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

---

• Our Editor Visits The Magnificent Belvedere Palaces In Vienna, Austria ~ A World Of Breathtaking Art & Architecture
• The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco
• Phoenix Art Museum Hosts Major Retrospective of Ernest L. Blumenschein
• MOCA Receives Gift from Photographer Max Yavno's Estate
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art Displays ~ Art of the Royal Court
• Kevin Bubriski Named Visiting Artist Fellow at the Peabody Museum
• Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent dies at 71
• Peabody Essex Museum to Host Art Museum Libraries Symposium
• Renowned Texas Artist, Bert Long Jr., Exhibits at HCG Gallery
• Dallas Museum of Art presents a New Way for Visitors to Experience the Museum's Collections
• Mika Rottenberg's New Video Installation Debuts at SFMOMA
• Princeton Art Museum Announces Gauguin Woodblock Prints Exhibition
• Arnaldo Roche Solo exhibition at The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Our Editor Visits The Magnificent Belvedere Palaces In Vienna, Austria ~ A World Of Breathtaking Art & Architecture Posted: 22 Jan 2011 07:54 PM PST The Belvedere Palaces, as an art museum, have harbored treasures of art ever since its beginnings, at first the collections of Prince Eugene and, from 1781, extensive parts of the imperial collection, which were also open to the public. The various directors of the house resorted to numerous measures to safeguard the works of art, including the glazing of the central wing of the Upper Belvedere in the nineteenth century and extensive reconstruction in 2007. Around 1900, since no measures were being taken to build the planned new museum for the state collection of contemporary art, Austrian artists were urging an improvised accommodation of works in the Lower Belvedere. In 1903, the Moderne Galerie was indeed opened there, thus laying the foundation for today's collection. The enlargement of the Staatsgalerie to include the two palaces and director H. Tietze's restructuring of the former imperial collection. In 1923, the baroque museum was opened in the Lower Belvedere as the first part of this "restructuring". The Galerie des XIX Jahrhunderts (Gallery of the XIXth Century) was set up in 1924 in the Upper Belvedere, with works by international and Austrian artists, meanwhile the Moderne Galerie was accommodated in the Orangerie, where the monumental sculpture found an ideal setting in the adjacent large landscaped garden. During the National-Socialist regime the Moderne Galerie remained closed, which meant that the inventory of so-called "degenerate" works was untouched. New acquisitions since this period have been subject since 1998 to the provenance research department of the Belvedere. Museum operations during the post-Second World War period have been characterized by numerous new acquisitions, extensions and modernization measures. From 1991 to 1996, the Upper Belvedere underwent general refurbishment. The collection of medieval art kept in the Orangery from 1953 to 2006 and the collection of baroque works (former Lower Belvedere) are on show from spring 2008 onwards in the Upper Belvedere. Thus it is possible for the first time in its history to see all sections of the collection under one roof, ranging from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century. The Lower Belvedere and the Orangery are used as the Belvedere's exhibition forum. Medieval at the Upper Belvedere: The Belvedere owns internationally outstanding works of Late Gothic sculpture and panel painting, now being shown as part of the permanent exhibition in the west wing of the Upper Belvedere. They offer an overview of the major artistic developments in the International Style from around 1400 to the early sixteenth century. The prelude to the presentation takes the shape of a sculpture gallery, with works by the Master of Grosslobming, who around 1400 was one of the leading sculptors in the International Gothic Style and probably active in Vienna. The Master of the Albrecht Altarpiece is among the most important Viennese panel painters of the next generation. His depiction of the Annunciation of the Angel to Joachim (c. 1435/50) is a remarkably early example of an artist capturing a phenomenon of light in nature. The Baroque Collection of the Belvedere left the Lower Belvedere in 2007. From spring 2008 on the most important works of Austrian Baroque are shown in the east wing of the Upper Belvedere. The works of Martino Altomonte ring up the curtain for the resplendent show of Austrian High Baroque. These works fuse impulses from Rome and Naples with the colorful fascination of the Venetians. Long years of schooling in Venice are also apparent in Johann Michael Rottmayr's The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (c. 1690/91) and the Lamentation of Abel (1692). He is known as the father of Austrian baroque painting. Among his most outstanding works are the paintings in the Stiftskirche, the monastery church, at Melk, and St Peter's and St Charles's churches in Vienna. Daniel Gran's mythological and allegorical histories, like the Apotheosis of Diana into Olympus (1732) and the Allegory of the Felicitous Government of Moravia (1743), are works from the heyday of High Baroque under Charles V1. Italian models were also obligatory for Paul Troger, the "classical" artist in Austrian baroque painting. The affecting chiaroscuro of his altarpieces accentuates the intensity of baroque piety. The sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt challenged the observer with distortion in human facial features. Works by Vincent Fischer, Lorenzo Mattielli, Karl Georg Merville and Franz Zächerle provide further remarkable encounters with the manifold facets of baroque art in Austria. The 19th century collection