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• National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu
• The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo Honors Taro Okamoto on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth
• Bonhams to Sell Outstanding Collection of Archibald Thorburn Paintings
• William Bouguereau ~ An Artistic Revolution at Hirschl & Adler Gallery
• 'Deadly and Brutal' Film Posters from Ghana at The International Design Museum Munich
• Taurus: From Myth to Ritual at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum
• Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza opens Monographic Exhibition Devoted to Henri Fantin-Latour
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents "Art of Two Germanys"
• Age of Splendor expands at Metropolitan Museum of Art
• MoMA hosts ~ Dali: Painting & Film Explores Cinema in the Work of the Surreal Master
• Comprehensive Retrospective Dedicated to the German Painter Eugen Schönebeck at the Schirn In Frankfurt
• Peabody Essex Museum to Host Art Museum Libraries Symposium
• Milwaukee Art Museum to display Figurative Prints ~ 1980's Rewind
• Carroll Dunham exhibits at Skarstedt Gallery
• Kai Althoff at Gladstone Gallery
• Yeshiva University Museum features "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work"
• The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion
• From Mihály Munkácsy to Andy Warhol at Budapest Fine Art Fair '08
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:29 PM PDT Washington D.C.- Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his life and career were very short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. Featuring some 35 paintings, this exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States. Organized by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, in association with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of Art inWashington, the exhibition will be on view at the NGA in Washington from April 10 to July 24, 2011. The son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsue, Gabriel Metsu was born in Leiden in 1629. In 1644, at the age of fifteen, Metsu is recorded as one of a group of artists who were lobbying for the establishment of a Leiden Guild of St. Luke, and in 1648 he became a founder-member of the organization. With the exception of short absences in the early 1650s, he spent the next decade in Leiden. By July 1657, however, he had moved to Amsterdam. On April 12, 1658 he married Isabella de Wolff, a relative of the Haarlem classicist painter Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1652/1653). In January of the next year, Metsu became a citizen of Amsterdam, where he died in 1667 at the age of only thirty-eight. It has been assumed that in addition to the early artistic training he would have received from his father, Metsu also must have studied with Gerard Dou, who was Leiden's leading genre painter during the 1640s. This assumption may well be correct, but is not without problems, given that early works from Metsu's Leiden period tend to be executed in a fairly broad and fluid manner far removed from the meticulously crafted, small-scale paintings of Dou and the other Leiden fijnschilders. With the possible exception of the local painter Jan Steen, Metsu, in fact, seems to have been influenced more by the Utrecht artists Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-c. 1660) and Nicolaus Knüpfer (c. 1603-1655). Interestingly, after moving to Amsterdam, Metsu's style demonstrates more of the high level of detail and finish associated with the Leiden school. The influence of several other artists (notably Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, and Pieter de Hooch) is sometimes very evident in Metsu's work, but despite the existence of a sizeable number of dated paintings, these influences occur without any clear chronological pattern, and it is difficult to establish a structure for Metsu's stylistic development. Metsu's most widely acclaimed paintings are the genre pictures, generally depicting a small number of relatively large figures within an upright composition. In addition to his indoor genre scenes Metsu painted a handful of depictions of outdoor markets, a number of religious subjects and portraits, and a few still lifes. His only known pupil was the genre and portrait painter Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705). Now visited by more than 4.5 million people annually, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) is now one of the world's leading art museums. The NGA was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. Since its inception, the mission of the NGA has been to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassical marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. The modern East Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry and forms an architectural link between the two structures. The East Building provided an additional 56,100 m2 of floor space and accommodated the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule as well as housing an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The two buildings are linked by an underground concourse featuring sculptor Leo Villareal's computer-programmed digital light project "Multiverse". The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world, including an outstanding and highly representative collection of European art. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. Visit the museum's thorough website at .. http://www.nga.gov

The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo Honors Taro Okamoto on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:28 PM PDT Tokyo.- The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo presents an exhibition of works by Taro Okamoto on the 100th anniversary of his birth until May 8th 2011. Taro Okamoto (1911-1996) is probably one of the most well-known artists in Japan during the latter half of the 20th century. He created the 'Tower of the Sun' for Expo '70 held in Osaka, made comments full of impact such as "Art is explosion" and "Art is magic", and frequently appeared on television. Even after his death in 1996, more and more people, especially the young generation, are showing renewed interest in the artist. In 1998, the studio he worked in during his lifetime was opened to the public as the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum. Topics concerning Okamoto never cease to attract our attention. Furthermore, in recent years, his monumental mural Tomorrow's Mythology was rediscovered in Mexico and installed in Shibuya in 2008.

