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

---

• Our Editor Visits The Tate Modern In London ~ The World’s Favorite Modern Art Museum
• Maurice Sendak major retrospective at the Rosenbach Museum & Library
• Frank Frazetta Siblings Resolve Dispute over His Famous Fantasy Art
• Tacoma Art Museum presents " Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire "
• Prints & Photographs Bring More than $2.7-Million at Bonhams & Butterfields
• Victor Pesce - Painter of Minimalist Still Lifes, Dies at 71
• Projects Gallery Presents Florence Putterman & Elizabeth Bisbing
• The Best School of London Post-War and Contemporary Art at Sotheby's
• High Museum of Art Gifted 47 Extraordinary Works from Stein Collection
• Exhibition Featuring Musical Instruments of Pacific Islands at Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Christie's To Offer Collection of The Hon. Simon Sainsbury in June 2008
• New Photographs by Julian Faulhaber at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler
• Barbara Siegel's ~ SideShow ~ at A.I.R. Gallery
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Our Editor Visits The Tate Modern In London ~ The World’s Favorite Modern Art Museum Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:10 PM PST Located in central London on the banks of the river Thames, the Tate Modern is one of the family of four Tate galleries which display selections from the Tate Collection (named for Sir Henry Tate, a Victorian sugar merchant, whose donation formed the basis of the modern collection). The Collection comprises the national collection of British art from the year 1500 to the present day, and of international modern art. The other three galleries are Tate Britain, also in London, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, in Cornwall. Created in 2000 from a disused power station, the Tate Modern displays the national collection of international modern art, defined as art since 1900. The international modern art was formerly displayed alongside the British art at what was previously the Tate Gallery and is now Tate Britain. By about 1990 it was clear that the Tate Collection had hugely outgrown the original Tate Gallery on Millbank. It was decided to create a new gallery in London to display the international modern component of the Tate Collection. For the first time London would have a dedicated museum of modern art. At the same time, the Tate building on Millbank ( now the Tate Britain) would neatly revert to its original intended function as the national gallery of British art. The Bankside power station had closed in 1982 and was available, a striking and distinguished building in its own right, it was in an amazing location on the south bank of the River Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral and the City of London. The fact that the original Tate Gallery was also on the river meant that the two could be linked by a riverboat service while a new footbridge (the Millennium Bridge) would connect the Tate Modern to St Paul's cathedral. An international architectural competition was held attracting entries from practices all over the world. The final choice was Herzog and De Meuron, a relatively small and then little known Swiss firm (who have subsequently won the Pritzker Prize and become world famous on the back of this, and other works). A key factor in this choice was that their proposal retained much of the essential character of the building. The power station (originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also created Liverpool's Anglican cathedral, University libraries in Oxford and Cambridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the design of the famous British red telephone box) consisted of a huge turbine hall, thirty-five metres high and 152 metres long, with, parallel to it, the huge boiler house. The turbine hall became a dramatic entrance area, with ramped access, as well as a display space for very large sculptural projects. The boiler house became many of the galleries. These galleries are on three levels running the full length of the building. The galleries are disposed in separate but linked blocks, on either side of the central escalators. Above the original roofline of the power station Herzog and De Meuron added a two-storey glass penthouse, known as "the lightbeam". The top level of this "lightbeam" houses a café-restaurant with stunning views of the river and the City, and the lower room with terraces on both sides of the building. In total, the Tate Modern has 34,500 square meters of floorspace, including over 9,800 m2 of display and exhibition space, plus 3,300 m2 for specific installations in the turbine hall. The Tate Modern opened in 2000 and became an instant hit with visitors from worldwide. Designed to handle up to 2 million visitors a year, it rapidly became the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 5 million visitors every year. Further expansion of the gallery has been a priority for some time, and a new extension is scheduled to open in 2012. Also designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the new extension will take the form of a ziggurat or pyramid with a sloping brick facade to match the original building. When completed, this will include galleries dedicated to photography, video, exhibitions and the community. Be sure to visit the museum's website at: … http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/ The Tate collection of modern and contemporary art represents all the major movements from Fauvism onward. It includes important masterpieces by both Picasso and Matisse and one of the world's finest museum collections of Surrealism, including works by Dalí, Ernst, Magritte and Mirò. Its substantial holdings of American Abstract Expressionism include major works by Pollock as well as the nine Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko. There is an in depth collection of the Russian pioneer of abstract art Naum Gabo, and an important group of sculpture and paintings by Giacometti. Tate has significant collections of Pop Art, including major works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, also great examples of Minimal and Conceptual art. Tate also has particularly rich holdings of contemporary art since the 1980's. The Tate Modern Collection consists of four wings on Levels 3 and 5 of the gallery. At the heart of each wing is a large central display, or 'hub', which focuses on one of the pivotal moments of twentieth-century art history. Around a focal points, a range of displays move backwards and forwards in time, showing the predecessors and sometimes the opponents of each movement, as well as how they shaped and informed subsequent developments and contemporary art. The introductory room in each wing brings together work by artists from different generations, to reflect this ongoing dialogue between past and present. On the 3rd level, three exhibition areas are devoted to the permanent collection. "Material gestures", focuses on abstraction, expressionism and abstract expressionism, featuring work by Claude Monet, Anish Kapoor, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Tacita Dean. "Poetry and Dream", shows how contemporary art grows from, reconnects with, and can provide fresh insights into the art of the past. The large room at the heart of the wing is devoted to Surrealism, while the surrounding displays look at other artists who, in different ways, have responded to or diverged from Surrealism, or explored related themes such as the world of dreams, the