Sabtu, 26 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...


Are Facebook, YouTube, And Other Social Networking Sites Becoming The Censors Of Artistic Taste?

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:51 PM PDT

artwork: Stephen Cefalo - " Couple Awaiting A Storm " - Oil on canvas, inspired by artist Steven Assael, Cefalo's teacher.


AKN NEWS
- It is a debate that seems to have been running since the dawn of time and shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. When does art cease to be art and become pornography? According to Facebook and YouTube, the bar is set by them as extremely low, both recently removing images of nudes created by established artists. Facebook is finding itself under fire for removing images of artwork from the New York Academy of Art's official page.  At the same time, YouTube is facing criticism for removing video of a Spanish documentary about Juan Francisco Casas, a hyperrealist artist known for his portraits of young Europeans drawn with a 'BIC' pen (portraits which are highly valued in art markets and can fetch prices of over 10,000 dollars). In January, Facebook removed a nude by Steve Assael from the New York Academy's official Facebook page.

The Academy dared to question the removal, but perhaps could have been a little less inflammatory: "As an institution of higher learning with a long tradition of upholding the art world's 'traditional values and skills', we, the Graduate School of Figurative Art, find it difficult to allow Facebook to be the final arbiter – and online curator – of the artwork we share with the world. If Facebook is a new online Salon de Paris, where a faceless group of 'curators' determine what artwork the public should see, well then please consider our website the Salon de Refusés! If it begins with Steven Assael, a modern master, who's next?" Facebook promptly answered that question by removing works from the accounts of two more Academy alumni, Richard Scott and John Wellington.

Facebook have since apologized and re-instated the images. Facebook spokesman Simon Axten explained that the site bans nude photographs, but the company has "an unwritten policy" that allows drawings or sculptures of nudes. The company only reviews images following a complaint, and admits that sometimes they get things wrong.

In a similar move, on February 4th, YouTube deleted a documentary about the Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas from the channel belonging to the magazine "cafedada.tv". According to YouTube, the video was withdrawn because it violated company policy relating to nudity and sexual content.

artwork: Juan Francisco Casas -  "Trine After Hours", 2009 - Ball Point Pen on paper A video featuring Casas' work (including nudes) was removed by YouTube in February 2011

Juan Francisco Casas (Jaén, 1976) is a hyperrealist artist known for his portraits of young Europeans drawn with a BIC pen. These portraits are highly valued in art markets and can fetch prices of over 10,000 dollars. His work reflects a new carefree and hedonistic European generation that thrives organizing parties and exploring their sexuality. His style is classed by art critics as "domestic hedonism" and as a "reaction against boring modern nihilism".

So far, he has been awarded several important prizes including the painting ABC, and his work is represented in collections such as those in the Artium Museum, the ABC Museum, and the collection in Spain's Museum of Foreign Affairs. His work can currently be seen in the "Cover Girl" exhibition in the Parisian gallery, "Galerie des Galeries".

The video, censored by YouTube, is a documentary about his work made by the website "cafedada.tv". This Internet page publishes videos about new trends in Europe and its' slogan is "European things that rock!" The video about J.F. Casas had received more than 25,000 visits and at the time it was deleted it was receiving 2,000 visits a day.

Increasing pressure from governments for internet imagery to be censored along lines analogous to film censorship means that far from going away, this is a question that will become more prominent in future. On the evidence to date, neither Facebook nor YouTube have yet come up with workable solutions.

You can currently see the video on the website belonging to the magazine cafedada.tv at  : http://www.cafedada.tv

MoMA presents ~ Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:48 PM PDT

artwork: The extraordinary building of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The majestic CCTV building in Beijing.


NEW YORK CITY - Dreamland: Architectural Experiments since the 1970s is an exhibition of works drawn from the MoMA collection of Architecture and Design that explores the ways in which the singular landscape of New York has inspired architects since the 1970s with visions of utopia. The city has served as a model for architectural projections and reflections, and also as a metaphor for the complex relationship between the limitations of reality and the infinite possibilities of architectural thought. On display through October 27, 2008.

