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

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• Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy
• Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I"
• Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) opens First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria
• The Morgan Library & Museum Receives an Important Gift of Forty Drawings from Artist Jim Dine
• 'George Condon: Mental States' at the New Museum in New York
• MACBA in Barcelona Presents 250 Works by Rodney Graham
• The Chan Hampe Galleries at The Raffles Hotel Shows Works by Guan Wei
• Headbones Gallery Exhibits Robert Bigelow’s New Drawings
• Exhibition to Celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Dutch Rembrandt Association
• Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art"
• EVERYDAY TOOLS & HARDWARE BECOME CREATIVE, AT KRESGE ART MUSEUM
• The Dutch Government Can't Find Its Missing Art
• SFMOMA SHOWCASES PICASSO AND AMERICAN ART
• John Constable: the Great Landscapes at Tate Britain
• Our Editor Is Greeted At The Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (The Mudam) In Luxembourg
• The Gemeentemuseum Presents Picasso in The Hague
• National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:49 PM PST FRANKFURT.- The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became known in Germany through his formative work as a teacher at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1928. His pioneering theories on art as a testing ground for new forms of expression and their application to all areas of modern life are still influential today. Comprising roughly 170 works – paintings, photographs and photograms, sculptures and films, as well as stage set designs and typographical projects - the retrospective encompasses all phases of his oeuvre. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, it will thus offer a survey of the wide range of Moholy-Nagy's creative output to the public for the first time since the last major exhibition of his work in Kassel in 1991. On exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle from 8 October through 7 February, 2010. No other teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, nor nearly any other artist of the 1920s in Germany, an epoch so rich in utopian designs, developed such a wide range of ideas and activities as Moholy-Nagy. His work bears evidence to the fact that he considered painting and film, photography and sculpture, stage set design, drawing, and the photogram to be of equal importance. Whether in his early work at the Bauhaus or in his late work in the USA, he continually fell back upon these means of expression. Using them alternately, he varied them and took them up again as parts of a universal concept whose pivot is to be seen in the alert, curious, and unrestrained experimental mind of the "multimedia" artist himself. Long before the word "media designer" was invented and people began to talk about professional "marketing," Moholy-Nagy worked in these fields, too – as a guiding intellectual force concerned with new technical facilities, design and educational instruments. "All design areas of life are closely interlinked," he wrote about 1925. Despite his motto expressing "the unity of art and technology," Moholy-Nagy was no uncritical admirer of the machine age, but rather a humanist who was open-minded about technology. His fundamental attitude as an artist may be summed up as aimed at improving the quality of life, avoiding specialization, and employing science and technology for the enrichment and heightening of human experience. Moholy-Nagy's aesthetically and conceptually radical approach already becomes apparent in the classical arts, in painting and sculpture. His so-called Telephone Pictures, which he dictated to somebody by telephone, exemplify this dimension: using a special graph paper and a color chart, he worked out the composition and colors of the pictures and had them executed according to his telephonic instructions by the employees of a sign factory. He also pursued new paths with his famous Light-Space Modulator of 1930, describing his gesamtkunstwerk composed of color, light, and movement as an "apparatus for the demonstration of the effects of light and movement." It was equally new territory he conquered in the fields of photography and film: with his cameraless photography, his photograms, and his abstract films such as Light Play Black, White, Gray from 1930, Moholy-Nagy is still regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century photographers. Presenting his The Room of Our Time, the Schirn offers a concise abstract of the artist's work. The sketches for this environment, which assembles all his theories, date back as far as 1930 and will be realized in the Schirn on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2009 for the first time. This theory and presentation space will confront the visitor with Moholy-Nagy's innovations in the new media, in exhibition design, and in light projection in a condensed form. The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT is one of Europe's most renowned exhibition institutions. Since 1986, more than 180 exhibitions have been realized, among them major surveys dedicated to Vienna Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, to "Women Impressionists" and the history of photography, to subjects like shopping and the relationship between art and consumerism, the visual art of the Stalin era, the Nazarenes, or the new Romanticism in present-day art. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Bill Viola, Arnold Schönberg, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, and Carsten Nicolai were presented in comprehensive solo shows. Visit : www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/index.php?lang=en

Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I" Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:46 PM PST Oberlin, Ohio - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1915 painting Self-Portrait as a Soldier and four powerful self-portraits by Max Beckmann serve as the focal point of this exhibition of primarily drawings and prints dating from about 1910 to 1925. The emotional drama and psychological intensity of the works on view—underscored by Kirchner's disturbing vision of himself as a soldier with his painting hand chopped off—suggests the increasingly varied ways artists sought to express the human condition. On exhibit through 7 June, 2009

Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) opens First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:45 PM PST VIENNA, AUSTRIA - For the first time in Austria, MUMOK presents a retrospective of Cy Twombly's work. Twombly, one of the most important artists of his generation (b.1928), has been based in Italy since the late 1950s. His work diverged from the abstract expressionist tradition dominated by such figures as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. Twombly first gained recognition with large format, monumental paintings with gestural and often textual inscriptions. His works have been influenced by poetry and classical mythology but also by Mediterranean landscapes and lighting. The exhibition "weaves together" approximately 200 works from every period, bringing his much lesser known photographic work together for the first time with his paintings, sculpture and drawings. On view through 11 October, 2009.

The Morgan Library & Museum Receives an Important Gift of Forty Drawings from Artist Jim Dine Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:44 PM PST NEW YORK, NY - The Morgan Library & Museum announced it has received a promised gift from artist Jim Dine of forty works on paper known as The Glyptotek Drawings.* The series was inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture, primarily from the Glyptothek Museum in Munich, and was created in 1987-88. The series has been exhibited at a number of museums, including the Glyptothek, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Madison Art Center in Wisconsin.

'George Condon: Mental States' at the New Museum in New York Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:43 PM PST New York, NY - In conjunction with the Hayward Gallery in London, the New Museum in New York presents "George Condo: Mental States" until 15th May 2011. The exhibition is the first conceptual survey of twenty five years of work by the American artist George Condo. Concentrating on painting, but including sculpture as well, the exhibition will offer a comprehensive survey of a career that has been innovative in his assimilation and appropriation of elements of the greatest Western artists of the past five hundred years, from Velasquez to Picasso to Arshile Gorky. Condo's career has been most prolific as a portraitist, but one who has devised a wholly unique way to interpret this genre. Beginning in the mid 1980s he developed the idea of "artificial realism" an idea that spawned a race of entirely imagined entities. Conventionally, a portrait depicts a individual who exists, or once existed. Condo's portraits do not. Painted with a highly detailed naturalism that gives old masterish attention to every detail of figure, costume and attribute, Condo's portraits remain recognizable as types, butlers, businessmen, saints or cleaning ladies, despite their often fantastic, or humorously grotesque features. Condo's production is famously prodigious, and this tightly edited collection of works dating from 1982 to the present day, is presented in thematic sections or chapters developed in close collaboration with the artist. A dramatic installation of a collection of more than fifty portraits in myriad styles, sizes, and types is the centerpiece of the exhibition. A catalog to accompany the exhibition features essays by Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, Laura Hoptman, former Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum as well as the fiction writers Will Self and David Means. After its presentation at the New Museum, the exhibition will travel to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (June 4 – September 25, 2011); Hayward Gallery, London (October 18, 2011 – January 15, 2012); and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (February 23 – May 28, 2012). American artist George Condo was born in New Hampshire in 1957. He has occupied a prominent position in the art world for close to three decades. Often called "an artist's artist," Condo has stood as an example to younger practitioners through his unabashed commitment to his personal vision despite the coming and goings of fads in the art world. Along with Schnabel, Basquiat, and Haring, Condo was instrumental in the international revival of painting in the 1980s. Condo studied art history and music theory at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. The first public exhibitions of his work took place in New York City at various East Village galleries in 1981. His first solo exhibition was in Los Angeles in 1983 at the Ulrike Kantor Gallery, followed in 1984 by a simultaneous two-gallery exhibition in New York at Pat Hearn and Barbara Gladstone galleries.The New Museum previously showed Condo's work as part of the exhibition "East Village USA" (December 9, 2004–March 19, 2005). Condo has exhibited extensively in both the United States and in Europe. His work has been included in museum shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico; Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, France; and Stalliche Kunthstalle Baden, Germany, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York. In 1999, Condo received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2005 he received the Francis J. Greenberger Award. The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world. In the past, the New Museum has exhibited artists from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Germany, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, and the United Kingdom among many other countries. The Museum presents the work of under-recognized artists, and has mounted ambitious surveys of important figures such as Ana Mendieta, William Kentridge, David Wojnarowicz, Paul McCarthy and Andrea Zittel before they received widespread public recognition. In 2003 the New Museum presented the highly-regarded exhibition 'Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti'. Also in 2003, the New Museum formed an affiliation with Rhizome, a leading online platform for global new media art. In December 2007, the New Museum opened the doors at its new location on 235 Bowery, at Prince Street. This new facility, designed by the Pritzker Prize winning  Tokyo-based firm of Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA and the New York-based firm Gensler, has greatly expanded the Museum's exhibitions and space. In March 2008, the museum's new building was named one of the architectural seven wonders by Conde Nast Traveler. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.newmuseum.org

