The IFPDA Print Fair Brings Fine Art Prints to New York in November Posted: 30 Oct 2011 10:12 PM PDT New York City.- The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) print fair opens at the historic Park Avenue Armory located on Park Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets in the heart of Manhattan's elegant Upper East Side. The fair opens on November 3rd and runs through November 6th. The largest international art fair focused exclusively on the artistic medium of printmaking, the IFPDA orint fair is noted for its historical depth, exhibiting works from the 16th through 21st centuries. While the Fair is known among museum curators and major collectors for its rare and exceptional prints, excellent works can be found in all price ranges. Visitors have an unrivaled opportunity to view and acquire outstanding works across the diverse range of periods and specialties represented by the IFPDA's exhibiting members. While the Fair is known among museum curators and major collectors for its rare and exceptional prints, excellent works can be found in all price ranges, including exciting new projects from today's leading and emerging artists. For its entrance, the Fair is proud to introduce a new wallpaper created by painter and designer Madeline Weinrib and produced by Studio Printworks. Exhibiting dealers are all leading members of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA). This year's roster of ninety exhibitors includes dealers from Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Zurich, and North America. The IFPDA is a non-profit organization of expert art dealers committed to the highest standards of quality, ethics, and connoisseurship, and to fostering a greater appreciation of fine prints among art collectors and the public. The Association's thorough vetting assures collectors of each exhibitor's expertise and professionalism, and of the authenticity and condition of artwork available for purchase. The IFPDA has sponsored the Print Fair since 1991. The Fair presents nearly 500 years of printmaking from early woodcuts and traditional engravings to etchings, lithographs, and innovative contemporary projects. The wide historical spectrum of artists' works on view includes old masters Rembrandt, Dürer, and Goltzius; Japanese ukiyo-e; 19th century American masters including Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, and Mary Cassatt; European Impressionists Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; American and European Modernists such as George Bellows, Martin Lewis, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Max Beckmann; and postwar masterworks by Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Louise Bourgeois. New editions pwill also remiere at the Fair from leading contemporary artists such as Chuck Close, Kiki Smith, Richard Serra, and John Baldessari. The Fair attracts over 6,000 new and seasoned collectors, curators from major museums worldwide, artists, art historians, and art enthusiasts. The fair is held at the end of New York's Print Week. This lively schedule of lectures, exhibitions, demonstrations, gallery talks, and openings is focused on printmaking and its vitality as an artistic practice. Print Week enables collectors, artists, scholars, educators, and the public to connect with IFPDA member galleries, museums, and non-profit organizations to discover new projects, enrich their knowledge of fine prints, and expand or begin their own collections. Visit the fair's website at ... http://www.ifpda.org |
The Parrish Art Museum Highlights "American Portraits" From its Collection Posted: 30 Oct 2011 10:11 PM PDT Southampton, New York.- "American Portraits: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum", the fourth in a series of special exhibitions drawn exclusively from the Parrish's collection, showcases some of the truly exceptional works of art that illustrate the many and varied ways in which artists approach portraiture. The exhibition is presently on display through the 27th of November. William Sidney Mount's "Portrait of Mrs. Manice" (1833) is the earliest painting in the Parrish collection and a prime example of the importance of portrait painting in the early years of the nation, assigning both status and prominence to the sitter. Mount painted many of Long Island's best known citizens, and this work, while recalling Renaissance models, remains resolutely American. |
The Museo d'Arte Mendrisio Presents a Major Retrospective of Simonetta Martini Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:57 PM PDT Mendrisio, Switzerland.- The Museo d'Arte Mendrisio is proud to present "Simonetta Martini: Whither are You Taking My Art?", on view at the museum from October 29th through January 15th 2012. In this exhibition, the artist is showing an overview of her work of the past twenty years, with about twenty large-format works together with a series of drawings and ceramics (made in collaboration with Giusi Arndt). This is her first retrospective exhibition in a museum. The catalogue, which is part of a series of books devoted to contemporary art in Ticino, contains critical and literary essays by Erri de Luca, Sylviane Dupuis, Maria Sole Martini Giovannoli, Simone Soldini, and Maria Will, and is illustrated with 54 colour plates. |
The Smithsonian American Art Museum Shows Highlights From the Koffler Collection Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:34 PM PDT Washington, D.C.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum is pleased to present "Made in Chicago: The Koffler Collection", on view at the museum until January 2nd 2012. The exhibition features 25 paintings, sculpture and works on paper from 1960 to 1980, including works by Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Theodore Halkin, Vera Klement, Ellen Lanyon, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Barry Tinsley and Ray Yoshida. The artworks are all by Chicago artists from the S.W. and B.M. Koffler Foundation collection, given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Samuel and Blanche Koffler. |
