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

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• Singapore Art Museum Celebrates the Centenary of Liu Kang's Birth
• The Jane Sauer Gallery To Exhibit New Works by Michael Bergt
• Santa Clara University's de Saisset Museum Explores Homelessness
• Prestigious International Galleries Announced for the 2011 Edition of FIAC
• New Book by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp Examines the 1960's Los Angeles Art Scene
• The Off the Wall Gallery Presents a Solo Show of Works by Ciara Lewis
• The Silvana Gallery Presents an International Salon of Traditional Art
• Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) Presents Ricardo Garabito
• Crime and Punishment Explored in Exhibition at Musée d'Orsay in Paris
• Bonhams To Sell Bansky Poster For Greenpeace
• Age of Splendor expands at Metropolitan Museum of Art
• "In His Sixth Decade ~ Prints by Peter Milton" at Jane Haslem Gallery in Washington D.C.
• Mead Art Museum at Amherst College Reopens with Fresh Look
• Micaela Gallery to Feature "Marvin Lipofsky: 1969 - 2009" a Solo Exhibition of Sculpture
• Stephen Haller Gallery presents New Work by Lloyd Martin
• Irish Museum of Modern Art hosts Lucian Freud
• Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center Receives Al Hirschfeld 'Barber Chair'
• Blum & Poe Presents Twelve New Works from Mark Grotjahn's "Face" Series
• Leopold Museum Explores Love, Fear and Death in Edvard Munch's Work
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Singapore Art Museum Celebrates the Centenary of Liu Kang's Birth Posted: 31 Jul 2011 10:20 PM PDT Singapore.- To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Liu Kang, a highly regarded and respected Singapore artist, the National Art Gallery, Singapore is organising "Liu Kang: A Centennial Celebration". Featuring 100 artworks, sketches, writings and artefacts, the exhibition invites art enthusiasts and visitors alike to explore the life and mind of the prolific  artist known for being one of the founders of the Nanyang movement. Visitors can also learn about his artistic beliefs and his insights on art and culture. Since the National Art Gallery will not open until 2015, this exhibition is being hosted by the Singapore Art Museum, where it will be on view until October 16th. The late Liu Kang (1911 to 2004) played a key role in the development of Singapore's art scene. In 1952, along with Cheong Soo Pieng, Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi, Liu made a historic field trip to Bali. The visual inspiration gathered then provided the catalyst for some of his later works. In the eyes of many arts scholars, the Bali trip is regarded as a milestone event contributing to the birth of the Nanyang art style - an important juncture in Singapore's art history. Liu dedicated more than 33 years of his life to art education. He played a leading role in promoting the arts to the community and served as the President of the Society of Chinese Artists for more than a decade. Although the society was located in Singapore, it united artists from all across Southeast Asia, including Thailand and Vietnam. He was also one of the founding members of the Singapore Art Society, which warmly welcomed anyone interested in art, regardless of ethnicity or nationality. Mr Kwok Kian Chow, Director of the National Art Gallery, Singapore, said, "Believing that art is 'the spirit and soul of a people', Liu Kang emphasised the importance of raising artistic standards and art appreciation within the community. A key player in realising the Nanyang School in art, he played a strong and significant influence on the next generation of artists in Singapore. We are happy to put together this exhibition to showcase his distinctive painting style and legacy". Launched in the conjunction with this exhibition is the Gallery's second title in the Asian Artist Series of books featuring the artistic talents of Southeast Asia. Entitled "Liu Kang: Colourful Modernist", the monograph presents Liu Kang in his voyage as an astute observer, commentator and visionary of modernity in Singapore art history. The publication offers fresh insights on the artist's engagement with European and Chinese modernists in a Singaporean context. Previously unpublished archival photographs, along with 200 illustrations, are included in the publication. The National Art Gallery, Singapore is a brand new visual arts institution building upon a sound foundation of scholarship and experience. Over time, they hope to strengthen Singapore's role as a regional and international hub for visual arts. Right in the heart of the Civic District, two monumental buildings — the City Hall and the former Supreme Court — will be refurbished and reborn as the National Art Gallery. At 60,000 square metres, we will not only be the largest visual arts venue in Singapore but also one of the largest in the region when the Gallery opens officially in 2015. The collection's strength lies in its comprehensive representation of Singapore art and its unparalleled holdings of works by major Singaporean artists such as Georgette Chen, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Liu Kang. The collection also includes significant pieces from Southeast Asian artists of international standing, such as Affandi (Indonesia), Latiff Mohidin (Malaysia), Le Pho (Vietnam), Montien Boonma (Thailand) and Fernando Cueto Amorsolo (Phillippines). Apart from exhibitions within Singapore, their collection has also travelled to international museums and has been displayed at leading museums, galleries and institutions in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Visit the museum's website at ... http://nationalartgallery.sg The Singapore Art Museum (SAM), which is hosting this exhibition, opened in January 1996, with the mission of preserving and presenting the art histories and contemporary art practices of Singapore and the wider Southeast Asian region. In pursuit of this aim, SAM has amassed one of the world's largest public collection of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian artworks. Housed in a restored 19th century mission school, the museum draws from its collection and collaborates with leading international museums to present shows covering both local and international art practices, as well as cutting edge art expressions. Contemporary art of the region is given international exposure through the museum's travelling exhibition program and loans from the collection. Through strategic alliances with international arts and cultural institutions, SAM facilitates visual arts education, exchange, research and development within the region and internationally. The museum has forged partnerships with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Seoul National University Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum, Bonn Art Museum, Centre of International Modern Art, National Museum of India, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Asia Society in New York, Fukuoka Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. With Singapore becoming a global city for the arts, SAM's international networks bring about a confluence of ideas, and create a dynamic arts scene invigorated by international flows of ideas, talents, knowledge and resources. Community outreach continues to be an important area of the Museum's function. Through the Museum's exhibition programmes as well as its education and public programmes which cover a diversity of art trends and practices, fringe activities and public lectures, SAM Museum promotes awareness and appreciation of contemporary art and encourages the growth of an active and stimulating cultural environment in Singapore. The museum has hosted a series of travelling exhibitions since its opening, including those featuring works by Liu Kang, Leonardo Da Vinci, Chen Chong Swee, Fan Chang Tien, Lim Tze Peng and Chen Wen Hsi. SAM is also the organiser of the Singapore Biennale 2011. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.singaporeartmuseum.sg

