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• Most ambitious exhibition of Lucian Freud's work opens at the National Portrait Gallery
• Christie's London announces details of the long-awaited Hockney on Paper sale
• The Demuth Museum Presents its Annual Invitational Exhibition
• The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum Shows the Art of George Schmidt
• World Renowned Spanish Abstract Artist Antoni Tàpies Dies at Age 88
• Sotheby’s London Announce Sale of South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art
• The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale is Showing "William Glackens and The Eight"
• Chicago's Premier Contemporary Art Galleries Announce Gallery Weekend Chicago
• Masters of Photography Sale Including 275 Items at artnet Auctions
• Christie's NY Announces Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale May 12
• Pure Sixties, Pure Bailey, a Selling Exhibition at Bonhams in London
• Double-Header of Andy Warhol Exhibitions Opening this Fall in Athens
• Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) ~ Magnificent Gallery Spaces Displaying The Best In Modern & Contemporary Art
• KLEE And America at Neue Galerie
• 'LIFE AS A LEGEND: MARILYN MONROE' at BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART
• Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts 'Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake'
• DeCordova Sculpture Park Installs Roy Lichtenstein’s "Five Brushstrokes"
• The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows "Ralo Mayer - Obviously a Major Malfunction"
• Grand Rapids Art Museum shows Richard Avedon ~ ' Larger Than Life '
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Most ambitious exhibition of Lucian Freud's work opens at the National Portrait Gallery Posted: 08 Feb 2012 08:14 PM PST London - Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011) was one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. Paintings of people were central to his work and this major exhibition, spanning over seventy years, is the first to focus on his portraiture.Produced in close collaboration with the late Lucian Freud, the exhibition concentrates on particular periods and groups of sitters which illustrate Freud's stylistic development and technical virtuosity. Insightful paintings of the artist's lovers, friends and family, referred to by the artist as the 'people in my life', will demonstrate the psychological drama and unrelenting observational intensity of his work. On exhibition 9th of February through 27th of May. "Lucian Freud: Portraits" then moves to Fort Worth from July 1 to Oct. 29. Auping said he was eager to bring the show to the United States, where the fleshiness of Freud's paintings initially came as a shock. "We have nothing like this in America," Auping said. "We are the land of Photoshop. We are the land of sleek models. We are the land of no wrinkles. "It disturbed our sense of abstraction and minimalism. (But) over the years we came to embrace Freud." Featuring over 100 works from museums and private collections throughout the world, some of which have never been seen before, this is an unmissable opportunity to experience the work of one of the world's greatest artists. There is a vast amount of flesh — clear and smooth or wrinkled and mottled — on display in the latest show at Britain's National Portrait Gallery, a retrospective of the work of Lucian Freud. Freud was the most renowned British portrait painter of the 20th century, and he found that clothes often got in the way. The artist, who died in July at age 88, approached the human body the way his psychoanalyst grandfather Sigmund Freud approached the mind — determined to unmask its secrets. The exhibition, which kicks of with a royal preview for the Duchess of Cambridge features more than 100 paintings completed over 70 years, many of them nude studies of the artist's friends and family. Michael Auping, chief curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas — where the show will move after its London run — said Freud was often asked why he painted so many nudes. "He would say, every time: 'It's the most complete portrait,'" Auping said. The exhibition opens with early head-and-shoulders portraits from the 1940s and '50s, then moves on to the to vast, monumental nudes for which Freud became famous. He painted standing up in his London studio, layering oil paint on large canvases with a broad, coarse-haired brush. Many of the paintings have generic names — "Naked Solicitor," ''Man in a Blue Scarf" — but the portraits are revealing images of the artist's inner circle, or sometimes Freud himself, often naked and looking vulnerably exposed. Freud kept his focus on depicting the human body even when the prevailing fashion in art turned to abstraction. National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne said that for seven decades Freud looked at people with an "unrelenting, determined eye." "They sometimes feel in your face and very explicitly naked," Nairne said of the paintings. "But that was always with the cooperation of the sitter. In the end, they were sympathetic. "None of these are casual sitters. They are not figures — they are individuals." Berlin-born Freud, who moved to Britain with his family in 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany, painted his mother, his brother, his daughters Bella and Esther, and an eclectic array of acquaintances. The subjects of his paintings range from performance artist Leigh Bowery and supermodel Kate Moss to Brig. Andrew Parker-Bowles, a horse-riding friend (who got to keep his uniform on). He was at work until the very end. The exhibition includes Freud's unfinished final painting, "Portrait of the Hound," which shows his assistant David Dawson and whippet Eli, and appears to have been cut off mid-brushstroke. Most of Freud's sitters seem to have loved the experience of posing for the master. Sue Tilley, subject of several nudes including "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" — which sold at auction in 2008 for $33.6 million, a record for a living artist — remembers long sessions of chat and laughter. She said Freud was "a complete one-off ... exciting, interesting, funny and serious — every single personality trait wrapped up in one person." "Lucian Freud: Portraits" is open to the public from Thursday until May 27, then moves to Fort Worth from July 1 to Oct. 29. Auping said he was eager to bring the show to the United States, where the fleshiness of Freud's paintings initially came as a shock. "We have nothing like this in America," Auping said. "We are the land of Photoshop. We are the land of sleek models. We are the land of no wrinkles. "It disturbed our sense of abstraction and minimalism. (But) over the years we came to embrace Freud." British society embraced him, too. Freud gained the ultimate sign of respectability in 2000 when he painted Queen Elizabeth II — fully clothed. The naturalistic portrait, dubbed daring by some and disrespectful by others, is not on display here. But the show does have royal approval. The Duchess of Cambridge, wife of Prince William, is a patron of the National Portrait Gallery and attended the show  — greeting Freud's daughters Bella and Esther Freud. Tilley said she wasn't worried the duchess would be put off the Freud exhibition by all the flesh on display — a roomful of it Tilley's. "I'm not embarrassed about her seeing me naked — I'm a human being," Tilley said. "I may not be the most gorgeous one under the sun but that's what I am." "It's art, you know. Poor woman, I'm sure she's seen things before," she said.

