Kamis, 07 Juni 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 Kunstpalast features "El Greco and Modernism"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 11:13 PM PDT

artwork: El Greco and Jorge Manuel - "Immaculate Conception", 1607-1613 - Oil on canvas - 108 x 82 cm.Collection of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid. On view at the Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf in "El Greco and Modernism" until August 12th.

Dusseldorf, Germany - "El Greco and Modernism", on view at the Museum Kunstpalast through August 12th is the first major exhibition in Germany to focus on El Greco's paintings and pictorial world. Taking place one hundred years after the groundbreaking El Greco exhibition that toured Europe, "El Greco and Modernism" illustrates how the Old Master inspired and fascinated many artists of the early Modernist period. Born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in Crete in 1541, El greco moved to Italy, and later Madrid before settling in Toledo in Spain, where he remained until his death in 1614. His paintings had a profound impact on the work of many modern artists including Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Robert Delaunay. The exhibition unites over 100 works, including paintings, sculptures and drawings by around 38 artists from the early Modernist period and over 40 important works by El Greco, featuring portraits, landscapes and works on religious themes.


A Major highlight of the exhibition is El Greco's "The Immaculate Conception", loaned by the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. There are also works from the artists workshop. The exhibition also includes key materpieces such as El Greco's only surviving panel picture, "Laocoon", loaned by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In this striking and influential work, El Greco explored Greek mythology. Also on show will be "The Opening of the Fifth Seal", loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

artwork: Oskar Kokoschka - "Annunciation", 1911 - Oil on canvas - 83 x 122.5 cm. - Collection of the Museum Ostwall, Dortmund. On view at the Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf in "El Greco and Modernism" until August 12th.

Visitors will have the rare opportunity to view "Laocoon" together with Ludwig Meidner's "Three Wailing Figures in the Apocalyptic Landscape" as part of his "Apocalyptic Landscapes" as well as "The Descent From the Cross" by Max Beckmann, from MoMA New York, and El Greco's "El Espolio" from the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. "El Greco and Modernism" brings together works from the world's leading museums such as MoMA, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Museo del Greco, Toledo, the National Gallery, London, The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Alte Pinakothek, Munich and the Musee du Louvre, Paris.

El Greco's ouvre was discovered by the German public circa 1910, following the publication of Julius Meier-Graefe's diary, "The Spanish Journey". The art historian had encountered El Greco's painting in Spain in 1908. His diary describes the strong impression El Greco's art made on him. Even though the notion of "El Greco and Modernism" has been a recurring topic for over 100 years, an exhibition on the subject had remained a dream until the Museum Kunstpalast organised this show. It is particularly timely that the exhibition goes on show in Dusseldorf this year, exactly 100 years ago, a selection of 10 paintings by El Greco went on show in the city, having been shown in Munich the previous year. The paintings were shown within an exhibition of the Hungarian private collector Marcell Nemes, hosted by the Stadtische Kunsthalle Dusseldorf. in the same year, a small number of El Greco's pictures were presented in the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, jointly with works by Picasso and van Gogh. Thus, for many artists of the Rhineland, ther summer of 1912 provided the very first direct encounter with El Greco's works. The touring exhibition of 1912 had a profound impact on a new generation of artists. Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer and Ludwig Meidner were all influenced by the works. Key representatives of the Blaue Reiter movement, such as August Macke, Franz Marc and Albert Bloch recognised the Old Master as one of the father figures of Modernism and mentioned his name in the same vein as Cezanne. the complex psychological possibilities offered in El Greco's paintings made him become a key figure for avant-garde artists. In particular, the artist's late works, with their exaggerated figures, distorted pictorial spaces, dream-like landscapes, Mannerist aesthetic and striking use of colour, attracted a great deal of attention.

artwork: Max Beckmann - "The Descent from the Cross", 1917 - Oil on canvas - 59 1/2" x 50 3/4" Colleciton of MoMA, NY. - On view at the Museum Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf in "El Greco and Modernism" until August 12th.

The Museum Kunst Palast was founded as Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, a typical communal arts collection in Germany. The first exhibits were given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici and some rich citizens of Düsseldorf. The number of exhibits was expanded in the 19th century by the collection of Lambert Krahe, formerly a collection for educational reasons of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The Düsseldorfer Gallerieverein, founded in 19th century, collected many drawings of the Düsseldorfer Malerschule, later given to that collection. The museum for advanced arts, whose opening was in 1883, merged with that museum later. The Kunstmuseum in its actual form opened in 1913, it became a foundation (in private-public partnership) called: "Stiftung museum kunst palast" in 2000. The Ehrenhof was built in 1925 for the exhibition "Gesundheit, soziale Fürsorge, Leibesübungen" (short „GESOLEI", germ.: "health, social care and sports"). Construction plans of the building are made by the architect Wilhelm Kreis. The Communal Arts Collection and the Hetjens-Museum for ceramics moved into the Ehrenhof building in 1928. There is also the NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft (forum for culture and economy of North Rhine-Westphalia) in the same building complex. The Museum Kunst Palast includes objects of fine arts from Classical antiquity to the present, including drawings, sculptures, a collection of more than 70,000 graphic exhibits and photographs, applied arts and design and one of Europe's largests glass collections. The graphic collection includes 14,000 Italian baroque graphics. The collection presents several works from Europe, Japan, Persia/Iran, beginning with the 3rd century BC. The art collection also include works from periods such as Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, the time of Goethe, the 19th century, the 20th century including a large collection of ZERO works, and the present. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.smkp.de

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston shows Masterworks from Malba ~ Fundación Costantini

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 09:53 PM PDT

artwork: Xul Solar  -  "Troncos (Trunks)",  1919  -  Watercolor on paper  -  Collection of Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires. On view at MFA, Houston in "Modern and Contemporary Masterworks from Malba - Fundación Costantini" until Aug. 5th.

