Senin, 14 Mei 2012

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

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


The Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) ~ Is A World Famous Dynamic Cultural Complex

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:45 PM PDT

artwork: Antonio Berni - "La sordidez" (Sordidness - from the series Cosmic Monsters), c.1964 - Wood, steel, iron, aluminum, cardboard, plastic, roots, nails, and enamel - 129 x 120 x 400 cm. with platform. - From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Located in the heart of Houston's Museum District, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFAH) is a dynamic cultural complex comprising two gallery buildings, a sculpture garden, visitor's center, library, theater, gift shop, café, two art schools, and two house museums. The MFAH's permanent collection totals 62,172 pieces in 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2) of exhibition space, placing it among the largest art museums in the United States. The original 'Caroline Wiess Law' building was designed in phases by architect William Ward Watkin and constructed in 1924 with the east and west wings added in 1926. The 'Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Wing' was designed by Kenneth Franzheim and opened to the public in 1953. Two subsequent additions, the Cullinan Hall and the Brown Pavilion, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were built in 1958 and 1974 respectively. This section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston campus is the only Mies-designed museum in the United States. The 'Caroline Wiess Law' building provides an ideal space in which to exhibit the museum's collection of twentieth and twenty-first-century artworks, as well as installations of Oceanic art, Asian art, Indonesian gold artifacts, and Pre-Columbian and sub-Saharan African artworks. The 'Audrey Jones Beck Building' which opened to the public in 2000 was designed by Rafael Moneo, a Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate and a respected Spanish architect of tremendous range. The museum Trustees elected to name the building after Audrey Jones Beck in honor of the large collection she had donated to the museum several decades prior. The building also doubles as the museum's main campus exhibition space with an additional 158,150 sq ft (14,693 m2). The 'Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden', designed by US-born artist and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi and opened in 1986. The Sculpture Garden houses more than twenty-five masterworks by some of the most acclaimed artists from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries from the MFAH and other major collections. The garden itself is a sculpture that unites the pathways between the Caroline Wiess Law Building and the Glassell School of Art. Visit the museum's website at : http://mfah.org/

artwork: Gustave Courbet - "The Gust of Wind", circa 1865 - Oil on canvas - 143.5 x 228.5 cm. From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with more than 62,000 works from six continents. The European Painting and Sculpture collection contains examples from the earliest Christian art to the present day. The museum´s collection is particularly strong in Renaissance and Baroque art. Among the Renaissance highlights are Italian examples by Fra Angelico, Giovanni di Paolo, Sebastiano del Piombo, Antico, and Scarsellino, as well as Flemish masterpieces by Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling. Baroque artworks include notable works by Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Philippe de Champaigne, Luca Giordano, Frans Hals, and Jan van Huysum. The 18th- and 19th-century galleries feature important artworks by Jean-Siméon Chardin, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Canaletto, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Francisco de Goya, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Camille Corot, and Théodore Rousseau. From the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism period, MFAH features key works by Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Courbet, and Édouard Vuillard. Modern Art highlights include Cubist works by Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, as well as works by Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, and Piet Mondrian. Art at mid-century is one of the MFAH´s outstanding strengths. The Abstract Expressionist collection deserves particular recognition, as it contains key works by Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Franz Kline. The next generation is also well represented, with paintings by Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland. Post-World War II sculpture includes examples by Picasso and Alexander Calder, and Assemblage can be studied through works by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. Other styles and approaches represented in the collection include Hard-Edge Abstraction (with examples by Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin), Pop Art (Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and James Rosenquist), Minimalism (Donald Judd and Jo Baer), and current movements. Recently the collection has been enhanced by the addition of major works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, and other modern masters. The Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden displays important sculpture by Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, and other key figures.

artwork: Louis Comfort Tiffany - "A Wooded Landscape in Three Panels",1902-1933 - Glass, copper-foil and lead 86 1/2 x 131 9/16 x 1 3/4 inches. - From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

