Sabtu, 31 Desember 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...


Museo de Arte de Ponce announces "Treasures of the Collection : The Pre-Raphaelites"

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 09:48 PM PST

artwork: Edward Coley Burne-Jones - "The Sleeping Beauty" from the small Briar Rose series. - Oil on canvas, 60 x 115 cm. Courtesy of Museo de Arte de Ponce, San Juan de Puerto Rico

PONCE, PR.- In an unprecedented event for Puerto Rico, on Saturday, February 4, 2012, Museo de Arte de Ponce will host an international symposium titled "Treasures of the Collection in Context: The Pre-Raphaelites in the Museo de Arte de Ponce Collection." From 10 am to 5 pm, renowned specialists in art history and Victorian literature will meet in this south-coast Puerto Rico city to discuss the artists and works contained in the museum's world-famed collection. This conference represents the most important academic event ever held on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Puerto Rico. The symposium is made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Among the scholars specializing in Victorian England expected to take part in the conference are Tim Barringer (Yale University), Sally Huxtable (Northumbria University), Franny Moyle (author and BBC producer), Jason Rosenfeld (Marymount Manhattan College), Alison Smith (Tate Britain), and Madeleine Vala (University of Puerto Rico).


artwork: William Holman Hunt - "Miss Gladis M. Holman Hunt" (The School of Nature). Oil on panel, 122.5 x 982 cm. San Juan de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Ponce.Their presentations will be in English, with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish. The speakers promise to throw light on the creative processes of the young artists who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, their sources of inspiration, and the recurrent themes and subject-matter of the movement, and there will be panels on the artistic and literary exchanges that occurred as a result of the movement's sweeping influence and popularity. Also to be discussed are the curatorial approaches that have been taken in Pre-Raphaelite exhibitions organized since 1980.

The remarkable collective of painters and poets that comprised the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood decried the formulaic nature of the art promulgated by the Royal Academy in London, and proposed instead to return to an "honest" art—the sort that existed, in their view, prior to Raphael. And so the Brotherhood's name: the Pre-Raphaelites.

Museo de Arte de Ponce's British Collection consists of sixty-six objects dating from 1760 to 1905. Forty of these works are Pre-Raphaelite paintings, drawings, and a photograph. It represents one of the clear strengths among its holdings, and the nucleus of Victorian works in the British Collection has been called one of the most important outside London itself.

"This symposium will be a milestone in the Museum's history, as it will offer, for the first time, a broad look at these wonderful works of art outside the context in which they were created," said Agustín Arteaga, the museum's director and chief executive officer, who then added, "Through this international symposium we will be bringing this important group of works to the attention of a broader public and continuing to promote our permanent collection as an object of study and intercultural dialogue."

The conference will serve as a preamble to the publication, in the summer of 2012, of a bilingual (English/Spanish) catalog of the Museo de Arte de Ponce's British Collection, which is being co-edited by Cheryl Hartup (the museum's curator-in-chief), Alison Smith, and Sally Anne Huxtable. This collection, which has traveled to the Tate Britain, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, and the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, among many others, contains such masterpieces as The Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon (1881–1898) by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Flaming June (c. 1895) by Frederic, Lord Leighton. The catalog of the British Collection is planned as the first in a series of volumes on specific areas of the museum's permanent collection, specifically those that solidify its position as an institution of great international prestige.

artwork: Dante Gabriel Rossetti - " Roman Widow" (Tell Manibus). Oil on canvas, 103.7 x 91 / 2 cm.  -   San Juan de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Ponce.

The Museum is offering financial aid for graduate students in Art History or Victorian Literature who wish to take part in the symposium for academic purposes. Those interested in applying for this aid (which will be given on a competitive basis) should send a current curriculum vitae accompanied by a letter of interest explaining how their participation in the symposium is related to the museum's collection, and how it would further their studies and possible or ongoing research. The letter should be addressed to kjelias@museoarteponce.org, and should specify the university where they are studying and their year of study. Deadline for application is January 7, 2012.

To complement this academic event, on the evening of February 4, the museum's restaurant Al Sur will offer a prix-fixe menu designed especially for the symposium. Chef Ariel has drawn inspiration from the Romanticism that was a part of the age of the Pre-Raphaelites, and he is making preparations to delight diners with foods known in the culinary world for their relationship to love and passion. And coincidentally, that dizzying passion of the time is at the heart of the BBC-produced mini-series "Desperate Romantics," based on the best-selling novel by one of the symposium's speakers, Franny Moyle.

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery Exhibited New Collages by Poet John Ashbery

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 08:30 PM PST

artwork: John Ashbery - "The 'Little' Tower of Babel", 2010 - Collage, digitized print - 6 3/4" x 8 1/4" - Courtesy the artist and Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

New York City.- The Tibor de Nagy Gallery presented an exhibition of new collages by acclaimed poet John Ashbery. This is the gallery's second solo exhibition devoted exclusively to Ashbery's collages, following his hugely successful debut with the gallery in 2008. "John Ashbury: Recent Collages" Ashbery was fascinated in his youth by the collage novels of Max Ernst and the partly collaged Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque. He started making collages as an undergraduate at Harvard, and has continued the collage process in both his visual and literary creations ever since. Influenced by such collage giants as Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, and more directly, Joe Brainard, Ashbery's work combines equal doses of art historical and contemporary pop culture references. These recent works are more inventive and confidently his own than ever before. Ashbery continues to explore the collage medium, pushing the imagery into increasingly amorphous shapes with unexpected and often humorous juxtapositions, in much the same way that he has consistently pushed the boundaries of poetry.


The 17th Annual LA Art Show: Modern & Contemporary Opens January 18th

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 07:20 PM PST

artwork: David Bailey - "Unfulfilled Love" 2010 - Hahnemühle Photo Rag Satin - 773 x 610 mm - Edition of 20 Courtesy of Paul Stolper Contemporary Art Gallery, London

LOS ANGELES, CA.- The 17th Annual LA Art Show: Modern & Contemporary will feature the California debut of new works by artists Damien Hirst and photographer David Bailey. Locally accessible for the first time, new works by Hirst include 'The Souls' series of shimmering foil-­‐block butterfly prints and gold foil block skulls 'Death or Glory.' Bailey will exhibit new works of still lives, fashion images, and portraits. Both artists are represented by Paul Stolper Contemporary Art Gallery from London, UK. The LA Art Show: Modern & Contemporary will kick off with a high-­‐profile Opening Night Premiere Party on Wednesday, January 18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Hosted by actor and Art of Elysium supporter David Arquette, proceeds from the Opening Night Premiere Party will enable Preview beneficiaries The Art of Elysium to expand its program to bring arts to critically ill hospitalized children and increase substantially the number of school children who visit the Getty through the J. Paul Getty Museum's Education Department program for Title One School visits. Show dates January 18 - 22.

Chen Wenling in Singapore with "Red Memory" & "China Scene" on Exhibit

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:53 PM PST

artwork: Chen Wenling - A multiple sculpture from his famous "Red Memory" series. This breakthrough body of work with sinewy boys, made of bronze and auto-grade paint, drenched in his signature fire-engine duco red paint, is a testament of the artist's fiery attitude towards life.

SINGAPORE.- Ode To Art Contemporary will be holding a solo exhibition for one of China's top ten contemporary sculptors, Chen Wenling , at Art Stage 2012 from 12 – 15 January at the Marina Bay Sands Convention & Exhibition Center (booth D4-05). This exhibition showcases artworks from his two renowned series of sculptures: Red Memory and China Scene. Following a number of prestigious exhibitions, such as Art Basel in Switzerland and the Shanghai Biennale , Chen has been represented by Ode To Art for the last five years. The two main themes of Chen Wenling's sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images. His self extreme condition begins from the series of "Red Boy" (Red Memory). It is neither realism nor vanguard sculpture, but the self expression of Chen Wenling himself to the critical state of life. For example, dread, gladness, game and fancy are the basic main motivations of his sculptures. This series of "Red Boy" (Red Memory) conveys his experience in an autobiographic form.

The Kenan Center Presented a Catherine Parker Solo Show

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:52 PM PST

artwork: Catherine Parker - "Messiaen V", 2010 - Gouache & charcoal on paper - 26" x 32" - Courtesy of the artist and the Kenan Center, Lockport, New York

Lockport, New York.- The Kenan Center was honored to present a solo exhibit of painter Catherine Parker's works. "Catherine Parker: Resonance"  Parker's intensely pigmented watercolors are inspired by poetry, music and places. An acute observer of her surroundings, Parker revels in small and large occurrences, finding ideas both in the boundlessness of travel, and the intimacy of watching a flower grow on her kitchen windowsill. The artworks featured in the show span a period of creative output encompassing the last two decades. Many new pieces, created especially for this event, will be on view. "The Kenan Center is especially pleased to present Catherine Parker's work," said Susan Przybyl, executive director of the Center. "Aside from being the first exhibit of Catherine's art at the gallery, her show has additional significance; our first gallery exhibit, 45 years ago in 1966, was an exhibition of works by her father, noted American watercolorist Charles Burchfield. We are pleased to be contributing to this ongoing family and artistic legacy."


Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome shows Carsten Höller's Award-winning Project

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:51 PM PST

artwork: Carsten Höller winning piece "Double Carousel" with Zöllner Stripes will be on display through 26th March 2012 at the MACRO in Rome.

ROME.- Enel Contemporanea entry shown in MACRO's exhibition schedule in the autumn with one of the most important artists today: Carsten Höller, the winner of the 2011 Enel Contemporanea Award. His work Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes will be on view and free to public untill 26th February 2012 at the MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. Enel Contemporanea Award 2011 is the prize promoted by Enel within its "Enel Contemporanea" programme, which calls for the annual production of an original artwork on the theme of energy by international artists. For the past number of years, Enel has focused on contemporary art due to its ability to express and transmit values of innovation, attention to the environment and an openness to the world. Today, these values constitute the three fundamental axes pertaining to the creation of a sustainable future and also reflect the evolution of a company like Enel.

In Double Carousel with Zöllner Stripes the public will be also able to interact with two moving merry-go-rounds created by the artist. Turning slowly and in opposite directions, the merry-go-rounds allow the public to get on and off easily, as if they were enormous mills or grindstones, where the people, sitting on top, come closer together and move further apart in constant rotation. Around the merry-go-rounds, criss-crossing lines (the "Zöllner Stripes") create a destabilizing effect, deforming spatial perception to provoke a slowed-down vision of reality.

