Exhibition on view 15th July through 17th September.

The Hove Museum Fine Art Gallery Shows Paintings of the Five Senses

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 10:39 PM PDT

artwork: Jacob Toorenvliet - "The Dentist", circa 1719 - Oil on Copper. - Collection of the Hove Museum Fine Art Gallery, Sussex. On view in "The Five Senses: Paintings from the Fine Art collection" until March 1st 2012.

Brighton, UK.- The Hove Museum Fine Art Gallery is pleased to present "The Five Senses: Paintings from the Fine Art collection", on view through March 1st 2012. The Five Senses is a family-friendly display that explores the variety of ways sensory experiences are portrayed in the visual arts. The display is based on works from the Fine Art collection and is accompanied by interactive materials. How would you paint the smell of roses? How does an artist suggest the softness of a rabbit? Can we 'see' the taste of walnuts? This small family-friendly display explores the variety of ways sensory experiences are portrayed in the visual arts.


Kunsthallen Brandt Museum Exhibits Valkyries Sculptures by Joana Vasconcelos

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 10:38 PM PDT

artwork: Two of Joana Vasconcelos' Valkyries sculptures in knit-work and textiles at Kunsthallen Brandt Museum in Denmark.

Odense, Denmark -
Metres tall and metres long, they conquer their space. At the same time enticingly colourful and mysteriously gloomy. Embracing and devouring. Two of Joana Vasconcelos' Valkyries sculptures in knit-work and textiles have settled in the Kunsthallen Brandt Museum. With tentacles, feelers, bulging bodies and eyes on stalk, one is more in the animal kingdom than in a human world. Or perhaps somewhere in the land of the gods: The valkyries served Odin. They selected the greatest among the fallen warriors in the battle field and led them to Valhalla. Odin needed the best men to fight by his side in the struggle at the end of the world: Ragnarok. The valkyries in mythology also appear as servants, mistresses and lovers. And they are pre-occupied with needle-work: They are the ones who weave the fates of humans. Joana Vasconcelos continues to sow together the many mythological stories about these powerful women, and she turns them a modern saga, in an endeavour to supply the present-day fascination with technology and industry with an otherwise repressed touch of magic.

National Maritime Museum in London Opens New £35 Million Wing

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:33 PM PDT

artwork: Baroque painting of "The Battle of Actium" by Lorenzo A. Castro - painted 1672  - Collection of National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

LONDON.- This July the National Maritime Museum opens the Sammy Ofer Wing, a transformative £35m capital project which sets a new strategic direction for the Museum. Opening 14th, the £35m wing is the largest development in the National Maritime Museum's history and a catalyst for the organisation to change completely the way it presents its galleries, exhibitions and events. This major new project has been made possible through a generous donation of £20m from international shipping magnate and philanthropist Sammy Ofer and an award of £5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

"Bronx Boys" With Photographs by Stephen Shames Is An Ebook Now

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:32 PM PDT

artwork: For over two decades (1977-2000), Stephen Shames photographed a group of boys coming of age in the Bronx in a neighborhood ravaged by drugs, violence and gangs. Now published in an Ebook.  It is comprised of 265 pages and 122 photographs.

NEW YORK, NY.- For over two decades (1977-2000), Stephen Shames photographed a group of boys coming of age in the Bronx in a neighborhood ravaged by drugs, violence and gangs. These young men allowed Shames extraordinary access into their lives on the street and in their homes. Shames met the "Bronx boys" as children, and tracked them growing up, falling in love, and having children of their own. His work explores the interplay between good and evil, violence and love, chaos and family. He captures the brutality of the times - the fights, the shootings, the arrests, the drug deals - but also revelatory moments of love and tenderness
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Discovered Massive Statue Believed to Be of Roman Emperor Caligula

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:04 PM PDT

artwork: Guardia di Finanza police officers inspect a statue believed to be that of Roman emperor Caligula in Nemi, north of Rome. Officials unveiled a massive statue believed to be that of Roman emperor Caligula sitting on a throne, and said it came from an illegal dig south of Rome possibly the site of one of his palaces.

