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

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• The Van Gogh Museum In Amsterdam Hosts Our Editor ~ The World's Largest Collection of Van Gogh’s Artwork
• The Akron Art Museum to feature "Pattern ID"
• Gagosian Gallery Presents a Major New Work by Takashi Murakam
• Brigham Young University Museum of Art shows "Mirror, Mirror on the Gallery Wall"
• The Meadows Museum Acquires Monumental Jaume Plensa Sculpture
• El Museo del Barrio opens "Retro-Active The Work of Rafael Ferrer"
• Maxfield Parrish ~ 'The Art of the Print' at The Everson Museum
• National Design Museum presents "Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection"
• Impressionist Landscapes on View at the Portland Museum of Art
• Getty Museum and Sicilian Officials Launch Art Collaboration
• GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY displays DAVID LEVINTHAL'S ~ BARBIE!
• Author Michael Crichton Collection Features World-Class Artists
• Art Institute of Chicago Intertwines Sound & Vision in Exhibition
• Mickalene Thomas' Commission for MoMA on View at the 53rd Street Entrance
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Van Gogh Museum In Amsterdam Hosts Our Editor ~ The World's Largest Collection of Van Gogh’s Artwork Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:30 PM PST The Van Gogh Museum is a comparatively young museum. It opened its doors in 1973 and has since grown into one of the world's most prominent and popular museums, with well over one million visitors every year. Its reputation stems from its unique collections, the quality of its exhibitions, its outstanding research, pristine publications, and its two internationally renowned buildings on one of Europe's leading cultural locations. The museum collects and preserves Western paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints from the period 1840 to 1920. At the heart of the museum is the estate of Vincent van Gogh, the largest collection of Van Gogh's work anywhere in the world. Around this the museum presents a broad range of nineteenth-century art. The Van Gogh Museum makes the life and work of Vincent van Gogh and the art of his time accessible to as many people as possible in order to enrich and inspire them. Situated in the Amsterdam's Museum Quarter, The Van Gogh Museum consists of two linked buildings. The permanent collection is housed in a building originally designed by Gerrit Rietveld, a leading member of "De Stijl", a group of progressive artists and architects which was active in the 1920's. In line with his Modernist approach, Rietveld favoured geometrical forms and light, open spaces. The most striking feature is the staircase in the central hall, where daylight enters through a high atrium and floods into the museum galleries. The interior was altered many times over the years and completely renovated in 1998-99. A new exhibition wing was added in 1999. The Exhibition Wing was designed by the famous Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. He is best known for his original designs for several Japanese museums and for Kuala Lumpur airport. His work is characterised by geometrical forms, such as cones, ellipses and squares, and a symbiosis between Eastern and Western principles in philosophy and architecture. For the new wing of the Van Gogh Museum he created a sober design that accords perfectly with the existing building. Rational geometry forms a symbiosis with Eastern asymmetry, reflecting Van Gogh's own interest in Japanese art. The only access to the Exhibition Wing is from the existing building. Visitors enter through a specially designed passage under the Museumplein (also extensively remodeled in 1996-1999), and then come into the Promenade, which forms an ellipse around a shallow, enclosed pond. The landscaped Museumplein square includes cafes and the Van Gogh Museum shop and creates an open expanse in the city where people can meet, stroll and relax. The museum also includes a print room and temporary educational exhibitions, such as restoration research and comparative displays as well as a study area featuring computers with Internet access. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl The collection originally belonged to Theo van Gogh (1857-1891), Vincent's younger brother. Following Theo's death, it passed to his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (1862-1925). Although a number of works were sold, she retained a major group, representing all phases of Van Gogh's oeuvre. On her death in 1925, her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890-1978), inherited the collection. In 1962, on the initiative of the Dutch state, he transferred the works to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. They are now on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum and form the nucleus of its collection. Consisting of over 200 paintings, 500 drawings and 700 letters, as well as Van Gogh's own collection of Japanese prints, this original collection has been supplemented with numerous other works. As well as works by Van Gogh, the collection includes 19th-century schools, styles and artists that Van Gogh admired, including Realism (Gustave Courbet), Impressionism (Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Manet, Sisley, Cézanne) and Post-Impressionism (Toulouse-Lautrec). Van Gogh's artwork is organised chronologically into five periods, each representing a different phase of his life and work. Early works, including "Portrait of Jozef Blok", "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" and "Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette" are included in the works he created before leaving the Netherlands. Works completed in Paris between 1886 and 1888 form the next section and include large numbers of self-portraits and still lifes as well as views of Paris. Paintings created at Arles in the south of France between 1888 and 1889 include well known pieces such as "The Yellow House", "Gauguin's Chair" and "Wheatfield". Paintings from his stay at the hospital of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy (during which he painted "Starry Night") form the next group, and the final section features paintings from 1890 created in Auvers-sur-Oise before his death. As well as the permanent collection, the Van Gogh Museum features temporary exhibitions focused on Van Gogh's life , but broadening the context to look at artists and movements that influenced him, or were influenced by him. A current show until 5 June 2011, "Stepping out in Montmartre: Prints of Cafes and Theatres" explores the artistic background at the time that Van Gogh lived in Montmartre (1886 to 1888). Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen made their famous illustrations and posters there in the 1890s, and when Picasso arrived in Paris, Montmartre was just the place to be if you were an artist. In addition to entertainment, the bustling nightlife with all the cafés, theatres, dance halls and brothels of Montmartre afforded a wide range of subjects for artists interested in capturing the feel of Paris. The advent of colour lithography stimulated an unprecedented production of posters and other publicity material by avant-garde artists. They also made illustrations for magazines and sheet music, and designs for theatre sets and shadow plays. The exhibition "Stepping out in Montmartre: Prints of cafés and theatres" gives an impression of this flourishing artistic climate. Posters, prints and theatre programmes by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Henri-Gabriel Ibels, among others, show how the artists who also inspired Picasso portrayed nightlife in the artists' district. Several of the works Vincent van Gogh made in Montmartre are also on view. "New acquisitions: Works on paper" (until 5 June 2011) provides a chance to see recently acquired drawings and prints by Van Gogh's predecessors and contemporaries, such as artists of the Barbizon School and the Hague School, and Emile Bernard and other works from the years immediately after van Gogh's death in 1890. For "New acquisitions" a representative selection has been made of the almost 200 works acquired in the past five years. Drawings and prints by famous artists, such as Gustave Doré, Jean-François Millet, Anton Mauve and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as Vincent van Gogh's early drawing "Woman on her deathbed", are on display. Because of their sensitivity to light, drawings and prints are only rarely exhibited. This presentation constitutes a unique opportunity to see these works, the majority of which have never before been on view at the Van Gogh Museum. A third exhibition explores the practical business of creating a painting in the 1890's and the myth that works were always created En plein air (a French expression which means "in the open air"),. "Painting In The Open Air: Myth and Reality" is on show until 10th April and focuses on a piece by one of the artists who served as a source of inspiration to Van Gogh: "Cliffs at Villerville-sur-Mer", painted between 1864-1872 by Charles-François Daubigny. This work was regarded as a milestone in the Impressionist tradition as it was held to have been painted in its entirety in the open air. Recent research, however, shows this to be partially a myth. 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

