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

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• Facebook Going Public to Make Graffiti Artist David Choe a Very Rich Man
• The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Presents Kadir Nelson's Original Paintings
• The Morikami Museum Shows Japanese Prints from the Paul & Christine Meehan Collection
• The Telfair Museums Features Leo Villareal's Light Sculptures
• Caribbean Cultures Explored in KMAC’s "Into the Mix" Exhibition
• RAY Fotografieprojekte to present Contemporary Photography & Video Art in Frankfurt
• Christies's to highlight "The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale"
• The Andy Warhol Museum shows "Warhol and Cars" and " About Face"
• Alec Soth's series "Broken Manual" at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York
• The Cincinnati Art Museum Showcases Claude Monet in Giverny
• Irish Museum of Modern Art shows Spanish Artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla
• Alfred Kubin ~ Drawings, 1897-1909 displayed at the Museum Neue Galerie New York
• Wonders of Imperial Russia ~ Collection of the State Hermitage Museum opens in Mexico City
• Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s Phantasmagorical Paintings at Hauser & Wirth
• Sotheby's Announces Two-Day Exhibit of Ukrainian Art In Kiev
• The Tate Liverpool Receives Freedom of the City of Liverpool
• Kelly Fearing Dies at 92 ~ Noted Artist & Art Teacher at The University of Texas
• Jim Lambie's Modern Sculpture
• The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Hosts A Major Retrospective of Antonio López
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Facebook Going Public to Make Graffiti Artist David Choe a Very Rich Man Posted: 06 Feb 2012 11:55 PM PST Los Angeles.- When Facebook announced its $5 billion public offering on Wednesday February 1st, a great many people became millionaires and billionaires (at least on paper). Some of them are very well known, such as Mark Zuckerberg, the company's co-founder, others are family members or friends, who invested in the company during its early days. However, a Los Angeles graffiti artist, David Choe stands to join the art elite, potentially making more money from the sale than Sotheby's record-breaking $200.7m (£127m) 2008 sale of a collection of work by Damien Hirst. In 2005, David Choe was first commissioned by Facebook's then president, Sean parker. to paint murals for the Facebook head office in Palo Alto. Offered the choice of a fee in the "thousands of dollars" or shares in the company, Choe elected to take the shares. Mark Zuckerberg then later asked Choe to paint art for its second office in 2007. Artworks from the original Palo Alto office building were removed, and can now be seen in Facebook offices around the world, and the company have maintained their relationship with Choe, who is currently painting their new offices in Menlo Park, California. David Choe (born 1976, Los Angeles, California) is a painter, muralist, graffiti artist and graphic novelist of Korean descent. In 1990, inspired by L.A. graffiti pioneers Mear One and Hex, Choe started venting his teenage anger by scrawling graffiti on bus benches, billboards and back alleys across the city. Immediately after graduating from high school, Choe departed on the first of many adventures, and spent the next two years freight-hopping, hitchhiking, hustling and stealing his way around the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. When he returned to Los Angeles at the age of 21, he decided he needed formal training if he wanted to be a "real" artist, and enrolled in the only art school that accepted him, the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland. There he came under the influence of professor Barron Storey's raw, intimate, painterly style. A week-long spell in an Oakland jail for graffiti provided an incentive to settle down a bit, he returned to his family home in Los Angeles, and began illustrating and writing for magazines including Hustler, Ray Gun and Vice. Around the same time, he began his ongoing relationship with the Asian pop culture store-cum-magazine Giant Robot, which has continued to be mutually beneficial to this day. He also started showing his paintings to art galleries, which exhibited little interest. In defiance, Choe hung his work in a local ice cream shop, where the exhibition was so sucessful that it lasted for two years, with Choe replenishing pieces as they sold. Always fascinated by comics, especially the work of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane, Choe initially dreamed of a career as a comic book creator. In a single night in 1996, he wrote a 35-page tale of violent sexual obsession which, coupled with drawings and paintings that he created over the next couple of years, eventually became the graphic novel Slow Jams. Choe initially made about 200 copies of Slow Jams on a photocopier and gave them away at Comic-Con in 1998, hoping to interest a publisher. Later that year, he submitted Slow Jams for the Xeric Grant and was awarded $5,000 to self-publish a second, expanded edition of 1,000 which came out in 1999 with a cover price of $4. Over the next decade, Slow Jams became a cult phenomenon, and in recent years, increasingly rare copies of the graphic novel have changed hands on eBay for hundreds of dollars. Having caught the attention of the entertainment and advertising industry with Slow Jams and that makeshift art exhibit, Choe soon found himself in great demand for commercial illustration and graphic design. Within a few years, he was successful enough to be able to turn down many offers of commercial work in order to concentrate on his own paintings and murals. Simultaneously, Choe's best friend Harry Kim began documenting his life, often living with him while videotaping his frenzied art-making, colorful personal life and intimate thoughts. Over the next 10 years, Kim would capture thousands of hours of Choe's everyday existence as an artist, footage which would eventually become the documentary Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe. All the while, Choe continued his obsessive traveling, from making an expedition to the jungles of the Congo to painting graffiti and murals around the globe alongside the world's greatest urban artists for the street culture brand Upper Playground. In late 2003, Choe arrived in Tokyo and was jailed within 24 hours. An undercover security guard had approached him threateningly, and due to the language barrier, he misunderstood the man's intentions and reacted instinctively, punching him in the face. Choe ended up spending three months behind bars for violent assault, out of contact with his family or friends, and under threat of being imprisoned for two years. After three months, he was released on the condition that he leave Japan immediately and not return. His prison art has been the subject of constant speculation and interest ever since. Returning home to San Jose with a new perspective on life, Choe began the task of rebuilding himself from the ground up, focusing hard on his career and channeling his more self-destructive impulses into somewhat less risky pursuits such as gambling and drumming. After holding several solo shows in San Jose and San Francisco, he was offered a solo exhibit at the Santa Rosa Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005. He held his first New York solo exhibit, "Gardeners of Eden," in 2007 at Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea, and in 2008, he had his first UK solo exhibition, "Murderous Heart," in both the London and Newcastle locations of Lazarides Gallery, simultaneously. It has often been said that Choe's greatest artwork is his life, itself. Over the past 15 years, Choe has built a worldwide reputation for his raw, vibrant, frenetic imagery, exhibiting in galleries in Barcelona, Beijing, Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, New York, and many places in between. He says he makes art because he has no other choice. "I don't know how many times I have to say this—in all honesty and all kidding aside—without art I'd be 110% dead or in jail. I have a murderer's blood coursing through my veins. I try to be good, but I'm just a bad man who happens to know how to wield a pencil and smear paint in fancy ways." Visit the artist's website at ... http://www.davidchoe.com/