Library of Congress on iTunes U

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:46 PM PDT

artwork: Sara Deathridge, third grader - Sequoyah Elementary School, Knoxville, Tennessee. God Bless America ,  2001 - Courtesy of American Folklife Center

Washington, DC -  In an ongoing effort to make its digital educational, historical and cultural resources available to web users across a broad spectrum of platforms, the Library of Congress today launched "The Library of Congress on iTunes U." At its inception, the Library's iTunes U site includes historical videos from the Library's moving-image collections such as original Edison films and a series of 1904 films from the Westinghouse Works and original videos such as author presentations from the National Book Festival, the "Books and Beyond" series, lectures from the Kluge Center, and the "Journeys and Crossings "series of discussions with curators.

Aoife Collins solos at Location One

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:42 PM PDT

artwork: Aoife Collins - All fashions are charming, All fans are Charming (Baudelaire Celebrity Fan I), 2008 - Oil, ink, canvas, paper - 41 x 51 cm


New York City - Location One is pleased to present the first US solo show by Irish artist Aoife Collins. Featured in the main gallery, the exhibition Wet Eye charts eight months of new work realized in the studio by the artist during her residency at Location One. The exhibition will remain open to the public through Saturday June 14th, 2008.

Scandinavia House in NYC Shows Early Modern Scandinavia Painting

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:38 PM PDT

artwork: Harald Sohlberg - "Flower Meadow in the North", 1905 - Oil on canvas - 96 x 111 cm. - The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway. On view at Scandinavia House, New York in "Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America 1912" from October 25th until February 11th, 2012.

New York City.- Scandinavia House is proud to present "Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America 1912", an international loan exhibition of paintings by Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Anders Zorn, and other Scandinavian pioneers of modernism, opened October 25th at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America. The exhibition, which remains on view through February 11th, 2012, brings together approximately 50 works by leading late 19th- and early 20th-century Nordic artists from more than 20 public and private collections in Europe and America. The last of three exhibitions presented by The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) in recognition of its centennial, Luminous Modernism revisits the landmark ASF sponsored exhibition of 1912 — a groundbreaking display of contemporary Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painting that gave many in the USA, including emerging modern artists, their first introduction to Scandinavian art.  While "Luminous Modernism" features 20 of the same artists and eight of the same works presented in the 1912 exhibition, it has been expanded in scope to encompass all five Nordic countries, including Finland and Iceland, illustrating the richness of artistic expression throughout the region during this period.


Colgate's Picker Art Gallery Exhibitions ~ Treasures from the Permanent Collection

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:34 PM PDT

artwork: Maurice Prendergast (American, 1859-1924) - Seaside, Maine, ca.1910/13 - Picker Art Gallery, gift of Mrs. Charles Prendergast

HAMILTON, NY.- The Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University features two new exhibitions for the summer and fall seasons, both highlighting special selections from the permanent collection: A Painters' World: Twentieth Century Paintings and I See You: Drawings of Figures and Faces. The exhibitions will both be on view until November 16.

Getty Center Exhibition Explores the Birth of the L.A. Art Scene 1950 1970

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:32 PM PDT

artwork: Betye Saar - "The Phrenologer's Window", 1966 - Assemblage of two panel wood frame with print and collage - 47 x 74.6 x 3.8 cm. - Private Collection; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, NY - © Betye Saar. - On view at the Getty Center from October 1st until February 5th 2012.