Rome - The Italian authorities unveiled a marble statue found in the district of Ostia which experts believe depicts infamous Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula.The 2.5-meters tall statue made of rare Greek marble had been covered with soil for about 2,000 years in Ostia, near Lake Nemi, where Roman emperors, including Caligula were believed to have summer villas and palaces. The statue which was fragmented in several pieces was found last January by agents of the Italian government at the time illegal excavators where about to load a piece into a container to be transported abroad.


Williams College Museum of Art Continues Its Reinstallation Project With "Expressions"

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:03 PM PDT

artwork: Edward Hopper - "Morning in a City", 1944 - Oil on canvas. - Collection of Williams College Museum of Art. On view in "Expressions", the current installation in The Gallery of Crossed Destinies from July 16th until September 11th.

Williamstown, MA.– The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is proud to present "Expressions", the current installation in The Gallery of Crossed Destinies from July 16th through Sunday, September 11th. Featured as one of the centerpieces of the museum's Reflections on a Museum reinstallation project, The Gallery of Crossed Destinies invites us to consider how our perceptions of objects change in the museum setting. The museum invited four guest curators — a florist, a group of high school students, a theater festival director and an athletic coach — to create their own narratives from a miniature "collection" of 25 artworks. Each curator has responded to the same objects to conceive a distinct exhibition, determining every aspect of presentation from art placement to wall text. Each exhibition explores how objects evoke stories and how these narratives change depending on how they are presented and who presents them.


artwork: Georgia O'Keeffe - "Skunk Cabbage (Cos Cob)", 1922 - Oil on canvas. Collection of Williams College Museum of Art. - © 2011 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS).The current installation, "Expressions", is by Jenny Gersten, Artistic Director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF). Gersten approached the exhibition by connecting to the art through the medium of theater. She was interested in how artworks express themselves and wanted to endeavor to give the artworks a voice. Gersten reached out to  theater artists, specifically playwrights, and showed them particular images of art selected for the exhibition and asked them if they would either write something for it, or choose something already written that might accompany the work in some way.

The result will culminate with readings by actors from the WTF's non-Equity company on Tuesday, July 19th at 2:00 p.m. Actor/director/MacArthur Recipient Bill Irwin will direct the performance of works by Samuel Barclay Beckett, Liz Flahive, Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, Howard Korder, Donald Margulies, Itamar Moses, and Bess Wohl. When asked about the connection between the visual art and the written art Gersten responded, "There are very few chances to exercise one's imagination anymore. In the digital age when we can look up anything at any moment, it can be very limited. This is one of the great opportunities to exercise your imagination." The Gallery of Crossed Destinies is a project inspired by a text that Williams Professor Mark Haxthausen assigned to his students to encourage critical thinking about museum practice. In Italo Calvino's fantastical novel, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a group of travelers meet at an enchanted castle where guests must communicate with only a set of tarot cards. Continually shuffled, these cards—like the art objects in The Gallery of Crossed Destinies—tell new stories with each sorting. The artwork presented in The Gallery of Crossed Destinies features an eclectic mix of some of the museum's finest treasures.

The collection includes such items as oil paintings by Edward Hopper and George Inness, artifacts from ancient China and Egypt, and sculpture by Louise Nevelson and Claes Oldenburg. The ongoing exhibitions are on view in the Class of 1935 Gallery, where three large windows have been reopened after having been covered for almost 20 years. This new, dramatic influx of light has had a transformative effect on the gallery space. The windows act as a metaphor for the project as a whole, visually connecting the museum with the outside community. The previous projects of The Gallery of Crossed Destinies were Light Affects by local florist Chad Therrien and The Art of Emotion by 9th graders at Mt. Greylock Regional High School.  Aaron Kelton, the head football coach at Williams College, will curate the gallery this coming fall.




artwork: Pablo Picasso - "Shells on a Piano, Paris", 1912 - Oil on canvas. - Yale University Art Gallery, The Katharine Ordway Collection. On view at the Williams College Museum of Art.