Born in Brussels in 1961 (to German parents), Carsten Höller graduated in agricultural sciences with a specialization in plant pathology and a Masters' thesis on olfactory communication between insects, uses art as a cognitive tool in probing objective reality and perception. Disorientation is a key feature in most of his works from the rotating mushrooms suspended from the ceiling of the Prada Foundation in 2000 to the steel Test Site slides in Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern in 2006, as part of the Unilever Series, to his most recent exhibition, Soma, at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin. Carsten Höller has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in such prestigious international institutions as the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Bregenz Kunsthaus. He represented Sweden at the Venice Biennial 51st International Art Exhibition (with Miriam Bäckström) and has participated in numerous editions of Documenta and the São Paolo Biennial. The New Museum in New York is currently featuring his solo show entitled Carsten Höller: Experience. He lives and works in Stockholm.

artwork: Carsten Höller - " Y ", 2003 - 960 lightbulbs, aluminium, electronic circuitry, wood cables, light signs, and mirrors - Overall Installation: approx. 1300 x 850 x 320 cm.

The 2011 winning artwork was selected by the international jury, which met on the 2nd of June in Venice at the 54th International Art Exhibition, of which Enel was the main sponsor. The jury chose the laureate among 3 internationally recognized artists—Carsten Höller (Germany), Bruce Mau (Canada) and Paola Pivi (Italy)—invited to participate in the competition by the Artistic Director of the Award, Francesco Bonami.

The jury, presided by Gianluca Comin, Enel's Group Director of External Relations, was made up of representatives of some of the most prestigious international arts institutions: Joseph Backstein (Curator of the Moscow Art Biennial), Luca Massimo Barbero (Associate Curator Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London), Massimiliano Gioni (Artistic Director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan), Ivo Mesquita (Chief Curator of the Sao Paolo National Gallery), Jack Persekian (Director of the Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem).

Previous Enel Contemporanea editions have featured the works of eight international artists: in 2010 the Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol's "Butterfly House" inaugurated the new MACRO wing by Odile Decq. Enel Contemporanea previously presented the American artist Doug Aitken and Jeffrey Inaba, the French-Brasilian assume vivid astro focus, the Italian A12 group and Patrick Tuttofuoco, the Danish Jeppe Hein and the British Angela Bulloch.

Philadelphia Museum of Art hosts 'Rhythms of India ~ The Art of Nandalal Bose'

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:41 PM PST

artwork: Nandalal Bose - Village Huts, 1928 - Watercolor and wash on paper, 8 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi


Philadelphia, PA - The first traveling exhibition outside Asia to highlight the works of Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) will make its only East Coast stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this summer. Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (June 27 – Sept. 1, 2008) includes nearly 100 of the artist's finest paintings in a variety of styles and media.  Considered the father of modern art in India, Bose chronicled and — through his art —contributed to India's emergence from British colonial rule and transition to an independent nation in 1947. The San Diego Museum of Art organized the exhibition in collaboration with the government of India and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.

The paintings on display were selected from nearly 7,000 of the artist's works, all of which are held by the NGMA as the result of a gift to India from the artist's family. The exhibition marks the first time Bose's artworks, considered Indian National Treasures, have been permitted to travel to the United States.

"We are delighted to share with our visitors this rare retrospective, examining one of South Asia's great 20th century artists," Anne d'Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said. "Bose's art is inextricably bound to the story of India's national awakening and independence, and at the same time is deeply personal and nuanced. Although he was highly influential to a younger generation of artists, his work represents an area of modern art that has been little understood in the United States, and along with our colleagues in San Diego, we are thrilled to introduce it to a broad public. We are particularly delighted to be able to show Nandalal Bose in the context of this Museum's fine collections of earlier painting and sculpture from India."

artwork: Nandalal Bose - New Clouds, 1937 Tempera on paper, 16 5/8 x 27 1/2 in. National Gallery of Modern Art, New DelhiThroughout his 60-year career, Bose utilized a wide range of styles and techniques. Many of his works depict devotional and literary subjects and natural, tribal and village life scenes in modes that draw from indigenous Indian, Japanese and Chinese sources. The exhibition, organized by Sonya Rhie Quintinilla, the San Diego Museum of Art's Curator of Asian Art, contains six sections that highlight the depth and variety of Bose's work and the different formats he used, from intimate monochrome sketches on postcards or scroll-like wash paintings to brightly colored monumental murals. It also examines his relationships with key figures including Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) — a major political and spiritual leader during the independence movement — and the writer, educator and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

Bose's adoption of Japanese and Chinese techniques to illustrate India's heritage, national pride, and spirituality is evident throughout the exhibition. Many of these Asian-inspired paintings evoke scenes from nature. In Darjeeling and Fog (1945), Bose captured the picturesque Bengal village of Darjeeling in the style of a Chinese landscape painting. He borrowed from East Asian artistic traditions again in Floating a Canoe (1947), in which two Eastern Indian tribal fisherman move with the rhythm of the sea. In Dolan Champa (1952), a delicate depiction of a flower common in Bengal, Bose went so far as to write his name vertically in a Chinese-style seal.

Bose also depicted traditional Indian religious icons in modern styles, as illustrated in Saraswati (1941), a fresh take on the Indian goddess of knowledge, learning and music.  In Annapurna (1943), he depicts the Hindu god Shiva's wife — whose name translates as "abundance of food" — together with her ascetically emaciated husband, as a comment on the great Bengal famine of the same year, caused by the British stockpiling rice for World War II military rations.  In Sati (recreated in 1943 from a prize-winning work he did as a student in 1907), Bose reveals one of Siva's other wives in a moment of supreme devotion. He painted it in a style reflecting the delicacy of Indian Mughal "miniatures" while using a Japanese-inspired wash technique.

Visitors to a simultaneous exhibition, Multiple Modernities: India, 1905-2005, can see more than 25 drawings, prints and watercolor paintings created by Bose's contemporaries and successors. Multiple Modernities (on view in the Museum's second floor Gallery 227 from June 14 – Dec. 7, 2008) reveals the broad range of artistic sources, traditions and experiments in visual culture that emerged before and after Indian independence.

artwork: Nandalal Bose - Radha's Longing (Radha's Viraha), 1936. Tempera on silk, 32 1/2 x 19 5/8 in. National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, IndiaIn conjunction with the exhibition, the San Diego Museum of Art has published a 304-page catalogue with nearly 100 color plates, along with essays by a renowned and international group of art historians, historians and contemporary Indian artists.

About Nandalal Bose
India's changing political climate influenced Bose's life and art greatly. When Bose was born in 1882, Britain had ruled India for nearly 25 years, and anti-British sentiment was at an all-time high. Indian artistic traditions had been pushed aside by rapid westernization and mass production, and most artists were forced to work in either European or photographic modes. As a child, Bose exhibited an extraordinary facility for drawing, and in 1905, he enrolled in Calcutta's Government School of Art to study with the modern master Abanindranath Tagore.

At the outset of his career, Bose worked closely with Abanindranath and his visionary uncle, the writer and educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), on a cultural regeneration movement sometimes known as the "Bengal Renaissance." Bose studied earlier Indian art, including Mughal "miniature" painting and the 5th-century Buddhist murals at Ajanta. In 1919, Rabindranath selected him as the first director of art at Visva-Bharati University.  The Nobel laureate (1913) had founded this experimental institution at Santiniketan in rural Bengal in order to foster traditional Indian teaching methods instead of British-style education. There, Bose developed his interest in indigenous Indian art and village craft traditions — passions he continued to cultivate throughout his life.

After Bose retired from teaching in 1951, he produced highly personal monochromatic ink paintings that pare his home landscape to a few essential lines. In his years as an art instructor, his openness to various styles and techniques made his students feel free to work in whichever medium best suited their talents. Many of his students became major names in Indian contemporary art, and their works are also represented in the exhibition.

About the Collection of Indian and Himalayan Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses one of the finest collections of South Asian art in the United States, including the spectacular Pillared Temple Hall (16th century) from Southern India; paintings and sculptures from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet; an important group of textiles; and a variety of decorative arts. Works from the Indian and Himalayan Art Collections are displayed in a series of galleries (224, 227, 229–232) on the second floor. The William P. Wood Gallery hosts changing collection exhibitions primarily devoted to 16th- through 20th-century art from India. Gallery 232 presents art from the Himalayan region, including Buddhist and Hindu paintings, metal images, and ritual implements.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States, showcasing more than 2,000 years of exceptional human creativity in masterpieces of painting, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts and architectural settings from Europe, Asia and the Americas. The striking neoclassical building stands on a nine-acre site above the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and houses more than 200 galleries. The Museum offers a wide variety of enriching activities, including programs for children and families, lectures, concerts and films. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100, or visit the Museum's website at www.philamuseum.org

Exhibition of Prints by Jacob Lawrence at the Hudson River Museum

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:40 PM PST

artwork: Jacob Lawrence - "Toussaint et Ennery", 1989 - Silk screen on bainbridge two-ply rag paper. - The Collection of Curtis E. Ransom.

NEW YORK, NY.- Jacob Lawrence, born in 1917, became one of the most important African American artists of the twentieth century, renowned for his paintings of African Americans and black people of other lands who struggled for freedom. Jacob Lawrence Prints, 1963 – 2000, at the Hudson River Museum through June 6, 2010, include 81 of Lawrence's brilliantly-colored individual prints as well as three series of prints that show his versatility as an artist and storyteller. The Legend of John Brown series depicts a deeply religious and passionately anti-slavery John Brown, who felt called to violent insurrection to dismantle the institution of slavery in the United States; the Eight Studies for the Book of Genesis series is based on Lawrence's memories of the Baptist ministers of his youth, whose sermons contained stories of Creation; and the series on Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture focuses on the Haitian slave who became the commander of the revolutionary army that fought France and England for Haiti's freedom.