The Akron Art Museum to feature "Pattern ID" Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:29 PM PST AKRON, OH.- What's your Pattern ID? Whether we're aware of it or not, we all have a Pattern ID. It is revealed in the clothing we wear and the interiors with which we surround ourselves. Damask silk, Indian brocade and Burberry plaid each carry specific cultural associations. The aesthetic choices we make every day communicate subtle and not so subtle messages about who we are and where we've come from — our cultural identities. Pattern ID, on view at the Akron Art Museum January 23 through May 9, 2010, calls attention to the fact that cultural identity is not so clear-cut these days. Including painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and video­­, this visually stunning, vibrant exhibition presents fifteen artists of diverse origins who manipulate pattern and dress to define as well as expand their cultural identities. Taking a range of approaches from humor to irony and formal beauty, these artists borrow from popular culture, world history, and art history to transform and redefine the cultural meanings of patterns. "The artists use pattern and dress to take up the 21st century challenge of locating one's place in society against the backdrop of globalization," said Ellen Rudolph, the museum's curator of exhibitions. "Many of the artists in the exhibition have migrated from one culture to another, be it national, ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, political or religious. Rather than trade one identity for another, the artists in Pattern ID reveal ways in which identity can be cumulative." The approximately 40 works in Pattern ID include those of: Mark Bradford, (b. 1961, Los Angeles, CA); iona rozeal brown (b. 1966, Washington DC); Nick Cave (b. 1959, Jefferson City, MO); Willie Cole (b. 1955, Somerville, NJ); Lalla Essaydi (b. 1955, Morocco); Samuel Fosso (b. 1962, Cameroon); James Gobel (b. 1972, Las Vegas, NV); Brian Jungen (b. 1970, Fort St. John, British Columbia); Bharti Kher (b. 1969, London); Takashi Murakami (b. 1963, Tokyo); Grace Ndiritu (b. 1976, Birmingham, England); Yinka Shonibare MBE (b. 1962, London); Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, NJ); Aya Uekawa (b. 1979, Tokyo); Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977, Los Angeles, CA) Yinka Shonibare, MBE uses elaborately patterned Dutch wax printed cotton, which is manufactured in Europe but widely associated with West African culture, as the basis for his identity play. He visually manifests the links between African and European cultures by fashioning Dutch wax cotton into Victorian costumes, which he places on racially ambiguous, headless mannequins. Shonibare uses vignettes from European art and history as the basis for his sculptural installations and photographs. The artists cross boundaries of time, place, culture and gender to interweave their histories with those of others. From headless mannequins dressed in Afro-Victorian garb to paintings made entirely of Indian bindis and hip-hop youth portrayed in the style of Japanese woodblock prints, each artist places these patterns into new contexts to offer insight into complex cultural relationships. Woven from NBA and NFL jerseys, Brian Jungen's Blankets link the "tribal" rituals of the Swiss-Canadian/Native American artist's own Dane-zaa Nation with behaviors of professional sports teams and their fans. A Moroccan woman now living in the United States , Lalla Essaydi examines the repression of Arab women through her application of Islamic calligraphy to every surface in her scenes. Painstakingly applied in henna, these writings represent both male and female traditions in Islamic culture. Calligraphy is strictly a male practice, while henna designs are used and applied exclusively by women. Essaydi allows her models the unusual freedom to speak publicly through their poses and adornment. Based on Old Master portraits, Kehinde Wiley's paintings mix time, culture and race to recast historical figures as young black men. For each of his portraits, he invites his sitters, young black men he meets on the streets of major urban centers, to strike a pose from an art historical painting. Wiley photographs his subjects in their street clothes—hip-hop gear—and then paints them amid decorative, richly patterned backgrounds. Mickalene Thomas addresses exoticized stereotypes of black femininity while also exploring how her women fit into the visual record of art history. Thomas looks at black female sexuality from her perspective as a gay African-American woman who formed her ideas of beauty and femininity while growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by her stylish mother (a former fashion model), imagery in Jet and Ebony magazines, 1970s funk and soul music and trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas' rhinestone-encrusted paintings unite personal experience, popular culture and art history. Pattern ID places the complexities of cultural experience at the forefront of current artistic concerns. The artists express their personal and societal histories in vivid, tangible forms, proving pattern to be a rich tool with which to communicate. They advance a new collective aesthetic memory through their visual narratives. About the Akron Art Museum Dedicated to enriching lives through modern art, the Akron Art Museum showcases regional, national and international art created since 1850. The museum's permanent collection houses over 4,000 objects. Particular areas of strength include American painting and sculpture since 1960, 20th-century American and international photography and American impressionist and tonalist paintings. The museum also highlights modernism and regionalism in northeast Ohio from the 1910s to 1950, including the work of William Sommer, this region's most important historical artist. The Akron Art Museum is the only place in the nation where Sommer's work is on permanent view. In addition to the collection galleries, a dozen special exhibitions each year present celebrated artists in various media, including painting, sculpture, photography and video. The Museum also offers a host of dynamic educational programs for all ages including family drop in events, films, lectures, art workshops and concerts.  Visit : http://www.akronartmuseum.org/