The Jane Sauer Gallery To Exhibit New Works by Michael Bergt Posted: 31 Jul 2011 10:02 PM PDT Santa Fe, NM.- The Jane Sauer Gallery is proud to present Santa Fe artist Michael Bergt's new body of work from August 12th through September 6th, in an exhibition entitled "About Face". Michael Bergt has received attention worldwide for his exceptionally beautiful artworks combined with meaningful narratives relevant to the contemporary human condition. His purpose is to create beauty but also to arrest the viewer's eye by setting forth some seeming contradiction or paradox inherent in our lives: "My intentions are to challenge and identify the perceptions of our mind's eye." A student of the European masters for many years, Bergt mastered his technique and the very difficult medium of egg tempera.  His work astonishes viewers by the way he combines old world draftsmanship--not often seen in contemporary art--with a highly contemporary vision.  His choice of egg tempera and colored pencil as his mediums require mastery and perfection that few living artists can match.

Santa Clara University's de Saisset Museum Explores Homelessness Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:57 PM PDT SANTA CLARA, CA.- This summer the de Saisset Museum opens four thought-provoking exhibitions that examine how artists have responded to homelessness since the 1930s. These exhibitions, which explore a range of historical perspectives and cultural histories, opened Friday, July 29th. Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present compares artistic interpretations of homelessness from the Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s to the stigmatized street people of today—with a focus on California. Featuring works by 30 artists working over the last 75 years, this traveling show documents the tragedy of homelessness and the governments' role in the crisis. Through painting, printmaking, photography, and mixed media, Depression-era and contemporary artists offer glimpses of life on the street and call attention to the many similarities between the eras.

Prestigious International Galleries Announced for the 2011 Edition of FIAC Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:40 PM PDT PARIS.- FIAC 2011 will bring together 1681 galleries of modern and contemporary art, coming from 21 countries. France will be represented by 53 galleries, accounting for 33% of exhibitors, followed by the United States with 27 galleries, Germany with 21 galleries, Italy with 13 galleries, Belgium with 11 galleries, the United Kingdom with 9 galleries and Switzerland with 9 galleries. 73% of participating galleries are European. Brazil, Turkey and South Africa are represented by participating galleries for the first time this year. 37 galleries are newcomers to FIAC or are returning to the event after an absence.

New Book by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp Examines the 1960's Los Angeles Art Scene Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:06 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.-"Rebels in Paradise" recounts the story of how adventurous contemporary art developed in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, and how an "art scene" took off in the city during the '60s. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is especially interested in the "scene" part — of how little-known artists joined together to form a cool cohort, ultimately achieving L.A.'s grand prize: celebrity. She tells us just a little about their work: how Ed Moses busted the borders of the gallery format, how Ed Ruscha integrated words into his paintings, how Robert Irwin and James Turrell discovered light as their medium, and how Judy Chicago explored sexuality and gender in this macho atmosphere. But we learn more about who was sleeping with whom, about prices for art when it was cheap, and about how these West Coast artists came to understand their careers in relation to the entrenched interests in the other art scene they sought to supplant: New York's.