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park to host Unique Sculpture Exhibition by Jonathan Borofsky

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:39 PM PST

artwork: Jonathan Borofsky - Human Structures and the Light of Consciousness - (installation, PYO Gallery Beijing), 2008. 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, one of the nation's most significant sculpture and botanic experiences, will host an upcoming exhibition by celebrated American sculptor Jonathan Borofsky. On display January 30 through May 10, 2009, it will be the first of only two exhibitions for Borofsky this year. Borofsky describes his work as being connected through "the search for human understanding – symbols that give us a feeling of connection to each other."

Tacoma Art Museum opens Speaking Parts: Between Works in the Collection

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:38 PM PST

artwork: Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Heads of Two Young Girls\The Two Sisters - Oil on canvas - Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. W. Hilding Lindberg, 1983

TACOMA, WA - Tacoma Art Museum's new exhibition seeks to answer the question, "How do museums decide which works of art to add to the permanent collection?" Speaking Parts: Conversations between Works in the Collection is organized around Northwest artist Dennis Evans' mixed-media construction Writing Lessons with every other artwork in the gallery—paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, or jewelry—relating back to it. Speaking Parts is on view through November 2010.

"The Fruit of Promise" Exhibition at the Germanisches National Museum

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:37 PM PST

artwork: 'Maria with child' (R) from the 13th century of Giovanni Bellini is pictured at the exhibition 'Fruits of promise - at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, Germany. The museum presents the world of citrus fruits with more than 200 objects . . until 11 september 2011. - EPA

NUREMBERG.- Bitter oranges and lemons are found in portraits since the 15th century. Varied meanings are tied up with the fruits. In the Baroque age, it was popular to symbolize the descent of a portrait subject from the Dutch ruling dynasty of Orange by a small fruit-bearing orange tree. Often a citrus fruit represented the social or moral status of the portrait subjects. But citrus fruits could also point to personal botanical preferences and to dream destinations in Southern climes. On exhibition at the Germanisches National Museum through 11 September.

Time and again citrus fruits were also associated with the subject of wedding, marriage and love. This traces back to the golden apples of the Hesperides which already in the classical myths were a wedding gift and a beauty prize.

Religion: Adam's Apple
Since time immemorial the citron has been playing an important part in the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, in which the gathering in of the harvest is celebrated for a week in fall. To this day it is used in the morning prayer, together with the festal bouquet of purple willow, myrtle and palm.

The citron, called "etrog" in the Talmud, is of highly symbolic value in the Jewish faith. As the fruit of the biblical 'goodly tree', it was equated with the fruit of the tree of knowledge, of which Adam and Eve ate. At the same time, the etrog symbolizes the Jewish hope of paradise.

artwork: Pierre Nicolas Legrand de-Sicot Serantes "La marchande d'orange", late 18 Century Rouen, Musée des Beaux-ArtsCustoms: Illness and Death
In German-speaking Europe, lemons and bitter oranges played an important part in various customs surrounding illness, death and funeral. The earliest known depiction of a deceased with a citrus fruit in his hand is to be found on the 1247/48 tomb of Count Henry of Sayn and his daughter. The citrus fruit symbolizes the hope of resurrection and eternal life. In addition, lemons in particular served as get-well gifts for sick people, due to their medicinal properties.

Still Lifes: Feast for the Eyes and Sensuous Delight
Around 1600, still lifes developed in Italy and the Netherlands as a distinct genre from religious painting. Citrus fruits played an important part in them from the outset, which is attributable, apart from the fruits' exoticism and value, to their importance as a Marian symbol. This religious interpretation manifests itself in the simply composed Spanish fruit still lifes until the 17th century. However, the botanically exact documentation of the various citrus varieties was also a significant stimulus for their depiction, primarily in the Italian still lifes.

In the 17th century, the charging of the still lifes with inner meaning as well as the virtuosic composition of selected objects and citrus fruits was brought to a climax by the Dutch. In their paintings citrus fruits can be interpreted as an exhortation to moderation in the midst of portrayed luxury. At the same time the bright citrus fruits with their pitted skins and the transparently shimmering pulp provided an opportunity to the artists to bear witness to their skills. Insects, dew drops and traces of fruit decay added a theme of temporality to the still lifes and heightened the virtuosity by yet another element.

Botany: Artifact and Miracle of Nature
For centuries well-to-do garden lovers and patricians in these climes have collected and enjoyed citruses. The scent of the delicate flowers, the bright colors of the fruit and the bitter-sweet taste of their juice made them something special. In the Middle Ages they had already found their way into many areas of life in Central Europe. They were coveted as seasoning and as remedies, for the strange and exotic was deemed particularly efficacious.

Citrus Trade: Golden Apples Traveling
Some citrus varieties like sour lemons and thick-skinned citrons have been known to the Western world since antiquity. However, it is uncertain when trading with these and other citrus fruits began in Central Europe. Not until around 1400 is there increased evidence of goods traffic along Central European long-distance trade routes involving these exotic fruits.

In the 19th century the worldwide cultivation of citrus fruits goes hand in hand with their growing consumption in broader levels of the population, both as fresh fruit and processed into lemonade. The two world wars of the 20th century mark a deep break here, too: In post-war Germany fresh oranges became a rarity again, of which we are reminded by their presence on German Christmas plates even today.

Table Culture: Culinary Art and Table Decoration
Citruses adorn the festive table in Italy and Spain as early as the beginning of the Renaissance.They are reproduced initially in faience, later in silver, porcelain and glass.

Often silver or porcelain lemons were also used as jar knobs. In addition, porcelain figures decorated the tables of upper-class parties. Among the best-known rococo figures are the reproductions of Paris street vendors, which, known as the Cris de Paris series, originate around 1744. Here, too, the lemon vendor or 'lemon monger' is to be found.

Orangeries: Conceived Space
From the 16th century on, citruses were transported across the Alps to the North in increasing numbers. In central Europe, the valuable plants developed into important mobile elements of decoration in the French formal garden in summer. To overwinter the sensitive tub plants, bitter orange houses and orangeries, which became a permanent feature of princely palace grounds, were built. Linked to the orangery was the ideal of classical antiquity and of the mythical Garden of the Hesperides where trees bearing golden apples flourish.

Treatises on architecture and gardens, especially between 1650 and 1750, focus on orangery culture and the architectural development of orangeries. The era of great representative works in the 1st half of the 18th century begins with Johann Friedrich Nette and Matthias Diesel and reaches its climax and end with Salomon Kleiner's copperplate prints.

Apart from the etrog, the Adam's apple is another citrus fruit that since the late Middle Ages has been identified as the paradisiacal fruit of the tree of knowledge. In the Ghent Altarpiece, Eve is portrayed for the first time with one such Adam's apple in her hand. Especially in devotional pictures of Mary and the infant Jesus the Adam's apple becomes a frequently used symbol of the overcoming of the Fall by Mary, the new Eve, and Jesus, the new Adam. 

Johann Christoph Volkamer and His Work on the Hesperides
Citrus fruits came into fashion in the Baroque age. Hardly another fruit has since been given as much attention as the evergreen, simultaneously blossoming and fruit-bearing plants on which especially the so-called Hesperides literature focuses. In the early 18th century the Nuremberg merchant Johann Christoph Volkamer created the two-volume standard work on the culture of citrus fruits, still accepted today: "Nürnbergische Hesperiden" ("Nuremberg Hesperides") and their "Continuation".

His etchings were created based on his own observations of the fruits that Volkamer raised in great numbers in his Nuremberg garden and received from other garden owners at home and abroad. Each folio combines the life-size rendering of a fruit with a topographical view, which lends the work its unique charm. The first volume shows views of Nuremberg Patricians' and burghers' gardens; the second, the villas of Veneto.

A third volume of the "Nürnbergische Hesperides" depicting citrus fruits above villas of the Bolognese nobility does not get beyond engraver's copies and proofs. They are showcased in this exhibition for the first time.

Big Pink Paintings: Abstract Paintings by Martha Jones on View at VMFA

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:36 PM PST

artwork: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) presents Big Pink Paintings: Abstract Paintings 2008-11 by Martha Jones. - The predominance of red and pink imparts a comic tone as the artist reflects the influence of contemporary painting, particularly the late work of Philip Guston. - Photo: Courtesy VMFA

RICHMOND, VA.-
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) presents Big Pink Paintings: Abstract Paintings 2008-11 by Martha Jones is on view July 16, 2011 through November 13, 2011. This exhibition of recent works by Martha Jones features oil paintings based on a consistent set of elements that call on the viewer to think about issues of color, scale, and abstraction within an artistic tradition.

Baroque 1620 ~ 1800: Style In The Age of Magnificence at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:35 PM PST

artwork: The Interior of St Peter's in Rome, Giovannni Paolo Panini & studio, Before 1742 © The National Gallery, London.

LONDON - The magnificence and splendour of Baroque, one of the most opulent styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the subject of the V&A's spring exhibition. The exhibition will reflect the complexity and grandeur of the Baroque style, from the Rome of Borromini and Bernini to the magnificence of Louis XIV's Versailles and the lavishness of Baroque theatre and performance. On display will be religious paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo while silver furniture, portraits, sculpture, a regal bed and court tapestries will conjure up the rooms of a Baroque palace. The exhibition will be the first to examine all the elements of the Baroque style and will show how, as European power spread, Baroque style reached other parts of the world, captured in objects such as a gilded Mexican altarpiece.

The National Academy Museum Reopening Features a Will Barnet Retrospective

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:34 PM PST

artwork: Will Barnet - "Self-Portrait", 1981 - Oil on canvas - 31 1/8" x 45 1/2" - Collection of the National Academy. On view in "Will Barnet at 100" from September 16th until December 31st.