Gagosian Gallery Presents a Major New Work by Takashi Murakam Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:27 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- In his distinctive "Superflat" style, which employs highly refined classical Japanese painting techniques to depict a super-charged mix of Pop, animé and otaku content within a flattened representational picture-plane, Murakami moves freely within an ever-expanding field of aesthetic issues and cultural inspirations. Parallel to the familiar utopian and dystopian themes that feature masses of smiling flowers, elaborate scenes of toonish apocalypse, and the ever-morphing cult figures of DOB, Mr. Pointy, Kaikai and Kiki, he recollects and revitalizes narratives of transcendence and enlightenment, often involving outsider-savants. Mining religious and secular subjects favored by the so-called Japanese "eccentrics" or non-conformist artists of the Early Modern era commonly considered to be counterpart to the Western Romantic tradition, Murakami situates himself within their legacy of bold and lively individualism in a manner that is entirely his own and of his time.  On view at Gagsosian Gallery through 24th October, 2009. In this new work, Murakami depicts the legend of the Karajishi or "China-lion", the mythological animal that guards the thresholds of Japanese Buddhist temples, separating sacred precincts from secular areas, averting evil, and promoting happiness and joy. Representations of lions were produced first by Chinese, and then Japanese, artists based on versions from India and Assyria that had been assimilated into Buddhist iconography, without the real animal ever having been seen. Thus these depictions of the exotic animal became increasingly fanciful. The Karajishi was a chosen subject of Shohaku Soga (1730-1781), the prominent iconoclast who mixed Zen and Chinese styles with wilder, virtuoso brushwork and equal measures of irreverent wit and inventiveness and whose interpretations of the Zen Buddhist ascetic Daruma, another famous outsider, were a key inspiration for Murakami's 2007 series. On a large four-panel canvas of staggering intricacy and painterly detail, Murakami depicts the allegory of ritual and survival that attends the development of the Karajishi, whereby as cubs they are thrown off cliff tops by their parents in order to test their strength and resilience. On a macabre bridge built entirely from human skulls, the mature Karajishi sits while its cubs play about, presumably survivors of the Darwinian exercise. The heaps of skulls – each one individually and painstakingly rendered in delirious color combinations -- are offset by atmospheric voids of abstract, oscillating hues, achieved by the use of various traditional patterning and painting techniques including kezuri, whereby the surface of the painting is created by applying then sanding away layer upon layer of paint to produce a rich and varied patina that fuses the refined depths of Japanese lacquer with the alchemy of Warhol's risqué Oxidation paintings. Takashi Murakami was born in 1962 in Tokyo, and received his BFA, MFA and PhD from the Tokyo University of the Arts (formerly the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music). He founded the Hiropon factory in Tokyo in 1996, which later evolved into Kaikai Kiki, an art production and art management corporation. In addition to the production and marketing of Murakami's art and related work, Kaikai Kiki functions as a supportive environment for the fostering of emerging artists. Murakami is also a curator, a cultural entrepreneur, and a critical observer of contemporary Japanese society. In 2000, he organized a paradigmatic exhibition of Japanese art titled "Superflat", which traced the origins of contemporary Japanese visual pop culture in historical Japanese art. He has continued this work in subsequent impactful exhibitions such as "Coloriage" (Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2002) and "Little Boy: The Art of Japan's Exploding Subcultures" (Japan Society, New York, 2005). Murakami's recent major solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, Paris and the Serpentine Gallery, London (2002). A comprehensive survey exhibition opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2007 and traveled to the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao in 2008-9. Murakami currently lives and works in Tokyo, New York, and Los Angeles.

Brigham Young University Museum of Art shows "Mirror, Mirror on the Gallery Wall" Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:26 PM PST PROVO, UT.- Portraits reflect more than a person's mirror image. They reveal—and sometimes conceal—certain aspects of a person's identity. While portrait artists play a role in creating that identity for some, many contemporary artists hold up a mirror to the process of identity creation itself—examining how people shape their identities and how they seek to change other people's perceptions about themselves. This exhibition will be on view in the Conway A. Ashton & Carl E. Jackman Gallery on the museum's lower level through Saturday, May 8, 2010. Admission is free. "Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self," a new exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, features 56 works of art by 32 local and international artists who trace the influences of rituals, facades, social media, and the family on the formation of individual identity. Ultimately this exhibition examines what it means to be human beneath the veneers of identity we accumulate in society. Visitors to "Mirror Mirror" will see cutting-edge contemporary works of art in a variety of media including installation art, painting, photography, multi-media and video art. The exhibition includes works by notable artists from across the United States and around the world, including Aram Bartholl (Germany), Rebecca Campbell (California), Hasan Elahi (Bangladesh/California), Harrell Fletcher (Oregon), Douglas Gordon (Scotland), Oliver Herring (Germany), Nikki Lee (Korea/New York), Feng Mengbo (China), Takashi Murakami (Japan), Julian Opie (England), Rachel Papo (Israel), Prezemslaw Pokrycki (Poland), and many others. The exhibition also features works by Utah artists, including Valerie Atkisson, Amy Jorgensen, Jeff Larsen, Michael McGlothlen and Nate Ronniger. "Portraiture has enjoyed a rich tradition in the history of art," said Jeff Lambson, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Art. "However, since the advent of modernism, artists have been less constrained by the limitations imposed by patrons and have freely explored personal identity, creating truer portraits that tend to examine the human condition in a more incisive and critical manner. The interplay among the diverse perspectives of the artists represented in this exhibition reveals individual differences and shared commonalities in a global community." The works of art in the exhibition address three themes relating to identity. Some works relate to rituals that shape identity. These works explore the influence of societal forces such as education, economics, religion and the family, as well as the influence of rituals and behavioral routines that shape who we are. Other works examine the facades, mirrors and masks we "try on" as we search for our "true" identity. These works address this search by scrutinizing the way we dress, the kind of music we listen to, the books we read, the friends we make, and the activities we participate in. Additional works question what remains when all the layers of assumed identity are stripped away. These works of art seek to remove the external veneers of portraiture, examining what is beneath. "Mirror, Mirror" also explores the impact of new technological mediums on the traditional art form of portraiture— thoughtfully analyzing the ways in which these mediums prompt new explorations of identity. A number of works in the exhibition address phenomena such as online multiplayer video games; social networking Web sites, including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr; and the ease of capturing and sharing images and video. "It is significant for our time that this exhibition poses the question of how we establish our true identities in a world of digitally mediated multiple realities," said Herman du Toit, Museum of Art educator. "Ultimately this exploration helps to reinforce the enduring and eternal nature of personal identity and brings us back to the Divine nature of selfhood." An audio tour featuring insights from some of the artists represented in the exhibition will be available on visitors' cell phones and as MP3 files on the museum's Web site. In the next few weeks the museum will also be introducing the details of a Web-based portrait competition that will allow museum visitors to submit portraits that will be judged online by other museum visitors.