Widely considered one of the finest college art museums in the country, the Williams College Museum of Art is a department of Williams College. The mission of the Williams College Museum of Art is "to advance learning through lively and innovative approaches to art for the students of Williams College and communities beyond the campus." The museum was accredited by the American Association of Museums in 1993 and re-accredited in 2004. WCMA houses nearly 13,000 works that span the history of art. The museum encourages multidisciplinary teaching through encounters with art objects that traverse time periods and cultures. An active, collecting museum, its strengths are in modern and contemporary art, photography, prints, and Indian painting. The museum is especially known for its stellar collection of American art from the late 18th century to the present. With the largest collection in the world of works by the brothers Charles and Maurice Prendergast, the museum is a primary center for study of these American artists in a transatlantic context of the 19th and early 20th centuries. WCMA's signature exhibition style is to place art within a broad cultural and historical context. Special exhibitions curated by museum staff, faculty, students, and guest curators focus on new scholarship and encourage multiple perspectives.

The museum's catalogues are consistent with this mode of presentation, in that they typically include writings from a range of scholars, and it is characteristic to find art historians and artists writing alongside historians and political scientists. WCMA actively publishes catalogues to accompany our self-organized loan exhibitions, many of which travel nationally and internationally. Some of these exhibitions include: Introjection: Tony Oursler, mid-career survey, 1976–1999 (1999); Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project (2000); Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler's Early Years in Vienna, 1906–1913 (2002); Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (2003); Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1890–1910 (2005); Jackson Pollock at Williams College: A Tribute to Kirk Varnedoe '67 (2006); Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2006); Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/ Edward Hopper (2006); Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy (2007); Liu Zheng: The Chinese (2008), and Prendergast in Italy (2009). WCMA has received recognition from the International Association of Art Critics for the following four exhibitions: Introjection: Tony Oursler, mid-career survey, 1976–1999; Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler's Early Years in Vienna, 1906–1913; Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1890–1910; Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Prendergast in Italy. The year 2011 saw the reinstallation of ten of the museum's galleries with Reflections on a Museum, an ambitious project that stresses the importance of the museum's collection as the heart of this teaching museum. Visit the museum's website at ... http://wcma.williams.edu






Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza ~ A Jewel In The "Golden Triangle of Art" In Madrid

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:50 PM PDT

artwork: Lord Frederick Leighton - "Greek Girls Playing at Ball", 1889 - Oil on canvas - 114 x 197 cm. East Ayrshire Council, Scotland, currently on display as part of the exhibition

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spanish), is one of the three Madrid museums that make up the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia (modern and contemporary) galleries. The collections's roots lie in the privately owned Thyssen-Bonremisza collection, once the second largest private art collection in the world (after the British Royal Collection). The collection started in the 1920s as a private collection by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon (1875–1947). In a reversal of the movement of European paintings to the United States during this period, one of the Baron's sources was the collections of American millionaires coping with the Great Depression and inheritance taxes, from which he acquired such exquisite old master paintings as Ghirlandaio's 'Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni' (once in the Morgan Library) and Carpaccio's 'Knight' (from the collection of Otto Kahn). The collection was later expanded by Heinrich's son Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921–2002), who re-assembled most of the works from his relatives' collections (distributed after his father's death) and proceeded to acquire large numbers of new works. In 1985, the Baron married Carmen Cervera (a former Miss Spain 1961) and introduced her to art-collecting. Carmen's influence was decisive in persuading the Baron to decide on the future of his collection and cede the collection to Spain. When Baron Thyssen decided to open his collection to the public, he initially tried to have his museum in the Villa Favorita in Switzerland expanded, when this proved impossible, a Europe-wide search for a new was home started. The competition was won in 1986 when the Spanish government came to an agreement to provide a home for the collection (the 19th century Villahermosa Palace close to the Prado in Madrid) and fund the museum in return for the loan of the collection for a minimum of nine and a half years. Pritzker prize winning Spanish architect, Rafael Moneo was employed to redesign and extend the building and the museum opened in 1992. However, so impressed were the Thyssen-Bornemiszas with the building and Spain's commitment to the collection, that even before it opened, they were negotiating with the Spanish government to make the museum permanent. In 1993, the Spanish government agreed to buy the collection (valued at up to 1.5 billion dollars) for $350 million and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum became a permanent fixture in Madrid. The museum currently houses two collections from the Thyssen-Bornemiszas, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, acquired by the Spanish government from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza on permanent display since the museum opened in 1992 and the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, owned by the baron's widow and held by the museum since 2004 on loan. These two collections comprise over one thousand works of art (mostly paintings), with which the museum offers a stroll through the history of European painting, from its beginning in the 13th century to the close of the 20th century. The Baroness remains involved with the museum, deciding the salmon pink tone of the interior and in May 2006 campaigning against plans to redevelop the Paseo del Prado as she thought the works and traffic would damage the collection and the museum's appearance. A collection of works from the museum is housed in Barcelona in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.museothyssen.org