New York City.- The National Academy Museum reopens to the public after major refurbishment on September 16th. Amongst an array of new exhibitions, the museum will be showing the first New York retrospective of Will Barnet's work. "Will Barnet at 100" will explore the dialogue between figuration and abstraction that has defined Barnet's remarkable 80-year career. A painter, printmaker and teacher who has worked largely outside the various schools of Modernism, Barnet has made significant and unique contributions to American art in the realms of both abstraction and figuration. Will Barnet at 100 will feature approximately 45 works from private and museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Montclair Art Museum, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. "Will Barnet at 100" will be on view at the museum from September 16th through December 31st.


artwork: Will Barnet - "Woman and the Sea", 1972 Oil on canvas - 51" x 41" - Private collection  - Courtesy of Alexandra Gallery, NYC © the artist.Born in 1911 in Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet knew by the age of ten that he wanted to be an artist. As a student he studied with Philip Leslie Hale at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and viewed first-hand John Singer Sargent at work on the murals of the Boston Public Library. In 1930 Barnet studied at the Art Students League of New York, with Stuart Davis, beginning his long association with the school. Here he concentrated on painting as well as printmaking, and in 1936 he became the official printer for the Art Students League. There, he later instructed students in the graphic arts at the school and taught alongside the likes of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Beverly Hale and Richard Pousette-Dart. Barnet continued his love of teaching with positions at the Cooper Union, at Yale University, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Barnet's works, while remaining universal, reference his own personal history complete with images of his wife, his daughter and their family pets. As James Thomas Flexner wrote, Barnet's work "makes us experience the interplay between the personal and the universal." While remaining representational, the simple elegance of the figures and their flat surfaces reflect his exploration with abstraction. He was a key figure in the New York movement called Indian Space Painting, artists who based their abstract and semi-abstract work on Native American art.

For many years he pursued abstraction in painting, then a fashionable trend in the USA. His later work returned to figurative painting. He is probably best known for his enigmatic portraits of family, made from the 1970s onwards, notable the Silent Seasons series. However, his earlier works maintain an edginess and brooding contemplation that is even more remarkable when compared with the more placid and pretty works which followed his second marriage. His works have entered virtually every major public collection in the United States, including, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has been the subject of over eighty solo exhibitions held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design Museum, the National Museum of American Art, Montclair Art Museum,and the Boca Raton Museum of Art among others. Barnet has been the recipient of numerous awards including the first Artist's Lifetime Achievement Award Medal given on the occasion of the National Academy of Design's 175th anniversary, the College Art Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art's Lippincott Prize, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters' Childe Hassam Prize. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Design, The Century Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Barnet has defined an artistic career that, in the words of Robert Doty, "has always gone beyond the limitations of modern art because his work affirms a faith in life."

artwork: Will Barnet - "Three Chairs", 1991-1992 - 43 x 53 1/2" - Private collection Courtesy of Alexandra Gallery, New York. -  © the artist.

Founded in 1825, the National Academy is the only institution of its kind that integrates a museum, art school, and association of artists and architects dedicated to creating and preserving a living history of American Art. Modeled after the Royal Academy in London, the National Academy was founded with the simple yet powerful mission to "promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition." For the very first time in this country, an arts institution was conceived with artists and architects at its core. Today, with its museum, art school, and association of artists and architects – the National Academicians – the Academy sees its original mission realized through a contemporary lens. It is a continually evolving testament to the transformative power of art, an institution that sheds light on over 7,000 great works, a thriving forum for education, intergenerational dialogue and debate, and a source of vibrant exhibitions. The National Academy is an organization where tradition is celebrated and new visionaries embraced, connecting the past, present, and future of American art. Funded by generous bequests from Eleanor D. Popper, a former student of the School, and author Geoffrey Wagner in memory of his wife, Colleen Browning Wagner, an American realist painter and National Academician (NA), the National Academy's newly renovated spaces open September 2011. The renovation will revitalize the Academy's entrance on Fifth Avenue, include new student and faculty galleries, enhance the second and fourth floor galleries and expand the public assembly space. Visit the academy's website at ... http://www.nationalacademy.org

Tacoma Art Museum hosts Luminous Landscapes of Victoria Adams

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:33 PM PST

artwork: Victoria Adams - "Two Waves of the Sea" - Tacoma Art Museum presents Where Sky Meets Earth - Landscapes of Victoria Adams

TACOMA, WA.- Somewhere between the soothing and the sublime, the work of landscape artist Victoria Adams offers a respite from our busy lives. Tacoma Art Museum is proud to present Where Sky Meets Earth: The Luminous Landscapes of Victoria Adams. A local artist living on Vashon Island, Adams paints rich, panoramic views of sky and land, untouched and untrammeled by man.  On view through 3 October, 2010.Victoria Adams will visit Tacoma Art Museum throughout the summer with lectures, workshops, book signings and more.

Figurative Paintings From the La Caixa Foundation Collection on View

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:33 PM PST

artwork: A. R. Penck dedicates a triptych to Jean-Michel Basquiat, with great influence from the graffiti he saw in NYC. Photo: EFE/Alberto Estévez

BARCELONA.- The La Caixa Foundation has cleaned the dust from its contemporary art collection, which was started in 1985, to show at CaixaForum in Barcelona the revitalization the painting experienced in the 1980s from the hand of artists such as Miquel Barceló and Ferran García Sevilla. The exhibition "Figurations" comprises 12 large works of art, owned by the private entity, many of which had never before been seen in Barcelona or only in the exhibition "26 Painters, 13 Critics: Panorama of Young Spanish Painting" that was organized in 1982. For "Figurations", which will remain on view through September 27, the most expressionist was selected, and not only from Spanish artists: Anselm Kiefer, with his Dionysius the Aeropagite - Hierarchy of Angels (1984-1986) Italian Enzo Cucchi, with a remembrance of Arthur Rimbaud in exile, and American Julian Schnabel, with The Quixote Meets Corleone (1983), are some of them.

Lora Schlesinger Gallery presents Adonna Khare ~ By A Thread

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:32 PM PST

artwork: Adonna Khare - The Lioness, 2008 - carbon pencil on paper  65 x 42 

Santa Monica, CA - Lora Schlesinger Gallery is proud to present Adonna Khare, By A Thread.  The show is the artist's second solo exhibition with Lora Schlesinger Gallery.   Adonna Khare creates a world without humans, a natural paradise at first glance, but looking closer reveals a more entangled kingdom. The animals in her drawings are bound together and connected by thin ropelike threads and pulleys.  Many endure heavy burdens, such as entire castles.  On exhibition 5 April through 10 may, 2008.
 

Works In Wood at Crystal Bridges

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:31 PM PST

artwork: Alison Elizabeth Taylor - Room

BENTONVILLE, ARK.- Two striking portraits in wood by female artists – one a rising star, the other an icon of the 1960s art scene – are the most recent works announced by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Room (2007-08) by Alison Elizabeth Taylor is a life-size architectural portrait created using the craft of marquetry, or inlaying sections of wood on a flat surface to form an image. Portrait of Martha Graham (1977) by Marisol, one of the few female artists to be associated with the Pop art movement, is a wood, plaster, oil and graphite rendering of the woman who pioneered modern dance in America. Both works are examples of female artists taking on art forms traditionally created by males. "These two artists are a couple of generations apart, but they both work on a large scale, with strenuous techniques and materials: Marisol with her heavy, chopped woodworks and Alison Elizabeth Taylor with marquetry, an exquisite craft perfected by male artisans during the Renaissance," said Don Bacigalupi, executive director of the Museum.

Philip Pearlstein retrospective at The Montclair Art Museum

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST

artwork: Philip Pearlstein - Nude in Hammock  - color etching and aquatint,  36 x 48 in. - at The Montclair Art Museum's exhibition includes paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints that cover Pearlstein's art from 1940 through 2008. 

Montclair, NJ - This exhibition, featuring 40 works by artist Philip Pearlstein, is the first retrospective in 25 years, since his 1983 survey at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Montclair Art Museum's exhibition includes paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints that cover Pearlstein's art from 1940 through 2008. On exhibition through February 1, 2009.

artwork: Philip Pearlstein 'Two Models on a Kilim Rug with Mirror, 1983' acrylic paint on canvas 90 x 72 inches'Philip Pearlstein: Objectifications'  displays 40 works, including Pearlstein's first, award-winning high school work, Merry-Go-Round; his expressionist works of the 1950s; his signature, post-1961 female and male studio nudes; lesser-known landscapes and cityscapes; and a selection of his portraits. Among these works is an elaborate object still-life assemblage that was used in the most recent painting, Two Models and Four Whirly – Gigs, as well as three of his nude figurative works that depict his favorite model of recent years, Kilolo Kumanyika, a resident of East Orange, New Jersey.

Philip Pearlstein is among the most important and innovative American realist painters to have emerged in the last 50 years. His objectified compositions using nude human figures revitalized realism as they challenged precepts of artistic modernism and subject matter. His breakthrough was based on his firm commitment to painting from direct observation.

Pearlstein, born in 1924, was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). During War World II, he toured Europe serving in the US Army, afterward residing back home in Pittsburgh. In 1949, he moved from Pittsburgh to New York City, which remains his home today. While living in New York City he maintained a second residence on Fire Island, New York, from the 1980s through 1998, and since 1998 in Highland Lakes, New Jersey.

artwork: Philip Pearlstein photo by Brian Rigney Hubbard Copyright © 2005Pearlstein has also had a concomitant academic career, starting in 1955 with his master's degree from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and teaching appointments at Pratt Institute, Yale University, and Brooklyn College. He received a Fulbright Hayes Fellowship in 1958 and a National Endowment for the Arts Artists Fellowship in 1968. He has served as president of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, where he has been a member for more than 25 years. He has also earned several honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards. Pearlstein has written and lectured extensively on his own art, as well as other art.

He has assembled an extensive art library, traveled widely, and, with his wife, Dorothy, has collected a distinguished array of artifacts and decorative arts ranging from antiquities to Americana. Since 1955 his work has been widely written about by scholars and critics, featured in over 135 solo and 300 group exhibitions, and included in nearly 70 public collections.

The exhibition was organized by Patterson Sims, Director of the Montclair Art Museum since 2001. It will be accompanied by a publication that will include a compendium of writings by the artist and an essay on Pearlstein with individual commentaries on the works in the show by Sims.  Visit : www.montclairartmuseum.org

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 06:29 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 .

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

Jumat, 30 Desember 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...


The Baltimore Museum of Art Shows Photographer "Candida Höfer ~ Interior Worlds"

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 10:27 PM PST

artwork: Candida Höfer - "Palais Garnier Paris XXXIV", 2010 - Photograph - Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, New York. © Candida Höfer. On view at the Baltimore Museum of Art in "Candida Höfer: Interior Worlds" until February 26th.