Los Angeles, CA - A new exhibition at the Getty Center explores the birth of the L.A. art scene with a historic survey of painting and sculpture from the 1950s and 1960s'. "Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950 - 1970" brings together 76 works by more than 40 artists produced in Southern California during this crucial period. The exhibition opens on October 1st and will remain on view through February 5th 2012, after which it will move to Berlin, where it can be seen at the Martin-Gropius-Bau from March 15th through June 10th 2012. In recent decades, Los Angeles has shed its stereotype as the land of sunshine, palm trees, and movie stars to become an artistic powerhouse and an increasingly important international creative capital. This fundamental shift in the cultural landscape of the city dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, a period of critical importance in art history that has never before been fully studied and presented
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Monk Photographs of Sheila Rock

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:26 PM PDT

artwork: Sheila Rock - Sons of the Buddha - Silver gelatin print, 1999 - Courtesy Sheila Rock & June Bateman Fine Art, NYC


Storrs, CT - Sheila Rock's Sera: The Way of the Tibetan Monk is a photographic document of the daily life of the Tibetan monks of the Sera Monastery in southern India's Mysore District and a visual essay on a state of mind. On exhibition 26 August through 19 December, 2008.
 

The Helsinki City Art Museum Shows Major Exhibition of Works by Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:21 PM PDT

artwork: Akseli Gallen-Kallela - "Symposion", 1894 - Oil on canvas - Private collection. On view at the Helsinki City Art Museum (Tennis Palace) in "Akseli Gallen-Kallela: European Master" until January 15th 2012.

Helsinki.- The Helsinki City Art Museum is pleased to present "Akseli Gallen-Kallela: European Master" on view from September 23rd through January 15th 2012. Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) produced works of infinite sensitivity and excitement of expression. The exhibition includes both small-scale works and monumental pieces. The works are mainly taken from the years between 1884 and 1910, which can be regarded as Gallen-Kallela's creative peak. During that time, Gallen-Kallela was known as an artist whose distinctive Scandinavian style and linguistic form stood out from the crowd of European impressionists and post-impressionists. In Finland, he was considered to be the nation's leading artist and a pioneer in the field of visual arts. "Akseli Gallen-Kallela" is a joint exhibition organised by the Helsinki City Art Museum, Musée d'Orsay, Paris and the Düsseldorf Kust Museum and is the largest survey of Gallen-Kallela's work to be exhibited in France or Germany.


Gallen-Kallela was born Axel Waldemar Gallén in Pori, Finland in a Swedish-speaking family. His father Peter Gallén worked as police chief and lawyer. At the age of 11 he was sent to Helsinki to study at a grammar school, because his father opposed his ambition to become a painter. After his father's death in 1879, Gallen-Kallela attended drawing classes at the Finnish Art Society (1881-4) and studied privately under Adolf von Becker. In 1884 he moved to Paris, to study at the Académie Julian. In Paris he became friends with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt, the Norwegian painter Adam Dörnberger, and the Swedish writer August Strindberg. He married Mary Slöör in 1890. The couple had three children, Impi Marjatta, Kirsti and Jorma. On their honeymoon to East Karelia, Gallen-Kallela started collecting material for his depictions of the Kalevala. This period is characterized by romantic paintings of the Kalevala, like the Aino triptych, and by several landscape paintings. In December 1894, Gallen-Kallela moved to Berlin to oversee the joint exhibition of his works with the works of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Here he became acquainted with the Symbolists. In March 1895, he received a telegram that his daughter Impi Marjatta had died from diphtheria. This would prove to be a turning point in his work.

artwork: Akseli Gallen-Kallela - "Rustic Life", 1867 - Oil on canvas - 94 x 90 cm. - Private collection. On view at the Helsinki City Art Museum in "Akseli Gallen-Kallela" until January 15th 2012.