Houston, Texas.- The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), is hosting an exclusive loan exhibition from one of Latin America's most important arts and cultural institutions: el Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires), known as "Malba." The exhibition, on view through August 5th, features 39 masterworks by some of the region's best-known artists, including Tarsila do Amaral, Frida Kahlo, Wifredo Lam and Diego Rivera, as well as landmark figures new to U.S. audiences. "Modern and Contemporary Masterworks from Malba - Fundación Costantini" is part of an ongoing artistic exchange between the MFAH and Malba, a partnership formed in 2005. Founded by collector Eduardo F. Costantini in 2001, Malba is the only museum in South America dedicated to collecting and exhibiting Latin American art from 1900 to the present. The exhibition, featurea artists well known in South America's Southern Cone but new to many North American audiences. Rafael Barradas, Antonio Berni, Alfredo Guttero, Emilio Pettoruti and Jorge de la Vega are among the artists included. The exhibition will be accompanied by a lecture program and a major catalogue featuring an interview with Costantini by Ramírez; text by Marcelo Pacheco, Chief Curator of Malba; scholarly analyses by Pacheco, Edward Sullivan, Patricia Artundo, Llilian Llanes and others of each of the works featured in the exhibition. 


A major highlight of the exhibition is a 1928 painting central to Brazilian national identity: Tarsila do Amaral's Abaporu. Amaral was a leading Latin American Modernist painter who lived and worked in Paris and São Paulo. In the late 1920s, her painting Abaporu became the emblem of the Anthropofagia (Cannibalism) movement in Brazil. Both Amaral and poet Oswald de Andrade used cannibalism as a metaphor to describe the Brazilian ability to digest and transform European culture. Abaporu features a large, stylized seated figure, cactus and bright sun—elements through which Amaral seamlessly combines Brazilian subject matter with her avant-garde influences. The work inspired a generation of artists to create a uniquely Brazilian art, one rooted in the belief that Brazilian identity can be at once indigenous and cosmopolitan. This painting has long been viewed as a national treasure, and in 2011 Malba loaned the work to Brazil so that the painting could be present during a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. 

artwork: Miguel Covarrubias - "George Gershwin, An American in Paris", 1929 - Oil on canvas - Collection of Malba - Fundación Costantini © Maria Elena Rico Covarrubias.  -  At MFA, Houston in "Modern and Contemporary Masterworks from Malba until Aug. 5th.

An early Cubist work by Diego Rivera, widely considered among the greatest painters of the 20th century, is another exhibition highlight. While living in Europe from 1913 to 1918, Rivera produced nearly 200 works of Cubism before returning to Mexico in 1921 and becoming a muralist—the work for which he is best known. The well-recognized face of Frida Kahlo also makes an appearance. Kahlo's Autorretrato con chango y loro (Self-portrait with Monkey and Parrot) (1942) is a classic late work, showing the artist surrounded by two of her favorite pets. Wifredo Lam, the Cuban artist who established himself in Paris and befriended Pablo Picasso, became renowned for avant-garde depictions of Afro-Cuban culture. Two works by Lam—an untitled painting from Costantini's personal collection as well as La mañana verde (The Green Morning) (1943)—will be on view in the exhibition. Several works by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, the founder of Constructive Universalism, will be on display, including his extraordinary Composition symétrique universelle en blanc et noir (Universal Symmetrical Composition in White and Black) (1931), one of the strongest and rare surviving examples of two key years in his production: 1931 and 1932, when the artist arrived at the core of his Constructive Universalist idiom. Two works by Torres-García's friend and fellow Uruguayan, artist Rafael Barradas, will also be on view. Barradas created several art movements while living in Spain, most notably Vibracionismo (Vibrationism), aimed at capturing the color and dynamism of urban life. The two Barradas works in the exhibition are prized examples of this genre. Argentine painter and sculptor Xul Solar, who was the subject of a Malba retrospective that traveled to the MFAH in 2006, is represented in this exhibition by Troncos (1919), a watercolor that brings together Xul Solar's interest in world mythology and esoteric philosophy. A range of examples from the prolific career of Antonio Berni, the central figure of 20th-century Argentinean art, will be presented, including Manifestación (1934), a portable mural depicting a public demonstration. Also on view will be Berni's 1962 La gran tentación or La gran ilusión (The Great Temptation or The Great Illusion), a Pop commentary on the allure of consumer culture, made from an assemblage of feathers, tin and other found materials. One of Berni's three-dimensional allegorical monstruos (monsters) will be featured as well. Many of the artists in the exhibition, though well recognized in South America, are less known to U.S. audiences. Emilio Pettoruti is considered the most important Argentine artist of the 1920s. A participant in the Futurist movement while living in Italy, Pettoruti sought to bring Modernism to Argentina. Together with artist Xul Solar and writer Jorge Luis Borges, Pettoruti became involved in the avant-garde journal Martín Fierro in Buenos Aires. Two charcoal drawings on canvas, which relate to his Futurist period, resurfaced only recently, and these extremely rare works will be included in the exhibition. Monumental scenes of workers' lives by Cândido Portinari, one of the most important Brazilian artists working in the 1930s in the Social Realist style, will be on view, as will the work of Argentine artist Alfredo Guttero, who is virtually unknown in the United States but is renowned for the unique textures he achieved in his work. Guttero created a technique he called "fired gesso" to give his canvases the appearance of fresco. The resulting paintings are exquisite but extremely fragile and are rarely allowed to travel. Fortunately, Malba's conservators have declared Guttero's Anunciación (Annunciation) (1931) stable enough to send to Houston.