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Presents Kadir Nelson's Original Paintings Posted: 06 Feb 2012 11:36 PM PST Amherst, MA.- The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is pleased to present "We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, Original Paintings by Kadir Nelson ", scheduled to open on February 7th and run through June 10th 2012. Award-winning artist and author Kadir Nelson spent seven years researching, writing, and creating striking oil paintings to be included in the brilliantly illustrated book, 'We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball', which is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the Negro Leagues. During the process of creating the book, Nelson interviewed former Negro League players, traveled to museums around the country, pored over old photographs, firsthand testimonies and documentaries, and collected baseball memorabilia. He posed and photographed himself in original uniforms with the intention of putting himself in the shoes of a former Negro Leaguer to recreate an authentic depiction of life in baseball's Negro Leagues.

The Morikami Museum Shows Japanese Prints from the Paul & Christine Meehan Collection Posted: 06 Feb 2012 09:24 PM PST Delray Beach, Florida.- The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is proud to present "Old Techniques, New Interpretations" on view at the museum from February 7th through May 6th. This exhibition showcase more than 75 prints from the Paul and Christine Meehan Collection.Setting the scene for this exhibit, the art of Japanese woodblock prints experienced a revival in the early 20th century which inspired the development of two new printmaking movements in Japan: shin hanga (modern prints) and sosaku hanga (creative prints).

The Telfair Museums Features Leo Villareal's Light Sculptures Posted: 06 Feb 2012 08:44 PM PST Savannah, Georgia.- The Telfair Museums are proud to present "Leo Villareal", on view at the museum through June 3rd. Organized by the San Jose Museum of Art and opening there in the summer of 2010, the show has travelled to Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, and now, the Telfair Museum of Art. Another venue has recently been added which will bring the exhibition to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin from September 8th through December 30th. Leo Villareal is a pioneer in the use of LEDs and computer-driven imagery and known both for his light sculptures and architectural, site-specific works. This exhibition, his first major traveling museum survey, seeks to place Villareal's body of work within the continuum of contemporary art.