The Off the Wall Gallery Presents a Solo Show of Works by Ciara Lewis Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:05 PM PDT Cardiff, Wales - The Off the Wall Gallery is pleased to present "Ciara Lewis: Road Trip from Wales". Ciara Lewis is an Irish artist based in Wales. Ciara is one of the gallery's most popular and talented artists, having won Off the Wall's X Factor competition. This show will illustrate Ciara's travel around Wales and beyond, including Morocco and other European cites and demonstrates the versatility of her work. Ciara Lewis was born and educated in Dublin, Ireland. She studied art and design at the College of Marketing and Design Dublin before moving to do Textile Printing in West Yorkshire. She moved to London to become a commercial printer before settling in Shropshire in 1992.

The Silvana Gallery Presents an International Salon of Traditional Art Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:01 PM PDT Glendale, CA.- The Silvana Gallery is pleased to present the "International Salon of Traditional Art". This group exhibition features original oil paintings by the gallery's American, Russian and Unkranian artists. "International Salon of Traditional Art" will be on display at the gallery from July 30th through September 7th.

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) Presents Ricardo Garabito Posted: 31 Jul 2011 08:01 PM PDT Buenos Aires.- The Museo de Arte Latinoamerican and Fundación Costantini is proud to present "Ricardo Garabito: Paintings and Drawings" on view at the museum through August 29th. The exhibition presents a selection of historical drawings and recent paintings by the artist Ricardo Garabito (Trenque Lauquen, 1930), a major figure in 20th century art from Argentina.  The show includes thirty-two drawings produced between 1972 and 1982, works largely unknown to the viewing public because they have only been exhibited once before, in 1980 at the Ática Gallery. The central theme of these highly comic and ironic portraits on paper in an array of techniques (pencil, tempera and watercolor) is the human figure. The exhibition also includes a group of fifteen oil paintings created from 1998 to 2011; these works include still lifes and themes taken from daily life. The drawings and paintings by Garabito included in the exhibition make reference to common faces and seemingly irrelevant objects that are transformed by the artist's vision. "In his drawings and paintings, what appears to be explicit is a means to say something else, a key to open the gate to a closed imagination, so that what we see only vaguely due to the negligence born of habit grows sharper and tells us that 'everything' can be seen differently (discovered), with greater pleasure and intensity," states the artist Juan Carlos Distéfano. Garabito dwells on the gesture, which he comes to after close observation of nature and human behavior. In the words of Samuel Oliver –former director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and a friend of the artist-, these are imaginary portraits of persons we can identify. "His models are those strangers who tend to surround us, who walk beside us and leave their essence on the artist's eye, as if filtered through a net. The artist understands and does not judge them. At most, he teases them a little, enacting a peculiar humor," explains Oliver in the text reproduced in the catalogue to this exhibition. In a certain way, Garabito's drawings partake of journalistic photography with its shots that surprise the model. "His drawing is rational due to its technique, imaginative due to the elements it combines, and documentary because it speaks of a topic from these times. Drawing par excellence," Oliver adds. Samuel Paz –who, like Oliver, was an important critic and mentor of Garabito– wrote that the humorous figures that Garabito portrayed, with their specifically Buenos Aires brand of the picaresque, awakened in the viewer a justified suspicion that he himself was object of the irony. In Garabito´s still lifes, on the other hand, the silence of the space and the immanent power of everyday objects prevail. "If these still lifes are marked by meditation and control, the sculptural forms tend towards an unbridledly sensual Surrealism," explained Paz in 1998, on the occasion of the anthological exhibition at the Centro Cultural Recoleta. In 2007, Samuel Paz and Victoria Noorthoorn co-curated a major retrospective of Garabito's work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Far from passing trends, Garabito draws the signs that narrate the world without obeying any external imposition. "In his production, his only desire is to 'make' and the hand that heeds that mandate," Distéfano concludes. Ricardo Garabito is an Argentine artist, drawer, painter and teacher, he was born in Trenque Lauquen in 1930. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he currently lives and works in his studio in the neighborhood of Monserrat. In the early 1950s, he frequented the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes, and from 1953 to 1956 he took studio classes with Horacio Butler. That is where he met Samuel Paz who, along with Samuel Oliver, would be his primary critic and mentor. In 1963, the first solo exhibition of his work was held at the Rubbers Gallery and since then he has participated in numerous group shows in Argentina and abroad. There have been only eleven solo exhibitions of his work, including an anthological show at the Fundación San Telmo (1982); an exhibition in the Cronopios Gallery of the Centro Cultural Recoleta (1998), and a major retrospective at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (2007), which was curated by Samuel Paz and Victoria Noorthoorn and featured more than one hundred works produced from the 1960s to the present. His work forms part of the collections of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Collection of the Banco de la República de Colombia, among others. With an impressive unique permanent collection and a continuous stream of new and exciting temporary exhibitions, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) should be at the top of the list for art lovers visiting Argentina's capital. The museum was created by the Eduardo F. Constantini Foundation as a not-for-profit museum to display (and build on) the collection donated by Eduardo F. Constantini. Since its founding in 2001, The Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires has dedicated itself to the preservation, dissemination, and integration of modern and contemporary Latin American art worldwide. Fundación Costantini, in its dedication to 20th century Latin American art, owns a unique collection that includes the principal tendencies and movements that characterize the region's art in all its mediums, bringing together paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, collages, photographs, installations and artists' objects from Mexico and the Caribbean to Argentina. Located on the tranquil and historic Avenida Figueroa Alcorta in Palermo, Buenos Aires, and close to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the MALBA building was constructed to blend in with its surroundings and encourage a natural interaction between its visitors and the art it showcases. Designed by renowned local architects AFT (Atelman, Fourcade & Tapia), the stunning building provides an airy and luminescent environment, with sectional yet fluid gallery spaces. Visitors seamlessly transition from one period or style of art to the next, the lighting changing throughout the building to best suit the art on display. The mission of the MALBA is to stimulate interest in and knowledge of Latin American art. To achieve this, the museum maintains a dynamic cultural center which serves to constantly highlight and expose the collection, a program of high-quality temporary exhibitions and a library of Latin American films (shown in the museum's theatre Tuesday through Saturday). MALBA also hosts meetings, classes, lectures and seminars with authors and artists. The museum's terrace restaurant and cafe is very highly regarded. Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2011, the MALBA is already visited by almost 1.5 million people every year. Visit the museum's website at ... www.malba.org.ar