artwork: Cândido Portinari - "Festa de São João (Festival of St. John)", 1936-1939 - Oil on canvas Collection of Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires - © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS) At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in "Modern and Contemporary Masterworks from Malba - Fundación Costantini" until August 5th.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is one of the largest museums in the United States.The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with more than 62,000 works from six continents. The museum benefits the Houston community through programs, publications and media presentations. Each year, 1.25 million people benefit from museum's programs, workshops and resource centers. Of that total, more than 500,000 people participate in the community outreach programs. The MFAH's permanent collection totals 63,718 pieces in 300,000 square feet (28,000 m2) of exhibition space, placing it among the larger art museums in the United States. The museum's collections and programs are housed in seven facilities.  Prior to the opening of the permanent museum building in 1924, George M. Dickson bequeathed to the collection its first important American and European oil paintings. In the 1930s, Houstonian Annette Finnigan began her donation of antiquities and Texas philanthropist Ima Hogg gave her collection of avant-garde European prints and drawings. Ima Hogg's gift was followed by the subsequent donations of her Southwest Native American and Frederic Remington collections during the 1940s.  Over the next two decades, gifts from prominent Houston families and foundations concentrated on European art from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, contemporary painting and sculpture, and African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art. Among these are the gifts of Life Trustees Sarah Campbell Blaffer, Dominique de Menil and Alice N. Hanzsen as well as that of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Augmented by museum purchases, the permanent collection numbered 12,000 objects by 1970. The MFAH collection nearly doubled from 1970 to 1989, fueled by continued donations of art along with the advent of both accession endowment funding and corporate giving. In 1974, John and Audrey Jones Beck placed on long-term loan fifty Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, augmenting the museum's already strong Impressionist collection. This collection would never leave the MFAH, formally entering its holdings in 1998 as a gift of Life Trustee Audrey Jones Beck. The collection is permanently displayed in the building that bears her name. On the heels of the Cullen Foundation's funding of the MFAH's first accessions endowment in 1970, the Brown Foundation, Inc., launched a challenge grant in 1976 that would stay in effect for twenty years raising funds for both accessions and operational costs in landmark amounts and providing incentive for additional community support. Also in 1976, the photography collection was established with Target Stores' first corporate grant to the museum. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mfah.org

The Columbus Museum of Art hosts "The Radical Camera of New York's Photo League From 1936 to 1951"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 09:40 PM PDT

artwork: Walter Rosenblum - "D-Day Rescue, Omaha Beach", 1944 - Gelatin silver print - Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio. © Estate of Walter Rosenblum. On view in "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936 – 1951" until September 9th.

Columbus, Ohio. Drawing on the depth of two great Photo League museum collections, the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) and The Jewish Museum in New York City collaborated on an exhibition of nearly 150 vintage photographs. "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936 – 1951", a formidable survey of the group's history, its artistic significance, and its cultural, social and political milieu, will be on view at CMA through September 9th. Catherine Evans, exhibition co-curator and the William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography at the Columbus Museum of Art, observed that "This museum partnership is an extraordinary opportunity to showcase two in-depth collections. Because the images continue to have relevance today, it is especially important that the exhibition will be seen in four U.S. cities, reaching as broad an audience as possible." The exhibition premiered at The Jewish Museum on November 4, 2011, to rave reviews. The New York Times called The Radical Camera a "stirring show," and the New York Photo Review hailed it as "nothing short of splendid." The New Yorker named the exhibition one of the top ten photography shows of 2011. Following its CMA presentation, The Radical Camera exhibition will travel to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (November 15, 2012 – February 24, 2013); and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (March 16 – June 16, 2013).


The Laguna Art Museum to show Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 08:33 PM PDT

artwork: Clarence Hinkle - "Laguna Beach", 1929 - Oil on canvas - 30" x 36" - Collection of the Laguna Art Museum. On view in "Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight" from June 10th until October 7th.ust 19th.

Laguna Beach, California.- This summer, Laguna Art Museum opens a retrospective on artist Clarence Hinkle (1880–1960) in "Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight", on display from June 10th through October 7th. A native Californian, Clarence Hinkle had a career as an artist and teacher that spanned several decades. Although associated with other American impressionists from California, Hinkle's modernist work from the 1920s sets him apart from other artists of his generation. During the 1920s and 30s, Hinkle lived in Laguna Beach where he was a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association. The association had a memorial exhibition for Hinkle in February 1963 with forty paintings, and Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight is the first major museum exhibition of Hinkle's work in nearly fifty years. The exhibition is curated by Laguna Art Museum's curator of collections Janet Blake, an expert on historic California art, and will be shown on the museum's main level. This exhibition will be accompied by a 144-page hardcover catalogue produced by Laguna Art Museum.


Born in Auburn in 1880, Hinkle began his studies at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, followed by classes at the California School of Design in Sacramento. He traveled east, studying at the Art Students League in New York and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he won the Cresson Traveling Scholarship. The scholarship afforded him the opportunity to study and work in Europe for six years. After returning to the United States in 1912, he lived in San Francisco before moving to Los Angeles in 1917, where he began teaching at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design. Four years later, he accepted a position at the newly founded Chouinard School of Art. During his years as a teacher, Hinkle lived in Laguna Beach, where he was a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association. Laguna Art Museum continues the tradition of the Laguna Beach Art Association, which was founded in 1918 by American artists who had discovered the town at the turn of the twentieth century and transformed it into a arts community. The association built a gallery on Cliff Drive in 1929, and that original gallery is part of today's Laguna Art Museum, the museum's largest gallery. The museum holds many works by Hinkle in its permanent collection. In the mid 1930s, Hinkle relocated to Santa Barbara and became an active member of the art community and a teacher at the Santa Barbara School of Art. His career as a teacher won him accolades from many in the next generation of artists, among them Phil Dike and Millard Sheets, both of whom studied at Chouinard. Hinkle's early works reflect the traditional approach of the impressionists, but he soon began exploring post-impressionist and modernist techniques, utilizing an expressive, gestural brushstroke and semiabstract forms. His subject matter included portraits, figural works, landscapes, and still lifes—all of which will be featured in the exhibition of more than seventy-five works.

artwork: Mabel Alvarez - "In the Garden", circa 1922 - Oil on canvas - 20" x 24" - Collection of Laguna Art Museum. On view in "Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight" from June 10th until October 7th.

