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

---

• The Baltic Centre ~ A Superb International Exhibition Centre ~ A Major Venue For Contemporary Art
• Mural Paintings at Castillo de Chapultepec Now on the Web
• Frey Norris features Dorothea Tanning's Early Career Paintings
• Abstract Art in South & North America at the Amon Carter Museum
• Retrospective of Photographer Tina Modotti at Kunst Haus Wien
• Sprengel Museum Hannover opens ~ 'The Beauty of a Fragile World'
• Allentown Art Museum Receives Major Gifts from Peter Grippe Estate
• Florence Griswold Museum presents Bessie Potter Vonnoh Exhibition
• Collector Julia Stoschek Exhibits Her Collection at The Deichtorhallen
• The FEMSA Collection, a Continental Vision at NHCC
• Italian Museum Director Seeks Asylum In Germany ~ For Himself, His Staff And His Artworks ~ After Mafia Threats
• artnet Auctions Launches 'Faces & Figures' Famous Photographs Sale
• Emerson Woelffer solos at Black Mountain College Museum
• Arabian Nights : Film Art from the Collection of the Kunstmuseum Bonn
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Baltic Centre ~ A Superb International Exhibition Centre ~ A Major Venue For Contemporary Art Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:12 PM PDT Housed in a landmark industrial building on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, UK, the Baltic Centre is a major international centre for contemporary art. The Baltic itself has no permanent collection, providing instead an ever-changing calendar of exhibitions and events that give a unique and compelling insight into contemporary artistic practice. Baltic's dynamic, diverse and international program ranges from blockbuster exhibitions to innovative new work and projects created by artists working within the local community. The Baltic was founded with funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Gateshead Council, Northern Rock Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund and One NorthEast, and receives continued support from Arts Council England and Gateshead Council. The notion of Baltic began in 1991 when Northern Arts (now Arts Council England North East) announced its ambition to achieve 'major new capital facilities for the Contemporary Visual Arts in Central Tyneside'. The Baltic Flour Mill was closed in 1981. Dominic Williams of Ellis Williams Architects won an architectural competition in the mid-1990s to convert the old mill building into a centre for art. Construction began in 1998, and only the south and north facades of the original 1950s building were retained. A new structure consisting of six main floors and three mezzanines was secured between the facades which contain 3, 000 square meters of arts space (four galleries and a flexible performance space), artists' studios, cinema/lecture space, shop, a library and archive for the study of contemporary art and the Rooftop Restaurant on Level 6 (providing stunning views over the River Tyne). An additional two-story structure: The Riverside Building, was constructed to the west of the main building, providing the main entrance into BALTIC, which looks out across Baltic Square and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. After ten years in the planning and a capital investment of £50m, BALTIC opened to the public at midnight on Saturday 13 July 2002. The inaugural exhibition, 'B.OPEN', featured work by Chris Burden, Carsten Holler, Julian Opie, Jaume Plensa and Jane & Louise Wilson, and attracted over 45,000 visitors in the first week. Since then the Baltic has presented over 40 exhibitions and welcomed more than 3 million visitors. As well as contemporary art exhibitions, the Baltic also offers a range of spaces for hire, and can accommodate a wide range of events, from meetings and workshops to banquets and conferences. Since opening in July 2002 the Baltic has hosted a range of high profile events including The Channel 4 Stirling Prize 2002, Audi Young Designer of the Year Competition Final 2002-2005, University of Northumbria final year fashion show 2003, BBC Question Time and Prime Minister's Newsnight. Even though BALTIC opened to the public in July 2002, the first exhibition which was seen on the site of the building was "Tarantantara" by Anish Kapoor in 1999. "Tarantantara" formed part of 'B4B', the Baltic's pre-opening series of exhibitions and events. A site-specific installation by Anish Kapoor, "Tarantanrara" was commissioned specially for the site before the construction of the new building began. Over 50m long and 25m wide, the work filled the shell of the Baltic Flour Mills and was in-situ for eight weeks and seen by over 16,000 people. In 2011 the Baltic is to be the venue for the Turner Prize, this would be the first time the event has been held outside of a London or Liverpool Tate in its 25 years, a major exhibition from 21 October 2011 to 8 January 2012 will coincide with the final stages of the competition and the winning artist will be announced at a celebratory event at BALTIC in December 2011. Visit the Baltic's website at … http://www.balticmill.com The Baltic currently have 2 related exhibitions of work by British painter George Shaw. "Payne's Grey" is an intimate presentation in the Baltic's Level 2 gallery showcasing a strand of George Shaw's practice that has never been seen before. Fourteen watercolors, named after the peculiar shade of their creation, provide a new take on Shaw's familiar subject matter. Describing the works, Shaw said; "Once I started painting skies in Payne's Grey and following Constable's dictum that the sky was like the tuning fork for the tone of the painting, I began to simply allow the whole world to be sky coloured. And like the worst fears of Chicken Licken the sky did fall in - and the painted world became Payne's Grey." A more major retrospective of George Shaw's works is exhibited in "The Sly and Unseen Day: George Shaw". This major exhibition brings together some forty paintings from 1996 to the present day. Within a practice that has encompassed drawing, video-making, performance and writing, Shaw is best known for his expansive body of painting. Based upon photographs taken of and around his childhood home on the Tile Hill Estate, Coventry, Shaw's landscapes are at once familiar and unnerving. Unassuming buildings, patches of woodland, pubs, his school, the park, and