The Royal College of Art to Open an Exhibition of Lebanese Art Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:22 PM PDT London.- The Royal College of Art is pleased to host "Subtitled: with narratives from Lebanon" starting November 2nd. Using five themes to interpret Lebanon's rich, complex history, artists living both in and outside of Lebanon explore the socio-political realities that have influenced and shaped their art. The exhibition has been organised by the Association for the Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon (APEAL). The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, mixed-media installations, photographs, digital animations, films and sculptures by over 30 Lebanese artists such as Ayman Baalbaki whose iconic representations provoke an edgy insight into his world and this approach contrasted by Huguette Caland, now in her eighties, who uses mixed media in abstract to evoke the cultural heritage of her country, drawn from childhood memories. This show comes at a time of progressive change across Lebanon, with the older generation sharing their experiences with the new and a government and people who want to leave the battlefields behind and embrace democracy. |
Salffineart to Exhibit "The Nature of Graffiti" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:21 PM PDT Laguna Beach, California.- Fresh from artist residencies in Paris and Germany, saltfineart presents "Graffiti Nature: The Nature of Graffiti", an exhibition introducing paintings by celebrated Panamanian street artist Cisco Merel and artist collaborative dubbed W (Paz Ulloa and Vinicio Jimenez). "Graffiti Nature" will be on view at the gallery from November 3rd through December 29th and there will be an opening reception on Thursday, November 3rd from 6 - 9 pm. Graffiti Nature / The Nature of Graffiti explores the spectrum of influence "street art" has had on contemporary art through the work of two ground-breaking artists, Cisco Merel and the collaborative team W. Merel's canvases combine the compositional awareness of a classical painter and the graphic qualities of a street artist in order to convey a post-modern Utopia, moments of beauty and color infused into a world of chaos and concrete. |
Te Papa Museum Exhibits Recent Contemporary Art Acquisitions Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT Wellington, New Zealand.- Te Papa Museun is currently showing "Collecting Contemporary" on view through June 2012. Every year, Te Papa extends its contemporary art collection, adding significant works by both emerging and established artists, as well as pieces that enhance the collection or reflect important trends. This exhibition showcases a selection of works acquired between 2006 and 2011. The current selection of artworks will be on display until 24 January 2012. In February 2012, Collecting Contemporary will re-open with more new acquisitions, replacing some of the works now on display. Te Papa's purchases of works from new and emerging artists are based on the artist's individual practice, and the work's wider significance. Often these artists, although at the beginning of their careers, have in a short period of time developed a considerable exhibition history and a profile nationally and sometimes internationally. |
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Opens “Edo Pop ~ The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints” Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:04 PM PDT Minneapolis, Minnesota.- The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is home to one of the world's great collections of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") prints. The museum's new exhibition, "Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints," opening October 30th, and running through January 8th 2012, features more than 160 masterworks that reveal the great breadth of ukiyo-e production as well as the individual artistry of about 40 artists. Organized thematically, the exhibition provides a kaleidoscopic view of popular culture in pre-modern Japan. "Pop Art" usually describes the artistic movement of the 1950s, when artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein gleaned inspiration from contemporary urban life, mass-produced consumer products, and slick advertising. Picturing film stars and comic-book heroes in bright colors and crisp forms, Pop Art referred largely to the popular culture from which the movement emerged. "Pop" also aptly describes ukiyo-e produced in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1868), which reflected the tastes and proclivities of a rising class of urban commoners, known as chønin. Chønin merchants and artists grew rich providing goods and services to the inhabitants of Japan's rapidly growing cities. Strict stratification of Japanese society, however, prevented prosperous townspeople from advancing socially despite their wealth. As a result, many pursued hedonistic pleasures and pastimes. Most ukiyo-e artists created both paintings and designs for woodblock prints, depicting the pleasures and pastimes associated with the floating world. Fine paintings commanded high prices, but mass-produced woodblock prints were within the reach of almost everyone. Low cost alone, however, did not account for the immense popularity of ukiyo-e prints. The subversive subject matter made them irresistibly intriguing. Images of women, especially entertainers and the denizens of the licensed (and unlicensed) brothels, were purchased as reminders of their sex appeal and fashionable style. Depictions of actors were procured by devotees of Kabuki, the robust and lowbrow theater. Other figural themes included sumo wrestlers, dandies and male prostitutes, ghosts and demons, mythological and legendary heroes, and ordinary townspeople engaged