Christie's London announces details of the long-awaited Hockney on Paper sale Posted: 08 Feb 2012 06:13 PM PST LONDON.- Christie's announced full details of the long-awaited HOCKNEY ON PAPER sale, which will take place on Friday 17th February. Featuring 147 works including etchings, lithographs, drawings and photography by David Hockney (b.1937), it is expected to realize in excess of £1 million. The sale spans over forty years of the artist's career and includes works which reflect Hockney's various incarnations: the precocious student, the young émigré in California, the Hollywood pool-sider and chronicler of gay life, the portraitist, the fax-artist, the collagist photographer, the set designer and the camera obscura provocateur.

The Demuth Museum Presents its Annual Invitational Exhibition Posted: 08 Feb 2012 06:12 PM PST Lancaster, Pennsylvania.– The Demuth Museum opened its 2012 exhibition schedule with the annual Invitational exhibition, "An Architect's Influence", on view at the museum through February 26th. The exhibition showcases the work of contemporary artists from Lancaster and the surrounding region who have been invited to exhibit new works based on a given theme. This year's exhibition takes its theme from Charles Demuth's interaction with architects. Demuth experienced firsthand the architectural renovation of his family's Tobacco Shop in 1917 by Lancaster native C. Emlen Urban. By this point in time Urban had already designed Lancaster's Southern Market (1888) and the Hager & Brother Store (1911) and would continue to shape the skyline and streetscapes of Lancaster. Demuth also developed a close relationship with Frank Everts, the architect who, in 1927, began transforming the Steinman family home, Conestoga House, from three existing houses into a home of grand Colonial Revival style. Everts enlisted Demuth's help in the design of the home.

The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum Shows the Art of George Schmidt Posted: 08 Feb 2012 06:12 PM PST Lafayette, Louisiana.- The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum is pleased to present "Satire, Scandal, and Spectacle: the Art of George Schmidt" on view at the museum through May 26th. An engaging storyteller both visually and aurally, New Orleans artist George Schmidt brings to life myths, tales, and scandals from Louisiana history in his provocative paintings, prints, and drawings. This exhibition will showcase the many examples of Schmidt's visual elucidation on Louisiana characters, scandals, myths, and musings along with his mélange of Roman history and Louisiana personalities. History and the present come to life in the artist's deft hands. George Schmidt was born in New Orleans on November 14, 1944 at the Touro Infirmary. His earliest drawing was at the age of three in his parent's receipt book at the Lauralee Guest House on St. Charles Avenue. George imitated the stick men, known as Dixie Doodles, from the Dixie Beer ad campaign of the time, which proved to his doting mother, Josephine, that her little boy was a child prodigy.