Bonhams to Sell Outstanding Collection of Archibald Thorburn Paintings Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:27 PM PDT London.- An outstanding private collection of 15 works by Archibald Thorburn will feature in the next 19th Century Paintings auction at Bonhams New Bond Street on 13th July 2011.  This follows on from the success of Bonhams 19th Century Paintings auction in January, where "Covey at Daybreak (Partridges)" sold for £192,000 – the second highest price ever paid for a Thorburn painting at auction. The highlight in the collection is the magnificent "Peacock and Peacock Butterfly", at 87.5 x 111.5 cm it is one of the largest of Thorburn's paintings, and it shows a large peacock proudly displaying his extravagant plumage, in contrast to the delicate and beautifully detailed peacock butterfly in the foreground.  Hugh Gladstone wrote in Thorburn's obituary in the Scottish Naturalist, January 1936, "of all his pictures...the most daring was a gigantic one...of a peacock in full display in front of a red rhododendron in full bloom; a gorgeous sunset and woodland as the background...I remember the whole as a riot of colour...both magnificent and accurate." Thorburn later recalled how he had nightmares of endlessly painting the 'eyes' on the peacock tail feathers. Between 19-21 April selected Thorburn highlights from the sale will be on view in Bonham's Edinburgh saleroom: 22 Queen Street, Edinburgh.

William Bouguereau ~ An Artistic Revolution at Hirschl & Adler Gallery Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:25 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Hirschl & Adler Gallery presents William Bouguereau & His Milieu, on view until April 30th, 2011. In the 1950s, the art establishment had a rather narrow view of art and art history. When abstract art was at its peak, Hudson River School paintings by Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt were considered too realistic, too tightly painted and photographic and were often deacessioned by museums and largely ignored by collectors. Similarly, William Bouguereau was customarily derided in art-history lectures. Then along came an artistic revolution; starting with Pop Art and Andy Warhol—who owned a painting by Bouguereau—the canons of art started to broaden.

'Deadly and Brutal' Film Posters from Ghana at The International Design Museum Munich Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:23 PM PDT MUNICH.- Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum Munich presents 'Deadly and Brutal' film posters from Ghana, on view until June 26, 2011. Graphic design from West Africa: Ever since the 1980s, hand-painted posters have advertised Nollywood and locally-made action movies or family dramas in Ghana, not to mention the Hollywood blockbusters and martial arts films from the Far East. The posters originate from the Dr. Wolfgang Stäbler Collection, Rosenheim. The drastic imagery with which the movie theaters and venues whet the potential audience's appetite tends to adapt local myths and religious dogmas from Christian Pentecostal believes alongside advertising elements from Hollywood and Hong Kong. In the posters as in the films, the occult and magic practices play a strong part, as does the antagonism of Good and Evil, the battle waged against the forces of darkness, giving rise, for example, to the noticeable preference for horror movies fueled by the fears of people who find themselves confronting the impenetrable, complex political and economic world of the present. The posters thus go far beyond merely painting an appealingly exotic picture. These examples of African graphic design broaches issues of political correctness, of visual habits and visual traditions, of cultural origins and cultural transfer. The vibrant interaction between individual countries and continents in a globalized world hinges not only on goods, technologies and consumer habits, but also involves what were hitherto foreign aesthetic notions and concepts that can nevertheless emphatically change societies. In sub-Saharan Africa, hand-painted advertising boards for hairdresser salons, take-aways, or native healers are still very much a normal part of street life. In Ghana, a special role is played in this colorful world of images by cinema posters; only in this West African country are there such individually designed 'one-offs", albeit creations that do not lay claim to being art in the Modern European sense. When the first video recorders reached Ghana in the 1980s and gradually a rental structure arose for homegrown movies, in the urbane centers of Accra and Kumasi a host of simple movie theaters arose, usually called "video clubs". All they needed was a walled piece of ground and a TV, not to mentioned a VCR and chairs or benches. Mobile movie-theater operators moved around the country, creating overnight venues with a small electricity generator and simple equipment. Yet the progressive spread of private TVs have since almost put paid to these small cinemas. To this day, hand-painted posters advertise the movie performances. The back of old flour sacks serve as the canvas, and the size of the sacks tends to define the format. The posters are made in small painting studios who act as service providers and make posters, advertising boards and other items, such as portraits or the likenesses of Rock stars, soccer players, and popular politicians. Many of the representations are dramatically exaggerated and at times have little in common with the content of the films. Flashes of lightning and pots full of blood or magical potions allude to magical practices; rays from the eyes or mouth emphasize the figure's aggression. Then there are mythical figures such as the female demon Mami Water in the guise of a mermaid or as a three-headed creature. Themes from international films are often simply incorporated as bits of the posters, sometimes simply adopted into the respective Ghanaian visual idiom.