While his works had previously been romantic, after his daughter's death Gallen-Kallela painted more aggressive works like the 'Defense of the Sampo', 'Joukahainen's Revenge', and 'Lemminkäinen's Mother'. On his return from Germany, Gallen studied print-making and visited London to deepen his knowledge, and in 1898 studied fresco-painting in Italy. For the Paris World Fair in 1900, Gallen-Kallela painted frescoes for the Finnish Pavilion. In these frescoes, his political ideas became most apparent. One of the vipers in the fresco 'Ilmarinen Plowing the Field of Vipers' is wearing the Romanov crown, and the process of removing the vipers from the field was a clear reference to his wish for an independent Finland. The Paris Exposition secured Gallen-Kallela's stature as the leading Finnish artist. In 1901 he was commissioned to paint the fresco, 'Kullervo Goes to War', for the concert hall of the Helsinki Student's Union. Between 1901 and 1903 he painted the frescoes for the Jusélius Mausoleum in Pori, memorializing the 11-year-old daughter of the industrialist F.A. Jusélius. (The frescoes were soon damaged by damp, and were completely destroyed by fire in December 1931. Jusélius assigned the artist's son Jorma to repaint them from the original sketches. The reconstruction was completed just before Jorma's death in 1939.).

Gallen-Kallela officially finnicized his name to the more Finnish-sounding Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907. In 1909, Gallen-Kallela moved to Nairobi in Kenya with his family, and there he painted over 150 expressionist oil-paintings and bought many east African artefacts. But he returned to Finland after a couple of years, because he realized Finland was his main inspiration. Between 1911 and 1913 he designed and built a studio and house at Tarvaspää, about 10 km north of the centre of Helsinki. In 1918, Gallen-Kallela and his son Jorma took part in the fighting at the front of the Finnish Civil War. When the regent, General Mannerheim, later heard about this, he invited Gallen-Kallela to design the flags, official decorations and uniforms for the newly independent Finland. In 1919 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Mannerheim. From December 1923 to May 1926, Gallen-Kallela lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities and where he visited the Taos art-colony in New Mexico to study indigenous American art. In 1925 he began the illustrations for his "Great Kalevala". This was still unfinished when he died of pneumonia in Stockholm on 7 March 1931, while returning from a lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark. His studio and house at Tarvaspää was opened as the Gallen-Kallela Museum in 1961; it houses some of his works and research facilities on Gallen-Kallela himself.

artwork: Akseli Gallen-Kallela - "Lovers", 1906-1917 - Oil on canvas - Private Collection. On view at the Helsinki City Art Museum in "Akseli Gallen-Kallela"until Jan. 15th 2012.

The Helsinki City Art Museum is an art institution with a vast area of activity and huge premises. The museum comprising two separate venues - the Tennis Palace Art Museum and the Meilahti Art Museum - which, between them host 10-15 themed temporary exhibitions every year, covering both classic and contemporary art and featuring various inter-genre projects. The museum also manages and finances the Kluuvi Gallery, an art venue focusing on exhibitions of experimental and non-commercial works by Finnish artists, opening its door to projects hard to bring to life elsewhere in Helsinki. The collection of the Helsinki City Art Museum includes all works of art purchased by the city since the 19th century, totalling some 7,500 artworks. The largest part of the collection consists of private donations, including great artwork by the renowned Finnish artists Hugo Simberg, Pekka Halonen and Eero Järnefelt. The Art Museum's building in Meilahti was originally built in 1976 to house the Bäcksbacka donation, which includes numerous treasures of Finnish art such as Ellen Thesleff's Thyra Elisabeth (1892) and Tyko Sallinen's Mirri (1910). The works of art donated by Professor Gösta Becker are another important contribution to the Art Museum's collections. Smaller donations include the outstanding collections of Elsa Arokallio, Aune and Elias Laaksonen, Aune Lindeberg, Iris Roos-Hasselblatt and Martta and Reino Sysi. Roos-Hasselblatt's donation of seven works includes one of the best portraits ever made by a Finnish artist, namely Magnus Enckell's 'Tyra Hasselblatt' (1910).  More recent donations include the Contemporary Art collection of former Chief Curator Katriina Salmela-Hasan and her husband David Hasan. It comprises works by the biggest Finnish names of the 1980s and 1990s, including Leena Luostarinen, Chris af Enehielm and Outi Heiskanen. Today, the Art Museum is concentrating on building up its collection of Finnish Contemporary Art. Visit the museum's website at ... http://taidemuseo.fi