Caribbean Cultures Explored in KMAC’s "Into the Mix" Exhibition Posted: 06 Feb 2012 08:43 PM PST Louisville, Kentucky.– The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (KMAC) is pleased to present "Into the Mix", an exhibition that will stage a conversation about how materiality addresses the complexities of cultural stereotypes and feature works from 10 Caribbean artists: Janine Antoni, Christopher Cozier, Blue Curry, Carlos Gamez de Francisco, Marlon Griffith, Sofia Maldonado, Wendy Nanan, Ebony G. Patterson, Sheena Rose, and Heino Schmid, with accompanying text and daily blog entries by arts and cultural writer, Nicholas Laughlin. The exhibit will be on display from February 4th through April 14th, and the opening reception was held on February 3rd from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Several of the artists traveled to Louisville to spend the week of January 30th to February 4th working with local artists and students to create collaborative pieces for the exhibit, and they will also participate in panel discussions, guest lectures and performance art at institutions around the city.

RAY Fotografieprojekte to present Contemporary Photography & Video Art in Frankfurt Posted: 06 Feb 2012 07:50 PM PST FRANKFURT.- From April to October 2012, RAY Fotografieprojekte will present outstanding international positions of contemporary photography and video art in Frankfurt Rhein-Main. RAY comprises the main exhibition MAKING HISTORY, which is distributed across three central sites in Frankfurt and many partner exhibitions and projects in Frankfurt and the region. With RAY 2012, the Rhine-Main region is once again establishing itself as an important site of contemporary photography. For the first time, nine strong partners worked together to enable this event: Art Collection Deutsche Börse, the Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie, the DZ BANK Kunstsammlung, the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Marta Hoepffner-Gesellschaft für Fotografie e.V. in the Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, the Städel Museum and the Opelvillen foundation followed the initiative by the cultural fund Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

Christies's to highlight "The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale" Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:59 PM PST London - Christie's to highlight The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale will immediately follow the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Auction, and will offer 39 lots with a total pre-sale value of £19,645,000 - 29,130,000 - the most valuable pre-sale estimate for any auction of Surrealist and Dada art. the Surreal Evening Auctions will take place on 7 February 2012 at 7pm with a pre-sale estimate of £86,205,000 -127,090,000 (corresponding estimate in 2011: £73.8-109 million). Combined with the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist works which will be offered in Living with Art – A Private European Collection, the total value of art offered in the Evening Sales between 7 and 9 February is £97,761,000-145,090,000.

The Andy Warhol Museum shows "Warhol and Cars" and " About Face" Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:58 PM PST PITTSBURGH, PA.- Warhol and Cars: American Icons is the first exhibition to examine Warhol's enduring fascination with automotive vehicles as products of American consumer society. This exhibition features more than forty drawings, paintings, photographs, and related archival material spanning from 1946 to 1986. As one of the most iconic and influential artists of the 20th century, Andy Warhol has helped to define America. His signature images of such American products and celebrities as Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor have become instantly recognizable. The majority of the work in the exhibition is from The Andy Warhol Museum's collection. On view 5th February until 13th May.

Alec Soth's series "Broken Manual" at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:57 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Sean Kelly Gallery announces the opening of Alec Soth's new exhibition, "Broken Manual", which is Soth's premiere exhibition with the gallery and the first opportunity to view such a large selection of this important body of work in New York. The majority of photographs that comprise this compelling series were taken over a four-year period, from 2006-2010. They reflect Soth's increasing interest in the mounting anger and frustration that some—specifically male— Americans feel with societal constraints and their subsequent desire to remove themselves from civilization. The resultant work is a group of portraits of men and the landscapes they inhabit that are poignant, disturbing and mysterious. Soth's uncanny ability to gain the trust of those whom he photographs gave him unprecedented access to these notoriously elusive individuals, in moments, variously, of brooding, deep reflection or vulnerability. On view through 11th March.