encompasses a wide range of masterpieces, including classicism, romanticism and Biedermeier, realism and historicism, and the art of impressionism. Classicism and romanticism are pre-eminently represented in portraits and mood landscapes, especially by Caspar David Friedrich. The Biedermeier Collection has its culmination in the paintings of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. The chief representative of historicism in Austria is Hans Makart. Besides examples of Austrian mood impressionism, there is a remarkable and exclusive selection of international art with works by Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. Be sure and visit the website at : http://www.belvedere.at The Upper Belvedere houses the impressive collection of Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages to the present day. At the heart of the displays of "art around 1900" is the world's largest Gustav Klimt collection. The glittering highlights are Klimt's golden pictures The Kiss and Judith I, and masterpieces by Schiele and Kokoschka. Prominent works by the French Impressionists and the outstanding collection of Viennese Biedermeier paintings. The Vienna Secession was founded in 1897 and became synonymous with Viennese art nouveau. The first significant acquisitions by the Moderne Galerie (from 1903) came from Secession exhibitions and formed the basis of the Belvedere collection. After the art of the fin de siècle found its climax in Gustav Klimt's "Golden Period", early expressionism followed, represented among others by Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. The borderline between symbolism and Secessionism is not always easy to draw. Both trends rejected a naturalist representation of material reality. The main agenda of the symbolists was to express states of mind and soul, irrational forces, dream, ecstasy and vision. Major works of symbolism are The Evil Mothers (1894) by Giovanni Segantini, Half-figure of a Nymph (1896) by Fernand Khnopff and Awe-struckness (1900) by Ferdinand Hodler. The Secessionists wanted to redesign the whole of life artistically, transform the prosaic everyday into an aesthetic experience. Along with Gustav Klimt, Carl Moll was one of the major exponents of Secession art, as seen in works like Twilight (c. 1900). The close personal connections between the Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte led in 1902 to the Beethoven Exhibition, planned as a "temporary Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art)", for which Klimt created the Beethoven frieze. In 1905, a controversy was unleashed about the exclusion of selling activities from the Secession exhibition programme; the "Klimt Group", with Klimt and Moll at its head, left the Secession. In the same year, the "Brücke" was formed in Dresden and the " Fauves" in Paris. Aestheticism was no longer at the forefront, but the innovative, expressive message that left all academic conventions behind it. In Austria, the works of the young painter Richard Gerstl were among the earliest examples of expressionist tendencies. His painting The Sisters Karoline and Pauline Fey (1905) shows the influence of Edvard Munch. Later pictures manifest the example of Vincent van Gogh, such as the Laughing Self-Portrait (1908), which Gerstl painted shortly before his suicide. Soon afterwards, the young Oska Kokoschka shocked the Viennese public with distressingly forthright portraits. Egon Schiele, just turned twenty, painted several portraits around 1910 that were remarkable for their piercing urgency and dramatic gesture, arousing deep and disturbing associations. Max Oppenheimer also belonged to the group of early expressionists; his Klingler Quartet (1916) betrays the confrontation between cubists and futurists. A fellow artist very close to Schiele was Anton Faistauer from Salzburg, showing in his emotive Portrait of a Lady in a White Blouse (1913) a similarly unconstrained handling of colour like Anton Kolig's Portrait of the Wife of the Artists with Flowers (1913). A culmination of this expressive use of colour is seen in the work of the Carinthian painter Herbert Boeckl. His Still Life with Bottles and Fishes (1922) appears as an agitated, pastel configuration that follows its own colour and form structures. With its exhibition DYNAMICS! Cubism / Futurism / KINETICISM, the Belvedere offers a comprehensive insight into abstraction as practiced in Vienna between 1919 and 1929, in the context of European Modernism. The phenomenon of Viennese Kineticism, which has hitherto attracted little attention internationally, is presented alongside masterpieces from all over Europe, including works by František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Carlo Carrà, and Giacomo Balla. In the early 1920s, it was particularly the students in Franz Cizek's class at the Vienna School of Applied Arts who dealt with Cubism and Italian and Russian Futurism - art styles for which, contrary to Paris or Berlin, no tradition had yet been established in Vienna. The exhibition demonstrates how rapidly and innovatively Viennese artists joined in with the European post-war avant-garde during the 1920's. A joint project by the Belvedere and the Vienna University of Applied Arts. On exhibition 10 February to 29 May 2011. ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Editor has been invited to visit Museums and cultural sites in mainland China, Korea, Vietnam. Myanmar, Thailand (Siam), Singapore, Bali and mainland Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Bhutan, Malaysia, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and now Austria. Because of the Editor's travel we will be posting many interesting articles from our archives, some of the BEST Articles and Art Images that appeared in your magazine during the past six plus (6+) years . . Enjoy.