Taurus: From Myth to Ritual at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:20 PM PDT BILBAO,SPAIN.- From prehistoric times to the Roman age, the bull had pride of place in Mediterranean culture and art, and the image of this magnificent beast appears in myths, ritual ceremonies, games and fiestas. The Renaissance also favoured the iconography of the bull, particularly in connection with the myths of the Minotaur and the Rape of Europa. From the 16th century, art also reflected contemporary interest in representations of the bullfight. On exhibition 7 June through 5 September.

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza opens Monographic Exhibition Devoted to Henri Fantin-Latour Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:19 PM PDT MADRID.- The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid is presenting Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), the first major monographic exhibition to be devoted in Spain to this French painter. It has been organized in conjunction with the Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, where it can be seen this summer. The exhibition features a comprehensive selection from the artist's oeuvre comprising 70 paintings, drawings and prints loaned from museums and institutions around the world. Using a chronological arrangement that follows Fantin-Latour's career through the second half of the 19th century, the exhibition includes some of his most famous paintings, among them group portraits of family members and friends, interiors with figures and realist still lifes, as well as allegorical and musical fantasies. On exhibition 29 September through 10 January, 2010.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents "Art of Two Germanys" Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA - The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures (on view January 25 to April 19, 2009), the first major exhibition in the United States to examine the range of art created during the Cold War. Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures continues LACMA's tradition of thematic explorations of twentieth century German art in its political, social, and historical contexts and is co-curated by LACMA's Stephanie Barron and Eckhart Gillen of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH.

Age of Splendor expands at Metropolitan Museum of Art Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:14 PM PDT New York City - The galleries of 19th-century European painting and sculpture are the Metropolitan Museum's most popular attraction. And after they were closed for renovation in August, some very sad scenes ensued. Tourists expecting Monets and Renoirs by the roomful left the museum distraught, hopes dashed. Met regulars who count on having certain things just so — Cézanne's "Card Players" right there, in that gallery, on that wall, forever — wandered about in a daze, their coordinates thrown off.

MoMA hosts ~ Dali: Painting & Film Explores Cinema in the Work of the Surreal Master Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:12 PM PDT NEW YORK CITY - The Museum of Modern Art presents Dalí: Painting and Film, the first exhibition to focus on the profound relationship between the paintings and films of Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989). The exhibition proposes that Dalí's personal engagement with cinema—as a filmgoer, a screenwriter, a filmmaker, and an art director—was fundamental to his understanding of modernism and deeply affected his art. Comprising a gallery presentation of more than 130 paintings, drawings, scenarios, letters, and films. The exhibition is on view from June 29 to September 15, 2008, with the first film program beginning on June 20.

Comprehensive Retrospective Dedicated to the German Painter Eugen Schönebeck at the Schirn In Frankfurt Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:11 PM PDT FRANKFURT, GERMANY - From February 23 to May 15, 2011, the Schirn museum  presents a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the German painter Eugen Schönebeck, which will feature almost all of his surviving paintings and his most important drawings. After devoting himself to Tachist drawing in his beginnings, Schönebeck turned to figurative drawing and painting and was one of the first German artists to thematize the traumatic experiences of World War II. He created unique works combining the abstract and the figurative. In 1961 and 1962, he and Georg Baselitz pilloried the jaded bourgeois art world in their two "Pandemonic Manifestos". In the mid-1960s, Schönebeck's growing awareness of the Socialist intellectual world inspired the artist to create timeless portraits of various "Heroes of the East," none of which were produced for propaganda purposes. In these pictures, Schönebeck not only examined the character and behavior of revolutionaries such as Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao, but also fathomed the significance of the artist's willingness to take risks. Schönebeck's paintings and drawings were indeed ahead of their time, and to this very day the issues they deal with have retained their topicality. Comprising thirty paintings and an equal number of drawings, the exhibition at the Schirn shows the first extensive survey of Schönebeck's oeuvre after the retrospective prepared by the Kestnergesellschaft Hannover in 1992.