artwork: Matthias Stom - "The Supper at Emmaus", circa 1636 - Oil on canvas - 111.8 x 152.4 cm. Collection of The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

One of the key characteristics of the Thyssen-Bonemisza Museum is that it complements the Prado's collection of old paintings and the modern art housed at the Reina Sofía Museum, featuring movements and styles such as the Italian and Dutch primitives, German Renaissance art, 17th century Dutch painting, Impressionism, German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art. And, setting it apart, its singular display of 19th century North American painting (practically unknown in any other European museum), which occupies two halls of the museum. With the museum's own acquisitions, it now contains over 1,600 paintings and sculptures, which are laid out in chronological order. One of the focal points is in early European painting, with a major collection of trecento and quattrocento (i.e. 14th and 15th century) Italian paintings by Duccio, and his contemporaries. Among the highlights are paintings by Luca di Tomme, Benozzo Gozzoli , Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello ("Crucifixion among saints"), Cosimo Tura, Ercole de'Roberti, Bramantino ("Christ Risen"), Antonello da Messina and "The Young Knight" by Vittore Carpaccio, generally considered the first full-length portrait painted in Europe. Works of the early Flemish and Dutch painters include masterpieces by Jan Van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Holbein. Later Renaissance and Baroque works include significant paintings by Italian, Dutch and Flemish masters such as Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, Caravaggio, Rubens, Tintoretto, El Greco, Van Dyck, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Claude Lorrain, Murillo, Rembrandt and Frans Hals as well as wonderful portraits by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Vittore Carpaccio. The artistic shift from rococo through to realism and romanticism is reflected in works of European artists including Watteau, Boucher ("The Toilet"), Nicolas Lancret, Fragonard, Hubert Robert, Jean-Marc Nattier, Chardin ("Still Life with Cat and Stripe"), Giambattista Tiepolo ("Death of Jacinto"), Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto and Pietro Longhi ("Tickle"), English paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence and Johann Zoffany and the works of Goya, Delacroix ("The Arab Horseman"), Géricault, Courbet and Caspar David Friedrich marking the transition to realism and romanticism. In line with museum policy, from 1960 onwards different parts of the collection began to travel all over the world and a major programme of loans to other galleries was put in practice, meaning that the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection was nearly always present, in some form or another, in the big collective exhibitions.

artwork: Roberto Matta - "Great Expectations. From "The Blinding Exile" Cycle", 1966 - Oil on canvas 203 x 402 cm. - Collection of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