Baltimore, Maryland.- The Baltimore Museum of Art is proud to present " Candida Höfer : Interior Worlds" on view at the museum until February 26th. Internationally acclaimed contemporary German photographer Candida Höfer focused her camera on two of Baltimore's most venerable cultural institutions: The Johns Hopkins University's George Peabody Library and the Walters Art Museum . A selection of the resulting images will make their Baltimore debut in "Candida Höfer: Interior Worlds". The exhibition features 13 breathtaking images of European and American interiors that demonstrate how the artist goes beyond documenting architecture to capture moments of contemplative beauty. Höfer's images of the Peabody Library and Walters Art Museum contrast the exciting cast iron decoration in the library's late 19th-century reading room with the refined Italian Renaissance-inspired space of the early 20th-century museum interior.


These enormous works, each more than six feet tall, are complemented by the artist's spectacular images of the State Art Gallery in Karlsruhe, Germany (1999); Basel University Public Library in Switzerland (1999); Bregenz Art Museum in Germany (1999); Library of the Royal Academy of Language in Madrid, Spain (2000); Harvard University Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2001); Louvre Museum in Paris, France (2005); Palais Garnier Opera House in Paris, France (2005); Library of the Archiginnasio in Bologna, Italy (2006); and Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon, Portugal (2006). The works in the exhibition are loaned by the artist and private collectors and are installed in two neoclassical galleries adjacent to the BMA's collection of 17th- and 18th-century European paintings. Known for her intensely detailed images of grand architectural spaces, Höfer (born 1944) is among an important group of artists that emerged from the Düsseldorf Academy in the 1980s under the tutelage of influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher .

artwork: Candida Höfer - "Musee du Louvre Paris VIII", 2010 - Photograph - Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, New York. © Candida Höfer. On view at the Baltimore Museum of Art in "Candida Höfer: Interior Worlds" until February 26th.

These artists transformed the formal and conceptual ambitions of their medium by repeatedly focusing their lenses on carefully defined subjects and expanding the size of their lushly colored images to rival painting. Höfer's meticulously composed photographs of rooms in libraries, museums, theaters, cafés, universities, and other centers of cultural life have been featured in numerous solo exhibitions in museums throughout Europe and the United States, including the Kunsthalles in Basel and Bern, Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, and the Power Plant in Toronto. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art , New York; the Museum Ludwig , Cologne; and Documenta 11. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and is represented by galleries in Europe and the United States. She lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Throughout the Baltimore Museum of Art, visitors will find an outstanding selection of European and American fine and decorative arts, 15th- through 19th-century prints and drawings, contemporary art by established and emerging contemporary artists, and objects from Africa, Asia, the Ancient Americas, and Pacific Islands. Two beautifully landscaped gardens display an array of 20th-century sculpture that is an oasis in the city. As a major cultural destination for the greater Baltimore region, the BMA organizes and presents a variety of dynamic exhibitions and innovative programs throughout the year, and frequently hosts special events with cultural and educational partners. The Museum is located three miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor in a park-like setting in the heart of Charles Village, adjacent to the main campus of The Johns Hopkins University. It is distinguished by a grand historic building designed in the 1920s by renowned American architect John Russell Pope and a massive wing for contemporary art added in 1994. Gertrude's restaurant and The BMA Shop are destinations unto themselves. Visitors enjoy superb regional cuisine from celebrity chef John Shields while overlooking the scenic sculpture gardens or listening to the popular summer jazz concerts. The BMA Shop offers a variety of unique art-inspired gifts, including items from local artists and craftsmen.

artwork: Candida Höfer - "George Peabody Library Baltimore", 2010 - Photograph Courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, NY -  © Candida Höfer. On view at the Baltimore Museum of Art in "Candida Höfer: Interior Worlds" until Feb. 26th.

From a single object in 1914, The Baltimore Museum of Art's outstanding collection today encompasses 90,000 works of art, including the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world, as well as masterpieces by Pablo Picasso , Paul Cézanne , and Vincent van Gogh . The BMA is recognized for an impressive collection of contemporary art that includes important examples of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist sculpture, and Pop Art with many late works by Andy Warhol , as well as major acquisitions of more recent work by artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Kara Walker .The Museum also boasts an internationally renowned collection of prints, drawings, and photographs from the 15th century to the present; European masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli , Rembrandt van Rijn , and Sir Anthony van Dyck ; distinguished American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; one of the most important African collections in the country; and notable examples of art from the Ancient Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The BMA's Sculpture Gardens feature a 100-year survey of modern and contemporary sculpture on nearly three landscaped acres in the heart of the city. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.artbma.org

'Forrest Gump', Chaplin's "The Kid" to be preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 09:58 PM PST

artwork: Tom Hanks staring as Forrest Gump. Bambi, and Hannibal Lecter have at least one thing in common: Their cinematic adventures were chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the world's largest archive of film, TV and sound recordings. -  Photo/Paramount, Library of Congress.

WASHINGTON, DC - Bambi, Forrest Gump and Hannibal Lecter have at least one thing in common: Their cinematic adventures were chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the world's largest archive of film, TV and sound recordings. The registry began in 1989 under an act of Congress and now includes 575 films. Its aim is not to identify the best movies ever made but to preserve films with artistic, cultural or historical significance. Previous titles chosen range from "The Birth of a Nation" to "National Lampoon's Animal House." A majority of the 25 titles chosen this year for inclusion in the National Film Registry are lesser-known — including silent films, documentaries, avant-garde cinema and even home movies. The Library of Congress announced the selections Tuesday. Films must be at least 10 years old to be considered for the registry. Among the lesser-known titles chosen this year, "A Computer Animated Hand" (1972) by Pixar Animation Studios co-founder Ed Catmull was one of the earliest examples of 3D computer-generated imagery. The one-minute film shows a hand turning, opening and closing.

Beloved Pop Artist James Rizzi, creator of unusual projects worldwide, Dies at Age 61

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 09:24 PM PST

artwork: US Pop Art artist James Rizzi stands in front of his work "In the Spirit of Peace", painted on a fragment of the Berlin Wall, during the opening of his exhibition "Rizzi's World - 60 Years of James Rizzi" in Bremen, northern Germany. James Rizzi, a New York-born and based pop artist best known for his playful and childlike three-dimensional sculptures, and unique outdoor creations has died. He was 61.

New York City.- James Rizzi, the world famous pop artist died peacefully in his sleep at his studio in SoHo, New York, the night after Christmas. Rizzi's managers, Art 28 GmbH & Co. KG, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement on its website that the artist died peacefully at his studio in New York's SoHo district on Monday. They gave no cause of death, but he was known to have had a heart condition. His sudden and unexpected death comes as a shock to family, friends, and collectors alike. James Rizzi became famous for the 3D paper sculptures he invented, the playful and childlike forms and bright colors were to become his artistic trademark.


The Wichita Art Museum Celebrates Printmaking from the Lawrence Lithography Workshop

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 08:18 PM PST

artwork: William T. Wiley - "Seedy Rom-Bound to Help" - Color lithograph - Courtesy of The Lawrence Lithography Workshop © the artist. On view at the Wichita Art Museum in "The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Suites and Portfolios" until February 12th 2012.

Wichita, Kansas.- The Wichita Art Museum is proud to present "The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Suites and Portfolios" on view at the museum through February 12th 2012. For more than 30 years artists have come to work at The Lawrence Lithography Workshop with master printer Mike Sims. This exhibition features more than 70 prints including noted local artists such as Peregrine Honig and Roger Shimomura, along with William T. Wiley of California and the late Luis Jimenez of New Mexico. "Suites and Portfolios" is a collaboration between the Belger Arts Center, TLLW, and the Wichita Art Museum. Stephen Gleissner, Chief Curator of Wichita Art Museum, curated many of the works for the exhibition, which will be supplemented with some artwork from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation collection. A catalog is being produced by the Wichita Art Museum with support from the Belger Cartage Service, Inc.


The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Opens New Galleries for the Art of Asia

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 06:23 PM PST

artwork: Devidasa of Nurpu - "Praudha Adhira Nayika (The Mature Heroine Without Self Control)", 1694-95 - Page from an illustrated manuscript of the Rasamanjari - Opaque watercolor, gold, and beetle wing on paper - 19 x 29 cm. - Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. -  On view in "Gems of Rajput Painting" until September 3rd 2012.

Boston, Massachusetts.- Two new galleries recently opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). One celebrates rare sculptural works from India and neighboring countries (South Asia) and Southeast Asia. The other will showcase rotations of the rich painting traditions of India, Korea, the Himalayas, and Persia beginning with an important collection of Indian works in the exhibition "Gems of Rajput Painting". The two new galleries will reflect a broad range of cultures — from Iran to the west and Indonesia to the east, and from the Himalayas to the north and Sri Lanka to the south — reinforcing the global nature of the MFA's encyclopedic collection. Highlights include important Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain works, such as a rare 5th century painted fragment featuring Buddha's half-brother, Nanda, from the caves in Ajanta, a UNESCO World Heritage site in central India—the only known work to have left Ajanta—and an elaborately carved 11th century sculpture of the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune, Ganesh. The new galleries are located on Level 1 near the Museum's Huntington Avenue Entrance.


Landscape by painter Antonio Joli donated by the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:55 PM PST

artwork: Antonio Joli (Modena, 1700 – Naples 1777) - "View of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony at the Arch of Trajan in Benevento", Ca.1759. Oil on canvas, 77.5 x 131 cm. - Museo Nacional del Prado - Donation of the FAMP.