Royal Academy of Arts Collection Displays Major Works Given by Early Members

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:17 PM PDT

artwork: W.P. Frith, RA - Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 - Oil on canvas, 1883 - (Collection: Pope Family Trust) Copyright Christies Image Limited
LONDON - History painting was regarded as the pinnacle of High Art and strongly promoted by Sir Joshua Reynolds above other genres such as portraiture, landscape and still life. This new display includes major works given by early Members of the Royal Academy of Arts to the Collection including biblical subjects by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley and John Francis Rigaud, as well as Henry Fuseli's fantastical Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent. On exhibition through 29 November, 2009.

UCCA presents 'Nature & Innocents' starring Artist Yan Pei-Ming

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:07 PM PDT

artwork: Yan Pei-Ming - Double Emperor (Mao, Puyi) , 2007 - Watercolor on paper Diptych Each work: 154 x 278 cm. - Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery, NY

Beijing, China - UCCA will present Nature & Innocents, an exhibition by painter Yan Pei-Ming, from June 18 to September 13, 2009. Nature & Innocents will stand as a surprising exhibition and for the first time in Yan Pei-Ming's career, he will produce a show without canvases. Huge landscapes directly painted onto UCCA big hall's walls, will frame a series of painted flags, representing portraits of 200 new born Chinese children. Imagined as an experimental walk through, the exhibition powerfully conveys Yan Pei Ming's intentions and gives the audience an opportunity to discover the victims, memories and a vision of united nations in a landscape of crisis.

William Benton Museum of Art features Rome, Italy and Europe

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:03 PM PDT

artwork: Jan Weenix - Dutch (1642–1719), Italianate Landscape with Sleeping Youth and Sculpture, ca. 1660/65  Oil on canvas -  Museum Purchase for the Louise Crombie Beach Memorial Collection 

Storrs, CT - Between 1550 and 1650, Italian artists and the city of Rome were at the center of the European art world and, despite the rise of Paris and London in the eighteenth century, Rome remained the most important cultural center until about 1800. Rome was, above all, the source of the western European classical tradition, visibly manifested by the Roman architectural and sculptural monuments dominating the city. And there was the Italian landscape, especially the Roman Campagna, the lands stretching south and east of the city.  On exhibition through 11 May, 2008.
 

The Montclair Art Museum Exhibits "The Spectacular of Vernacular"

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:57 PM PDT

artwork: Lari Pittman - "A Decorated Chronology of Insistence and Resignation #30", 1994 - Acrylic, enamel, glitter on 2 wood panels - 83" x 160" Private Collection. -  On view at the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey in "The Spectacular of Vernacular" until January 1st 2012.

Montclair, New Jersey.- The Montclair Art Museum is proud to present "The Spectacular of Vernacular", on view from October 7th through January 1st 2012. The exhibition focuses on the role of vernacular forms in the work of 25 contemporary artists who utilize craft, folklore, and roadside kitsch to explore culturally specific iconography in the context of an increasingly global world of art. The exhibition will look closely at this particular brand of culture known as the vernacular, a term used to describe amateur or regional forms of expression that tend to be more homegrown than high-end. From dime-store plaques and snapshot photography to the objects attending folk rituals, these items often possess a warm familiarity. Yet for the artists who take them on as subjects, these humble forms can become nuanced and loaded symbols, offering clues about who we are and where we live.