The collection of nineteenth century artworks includes all the masters, Manet, Renoir, Monet, Degas ("Green Dancer" and others), Pissarro, Bonnard, Berthe Morisot, Gaughuin, Toulouse-Lautrec ("Redhead with White Blouse") and important works by Van Gogh. American nineteenth century art includes examples by Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. The twentieth century section has a significant role in the Thyssen Museum, and includes Fauvist works by Henri Matisse ("Yellow Flowers") and André Derain, but it is in Cubism, Russian Constructivism and German Expressionism where the collection is concentrated. Of note is the abundant collection of works such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner ("Alley With Woman in Red"), Emil Nolde, Max, Franz Marc, Ludwig Meidner and Erich Heckel among others. The jewel is possibly "Metropolis", a masterpiece by George Grosz. The ground floor is devoted entirely to twentieth century art, from Cubism to Pop Art. Examples of analytic cubism include noteworthy pieces by Pablo Picasso ("Man With Clarinet"), Georges Braque ("Woman With Mandolin") and Juan Gris. "Harlequin Mirror" and "Bullfight" are highlights from Picasso's blue period. Surrealism is well represented, including a number of important works by Salvador Dali. Highlights from the 1960s and 1970s include "Moon Over Alabama" by Richard Lindner, works by David Hockney , Tom Wesselmann ("Large Nude # 1") and Roy Lichtenstein ("Women in the Bathroom"). A "Portrait of Baron Thyssen" painted by Lucian Freud in the early 1980s is the latest work, and one of three Freud's in the collection. Other important artists amongst the incredible collection of 20th century artistic trends include, Edvard Munch, James Ensor, Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Lyonel Feininger, August Macke, Otto Dix, Albert Gleizes, Frantisek Kupka, Gino Severini, Fernand Léger, Rodin, Liubov Popova, El Lissitzky, Francis Picabia, Yves Tanguy, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper, Joan Miró, Kurt Schwitters, Balthus, Paul Delvaux, Magritte, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ronald Kitaj, Alberto Giacometti, Lucio Fontana, Francis Bacon, Roberto Matta, Richard Estes and Robert Rauschenberg, representing almost every artistic movement from impressionism to hyper-realism. Temporary exhibitions, educational activities, conferences, publications, voluntary, corporate and promotional programmes, are just some of the initiatives that have been put in practice over these years, aimed at progressively increasing the cultural services on offer to promote the collection, as well as to involve an ever broader section of society in the life of the museum.

artwork: Antonio López García - "La Pistola (The Pistol)", 1959 - Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist. From June 28th until 25th September 2011, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza will be hosting a major retrospective of Antonio López García's work.

Two major temporary exhibitions can currently be viewed at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Until 22 May 2011, "Jean–Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)" provides an in-depth retrospective of this controversial French artist. Jean-Léon Gérôme was one of the most famous French painters of his day, but in the course of his long career, he was the subject of controversy and bitter criticism, in particular for defending the conventions of the waning genre of Academic painting. However, as this exhibition shows, Gérôme was not so much heir to that tradition as he was the creator of totally new pictorial worlds, often based on a strange iconography. This exhibition, the first retrospective of this artist's works to be held in Spain, sheds light on the most noteworthy features of his painting and sculpture from his early career in the 1840s up to his last works. "Heroines" from 8th March to 05th June 2011 is a joint exhibition, hosted between the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Fundación Caja (both in Madrid). The history of Western art is full of images of seductive, indulgent, submissive, defeated and enslaved women. But the women whom this exhibition centers on are strong women. The focus is on active, independent, defiant, inspired, creative, domineering and triumphant women as depicted in art. Following a non-chronological but thematic order, the exhibition explores the backgrounds and aspirations of heroines, through the iconography of solitude, work, delirium, sport, war, magic, religion, reading and painting (the first 5 at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the latter 4 at the Fundación Caja). In each "chapter" artworks from different periods, languages and artistic environments are juxtaposed, providing food for thought on what has changed and what has remained the same over time. And in each chapter, one or several voices of women artists, particularly contemporary women, respond to images created by their male counterparts. From June 28th until 25th September 2011 the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza will be holding a comprehensive exhibition of the work of the Spanish artist Antonio López (born Tomelloso, 1936). It will feature oil paintings, drawings and sculptures of some of his most typical subjects such as the interior of houses, the human figure, landscapes and urban views (principally of Madrid), as well as his still life depictions of fruit and other subjects. In the reality that surrounds him López looks for everyday aspects that he can reproduce in his work, using a slow, highly meditated creative process that aims to capture the essence of the object or landscape.