The Meadows Museum Acquires Monumental Jaume Plensa Sculpture Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:25 PM PST DALLAS, TX.- The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University announced today that it has acquired Sho, a monumental sculpture by contemporary Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955). Completed in 2007, the work represents a female head and is formed by white-painted stainless steel openwork mesh. It stands approximately 13 feet tall and 10 feet wide (157 ½ x 157 ½ x 118 -1/8 inches) and weighs 660 pounds. This sculpture acquisition from the Richard Gray Gallery was made possible with the generous support of The Pollock Foundation, the Family of Mr. and Mrs. Richard R. Pollock, and the Family of Mr. Lawrence S. Pollock, III, in honor of Mrs. Shirley Pollock, and will be matched with a 1:1 challenge grant for museum acquisitions from The Meadows Foundation. Plensa is known for his monumental figural sculptures that often incorporate film, light, letters and unusual materials in order to present familiar objects (such as the human body) in unfamiliar ways. Sho is an excellent example of Plensa's mastery of his medium. It is a portrait of a young Chinese girl, Sho, whom the artist met in Barcelona where his studio is located. The undulating curves of the girl's facial features and braided hair are emphasized, especially in profile, demonstrating the artist's characteristic experiments with the interplay of large scale and intimacy in three-dimensional representations of the human form. A native of Barcelona, Plensa had his first solo exhibition in 1980 and has since achieved international acclaim. Although his primary studio is in his native city, Plensa has also lived and worked in Berlin, Brussels, England (at the invitation of the Henry Moore Foundation), and France (at the invitation of the Atelier Alexander Calder). His numerous awards and honors include the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French Minister of Culture, the National Art Award of Catalonia, Spain, and an honorary doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago. Plensa has exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide, including the Galérie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris; the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust in Halifax, England; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum der Modernen Kunst, Vienna, and in New York, Chicago and Tokyo. Outdoor and public sculpture is an equally important aspect of Plensa's output, with numerous installations in North America, Europe and Asia. One of his most notable works is Crown Fountain (2000-04) in Chicago's Millennium Park, arguably one of the most successful public art projects of the past decade. Plensa's works are also found in the collections of such notable museums as the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. Sho was first exhibited at the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain, in the winter of 2007. It was the centerpiece of a mid-career retrospective exhibition of Plensa's work and served as the cover illustration for the accompanying catalogue. The work then traveled to Chicago, where it was exhibited along the riverfront in the heart of downtown, and to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it was included in a major exhibition of the artist's latest work at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park through early January 2009. "Sho marks the most important acquisition of a work by a living artist into the Meadows collection since the commissioning of Calatrava's Wave in 2001," said Dr. Mark Roglán, museum director. "Plensa is among the most dynamic and talented artistic minds in Spain today, and we are honored to have him represented at the Meadows with such a unique and monumental sculpture. This one-of-a-kind masterpiece will welcome visitors to the museum from its prominent position in the center of our new entrance plaza, due to open this fall. The acquisition, made possible by the Pollocks and The Meadows Foundation, further represents a beautiful way to honor in perpetuity the memory of the late Shirley Pollock, who was such a great friend of this institution." The Museum will present a public lecture about Plensa by art historian and critic Barbara Rose on November 12, and additional public programming is planned throughout the year. Sho will go on permanent display outdoors on the museum's newly renovated entry plaza as part of the exhibition "Face and Form: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in the Meadows Collection," opening October 7, 2009. The exhibition will highlight the Meadows Museum's distinguished collection of modern and contemporary sculpture from the 19th to the 21st centuries, which includes works by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Jacques Lipchitz, Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg and David Smith. The sculpture collection will be featured both outdoors on the plaza and indoors in the Jake and Nancy Hamon Galleries. Visit : http://smu.edu/meadows/museum/