Works by the Group of Eight will be featured in the concurrent exhibition Modern Spirit and the Group of Eight. During the 1920s, Hinkle was a member of the progressive Group of Eight, which included artists Mabel Alvarez, Henri de Kruif, John Hubbard Rich, Donna Schuster, E. Roscoe Shrader, and Edouard and Luvena Vysekal. Besides showcasing works by Clarence Hinkle, the exhibition will include a selection of works by these artists, who will be examined in depth as part of the progressive movement in Los Angeles in the 1920s. Modern Spirit and the Group of Eight is curated by art historian Susan M. Anderson. Early progressive groups like the Group of Eight constituted the initial phase of Modernism in Los Angeles. To the progressive artist, a painting, before representing anything, was perceived as a flat surface covered with expressive, ordered patches of color. The artists drew upon the lessons of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Neo-Impressionism, as well as the teachings of Robert Henri and The Eight in New York. In landscape painting, for example, the aim of the progressives was less the realistic description of California's bounty and more the expression of the artist's inner, emotional response to the land.

Laguna Art Museum is a museum of American art with a special focus on the art of California. Its purpose is to provide the public with exposure to art and to promote understanding of the role of art and artists in American culture through collection, conservation, exhibition, research, scholarship and education. Working within the tradition of the oldest cultural institution in Orange County, Laguna Art Museum documents regional art and places it in a national context. The Museum maintains its historic ties to the community and is responsive, accessible, and relevant to the area's diverse population. Founded in 1918 by a small group of painters who settled in Laguna Beach, the Laguna Beach Art Association developed an exhibition space in which to introduce the best current works being produced by artists in the area. This early emphasis on supporting artists in the region has been an integral part of Laguna Art Museum throughout its history. In 1920, the Laguna Beach Art Association was incorporated with artist Edgar Payne as president. The Association soon outgrew the old Town Hall, where its first exhibition was held, and after the completion of a successful fundraising drive, a gallery on the present site opened in 1929.

artwork: Clarence Hinkle  -  "In the Hammock",  1929  -  Oil on canvas  -  36" x 30" Payton Family Collection.  At the Laguna Art Museum in "Clarence Hinkle and the Group of Eight" from Jun. 10th until Oct. 7th.

In 1948, a gift from the estate of artist Frank Cuprien served as the catalyst for a fundraising campaign to enlarge the gallery space. The new addition opened in 1951 with an exhibition organized by Mrs. William Swift Daniell, a long-time leader in the arts. This selection of paintings by early Laguna Beach artists later became the Museum's Permanent Memorial Collection. The Museum's collection has since grown to include many exemplary works by California artists dating from the late nineteenth century to the present. By 1971, when the association had attained nonprofit museum status, it had a collection that reflected its artistic roots. The Museum has occupied the same site in Laguna Beach since 1929. An expansion in the mid-1980s increased exhibition and support space. In keeping with the Museum's goal of collecting and exhibiting American art with a particular focus on California art, the name was formally changed to Laguna Art Museum in 1986. In 1996, Laguna Art Museum merged with Newport Harbor Art Museum creating the Orange County Museum of Art. In April 1997 a new non-profit reestablished Laguna Art Museum as a separate entity from the Orange County Museum of Art. Today the majority of Laguna Art Museum's pre-merger collection has been returned to the Museum. The re-establishment of Laguna Art Museum has been very beneficial in unifying the support of the local community in unprecedented ways. Among the artists represented in the museum's permanent collection are; John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Franz Bischoff, Hans Burkhardt, John McLaughlin, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Raymond Pettibon, Ed Ruscha and many others. Visit the museum's website at ... http://lagunaartmuseum.org

The Morris Museum goes "On Vacation with Winslow Homer"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 08:03 PM PDT

artwork: Winslow Homer - "Snap the Whip" (Harper's Weekly magazine, September 20, 1873), 1873 - Wood engraving on paper - Private collection. At the Morris Museum, NJ in "On Vacation with Winslow Homer: Wood Engravings of an American Master" until October 7th.

Morristown, New Jersey.- This summer, visitors to the Morris Museum can enjoy the pleasures of the seashore and countryside, as seen through the eyes of American master Winslow Homer . The Morris Museum is pleased to announce the new exhibition, "On Vacation with Winslow Homer: Wood Engravings of an American Master", which will be on view from June 7th through October 7th. Focusing on the artist's early career as an illustrator, the exhibition features twenty-eight wood engravings. The selected works reflect the timeless appeal of Homer's love of country life at its simplest and his delight in depicting children and adults in a range of vacation activities such as bathing, hiking, fishing, clambakes, picnics, games, and 4th of July
fireworks. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) began his career as a graphic artist; and to a large extent he remained one his entire life.  One of the most revered American artists of all time, he was essentially self-taught. His vast body of work includes more than 250 published illustrations, the majority completed before the age of 35. The work he did in his early career as an illustrator captured an enormous range of subjects and was pivotal to his future development as a fine artist.

New Magritte Museum Houses the Largest Collection of René Magritte Art in the World

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:42 PM PDT

artwork: King Albert II & Queen Paola of Belgium observe the painting

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - On June 2 2009, the new Magritte Museum opens its doors to the public on the Place Royale in Brussels. The first museum of this scope devoted to one of the best known artists of the 20th century, presents for the first time the largest collection of Magritte works in the world. This new cultural and touristic attraction in Belgium has been completed thanks to an original partnership between the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Magritte Foundation, the Belgian Régie des Bâtiments, the Belgian Federal Science Policy Administration, and the GDF SUEZ Group, which completed the museum's installation thanks to a skill-based sponsorship unique in Belgium.

A prestigious setting for Magritte
artwork: René Magritte's Mona Lisa Courtesy of  Magritte Museum Site work was carried out in less than one year by GDF SUEZ teams working alongside Belgium's Régie des Bâtiments. Their contribution was symbolized by an immense canvas tarpaulin inspired by L'Empire des Lumières (Empire of Light) that covered the building during its restoration. The Hôtel Altenloh, a neo-classical edifice located on Place Royale, was thus transformed into a contemporary museum reference.