Major Exhibition of the Work of Andreas Hofer at Sammlung Goetz in Munich

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:49 PM PDT

artwork: Andreas Hofer - "Thunder Agent Nevada Doom 4419", 2004, acrylic, enamel on canvas - Courtesy of Sammlung Goetz

MUNICH.- Sammlung Goetz will present a major exhibition of the work of Andreas Hofer. More than 70 individual and multi-part works from the years 1995 to 2009 are being shown throughout the museum and in the BASE. As in other recent shows at Sammlung Goetz, the exhibition is curated by the artist himself, based on works already in the collection. These range from large-scale installations to paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures. Andreas Hofer has pulled together some of the groups of works in the collection in order to create situations that echo the mood of concentration that informed the exhibitions in which these works were originally displayed. He creates new atmospheres and self-contained spaces within the architectural framework of the museum. On view 23 November through 1 April, 2010.

Exhibition at Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts Presents "Dreamscapes"

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:48 PM PDT

artwork: Max Ernst (German, 1891–1976) - "The Eye of Silence", 1943 - Oil on canvas, 43 ¼ x 56 ¼ in. (109.9 x 142.9 cm) Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis . University purchase, Kende Sale Fund, 1946 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

ST. LOUIS, MO.- The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts presents "Dreamscapes", on view February 11–August 13, 2011. This exhibition incites questions about the act of dreaming—a succession of thoughts, images, sounds or emotions, which the mind experiences during sleep. The artworks on view and their juxtaposition with Tadao Ando's architecture offer new ways to think about the content and purpose of dreams on numerous levels: physiological, psychological, cultural and spiritual. The concept behind the exhibition began with the Pulitzer's Watercourt. Its meditative reflecting pool and hewed boulder - Scott Burton's Rock Settee (1988-89) - create an insular dreamscape in the middle of our city. A glass wall divides the Watercourt from the rest of the Pulitzer building.

Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Painting by Alice Neel at Sotheby's Auction

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:47 PM PDT

artwork: Alice Neel (1900 - 1984), "Jackie Curtis and Rita Red", 1970. Oil on canvas. 60 x 41 3/4 inches. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: $1,650,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's

NEW YORK, NY.- The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) today announced the acquisition of "Jackie Curtis and Rita Red" (Oil on canvas, 1970) by Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984). Purchased from the collection of Mary Schiller Myers and Louis S. Myers at Sotheby's in New York on November 11, "Jackie Curtis and Rita Red" is widely recognized as a superb example of Neel's work during the most fertile years of her career as well as one of her most moving pieces. CMA temporarily borrowed "Jackie Curtis and Rita Red" from the Myers for the inaugural opening of the East Wing this past summer in order to more fully represent the work of Neel and women artists of the 20th-century among the museum's contemporary collection.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Focus is on Paul Klee

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:46 PM PDT

artwork: Paul Klee Around The Fish

New York City - The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) launches Focus, a new series of special collection displays highlighting noteworthy aspects of the Museum's extensive collections.  The Focus series provides an opportunity for in-depth and cross-disciplinary presentations that will variously concentrate on a single artist's achievement, on broader artistic manifestations, on particular historical moments, or on significant groupings of works.  This initiative aims to animate the larger history set forth in the Painting and Sculpture galleries, ensuring that a greater number of familiar and unfamiliar works in the collection are rotated on and off view.

Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenhagen to show Balke & Kirkeby "Distant Horizons"

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:45 PM PDT

artwork: Peder Balke - The North Cape, 1840 - Oil on canvas, 67,5 x 84 cm. -  National Gallery, Oslo 

COPENHAGEN.- Ordrupgaard Museum will present the exhibition "Balke & Kirkeby. Distant horizons" from March 5 to June 21 2009, showing paintings by the Norwegian romantic landscape painter, Peder Balke, together with works by the Danish contemporary artist, Per Kirkeby. The exhibition will for the first time confront the Danish artist with one of the spiritual affinities he values the most. Both artists have each in their own time reached for the sublime, whether it was for the grand dramas of geology or for the landscapes of distant and desolate areas.