World Renowned Spanish Abstract Artist Antoni Tàpies Dies at Age 88 Posted: 08 Feb 2012 06:11 PM PST New York (New York times).- Antoni Tàpies, a largely self-taught Spanish abstract painter whose seductive, tactile surfaces, often scratched with mysterious graffiti-like marks, made use of unconventional materials like marble dust, ground chalk, sand and earth, died on Monday in Barcelona. He was 88. Douglas Baxter, a friend of the artist and president of the Pace Gallery, which has represented him since 1992, announced the death in a statement. Mr. Tàpies (pronounced TAH-pee-ess) came to prominence in the late 1940s with richly symbolic paintings strongly influenced by Surrealist painters like Miró and Klee, a style he abandoned by the mid-1950's as he turned to what became his signature work: the heavily built-up surfaces that were often scratched, pitted and gouged and incised with letters, numbers and signs. Using a wide variety of materials, on canvases and boards that often suggested walls, doors, windows or gates, he grounded his work in the brute reality of the Spanish street and in the turbulent political dramas of his youth in Catalonia, including the Spanish Civil War and a Catalan nationalist movement. "The dramatic sufferings of adults and all the cruel fantasies of those of my own age, who seemed abandoned to their own impulses in the midst of so many catastrophes, appeared to inscribe themselves on the walls around me," he told the French dealer and art critic Michel Tapié in 1969. "My first works of 1945 already had something of the graffiti of the streets and a whole world of protest — repressed, clandestine, but full of life — a life which was also found on the walls of my country." The rich, painterly textures and sober use of color in his "matter paintings" lent a moving solemnity — the critic John Russell referred to their "seignorial dignity" — to works that "seemed to have been not so much painted as excavated from an idiosyncratic compound of mud, sand, earth, dried blood and powdered minerals." Mr. Tàpies chafed at being characterized as an abstract painter. At the same time, he refused to explicate the tantalizing scratches, letters and crosses that seemed to offer the viewer a text. His dreamlike symbols, fished from the soup of the unconscious, suggested an ancient language waiting to be deciphered, but Mr. Tàpies declined to assist. He did, however, place his work in the realm of the sacred, but a world far removed from his strict Catholic upbringing. "In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal," he said on the BBC arts program Omnibus in 1990. "I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins." Antoni Tàpies Puig was born in Barcelona on Dec. 13, 1923. His father was a lawyer and Catalan nationalist who served briefly with the Republican government. At 17, Mr. Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis. He spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art that had already expressed itself when he was in his early teens. To please his father, he enrolled in the University of Barcelona to study law, but he continued to produce art and for two months studied drawing at the Valls Academy. With the Catalan poet and playwright Joan Brossa, he founded Dau al Set ("The Seven-Spotted Die"), a progressive arts magazine, and, at an exhibition of his work in Barcelona, befriended Miró, a decisive influence. In 1954 he married Teresa Barba Fàbregas. They had three children, Antoni, Miguel and Clara. His earliest works were collage-based abstract paintings on cardboard that anticipated the arte povera movement of the 1960s in their use of such humble materials as string and scraps of paper. After studying in Paris, where he met Picasso, a fellow Spaniard, Mr. Tàpies began exhibiting regularly and, after the Surrealist adventures of his "magic period," he set about transforming himself into a painter who, as the critic Roland Penrose put it in his monograph "Tàpies" (1978), "a painter who was to create mysteries in matter itself." In 1953 he had his first shows in the United States, at the Marshall Field Art Gallery in Chicago and the Martha Jackson gallery in New York, where he first saw the work of the Abstract Expressionists. "They were wrestling with canvases, using violent colors and huge brush strokes," he recalled in an interview with The New York Times in 1995. "I arrived with gray, silent, sober, oppressed paintings. One critic said they were paintings that thought." In 1958 Mr. Tàpies represented Spain in the Venice Biennale with his compatriot Eduardo Chillida. Four years later, he was given a solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The art critic Stuart Preston, reviewing the Guggenheim exhibition in The New York Times, wrote: "The word subtlety is crude when applied to the astonishing textural and coloristic variations that Tàpies, whose taste is unerring to the point of preciosity, manages to confect." (Mr. Tàpies's work had also been part of the Guggenheim's inaugural exhibition in 1959.) With the rise of Pop Art and Conceptualism, Mr. Tàpies's reputation declined in the United States, although many of his "object works" of the late 1960s and early '70s incorporate some elements of both movements, with a Surrealist spin. Works like "Mattress" (1971), an actual mattress painted with blood-like stains and ripped down the center to reveal horsehair stuffing, and "Desk and Straw" (1970), a rather worn wooden office desk piled high with heaps of straw, suggested the influence of Robert Rauschenberg. In one of his more whimsical works, "Sock" (1971), he affixed a man's white sock to a canvas. This theme would return with a vengeance in 1992, when the new National Museum of Catalan Art commissioned a work of sculpture for its central hall. Mr. Tàpies created a furor when he submitted a model for a dirty sock that, when executed, would rise to a height of 40 feet. The sculpture was never made. In 1984 Mr. Tàpies created the Tàpies Foundation, dedicated to the study of modern art. In 1990 it opened a museum and library in the premises of a former publishing house in Barcelona. Its holdings include nearly 2,000 examples of his work. He was the subject of retrospective exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1994 and at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid in 2000. Age did not diminish his output, although much of his work after 1980 returned to old themes and images. In January 2010 he exhibited his work at the Toni Tàpies Gallery in Barcelona, owned by his son Antoni, and in the following March his work of the past 20 years was the subject of an exhibition organized for the reopening of the Tàpies Foundation after an extensive renovation. "My illusion is to have something to transmit," he said when his museum opened in 1990. "If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it."