With their modern, pedagogical treatment of the museum experience, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Magritte Foundation are unveiling to the public, with over 26,000 sq. ft. and five exhibition levels, the world's largest collection of René Magritte works of art. Two hundred and fifty artworks and archive pieces are presented together for the first time. They are organized and presented in a manner linking them together by different levels of chronological and thematic interpretation.

With its attachment to the prestigious ensemble of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium, the Magritte Museum has the advantage of an exceptional location in the heart of Brussels, the painter's birthplace and the capital of Europe.

The largest collection of works by René Magritte in the world
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, with the support of the Magritte Foundation, has the most remarkable collection of the artist's work in the world. Representative of René Magritte's creative evolution, it is unequalled in its richness. There are numerous masterpieces, including Empire of Light (1954), The Return (1940), and Shéhérazade (1948), as well as a highly diverse range of techniques and media (paintings, drawings, gouaches, photographs, sculptures, sundry objects, cinema films, posters, advertisements, etc.), with the various periods of the artist's life fully covered.

Mona Lisa is one of the most important images in René Magritte's œuvre. It resumes three at once recognizable elements of his universe: the little bell, the sky and the curtain that are parts of his work since the middle of the1920s. At that time, facing a reality which seems for him more and more abstract, Magritte turns to surrealism. From then on the curtain appears as a new perspective of reality, a permanent spectacle that the painter tries to decrypt.

The works presented come mainly from the bequests of Irène Scutenaire-Hamoir, and of Georgette Magritte, and successive purchases made by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, enriched by private loans and donations.

artwork: René Magritte,The Lovers Courtesy of  Magritte Museum A new generation of single artist museums
"A contemporary thought on the theme of biography," according to Michel Draguet, Director of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium, the Musée Magritte Museum is multi-disciplinary, educational, and interactive. State-of-the-art technologies applied by GDF SUEZ are offered to the public to discover the work, thought, and life of Magritte, in careful observance of environment-friendly practices. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary work of René Magritte, the Musée Magritte Museum will also be a center for artistic and scientific exchange focusing on his work. Archives and unpublished documents are available and exhibitions-confrontations strengthen the evolutionary aspect of the path.

Like the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam or the Zentrum Paul Klee at Berne, the Magritte Museum is intended to become the leading international skill center for research, transmission and presentation of the life, thought and work of René Magritte.

René Magritte, a universal artist
Painter, illustrator, engraver, sculptor, photographer, film-maker, René Magritte (1898-1967) was one of the most eminent artists of the Surrealist movement. He is considered as the most important Belgian painter of the 20th century. Celebrated for his slyly subversive analysis of language and its conceptualization of image, René Magritte is "the man who transformed poetic images into plastic poems," according to Michel Draguet, Director of the Royal Fine Arts Museums of Belgium.

In his work, Magritte constantly covered his tracks so that the image retained its capacity to surprise, to transform obviousness into mystery. With his word-pictures, whose poetic charge remains indissociable from an anarchist inspiration, Magritte underscored the new status of the object. Through this revolutionary research, Magritte broadly anticipated contemporary artistic movements such as Pop Art or conceptual art. Visit : www.magrittemuseum.be/

ARCOmadrid Opens 30th Edition with Works of Art Between the Ordinary and Extraordinary

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:41 PM PDT

artwork: Alberto Pancorbo - "Sueno Blanco" - Oil on canvas, 50 x 62 cm.- Courtesy of Gomez Mulet Gallery, Miami, FL


MADRID.- ARCOmadrid opens its doors on February 16th to art world professionals from noon to 9 pm, who can now get their passes to the fair online in the Request for Professional Access section on our web. After two professional preview days, the fair opens to the general public on Friday 18th until Sunday 20th, from noon to 8 pm. The public can also get their tickets online. Anyone interested in knowing more about the upcoming fair can find what they are looking for in INFOARCO, also available on our web. INFOARCO contains details of how to get there, admission, galleries, the different sections, awards, prizes, etc. plus lots of useful information on Madrid and what's happening art-wise in the city during the fair. At the same time, this coming February 9th, ARCOmadrid is launching its application for iPhone and iPad, downloadable from iTunes. ARCO runs from 16 February 2011 until 20 February 2011. With a number of 197 galleries taking part this year, 2011 edition has a special focus on Russia.

Museum Morsbroich Shows Exhibition of "Slow Paintings" By 32 Artists

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:40 PM PDT

artwork: Tomma Abts - " Ert ", 2003 - Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 38 cm. - Sammlung Boros, Berlin

LEVERKUSEN, GERMANY - The exhibition "Slow Paintings" is devoted to the development of a highly involved form of painting as a continual strategy in the history of art, which emerged from the early 1960s onwards. With over 60 paintings and featuring no fewer than 32 artists, "Slow Paintings" provides a comprehensive overview of the different techniques and conceptual approaches that characterise this style of painting. The expanse of time invested by individual artists into the production of the paintings exerts its effect upon the visitor via the unique experience of sustained deceleration. On view 24 November through 7 February, 2010.

Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale opens Edward Steichen Fashion Photo Exhibit

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:39 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.

MoMA to Show Fassbinder's Visionary Science-Fiction Thriller

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:38 PM PDT

artwork: "World on a Wire", 1973. Germany. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Pictured: Barbara Valentin. Courtesy: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.

NEW YORK, NY.- 'World on a Wire' (1973), written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (German, 1945–1982) and based on the novel Simulacron-3 by American author Daniel F. Galouve, will have a weeklong run at MoMA, from April 14 through April 19, 2010. Originally made for German television in 1973, Fassbinder's revolutionary adaptation has only been shown in America once before, in 1997, as part of a comprehensive Fassbinder retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art.