Inspired by artist Mike Kelley's observation that "the mass art of today is the folk art of tomorrow," the exhibition examines the role of vernacular forms in more than two dozen works that run the aesthetic gamut: the hand-crafted work of Aaron Spangler juxtaposes with Lari Pittman's carnivalesque day-glo paintings; Marc Swanson's glittering trophy heads with Rachel Harrison's urban relics. Also on view are photographs from Walker Evans, William Eggleston, and Shannon Ebner, who revel in the signage and other elements of roadside culture. Focusing on pieces made since the 1970s, the exhibition shows how the vernacular, in its very ubiquity—its integration into home life, social rituals, and sense of place—is an ongoing fascination for artists. With artworks that draw from such diverse sources as billboards and handmade domestic items, it's suggestive of a long, meandering road trip through the emblems and eyesores of everyday culture, replete with tourist destinations and outmoded hotels. Every locale has its own singular brand of vernacular—discernible in the ways people dress, decorate their homes (especially around the holidays), and self-identify with behaviors seen as typical of the area.

artwork: William Eggleston - "Untitled (Steak Billiard) Memphis, TN", 1973 - Dye transfer print - 16" x 20" Courtesy of Cheim & Reid, NY. © Eggleston Artistic Trust. On view at the Montclair Art Museum.

A number of artists here consider those aspects of local culture, probing the markers of place and region. Some hint at the sprawl of the Western strip, filled with commercial billboards, signs, and shopping malls. Several come from the Midwest and respond to its conditions in their work—its landscape, structures, and weather; others look to the South for inspiration, while still others examine the Northeast's industrial landscape. The culture of today provides a vast source material of readily accessible and massproduced goods, which is in direct contrast with the tangible, locatable reality addressed by the artists in The Spectacular of Vernacular. In a world that is increasingly networked, with influences flowing in from an endless stream of sites and sources, the issue of what remains particularized, even regionalized, is an open question—and one among many that artists engaging the vernacular seek to address.

artwork: Kerry James Marshall - "Gulf Stream", 2003 - Acrylic and glitter on canvas - 274.3 x 396.2 cm. Collection of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. - On view at the Montclair Art Museum, NJ

The Montclair Art Museum was one of the country's first museums primarily engaged in collecting American art (including the work of contemporary, nonacademic artists) and among the first dedicated to the study and creation of a significant ethnographic art collection. This pioneering spirit still reverberates in the Museum's pursuit and presentation of high-quality art that characterizes and celebrates America's diversity. The collection has grown to over 12,000 works. The American collection, which began with a gift of 30 paintings from William T. Evans, a Montclair civic leader, comprises paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and sculpture dating from the 18th century to the present, and features excellent works by Benjamin West, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as younger and emerging artists such as Louise Lawler, Chakaia Booker, Whitfield Lovell, and Willie Cole. The Museum's superb holdings of traditional and contemporary American Indian art and artifacts represent the cultural achievements in weaving, pottery, wood carving, jewelry, and textiles of indigenous Americans from seven major regions—Northwest Coast, California, Southwest, Plains, Woodlands, Southeast, and the Arctic. The collection was begun by Annie Valentine Rand and carried on by her philanthropic daughter Florence Rand Lang, one of the Museum's founders, and continues to grow with commissioned works, gifts, and purchases that celebrate the vitality and modernity of traditional forms and beliefs. Among the contemporary American Indian artists represented are Tony Abeyta, Dan Namingha, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Allan Houser, Bentley Spang, and Marie Watt. The Museum's extensive education programs serve a wide public and, often in collaboration with cultural and community partners, bring artists, performers, and scholars to the Museum on a regular basis. MAM's Yard School of Art is the leading regional art school, offering a multitude of comprehensive classes for kids, teens, adults, seniors, and professional artists. One of the first museums to be accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Montclair Art Museum welcomes more than 65,000 visitors annually to its acclaimed exhibitions and programs. The expansion and progress of the Museum has been made possible by the participation, generosity, and farsightedness of its founders, trustees, members, and friends. Their support has helped to make the Montclair Art Museum the vital institution it is today. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.montclairartmuseum.org