The Cincinnati Art Museum Showcases Claude Monet in Giverny Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:56 PM PST Cincinnati, Ohio.- The Cincinnati Art Museum is proud to present "Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection" on view through May 13th. Through twelve major paintings only on view at the museum, this exhibition will examine the range of Impressionist master Claude Monet's work in Giverny, France. Claude Monet (1840-1926) retreated to Giverny, the small village northwest of Paris, in 1883, and then spent the next 43 years there experimenting with landscape and garden painting. The works of art he painted there are among the most recognizable in Western Art. Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum, "Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection" takes you on an artistic journey, from early Impressionist-inspired landscapes of waterways outside Giverny to serial depictions of specific garden motifs, such as his famous water lilies, to the immersive environment of large-scale works such as the late wisterias. Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection tells a chronological narrative of artistic self-discovery culminating with two oversize depictions of wisterias, paintings Monet originally conceived to hang above the enormous wall-sized cycles of painted water lilies of the artist's last years. The two exhibited paintings—brought together for the first time since they were in Monet's studio around 1920—combine to make up a garland of wisterias nearly twenty feet long.  "Monet here combines sky and water to create a reflective, surrounding atmosphere that makes clear the debt owed by contemporary art to Monet and his immersive environments."  Leca explains the theme of reflection that plays out in this rare collection of paintings:   "Monet thought about reflection in many ways and understood the multiple associations linked to the term. He himself tells us of his obsession with representing the many reflective effects of moving water; just as his deliberate experimentation in paint was a sort of reflection, a thinking through of his process". Cincinnati Art Museum  Director, Aaron Betsky, adds: "We are delighted to bring this exceptional grouping of Monet masterpieces to the Midwest and to illuminate these iconic works anew as part of our ongoing program of in-depth exhibitions treating some of the great chapters of European painting". Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection is organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities. The exhibition is curated by Benedict Leca, curator of European painting, sculpture and drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Located in scenic Eden Park, the Cincinnati Art Museum features an unparalleled art collection of more than 60,000 works spanning 6,000 years. In addition to displaying its own broad collection, the Art Museum also hosts several national and international traveling exhibitions each year. The art museum has paintings by several European Masters, including: Master of San Baudelio, Jorge Ingles, Sandro Botticelli ("Judith with Head of Holofernes"), Matteo di Giovanni, Mattia Preti, Strozzi, Frans Hals, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ("St. Thomas of Villanueva"), Peter Paul Rubens ("Samson and Delilah") and Aert Vander Neer. The collection also includes works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet ("Rocks At Belle Isle") and Pablo Picasso. The museum also has a large collection of paintings by American painter Frank Duveneck ("Elizabeth B. Duveneck"). In the late nineteenth century, public art museums were still very much a new phenomenon, especially as far west as Cincinnati. Following the success of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia, the Women's Art Museum Association was organized in Cincinnati with the intent of bringing such an institution to the region for the benefit of all citizens. Enthusiasm for these goals grew steadily and by 1881 the Cincinnati Museum Association was incorporated.  Just five years later, in May 1886, a permanent art museum building was completed in Eden Park and was heralded worldwide as "The Art Palace of the West." The Cincinnati Art Museum enjoyed the support of the community from the beginning. Generous donations from a number of prominent Cincinnatians grew the collection to number in the tens of thousands of objects, which soon necessitated the addition of the first of several Art Museum expansions. In 1907 the Schmidlapp Wing opened, which was followed by a series of building projects. The addition of the Emery, Hanna and French wings in the 1930s enclosed the courtyard and gave the Art Museum its current rectangular shape and provided the space in which our American, European and Asian collections are currently shown. Renovations during the late 1940s and early 1950s divided the Great Hall into two floors and the present main entrance to the Art Museum was established. The 1965 completion of the Adams-Emery wing increased our facility resources yet further, adding space for the permanent collection, lecture halls and temporary exhibition galleries. In 1993, a $13 million project restored the grandeur of the Art Museum's interior architecture and uncovered long-hidden architectural details. This project included the renovation of one of the Art Museum's signature spaces, the Great Hall. In addition, new gallery space was created and lighting and climate control were improved. The Art Museum's temporary exhibition space was expanded to approximately 10,000 square feet to accommodate major temporary exhibitions. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Art Museum's collection numbered over 60,000 objects and, today, is the largest in the state of Ohio.  In 2003, the Cincinnati Art Museum deepened its ties with the Greater Cincinnati community by opening the popular and expansive Cincinnati Wing, the first permanent display of a city's art history in the nation.  In addition, on May 17, 2003, the Art Museum eliminated its general admission fee forever, made possible by The Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation. In 2006, the Art Museum marked its 125th anniversary with 125 days of programs and events for the community to celebrate.  In addition, a Facilities Master Plan, approved by the Board of Trustees in February 2006, provided a plan for growth that will serve the Art Museum for the next two decades. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Irish Museum of Modern Art shows Spanish Artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:38 PM PST DUBLIN.- An exhibition by Ferran Garcia Sevilla, a leading Spanish artist whose career has embraced many of the most influential art movements of the past 40 years, opened to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on 10 June 2010. Ferran Garcia Sevilla presents 42 paintings in the artist's characteristically eclectic style, which draws on influences as diverse as his travels in the Middle East, philosophy, Eastern cultures, comic books and urban graffiti. The exhibition comprises works from 1981 to date and includes well-known earlier works, alongside a group of more recent, previously unseen pieces, all illustrating the extraordinary visual richness of Garcia Sevilla's work. The earlier works in the exhibition date from the 1980s, when Garcia Sevilla was one of the principal proponents of the so-called return to painting. This followed a period as an outstanding figure in the vibrant Catalan Conceptual Art scene centred on Barcelona, where he had settled from Palma de Majorca in 1969. Paintings such as Ruc series, created after a trip to Nepal in 1986, brought Garcia Sevilla great international acclaim, as part of an explosion of Spanish art on the international scene, which also included artists such as Juan Mũnoz, Cristina Iglesias, José Maria Sicilia and Miquel Barceló. During the 1980s he showed regularly throughout Europe and beyond, with solo show in Spain, France, the UK and Japan. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1986, in Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and in ROSC 1988, which took place in number of locations around Dublin, including the Royal Hospital Kilmainham now the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Works from this period such as the celebrated Deus series from 1981 demonstrate the artist's interest in exotic cultures and mythologies, while their execution, with rapid brush strokes and splashes and drips, suggest the immediacy of primitive rituals. The Ruc paintings show a further development of these mythic or symbolic forms in a more graphic style and include what the artist himself has described as some of his most powerful images. Always controversial, he also began to introduce, sometimes self-mocking, phrases into his paintings, such as "If you discover the secret I'm sure you'll get depressed" in Muca 17. Towards the end of the 1980s Garcia Sevilla works take on a more three-dimensional form incorporating everyday objects, including books, shoes and light bulbs. His use of floor tiles in the Mosaico series refers directly to the work of the famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who used broken ceramics in, for example, his design for Parc Güell. The early 1990s sees the introduction of still further new imagery in the form of coloured discs, hands, feet and arrow motifs in the Sama series from 1990, while the many works that make up the Xa series from 1995 contain primarily black and red forms reminiscent of scaffolding or of the iron grilles used in 19th-century balconies in Barcelona. Towards the end of the 1990s, in series such as Tepe, Garcia Sevilla's work becomes more introverted, featuring drips, intertwining and superimposed lines, dots and nets. While these motifs suggest balloons, gun shots, fireworks and comets as well as force-fields, graphs and atmospheric phenomena, they may also simply be results of the properties of paint as a material. In some cases, he exaggerates the dripping effect further by rotating his canvases. These works were the last to be seen for some time and marked a move from the narrative to the lyrical in which specific references are abandoned. In 1998 Garcia Sevilla stopped exhibiting in solo exhibitions, alienated by what he saw as an overly-commercialised art scene. He continued, however to create work with the same vigour as before and works began to emerge again in a solo show in Barcelona in 2007. In the Moll series from 2008, for example, the dot has become the predominant element, seemingly referring to notions such as the dissolution of reality or the disintegration of matter. Sometimes they are spread over the expanse of the painting; on other occasions, they form constellations and molecular chains. Born in Palma de Majorca in 1949, Ferran Garcia Sevilla lives and works in Barcelona. Major international exhibitions include Foundation Cartier, Paris, 1997; IVAM, Valencia, 1998; Malmo Konsthall, 1998; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofía, Madrid, 2001; and more recently exhibitions at Galería Joan Prats, Barcelona, 2007, and Galería Fúcares, Madrid, 2008. Visit the Irish Museum of Modern Art at: http://www.imma.ie/en/index.htm