unconscious and archetypal myth. Artists include: Giorgio de Chirico and Jannis Kounellis, Jean Painlevé, Fréderic Bruly Bouabré, Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys, Julião Sarmento and Mona Hatoum. The third, smaller, section on this level is "Chromatic Structures", bringing together artists from the early and mid-twentieth century who explored the use of colour and geometric structures to create abstract art. Featured artists include Piet Mondrian, Victor Pasmore, Mary Martin, Charles Biederman, Ben Nicholson, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Gego, Helio Oiticica and Mira Schendel. The thematic displays continue on the 5th level. "Energy and Process", looks at artists' interest in transformation and natural forces. A central room focuses on sculpture of the late 1960s made from a diverse range of everyday objects rather than those associated with fine art. The Italian artists of Arte Povera produced work that explored changing physical states, while in Japan and the United State the Mono Ha and Post-Minimalism movements looked for alternatives to a sleek technological aesthetic. Adjacent rooms show pioneering uses of commonplace things and activities. More recent work on display blurs the boundary between art and daily life in photography, film and installation. Artists featured include; Kasimir Malevich and Richard Serra, Ana Mendieta, Marisa Merz, Luciano Fabro, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lucia Nogueira, Juan Downey, Peter Fischli & David Weiss. "States of Flux" is devoted to the early twentieth-century movements of Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. These avant-garde artists broke with traditional ideas of picture making, seeking a more dynamic and fractured visual language to represent the complex reality of modern life and the machine age. Surrounding displays show how these developments influenced experimental film, photography and design, sometimes with a more pointed political agenda. Another room shows the post-Impressionist art from which the younger generation were breaking away. Cubist innovations such as collage were central to the emergence of Pop Art which combined high and low culture, art and commerce into forceful, celebratory and sometimes critical visions of the post-war consumer era. More recently, techniques such as collage, appropriation and assemblage have been reinvented and transformed by younger artists to reflect the multi-layered texture of urban life. New digital technologies have enabled contemporary artists to adopt methods of sampling, mixing and montaging associated with alternative music and club cultures. Artists include: Umberto Boccioni, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Frank, Bridget Riley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Marcel Duchamp and Richard Hamilton. "Photographic Typologies" gathers a range of artists who use photography to approach a topic or theme systematically, creating multiple images of similar subjects. This typological method was pioneered by the German photographer August Sander, whose work can be seen in the central gallery. Sander's People of the Twentieth Century is a vast series of photographic portraits classified according to the profession or role of their subjects. Sander's process of analyzing and ordering his images was matched by the rigorous, objective style of the photographs themselves. All of his subjects are observed by the photographer with the same neutral distance. Sander's methodology has influenced subsequent generations of artists. The photographic portraits of Thomas Ruff, Rineke Dijkstra and Paul Graham view their sitters in series, presenting them as individuals but also as part of a related group. A similar technique is applied to spaces and architectural structures in the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Again, these sequences depend on the accumulation of images, allowing contrasts or similarities to emerge between them. Contemporary practitioners such as Simryn Gill and Alexander Apóstol continue to work in this tradition, producing sequences of images that can be read as themes and variations on their chosen subjects. The Tate is perhaps best known for the massive installations in the main turbine hall. These annual commissions (Sponsored by Unilver) invite artists to make a work of art especially for Tate Modern's vast Turbine Hall. The Series has resulted in some of the most innovative and significant sculptures of recent years. Currently, and until 2 May 2011, the turbine hall is the site for Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds". Consisting of 100 million individually crafted, porcelain sunflower seeds (made in small scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen), the seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. The landscape of sunflower seeds can be looked upon from the Turbine Hall bridge, or seen up-close at the east end of the Turbine Hall on Level 1. The work poses challenging questions: What does it mean to be an individual in today's society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together? What do our increasing desires, materialism and number mean for society, the environment and the future? Until 30 June 2011, visitors to the restaurant can see James Aldridge's "Cold Mouth Prayer", specially commissioned for the Tate Modern's Restaurant. Influenced by Renaissance landscape painting and nineteenth-century French scenic wallpaper, the artist explores his interest in the natural world as well as the ideas and imagery surrounding extreme heavy metal music. In this seductive landscape, crows exhale smoke in a scene rich in decorative flowers, yet loaded with sinister overtones. The major exhibition in the 4th floor gallery is a retrospective featuring the works of Gabriel Orozco (until 25 April 2011). Creative, playful and inventive, Orozco creates art in the streets or wherever he is inspired. Born in Mexico but working around the globe, Orozco is renowned for his endless experimentation with found objects, which he subtly alters. His sculptures, often made of everyday things that have interested him, reveal new ways of looking at something familiar. A skull with a geometric pattern carefully drawn onto it, a classic Citroën DS car which the artist sliced into thirds, removing the central part to exaggerate its streamlined design, and a scroll filled with numbers cut out of a phone book are just some of his unique sculptures. Orozco's photos are also on display, capturing the beauty of fleeting moments: water collecting in a punctured football, tins of cat food arranged on top of watermelons in a supermarket, or condensed breath disappearing from the surface of a piano show Orozco's eye for simple but surprising and powerful images. His art also shows his fascination with game-playing, for example a billiard table with no pockets and a pendulum-like hanging ball, or Knights Running Endlessly, an extended chess board filled with an army of horses, both of which are well-known games to which he has added an element of futility. This kind of unexpected twist makes Orozco's work interesting to both contemporary art lovers and also anyone who wants an unusual and captivating art experience. ANNOUNCEMENT: Our Editor has been invited to visit Museums and cultural sites worldwide, and they are featured on our Home Page (center). 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 . . and we are publishing current art news articles on the left hand side under RECENT NEWS .. Enjoy