Translife: International Triennial of New Media Art at the National Art Museum of China

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:48 PM PDT

artwork: 'Artificial Moon' an installation by Chinese artist Wang Yuyang consisting of 10,000 energy-saving light bulbs, part of 'Translife' the International Triennial of New Media Art at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, China. The show is curated by the museum's director Fan Di'an who has built a reputation for the venue as a place for cutting edge exhibitions often with a strong international element, breaking from the decades old tradition of dull propaganda based domestic art.
BEIJING.- Following the groundbreaking international new media art exhibition Synthetic Times, a 2008 Beijing Olympics Cultural Project, the National Art Museum of China presents TransLife, the next installment of the Media Art China series, now instituted as a triennial, in Beijing. Amidst the global challenges of climate and ecological crises that threaten the very existence of humanity, the exhibition TransLife reflects on the whereabouts of humankind in relationship to nature through an unique perspective and philosophical speculation, calling for citizen participation in facing these imminent challenges with artistic imagination to advocate a new world view of nature and a retooled humanist proposition.

FENIMORE ART MUSEUM SHOWS IROQUOIS ARTISTS

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:36 PM PDT

artwork: Peter Jones Untitled 

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The Fenimore Art Museum will open Being Indian: The 6th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial, an exhibition featuring the works of Native American artists Peter B. Jones and George Longfish, on September 22. The exhibition showcases Iroquois pottery and vivid mixed-media paintings representing Native identity and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) experience. The exhibition was developed in collaboration with guest curator G. Peter Jemison, a contemporary Native American (Seneca) artist and leading authority on the history of the Haudenosaunee. The exhibition will be on view through December 30, 2007.

Smithsonian showcases replica of the Prehistoric Monster Snake ~ Titanoboa

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:16 PM PDT

artwork: The National Museum of Natural History is welcoming Titanoboa, a 48-foot snake that weighed 2,500 pounds and is the largest snake ever discovered. But don't worry ~ it's just a replica based on fossil discoveries. Titanoboa was the world's largest predator and large enough to eat a cow or a human easily. It fed on large turtles and crocs. Image is a promotion for the exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. -  AP Photo / Bebeto Matthews.

WASHINGTON, DC - A prehistoric monster snake the length of a school bus that likely fed on supersize turtles and crocodiles has made its way to the Smithsonian Institution for an exhibit opening Friday. The National Museum of Natural History is featuring a life-size replica of Titanoboa (ty-tan-uh-BOH'-ah) along with a cast of its large vertebra through January 2013. When it was alive, the snake averaged 48 feet long. Fossils from the world's largest snake were first discovered in 2004 in a coal mine in Colombia that once was a rainforest. Eventually bones from at least 60 of the monster snakes were uncovered.

'Manet ~ The Man Who Invented Modern Art' at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:38 PM PDT

artwork:  Édouard Manet - "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère", 1882 - Oil on canvas - 96 x 130 cm. - Collection of Courtauld Institute Galleries, London. On view at the Musee D'Orsay as part of the 'Manet: Inventor of the Modern" from April 5th to July 3rd 2011.

Paris.- The Musee d'Orsay presents "Manet, The man Who Invented Modern Art" from 5th April 2011 - 3rd July 2011. More than a one man retrospective for Edouard Manet (1832-1883), the exhibition explores and highlights the historical situation around him, including the reaffirmed legacy of Romanticism, the impact of his contemporaries and the changes in the media at the time. The exhibtion includes a reconstruction of his exhibition at the Gallery La Vie moderne, organised in March-April 1880 at the start of the Salon, and raises the question finally of what "the freedom to create" meant to him. As well as works from the Musee d'Orsay's own collection, the exhibtion features numerous loans from other museums and private collectors.