Alfred Kubin ~ Drawings, 1897-1909 displayed at the Museum Neue Galerie New York Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:37 PM PST NEW YORK CITY - The Neue Galerie New York opens the exhibition "Alfred Kubin: Drawings, 1897-1909," featuring more than 100 works on paper by the Austrian artist. This is the first major museum exhibition of his work ever held in the United States, and it focuses on his macabre early drawings, watercolors, and lithographs. It will be on view at the Museum Neue Galerie through January 26, 2009. The exhibition is organized by Annegret Hoberg, curator of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

Wonders of Imperial Russia ~ Collection of the State Hermitage Museum opens in Mexico City Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:36 PM PST   MEXICO CITY- The most complete collection of Russian imperial art arrives to Mexico, for the first time, through the international exhibition "Czars, Wonders of Imperial Russia. Collections of the State Hermitage Museum", that will open today at the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA). More than 500 pieces of the highest aesthetic and historical value give account of the czarist Russia daily life between 17th and the early 20th centuries, part of the collection of this Saint Petersburg museum.

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski’s Phantasmagorical Paintings at Hauser & Wirth Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:35 PM PST New York, NY - Jakub Julian Ziolkowski's phantasmagorical paintings roil with colorful mutant life: plants sprout eyeballs, bodies go about their business while sloughing off limbs and disgorging organs, and dense vegetal landscapes transform into visceral surgical tableaux. Vibrant and perverse, anthropomorphic and surreal, Ziolkowski's private language is the symbolic expression of a highly concerted imagination that also was shaped by life in a very small town: Zamosc, where the artist was born in 1980, is a remote Renaissance city that began as a fortress in the middle of the lush Roztocze plateau in southeast Poland. Here wild nature penetrates the edges of an idealized urban microcosm that was once a center of intellectual life and seat of Eastern Europe's Chasidic Jewish community, later stained by Nazi atrocities, and today is home to a concentration of food factories. Influenced by Zamosc's dream-like intersection of preserved history and encroaching modernity, Ziolkowski has nurtured an inner world where poetry and ornament, religiosity and eschatology, flourishing life and decay intertwine. This is the universe of Ziolkowski's art. On June 30, Hauser & Wirth New York unveiled the first American solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, bringing together more than 50 new works. The exhibition will be presented on two floors of the gallery and will remain on view through July 30. The exhibition is titled 'Timothy Galoty & The Dead Brains,' named for a fictional rock band that appears in some of the artist's images (the word galoty in Polish means 'short pants' of the sort worn by Eastern European circus clowns). Among the paintings on view at Hauser & Wirth are several that evoke promotional posters for such fantasy bands. Their members can be counted among the large and colorful population of characters inhabiting Ziolkowski's work, standing in for the artist's own moods and serving as composite portraits of both human types and states of mind. These include jaunty skeletons and autonomous eyeballs that return the viewer's gaze; implement-wielding doctors in white coats; women with pendulous breasts and animal heads; monks with even more pendulous earlobes, regarding the universe; fat drinkers defecating gold coins; a host of political figures and everyday citizens going about strange business; and Ziolkowski himself, bespectacled and smoking a cigarette as he surveys the scene and waves to us. 'Timothy Galoty & The Dead Brains' includes surreal portraits, lavishly detailed fantasy landscapes, and works of eccentric figuration that combine the two. Ziolkowski has been profoundly influenced by his small town upbringing, the folk traditions and stories of Poland, and his nation's more recent and dark history. But while these permeate the atmosphere of his oeuvre, Ziolkowski's paintings do not dwell in the past. In this regard, Ziolkowski departs definitively from immediate predecessors among leading Polish artists, including Pawel Althammer, Wilhelm Sasnal and Monika Sosnowska, who have used their work to deconstruct and critique Polish identity. Ziolkowski's work is less overtly about history – his own as well as that of his troubled homeland – than about escape from a bleak personal and cultural inheritance, and a simultaneous celebration of art and artmaking. Ziolkowski's work principally emerges from his fantasies, which are translated into imagery that appears as if in a psychedelic dream – by turns funny and frightening, confounding yet familiar. In the midst of this, Ziolkowski is careful to remind us that he is no naïf, but is tethered to reality and engaged in the centuries of artistic practice and innovation from which he descends. One painting matter-of-factly depicts a whirlpool of feces. Another shows a well-attended surgical procedure with many recognizable public figures. And in another work, the eyes of a Vietnamese man reflect a threatening policeman, presumably a reference to the artist's travels in Asia in 2009. In all of these, viewers can find references to milestones in the history of art, with Ziolkowski cannily connecting the dots between Leonardo da Vinci, Hieronymus Bosch, James Ensor, Pablo Picasso and Philip Guston. Visit Hauser & Wirth New York at : http://www.hauserwirth.com/