the arbitrary details of urban infrastructure deposited by town planners, are the cast of a series of paintings ongoing since the mid-1990s. Shaw's landscapes are at once familiar and unnerving. Painted exclusively in 'Humbrol' enamel, the material of choice for teenage model-makers, Shaw's subject matter brings about associations of domesticity, folk art and nostalgia for a lost childhood and adolescence. Yet, as "The Sly and Unseen Day" reveals, Shaw's art quickly moves beyond the autobiography it first suggests. His jarring, atmospheric paintings become peculiar records of 'Englishness' and are suggestive of a different state of mind. Even his more tranquil paintings, for example "Scenes from the Passion: Pig Wood" and "Scenes from the Passion: The Way Home" (both painted in 1999), included within the exhibition, retain a peculiar tension. As the exhibition progresses we see Shaw take an investigative journey, typically making something out of nothing, as beauty is found in the mundane. The 'Ash Wednesday' series (2004-5) depicts the estate hour-by-hour on a single day. Other paintings, such as 'The Age of Bullshit' 2010 (a demolished pub) and 'The Assumption' 2010 (the local school), offer a curious record of British social and class life. Shaw's painting 'Scenes from the Passion: The First Day of the Holidays' 2003, can be seen on a large-scale banner on the North face of BALTIC's exterior building for the duration of the exhibition. Both George Shaw exhibitions run concurrently through May 15th at the Baltic. "Jesper Just: The Nameless Spectacle", also from February 18th to May 15th features the New York-based Danish artist Jesper Just's short films. These films have the formal qualities and gloss of Hollywood productions while resisting their narrative conventions. His lavish visual language, overlapping musical, literary and cinematic references deliver a framework onto which the viewer can attach personal memory. Despite its often highly charged emotional content, Just's work is ambiguous, uncertain and never reaches the moment of 'closure'. The exhibition at the Baltic is Just's first in a public gallery in the UK and includes three works: , "A "No Man Is An Island", 2003 (video); Vicious Undertow" 2007, and new work "Sirens of Chrome" 2010. "Lindsay Seers: It Has To Be This Way 2" (until 12th June 2011) explores the complexities and uncertainties of history and memory. The installation resumes the story of the disappearance of the artist's stepsister, Christine Parkes. Presented on a circular screen within a structure derived from forts on the West African Gold Coast, Christine's stepmother narrates her tale while the film retraces her travels through West Africa. The complex and unsettling story takes the viewer on a journey that navigates the occult, the subconscious and the fragmentation of personal memory. 'I was her mother but she was never my daughter and now she has gone missing, I can honestly say that I never loved her.' This sentence, which opens the film at the heart of "It Has To Be This Way 2", crystallizes the ambiguities, the contradictions and the play between past and present which constantly reshape our memories. Memory of the past illuminates our present actions and experiences. Lindsay Seers' work explores the complexities and shifts at play in any understanding of past and present. She begins with an exploration of the image; a recurring interest into the act of photography, the workings of the lens and the apparatus of the camera. She develops narratives from her family life, engaging chance, the occult and the subconscious to restage periods from her own history and the histories of her parents and siblings. Throughout its short history, the Baltic has become famous for the quality of the exhibitions it has hosted. A major retrospective of Anselm Kiefer's work ended in January 2011. This exhibition, the largest of the artist's in the UK for many years, spanned forty years of his work. Major paintings were presented over two floors of the Baltic's galleries, alongside the monumental installation "Palmsonntag". In 2009, "Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and my Head" highlighted works from a career spanning nearly 50 years with two floors dedicated to works from the 1950s to the present. A 2007 exhibition of work by Beryl Cook divided art critics, who could not decide whether her (very popular) self-taught paintings of people going about their daily activities deserved space in an art gallery. "Package Holiday by Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg in 2005 gave visitors the chance to have themselves photographed in the fictitious and digitally-created Gleissenhorn mountain region. In 2004, the Baltic presented a large selection of recent and new paintings by Elizabeth Magill. "Domain Field; Allotment; Body, Fruit, Earth" in 2003 was an extensive solo exhibition by Antony Gormley, creator of the North East landmark 'Angel of the North' which included a major new commission plus existing works. Also in 2003, "Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam" was the first major show in the UK of the Cobra movement and presented works by 20 artists, including paintings and drawings by key figures of the movement Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Constant, Asger Jorn and Carl-Henning Pederson, alongside a selection of film, publications and manifestos. As part of B.OPEN, the Baltic's inaugural exhibition, Julian Opie was commissioned to make new work for both inside and outside of the building. Julian Opie adorned the Level 2 art space and Level 5 Viewing Box, as well as the two glass boxes outside the Baltic on each side of the Millennium Bridge, with outlines of human bodies. these figures, represented in Opie's distinctive graphic style as simple silhouettes in black vinyl (one male, one female) were positioned opposite one another and sometimes together on the gallery walls and surfaces on Levels 2 and 5 as well as on opposite banks of the River Tyne. Other exhibitions have featured local North East, British and international artists (often featuring works with a distinct 'North East' tone to their works, such as Chris Burden's scale model of the Tyne Bridge in Meccano or Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's photographs of industrial wreckage on North Eastern beaches).