"Split Second"~ Todd Siler’s Ninth Exhibition at the Feldman Gallery

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:37 PM PDT

artwork: Todd Sile -  Human Emotions Are the Messiest Matter in the Universe! - Courtsey Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

New York, NY - Split <-> Second, Todd Siler's ninth exhibition at the Feldman Gallery, includes paintings, sculptures, and drawings that take as their subject the processes of the brain
and its connection with the physical laws of nature.   An artist with a background in brain science, Siler transforms the gallery space into an observatory for contemplating what our eyes may not see but our intuitions can sense: life-changing events happen in less than a split-second. This rapidly changing reality makes countless critical decisions increasingly difficult especially as we respond to global challenges that impact our present-future. On view May 14 through June 18th.

Su-Mei Tse presents New Multi-Media Installation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:36 PM PDT

artwork: Luxembourg- and Berlin-based visual artist Su Mei Tse - Exhibition gallery view and detail. - Photo by Jean-Lou Majeru.

BOSTON, MA.- In 2007, Luxembourg- and Berlin-based visual artist Su Mei Tse lived at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, drawing inspiration from the museum's rich collection, its history, and the Dutch Room, where the empty frames remain as an ever-present reminder of loss and absence. This summer, the 2003 the Golden Lion award-winner returns to present a solo exhibition and new sound installation in Floating Memories, on view July 16th through October 18th, 2009. Programming during the run of exhibition includes artist and gallery talks, a book signing, and a musical performance featuring Su Mei Tse, contemporary visual artists Lee Mingwei and Cliff Evans, songwriter and performer Niko Hafkenscheid, gallery owner Peter Blum (Peter Blum Gallery, New York), curator Enrico Lunghi, Director of the Mudam Museum in Luxembourg, and Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art, Gardner Museum, will accompany the exhibition.

artwork: Su-Mei Tse The Desert Sweepers,  2003 / 5.30 min (loop)"In art, Su-Mei Tse searches for and achieves complete harmony," says Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Gardner Museum and curator of the exhibition. "It is a painstaking relentless process of discovery and balance and an incredible privilege as a curator to follow and learn to understand it." "Since Su Mei's [2007] residency at the Gardner, I have been following her work, and have delighted in the unique forms she creates to express her ideas," says Anne Hawley, the Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. "Su Mei's artistry is always filled with invention."

Su-Mei Tse first emerged on the international contemporary arts scene in 2003, winning critical acclaim and a Golden Lion award for Best National Participation at the 50th Venice Biennale for her first show, Air Conditioning, where she showed the work Echo for the first time. The daughter of a Chinese violinist and an English pianist, Su-Mei Tse's work as a visual artist is also informed by her background as a classically trained cellist. This part of her training has enabled her to take up music and sound, not as themes in her work, but as tools and languages to express her ideas. This is why her work often merges sound, images, and sculpture into a single poetic form. Her work also conveys a deep appreciation for craft and gesture. Tse's work has the pared-down aesthetic quality of minimalism with an emotional charge; her videos, sculpture, and sound installations in particular having been compared to haiku poetry for their elegant and spartan imagery. Tse moves frequently between different cultures in her work, occasionally diverting them and testing them against common clichés in order to pose the question: What might be a universal language?

artwork: Su-Mei Tse (with Jean-Lou Majerus) Bird Cage, 2007 neon with wood pedestal 95 x 50 x 50 cm. / Edition of 3In Floating Memories, Tse presents a new installation merging sound, sculpture, and a video projection while reflecting on the passing of time, distant memory, absence, and longing. The artist has embedded a gold monochrome rug in an empty wooden frame, carved with the partially worn and faded pattern of the 17th century Italian silk damask that originally covered the walls in the Dutch Room (a reproduction of that same fabric now hangs on the walls to preserve the original from irreversible damaging light). Tse has paired this with an image flashback from her childhood of an endlessly revolving vinyl record, floating like a distant shimmering mirage. Rug, frame, and image are suspended in a poetic limbo by the incessantly scratching turntable sound of a revolving LP.

"Tse's installation resonates within the Gardner collection particularly in the Dutch Room, where time has come to a standstill while a sense of absence, distant memory, and longing fades in and out of every empty frame," adds Cavalchini. On the exhibition title, she explains: "Floating Memories are distant memories that suddenly bubble up to the surface before us, only to recede again. But they are never quite forgotten."

Su-Mei Tse has exhibited in New York at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Peter Blum Gallery; London at the Albion Gallery; Roskilde, Denmark at the Museet for Samtidskunst; Chicago at The Renaissance Society; Stockholm at the Moderna Museet; Seattle at the Seattle Art Museum; Athens at the Alpha Delta Gallery; Antwerp at the Tim Van Laere Gallery; Taiwan at MOCA Taipei; Amsterdam at the Foundation De Appel; Jerusalem at the Israel Museum; Paris at the Centre Culturel Suisse; and San Francisco at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. A major exhibition of her work was recently presented at Casino Luxembourg Forum d'Art Contemporain. This last spring, Tse presented the first major survey of her work in Asia at Art Tower Mito, Japan. In addition to the Gardner Museum, Tse has been an artist-in-residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge; and Acadia Summer Art Program, Bar Harbor, Maine.

Tse was recently awarded the prestigious Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize for Contemporary Art (May 2009). Her numerous honors and awards, in addition to this award and the Golden Lion award, also include the SRMedienkunstpreis given by the Saarlandischer Rudfunk as well as the Prix d'art Robert Schumann. In 2005, Tse became the first recipient of the Edward Steichen Award, earning a grant for a six-month artist's residency in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in national and international publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, ARTforum, Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, ARTnews, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Independent, ART (Germany), Art Press (France), iD-Magazine (Germany), Art it (Japan), and more. Tse was born in Luxembourg in 1973. She currently lives and works in Luxemburg and Berlin.