El Museo del Barrio opens "Retro-Active The Work of Rafael Ferrer" Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:24 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- El Museo del Barrio presents Retro/Active, The Work of Rafael Ferrer, the first solo exhibition in a museum to examine the breadth and depth of the artist's influential production over the last 55 years, will be on view June 8 – August 22, 2010. The travelling retrospective, curated by Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo del Barrio, includes approximately 100 works from the mid-1950s to the present in a vast variety of media including collage, sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, and mixed-media. It is part of El Museo's FOCOS series, which highlights the work of mature, under-recognized, and groundbreaking artists. "Rafael Ferrer is a greatly important living artist. This expansive retrospective strives to spark a critical re-consideration of his work," notes Cullen. "El Museo is proud to be showing his entire oeuvre, from documentation of his earlier better-known works to his post-1980 creations, for the very first time." "In many ways, Rafael Ferrer's career reflects El Museo's own history," states Julián Zugazagotia, Director of El Museo del Barrio. "His work both stands within and moves beyond the major art movements of the 20th century—Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, as well as large-scale, figurative painting. The course of Ferrer's artistic development runs parallel to, but often outside of the art historical cannon, enriching and troubling any preconceived idea of what an artist of Puerto Rican birth is or should be." Rafael Ferrer was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1933, and from an early age was exposed to international groups and artists in Puerto Rico, New York, and Los Angeles. He attended Syracuse University where he focused on playing jazz timbales. Upon his return to the island in 1953, he studied painting with the exiled Spanish surrealist, Eugenio Fernández Granell, at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. Ferrer joined Granell in Europe during the summer of 1954, where he met Wifredo Lam, as well as André Breton, Benjamin Peret, and other renowned artists associated with the Surrealist movement. This trip would have great influence and long lasting impact on his oeuvre. After notorious and critically-excoriated exhibitions of collaged paintings, environments, and welded steel combines in Puerto Rico during the early and mid-1960s, Ferrer moved to Philadelphia in 1966. The artist began to carry out ephemeral "actions" and to create improvisational sculpture with chain link fencing, corrugated steel, neon tubing, leaves, ice, hay, and grease. Ferrer became internationally recognized between 1969 and 1971 for his participation in seminal "postminimalist" exhibitions, including: Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969); Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations-Information (Bern Kunsthalle, 1969); and Information (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970). His 1968 and 1970 exhibitions at Leo Castelli's Warehouse, 1969 and 1970 solo exhibitions in Essen and Amsterdam, and his Deflected Fountain as part of a 1970 Duchamp homage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art sealed his reputation within the avant-garde. His attempts to bring the New York avant-garde to the island were again, critically misunderstood and his relationship with his birthplace continued to be fraught. During the early 1970s, Ferrer began creating room-sized installations that were more poetic, literary, and allusive. Building off his earlier use of natural and industrial materials he continued to incorporate ephemeral elements in his work such as found objects, neon and either painted or printed imagery. Madagascar (Pasadena, 1972); Museo (MCA Chicago, 1972); Deseo (Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, 1973); and Isla (MoMA-Project Room, 1974) all stem from this period. While Ferrer had previously been colleagues of artists such as Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, and Alan Saret, his travels introduced him to other groups that were to have a direct impact on his subsequent work. He became friendly with Claes Oldenberg, the Chicago imagists including Roger Brown, and several of the American "New Image Painters," including Neil Jenney and Alex Katz. Ferrer developed various long-standing series in the 1970s. In this period, he received several NEA Fellowships and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. Nonetheless, through his change of format, his work began to be positioned outside of the cutting-edge, and pigeonholed within several "Latin American" projects as well as along "primitivist" and "intuitive" lines. His ongoing series included Maps (approximately 100 drawings on printed maps and navigational charts); Faces (over 500 visages drawn on paper bags of various sizes); Kayaks and Constructions (assembled and painted, often hanging, sculptures). In the mid 1970s, Ferrer began creating intimate and magically-named Tents, with painted sides and often with a crowning word over the portal. He was excited to observe Katz painting from life while vacationing in Puerto Rico, and soon he returned to painting. In 1980, Ferrer began his nearly 20-year engagement with large-scale Painting (1980-1997), incorporating portraits, nudes, musicians, nightclub and cockfight scenes, landscapes, and scenes in the Dominican Republic where he lived and worked part-time. He also produced homages to various artists, including Wilfredo Lam, David Smith, Alberto Giacometti, and Giorgio Morandi. Despite the fact that Ferrer remained consistently engaged with, and responsive to, the changing trends of the larger art world around him, his involvement with large-scale painting has never been considered alongside American "New Image Painting" or Italian transavanguardia or German Neo-Expressionism. His entire body of work after 1980 has never been critically recognized or examined together with his earlier, better-known production. This retrospective will, for the first time, note the continuities of Ferrer's interests and themes over his lifetime. During his long career, Ferrer has created artist's books, fine prints, and has had major public art commissions in the Bronx (1979), Philadelphia (1982), and Puerto Rico (2004). Currently, his smaller-scale work involves drawing, collage and mixed-media on paper and canvas, and engages language, topical news, and artistic events culled from newspapers and magazines to express his sharply critical, witty observations. Rafael Ferrer's work has been acquired by prominent private and public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, yet his contributions remain outside of U.S. or western art histories, as well as the standard histories of Puerto Rican and Latino contemporary art. Visit : http://www.elmuseo.org/

Maxfield Parrish ~ 'The Art of the Print' at The Everson Museum Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:23 PM PST SYRACUSE, NY.- The Everson Museum of Art presents the long awaited exhibition, Fantasies and Fairy-Tales: Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Print will open to the public on Thursday, April 29, 2010. The exhibition will remain on view through July 11, 2010. During the height of Maxfield Parrish's popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, he was the most reproduced American artist of his era. Disseminated through magazine covers, book illustrations, calendar pads, advertisements and color reproductions, Parrish's images occupied a ubiquitous presence in popular visual culture. "While recent exhibitions of Parrish have focused mainly on his original oil paintings, Fantasies and Fairy-Tales represents the first comprehensive sampling of Parrish's work in a variety of printed media," said Steven Kern, Everson Museum of Art Executive Director. "These whimsical works, based on fairy-tales and nursery rhymes, made Parrish a critical success in his own lifetime, and still delight audiences of all ages." Isolated from many of his fellow artists due, in part, to his enormous commercial success, Parrish developed an original and individual style that defies categorization. His career represented a challenge to the traditional artistic divide between commercial and fine art. Fantasies and Fairy-Tales testifies to the ability of Parrish to live with a foot in both worlds, simultaneously enjoying the fruits of commercial and critical success while delighting audiences of all ages. When the Everson Museum of Art opened its present quarters in 1968, it was dubbed "a work of art for works of art." As the first museum design by internationally-acclaimed architect I. M. Pei, the Everson's design has been credited with launching Pei's world-famous career and putting the museum at the forefront of contemporary architecture. Today, the museum is more than just a "work of art." It has assumed a vital role in the reinvigoration of downtown Syracuse through artistic programs designed to maximize community involvement. The Everson Museum of Art's roots extend to the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, which was founded in 1897 by George Fisk Comfort, a well known art educator who also helped establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts' inaugural exhibition was held in 1900. Within twenty years of its founding, the Syracuse museum made two character-setting decisions under the leadership of Fernando Carter, the second director of the museum. In 1911, it declared that it would seek to collect only American art (the first museum anywhere to do so), and in 1916, it purchased a small group of porcelains from Syracuse potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau, who is today considered one of America's finest ceramists and whose work is known throughout the world. Visit The Everson Museum of Art at : http://www.everson.org/home.php