Mural Paintings at Castillo de Chapultepec Now on the Web Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:04 PM PDT MEXICO CITY.- From the second half of 2010, the National Museum of History "Castillo de Chapultepec" will include in its web page an interactive guide to the most acknowledged murals that represent the Independence and Revolution struggles, painted in the precinct. The paintings are "Fusion de dos Culturas" (Merger of two Cultures) by Jorge Gonzalez Camarena; "Retablo de la Independencia" (Independence Tableau) by Juan O' Gorman; "Revolucion contra la Dictadura Porfiriana" (Revolution against Porfirian Dictatorship) by David Alfaro Siqueiros, and "Alegoria de la Revolucion Mexicana" (Allegory of Mexican Revolution) by Eduardo Solares Gutierrez.

Frey Norris features Dorothea Tanning's Early Career Paintings Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:03 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Beyond the Esplanade surveys a fascinating period in the career of one of the most intriguing artists and writers of the last century. After extensive travel and living for some time in Sedona, Arizona and the Loire Valley in France, Dorothea Tanning now lives back in New York City, the same city where she came to prominence in 1942. That year Julien Levy, the gallerist who effectively introduced the United States to Surrealism, visited her studio. Levy was so impressed by Tanning's painting "Birthday" (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art), that he quickly offered her a solo exhibition in his eponymous gallery in 1944. This exhibition was well received and positioned Tanning as one of the more significant artists in the country at the time.

Abstract Art in South & North America at the Amon Carter Museum Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:02 PM PDT FORT WORTH, TX.- On June 26, the Amon Carter Museum presents Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s–50s. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first to bring together South American and U.S. geometric abstraction and includes a range of paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films. Constructive Spirit will be on view through September 5; Admission is free.

Retrospective of Photographer Tina Modotti at Kunst Haus Wien Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:00 PM PDT VIENNA.- The photographer Tina Modotti, who was born in 1896 in Udine, Italy and died in 1942 in Mexico, was one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century. She became famous as a result of the photographs she created in Mexico in the 1920s and her involvement in the revolutionary movements of her time. The exhibition at KUNST HAUS WIEN offers an overview of significant areas of her photographic work, which has yet to receive the tribute it deserves: her portraits and studies of plants, her images of the revolutionary movement of the 1920s in Mexico, her marionette photographs, her famous series on the "Women of Tehuantepec", and a selection of little-known vintage prints of photographs that Modotti made of Diego Rivera's murals. On view 1 July through 7 November.

Sprengel Museum Hannover opens ~ 'The Beauty of a Fragile World' Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:59 PM PDT HANNOVER, GERMANY - Franz Marc, August Macke  and Robert Delaunay: In a unique gathering of extraordinary paintings and works on paper, the Sprengel Museum Hannover will show the exhibition "Marc, Macke und Delaunay. The Beauty of a Fragile World (1910–1914)" from 29 March through 19 July 2009. And whilst each of the three artists held the works of the others in high esteem, they all developed their own individual approach and style.

Allentown Art Museum Receives Major Gifts from Peter Grippe Estate Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:57 PM PDT ALLENTOWN, PA.- The Allentown Art Museum recently received a major gift of art and real estate from the estate of the artist Peter Grippe (1912-2002). Grippe, an American mid-century modernist artist whose works were inspired by Cubism, was a talented and inventive sculptor and printmaker who worked and exhibited with the major artists of the mid-20th century, including those from the New York School. "Peter Grippe left behind a substantial body of work, and the museum is honored and grateful to serve as a home for it," said Greg Perry, the Allentown Art Museum 's Priscilla Payne Hurd Executive Director. "The collection will be a boon to our 20th century holdings, and will allow the museum to more fully represent the wave of abstraction that followed and reinterpreted Cubism from the first decades of the century." An exhibition of Grippe's work is scheduled at the museum from January 31-May 16, 2011.