Pipilotti Rist to Create a 'Living Room Disco' in Her Next Exhibition at Hauser & Wirth

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:35 PM PDT

artwork: Image from the Pipilotti Rist exhibition. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth © Hauser & Wirth

ZURICH.- Pipilotti Rist will create a kind of domestic fantasy for her exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zürich. The ground floor galleries will be transformed by the artist into her dream living room — a space whose walls, floors and furnishings are alive with images. Rist's video installations take many guises. She has likened them in the past to handbags, 'because there is room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex and friendliness.' From this versatile, capricious medium Rist draws inner and outer worlds of kaleidoscopic colour and wonderment.

Pioneering Abstract Impressionist Esteban Vincente at The Meadows Museum

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:34 PM PDT

artwork: Esteban Vincente - "Labels", 1956 - Colored paper, printed paper, ink, charcoal, gouache, and pastel on cardboard - 48 7/8" x 35 3/8" Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, Segovia. On view at the Meadows Museum in Dallas until July 31st.

Dallas, Texas - Until July 31st, 80 lyrical collages and polychrome sculptures are on display at the Meadows Museum in Dallas as part of the exhibition "Concrete Improvisations: Collages and Sculpture by Esteban Vicente". Vicente, a Spanish-born American painter, was a member of the first generation of New York Abstract Expressionists and a significant 20th century artist and teacher. Vicente participated in Meyer Schapiro and Clement Greenberg's landmark exhibition 'Talent 1950' and also helped to organize the seminal 9th Street show. The Meadows exhibition marks the first time Vicente's collages and sculptures have been paired together in a major exhibition. Vicente's collages, which he first began producing in 1949, provide an insightful connection when viewed alongside works on paper created by some of his contemporaries, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.


The Peggy Guggenheim Collection to Feature "Themes & Variations: Script and Space"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:33 PM PDT

artwork: Mirko Basaldella - "Roaring Lion II", 1956 - Bronze - 77 x 94 cm. - Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Venice. On view in "Themes & Variations: Script and Space" from October 15th until January 1st 2012.

Venice.- The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is pleased to present "Themes & Variations: Script and Space", on view at the museum from October 15th through January 1st 2012. First conceived in 2002 by Luca Massimo Barbero, this is the third edition of an innovative exhibition formula that offers visitors fresh perceptions of the museum's collections, whether known or less known, by means of a dialogue with works by more contemporary artists from other collections, thus opening up new, multiple possible interpretations. Hung in the same galleries, works from the early 20th c. avant-garde connect thematically in a confrontation and comparison with post war and contemporary works, tracing the evolution of forms of visual expression as they change with time. Each gallery narrates its own story, its own theme, a curiosity or a variation, sometimes self-evident and sometimes purposefully obscured by the artist.


artwork: Francis Bacon - "Study for Chimpanzee", 1957 Oil and pastel on canvas, 152.4 x 117 cm. - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. Beginning with Modernist works from early last century so strongly characteristic of Peggy Guggenheim's collection, such as Cubism and Futurism, "Themes & Variations. Script and Space", looks at the theme of script: as language, as sign, through the medium of paint and other materials, signs suggestive of images, or script that approaches typography. Forging a chronological bridge to the past, the first room connects the energy and onomatopoeia of the printed words of Pablo Picasso and of the Italian Futurist Carlo Carrà to the more deadpan script of Lawrence Weiner, or to the mysterious panels of Vincenzo Agnetti. Other thematic rooms follow, in which Piet Mondrian's inflexible geometries are offset by Gianni Colombo's flexible, ironic and elastic spaces; or uniformly patterned works, with a density of medium to the point of congestion, by Rudolf Stingel that contrast with Jackson Pollock's allover calligraphy. Writing-as-sign in Mark Tobey compares with the cryptic vocabulary of marks in Dadamaino and Riccardo de Marchi.

Then again, in a gallery dedicated to nature, a roaring lion by Mirko contradicts the existential complacency of a chimpanzee by Francis Bacon, and the metamorphosis of Germaine Richier's Tree Man echoes in Luigi Ontani's metamorphic 'personage'. With Peggy Guggenheim's "Celestial Bodies" by Rufino Tamayo, the exhibition engages the notion of cosmic space, understood as a multiplicity of perspectives, in which the woven textures of François Morellet and the self-contained spaces of Mario Nigro educate and enchant the spectator's eye in readiness for the shadowy figurations of Arthur Duff's Ropes and Knots, the photographs of Thomas Ruff, a small print of constellations by Giorgio de Chirico and the enigma of space in Lucio Fontana. The theme of script and matière, in the widest senses, are also key to the Gastone Novelli and Venice (1925-1968), with which "Themes & Variations" closes. A major figure in Italian art in the 1950s and 60s, Novelli in recent years has begun to assume a position in the forefront of international contemporary art of his time.

For "Themes & Variations", his poetical inscriptions on outsize canvases, in which marks, colors, and words are suspended in a delicate balance, have been selected to reconstruct his relation to Venice. Together with small sketchbooks of the 60s, which depict Venice—an enduring source of inspiration for him—there are his canvases painted between 1964 and 1968, in which Venice may be both subject and the place of his studio. 1968 was a critical year for Novelli—he was at the center of the polemics and the struggles against the Biennale that year, turning some of his paintings in his one-man show to face the wall, thus linking himself and his work to a now legendary episode in the student riots of that year.