Maurice Sendak major retrospective at the Rosenbach Museum & Library Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:10 PM PST   PHILADELPHIA, PA - The Rosenbach Museum & Library will present There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak from May 6, 2008 through May 3, 2009. This major retrospective of over 130 pieces pulled from the museum's vast Maurice Sendak collection – the biggest collection of "Sendakiana" in the world – is the largest and most ambitious exhibition of Sendak's work ever created and will feature original artwork, rare sketches, never-before-seen working materials and exclusive interview footage. The exhibition will draw on a total of over 300 objects, with new works on display every four months, providing a unique experience with each set of illustrations.

Frank Frazetta Siblings Resolve Dispute over His Famous Fantasy Art Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:08 PM PST ALLENTOWN, PA (AP).- The adult children of pioneering fantasy artist Frank Frazetta have resolved an ugly dispute over control of their elderly father's body of work. The family feud boiled over in December when Frazetta's son, Frank Frazetta Jr., was caught using a backhoe to break into the artist's museum in the Poconos. Police say he tried to remove 90 paintings insured for $20 million. Frazetta Jr. insisted he was attempting to safeguard the art from his scheming siblings. Frazetta, 82, is renowned for his sci-fi and fantasy art, creating covers and illustrations for more than 150 books and comic books as well as album covers, movie posters and original paintings. His work on iconic characters including Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan influenced generations of artists.

Tacoma Art Museum presents " Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire " Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:06 PM PST TACOMA, WA - Tacoma Art Museum's exhibition "Oasis: Western Dreams of the Ottoman Empire" from the Dahesh Museum of Art features a survey of nineteenth-century Western artists' responses to the diverse cultures of the former Ottoman Empire. Many Europeans relied on published travelogues for information, but many also traveled to the region. Genre paintings, the prevalent form of Orientalist art in the nineteenth century, were greatly influenced by these artists' direct experience of everyday life in the region. The exhibition is on view Saturday, September 20, 2008 through Sunday, January 4, 2009.

Prints & Photographs Bring More than $2.7-Million at Bonhams & Butterfields Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:04 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA -Prints and Photographs from estates, trusts, and private and institutional collections brought more than $2.7-million at Bonhams & Butterfields on May 20-21, 2008, during the two-day auction simulcast to salesrooms in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. "Interest in the fine prints and fine photographs auctions was extremely strong with enthusiasm for Old Master works through to the contemporary, showing a robust market for this material," said Judith Eurich, Director of Prints and Photographs at Bonhams.