in seasonal pastimes. Consumer products were featured in these images, including the latest fashions and textiles, makeup, elegant pipes, lacquers, ceramics, clocks, rare plants and flowers, and even pets. Landscapes, too, became an important sub-genre, first in the form of illustrated guidebooks in the 18th century and then as single-sheet prints in the 19th. Interest in landscapes reflected the government's loosening of restrictions on travel, prompting city dwellers to take to the road in search of adventure and exotic pleasures. Ukiyo-e masters evolved a distinctive style that featured fluid yet descriptive outlines, novel vantage points, bold areas of clear color unimpeded by chiaroscuro, and audacious compositions with off-center subjects and dramatic cropping. Meanwhile, block carvers and printers developed innovative printing techniques. Consequently, ukiyo-e images were fresh and contemporary, appealing to the popular tastes of the townspeople. "Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints" also features works by contemporary artists inspired by ukiyo-e and the social and conceptual underpinnings that inform them. Iona Roseal Brown, based in Washington, D.C., sees parallels between hip-hop culture and the floating world. Graffiti artist Gajin Fujita portrays East Los Angeles gang members as Japanese warriors against a backdrop of heavily tagged walls. Nagano-based artist Tabaimo focuses on notions of transience and estrangement in her animated video titled "Hanabi-ra" (Flower Petal), which appropriates imagery from ukiyo-e prints. These works demonstrate that ukiyo-e remains a vital artistic force, as relevant today as when it was created by Japan's pre-modern Pop artists. In 1883, twenty-five citizens of Minneapolis founded the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, committing them to bringing the arts into the life of their community. More than a century later, the museum they created, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, stands as a monument to a remarkable history of civic involvement and cultural achievement. Designed by the preeminent New York architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, the original building opened its doors in 1915. A neoclassical landmark in the Twin Cities, the MIA expanded in 1974 with an addition designed by the late Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. In June 2006, the museum unveiled a new wing designed by architect Michael Graves. The Target Wing was the result of a major renovation and expansion that included thirty-four new galleries, and an additional 40% exhibition space. As well as increased gallery space the expansion included a new Lecture Hall, Photographs Study Room, Print Study Room, and an Art Research Library in a new, more visible location. The Graves design respectfully combined the neoclassical elegance of the original McKim, Mead & White 1915 building with the minimalism of Tange's 1974 addition. The MIA's permanent collection has grown from eight hundred works of art to around eighty thousand objects. The collection includes world-famous works that embody the highest levels of artistic achievement, spanning five thousand years and representing the world's diverse cultures across all continents. The MIA has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; Prints and Drawings; and Textiles. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.artsmia.org |
The National Gallery Of Art In Washington D.C. ~ A US Treasure Of European & American Art That Attracts 4.5 Million Visitors Annually Posted: 30 Oct 2011 09:00 PM PDT Now visited by more than 4.5 million people annually, the National Gallery of Art is now one of the world's leading art museums. The National Gallery of Art was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. Since its inception, the mission of the National Gallery of Art has been to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassical marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. On March 17, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America. The paintings and works of sculpture given by Andrew Mellon have formed a nucleus of high quality around which the collections have grown. Mr. Mellon's hope that the newly created National Gallery would attract gifts from other collectors was soon realized in the form of major donations of art from Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Joseph Widener, Chester Dale, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch as well as individual gifts from hundreds of other donors. The modern East Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry and forms an architectural link between the two structures. The East Building provided an additional 56,100 m2 of floor space and accommodated the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule as well as housing an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The two buildings are linked by an underground concourse featuring sculptor Leo Villareal's computer-programmed digital light project "Multiverse". On May 23, 1999 the Gallery opened an outdoor sculpture garden located in the 6.1-acre block adjacent to the West Building at 7th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W. The garden provides an informal, yet elegant setting for works of modern and contemporary sculpture. The National Gallery of Art contains three museum shops, three cafes and a bar as well as the Library, a major national art research center serving the Gallery's staff, members of the Center for Advanced Study, visiting scholars, and serious adult researchers. Visit the museum's thorough website at .. http://www.nga.gov The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world, including an outstanding and highly representative collection of European art. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. The strongest collection is the Italian Renaissance collection, which includes two panels from Duccio's "Maesta", the great tondo of the "Adoration of the Magi" by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale "Nativity", Bellini's "The Feast of the Gods", the only Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Americas, and significant groups of works by Titian and Raphael. Other European collections include examples of the work of many of the great masters of western painting, including Mattias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and Eugène Delacroix, among many others. American artists featured in the collection include Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, Thomas Chambers, Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, Frederic Edwin Church and Mary Cassatt among many others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such diverse works as the "Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis", a superb collection of work by Rodin and Degas, Honoré Daumier's entire series of bronze sculptures, including all 36 of his caricatured portrait busts of French government officials, superb modern sculpture by Henry Moore and others and wonderful examples of Chinese porcelain. The east wing is a showcase for the museum's collection of 20th-century art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko as well as hosting the gallery's special exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art is home to fifteen diverse permanent exhibits that highlight artworks by Henri Matisse ("cutouts"), Alexander Calder (untitled mobile, commissioned for the East Building atrium), Andy Goldsworthy ("Roof", a sculpture installed on the ground level of the East Building) and other specially commissioned pieces or highlights from the collection. Three major exhibitions are now on view at the National Gallery of Art. "From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection" (until 2 January 2012) highlights works from Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962. This special exhibition features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. Among the masterpieces on view are Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's "Forest of Fontainebleau", Auguste Renoir's "A Girl with a Watering Can", Mary Cassatt's "Boating Party", Edouard Manet's "Old Musician", Pablo Picasso's "Family of Saltimbanques", and George Bellows' "Blue Morning". Other artists represented include Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Claude Monet. Dale was an astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market. Portraits of Dale by Salvador Dalí and Diego Rivera are included in the show, along with portraits of Dale's wife Maud (who greatly influenced his interest in art) painted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger.
A selection of works from the museum library entitled "Collections Frozen in Time" (until 24 July 201) focuses on historic private collection catalogues held by the National Gallery of Art's own library. From the Middle-Ages until the 19th century, rulers, nobles, and wealthy merchants acquired and sold paintings, classical sculpture, gems, vases, and numismatics. As these private libraries grew they became a way to demonstrate an individual's wealth and sophistication and had to be documented. Some collectors wrote their own catalogues, others sought noted scholars to catalogue the works. In the days before photography, artists were commissioned to produce lavish engravings depicting the assembled objects in fine detail. The private collection catalogue soon became as much a luxury object as the items it described, and as collections were dispersed over time, these catalogues often remained the only record of the collections' original contents.
Until the 15th of May 2011, the National Gallery of Art is spotlighting Ter Brugghen's "Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene" (on loan from the Allen Memorial At Museum of Oberlin College) hanging it alongside their own, famous "Bagpipe Player". Although these paintings belong to different genres, they reveal the sure fluidity of brush, exquisite color harmonies, and sophisticated compositional orchestration for which Ter Brugghen is renowned. "Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene" depicts an episode from the life of Sebastian, a third–century Roman soldier. After refusing to renounce Christianity he was bound to a tree and shot by archers. Irene, along with her maidservant, rescued him, removed the arrows from his flesh, and nursed his wounds. The circumstances prompting the creation of this work are not certain, but it is probable that Ter Brugghen painted it for a hospital in Utrecht. Major forthcoming exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art include "Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals" from 20th February 2011. Organized jointly with the National Gallery, London, this exhibition will explore the 18th century art inspired by the city of Venice. The exhibition celebrates the rich variety of these Venetian views, known as 'vedute', through some 20 masterworks by Canaletto and more than 30 by his rivals, including Michele Marieschi, Francesco Guardi, and Bernardo Bellotto. Responding to an art market fueled largely by the Grand Tour, these gifted painters depicted the famous monuments and vistas of Venice in different moods and seasons. From February 27thth 2011, "Gauguin: Maker of Myth will feature nearly 120 works by Gauguin in the first major look at the artist's oeuvre in the United States since the blockbuster National Gallery of Art retrospective of 1988–1989, "The Art of Paul Gauguin". Organized by Tate Modern, London, in association with the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition will bring together self-portraits, genre pictures, still lifes, and landscapes from throughout the artist's career. It will include not only oil paintings but also pastels, prints, drawings, sculpture, and decorated functional objects. Organized thematically, the exhibition will examine Gauguin's use of religious and mythological symbols to tell stories, reinventing or appropriating narratives and myths drawn both from his European cultural heritage and from Maori legend. Opening on April 17th 2011, a retrospective of work by Gabriel Metsu will featue some 35 paintings. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his career was relatively short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. This exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States. |