Florence Griswold Museum presents Bessie Potter Vonnoh Exhibition Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:56 PM PDT   OLD LYME, CT- The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, presents the first exhibition devoted to Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955), the leading sculptor of American womanhood of her time and a pioneer among female artists. On view October 11, 2008 through January 11, 2009, Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women spotlights a selection of the artist's small sculpture and garden statuary that portrays women as both icons of beauty and moral guardians of family and home. As the home of the Lyme Art Colony, the Florence Griswold Museum is proud to serve as the first venue for this landmark exhibition organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Collector Julia Stoschek Exhibits Her Collection at The Deichtorhallen Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:53 PM PDT HAMBURG.- For the first time world-wide, the Julia Stoschek Collection has gone on show in a museum context and outside the private home of the collector in Düsseldorf. Across a total space of over 2,000 sq. m. works by over 50 artists from this very young private collection is on display in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. The exhibition title of "I want to see how you see" is taken from the work of the same name by Pipilotti Rist (2003). The exhibition focuses on pieces on film and video, as is the case for the entire Julia Stoschek Collection. They are rounded out by sculptures (e.g., by Nandipha Mntambo), photographic works (e.g., by Thomas Demand, Taryn Simon, Thomas Ruff) and installations (e.g., by Jeppe Hein).

The FEMSA Collection, a Continental Vision at NHCC Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:52 PM PDT Albuquerque, NM - The National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) announces the opening of the traveling exhibition Colección FEMSA, una mirada continental.  Dr. Karen Cordero, Exhibition Curator and Professor in the Art History Department of the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City; and Lic. Rosa María Rodríguez Garza, FEMSA's Cultural Programs Coordinator, present this major exhibition. The exhibition will remain on view through Sunday, August 13, 2006.

Italian Museum Director Seeks Asylum In Germany ~ For Himself, His Staff And His Artworks ~ After Mafia Threats Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:51 PM PDT Casoria Italy (AFP). - An Italian museum director has announced that he is asking for asylum in Germany, saying he is fed up with mafia threats and a government that is failing to protect Italy's rich cultural heritage. "I wrote a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel," said Antonio Manfredi, founder and director of the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in Casoria, an impoverished and crime-heavy town close to Naples in southern Italy. "I'm serious. It's not some kind of performance art. If she gives me asylum, I'm going to pack up my bags and move to Germany with my staff and the museum's entire collection of 1,300 works," said Manfredi, who is also a sculptor. "Germany has been one of the few countries that hasn't cut its culture budget. It gives a lot of money to research unlike here," he said. To make his point, he has even planted a German flag outside the museum.

artnet Auctions Launches 'Faces & Figures' Famous Photographs Sale Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:47 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- From November 10 through19 artnet Auctions is featuring Faces & Figures, a special sale of 375 photographs by 185 renowned modern & contemporary artists. The works offered in the sale celebrate the human form as seen through the lens of some of the greatest photographers of our time. The auction includes portraits of some of the most unforgettable faces of the 20th-21st-century by legendary photographers including Howell Conant, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ron Gallella, Yousuf Karsh and Bert Stern. Stern is perhaps best known for his luminous portraits of Marilyn Monroe. The auction features ten photographs of a flirtatious Monroe taken just weeks before the actress' death in what is now known as the "Last Sitting" (estimates: $4,500-$5,500 each).

Emerson Woelffer solos at Black Mountain College Museum Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:46 PM PDT   Asheville, NC - From February 1 to May 31, 2008, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will present a one-person show, Emerson Woelffer: At the Center and At the Edge, curated by Brian Butler. The opening reception will be from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. on Friday, February 1st. Butler will give a curator's talk at 7:00 p.m.

Arabian Nights : Film Art from the Collection of the Kunstmuseum Bonn Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:45 PM PDT Bonn, Germany - The Kunstmuseum Bonn has at its disposition one of the most important video collections in Germany. Its special significance comes not least of all from the fact that it is comprised of important and rare video works, above all from the 1970s, which the museum took over from the Ingrid Oppenheim Collection. In the seventies and early eighties Ingrid Oppenheim was a central figure in the Rhenish art scene, whose gallery became a platform for media art in ist infancy. After her sudden death in 1986, her collection was donated to the Kunstmuseum and became the basis of the museum's video collection.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 24 Mar 2011 09:44 PM PDT This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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