A particular strength of American art at the MFAH is 19th-century landscape painting, with fine examples by Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and others reflecting the allure of the American wilderness. The post-Civil War period is well represented at the museum, with works by John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and Childe Hassam. The holdings in early-20th-century American art include wonderful Ashcan School paintings and important early abstract works. Paintings by Georgia O´Keeffe and other Taos artists are another highlight. The American galleries in the Beck Building surround a sculpture court that features works by Frederick William MacMonnies and Paul Manship. The MFAH collection contains a large number of Frederick Remington paintings, emphasizing his achievements as the creator the American cowboy as an enduring archetype. The museum´s collection of Texas art consists of more than 2,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs. The collection encompasses representations of the Texas landscape, spiritual and symbolic works, and examples of Modernism and Post-Modernism. These works testify to the rich and varied history of the art of Texas. Among the artists included are John Biggers, Rackstraw Downes, Dorothy Hood, and James Surls. MFAH's collection of Native American Art presents an unbroken visual history of the Pueblo peoples of northern Arizona and New Mexico from pre-hispanic times to the mid-20th century. It also includes works from the last 125 years made by the Navajo, the Apache, and other semi-nomadic peoples. Ceramics, kachina dolls, watercolors, textiles, baskets, stone and silver jewelry and various kinds of wooden objects are represented. The greatest strength of the museum´s Pre-Columbian collection lies in works of the Maya and the cultures of West Mexico. Of particular note are Maya ceramic vessels, limestone reliefs, and exquisite works in jadeite and flint. Other highlights from Mesoamerica include a large stone Aztec figure, a rare Ulúa marble vase, and an elaborate lid for a Teotihuacán incense burner. Examples from other regions include volcanic stone carvings from Costa Rica, ceramic vessels from coastal Peru, and beautiful small objects for personal use made of gold, silver, and inlaid bone and wood. The Glassell Collection of Pre-Columbian Gold includes gold objects that were created as personal ornaments to adorn the face and body, as well as ritual objects, like drinking cups for ceremonies and masks for burials. The MFAH is strategically positioned as an international leader in Latin American art. The museum´s collection includes more than 760 modern and contemporary Latin American works and more than 2,500 Pre-Columbian objects. Building on this momentum and commitment, in 2001 the MFAH became the home of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). The center, the only one of its kind in the world, serves as both a curatorial department and a resource center within the museum. The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art consists of the finest examples of geometric abstraction in paintings, constructions, drawings, posters, and graphic materials by Brazil's foremost artists of the post-World War II era.

artwork: Nepales sculpture (artist unknown) - Shastradhara (Weapon-Bearing) Hevajra, circa 1531 Gilt copper and pigment,  From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

The works of Asian art range from a Chinese vessel made about 2400 B.C. to contemporary Japanese ceramics made in the 1990s. The arts of India gallery displays 100 artworks representing diverse subject matter and media from India's unique regions and historic eras. In October 2010 the museum opened the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Arts of China Gallery to showcase its growing collection of Chinese works. Objects in the gallery, which was designed to reflect a distinct Chinese aesthetic, range from those created in the ancient Zhou and Shang dynasties to modern installations featuring video. Some of the important works include a 20th-century painting by Wu Changshi titled Flowering Vine and a carved limestone Avalokitesvara dating to between 557 and 618 A.D. The masks, figures, hats, and knives in the museum´s African art collection span some 2,500 years, from Nigeria´s early Nok culture, the first in all of sub-Saharan Africa to produce sculpture, to the mid-1900s. The Oceanic Art collection´s primary strength is in Melanesian works, particularly from the Sepik River region of New Guinea, with a secondary strength in Australian bark paintings. The ancient Egyptian works include a spectacular polychrome coffin of Pedi-Osiris and a rare blue faience sculpture of the god Thoth as a baboon. The MFAH also includes extensive collections of photography and prints and drawings (including 100 early German woodcuts and engravings, including 35 by Albrecht Dürer, and groups of prints by Rembrandt and by Jacques Bellange).

artwork: Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874)  "The Trapper's Bride", 1845 - Watercolor, gouache, graphite, and ink on off-white wove paper. From the Bank of America Collection, on display at MFAH in the "Romancing the West" exhibition until 8th May 2011.  - Photo: John Lamberton