The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest opens "From Botticelli to Titian" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:59 PM PDT BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - The most comprehensive exhibition to date dedicated to the Italian Renaissance will run in the Museum of Fine Arts from 28 October through 14 February, 2010. The large-scale exhibition entitled "From Botticelli to Titian: Masterpieces of Two Centuries of Italian Painting" will display paintings on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts from over fifty museums, including the Uffizi in Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the national galleries of London and Washington, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the Prado in Madrid. |
Stanley Spencer at Laning Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:58 PM PDT Newcastle upon Tyne, UK - The Stanley Spencer exhibition has previously been on show at Tate Liverpool. A major exhibition of work by one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century is to go on show at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle. On exhibition through 11 January, 2009. |
'Flesh and the Color' exhibition at Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:57 PM PDT MEXICO CITY - The Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes (MBAR) present the exhibition La carne y el color (The Flesh and the Color), through October. The show gathers paintings and drawings from both cultural institutions. The exhibition presents a total of 89 works by 73 artists. Among them are David Alfaro Siqueiros, Pablo Caliari "Veronese", Luca Giordano, José Clemente Orozco, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Roberto Montenegro and Gerardo Murillo. |
Mexico's INBA Celebrates Dolores Olmedo's 100th Anniversary Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:56 PM PDT MEXICO CITY - The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) will honor Dolores Olmedo on the centenary of her birth with the exhibition Dolores Olmedo: History of a Collection which will open at the Diego Rivera Hall in the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts), on December 9th, 2009.The exhibition is a coordinated effort between the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Museo Dolores Olmedo which shows a selection from her collections that represent the labor that Dolores Olmedo undertook as an art aficionado and that allows to appreciate life of this outstanding woman in Mexico's cultural life of the 19th century. |
Wolfe Contemporary Shows Works on Paper in "Sight Unseen" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:55 PM PDT San Francisco, CA.- Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art is pleased to present "Sight Unseen", a summer group exhibition of works on paper. Featured artists include Dan Attoe, Kirsten Deirup, Shawn Kuruneru, and Frank Magnotta. "Sight Unseen: Works on Paper by Various Artists" is on view at the gallery until July 15th.With the exception of Portland-based Attoe, all are based in New York City and rarely exhibited in the Bay Area. |
Kunsthistorisches Museum presents " Rooms in Pictures ~ Interiors from 1500 to 1900" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:54 PM PDT Vienna, Austria - Interiors are the most varied and diverse of all pictorial genres. Such paintings record the setting in which man lives, his private milieu, his place of work and the intimacy of his home. They depict every-day life in all its poetic detail, with all its quotidian, sometimes comic and occasionally tragic moments. Apart from the artistic challenge of creating the illusion of an interior with the help of perspective and light, they depict the reality of life in stark authenticity, through an ironic prism, or as a moralistic warning. On view at the Kunsthistorisches Museum through 12 July, 2009. |
Christie’s Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled $348,263,600 with Eight World Auction Records Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:53 PM PDT New York City - Christie's highly anticipated Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled $348,263,600, marking the second highest total ever in auction history for the category. Eight new world auction records were established for artists including Richard Prince, Sam Francis, Leon Gottlieb, with Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping setting a world auction record for any living artist, sold for $33,641,000. The sale was 95% sold by value and 95% sold by lot. |
Juan Genovés Presents 15 New Paintings at Marlborough Fine Art in London Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:52 PM PDT LONDON.- Marlborough Fine Art presents the first London exhibition in over 40 years by the Spanish artist Juan Genovés of 15 new paintings that will open at Marlborough Fine Art, London on October 29 through 28 November, 2009. Born in Valencia in 1930, Genovés has been exhibiting with Marlborough worldwide since 1964. This exhibition continues Genovés' exploration of people in groups, depicted through bird's-eye views of crowds where the absence of buildings, roads, trees or clues to a common landscape creates a dynamic of intensity and dislocation. The motivations for the groups' activities are never clear, as Genovés allows the viewer to draw his own conclusions.