Sotheby's Announces Two-Day Exhibit of Ukrainian Art In Kiev Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:34 PM PST KIEV.- Sotheby's announced that on Wednesday, May 20th and Thursday, May 21st, 2009 it will stage a two-day exhibition in Kiev, in association with Ukrainian House, to showcase 19 works from its first Contemporary Art sale ever to include a major offering of Ukrainian Art. The exhibition at Ukrainian House (2 Kreschatuk Street, 01001, Kyiv, Ukraine) will present highlights by some of Ukraine's most important contemporary artists from the London Contemporary Art: Russian and Ukrainian auction on Tuesday, June 9, 2009.

The Tate Liverpool Receives Freedom of the City of Liverpool Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:33 PM PST LIVERPOOL.- The Tate Liverpool was given the Freedom of the City in recognition of its two decades as a major cultural presence in the city. The high-profile art gallery and museum which opened at the Albert Dock in 1988, has given Liverpool people some of the very best displays from the national collection. It is an integral part of the artistic and cultural life of the city - and is the most visited modern and contemporary art gallery outside London. Since it opened it has hosted more than 150 exhibitions, and in 2008 was responsible for one of the highlights of Liverpool's Capital of Culture year when it displayed the work of Gustav Klimt. It is currently showcasing the work of Picasso in Picasso: Peace and Freedom.

Kelly Fearing Dies at 92 ~ Noted Artist & Art Teacher at The University of Texas Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:32 PM PST Austin, Texas (Statesman).- Kelly Fearing, painter, longtime University of Texas faculty member and one of the core members of a group that became known as the 'Fort Worth Circle' and who were instrumental in introducing modernist ideas to Texas art, died on Sunday March 13th in Austin, Texas of congestive heart failure. Fearing was 92. Over his prolific career, Fearing has been referred to as a magical realist, a Romantic surrealist, a mystical naturalist and a spiritual sensualist. He was on the UT faculty for more than four decades. In the mid-1940s, Fearing and his colleagues were some of the first artists in Texas to respond to the bold notions of Picasso, Miro and Modigliani. "We were considered way out at the time," Fearing said in an interview several years ago. "But we were just doing what we liked."

Jim Lambie's Modern Sculpture Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:31 PM PST Glasgow, Scotland - Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art has acquired a major piece of sculpture, Seven and Seven Is or Sunshine Bathed the Golden Glow by Turner-shortlisted artist Jim Lambie. The purchase of this vibrant and exciting work has been made possible by a £76,700 grant from independent charity The Art Fund. Seven and Seven Is was created for the 2008 Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts.