National Design Museum presents "Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection" Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:21 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- "Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection" is the 10th installment in an exhibition series devoted to showing rotations of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's permanent collection. The exhibition celebrates the museum's recent acquisition of an extraordinary collection of rare glass works from J. & L. Lobmeyr of Vienna, Austria, which dates from 1835 to 2008 and spans nearly the entire history of the firm. The exhibition will be on view from through Jan. 2, 2011, and will feature more than 100 Lobmeyr pieces selected by designer Ted Muehling, original drawings lent by Lobmeyr, and other related works from the museum's collection. One of the premier central European glass firms, J. & L. Lobmeyr was founded in 1822 and continues to deliver exquisite designs of high quality, execution and style. Celebrated for its clear, simple forms, many of the firm's designs have been in continuous production since their introduction in the mid-19th century. Guest curator Muehling—a noted designer of jewelry and decorative arts, who has created his own designs in glass for Lobmeyr—brings a unique perspective and particular insight into the collection and has chosen works that celebrate the art of drinking and entertaining. The exhibition works will be grouped by period, illustrating the timeless nature of Lobmeyr's classic designs, which helped to influence the modern aesthetic. Lobmeyr is renowned for its innovative manufacturing and glass-making technologies, and for its tradition of commissioning notable designers and artists to work for the firm. Among the most significant works in the 163 piece Lobmeyr collection are designs from the Wiener Werkstätte and other early 20th-century designers, including pieces by Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Michael Powolny, Stefan and Marianne Rath and Josef Wimmer. The collection also features works by major 19th-century designers, such as Ludwig Lobmeyr and Josef Storck, as well as glass by contemporary designers. A highlight of the exhibition will be glassware designed by Hoffmann, shown alongside a design drawing with handwritten notations by Ludwig Lobmeyr and Hoffmann, which illustrate the collaborative design process. Other work by Hoffmann from the museum's permanent collection will also be on view, including flatware, textiles and wall coverings. The exhibition will also feature: An 1835 wine decanter, designed by Josef Lobmeyr Sr., which is the earliest piece in the collection. A "Blue, White, Gold" Footed Plate, designed by Lobmeyr circa 1885, featuring intricate hand-painted designs. The "Patrician Drinking Set #238," which was designed by Hoffmann in 1917. The delicate, stream-lined decanter and stemware, created with Stefan Rath, are still considered one of the most important designs for Lobmeyr today. Viennese designer Marianne Rath's flower bowl, which mixes blown and carved glass techniques to create the effect of rock crystal. Muehling's 2007 "Drinking Set No. 279," with butterfly etched glasses and decanter, along with the book Botanicals: Butterflies and Insects from the National Design Library, which helped to inform the work. "Ted Muehling Selects" is the 10th in a series of small one-gallery exhibitions in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery. The museum invites guest curators from all around the world to create exhibitions and installations interpreted in their own voice from works in the museum's permanent collection. Previous guest curators include novelist, design critic and public radio host Kurt Andersen, Dutch designer Hella Jongerius, Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare, the innovation and design firm IDEO, the Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana and artist Shahzia Sikander. Muehling has been designing for more than 20 years and his work includes porcelain, glass, metalwork and jewelry. His exquisite designs are adaptations of nature, evoking both the organic and the manmade, and are sensual and tactile in their sculptural simplicity. Muehling has worked with Steuben as well as the Porzellan Manufactur Nymphenburg in Germany, where he designed hand-painted and naturalistic tableware. For Lobmeyr, he has created significant new designs that have expanded the range of commissions for the firm. His work was also featured in Cooper-Hewitt's recent exhibition "Design for a Living World."