There has been no exhibition exclusively devoted to Édouard Manet in France since 1983, the date of the memorable retrospective produced by Françoise Cachin and Charles S. Moffett. In the ensuing twenty-five years, however, there has been much valuable research and fruitful reflection. A rejection of formalism and a return to history, personal as well as collective, characterise the best of this work, whether documenting Manet's life story or analysing his work, how it was exhibited and received. Our understanding of French painting from the period 1840 to 1880 has at the same time become more refined and freed from over-Manicheistic interpretations. From these two developments, in which the Musée d'Orsay continues to be involved, a new image of Manet and his generation has appeared. This exhibition aims to demonstrate this in a most clear and attractive way. More than just a strictly linear, monographic retrospective, it constructs its premise around some twelve questions, each one closely related to the historical process from which Manet cannot be separated.


Édouard Manet - "The Dead Toreador", 1864-1865 - Oil on canvas - 76 × 153.3 cm. From the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. On view at the Musee D'Orsay.



Simplifying his modernity to an iconographic register or bringing it down to a few stylistic elements, comes, as we know, from a reductive approach. Manet is modern primarily because he embraces, as much as Courbet yet differently, the changes in the media that marked his era, and the unregulated circulation of images; secondly because imperial France, the backdrop to his developing career, was modern. And finally because the manner in which he challenged the masters of the Louvre was modern, extending beyond his militant Hispanism. It is clear that the aesthetic he forged after 1860 demands a broader definition of realism than is normally ascribed to him.With this objective in mind, the exhibition aims to revisit the many links, visual, literary or political, between Manet's art and Romantic culture. It will focus on the teaching of Thomas Couture, Baudelaire's support and encouragement, the reform of religious art, erotic imagery and its unresolved issues, etc. But the originality of an artist as unpredictable as Manet cannot be reduced to the sum of the sources from which he distils his art.

Other sections of the exhibition try to throw light on the art of the fragment(ed), his relationship with women painters (Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès), his decision to remain outside the main Impressionist movement and his complicity with Mallarmé at his darkest. The final reminder of the exhibition at the Gallery de la Vie Moderne, the last one-man show, in 1880, of a painter obsessed by the Salon, raises the question of what "the freedom to create" meant to him. This means that "Manet, the Man who Invented Modernity" highlights later works that are less well known and, more importantly, little understood if regarded as simply a stage in the process towards "pure painting"


artwork: Édouard Manet - "On the Beach", 1873 - Oil on canvas - 59.5 x 73 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. - Photo © Musée d'Orsay/RMN.



The history of the Musee d'Orsay and its building is quite unusual. In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first "work of art" in the Musee d'Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914. The station is superb and looks like a Palais des beaux-arts..." wrote the painter Edouard Detaille in 1900. Eighty-six years later, his prophecy was fulfilled when the Musee d'Orsay opened in 1986. The transformation of the station into a museum was accomplished by ACT architecture group, made up of M. Bardon, M. Colboc and M. Philippon. Their project was chosen in 1979 out of six propositions, and would respect Laloux's architecture while nonetheless reinterpreting it according to its new function. The project highlighted the great hall, using it as the main artery of the visit, and transformed the magnificent glass awning into the museum's entrance. The museum has been organised on three levels: on the ground floor, galleries are distributed on either side of the central nave, which is overlooked by the terraces of the median level, these in turn opening up into additional exhibition galleries. The top floor is installed above the lobby, which covers the length of the Quai, and continues into the highest elevations of the former hotel, over the rue de la Légion d'Honneur (formerly rue de Bellechasse). The museum's specific exhibition spaces and different facilities are distributed throughout the three levels: the pavilion Amont, the glass walkway of the former station's western pinion, the museum restaurant (installed in the dining hall of the former hotel), the Café des Hauteurs, the bookshop and the auditorium. The museum has 57,400 square metres of floorspace of which almost 22,000 is used to exhibit art. Almost 3 million people visit the Musee d'Orsay every year. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.musee-orsay.fr

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:37 PM PDT


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 .

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This Week in Review in Art News

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