MACBA in Barcelona Presents 250 Works by Rodney Graham Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:41 PM PST BARCELONA.- With source material deriving from Georg Büchner, Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, the Grimm brothers, Richard Wagner, Stéphane Mallarmé and Picasso, among many others, Rodney Graham (1949, Abbotsford, Canada) never ceases to delve, playfully and theatrically, into the history of the art of our times. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) explores the evolution of this fundamental artist's oeuvre through his literary appropriations, as well as through his films, photographs and pictorial works. The exhibition's title, Through the Forest, is taken from a key phrase in the English translation made by C.R. Mueller of Lenz, the only work of prose by the dramatist Georg Büchner which gives expression to the romantic subject of being lost in the forest. Rodney Graham became aware of a peculiarity in the text layout: the words "through the forest" coincided twice when passing from one page to another. He converted this chance occurrence into a narrative loop in which the spectator, in similar fashion to the novella's main character, is obliged to continually retrace his steps.

The Chan Hampe Galleries at The Raffles Hotel Shows Works by Guan Wei Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:38 PM PST Singapore.- The Chan Hampe Galleries at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore are pleased to present "Bird Island" a solo exhibition by Guan Wei from July 6th through August 6th. Award-winning Chinese/Australian artist Guan Wei will exhibit his newest series of paintings in this breathtaking solo exhibition of works exuding the artist's distinctive style.

Headbones Gallery Exhibits Robert Bigelow’s New Drawings Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:36 PM PST Vernon, BC - Robert Bigelow: C-RBB 6x6 2010 is part of an exhibition organized by Headbones Gallery that is on display at Ashpa Naira Gallery in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada.   Robert Bigelow's recently accomplished work is a series of drawings - over two hundred - in less than a year - using just red, black and blue. His practice is a perfect example of inspired research. With the attention to detail often associated with the scientific method, Bigelow has executed a concentrated body of work that records the visual charting of his mind as carefully as an electroencephalograph. On view through 1 August.

Exhibition to Celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Dutch Rembrandt Association Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:35 PM PST AMSTERDAM, NL -125 masterpieces from more than 30 Dutch museums can be seen together, this once only, at the Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition, titled 125 favourites. Acquired with the support of the Rembrandt Association, has been organised to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Rembrandt Association. The exhibition reveals the high quality and diversity of the acquisitions that have been supported by the Association. These include major works of visual arts, decorative arts, applied arts and video art. 125 favourites can be seen from 3 October 2008 to 18 January 2009. The Rembrandt Association was founded in 1883 by a group of individuals in order to ensure that significant works of Dutch art could remain in the country. At the time, there was little governmental support for retaining important works of art, while the museums did not have the financial reserves to make their own purchases. As a result, many works from private collections were sold abroad. The arrival of the Rembrandt Association helped to turn the tide. They brought works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Hendrick TerBrugghen back to the Netherlands. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Association expanded its efforts to include support for the purchase of foreign works of art. This led to the purchase of major works by, for example, Francisco Goya en Mattia Preti. Since the 1950s the purchase of modern and contemporary art has also been supported, including works by Piet Mondriaan, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. The Rembrandt Association has supported the purchase of more than 2500 works for public ownership during the last 125 years. This unique, celebratory exhibition traces the purchasing policies of the Rembrandt Association by means of 125 remarkable works of art. The works on show include Love letter by Johannes Vermeer (Rijksmuseum), Soo voer gesongen, soo na gepepen (As the birds sing, so do the chicks cheep back) by Jan Steen (Mauritshuis), Lattenleunstoel met zijstukken (Reclining slatted chair with arms) by Gerrit Rietveld (Centraal Museum), silverwork by the van Vianen brothers (Rijksmuseum), the video Washing hands by Bruce Nauman (Stedelijk Museum), Relief with yellow rectangle 2 by Kurt Schwitters (Kröller-Müller Museum), Euphiletos, black-figured Greek Panathenaic prize amphora (Allard Pierson Museum) and Edouard Manet's The jetty of Boulogne-sur-Mer (Van Gogh Museum). The concept of 125 favourites has been developed by guest curator Peter Hecht. The exhibition design is by Wim Crouwel. Publication - 125 jaar openbaar kunstbezit / met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt, by Peter Hecht. Waanders Uitgevers, 256 pages, 250 illustrations, in Dutch only. Price: € 29.95 (paperback); € 39.95 (hardcover). Available in the museum shop, via www.vangoghmuseumshop.com  and at bookshops.

Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art" Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:34 PM PST BERLIN.- The Ahlen Art Museum will be presenting in this exhibit the historical developments, contextual significance, and especially the artistic reflections of the topic 'bathing.' In the exhibit, 140 works by 90 artists will be presented, including Pierre Bonnard, Louise Bourgeois, Gustave Caillebotte, William N. Copley, Gregory Crewdson, Edgar Degas, Albrecht Dürer, Eric Fischl, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Xenia Hausner, David Hockney, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Édouard Manet, Bettina Rheims, Norbert Tadeusz, and Bill Viola. On view 31 January through 25 April, 2010.

EVERYDAY TOOLS & HARDWARE BECOME CREATIVE, AT KRESGE ART MUSEUM Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:32 PM PST EAST LANSING, MI –– Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University hosts Tools in Motion: Works from the Hechinger Collection, a traveling exhibition organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC, featuring 20th- century art that celebrates repetition and motion in common, everyday tools and hardware on exhibit through November 5, 2006.

The Dutch Government Can't Find Its Missing Art Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:31 PM PST Amsterdam, NL - The Dutch government has lost thousands of works from its own collection. According to free newspaper Metro, the value of the misplaced' art runs into the millions of euros. In the past few years, the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed National Cultural Heritage Service has conducted a search operation at ministries, museums, local councils and provinces. Metro writes that the results have been disappointing so far. The missing works include paintings by 17th century painters Isaac van Ostade and Pieter Molyn, as well as by members of the Cobra movement of the late 1940s. Sculptures, pieces of antique furniture and Ming dynasty vases have also gone missing.

SFMOMA SHOWCASES PICASSO AND AMERICAN ART Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:28 PM PST San Francisco, CA - From February 23 to May 28, 2007, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present the exhibition Picasso and American Art.  The exhibition examines the fundamental role that Pablo Picasso's artwork played in the development of American art during the 20th century.  Beginning with the artist Max Weber, who developed a friendship with Picasso in the early 1900s, many American artists came to both acknowledge Picasso as the central figure of the modern movements and define their own artistic achievements through the absorption, critique, or rejection of his example.  While unmistakably pervasive during the first half of the last century, Picasso's catalytic influence continued to be of great importance in the second half, sparking some of the most searching work from our most significant artists. Picasso and American Art is organized by guest curator Michael FitzGerald, associate professor in the department of fine arts at Trinity College in Connecticut, for the Whitney Museum of American Art.  The San Francisco presentation is organized by Madeleine Grynsztejn, SFMOMA's Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture. The exhibition spotlights nine American artists who have been most deeply engaged with Picasso's work and who, in turn, have made the most significant contributions to the art of their time: Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, and Weber.  The exhibition includes some 40 works by Picasso and more than 100 works by the artists he influenced, including Gorky's Enigmatic Combat (1936–37) from the SFMOMA collection.  The exhibition also features works by other American artists inspired by Picasso, including Louise Bourgeois, Marsden Hartley, Lee Krasner, Man Ray, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann.  The precise juxtapositions of these works—in many cases the first public pairings of significantly related objects—reveal Picasso's far-reaching effect on American art.  "We are thrilled to host this important exhibition and to showcase some of SFMOMA's own Picasso holdings, including the 1955 painting Les femmes d'Algers (Women of Algiers)," says Grynsztejn.  "Picasso was pivotal in the transformation of American art in the 20th century; this exhibition not only documents his influence but also defines the extremely varied role his art and reputation served for the American artists who used his example to make innovative and challenging works.  This exhibition will no doubt be a treat for all Bay Area audiences."  Picasso and American Art features a number of pieces that have never before been exhibited publicly in the United States, including Picasso's Still Life (1908); Untitled (1940) and Untitled (1941) by Louise Bourgeois; After Picasso (1998), Pyre (2003), and Pyre II (2003) by Jasper Johns; and several drawings from Johns's personal collection.  The exhibition also features important Picasso works from international collections, including Bar-Table with Musical Instruments and Fruit Bowl (ca. 1913), Still Life with Bunch of Grapes (1914), Landscape with Dead and Live Trees (1919), and Minotaur Moving (1936). The exhibition is accompanied by a 368-page catalogue which includes a scholarly essay by FitzGerald, some 300 illustrations, and a comprehensive chronology that documents the accessibility of Picasso's work in the United States through exhibitions, collections, and publications.  The catalogue offers new insights on Picasso's influence on American artists as well as the ways in which the United States helped shape Picasso's reputation.  The catalogue is copublished by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Yale University Press. Picasso and American Art is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Lead corporate support for this exhibition is provided by Bank of America.  Major support is provided by the Koret Foundation Funds, the Evelyn D. Haas Exhibition Fund, Robert Mondavi Winery, and the Modern Art Council, an SFMOMA auxiliary.  A Hidden Picasso In conjunction with Picasso and American Art, SFMOMA also will present the exhibition A Hidden Picasso in the Koret Visitor Education Center.  On view from February 23 to May 28, 2007, this unusual exhibition examines Picasso's Rue de Montmartre, a painting displayed on the second floor as part of the exhibition Matisse and Beyond: The Painting and Sculpture Collection.  During conservation work on the piece, X-rays revealed another image beneath its surface: a sketch of a Parisian nightclub bearing a striking resemblance to another Picasso painting, Le Moulin de la Galette. The Koret Center exhibition details this fascinating discovery and the methods used by researchers to find it.  An interactive feature accompanying the exhibition sheds more light on the use of X-rays and ultraviolet and infrared light in conservation and includes an extensive glossary. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is supported by a broad array of contributors who are committed to helping advance its mission as a dynamic center for modern and contemporary art. Major annual support is provided by the Koret Foundation Funds, Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, and Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.  KidstART free admission for children 12 and under is made possible by Charles Schwab & Co. Inc.  Visit our Web site at www.sfmoma.org