Amongst the exhibitions that can currently be seen at the MFAH are "Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time", on view through July 4th 2011. For more than five decades, Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) has experimented intensively with the origins and optics of color. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional color structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural integration projects, and experimental works that engage the response of the human eye while insisting on the participatory nature of color. The MFAH and the Cruz-Diez Foundation, Houston, present the first large-scale retrospective of this pioneering Franco-Venezuelan artist. Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time features more than 150 works created from the 1940s to today, including paintings, silk-screen prints, and innovative chromatic structures; room-size chromatic environments, architectural models, and videos; and a virtual re-creation of the artist´s studio. The exhibition introduces international audiences to Cruz-Diez´s extensive production and places his theoretical and artistic contributions to 20th-century Modernism in a broader context than they have traditionally been seen. "Romancing the West: Alfred Jacob Miller in the Bank of America Collection" until May 8th 2011 features works by Alfred Jacob Miller inspired by a six-month journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1837. Originally from Baltimore, Miller had a chance encounter, while living in New Orleans, with Scottish adventurer Sir William Drummond Stewart, who invited the artist to accompany him on a journey from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains of present-day Wyoming. On the expedition, Miller executed more than 100 field sketches, which became the inspiration for his work over the next three decades. The art in this exhibition, mainly studio works at various stages of completion that showcase a sometimes unorthodox fusion of media, provides a window onto how Miller worked and how he envisioned the West. These works depict the early days of westward expansion in lyrical and spirited watercolors that capture the rough terrain, the majestic Rockies, the abundant wildlife, and the mixed cultures that populated the West. The exhibition looks at these brilliant watercolors in the context of 19th-century art in general, Miller's career, and his place in American art as an early, and innovative, painter in watercolor.

Michel Majerus' Complex Oeuvre on view at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:44 PM PDT

artwork: Artwork entitled "Yet Sometimes What Is Read Successfully, Stops Us With Its Meaning, No. II", by Luxembourgian artist Michel Majerus (1967-2002) at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, Germany. The exhibition of the artist opens to the public on 26 November on. -  Photo by EPA

STUTTGART. - Michel Majerus only lived to the age of thirty-five and nevertheless the artist left behind a complex and comprehensive oeuvre. In a creative period of just ten years he produced a unique statement about painting that remains relevant today. Majerus worked with diverse techniques and varied subjects and motifs taken from the realm of computers, comics, and advertising. At the same time he made use of art history, drawing on works by artists such as Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and other representatives of Pop Art and Minimal Art. With his sampling method of combining various elements in a free and nonhierarchical manner, he created his own world of imagery and thereby gave painting an important impulse. Because of his works' large size and their installation character, very few museums have been able to show them in all their complexity. From November 26, 2011 to April 9, 2012 the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart fills this gap with a comprehensive exhibition of more than one hundred of the artist's paintings and installations, including works on loan from Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Stuttgart.

Philadelphia Museum of Art shows Skyscrapers: Prints, Drawings, & Photographs of the Early 20th Century

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:41 PM PDT

artwork: Stella Simon (American, 1878 – 1973) -  6th Avenue, c. 1930-32 - Gelatin silver print, Image & sheet: 9 1/2 x 7 3/16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents today Skyscrapers: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs of the Early Twentieth Century, on view through November 1, 2009. Icons of modernity and testaments to human achievement, skyscrapers rose to towering heights in major cities across the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. These technological feats of architecture and design furnished necessary solutions to the problems set by rapid urban growth while simultaneously providing exciting new material for artists. Skyscrapers offered the contemporary artist a way to document a city's development, a pretext for experimenting with modernist aesthetics, and a subject on which to project personal or collective ideas and emotions.

Renowned Artist Philip Brooker Gives Miami's Saucy Image a Makeover

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:40 PM PDT

artwork: A community initiative founded by veteran artist and illustrator Phillip Brooker - The Miami Poster Project.

MIAMI BEACH, FL.-
ArtCenter/South Florida presents Miami Poster Project, a community initiative founded by veteran artist and illustrator Phillip Brooker with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In celebration of Miami Poster Project's inaugural year, Brooker has created a series of five super-sized posters, marking a departure from the typical stale, superficial and tourist industry-driven images that have saturated the city. In offering visual content that is instead a reflection of Miami's complex and fascinating cultural microcosm, Brooker draws on tropical living, snow birds, urban undertones and the arts. The opening reception on Saturday, September 11, 2010, from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at ArtCenter's 800 Lincoln Road gallery is free and open to the public; works will be on view until October 17, 2010.

Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style at the International Center of Photography

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:27 PM PDT

artwork: Ralph Gibson - Caroline Winberg (Harper's Bazaar, May 2005) - Courtesy of International Center of Photographsilver print. © Estate of Yousuf Karsh. - At the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

NEW YORK, N.Y.- In the ten years since Glenda Bailey became Editor in Chief of Harper's Bazaar, she and Creative Director Stephen Gan have carried on the magazine's tradition of publishing innovative, high-impact photography. Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style, on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from September 9, 2011 through January 8, 2012, distills that decade into a choice group of nearly thirty images by some of the most important photographers working today. To emphasize the work's original context and the magazine's award-winning design, the exhibition will include several vitrines with issues open to display extended stories alongside the striking covers, swept clean of cover-line text, that are sent to Bazaar's subscribers.

Photographers in the exhibition include Peter Lindbergh, Jean-Paul Goude, David Bailey, William Klein, Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Camilla Akrans, Sølve Sundsbø, Mark Seliger, Tim Walker, Mario Sorrenti, and Karl Lagerfeld. The magazine has also regularly featured artists who are not usually associated with fashion, so Nan Goldin, Ralph Gibson, and Chuck Close are in the mix, along with two photographers who have a long, legendary history at Bazaar, Hiro and Melvin Sokolsky.
In addition to inventive fashion images in a wide range of styles, from classic to cinematic, there are vivid portraits of designers Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, and Diane Von Furstenberg, and celebrities, including Daphne Guinness and Lady Gaga.

artwork: Lady Gaga appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar in May, she was then featured with protruding cheek bones. Side by side the current Harper's cover with no makeup.

"Fashion magazines have always considered it an important part of their mission to combine art and commerce," said ICP Guest Curator Vince Aletti, who organized the exhibition. "Harper's Bazaar has a particularly distinguished history of hiring great photographers, printing important writers, and training a keen eye on the arts."

"Fashion reflects what's going on in our world, and Bazaar makes pop culture fashionable," said Bailey. "This exhibition is the culmination of a decade in a new world where every popular phenomenon comes with a fashion spin."

Under Bailey, Bazaar has been especially alert to shifts in the culture, casting Ellen DeGeneres as a successful presidential candidate in one wish-fulfilling fashion feature and imagining the second chapter in the life of an abruptly downsized female exec in another. Photographers are encouraged to borrow freely from the wide world of pop, so Seliger is inspired by iconic shots of Barbra Streisand for his black-and-white portraits of Jennifer Aniston, Demarchelier casts Stephanie Seymour as a Warhol superstar, and Julianne Moore looks like she stepped out of a John Currin painting in Peter Lindbergh's witty transformation.

An accompanying book, Harper's Bazaar: Greatest Hits collects these alluring, lively, and humorous visions into a single volume that celebrates the best of Bazaar from 2001 to 2011.

artwork: Harpers Bazaar UK Magazine (Dec 2009) - Victoria Beckham 594 x 401 cm.

Aletti previously co-curated ICP's dramatic "Year of Fashion" in 2009, including the shows Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now, and This Is Not a Fashion Photograph.

Interpreting the power and evolution of photography, the International Center of Photography (ICP) is a museum and school dedicated to the understanding and appreciation of photography. ICP creates programs of the highest quality to advance knowledge of the medium. These include exhibitions, collections, and education for the general public, members, students, and professionals in the field of photography. Photography occupies a vital and central place in contemporary culture; it reflects and influences social change, provides an historical record, is essential to visual communication and education, opens new opportunities for personal and aesthetic expression, has transformed popular culture, has revolutionized scientific research, and continually evolves to incorporate new technologies. Visit : http://www.icp.org/

Beauty on the Beach: A Centennial Celebration of Swimwear at The Wolfsonian

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:25 PM PDT

artwork: Pages from the Jantzen 2009 swimsuit collection catalog.