Sotheby’s London Announce Sale of South Asian Modern & Contemporary Art Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:52 PM PST LONDON.- Sotheby's London announce its sale of South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art to take place on the 31st May 2011. Comprised of 62 lots, several with unprecedented provenance, the auction is expected to fetch in excess of £2.8 million. Highlighting the sale will be works by Sayed Haider Raza. His Bindu is an important 1985 work and is one of the earliest large depictions of the Bindu by the artist. Raza's preoccupation with nature is apparent in his use of primary colours to highlight the elements of nature; red, blue, yellow, white and black respectively represent fire, water, wind, earth and the sun. It is estimated at £400,000-600,000. Another important work by Raza from his Paris period is Rue des Fossés St Jaques, an oil on canvas estimated at £300,000-500,000. Raza and his wife, the painter Janine Mongillat, were friends of the current owner's family and they rented a studio from them at Rue des Fossés St Jaques. Painted a year after Raza was awarded the 'Prix de la Critique', this painting depicts the view from the studio window and represents an important early phase in Raza's career where he abandons the confines of traditional watercolour and takes on oil developing a unique idiom where space and colour seem to feed into one another. In 1958, the painting was photographed with the artist by Henri Cartier Bresson. Maqbool Fida Husain's The Sixth Seal, estimated at £400,000-500,000, exemplifies the eclectic balance between Husain's cubist modern style of painting and Indian traditional sensibility and subject matter. This work, which was formerly in the Collection of Chester and Davida Herwitz , incorporates so many of the artist's most recognisable themes and symbols. Traditional forms of ancient Indian miniatures, sculptures, dance and folk art manifest themselves in one painting. The painting is made up of six vignettes a compositional device used by the artist in a number of his early works from the late 1950s and early 1960s. This work is published in Bartholomew and Kapur's seminal book on Husain and was exhibited at Oxford's Museum of Modern Art's India: Myth and Reality, Aspects of Modern Indian art in 1982. Illustrated is Jehangir Sabavala's oil on canvas The Tree, which is estimated at £65,000-75,000. This painting is part of the Tungabhadra landscapes that were painted in 1965 following a visit by the Sabavalas to South India. The artist was moved by the ruins at Hampi and in particular by the starkness of the artificial lake in the Tungabhadra river, at the border between Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. A further highlight is Manjit Bawa's Untitled estimated at £100,000-150,000. Manjit's subjects are often inspired by ancient iconography and myths but his primary concern was not with the narrative of the works but with their spatial and chromatic relationships. The artist's use of colour was grounded in his formal training as a silk-screen printer and his study of Rajput and Pahari miniature paintings. The simplicity of line and form is contrasted by the subtle graduation of colour and the artist's use of chiaroscuro. His figures possess a plasticity; sculptural in form yet suspended weightlessly in a space that is void of time and context. The sale will also include Subodh Gupta's Hungry God, estimated at £300,000-400,000. Subodh Gupta's monumental sculpture Hungry God, which in 2010 was exhibited at SESC Pompéia's Urban Manners 2, Contemporary Artists from India in Sao Paulo, is composed of a wavelike mass of stainless steel pans, milk pails and tiffins. These steel utensils have now become iconic symbols of Gupta's work. The artist uses these domestic household objects to comment on the underlying social and economic tensions that arise from India's progressive modernisation. These objects represent familiar features of Indian life which continue to transcend the conflicts between urban and rural existence; wealth and poverty; the religious and the vernacular. The auction will also feature Subodh Gupta's Untitled, estimated at £120,000-180,000, which was exhibited in The Empire Strikes Back Indian Art Today show at London's Saatchi Gallery in 2010. Gupta's preoccupation with ready-made objects from India transcends the boundaries of the mediums with which he works in. In this painting, stainless steel and copper-bottomed pots, pans and tiffins occupy a position of importance. Immaculately painted, these objects are revered by the artist and suggest an air of ambition and prosperity, congruent with India's flourishing economy. The photorealistic detail of these pots are starkly contrasted with the abstract, minimalistic background. They hang seductively in the foreground, alluding to the complex and evolving aspect of consumerism in India. Two early oils by Francis Newton Souza's Untitled, estimated at 25,000-35,000, is an oil on board dated 1954. The sale will also include Francis Newton Souza's Untitled, an oil on board, estimated at £35,000-45,000. Acquired directly from the artist by the writer and poet Stephen Spender, both these works are property from the Estate of Sir Stephen and Lady Spender

The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale is Showing "William Glackens and The Eight" Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:48 PM PST Fort Lauderdale, FL - As the repository of the William Glackens estate, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale has among its holdings a large collection of paintings and works on paper by this intriguing turn-of-the-century American artist. Along with fellow painters Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur B. Davies, John Sloan and George Luks, Glackens sought to change the face of American art in the first decade of the twentieth century. Those eight artists wanted to paint life the way it was being lived, and in their pursuit of that goal they brought a grittiness to American art that had, until then, been dominated by the society portraits of John Singer Sargent and the picturesque coastal scenes of Winslow Homer.

Chicago's Premier Contemporary Art Galleries Announce Gallery Weekend Chicago Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:45 PM PST CHICAGO, IL.- A select group of Chicago's premier contemporary art galleries have come together to organize Chicago's first ever Gallery Weekend Chicago (GWC) on September 16-18, 2011. Like the very successful Gallery Weekend Berlin, the event is designed to attract an exclusive group of national and international clientele to experience Chicago's dynamic contemporary art scene. Viewings of new exhibitions at top contemporary art galleries and museums, access to hard-to-secure reservations at Chicago's finest restaurants, and private VIP events will make up the weekend's activities.

Masters of Photography Sale Including 275 Items at artnet Auctions Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:43 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- artnet Auctions offers continuous online auctions of fine art, prints and photographs. Starting April 15, artnet Auctions will present 275 exquisite photographs by artists from Berenice Abbott to James Van Der Zee in a special sale that ends April 29th. Leading the sale is an extraordinary group of photographs by f/64, a group of seven San Francisco artists known for their modernist images of natural forms and found objects. The magnificent gelatin silver print Dunes, Oceano 31SO, 1971 is one of 20 works by Edward Weston offered in this section (estimate: $25,000-$30,000). Other works by the f/64 include Two Callas, 1925, one of five floral prints by Imogen Cunningham (estimate: $2,000-$3,000) and Mandenhall Glacier, c.1935 by Brett Weston (estimate: $7,500-$8,500).