John Constable: the Great Landscapes at Tate Britain Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:25 PM PST London - This major exhibition offers the first opportunity to view John Constable's seminal six-foot exhibition canvases together.  The 'six-footers' are among the best-known images in British art and comprise the famous series of views on the river Stour, which includes The Hay Wain 1820-1, as well as more expressive later works such as Hadleigh Castle 1829 and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows 1831. These paintings lie at the very heart of Constable's achievement and not even in the artist's lifetime were they ever brought together.  The exhibition is sponsored by AIG. Constable's decision to start painting six-foot landscapes around 1818-19 marks a significant turning point in his career.  He was determined to paint on a larger scale (about six foot by four and a half) both to attract more notice at the Royal Academy exhibitions but also, it seems, to project his ideas about landscape on a scale more in keeping with the achievements of classical landscape painting.

Our Editor Is Greeted At The Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (The Mudam) In Luxembourg Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:19 PM PST The Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (The Mudam) is the foremost museum dedicated to contemporary art in Luxembourg, and strives to be attentive to every discipline and open to the whole world. Its collection and programme reflect current artistic trends and appreciate the emergence of new artistic practices on a national and international scale. The building, which is the work of Sino-American architect, and Leoh Ming Pei, is a marvelous dialogue between the natural, historical, and modern environment. Standing against the vestiges of Fort Thüngen, it follows the course of the former surrounding walls, and is rooted in the Park Dräi Eechelen (planned by landscapists, Michel Desvigne and Christine Dalnoky) which offers magnificent views onto the old town. The asymmetrical V shape of the building, with 45 degree angles, rises over the ruins. Tucked into its fortified walls, the introverted shape of the fortress is still discernible in Pei's new building. The geometry of the museum is, so to speak, an extension of the fortress. The contrast with the fortress is all the more interesting because Pei's building has very geometrical volumes, and he opted for shapes that are both modern and classical. His architecture is formalist, while remaining sober and monumental. On its south-western front the building of the Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean looks onto down town – the Grund, Clausen and the Pfaffenthal – while on its north side is the "Place de l'Europe" where the main entrance is situated. Access to the museum will be via two bridges that cross the dry moat and converge leading to the arrowhead that reflects the shape of the museum. After the main reception area the visitor enters a space of light. As he moves forward he comes face to face with the Grand Hall, a glass structure 33 m high, made of a metallic frame surmounted by a bell-turret with a square top: this is the heart of the museum from which one can access its other spaces. A second glass structure on the right is as impressive: in response to the contour of the hall which stems from the original layout of the ancient foundations, I. M. Pei has designed a rounded and curved glass-structure. On the left, another glass structure, symmetrical to the one to the right but flattened, highlights the design of the different elements that make up the metallic structure. The building also offers a subtle outlook on the neighboring landscapes by providing an unexpected view of the forest and its surroundings. Uniquely, a balcony that overhangs the Grand Hall offers a view of the historical city centre. The museum is spread over three levels of 4,700 m2 of surface area dedicated to the visits. Its construction was begun in January 1999 and it was inaugurated on 1 July 2006. Level -1 introduces the visitor into a more intimate space where the overhead light gives way to a twilight appropriate to exhibit luminous works. The auditorium with 120 seats is also housed here. Set back from the building is a small octagonal construction – the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion – linked by a transparent footbridge. This pavilion is surmounted by a glass-structure with a bell-turret and gives another view over the "Park Dräi Eechelen". On the first floor, two large exhibition spaces can be accessed by the large staircase which starts in the Grand Hall, or by lateral staircases that are in themselves great architectonic feats. The sheds that we find in the first floor exhibition spaces allow natural and widespread lighting without shades or reflections. The cultural aspects of the Mudam is based on a conception of art seen at a poetical distance from the world. Its key words are freedom, innovation, a critical mind, and all this, not devoid of humor. The programme favors every vector of expression while questioning our habits and our representations. It aims to capture not only a way of contemporary thinking, but also the aesthetic language of an age to come. Visit the museum website at : www.mudam.lu/