MIAMI BEACH, FL.- From July 10 through October 11, 2009 The Wolfsonian–Florida International University presents Beauty on the Beach: A Centennial Celebration of Swimwear, a retrospective look at swimwear design and Sun Stroke Stimulus, an installation which focuses on contemporary bathing culture. The exhibition and accompanying installation, curated by Marianne Lamonaca, The Wolfsonian's associate director for curatorial affairs and education, are part of The Wolfsonian's "Celebrating America" series of exhibitions that explore various aspects of the American experience—social, political, and cultural—from the early 1900s to the present, through a range of viewpoints.

Moderna Museet's Exhibition in Malmo Focuses on the 60s

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:24 PM PDT

artwork: Robert Rauschenberg - Monogram. 1955-59, Copyright the Estate of Robert Rauschenberg, Vaga, NY

MALMO., SWEDEN - In the first presentation of Moderna Museet's collection, the museum has chosen to focus on the 60s. A time in which the art is characterized by a drive to approach a reality outside the gallery space and to a greater extent fuse with life itself. Here we meet Robert Rauschenberg's famous goat, Monogram, on the threshold into a new era where the concept of art widens and where high and low, kitsch and fine culture, are mixed with both seriousness and play. Artists like Andy Warhol, Marie-Louise Ekman and Claes Oldenburg seeks inspiration in an everyday life that more than ever before is pervaded by media's image flow and the growth of a consumerist society. Here a Filet mignon is presented in the form of a poorly painted plaster and plastic sculpture, and repeated reproductions of Marilyn Monroe stands alongside of Campbells soup cans, as reversed portraits of the mass as a subject.

Cincinnati Art Museum Celebrates The Amazing American Circus Poster Exhibition

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:22 PM PDT

artwork: Image courtesy of P.T. Barnum's American Museum archives. The Museum was a popular attraction in New York City in the 1850's.


CINCINNATI, OH.- Dashing daredevils, soaring trapeze artists, comic clowns – all make a grand appearance at the Cincinnati Art Museum in the spring. The Amazing American Circus Poster includes rare and unique examples from the Cincinnati Art Museum's own collection, shown for the first time. The exhibition is on view from February 26 through July 10, 2011. On display in a fantasy gallery reminiscent of the "Big Top" are eighty circus posters created between 1879 and 1938, along with photographs and circus ephemera. The exhibition pays tribute to the internationally acclaimed Cincinnati-based Strobridge Lithographing Company, which created and printed the posters and was the leading printer for the major circuses of the time. The posters designed by the firm's artists were unrivaled for their brilliant color, print quality, and graphic description of the acts and action. They give us a detailed portrait of the heyday of the American circus, spanning from the time of P.T. Barnum's circus until the early years of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. The vivid images and persuasive words reflect the important role outdoor advertising played for circuses, which flourished as vital forms of cultural entertainment across the country.

Robert Indiana’s EAT and HOPE Sculptures Installed at Farnsworth Art Museum

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:19 PM PDT

artwork: Robert Indiana - HOPE, 2008 - Stainless steel, 72 x 72 x 36 inches - Collection of Michael McKenzie

Rockland, ME -  On Monday, June, 15, the Farnsworth Art Museum will be installing two large sculptures by artist Robert Indiana in conjunction with the museum's exhibition Robert Indiana and the Star of Hope. The first of the two works of art, EAT, which stands twenty feet high and contains close to 400 flashing LED lights, will be installed on the roof of the museum, over the Museum Store, near the corner of Main and Elm Streets. The installation work will be done by Burr Signs, located in Yarmouth, ME. The second sculpture, Indiana's 2008 HOPE, which was unveiled at last year's Democratic National Convention in Denver, weighs 2,200 pounds and will be installed in the museum's Crosman gallery. HOPE is currently on display in New York City's Times Square, the first work of art on view at the new public plaza there.

Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale opens Edward Steichen Fashion Photo Exhibit

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:18 PM PDT

artwork: Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879–March 25, 1973) for Vogue using only natural light, 1935
FORT LAUDERDALE (AP).- Images of actresses and models in fashion's finest clothing, many of them looking straight into the camera under dramatic lighting: This is the Edward Steichen of the early 20th century. Steichen, one of the world's most influential photographers, is the subject of an exhibit that has come to the U.S. after starting out in Europe. "Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Conde Nast years, 1923-1937," started last week at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and runs through April 11.