Impressionist Landscapes on View at the Portland Museum of Art Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:20 PM PST   PORTLAND, MAINE - The Portland Museum of Art presents an in-depth study of Impressionist landscape painting. Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism is an exhibition of more than 40 masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The exhibition features both European and American painters including Claude Monet, Eugène-Louis Boudin, John Singer Sargent, George Inness, Frederick Childe Hassam, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Courbet. On view from September 25, 2008 through January 4, 2009, Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism explores the unities of style, color, and light in this all-important international movement. Among the earliest works in the exhibition are Charles-François Daubigny's The River Seine at Mantes (1856) and Gustave Courbet's Isolated Rock (1862), which reveal the impact of plein-air sketching practice on landscape art of the period. Many of the painters of the Barbizon School of French landscape painting executed on-site, preparatory sketches that were carried over into larger, more carefully designed paintings later completed in their studios. Heirs to this plein-air tradition, French Impressionists Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte painted highly elaborated "impressions"—seemingly spontaneous, rapidly executed landscapes and cityscapes that prompted the name of their movement. Monet is represented in the exhibition by several works, including The Islets at Port-Villez (1897), and Houses of Parliament, Effect of Sunlight (1903). After selecting a subject, Monet positioned himself before it for hours over a series of days, if not months, substituting one canvas for another as dictated by changing lighting and atmospheric effects, and producing a series of works devoted to the same subject under different conditions. Following in the footsteps of the French archetypes, many American painters sought inspiration in Paris and its environs, attending French art academies and frequenting the painting locations made famous by their Barbizon and Impressionist predecessors. Some of the Americans had direct contact with leading French landscape painters, sharing landscape sites or seeking informal guidance from admired mentors. The majority of the works by American painters on display depict American themes, demonstrating the eagerness of these artists to retain their progressive aesthetics after returning home, and to update the native scene in vibrant, innovative canvases. This led to the appearance of local beaches, factories, tenements, and notable subjects such as Central Park in paintings distinguished by brilliant colors and lively, broken brushwork, including William Glackens's Bathing at Bellport, Long Island (1912), Julian Alden Weir's Willimantic Thread Factory (1893), Robert Spencer's The White Tenement (1913), and Willard Leroy Metcalf's Early Spring Afternoon, Central Park (1911). In keeping with its long tradition of collecting French and American Barbizon and Impressionist landscapes, the Brooklyn Museum has recently added to its outstanding holdings Hassam's Poppies on the Isles of Shoals (1890), acquired in 1985, and Caillebotte's The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil (1885 or 1887), acquired in 1999, both of which are included in the exhibition. As the largest art museum in the state of Maine, the Portland Museum of Art serves as a vital cultural resource for all who visit. The Museum's collection of more than 17,000 objects is housed in three historic and remarkable buildings showcasing three centuries of art and architecture. With our constantly changing exhibitions and permanent collection, a diverse selection of fine and decorative arts is always on view. Visit the Portland Museum of Art at : www.portlandmuseum.org/

Getty Museum and Sicilian Officials Launch Art Collaboration Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:19 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA - The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Sicilian cultural ministry will collaborate to conserve art objects, stage exhibitions and conduct scholarly research. The agreement with the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity was announced Wednesday in Palermo and Los Angeles.Sicilian museums will lend marble statues and ancient vases to the Getty Museum and the museum's preservation staff will use their expertise in creating displays that protect the artwork from earthquakes, said Getty spokeswoman Rebecca Taylor. Many pieces that go on display at the hilltop museum in Los Angeles will be sent back to its home institution with a custom-built seismic isolator base, she said. The collaboration is an extension of the Getty's 2007 agreement with the Italian Ministry of Culture, said the Getty's acting director, Daniel Bomford. "I am delighted that the Getty Museum has reached a mutually beneficial agreement with our colleagues in Sicily that allows us to expand our relationship with Italy to this very important region for the study of the ancient Mediterranean," Bomford said. The Getty will also organize a conference in Sicily on protecting museum collections from earthquakes. Taylor said the curators and preservationists sought out two important and unique marble statues, The Marble Youth from Agrigento and Youth from Motya, which they want to evaluate for preservation and put on display in California. The Getty Museum will present two exhibits with art borrowed from Sicilian cultural institutions. One will examine Sicily's founding Greek colonies, which were some of the wealthiest and most powerful metropolises in the Mediterranean world. Another will focus on an important Greek colonial settlement called Selinunte and its temples. Since 2007, Italy has secured the return of dozens of Roman, Greek and Etruscan artifacts in deals with museums, including the Getty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Italy claimed artifacts were dug up and smuggled out of the country and sold to top museums worldwide. Getty's deal included no admission of guilt and the museum returned 39 ancient treasures. Italian art officials, in exchange, agreed to give long-term loans of other artifacts. The museum launched a similar partnership with Italy's National Archaeological Museum of Florence that has allowed it to show the Chimaera of Arezzo at the Getty Villa in Malibu. The life-sized sculpture of a triple-headed monster that is part lion, part fire-breathing goat and part serpent is a rare example of Etruscan bronzework from the fourth century B.C.

GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY displays DAVID LEVINTHAL'S ~ BARBIE! Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:18 PM PST New York City - In honor of the iconic doll's 50th birthday, GERING & LóPEZ GALLERY presents Barbie!, an exhibition of large-format Polaroids by acclaimed photographer David Levinthal. The subjects of these photographs are not toys but rather representations of popular culture, as Levinthal seeks to explore the subliminal effects of the Barbie doll image on the American collective subconscious. On view through 11 April, 2009. A familiar and often polarizing image, the Barbie doll has served as a figure of the idealized female form and the quintessence of glamour as well as a taboo symbol of the oppressive currents in society that have affected generations of American youths. Mattel first manufactured Barbie fifty years ago after the conclusion of World War II, a time when couture houses boomed in France after the ending of wartime restrictions. The Barbie dolls in the photographs featured in this exhibition lack the populist sentiments that later models displayed, instead reflecting a microcosm of mid-century American life inhabited by predominantly white, upper-middle class women. A far subtler series than others in Levinthal's oeuvre, these unbiased society portraits allow viewers to form their own interpretations of the impact of Barbie's image on American popular culture. Appropriately, the exhibition is located on Fifth Avenue mere blocks away from both Bergdorf Goodman and F.A.O. Schwartz, titans of haute couture and children's luxury items, in one of Manhattan's most highly trafficked shopping areas. Couched in the style of early high fashion photographers such as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, these dolls showcase the height of post-war fashion from 1959 to the early 1970s. The Barbie doll's limited range of motion produces deliberately stiff and artificial poses that are strikingly similar to those seen in early fashion photography, creating a parallel compositional effect between the two bodies of work. Levinthal combines white light and sharply contrasting shadows with intensely saturated color, a technique that elevates the dolls out of the realm of kitsch and into the glamorous echelons of high society. Solid monochromatic color backgrounds help to eliminate any sense of scale. Levinthal's standard use of a narrow depth of field, soft focus, and the photographic trope of enlargement seen in his close-up shots bring a sense of life to the objects in the foreground. These photographic techniques result in an unnerving sense of ambiguity as the dolls appear to be made of both plastic and flesh. David Levinthal was born in San Francisco and received his MFA in Photography from Yale University. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain; Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, Germany; and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland, among others. His work is featured in many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the International Center of Photography, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and the Polaroid Collection, MA. This will be the artist's first solo exhibition at Gering & López Gallery. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For further information please contact Lauren Cicione at 646.336.7183 or lauren@geringlopez.com. GERING & LoPEZ GALLERY - 730 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10019 - tel 646.336.7183 - www.geringlopez.com