Peabody Essex Museum to Host Art Museum Libraries Symposium Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:06 PM PDT SALEM, MA.- Libraries, archives, and museums face similar challenges. Libraries and archives affiliated with art museums have a second layer of concerns to consider in determining how they best relate to their parent institution. The Peabody Essex Museum's (PEM) Phillips Library will host a symposium on September 23 and 24, 2010 to explore the issues associated with this very question.Major topics to be addressed include:

Milwaukee Art Museum to display Figurative Prints ~ 1980's Rewind Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:05 PM PDT MILWAUKEE, WI. - Milwaukee Art Museum to display Figurative Prints: 1980s Rewind focuses on an art-historical moment when the figure returned as a dominant subject of artistic expression. Following on the heels of Minimalism and Conceptualism, the resurgence of the figure coincided with a renewed interest in image-making and the sensuality and emotionality of the painted surface. The trend in figuration spanned the globe, but it was especially prominent in the work of American, German, and Italian artists who returned to familiar images, including myth, allegory, and narrative.

Carroll Dunham exhibits at Skarstedt Gallery Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:03 PM PDT   New York City - Bigger names have come and gone, but few careers in painting have been more consistently interesting over the last 25 years than Carroll Dunham's. Mr. Dunham, who is 58 and lives in New York, is known for his cartoonish paintings of blockheaded men with penis-shaped, bullet-firing noses, who star in hectic stories of sexual conflict and global warfare. Driven equally by rage, anxiety and hilarity, his paintings deliver an uncommonly potent combination of formal punch, narrative intrigue and metaphorical resonance.

Kai Althoff at Gladstone Gallery Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:02 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Someone who saw the work said the following: "The images herein depict mundane and fantastic situations enacted by human and animal souls, figures ill and ecstatic about the situations they have been granted. Some figures cannot help but stare or grab at each other, while others step on their companions, soiling any hope of communion. Their wills, like twisted wicks, burn distinct but unified fires. They are composed of several species but they cannot tell themselves apart, awakening loathsome blood in the veins of each body. With sycophantic excitement they conduct every modern day sacrament—murder, construction, commerce, and hygiene (among others). Yet their tangled wills act not in the name of altruism or holiness, but from their everlasting yearning for life's sweet spots and the age-old wish to dissociate from (or marry) all carnal cravings. These acts set the figures at odds with their surroundings, as flowers ill through winter's scour."

Yeshiva University Museum features "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work" Posted: 05 Apr 2011 09:01 PM PDT New York City -  After more than 30 years of portraying the human figure with a neo-expressionist style, Michael Hafftka turns to his Jewish heritage for subject matter and inspiration in his new exhibition, "I of the Storm: Michael Hafftka, Recent Work," at the Yeshiva University Museum. Frequently compared to the painters Soutine, Goya and Rouault, Hafftka here makes use of mystical images, biblical themes and the Hebrew alphabet in watercolors and oils.  The exhibition runs through August 30, 2009. Gallery Talk: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 1:00 pm

The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion Posted: 05 Apr 2011 08:59 PM PDT   COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is extremely excited to host The Eclectic Eye: Pop and Illusion – Selections from the Frederick OR. Weisman Art Foundation as the inaugural exhibition in the new traveling exhibition galleries. The 150 works in the exhibition draw from Weisman's great passion for pop art and illusionistic art from the 1960s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, from such artists as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, David Hockney, Duane Hanson, and Keith Haring, among others.

From Mihály Munkácsy to Andy Warhol at Budapest Fine Art Fair '08 Posted: 05 Apr 2011 08:57 PM PDT   BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - Mihály Munkácsy, Béla Kádár, Andy Warhol, André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy,  just to name a few artists whose works of art can be admired at this year's Budapest Art Fair antique and contemporary exhibition and fair in the Mucsarnok (Art Hall) between 20 and 23 November 2008. The antique and contemporary exhibition, looking back to a period of 15 years and renewed last year both in its name and profile, is the most significant event of arts in Hungary, that gradually became a cultural event on the international scene too. Over the years the exhibition introduced under the name of Antique Interior in the Ethnographic Museum 15 years ago has undergone spectacular changes. The exhibition was launched simultaneously with the rebirth of the Hungarian art treasure market.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 05 Apr 2011 08:57 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.

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