More than 200 of Steichen's celebrity and fashion photos from his years as chief photographer for "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair" magazines are on display. The magazines were published by Conde Nast.

artwork: Edward Steichen's portrait of Gloria Swanson, taken in 1924. © Condé Nast Publications Inc./ Image Courtesy George Eastman House."One of the great things about Steichen when you go through the show, it's as if all the women in those images were all born in those clothes," said one of the curators, William Ewing, director of the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. "Today nobody looks at a Kate Moss picture and believes she lives in those clothes. There is no credibility to the contemporary fashion photograph. Perhaps that's the aim."

Steichen's goal was to make clothes appear appropriate and attainable, Ewing said.

"The other thing that was amazing about him is that he never repeated himself," Ewing said. "His signature is that he suppressed his signature ... Steichen was much more modern in the sense that he effaced himself."

Many of the black-and-white photographs are of celebrities of the day including Gary Cooper, Adele and Fred Astaire, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo and Amelia Earhart. There were politicians, like Winston Churchill, and even poets, like William Butler Yeats, who posed with his hair askew. French writer Colette is included. Gloria Swanson is depicted with a black veil over her face and actress Joan Crawford is in dress by Elsa Schiaparelli. The photographs are categorized by years.

All the photographs in the fashion exhibit are original vintage prints, meaning they were made when the negatives were made. Most came from the Conde Nast archives.

The show originally accompanied a Steichen retrospective that toured Europe from 2007 to 2008. The fashion exhibit has since traveled throughout Europe and will go to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., in May.

Ewing, along with museum colleague Nathalie Herschdorfer, Todd Brandow at the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, and Carol Squiers, a curator at the International Center for Photography in New York, put together the fashion exhibit.

Steichen, who was born in Luxembourg and came to the U.S. with his parents when he was an infant, had become a successful painter and photographer by the time he was offered the position as chief photographer for Conde Nast's two magazines. He worked there 15 years, until 1937. At age 66, he became director of photography for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he put on the famous "The Family of Man," show in 1955 and more than 40 other exhibitions. He died in 1973.

"He is one the most important figures in fashion photography," Squiers said. "He really starts to work with the models in terms of trying to portray the modern woman, someone who is forthright." That approach, she said, has influenced contemporary photographers as well.

artwork: Edward Steichen - Conde Nast Photo in 1928 - Collection of The National Portrait Gallery
Squiers said Steichen's work shows aspects of others artists of his time.

"There is a soft monumentality of Rodin that he brings into his pictures but also the great understanding of abstract form that Brancusi brings," she said.

Ewing said he sees the exhibit as two separate archives: fashion and celebrity portraiture. For the Fort Lauderdale exhibit, designer Ivonne de la Vega has created a gown valued at $20,000, which will be raffled off.

"He revolutionized fashion photography and pioneered a new visual language of glamour, profoundly shaping the look of celebrity and fashion to this day," said Irvin Lippman, executive director at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

Christie's To Launch Landmark International Exhibition & Sale in Abu Dhabi

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:16 PM PDT

artwork: Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Statue of Liberty  signed and dated `Andy Warhol 86' - Synthetic & silkscreen inks on canvas 72 x 72 in. (183 x 183 cm.) - Painted in 1986 - Estimate: $2,500,000 - $3,500,000 - Photo: Christie's Images Ltd. 2008 

LONDON - Christie's announced that it will stage a historic international exhibition in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates in October under the patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman, Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage. This exhibition is a vital component of Christie's global exhibition programme which tours selected masterpieces to international locations such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Moscow, and will be the first of its kind held in the Middle East.

Saltfineart Presents New and Unseen Works by Victor Hugo Zayas

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:15 PM PDT

artwork: Victor Hugo Zayas - "Tsunami", 2011 - Oil on paper - 79" x 105" (in 8 sections) - Courtesy Saltfineart. On view in "KINETIC" from September 1st until October 30th.