Christie's NY Announces Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale May 12 Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:42 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's announces the auction of a finely honed private collection of important Contemporary art, with works from marquee artists such as Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami. The Private European Collection represents work from each major artist's response to centuries of tradition, underscored with themes of loss, longing and desire. Comprised exclusively of cornerstone works from the 1960s to the present, the collection will be offered in afternoon session of Christie's May 12 Day Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art. The collection is estimated to realize upwards of $8 million. The collection's top lot is Robert Indiana's international icon, LOVE (Red/Blue) 1990 (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000). The sculpture acts as both an abstract configuration and a shaped poem with verbal and visual elements harmoniously juxtaposed. Damien Hirst's All You Need Is Love, 2006 (estimate: $1,000,000- 1,500,000), a heart-shaped, monochrome butterfly painting, is exceptionally rare. The work created under the aegis of the waning 20th Century by the Beatles' Paul McCartney and John Lennon, All You Need is Love makes bedfellows of hope, love and death with melancholic nostalgia with butterfly wings. Takashi Murakami's Kiki, 2000-2005 (estimate: $900,000-1,200,000) is another key highlight. Kiki, the Japanese warrior was originally conceived as one of two "acolytes" or guardians of the artist's Oval Buddha, but she has become a celebrated character in her own right. In creating the work, Murakami played with the associations of the prodigious Kano style of the 16th Century Japanese painter Kano Eitoku and the legacy of Japanese culture. Delicate yet bold, with an ebullient smile revealing sharp fangs, the subversive Kiki is rife with dichotomies. Andrew Massad, International Specialist, Head of Afternoon Session, comments: "Selected with a discriminating eye these exceptional works capture the zeitgeist of several decades. Each work of art reimagines traditional materials and images in a dialogue with art history. Christie's is pleased to present this exceptionally cultivated collection." Additional highlights include: Marc Quinn Myth Venus painted bronze, 2006 Estimate: $ 800,000 – 1,200,000 Mark Tansey Study for Columbus Discovers Spain oil on canvas, 1995 Estimate: $1,000,000 – 1,500,000 Andy Warhol Beatle Boots (Negative) synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas, 1986 Estimate: $600,000 – 800,000 Tom Wesselmann Still Life #13 oil and printed paper collage on board, 1962 Estimate: $300,000 – 400,000 Gimhongsok Love enamel on steel, 2010 Estimate: $40,000 – 60,000 Auction: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session Christie's New York May 12, 2011 at 2 pm Viewing: Christie's Rockefeller Center Galleries, May 7- 11

Pure Sixties, Pure Bailey, a Selling Exhibition at Bonhams in London Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:40 PM PST LONDON.- A selling exhibition of David Bailey's iconic images of the 1960s - the 50th anniversary of a decade that changed our cultural history - will be hosted by Bonhams in New Bond Street. The 'Pure Sixties. Pure Bailey.' exhibition will be on view at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, from 7th March – 7th April, 2010. David Bailey's name is an integral part of the 1960s, that dynamic period which created a melting pot of talent drawn from music, fashion, literature, design and cinema. He captured images which remain a pictorial reminder of all that was best about it – new, edgy, exciting, & beautiful.

Double-Header of Andy Warhol Exhibitions Opening this Fall in Athens Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:38 PM PST ATHENS.- Potnia Thiron Gallery and Haunch of Venison will present a double-header of Warhol exhibitions in Athens this autumn. Opening simultaneously, Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image at the Byzantine and Christian Museum and Warhol: Screen Tests at Potnia Thiron Gallery, will explore Warhol's obsession with fame through his work as a painter and filmmaker of 'icons'. The emphasis across both exhibitions will be on the relationship between his Byzantine religious beliefs, Slavic background and devotion to his mystical mother, and his apparently unfettered celebration of an American celebrity culture. On view 7 October through 10 January, 2010.

Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) ~ Magnificent Gallery Spaces Displaying The Best In Modern & Contemporary Art Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:32 PM PST The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) was inaugurated on December 15, 1999. It is situated at Petrovka, 25, near the Petrovsky Boulevard in central Moscow. The Museum's main building is the former Gubin's mansion, an imposing monument of the late 18th century neoclassical movement, designed by the noted Russian architect Matvei Kazakov. Apart from that, the Museum owns two splendid exhibition venues: a vast five-storey building in Ermolaevsky lane, and a spacious gallery in Tverskoy boulevard, both fully refurbished for hosting large-scale projects. The founder and general director of the Museum is a well-known Russian-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the first state museum in Russia that concentrates its activities exclusively on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inauguration, the Museum has expanded its strategies and achieved a high level of public acknowledgement. Today the Museum is an energetic institution that plays an important part on the Moscow art scene. MMoMA was created with the generous support of the Moscow City Government, Moscow City Department of Culture and Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow. Its founding director was Zurab Tsereteli, President of the Russian Academy of Arts. His private collection of more than 2.000 works by important 20th century masters was the core of the Museum's permanent display. Later on, the Museum's keepings were enriched considerably, and now this is one of the largest and most impressive collections of modern and contemporary Russian art, which continues to grow through acquisitions and donations. The Museum's extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21stcenturies at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. The Museum publishes «DI» (Dialog Iskusstv / Dialogue of Arts) magazine, heir to the authoritative «Dekorativnoe Iskusstvo» (Decorative Art). One of the Museum's priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program — the «Independent Workshops» School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today's culture. Visit The Moscow Museum of Modern Art at : http://www.mmoma.ru/en/ The Museum's permanent collection represents main stages in formation and development of the avant-garde. The majority of exhibits are by Russian artists, but the display also includes some works by renowned Western masters. For example, graphic pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Giorgio De Chirico are on view, along with sculptures by Salvador Dalí, Armand and Arnaldo Pomodoro, paintings by Henri Rousseau and Françoise Gillot, and istallations by Yukinori Yanaga. Within the Museum's holdings, a special emphasis is put on the assembly of Russian avant-garde. Many works have been acquired in European and American galleries and auction houses, and thus returned from abroad to form an integral part of Russian cultural legacy. The highlights include paintings and objects by Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Pavel Filonov and Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin and David Burliuk, as well as sculptures by Alexander Archipenko and Ossip Zadkine. Besides that, the Museum owns a unique collection of works by the famous Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani. An extensive section of the permanent display is devoted to Non-Conformist art of the 1960s-1980s. The creative activity of these masters, now well-known in Russia and abroad, was then in opposition to the official Soviet ideology. Among them are Ilya Kabakov, Anatoly Zverev, Vladimir Yakovlev, Vladimir Nemukhin, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Oscar Rabin, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Schwartzman, Oleg Tselkov, and more.The Museum readily supports the newest artistic developments and fills up its collection with works by our contemporaries. Now this part of the display presents pieces by Boris Orlov, Dmitry A. Prigov, Valery Koshlyakov, Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Oleg Kulik, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrey Bartenev, and many others. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. One of the Museum's priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program – the "Free Studios" School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today's culture. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is always open to new initiatives and ready for collaboration. The Museum's extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21st centuries at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Among the exhibitions currently showing at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is "THEM", the third key exhibition of Viktor Pivovarov in Moscow. The first one, "Steps of a Mechanic", took place in 2004 at the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum; the second one, "Lemon Eaters", was hosted by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Ermolaevsky Lane building) in 2006. The new exhibition is presented at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in the Gogolevsky Boulevard building. As were the previous ones, this project is prepared in partnership with XL Gallery. Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937), just like Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, represents the older generation of the so-called 'founding fathers' of Moscow conceptualist school and, just like Eric Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev, Pivovarov stands well beyond its limits. Being a truly radical romantic, Viktor Pivovarov has a special place among Moscow romantic conceptualists, as Boris Groys called them. The "THEY" referred to in the titles are themes, images, heroes, and ideas born in the artist's mind; they are embodied in the creative process and continue their independent lives in the space of culture. The project displays works that the artist created during almost five years that have passed since his last Moscow show. The current exhibition comprises ten independent cycles, each having its own detached space: 'Melancholics', 'Hermits', 'The Chosen Ones, or Time of the ROSE', 'The Glassy Ones', 'The Perfect Ones', 'Handsome Men', 'Milena and the Spirits', 'Philosophers, or Russian Nights', 'Immortals'. The 2010 album entitled 'They Are Back!' concludes the exhibition. A special place in the exhibition belongs to the series of portraits entitled 'Philosophers, or Russian Nights'. The artist understands philosophy in its original meaning, as love of wisdom. That is why here, apart from portraits of the so-called 'professional' philosophers such as Alexander Pyatigorsky and Merab Mamardashvili, one can find images of poet Igor Kholin, visionary Daniil Andreev, poet and political activist Eduard Limonov, and writer Vladimir Sorokin. These are portraits of people who have created and still create the inimitable spiritual ambience of Russian and Moscow culture. Viktor Pivovarov's radical romanticism lies, apart from other things, in his firm belief in the fact that, even in the new IT civilization, ideas and images of the old classic culture are omnipresent and they are still relevant to our formation. Dmitry Shorin: Festivals - The new project «Festivals» includes about 40 paintings, the presentation of the exhibition in Moscow Museum of Modern Art March 5 to Аpril 3, 2011. Also photography and installation by Rauf Mamedov on view.

KLEE And America at Neue Galerie Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:31 PM PST NEW YORK– The Neue Galerie New York opens "Klee and America," an exhibition that will address the enthusiastic reception for the artist's works in the United States, especially during the 1930s and 1940s. The exhibition features more than sixty paintings and drawings by Klee, which will be on loan from private and public collections in the United States and abroad. It runs through May 22 at the Neue Galerie, before traveling to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The national sponsor of the exhibition is Altria Group, Inc. The exhibition has more than 60 Paintings and drawings. Josef Helfenstein, Director of The Menil Collection, is responsible for the concept of the exhibition and co-edited the catalogue with Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator at The Phillips Collection. "The influence of Paul Klee in America has never fully been investigated," noted Helfenstein. "This exhibition seeks to document and analyze the reception and study of Klee, and thereby to restore an influential but often overlooked chapter to the history of modern art."

'LIFE AS A LEGEND: MARILYN MONROE' at BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:29 PM PST Boca Raton, FL - The Boca Raton Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Special Exhibitions Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe; Graham Flint: Portrait of America, Images from the Gigapxl™ Project and Yozo Hamaguchi: Father of the Modern Mezzotint.  The exhibitions will be on display through April 1, 2007.  Yozo Hamaguchi will be on display through February 18, 2007.

Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts 'Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake' Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:25 PM PST Washington, DC - Jeremy Blake's (1971–2007) lush digital videos combine representational and abstract imagery in the service of visual narratives that are dreamy, historical, and richly psychological. Renowned for his shimmering, hallucinogenic "moving paintings," which loop seamlessly without beginning or end, Blake was influenced as much by Hollywood culture as by the history of modernism. His coolly expressive digital and painted abstractions are slick, non-linear ruminations on topics as wide-ranging as reality television, vernacular architecture, mid-century Colorfield painting, the megamall, and the superchurch.  Blake's cinematic video portraits are the final developments in a career that consistently challenged distinctions between painting, photography, and computer and video art. For these last works, Blake turned to portraiture, plumbing the life, imagination, and aesthetic vision of three extraordinary artists. He honored his subjects' achievements through an innovative form that is its own contribution to the history of art. Wild Choir features Blake's two completed psychological pop portraits: Reading Ossie Clark (2003), a study of "Swinging London's" preeminent fashion designer (late 1960s−early 1970s) as seen through the pages of his wild and colorful stream-of-consciousness diaries; and Sodium Fox (2005), a collaboration with David Berman, the poet and frontman of the rock band Silver Jews. The exhibition also includes material related to Glitterbest, Blake's last portrait project, which remains unfinished. What was to be the third work in the series, Glitterbest is a portrait of and collaboration with Malcolm McLaren, the legendary and highly influential British fashion designer, boutique entrepreneur, punk rock band manager (Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Bow Wow Wow, and Adam and the Ants), and cultural impresario. Subjects Ossie Clark was the fashion designer for the glamour set of "Swinging London"―the era of British hip associated with the Beatles, James Bond, and the Mini-Cooper. With clients such as Marianne Faithful, Mick and Bianca Jagger, and Twiggy, Clark's designs were showstoppers. Today they are emblematic of a time of optimism, hedonism, and cultural revolution. Reading Ossie Clark was inspired by the posthumous publication (1998) of Clark's diaries, which are full of disorienting non-sequiturs, unabashed name-dropping, and confounding color-coded illustrations that evoke the remarkable, intoxicated world in which he lived. The script for the video is a prose poem comprising fragments from the diaries and is read by Clarissa Dalrymple, the New York art world luminary. Many people may recognize Clark and his wife, the textile print designer Celia Birtwell, as the subject of one of David Hockney's most reproduced paintings, Mr. and Mrs. Ossie Clark and Percy (1970−71; Tate). The poet and independent rock musician David Berman is the subject of Sodium Fox. A native Virginian who now lives in Nashville, Berman is a fascinating and complex figure, and the one portrait subject in the group who may be considered part of Blake's generation. Reluctant rock star, Gen-X wiseguy, willfully isolated literary light, reformed drug addict, Southerner, Jew, patriot, and ex-guard at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Berman's talent and influence among his contemporaries are equally matched by a desire to remain outside the public fray and the mass media's voracious spotlight. With its prosaic, bathroom-wall style poetry, fluid streams of saturated color, and mysterious stripper-heroine, Sodium Fox is, as Blake described it, a "peep show for poets." Blake intended Glitterbest to explore the originality, flamboyance, and pioneering work of a cultural icon. Malcolm McLaren has been a major influence not only on musical production and fashion, but also on contemporary art. Widely acknowledged as a key force behind the creation of Punk Rock in the 1970s―the music, style, and attitude—McLaren is famous for having cultivated one of the most notorious generation gaps of the postwar era. Since then, he has inspired successive younger generations through his continuing, groundbreaking work in a variety of cultural forms. While Blake never completed the portrait, it is clear from the still images featured in the exhibition that Glitterbest would have been¾as Sodium Fox and Reading Ossie Clark are¾a dense and decadent romp through the life and aesthetic vision of a creative force whose accomplishments are symbolic of an era. Technique Trained as a painter (Cal-Arts, M.F.A., 1995), Jeremy Blake was a bricoleur who employed a wide variety of media and an assortment of tools to make his art. Graphics and animation programs helped him to combine his own drawings and paintings with found materials, including photographs, 8mm and 16mm film, and mass- and printed media, to create richly layered digital C-prints and videos. Typically, the C-prints are not stills derived from the finished videos, but rather sources for the videos that he animated. Blake's enthusiasm for the handmade was central to his aesthetic and figured importantly in all aspects of his creative process. Using a computer, he rendered and animated each frame of his digital work. Despite the cool, dispassionate, and sleek appearance of its digital format, every aspect of his finished works bears the touch of his hand, albeit mediated by digital technology. This distinguishes his art from that of many of his contemporaries, such as Matthew Barney or Douglas Gordon, who also work in a cinematic format. Like these and other artists of his generation, Blake's videos embrace subjects as broadly appealing as Hollywood films, popular music, and fashion. However, by rendering or manipulating each frame individually, Blake's work is also linked to First Person Cinema, a tradition of experimental filmmaking that includes the work of artists such Man Ray, Harry Smith, and Stan Brackhage. Background Jeremy Blake was born in 1971 and grew up living with his mother in Takoma Park, Maryland, a Washington, DC suburb; and with his father in the District neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. He took his first art classes at the Corcoran during his eighth-grade summer. He attended Takoma Elementary School, Piney Branch Middle School, Takoma Junior High School, Blair High School, and the Einstein Art Magnet School before matriculating at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned his B.F.A. in 1993. Today he is internationally renowned, with his work collected by and shown in major museums throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. He produced the animated abstract sequences in director Paul Thomas Anderson's film, Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and contributed artwork and video for Beck's album, Sea Change (2002). Blake committed suicide on July 17, 2007 by drowning himself off Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York. The Associated Press confirmed his death on July 31, 2007. On exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art though March 2, 2008.  Visit www.corcoran.org

DeCordova Sculpture Park Installs Roy Lichtenstein’s "Five Brushstrokes" Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:24 PM PST LINCOLN, MA.- DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum announced the arrival of Roy Lichtenstein's Five Brushstrokes, a monumental addition to the Sculpture Park on Thursday, July 22.. The 2010 fabrication of Lichtenstein's iconic Five Brushstrokes showcases his bold, colorful graphics and humorous portrayal of the brushstroke, an integral yet uncommon subject in art. Rising 20 feet high, Five Brushstrokes pays homage to Lichtenstein's position as a central figure of the 1960's Pop Art movement. Lichtenstein's dynamic, stylized brushstrokes will enliven deCordova's campus for the next two years.