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The National Gallery of Denmark opens "Nature Strikes Back" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:51 PM PDT COPENHAGEN.- Throughout history, mankind has perceived nature differently at different times. During the Middle Ages, nature was mostly regarded as evil and mankind was prey to its whims, which only God could protect us from. This understanding was replaced by a more positive view of nature in the Renaissance, where man begins to regard nature as a useful resource that can be controlled. This way of thinking became increasingly striking in modern times. Nature came to be regarded as inexhaustible and something to be mastered and completely subjected to human needs. |
Freud's “Eros & Thanatos" Theory of Drives through Exceptional Works of Fine Art Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:50 PM PDT VIENNA, AUSTRIA - For the first time, the exhibition "Eros & Thanatos – Drives, Images, Interpretations", on view at the Sigmund Freud Museum and in the Historic Library of the Liechtenstein Museum, thematizes Freud's theory of drives through exceptional works of fine art. Paintings, drawings, prints, enamels and sculptures by artists including Dürer, Rubens, Bellucci, Klimt and Schiele illustrate the interplay between the life and death drives. The exhibition's team of curators and scientific advisors includes Monika Knofler, director of the Academy's Graphic Collection, Johann Kräftner, director of the Liechtenstein Museum, Hannes Etzlstorfer, and Jeanne Wolff-Bernstein, a psychoanalyst based in San Francisco and former president of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. On exhibition 12 June though 13 October, 2009.In his late work, Freud's theory of drives centered on the opposition between the death drive (Thanatos) and the life drive (Eros). He sought to explain the diversity of psychical life through the interplay of and conflict between these two primal drives. "Eros & Thanatos" is the first joint effort of the two museums, and it represents a continuation of the Sigmund Freud Museum's cooperation with the Graphic Collection of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Inge Scholz-Strasser, director of the Sigmund Freud Museum, elucidates: "In this exhibition we have brought together a controversial psychoanalytic theory with two internationally renowned and art-historically significant collections. It is the first cooperation with the nearby Liechtenstein Museum, which has provided key works on loan to the Sigmund Freud Museum." Johann Kräftner, director of the Liechtenstein Museum continues: "With this exhibition we would like to bring together the energies of the two museums, providing a new impulse in a district that has repeatedly been the birthplace of great cultural achievements in Vienna. Through the cooperation of two great antipodes, the home and workplace of Sigmund Freud in Berggasse and the Liechtenstein Palace, working together with the Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts, new realizations are opened by the integration of a transdisciplinary perspective into the consideration of themes of which one might have thought there was nothing new to know." The exhibition illustrates Freud's many-sided theory of the life and death drives using paintings and graphics from antiquity, the Renaissance and the fin de siècle. During Freud's life, artists such as Schiele, Klimt and Kokoschka devoted great attention to the theme of sexuality without ever having read Freud's theories on the topic. Conversely, although Freud felt himself misunderstood by his adherents in the question of Eros and Thanatos, he also did not seek contact to the artists of his era, instead only taking heed of the resonances he found with his revolutionary theories in the writings of the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles. In "Eros and Thanatos" the Sigmund Freud Museum and the Liechtenstein Museum use Freud's texts in exploring the tension between life and death, between violence and passion in the work of artists of various epochs – from Dürer through Giordano to the Vienna Secession. Eros and Thanatos in the Work of Sigmund Freud In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Freud introduced the life and death drives for the first time, whereby he declared that his earlier conception of a duality between the self-preservation drive and the sex drive was no longer sufficient. Although a number of psychoanalysts expressed doubt regarding his new theory, Freud remained an energetic proponent of this theory for the rest of his life. According to his essay, the life drive – Eros – strives to lengthen life and makes connections to objects, while the death drive – Thanatos – yearns for a return to an earlier stage of life, a tension-free and almost lifeless state, and does not strive to enter into object relationships. In Freud's last years, his theories of Eros and Thanatos found increasing resonance before the background of the violent and selfdestructive nature of political and social developments worldwide. In his 1932 letter to Albert Einstein, Freud linked Eros to love and Thanatos to hate, while at the same time warning: "(...) we must be chary of passing overhastily to the notions of good and evil. Each of these instincts is every whit as indispensable as its opposite, and all the phenomena of life derive from their activity." The exhibition "Eros & Thanatos" shows how continually relevant the struggle between external storm and inner drive has remained for humanity over the centuries. Visit The Liechtenstein Museum at : http://www.liechtensteinmuseum.at/de/pages/home.asp |
Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:49 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.
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