Laguna Beach, CA.- In an exciting prequel to his solo show at the Laguna Museum of Art in the winter of 2012, saltfineart is proud to present "KINETIC" featuring Victor Hugo Zayas' never before seen line work - delicate nudes in charcoal and electrical grids in thick, visceral oils. Also forming part of the exhibition is an astounding collection of vibrant rocks, ranging from giant to minute, that the artist has created privately for years. The exhibition will be on view from September 1st through October 30th.Installed by discipline (drawing, painting and sculpture) throughout the three rooms of the gallery, the exhibit will focus on the tremendous strength of Zayas' line and composition.


The Fitchburg Art Museum Presents the "World of the Graphic Novel"

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:13 PM PDT

artwork: Niko Henrichon - "Untitled", 2006 - Illustration for The Pride of Baghdad - Collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum. © and TM 1993 DC Comics. On view at the Fitchburg Art Museum, MA in "LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel" from September 25th until January 1st 2012.

Fitchburg, MA.- The Fitchburg Art Museum is proud to present "LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel", on view through January 1st 2012. The exhibition is organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum and is making its only traveling New England appearance at the museum. "LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel" will examine the use of this dynamic form of visual communication, and place specific emphasis on the art of the contemporary graphic novel, which is an internationally recognized artistic and literary genre. This special exhibition will feature over 200 original art works, including paintings, drawings, storyboards, studies, books, photographs, and a documentary film, offering insights into the lives of the artists and the nature of their work. The impact on art discourse and the surrounding public community will be deepened and heightened by the powerful literary element of the exhibition.


Heinrich Heidersberger Photographs at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:12 PM PDT

artwork: Heinrich Heidersberger - 'Kleid aus Licht', 1949 - Black-and-white photography. 109/12 - © Heinrich Heidersberger


Wolfsburg, Germany - In the 14 years since it was founded, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has regularly presented the medium of photography in exhibitions devoted to the work of individual artists. These have included Lee Miller, Cecil Beaton, Brassaï, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Pietro Donzelli and Ed van der Elsken. To mark the 70th anniversary of the City of Wolfsburg, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of work by the photographer Heinrich Heidersberger, who died in Wolfsburg in 2006, shortly after celebrating his 100th birthday. Around 170 photographs from different phases of Heidersberger's career will provide insight into the Ingolstadt-born artist's complex body of work.

Philadelphia Museum of Art to Survey Picasso and His Circle in Paris

Posted: 13 May 2012 08:09 PM PDT

artwork: "The City" (1919) -  Fernand Léger (French, 1881 – 1955) - Oil on canvas 91 x 117 1/2 inches - A.E. Gallatin Collection, 1952. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.-One of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) was at his most inventive between 1905 and 1945.The Philadelphia Museum of Artwill present Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris (February 24 - April 25, 2010) surveying Picasso's remarkable output during these years, from the pioneering role he played in the development of Cubism to his dialogue with Surrealism and other important art movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition also explores the pivotal role that the city of Paris played in the history of modern art, where artists from around the world made the French capital a center of innovation. It will include nearly 200 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and many others, who collectively formed a vibrant, international avant-garde group that became known as the School of Paris.

Drawn from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings by Picasso, and supplemented with loans from private American collections, this exhibition provides a unique opportunity to re-examine the remarkable burst of creativity that took place during one of the most revolutionary periods in the history of Western art. It includes a number of important works on paper, including collages which are rarely on display due to their inherent fragility and sensitivity to light, as well as important paintings that have not been on view in recent decades. Among the major works in the exhibition are Picasso's bold Self-Portrait with Palette (1906) and Three Musicians, (1921), a grand summation of the artist's almost decade-long exploration of Synthetic Cubism, Léger's monumental Cubist masterpiece The City (1919), Jean Metzinger's Tea Time (Woman with a Teaspoon) (1911), known in its day as "The Mona Lisa of Cubism," Juan Gris's Still Life Before an Open Window, Place Ravignan, which reveals the artist at the height of his powers, expertly balancing lyricism and geometric rigor in a composition of evocative spatial juxtapositions and luxurious color, and Marc Chagall's lyrical and kaleidoscopic Half Past Three (The Poet) (1911).

artwork: Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927), Man in a Café, 1912, Oil on canvas, 127.6 x 88.3 cm. - The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York "An exhibition of this scope and caliber underscores the importance of great Museum collections, and what they have to offer us," said Timothy Rub, the Museum's George D. Widener Director and CEO, adding "Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris is a show that will inspire, delight, and acquaint contemporary audiences with some of the most compelling and exciting works of art of the 20th century."