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Hosts A Major Retrospective of Antonio López Posted: 06 Feb 2012 06:30 PM PST Madrid, Spain - From June 28th through September 25th, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid is presenting a temporary exhibition that offers a complete overview of the work of the Spanish artist Antonio López (born Tomelloso, 1936). The exhibition is articulated through the artist's own gaze on his recent and earlier work, given that López has steered the selection of works and overseen their installation, working with the curators. The result is a major exhibition of an almost autobiographical nature. Works from the last twenty years, which will arrive at the Museum directly from the artist's studio and which represent almost half of the 140 works on display, are displayed alongside others created in the more distant past, as far back as the 1950's. Rather than a chronological presentation, the exhibition moves backwards and forwards within the oeuvre of Antonio López, who, as is clearly evident, remains active and working. This is clearly manifested in the Museum's galleries, in which paintings, drawings and sculptures coexist in a balanced manner, representing the three media in which the artist has worked over the course of his career. López's celebrated views of Madrid, including his most recent depictions of the Gran Vía, are shown here alongside depictions of his native Tomelloso, paintings and drawings of fruit trees, portraits of paired figures and interiors. Visitors can thus appreciate the recurring themes in the universe of Antonio López and the influence of artistic tradition and his connections with it, given that the artist considers himself the heir to that tradition to an almost obsessive degree. López García was born January 6, 1936 in Tomelloso, Ciudad Real , a few months before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It first appeared that Antonio would continue in the family tradition as a farmer, but an early facility for drawing caught the attention of his uncle Antonio Lopez Torres, a local painter of landscapes, who gave him his first lessons. In 1949 he moved to Madrid in order to study for entrance to the competitive Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Between 1950 and 1955 he studied art at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, winning a number of prizes. He formed friendships with Francisco Lopez Hernandez, Amalia Avia, and Isabel Quintanilla. Out of this nucleus a realist group was formed in Madrid. Madrid of the postwar period was isolated from the international panorama of art and culture. All the information that López García accessed on contemporary art was derived from library books at the school; he gradually became aware of Pablo Picasso and other great artists of the period. In 1955, a scholarship allowed him to travel to Italy with Francisco Lopez and study Italian painting from the Renaissance. During this period he began to reevaluate Spanish painting in the Prado, especially Velázquez, a constant reference. By 1957 his work had registered a certain surreal quality. Magic Realism continued to inform his work through the mid-1960s, but gradually, as he said, "the physical world gained more prestige in my eyes." In fact he had never abandoned it. Some of his relief sculptures conjure fantastic episodes, such as "The Apparition" (1963), in which a child hovers mid-air against a wall, gliding toward an open door. There are many affinities with the Tuscan Renaissance in his work in three dimensions. García's painting also reverberates with the art of the past. "The Grapevine" (1960) evokes Tiepolo's sunlight, "The Quince Tree" (1962) Chardin's dusky murk, and other paintings echo Old Masters from Albrecht Dürer to Edgar Degas. Though López García is devoted to the mundane — he depicts humble people, buildings, plants, and cluttered interiors — his portrayal of these subjects is compelling and beautiful. He began to paint panoramic views of Madrid about 1960. His work from this period attracted recognition, first within Spain — in 1961 he had his first solo show in Madrid — and later, in 1965 and 1968, at the Staempfli Gallery in New York. López García faithfully adhered to familiar subjects: images of women, anonymous and humble objects of domestic surroundings, desolate spaces, images of his garden and landscape. The pictures are sometimes worked on for more than twenty years, some of them remaining unfinished. He is a versatile realist, proficient in the traditional media of pencil drawing, oil painting on board, carved wood sculpture, and bas relief in plaster. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spanish), is one of the three Madrid museums that make up the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia (modern and contemporary) galleries. The collections's roots lie in the privately owned Thyssen-Bonremisza collection, once the second largest private art collection in the world (after the British Royal Collection). When Baron Thyssen decided to open his collection to the public, he conducted a Europe-wide search for a new home. The competition was won in 1986 when the Spanish government came to an agreement to provide a home for the collection (the 19th century Villahermosa Palace close to the Prado in Madrid) and fund the museum in return for the loan of the collection for a minimum of nine and a half years. Pritzker prize winning Spanish architect, Rafael Moneo was employed to redesign and extend the building and the museum opened in 1992. However, so impressed were the Thyssen-Bornemiszas with the building and Spain's commitment to the collection, that even before it opened, they were negotiating with the Spanish government to make the museum permanent. In 1993, the Spanish government agreed to buy the collection (valued at up to 1.5 billion dollars) for $350 million and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum became a permanent fixture in Madrid. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum offers visitors an overview of art from the 13th century to the late 20th century. In the nearly one thousand works on display, visitors can contemplate the major periods and pictorial schools of western art such as the Renaissance, Mannerism, the Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism and the art of the 19th and 20th centuries up to Pop Art. The museum also features works from some movements not represented in state-owned collections, such as Impressionism, Fauvism, German Expressionism and the experimental avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. In addition, it boasts an important collection of 19th-century American painting not found in any other European museum institutions. Visit the museum's website at : http://www.museothyssen.org

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 06 Feb 2012 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.

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