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art presents Andreas Golder

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:44 PM PDT

artwork: Andreas Golder -

Copenhagen, DK - The ARKEN- Museum of Contemporary Art opened the exhibit Andreas Golder: "It Has My Name On It " through May 18. In recent years Golder has become the object of attention with his personal painting which in a humorous and elegant fashion renews painting's potential – conceptually as well as regarding form and content.

Musée du Quai Branly Explores the Myth of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:43 PM PDT

artwork: Edgar Rice Burroughs had never been to Africa, but in creating Tarzan, he was inspired by many legends. He made Tarzan a real modern Western superhero living in an imaginary and idealized Africa in which he accomplishes incredible exploits in adventure after adventure.

PARIS.- Tarzan was a literary phenomenon from the very first book published in 1912, and soon appeared in comic strips, radio programmes, television series and films. The character, who features in many media such as posters, figurines, CDs and even games, continues to fascinate and fuel our vision of an imaginary, fantasy Africa. In the exhibition Tarzan! or Rousseau and the Waziri, the Musée du Quai Branly, in collaboration with the Centre International de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image (International Centre for Comic Books and Image), explores the myth embodied by this popular icon. On exhibition from 16 June through 27 September, 2009 at Musée du Quai Branly.

Christie's New York Photography Sales Highlight the Fall Auction Season

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:42 PM PDT

artwork: André Kertész - The Stairs of Montmartre, Paris, 1926 - Gelatin silver print on carte postale - Estimate: $80,000-120,00

NEW YORK, NY.- The Christie's line-up for the Photographs season this October 7 & 8 will include four major sales showcasing the very finest in the medium, from historical 19th century works through to contemporary prints. The four sales are: The American Landscape: Color Photographs from the Bruce and Nancy Berman Collection, Photographs by Sally Mann from a Private Collection, Washington, D.C., The Miller-Plummer Collection of Photographs, and the traditional Various Owners Photographs sale. All four sales will be preceded by a museum-quality exhibition at the Christie's Galleries at Rockefeller Center beginning October 3. The four auctions in their entirety are expected to realize in the range of $6-9 million.

The Morgan Library & Museum features Illuminated Pages From Its Renowned Collections

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:41 PM PDT

artwork: Adoration of the Magi, cut from a Gradual, in Latin. Italy, Milan, ca. 1500, Illuminated and signed by Master B. F. - Purchased, 1925

NEW YORK, NY - Famous for its medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum also holds a notable collection of single illuminated pages. Extracted from full texts, these works were acquired because they include some of the most spectacular examples of medieval painting, often with intricate designs brightened by burnished gold. From June 19 through September 13, 2009, in an exhibition entitled Pages of Gold: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan, fifty of the Morgan's finest single leaves—many of which were acquired by Pierpont Morgan and twelve of which are being displayed for the first time—are on view.

LACMA Announces First Exhibition Devoted to Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Late Work

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:40 PM PDT

artwork: Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Two Girls Reading, circa 1890-91. Oil on canvas. 22 5/16 X 19 in.- LACMA Frances and Armand Hammer Purchase Fund. Photo: 2009 Museum Associates/LACMA.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Renoir in the 20th Century, an exhibition focusing on the last three decades of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's career, until his death in 1919. The exhibition presents approximately 80 paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Renoir, interspersed with select works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Aristide Maillol, and Pierre Bonnard, to illustrate the developing avantgarde's debt to the older master. Curated by LACMA curator Claudia Einecke and Chief Curator of European Art J.Patrice Marandel, the show offers an unprecedented look at Renoir through the lens of modernism, bridging the perceived divide between the art of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Co-organized by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Musée d'Orsay, and LACMA, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition will be on view from February 14 to May 9, 2010.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:39 PM PDT

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 .

When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

This Week in Review in Art News

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