Author Michael Crichton Collection Features World-Class Artists Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:17 PM PST NEW YORK, NY (AP).- Best-selling author Michael Crichton approached art in the same way he did his writing — through extensive research — but also by developing close friendships with many of the artists whose works he collected. The popular thriller writer died in 2008 leaving behind such blockbusters as "Jurassic Park," ''The Andromeda Strain" and the TV series "ER." But he also left a 20th century art collection that features some of pop art's best known artists, including Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg. Crichton's family is selling about 80 percent of the collection at Christie's auction house in New York on May 11-12. Crichton's collection is part of Christie's post-war and contemporary art sale. Among the highlights is Jasper Johns' "Flag," a rendition of the American flag that Crichton bought from the artist in 1974, and which decorated the writer's Beverly Hills bedroom. It was last exhibited in 1992-93 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. About 70 of the 100 works from the collection, including paintings by Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso and Robert Rauschenberg, will be displayed at Christie's Rockefeller Center galleries from Friday through April 13. Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of Christie's Americas, said Crichton was generous in lending works from his collection for exhibitions, but was possessive about the "Flag." "With the 'Flag' it was such a personal thing because of his relationship with Johns," said Gorvy. Their close friendship and Crichton's knowledge of Johns' work led the artist to ask Crichton to write the catalog for his 1977 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Within the art world, Gorvy said, Crichton was renowned as a leading authority on Johns and the Whitney catalog, expanded and reprinted, has become the definitive text on the artist. The "Flag" has a pre-sale estimate of $10 million to $15 million, but Christie's believes it will set a new world record for the artist. "It will go substantially higher," given that the work "is so superb and rare ... and coming from a famous fella and also from someone who understood the artist," said Gorvy. The current Johns record stands at $18 million for "Figure 4," set at Christie's in 2007. A larger flag of the artist's seminal image was purchased privately last month for $110 million by hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, Gorvy said. Crichton "was a master of research" in his art collecting as much as in his writing, he said. "He collected artists in depth to know them better." Crichton, one of the world's most commercially successful writers whose many books have been turned into film, also forged close friendships with Oldenburg, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg. Oldenburg's 1970 "Three Way Plug Soft Sculpture," which he purchased from the artist, is estimated at $250,000 to $350,000. Lichtenstein's "Girl in Water" has a pre-sale estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million, while Rauschenberg's "Studio Painting" is estimated at $6 million to $9 million. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

Art Institute of Chicago Intertwines Sound & Vision in Exhibition Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:16 PM PST CHICAGO, IL.- Even before Bowie united them in song, sound and vision had been closely intertwined in the visual and audio art recordings of the early 1970s. This focused exhibition of a dozen works in various media explores the symbiotic relationship between art and music, presenting humorous yet rigorous investigations in which the two do not connect in any synesthetic sense but rather come together via acts of transposition—balls cast aloft are made to resemble notes in a musical score, honking drivers are photographed in mock (and silent) symphonic array, artists' names are called out as if by imaginary birds. At the center of the installation hangs the recently acquired Auto Series, a unique piece from 1971–73 by American artist Robert Watts. These 23 photographs capture drivers sounding their horns while nearing a bend in the road beside the artist's Pennsylvania home. Another audio/auto piece is the six-part Car Radios (Autoradios) by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, consisting of photographs taken during the 1970s and 1990s "when good music was playing." Louise Lawler's Bird Calls, a sound piece from 1976, and John Baldessari's 1973 Songs: Sky/Sea/Sand, from the Hirshhorn Museum, give a strong sense of the relations of sound to vision in the 1970s. More recent artists have also pursued the theme, in some cases making it a central aspect of their practice. Artist and experimental DJ Christian Marclay has visualized the musical in consistently funny and frustrating ways, most recently by creating cyanotype photograms using unspooled cassette tapes as photosensitive material. The videos of Dara Birnbaum, David Hammons, Hirsch Perlman, and Cory Arcangel pick up this direct correlation between art and music in their work with the moving image. These pieces all show humor, low-tech inventiveness, rigor masked with deceptive nonchalance—and a real, unconventional love of art and music.

Mickalene Thomas' Commission for MoMA on View at the 53rd Street Entrance Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:14 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Lehmann Maupin announced Mickalene Thomas' completion of a monumental commission for the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, entitled Le dejeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires, which will remain on view in the window of the Museum's 53rd Street entrance through December 2010. Mickalene Thomas creates works that introduce a complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expand common definitions of beauty. She has chosen her subjects for this body of work with an eye toward representations of women not typically seen in the canon of figurative painting. Drawing from her long study of art history and the classical genre of portraiture, she has infused her knowledge with more recent influences of popular culture and Pop Art. The new work, created specifically for MoMA, details three women, one in the style of a man dressed in drag, referencing Édouard Manet's iconic painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe from 1862-1863, but also harkening to early images of the Greek myth the Judgment of Paris in which the 'apple of discord' is presented at a wedding banquet with the inscription: "for the fairest one". The apple is claimed by the goddesses Aphrodite, Athena and Hera. In this work, Thomas replaces the apple with a flower as a symbol of the women's sexual prowess. A New York-based artist, Thomas earned her MFA from Yale University and participated in the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She has exhibited extensively and was included in the recent and critically acclaimed exhibitions Landscape Revisited at the Park Avenue Armory; Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Center of Photography, New York, NY; 30 Americans at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, FL; 21: Selections of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and Black Is, Black Ain't at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, IL.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 13 Feb 2011 08:13 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.

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