Victor Pesce - Painter of Minimalist Still Lifes, Dies at 71 Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:01 PM PST NEW YORK TIMES - If his immigrant father had had his way, Victor Pesce would have inherited the family plumbing business in Queens and run it until the day he died. But Victor had other aspirations. One was to be piano player, another to be a baseball player, and a third to be an artist, like the mural painters in his mother's family in Italy. As it happened, Victor did become a plumber, learning the skills at his father's elbow. He got his plumber's license, and he practiced the trade into middle age. But he held onto his artistic ambitions, and when he did die, on March 28, at his home in Sharon, Conn., at the age of 71, he had by then become an admired New York painter of still lifes with a Minimalist bent.

Projects Gallery Presents Florence Putterman & Elizabeth Bisbing Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:00 PM PST PHILADELPHIA, PA - Projects Gallery presents its second solo exhibition of Florence Putterman. Known for her textural paintings and bold, earthy colors, Noir et Blanc features works in only black and white, focusing the exhibition on Putterman's keen image-making. Utilizing etching and woodcuts, these works on paper continue to explore an imaginative world of whimsy and humor. Expressive and figurative, these prints are companion pieces to her often large-scale paintings that have been the benchmark of this artist's extensive body of work.

The Best School of London Post-War and Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:58 PM PST LONDON.- Sotheby's announced that its Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Monday, June 28, 2010 will present collectors with a one-off opportunity to acquire some of the best Post-War and Contemporary artworks by the venerated and highly sought-after School of London artists Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach, as well as Paula Rego, Richard Prince, and Patrick Heron (all born in the inter-war years between 1920 and 1935). These eight paintings of exceptional quality and historic significance come from a distinguished private collection and are estimated to realise in excess of £3,350,000.

High Museum of Art Gifted 47 Extraordinary Works from Stein Collection Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:57 PM PST ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art announced a gift of 47 works of art, the majority of which are prints and posters by major artists working in fin-de-siécle Paris , from prominent Atlanta collectors Irene and Howard Stein. The Stein collection includes many rare and extremely prized works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, such as "La Clownesse au Moulin Rouge" (1897), one of only a handful of impressions of this color lithograph, and "Miss Loïe Fuller" (1893), a ghostly image of the famous American dancer that incorporates powdered gold. The gift also includes important prints and drawings by Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Honoré Daumier and Paul Signac, and sculptures by Pieter Xavery, Martin Desjardins, Charles Cordier and Jules Dalou. In celebration of this gift, the High will mount a special exhibition titled "Toulouse-Lautrec and Friends: The Stein Collection," which will open in January 2011.

Exhibition Featuring Musical Instruments of Pacific Islands at Metropolitan Museum of Art Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:55 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Sounding the Pacific: Musical Instruments of Oceania, the first exhibition devoted to the subject ever mounted by an art museum, will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 17th. Featuring more than 50 outstanding works—including percussion, wind, and string instruments—the exhibition will explore not only the diverse forms of Oceanic musical instruments but also the many different roles they play, or played, in Pacific cultures, from announcing the onset of war to embodying the voices of supernatural beings or softly enticing a lover. Drawn entirely from the Museum's collection, the exhibition will showcase the objects that were created and used from the early 19th to the late 20th-century in all five regions of Oceania: Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, and Island Southeast Asia. The works on view will include many instruments whose forms are unique to the Pacific, ranging from small flutes and whistles used for private entertainment or courtship, to massive slit gongs played in performances heard by entire communities, where the thundering beats can carry for miles.

Christie's To Offer Collection of The Hon. Simon Sainsbury in June 2008 Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:53 PM PST   LONDON - Christie's announced that they will offer the private collection of the Hon. Simon Sainsbury on 18 June 2008 in London. One of Britain's most generous philanthropists and discerning collectors, the late Simon Sainsbury assembled throughout his lifetime one of the finest private British collections of the 20th century which will be offered at a landmark single-owner auction at Christie's on Wednesday 18 June 2008.

New Photographs by Julian Faulhaber at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:51 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Hasted Hunt Kraeutler presents an exhibition of new photographs from the body of work Lowdensitypolyethylene by Julian Faulhaber. The German-born photographer made his United States debut in Chisel curated by Kathy Ryan of the New York Times at the first annual New York Photo Festival in 2008. His first gallery show in New York followed in the fall of that year at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler. Since then, Faulhaber has been named a new and emerging photographer to watch in 2009 by Photo District News (PDN) and has been included in the exhibition Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On view 8 May through 26 June.

Barbara Siegel's ~ SideShow ~ at A.I.R. Gallery Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:49 PM PST New York, N.Y - A.I.R. Gallery announces Sideshow, an exhibition of multi-media installations by Barbara Siegel.  The opening will be held October 12 until 5 November, 2006.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:48 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