artwork: Rufino Tamayo - "Corpi celesti (Heavenly Bodies)", 1946 - Oil and sand on canvas - 86.3 x 105 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. © D.R. Rufino Tamayo/Herederos/México/2011. Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.C. On view in "Themes & Variations: Script & Space" until January 1st 2012.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is among the most important museums in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century. It is located in Peggy Guggenheim's former home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. The museum was inaugurated in 1980 and presents Peggy Guggenheim's personal collection of 20th century art, masterpieces from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Garden, as well as temporary exhibitions. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is owned and operated by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which also operates the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. The Palazzo Venier dei Leoni was probably begun in the 1750s by architect Lorenzo Boschetti, whose only other known building in Venice is the church of San Barnaba. It is an unfinished palace. Its magnificent classical façade would have matched that of Palazzo Corner, opposite, with the triple arch of the ground floor (which is the explanation of the ivy-covered pillars visible today) extended through both the piani nobili above. We do not know precisely why this Venier palace was left unfinished. Money may have run out, or some say that the powerful Corner family living opposite blocked the completion of a building that would have been grander than their own. Another explanation may rest with the unhappy fate of the next door Gothic palace which was demolished in the early 19th century: structural damage to this was blamed in part on the deep foundations of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. In 1980, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection opened for the first time under the management of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, to which Peggy Guggenheim had given her palazzo and collection during her lifetime. The core mission of the museum is to present the personal collection of Peggy Guggenheim herself. The collection holds major works of Cubism, Futurism, Metaphysical painting, European abstraction, avant-garde sculpture, Surrealism, and American Abstract Expressionism, by some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. These include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Constantin Brancusi, Gino Severini, Francis Picabia, Giorgio de Chirico, Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Renee Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Alexander Calder and Marino Marini. The museum also exhibits works of art given to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for its Venetian museum since Peggy Guggenheim's death, as well as long-term loans from private collections. Visit the museum's wesbsite at ... http://www.guggenheim-venice.it

Venice Cancels Inauguration of Grand Canal Bridge Made by Santiago Calatrava

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:32 PM PDT

artwork: The ceremony to inaugurate the new Venice bridge made by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was canceled by the local government after some sectors of society threatened to protest. -  Photo: EFE / Andrea Merola 

VENICE - Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava defended his bridge today from the critics. The bridge in Venice is a work that breaks with the architecture of the city being the first bridge constructed in 125 years. The bridge has been baptized as the Constitution Bridge. This is the fourth bridge that goes over the Grand Canal and while some approve of it others criticize it for its high cost. Those critics, headed by small political parties have made the local government make the decision not to officially inaugurate it on September 18.

'Photos and Phantasy' at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:31 PM PDT

artwork: Melanie Pullen Dorothy

Malibu, CA — The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University is pleased to present Photos and Phantasy: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, on view through December 10, 2006.  Over the course of the 20th century, photography came to be seen as an increasingly creative medium which artists could use to alter, as well as capture, reality.  With the rise of digital imagery, photo-based art has evolved into a dynamic means of manipulating, instead of merely documenting, what is real.  This exhibition highlights the many diverse ways that fantasy and photographic technology inform contemporary art.

The Columbia Museum of Art Opens "An Artist’s Eye"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:30 PM PDT

artwork: George Biddle - "South Carolina Landscape", 1931 - Oil on canvas. - Collection of the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina. On view in "An Artist's Eye" until October 23rd.

Columbia, SC.- The Columbia Museum of Art has invited guest curator Sigmund Abeles to bring a fresh eye and different perspective to the Museum's collection of modern and contemporary art. His selection of over 80 works is based on his personal taste, preferences and attitudes about contemporary art, which he developed over a 50-year career. The premise is that an artist brings a different 'eye' and set of criteria to the table in evaluating art than does a curator or an art historian, whose training tends toward historical context rather than artistic practice. This different viewpoint – born from a background of method, process, creation and materials – can yield a new and interesting perspective to the selection and display of modern and contemporary artwork from our collection. The exhibition "An Artist's Eye" remains on view at the museum until October 23rd.


artwork: Paula Rego - "Mother and Daughter" 1997 - 8 color screen-print on paper. Collection of the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina.The key to an exhibition of this nature is finding the right artist. We determined that we wanted someone who was a respected artist within the national scene, had the length of career that would allow him or her to put the artistic developments of the last 50 years (the strength of our modern and contemporary collection) into perspective, was articulate and well-versed in artistic styles and materials of the 20th century, and, if possible, had a connection to South Carolina. Sigmund Abeles was born 1934 in New York City and raised in South Carolina.  He is an artist whose work deals with the expressive and psychological aspects of the human figure (and animals); an art focused on the entire life cycle. Drawing informs all his work. He works in pastels, oils, the graphic media, and sculpture.  Currently, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, after 27 years of teaching, he is working full-time in his NYC and upstate New York studio.  Recipient of numerous grants and awards, a National Academician; Abeles work is in the collections  of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.  Coastal Carolina University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2000. A major one-artist exhibition was at Thomas Williams Fine Arts, London, UK in 2000. The Pastel Society of America made him their Hall of Fame Honoree for 2004 and was awarded their Degas Pastel Society Award in 2006.

He is represented by The Old Print Shop, NYC, Hampton III Gallery, Greenville, SC and Cherly Newby Fine Arts, Pawley's Island, S.C.  "From Whence I Came" a retrospective was held at the Burroughs-Chapin Museum of Art in Myrtle Beach, SC, his hometown, in 2007. "Passionate Lives, Passionate Lines", dual solo exhibits open in May  at The Park Row Gallery and The Joyce Goldstein Gallery in Chatham NY.  He is included in Humanity, One Hundred Years of Figurative Art at the ACA Gallery in NYC.

The Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina has a collection of European and American fine and decorative art that spans several centuries. The museum building was transformed from an urban department store into a light-filled space with 25 galleries. The museum has a Renaissance and Baroque collection – a gift from the Samuel Kress Foundation, which features Old Master paintings, many of which were commissioned by churches in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. Nativity scenes, Madonna and Child paintings, and scenes from the Old and New Testaments are featured in the museum's upstairs galleries. The museum also has a large and rare Nativity fresco transferred to canvas by Sandro Botticelli, a pre-eminent Florentine Renaissance artist. Also in the museum's permanent collection are "The Seine at Giverny" by Claude Monet and art glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The decorative arts holdings at the museum number around 3,000 objects, ranging in date primarily between the 17th and 20th centuries. Some Asian objects in the Turner Collection date back to the T'ang Dynasty. Holdings include silver, Chinese export porcelain, contemporary art glass, American furniture, textiles and sculpture. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.columbiamuseum.org

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Posted: 06 Jun 2012 07:29 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 .

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.

This Week in Review in Art News

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