The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:58 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musée d'Orsay jointly announce two consecutive special exhibitions, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay and Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay which will be on view at the de Young Museum for a combined eight months beginning in May 2010 and ending in January 2011. Each exhibition will include approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d'Orsay's permanent collection and highlights the work of nearly 40 artists including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Vuillard.

Phoenix Art Museum Hosts Major Retrospective of Ernest L. Blumenschein Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:57 PM PST Phoenix, AZ – Phoenix Art Museum celebrates the career of one of the most successful American artists of the early 20th century with the opening of In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein. A founder of the famed Taos Society of Artists, Blumenschein rocketed into the spotlight with his modernist approach to capturing the American West.  This major retrospective, on view March 15 through June 14, 2009, covers every aspect of the artist's career and is the first Blumenschein exhibition in 30 years and the first in Arizona.

MOCA Receives Gift from Photographer Max Yavno's Estate Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:56 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced a generous gift of $435,000 from the estate of renowned Los Angeles photographer Max Yavno, nearly 25 years after his death. Yavno, who died in 1985, was an accomplished fine art and commercial photographer known for his social documentation and sensitive depiction of urban realism. Said Stephen McAvoy, successor executor of the estate of Max Yavno and retired controller of City National Bank, "I am amazed and pleased that 25 years after Max's death, these funds are still able to benefit the museum, and are eligible to be matched by the generous grant given to the museum by The Broad Foundation."

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Displays ~ Art of the Royal Court Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:55 PM PST New York City - The Italian term pietre dure – literally meaning "hard stone" – refers to the artistic cutting of semiprecious stones, such as agate, lapis lazuli, and other colorful hardstones, to fashion extravagant luxury objects, from architectural ornament and furniture to ornate display items and personal jewelry.  Opening July 1 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the landmark exhibition Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe will feature more than 170 masterpieces in carved stone, many of them embellished with gold and silver mounts or decorated with exotic woods and other coveted materials.

Kevin Bubriski Named Visiting Artist Fellow at the Peabody Museum Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:53 PM PST CAMBRIDGE, MA.- Kevin Bubriski first began photographing Nepal in 1975, when he was stationed there as a Peace Corps water engineer. In the decades that followed he continued to shoot in Nepal, creating a large documentary record of the country. With the Robert Gardner Visiting Artist Fellowship, Bubriski will continue his photographic documentation of Nepal's Karnali Zone this year and then be in residence preparing his material for publication. He describes that history as an "evolution from an exotic destination for overland European travelers in the 1970s, political turmoil and strict monarchic rule in the 1970s and 1980s, democracy movement of 1990, the ten-year civil war from 1996 to 2006, to the current precarious peace."

Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent dies at 71 Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:51 PM PST PARIS (AP) — Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent, who reworked the rules of fashion by putting women into elegant pantsuits that came to define how modern women dressed, died Sunday evening, a longtime friend and associate said. He was 71. His close friend, Pierre Berge,  said Saint Laurent died at his Paris home following a long illness.

Peabody Essex Museum to Host Art Museum Libraries Symposium Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:49 PM PST SALEM, MA.- Libraries, archives, and museums face similar challenges. Libraries and archives affiliated with art museums have a second layer of concerns to consider in determining how they best relate to their parent institution. The Peabody Essex Museum's (PEM) Phillips Library will host a symposium on September 23 and 24, 2010 to explore the issues associated with this very question.Major topics to be addressed include:

Renowned Texas Artist, Bert Long Jr., Exhibits at HCG Gallery Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:48 PM PST   Dallas, Texas– Dallas' HCG Gallery is proud to host artist Bert Long Jr. and his latest show "My Daily Bread." Houston native Bert Long Jr., a self taught artist, received his formal education in Adult Education from UCLA in 1972. Working in a variety of mediums, Long Jr., has gained national and international recognition throughout his career for his thought provoking art. Following a private reception on December 5th welcoming Long Jr., HCG Gallery will display his art from December 5, 2008 through January 10, 2009.

Dallas Museum of Art presents a New Way for Visitors to Experience the Museum's Collections Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:47 PM PST DALLAS, TX.- This summer, the Dallas Museum of Art rolls out the red carpet to present the Summer Spotlight tour, inviting visitors to experience the romance, drama, action, and mystery of great works of art as they view them through a cinematic lens. Beginning in June and running through August, the Museum will highlight 30 of its masterworks, both old favorites in the collections and new acquisitions, to encourage viewers to look at great art in an exciting and different way. In addition, Summer Spotlight will offer a multitude of special family-friendly programming, including the launch of the Late Night Friday Summer Block Party and special film screenings. The Museum will also provide its guests with a special gallery map to the "DMA Stars" featured in the program.

Mika Rottenberg's New Video Installation Debuts at SFMOMA Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:45 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Artist Mika Rottenberg debuts her latest immersive video installation for SFMOMA's New Work series this summer in her first solo museum exhibition on the West Coast. Rottenberg makes feminist art decades after feminism was legibly defined. She makes seriously political art that is preposterously funny. She documents reality, but spins it into narrative fiction. With Squeeze (2010), Rottenberg hones these signature tactics, creating a video installation that is both humorous and unsettling. New Work: Mika Rottenberg will be on view from July 8 through October 3, 2010 and is organized by SFMOMA Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Alison Gass, who was recently cited by The New York Times as one of nine young museum curators in the U.S. to watch.

Princeton Art Museum Announces Gauguin Woodblock Prints Exhibition Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:44 PM PST PRINCETON, NJ.- The Princeton University Art Museum will launch its fall 2010 season with an exhibition it is originating, Gauguin's Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints (September 25, 2010—January 2, 2011), the first comprehensive look at this pivotal woodcut series. Paul Gauguin's Paradise Remembered posits a new way of understanding a key body of work within the artist's career, and by extension a new way of understanding this vital post-Impressionist artist.

Arnaldo Roche Solo exhibition at The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:42 PM PST   LONG BEACH, CA - The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) presents Hermandad / Brotherhood, a solo exhibition by the Puerto Rican artist, Arnaldo Roche. The exhibition features 19 large-scale paintings created between 2002 and 2007. Arnaldo Roche (b.1955) is recognized as the preeminent post-expressionist painter of Puerto Rico. Trained in the United States, Roche studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1980s where he quickly earned U.S. attention for his art. He continued to develop his artistic career in Puerto Rico and has received international acclaim. His art is included in major museum collections around the world.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 22 Jan 2011 06:41 PM PST This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

You are subscribed to email updates from Art News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610