MADRID.- The Museo del Prado is presenting this new donation in the form of a small exhibition of twelve works shown alongside View of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony at the Arch of Trajan in Benevento, an architectural landscape executed in 1759 by the set painter and vedutista Antonio Joli (Modena, 1700 – Naples, 1777). The exhibition includes three paintings by the artist from the Museum's collection as well as various landscapes and views by his predecessors such as Panini and Vanvitelli, a group of etchings, two of them by Piranesi, and a Portrait of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony by Giuseppe Bonito. Together, these works will enable the visiting public to locate Joli's canvas within the collections of the Prado and to appreciate the distinctive nature of this architectural landscape, which reflects the new intellectual attitude with which Grand Tour travellers of the day approached classical monuments. In addition, the presence in the painting of Queen Maria Amalia and an artist engaged in drawing refers to the importance of patronage for the conservation and dissemination of the art of antiquity.

artwork: Juan van der Hamen, " Portrait of a Dwarf " Oil on canvas , 1620 1220 x 870 mm Museo del Prado, MadridThe three paintings by Joli that are exhibited alongside this new work by the artist that has recently entered the Museum reveal the artist's wide-ranging skills as a landscape painter, given that they combine the descriptive and topographical veduta with a description of historical events, in addition to offering lively records of official acts. Also dating from 1759, two of these panoramic landscapes depict the departure for Spain of the King and Queen of Naples and Sicily, Charles of Bourbon and Maria Amalia of Saxony, in order to assume the Spanish throne following the death of Fernando VI. The third view depicts the abdication of Charles of Bourbon, future Charles III of Spain, in favour of his son Fernando, a work that represents Joli's only known interior scene. In addition, a group of views and architectural landscapes will allow visitors to appreciate the way that Joli moved away from his artistic predecessors. They include a descriptive and topographical view of the Bay of Chiaia, Naples, by Juan Ruiz; an ideal landscape with ruins by Joli's master Giovanni Paolo Panini, which is animated by figures in Roman dress; the poetic landscape of The Grotto at Posillipo by Gaspar Vanvitelli, which reflects Grand Tour travellers' literary perception of the Italian landscape as described, for example, by Virgil; and the type of Sublime veduta developed by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and represented here by two prints from the Biblioteca Histórica of the Universidad Complutense, one of which depicts the Arch of Trajan at Benevento. In addition, there are two prints from the prestigious Le antichità di Ercolano esposte (1757-1792), a publication sponsored by Charles of Bourbon that disseminated the archaeological items excavated at Herculaneum and Pompeii across Europe. The exhibition also includes a portrait by Giuseppe Bonito of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony. Educated at the court of Dresden, known as the "Florence of the north" due to its brilliant artistic life, the Queen was renowned for her sophisticated taste in classical antiquities.

The new work by Joli that has recently entered the Museum is a depiction of the imposing Arch of Trajan at Benvento surrounded by the ruins of other Roman monuments in that city. It depicts Queen Maria Amalia's visit to these monuments, during which she listened to the explanations of an expert guide while an artist, also guided by a knowledgeable companion, copies various classical remains from life. The painting can be dated to the first decade spent in Naples by Joli, a leading Modena-born painter of theatrical sets and vedute who had worked in theatres in Venice, London and Madrid. Jolil arrived in Naples in the spring of 1759, a few months before the departure of the monarchs, at that point King and Queen of Naples and Sicily, in order to assume the Spanish throne.

artwork: "The Grotto at Posillipo", by Gaspar Vanvitelli. Oil on canvas, 32 x 37 cm. First third of eighteenth century. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

This work represents the latest in a series of generous donations through which the Fundación Amigos del Prado have contributed to the enrichment of the Prado's collections since 1982, the year that it made its first donation withThe Countess of Santovenia, "The Girl in Pink" by Eduardo Rosales. Other donations have included Portrait of a Dwarf by Juan van der Hamen in 1986; The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen by Bernardo Cavallino in 1988; Aureliano de Beruete y Moret the Younger by Joaquín Sorolla in 1994; and Self-portrait of the Artist in his Studio by Luis Paret y Alcázar in 1996. In addition, between the years 1983 and 1984, the Fundación donated drawings by Mariano Fortuny, Francisco de Goya, Herrera the Elder, José del Castillo and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, as well as the print portfolios The Museo del Prado seen by Twelve Contemporary Spanish Artists in 1990, and Twelve Women Artists in the Museo del Prado in 2007.

The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture, it also contains important collections of other types of works. A new, recently opened wing enlarged the display area by about 400 paintings, and it is currently used mainly for temporary expositions. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered to be among the greatest museums of art. The large numbers of works by Velázquez and Francisco de Goya (the artist more extensively represented in the collection), Titian, Rubens and Bosch are among the highlights of the collection. Visit : http://www.museodelprado.es/en/

The Bank Austria Kunstforum Explores the Fernando Botero Phenomenon

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:42 PM PST

artwork: Fernando Botero - "The Regrinding", 1987 - Oil on canvas - 160 x 200 cm. - Private collection, © Fernando Botero. On view at the Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna in "Botero" until January 15th 2012.

Vienna.- The Bank Austria Kunstforum is proud to host the first ever comprehensive presentation in Austria of the painted oeuvre by the Columbian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero (b. 1932 in Medellín). "Botero", on view at the gallery until January 15th 2012, includes 70 paintings ranging from the late 1950s until today telescope a view for us into Botero's artistic universe. The artist interprets his portraits, nudes and still life with allusions to his South American origins. They are pictures of seeming cheer and innocuousness, but at the same time are ambivalent and infused with dark, unfathomable cunning. Botero has been astonishing the world now for more than fifty years with his opulent, "blown up" figures, whose aesthetics as it were contradict the precise rendition of form and colour. Botero does nothing other than force art history to question its own canon. The exhibition includes the sensational Abu Ghraib Cycle of 2004/2005 and explores the "phenomenon of Botero", which is today more topical than ever.


The exhibition is sectioned into various chapters: Everyday Life in South America, Catholicism, Bull Fight, or paraphrases of the most famous works in the history of art – images in which the sensuousness of life keeps colliding with its transience. "I am the most Columbian among Columbian artists," says Fernando Botero. He makes us understand with incredible consistency what a picture has to achieve according to his ideas: an unambiguous message, a dialogue between artist and observer that is unequivocally understood. Botero's subjects seem to come from another age and are full of melancholy and nostalgia. In this way Botero – exactly like contemporary South American literature and music – is placed entirely in the tradition of his home continent.

artwork: Fernando Botero - "The Teachers Club", 1997 - Oil on canvas - 191 x 181 cm. Private collection, © Fernando Botero. At the Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna

His figures have the effect of being captured in an anachronism: they exist unconcernedly, they eat, drink, play cards, go for walks, sew, weep, go on picnics; they always seem isolated, plunged into some world deep inside themselves. Botero moreover inserts metaphors of impending threat into his pictures – such as erupting volcanoes or collapsing buildings – which turn the seeming idyll upside down into the negative. The reproach, also repeatedly made by art critics, that Botero deals only with cosy and "appetising" motifs, is not true by any stretch of the imagination, as is proven above all in his Abu Ghraib Cycle. Here the artist wants to bear emotional witness to the shame that rises when watching the terrible scenes of torture perpetrated by US American soldiers. With this cycle Botero brought political events of everyday into his art.

Fernando Botero was born the second of three children in Medellín, in the mountains of Colombia. His parents were David Botero and Flora Angulo. David Botero, a salesman who traveled by horseback, died when the boy was age four, and his mother worked as a seamstress. An uncle took a major role in his life. Although isolated from art as presented in museums and other cultural institutes, Botero was influenced by the Baroque style of the colonial churches and then the rich life of the city. In 1944, after Botero attended a Jesuit school, Botero's uncle sent him to a school for matadors for two years. In 1948, at the age of 16, Botero published his first illustrations in the Sunday supplement of the El Colombiano daily paper. He used the money he was paid to attend high school at the Liceo de Marinilla de Antioquia. His first solo show was held at the Galería Leo Matiz in Bogotá, a few months after his arrival. In 1952, Botero travelled with a group of artists to Barcelona, where he stayed briefly before moving on to Madrid. In Madrid, Botero studied at the Academia de San Fernando. In 1952, he traveled to Bogotá, where he had a solo exhibit at the Leo Matiz gallery. Later that year, he won the ninth edition of the Salón de Artistas Colombianos.

artwork: Fernando Botero - "The Seminary", 2004 - Oil on canvas - 151 x 193 cm. - Private collection. © Fernando Botero. On view at the Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna until January 15th 2012.

In 1953, Botero moved to Paris, where he spent most of his time in the Louvre, studying the works there. He lived in Florence, Italy from 1953 to 1954, studying the works of Renaissance masters. In recent decades, he has lived most of the time in Paris, but spends one month a year in his native city of Medellín. He has had more than 50 exhibits in major cities worldwide, and his work commands selling prices in the millions of dollars. While his work includes still-lifes and landscapes, Botero has concentrated on situational portraiture. His paintings and sculptures are united by their proportionally exaggerated, or "fat" figures, as he once referred to them. Botero is an abstract artist in the most fundamental sense, choosing colors, shapes, and proportions based on intuitive aesthetic thinking. Though he spends only one month a year in Colombia, he considers himself the "most Colombian artist living" due to his insulation from the international trends of the art world.

In 1980, with the support and backing of the popular Viennese actor Heinz Conrad, the first exhibitions were organised in the former banking hall of the Österreichische Creditanstalt für Handel und Gewerbe (Austrian Bank of Trade and Commerce), premises built in 1914, which was then standing empty. The curtain-raiser was a comprehensive show on Austria's cultural and intellectual history from 1880 to 1980: "Aufbruch in die Moderne" (Starting out into the Modern Age), curated by Rupert Feuchtmüller and organised by Ivo Stanek, which attracted 28,000 visitors. Subsequent exhibitions, such as "Fotografis" – a presentation of the superlative photograph collection of the Länderbank, as it was then called – also proved to be great attractions for the public. The success of these exhibitions was as surprising as it was overwhelming, so that the director of the Länderbank and later Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky initiated a resolution to set up a permanent exhibition venue oriented on international standards – the Länderbank Kunstforum was born, and the present director of the Albertina, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, was its first director. In 1988, the Austrian star architect Gustav Peichl was commissioned to design the first reconstruction of the Kunstforum, making it the most modern exhibition building in Austria at the time.

artwork: Fernando Botero - "The Card-players", 1991 - Oil on canvas - 152 x 181 cm. Private collection, © Fernando Botero. On view at the Bank Austria Kunstforum.