The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows "Ralo Mayer - Obviously a Major Malfunction" Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:22 PM PST Linz, Austria.- The Lentos Museum of Modern Art is pleased to present "Ralo Mayer: Obviously a Major Malfunction", on view at the museum through October 23rd. Featuring 4.56-billion-year-old meteorites, a painting from the collection of the Lentos, a closed eco system and a checklist that travelled to the moon and back with the astronauts on board Apollo, such diverse objects are used by Ralo Mayer in the first part of his exhibition to throw light on his own work from the last few years. Ralo Mayer is the winner of the Triennale Linz Award, which was first presented in summer 2010. Space, the history of its exploration and utopias that tried (in the past) to predict what the world would look like in the future form the thematic backdrop for these works. Like all science fiction that deserves the name, they are deeply rooted in present-day reality and transfer social and economic facts into multifaceted stories.

Grand Rapids Art Museum shows Richard Avedon ~ ' Larger Than Life ' Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:15 PM PST GRAND RAPIDS, MI.- The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM), presents the work of Richard Avedon in an exclusive exhibition by one of the most important American photographers of the modern era. Richard Avedon: Larger Than Life traces the artist's dynamic career from the postwar years of the late 1940s in Europe to the early 21st century. Avedon set new precedents in fashion and portrait photography with his innovative approach to the medium. He also established a reputation as one of the greatest camera portraitists of our time. Richard Avedon: Larger Than Life is organized by the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography for an exclusive presentation at the Grand Rapids Art Museum through January 4, 2009. The exhibition includes over 80 photographs drawn from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, which houses the Richard Avedon Archive. A  Membership Drive launched with a Special Guest Speaker attending the Members Exhibition Preview on October 2, 2008: Nigel Barker, renowned photographer and judge on the hit television show America's Next Top Model, was Guest Speaker for the Exhibition Preview. After World War II, Avedon began taking photographs of street performers in Italy while doing freelance fashion photography for Harper's Bazaar, where he subsequently served as chief photographer until 1966. During his years at Harper's, Avedon created a new kind of fashion photography that transformed models from posed mannequins into actresses. He set his models in the city streets, bistros, and urban landmarks of Paris. In the studio, he required them to move and leap like dancers. The 1957 film Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn, cast Fred Astaire as fashion photographer, Dick Avery, a character based on Avedon, who consulted on the film and designed the opening titles. In 1966 Avedon left Harper's for Vogue and shifted his focus to portraiture, which he had begun in the late 1950s. Through the rest of his life, Avedon created powerfully engaging and unsparing portraits of actors, artists, writers, politicians, and intellectuals. His portraits are distinguished by their minimalist style. Posed in front of a sheer white background, the subject looks squarely into the camera. Avedon considered portrait photography a collaborative process. He admired his subjects and captured them in revealing moments as they paused in conversation with him. Avedon's subjects were often larger than life personalities. His photographs of President Gerald Ford, Rose Kennedy, The Beatles, and Louis Armstrong are portraits that document the 20th century. The famous and familiar people that he photographed were distinctly un-glamorized, yet their images are monumental in presence. His subjects also included sitters such as the Napalm victims he photographed on his 1971 visit to Vietnam. Avedon's series In the American West, 1979–84, included drifters, miners, field hands, and working people from the western United States. However anonymous these subjects were, they have the same psychological presence and dignity as Avedon's portraits of the powerful and celebrated. Richard Avedon died suddenly in 2004 from a brain hemorrhage while shooting in San Antonio, Texas, for The New Yorker magazine. His project was titled On Democracy, befitting an American photographer who defined the stylish optimism of postwar modernism and immortalized the forthright faces of people who, in their time, were larger than life. For the past two decades Nigel Barker has been taking the world of fashion by storm. He began his career as a model working for top designers and photographers and collaborating with the industry's elite. As his love for fashion grew, so did his desire to create beautiful images as a photographer. In 1996, Nigel opened his photo studio in Manhattan's hip Meat Packing District. His photography career took off, with his work appearing in such publications as GQ, Interview, Paper, Lucky, Seventeen, (t)here, Cover, Zink!, Razor Red and People. Nigel raises the bar with every project by leading with an infectious enthusiasm and ceaseless dedication for capturing the essence of his subjects. This success has led him to create advertising campaigns for brands such as Beefeater Gin, Sean John, Leviev Jewelry, Pierre Cardin, Pamella Roland, Nicole Miller, OP, Ted Baker, Land's End, Lexus and Frederick's of Hollywood. Coming full circle, Nigel has once again stepped in front of the lens, as a judge and photographer in the hit television show, "America's Next Top Model." With 10 seasons under his belt, Nigel has redefined the photography industry by giving it new meaning to the millions around the world who tune in each week to see and hear his take on beauty and fashion. Nigel's celebrity has enabled him to bring new dimensions to all his projects, including his work with several charities. Nigel is partnered with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and has shot groundbreaking ad campaigns for the foundation and regularly grants wishes. He also shoots and promotes charitable projects for Edeyo, Do Something and The Humane Society of the United States. Nigel Barker lives in New York City with his wife, Cristen, and their son Jack. Visit Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) at : www.artmuseumgr.org/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 08 Feb 2012 05:15 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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