In the spring of 1904, when the twenty-three year-old Picasso made the decision to move permanently to Paris, he had already established a reputation in his native Spain as a painter of exceptional ability. He plunged into the city's bohemian community, soon establishing what would become lifelong friendships with a number of fellow artists and writers, including the French painter Georges Braque who would become his close collaborator in the development of Cubism. The exhibition will be chronologically arranged in order to show the rapid evolution of Picasso's art during his time in Paris, starting with his early Self-Portrait with Palette (1906) in which the young painter unabashedly proclaims his artistic mastery. The next gallery will highlight the lively interchange between Picasso and Braque between 1910 and 1913, when they developed a shared vocabulary of grid-like scaffolding, overlapping planes, and a reduced palette of beige, ocher, white, and gray that marked the beginning of Cubism, as seen in Braque's Still Life (Violin) and Picasso's Man with a Guitar, both of 1912.

"Cubism represented a seismic shift in the way visual artists depicted the world around them," said Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who organized the exhibition. "Forms were flattened, dissected and recomposed into various essential shapes and lines that were shown from multiple angles and viewpoints. No longer was pictorial fidelity to the natural world considered paramount to a painting's success, as artists were now free to engage in a profound imaginative reordering of reality."

Although Picasso and Braque invented the new pictorial language of Cubism, with its flattened forms and multiple perspectives, artists such as Juan Gris and Fernand Léger soon made significant contributions of their own, especially to the development of what has come to be known as 'Synthetic' Cubism. One of the highlights of the exhibition will be a partial re-creation of the 1912 Salon d'Automne, where paintings by Gris, Albert Gleizes, and Metzinger were densely hung and interspersed with sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani, Jacques Lipchitz, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

artwork: Three Musicians, 1921 Pablo Ruiz y Picasso Oil on canvas 80 1/2 x 74 1/8 inches A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1952 Philadelphia Museum of ArtA section of the exhibition titled "Americans in Paris" deals with the numerous expatriates—among them the painters Max Weber, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Beecher Carles—who made their home in Paris and sought inspiration in the atmosphere of artistic and intellectual ferment that flourished in the years between the two World Wars. The installation also includes a selection of photographic portraits of the poets, writers, musicians, and performers who were a part of this eclectic circle, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Josephine Baker.

The exhibition further chronicles Cubism's persistence and adaptations during the war years, and Picasso's return to figuration in his neo-classical works of the early 1920s, a direction echoed more broadly in the work of many artists at this time that moved toward more traditional subject matter and techniques. Picasso's experiments in Cubism were also an essential precursor to the development of Surrealism and the work of artists such as Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí who came to prominence in the 1920s. Picasso maintained a complex relationship with this hugely influential movement, developing his own independent variant of Surrealism in paintings such as Bullfight (1934) and Head of a Woman (1937-38). The exhibition also considers the role of Eastern European artists who joined the thriving modern art scene in Paris, among them Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, and Constantin Brancusi.

The onset of civil war in his native Spain, and the approach of the World War II, laid the groundwork for the increasingly dark and political content of Picasso's later works. He remained in Paris for the duration of these conflicts and continued to be productive, despite the scarcity of art supplies. The works he created in the late 1930s and early 1940s are often somber in mood, as seen in the austere Chair with Gladiolas (1943) and in the melancholy still lives which feature human skulls in a macabre pun on the French term for still life, nature morte. His magnificent sculpture Man with a Lamb (1943-44) references the themes of sacrifice and redemption that were also explored by Jacques Lipchitz in works like The Prayer of 1943.

Through the dramatic shifts in style and technique that marked these tumultuous years, Picasso continued to be a galvanizing force and an inspiration to the artists around him. The exhibition demonstrates the tremendous variety and consistently high quality of his work during this period, and brings to life the extraordinary atmosphere of early 20th century Paris and the lasting significance of the art created at this time.  Visit The Philadelphia Museum of Art at : http://www.philamuseum.org/

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Posted: 13 May 2012 08:08 PM PDT


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