The re-opening was in March 1989 with "Egon Schiele und seine Zeit" (Egon Schiele and his Time). This exhibition attracted 186,000 visitors and was successful not only in Vienna; it created a sensation on tour in London, Munich and Wuppertal. The Schiele exhibition in the Kunstforum was the first major debut of the then little known Leopold Collection; it thus functioned as a booster for the Austrian Republic to purchase the collection and set up the present-day Leopoldmuseum. Since then, the objective of the Kunstforum has been very clearly defined: the presentation of international top exhibitions on classical modern art and its forerunners: Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, J. M. W. Turner, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky, Tamara de Lempicka and many more. Visit the gallery's website at  ... http://www.bankaustria-kunstforum.at

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presents "The Puppet Show"

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:41 PM PST

artwork: Christian Jankowski - Puppet Conference - The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston's Brow Foundation Gallery

HOUSTON, TX - The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston's Brow Foundation Gallery becomes a stage for The Puppet Show, a group exhibition that looks at the imagery of puppets in contemporary art. The Puppet Show concentrates on sculpture, video, and photography and brings together several generations of artists from around the world. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, The Puppet Show is co-curated by Ingrid Schaffner, senior curator at ICA, and Carin Kuoni, director, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, New York. On view through 12 April, 2009

Annie Leibovitz Retrospective: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005 at C/O in Berlin

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:40 PM PST

artwork: Annie Leibovitz's portrait of the Queen - Photograph: Annie Leibovitz / Contact/nbpictures

BERLIN, GERMANY - C/O Berlin, International Forum For Visual Dialogues presents the work of photographer Annie Leibovitz in the exhibition A Photographer's Life from February 21st through May 24th, 2009. C/O Berlin presents "A Photographer's Life" as first and only venue in Germany.

Museum Frieder Burda exhibits 'Nature in Contemporary Art'

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:40 PM PST

artwork: Norbert Tadeusz - Water Lilies Seerosen,  2002 - Acrylic on canvas,130 x 200 cm. - Altana Kunstsammlung, Bad Homburg Photo: Altana Kunstsammlung, Bad Homburg, Germany

Baden-Baden, Germany - Nature is making its appearance at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. The new show, that runs through February 08, 2009, is entitled "Nature. Contemporary art from the Altana Art Collection". The exhibition displays a selection of approximately 80 exhibited works by painters such as Georg Baselitz, Herbert Brandl, Franz Gertsch, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Alex Katz, Karin Kneffel, Wolfgang Laib, Norbert Tadeusz, Robert Longo and Markus Lüpertz, showing the variety of ways and methods, in which artists of the 20th and 21st century deal with the subject "nature" and man's interference with it.

The Royal Ontario Museum to Host "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008"

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:38 PM PST

artwork: Julianne Moore portrayed as Ingres's 'Grand Odalisque' by Michael Thompson - Vanity Fair Photography Exhibition

TORONTO.- The Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008 from September 26, 2009 to January 3, 2010. The exhibition, which garnered record-breaking attendance in its recent European engagements, showcases 150 portraits, including classic images from Vanity Fair's early period and photographs featured in the magazine since its 1983 relaunch. A collaboration between Vanity Fair and the National Portrait Gallery, London, the exhibition is curated by Terence Pepper, Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, and David Friend, Vanity Fair's Editor of Creative Development. Vanity Fair Portraits is presented by the Bay and will be displayed in the Roloff Beny Gallery on Level 4 of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. The ROM will be the only Canadian venue to display Vanity Fair Portraits, and this will be its first showing in eastern North America.

Throughout its 95-year history, Vanity Fair magazine has helped define the public persona of some of the most influential individuals in the world. The exhibition brings together a collection of captivating images of cultural icons from the magazine's vintage and modern periods. Sitters range from Claude Monet, Amelia Earheart and Jesse Owens to David Hockney, Arthur Miller and Madonna, as well as legendary Hollywood personalities from Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo, to Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. The magazine's mix of artistic seriousness and popular celebrity means that portraits of writers, artists and leaders of the avant-garde will be displayed alongside images of actors, musicians and athletes, providing a fascinating range of high and popular culture.

"We are delighted to bring Vanity Fair Portraits to the ROM. Across its history, the magazine has been a barometer of the cultural mood of the time. This exhibition succeeds in channelling a mixture of the bygone days of Hollywood glamour, as well as newsmakers in art, business, politics and sport - all captured by some of the best portrait photographers in history. We are grateful to the National Portrait Gallery in London and Vanity Fair magazine for the opportunity to show this beautiful exhibition in Canada. It will be the centrepiece in an upcoming series of programming on the nature of celebrity," said William Thorsell, ROM Director and CEO. 

artwork: The April 2007 edition of Vanity Fair had a cover story on the SopranosVanity Fair Portraits was mounted to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the modern-era magazine and the 95th anniversary of the original magazine's founding. The exhibition is divided into two parts, 1913-36, the magazine's early period, and 1983 to the present. In addition to the portraits, the exhibition will include vintage and modern editions of Vanity Fair magazines.

The magazine was launched in 1913 by visionary publisher Condé Nast and editor Frank Crowinshield. From its inception, the magazine strove to engage its cosmopolitan and discerning audience with the vibrant modern culture that sparkled at the beginning of the 20th century. The birth of modernism, the dawning of the Jazz Age, and the 1913 Armory Show that introduced avant-garde art to the American public, all marked the beginning of this sophisticated new era. Vanity Fair magazine became a cultural catalyst, introducing and providing commentary on contemporary artists, personalities and writers.

In these early years, Vanity Fair was the showcase for what was to become the most accessible art form in the 20th century, and an alluring array of portraits were commissioned from the greatest photographers of the period. Edward Steichen (1879-1973), the magazine's chief photographer for 13 years (from 1923 to 1936), became America's leading photographer of style, taste and celebrity. Steichen is best remembered for his timeless images of actors, whose likenesses in print and onscreen helped shape popular culture during the first quarter of the 20th century. A selection of his iconic photographs will be shown in the exhibition.

From the magazine's beginning, British, Irish and American literary figures were frequently profiled in the magazine along with their writings. Among the vintage portraits shown in the exhibition are iconic images of H.G. Wells, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, Ernest Hemingway and George Bernard Shaw.

Vanity Fair Portraits offers a rare opportunity to see some of the definitive portraits of the Jazz Age. Memorable images of men and women of the day are presented, such as Albert Einstein, Collette, Pablo Picasso and English playwright Noel Coward, whose images were captured by legendary photographers such as Martin Hölig, Cecil Beaton, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray and Edward Steichen.

In 1936, Vanity Fair suspended publication, laying dormant for almost half a century. In the early 1980s, the vibrant cosmopolitan spirit streaming through the culture of the time persuaded Condé Nast Publications to resurrect the magazine. Once again, the magazine succeeded in immortalizing the newsmakers of the day - individuals of talent, stature and culture who were firmly embedded in the popular culture. And, as in the early period, portrait photography was the graphic bedrock of the magazine. Tina Brown, editor from 1983 to 1992, notably imbued the magazine with a mixture of personality profiles and first-rate reportage. When Brown moved on to the New Yorker in 1992, Graydon Carter took the editorial reigns at Vanity Fair and expanded the magazine's coverage of news and world affairs, and, amongst a variety of new franchises, inaugurated the now annual Hollywood Issue along with the much-celebrated annual Oscar party.

The section of the exhibition representing the period 1983 to the present illustrates how the revived monthly followed in the tradition of its first editor, Frank Crowninshield, and commissioned the world's leading portrait photographers, among them Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Herb Ritts, Harry Benson, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber and Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair's principal photographer since 1983. Leibovitz, the most famous imagemaker of her generation, first came to prominence while she was working as a photographer for Rolling Stone magazine, eventually becoming chief photographer. Her Vanity Fair covers have left us with unforgettable images of prominent figures in American pop culture.

artwork: Hollywood Cover by Annie Leibovitz, April 2001 - Photograph © Annie Leibovitz VANITY FAIR PORTRAITS:PHOTOGRAPHS 1913 - 2008

Exhibition highlights:
From vintage to contemporary prints, Vanity Fair Portraits captures viewers' imagination, taking them on a journey of nearly 100 years of popular culture. The glamour of the golden age of cinema shines in portraits of American actresses Gloria Swanson, Anna May Wong and the Gish sisters; an incandescent portrait of Jean Harlow three years before her death; and beloved icons of the silver screen, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. With a nod to modernity – a significant element of the magazine's inception - the Jazz Age is represented by classic studies of trumpeter Louis Armstrong and entertainer Josephine Baker. The selection also includes unpublished images, including a portrait of 1930s actress Alice White by Florence Vandamm and a study of Weimar era artist George Grosz by Emil Bieber.

Bringing the exhibition to the 21st century, we are invited to look into the eyes of firefighters near Ground Zero (2001); a powerful image of actress Hilary Swank running on a beach (2004) and Annie Leibovitz's Hollywood Issue cover (2001), featuring Nicole Kidman, Catherine Deneuve, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Vanessa Redgrave, Kate Winslet, Chloe Sevigny, Sophia Loren and Penelope Cruz. From the world of music, portraits of Philip Glass (2002) and Liza Minnelli (2002) are juxtaposed with images of Run DMC (2005) and Radiohead (2000).

Vanity Fair's iconic photographs continue to make news. Post-1983 cover images include the Reagans dancing (1985), a very pregnant Demi Moore (1991), a formal portrait of President George W. Bush's Afghan War Cabinet (2002) and, most recently, actresses Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley photographed nude (2006). Exclusive to the ROM is a Jonathan Becker portrait of Conrad Black with his wife, Barbara Amiel.

The Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver To Show 'Flesh and Blood' Recent Work by Shary Boyle

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:37 PM PST

artwork: Shary Boyle - "Virus (White Wedding)", 2009 - Plaster, lace, timer-sequenced overhead projector, fan, acetate, ink - 153 x 153 x 123 cm. Copyright: Shary Boyle. Photo: David Jacques, courtesy of Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, At The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, in "Flesh and Blood" from June 17th until August 21st.

Vancouver, BC.- The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present "Flesh and Blood", a major touring exhibition of recent work by Canadian artist Shary Boyle. Through drawing, sculpture, painting, writing and performance Boyle creates installations that examine a range of psychological and emotional situations rooted in a fictional world. Her position is at once feminist yet poetic, located within dreamlike states. Tense with troubled emotions, possessing an expressive immediacy and poised between grace and strangeness, her portraits and 'genre scenes' read as allegories of the human condition.


Photographer Awards in Cannes

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:36 PM PST

artwork: One of the most famous photographs taken of Marilyn Monroe, taken by photographer Phil Stern,  who received the Legacy Award for his contribution to photography.