The Gemeentemuseum Presents Picasso in The Hague Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:17 PM PST 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.

National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:15 PM PST Washington D.C.- Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his life and career were very short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. Featuring some 35 paintings, this exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States. Organized by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, in association with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of Art inWashington, the exhibition will be on view at the NGA in Washington from April 10 to July 24, 2011. The son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsue, Gabriel Metsu was born in Leiden in 1629. In 1644, at the age of fifteen, Metsu is recorded as one of a group of artists who were lobbying for the establishment of a Leiden Guild of St. Luke, and in 1648 he became a founder-member of the organization. With the exception of short absences in the early 1650s, he spent the next decade in Leiden. By July 1657, however, he had moved to Amsterdam. On April 12, 1658 he married Isabella de Wolff, a relative of the Haarlem classicist painter Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1652/1653). In January of the next year, Metsu became a citizen of Amsterdam, where he died in 1667 at the age of only thirty-eight. It has been assumed that in addition to the early artistic training he would have received from his father, Metsu also must have studied with Gerard Dou, who was Leiden's leading genre painter during the 1640s. This assumption may well be correct, but is not without problems, given that early works from Metsu's Leiden period tend to be executed in a fairly broad and fluid manner far removed from the meticulously crafted, small-scale paintings of Dou and the other Leiden fijnschilders. With the possible exception of the local painter Jan Steen, Metsu, in fact, seems to have been influenced more by the Utrecht artists Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-c. 1660) and Nicolaus Knüpfer (c. 1603-1655). Interestingly, after moving to Amsterdam, Metsu's style demonstrates more of the high level of detail and finish associated with the Leiden school. The influence of several other artists (notably Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, and Pieter de Hooch) is sometimes very evident in Metsu's work, but despite the existence of a sizeable number of dated paintings, these influences occur without any clear chronological pattern, and it is difficult to establish a structure for Metsu's stylistic development. Metsu's most widely acclaimed paintings are the genre pictures, generally depicting a small number of relatively large figures within an upright composition. In addition to his indoor genre scenes Metsu painted a handful of depictions of outdoor markets, a number of religious subjects and portraits, and a few still lifes. His only known pupil was the genre and portrait painter Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705). Now visited by more than 4.5 million people annually, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) is now one of the world's leading art museums. The NGA was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. Since its inception, the mission of the NGA has been to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassical marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. The modern East Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry and forms an architectural link between the two structures. The East Building provided an additional 56,100 m2 of floor space and accommodated the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule as well as housing an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The two buildings are linked by an underground concourse featuring sculptor Leo Villareal's computer-programmed digital light project "Multiverse". The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world, including an outstanding and highly representative collection of European art. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. Visit the museum's thorough website at .. http://www.nga.gov

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 07 Feb 2012 07:14 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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