CANNES, FRANCE - Vanessa Winship from United Kingdom has been named Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year, revealed at the VIP Gala Awards ceremony in Cannes. Her entry in the Portraiture category has beaten thousands of submissions to win the esteemed title, accompanied by a $25,000 cash prize.

The Art Institute of Chicago Presents Soviet TASS Posters at Home & Abroad, 1941–1945

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:35 PM PST

artwork: Selection of Soviet WWII propoganda posters from "Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941–1945", on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from July 31st until October 23rd.

Chicago, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to present "Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941–1945" from July 31st through October 23rd. In 1997, 26 tightly wrapped brown paper parcels were discovered deep in a storage area for the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Prints and Drawings. Their presence was a mystery, their contents a puzzle. As conservators and curators carefully worked to open the envelopes, they were surprised and intrigued to find that they contained 50-year-old monumental posters created by TASS, the Soviet Union's news agency. The idea for a major exhibition began to take shape. Impressively large—between five and ten feet tall—and striking in the vibrancy and texture of the stencil medium, these posters were sent abroad, including to the Art Institute, to serve as international cultural "ambassadors" and to rally allied and neutral nations to the endeavors of the Soviet Union, a partner of the United States and Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany.


The Gemeentemuseum Presents Picasso in The Hague

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:34 PM PST

artwork: Pablo Picasso - Harlequin with Folded Hands (detail), 1923 - Oil on canvas - 130 x 97 cm Collection of the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, c/o Beeldrecht Amsterdam
THE HAGUE, NL - If anyone deserves to be called the 'artist of the twentieth century', that man is Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). The exhibition Picasso in The Hague covers his entire career and reveals his untiring urge to experiment. The works on show will include not only oil paintings, but sculpture, drawings, prints and ceramics. In addition, Roberto Otero's photographs of the mediagenic artist will provide an intimate insight into his turbulent life, in which work and private life were invariably closely intertwined. On exhibition through 30 March, 2008.

artwork: Pablo Picasso, 'Girl with a Mandolin' The earliest item in the exhibition is a sketch which Picasso made of his father in 1899, when he was only eighteen. Other early drawings and paintings illustrate his early years in Paris, when he was still in search of an individual style and taking his lead from French painters like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. The 1901 painting 'Café in Montmartre' is a good example of his work during this period. The impressive 1904 etching 'The Frugal Repast' was Picasso's first print and is regarded as marking the end of his famous 'Blue Period'.

His Cubist phase will be represented by various masterpieces, such as 'Girl with a Mandolin' (1910),
and his Classical Period, when his paintings contained references to classical antiquity, by large compositions like 'Harlequin with Folded Hands' (1923). The period of the Spanish Civil War and World War II are likewise included. The monumental portrait 'Woman with an Artichoke' (1942) and the 'View of Notre Dame' (1945) are fine examples of his output at this time.

artwork: Pablo Picasso, The Crane, (1951-1953)In his famous 100-print 'Vollard Suite' (1930-1937), to be exhibited in its entirety, Picasso examines the relationship between the artist, the model and the final work of art. Is it the artist or the model who determines the visual image? Or is it the idea of the model that provides the catalyst for the creation of the image? The 'Vollard Suite' is an ode both to one of Picasso's mistresses, Marie Thérèse, and to art itself.

Among the sculptures on show will be 'The Crane' (1952), generally regarded as one of his greatest achievements in this field. At the height of his fame, Pablo Picasso suddenly threw himself into ceramics. The exhibition shows how he drew inspiration from classical antiquity, from mythology and from other cultures, and how he created – within a mere decade – an impressive ceramic oeuvre displaying the same themes as his paintings and drawings.

The main emphasis in the exhibition is on Picasso's late works. The artist continued to work compulsively right up to his death in 1973 and his undiminished creativity in his final years will be demonstrated not only by large oils like 'Recumbent Nude with Bird' or 'Musketeer and Cupid' (1969), but also by a number of small, intimate pastels and felt pen drawings.

This exhibition is being organized in partnership with the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, where an exhibition called Mondrian in Cologne will be held simultaneously. Picasso in The Hague will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue (published by Waanders).
 
Visit The Gemeentemuseum at :  www.gemeentemuseum.nl/?langId=en

Philly’s Comix Pioneer R. Crumb at UArts Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:33 PM PST

artwork: R. Crumb My True Inner Self

Philadelphia, PA - With coarse humor and keen satire, the irreverent and subversive works of Philly guy R. Crumb come home for their first Philadelphia one-person exhibition, My True Inner Self.  One of the most influential artists of the Underground Comix movement, Crumb is often compared to Durer, Brueghel and Goya.  His sexualized, sexist, anarchistic and perverse drawings have influenced generations of artists from Philip Guston, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Mike Kelley to today's wheatpasters and manga artists.  New York's Paul Morris Gallery and private collectors provided the show's works, which range from small sculptures to self portraits to notebooks full of observational sketches, all from the early 1960s through 2000.

The Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2010 Finalists Exhibition at BAM

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:32 PM PST

artwork: Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2010 Finalists exhibition installation at The Baltimore Museum of Art. - Photography by Mitro Hood.

BALTIMORE, MD - And the winner is.. . The Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2010 Finalists exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) showcases the seven finalists for the $25,000 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. On view until August 1, 2010, the exhibition features a range of sculpture, film, animation, and multimedia works by Leah Cooper, Ryan Hackett, Matthew Janson, Nate Larson, Christopher LaVoie, Matt Porterfield, and Karen Yasinsky. Admission to the exhibition is free.

Art 40 Basel ~ Extraordinary Quality; Surprisingly Strong Results With 61,000 Attending

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:32 PM PST

artwork: Subodh Gupta - Still Steal Steel # 10 , 2008 - Oil and enamel on canvas, h: 199 x w: 364 cm. - Courtesy of Arario Gallery

BASEL.- The 40th edition of Art Basel closed on Sunday, June 14, 2009. This year, the annual reunion of the international artworld attracted 61,000 artists, collectors, curators, and art lovers from around the globe, slightly more than last year and the highest number ever. The participating galleries, art connoisseurs, and the media were unanimous in pronouncing this a strong year for the show. Art 40 Basel demonstrated the health of the high-quality segment within the art market: Collectors rewarded excellent material and strong booth presentations with unexpectedly strong sales throughout the week.

Van Gogh Unusual Painting Now Authenticated at Museum de Fundatie

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:30 PM PST

artwork: "Le Blute-Fin Mill", by Vincent van Gogh. The newly authenticated Van Gogh has gone on display 35 years after an art collector bought it in Paris, convinced it was painted by the famed Dutch master but never able to prove it. Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said "Le Blute-Fin Mill" was done in 1886. He said its large human figures are unusual for a Van Gogh landscape but it has his typically bright colors. AP Photo/Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle.

AMSTERDAM.- Today, the most recent painting to be authenticated as a genuine work of art created by Vincent Van Gogh, "Le Blute-Fin Mill", was put on display in the Museum de Fundatie in the central Dutch town of Zwolle, Amsterdam. The 19th century painting of a Paris mill was declared an original 25 years after the death of the man who bought it – Dirk Hannema. The painting's owner Dirk Hannema, who was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies in 1895, bought the piece in 1975 in Paris from an antique and art dealer for 5,000 Dutch guilders ($2,700), and then immediately insured it for 16 times more than what he paid.

Hannema claimed that he was "absolutely certain" that the work of art was an original, but, because of an earlier claim of having bought a Vermeer in 1937 that was later proven to be a forgery, the buyer's declarations were discredited and went disregarded. Nevertheless Hannema, who was born to a wealthy art-collecting family, and was named art director of the respected Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam in 1921 when he was only 26, never gave up hope that one day his claims would be verified.

Since his youth, the brilliant art curator collected high quality pieces by lesser known artists and had a preference for looking for works of masters that were yet to be attributed to them, though not usually with great success as he was mistaken nearly all of the time. His claims included that he owned seven Vermeers and more than one Van Gogh, as well as a few Rembrant's. Now 25 years after is death he seems to embody the famous quote of Marcel Proust…"If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

Not a stranger to scandal the curator spent two years in jail after the war in 1945, before which during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands he was given responsibility for all the museums in the country. Although arrested and having stood trial for accusations of having aided in the illegal sale of art pieces to the Nazis that once belonged the Koenigs Collection, at that time owned by the port magnate D. G. van Beuningen, Hannema was later released and never formally convicted.

"In 1958 Hannema created an institute for his collection and was allowed to live in Nijenhuis Castle in the village of Heino on condition that he allow public access to the works, which included many fine classical and modern pieces. Some were on permanent display in two small buildings on the grounds, and he conducted tours by appointment of his home until his death in 1984," states the Associated Press in their writings of today regarding this historic occasion in the for art-lovers around the world.

The AP, further wrote, "The museum had sought once before, in 1993, to have experts authenticate Le Blute-Fin Mill to prepare for an exhibition, Schuurhuis said. But the Amsterdam experts had no time, and the painting went on display as a work that Hannema "claimed" was a Van Gogh."

artwork: Vincent van Gogh montage on canvas by Steve Kaufman

The painting, whose genre is considered unusual for the impressionist, depicts large human figures in a landscape climbing both up and down wooden steps in front of an enormous wooden windmill in Monmartre, Paris. Contrasting Van Gogh's iconic starry sky pieces in rich blues and yellows that he is so well-known for, this painting's sky is not only starless but also cloudless and it is so pale a blue that it seems almost an ivory white, suggesting perhaps that the weather is cold, which could be further established by looking at the barren trees with sparse leaves in tones of ochre, olive green, sienna, and suede grey.

The clothing of the ladies, are a rainbow of brusque, yet defined, brush strokes ranging from a rich cranberry, red, and dusty rose, to pale yellows, sea-foam greens and a striking brownish-grey ensemble adorned with a bright red sash and big bow, and the windmill's wooden propeller, depicted from a view of its side, almost evokes thoughts of Don Quijote de la Mancha because of the shape of its wooden propellers.

The piece, that shares Van Gogh's style through it's bright colors that are lavishly slathered onto the canvas, was painted in 1886 when the artist was living in Paris and bears the stamp of an art store that he was known to buy materials and pigments from, said Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to the Associated Press during an interview.

Vincent Van Gogh painted almost 900 works during his short lifetime before he committed suicide at the age of 37.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Posted: 29 Dec 2011 05:29 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 .

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