Crime and Punishment Explored in Exhibition at Musée d'Orsay in Paris Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:50 PM PDT PARIS.- On 30 September 1981, the French Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals, Robert Badinter, successfully brought about the abolition of the death penalty in France. It had taken two hundred years of discussion to reach this point: from 1791, when Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau addressed the Constituent Assembly and called for the abolition of capital punishment. From 1791 to 1981, from the French Revolution to the present day, there had been two hundred years of passionate debate about the sense and the value of a penalty which, having once depended on the omnipotence of a god or on a king's absolute power - tempered by grace – would now only be meted out, in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, by man, and man alone. But can man be the judge of his fellow man's actions? With a long history of dark inspiration, modern literature has resounded with these struggles, and created many, memorable criminal characters, in works ranging from Sade to Baudelaire and Barbey d'Aurevilly, from Dostoyevsky, whence the title of the exhibition, to Camus' The Outsider... The figure of the murderer, with all his negative energy and complexity, is the dark side of the hero, his ambiguous double, the part of him that transgresses and becomes all the more disturbing for being so seductive. A source of stories for magazines (from Lacenaire to Violette Nozières), and soon after, for illustrated daily newspapers, the powerful fantasy of violent crime was greatly increased through novels and the theatre. Linking murder to sexual abuse even became a must in pulp fiction and in the images this conveyed or evoked. In fact, the contamination of the visual arts by the theme of crime, by newspaper articles, and even by images in the popular press, was another great feature of the century. There are many example of this in painting: from Prud'hon's Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime [Justice et la Vengeance divine poursuivant le Crime] to Valloton's Nemesis, from the Fualdès Affair that so fascinated Géricault, to Delacroix's Louvel, from Victor Hugo's hanged men to Warhol's electric chairs. New subjects, such as the female criminal, appeared and caught the imagination. Condemned by David, rehabilitated by Baudry, then presented once again as a dark character by Edvard Munch, Charlotte Corday joined the ranks of mythical figures, from Lady Macbeth to Lucie de Lamermoor. The issue was also raised of the relationship between madness, genius and crime, from Delacroix's prisoners to those of Egon Schiele. The greatest painters are those whose heightened representations of crime or of capital punishment result in the most striking works. These range from Goya and Géricault to Lautrec and Picasso. Like opera, the cinema was not slow to assimilate the equivocal charms of extreme violence, transformed by its representation into something pleasurable, perhaps even into sensual pleasure. At the end of the 19th century, a new theory appeared purporting to establish a scientific approach to the criminal mind. It was Lombroso - 2009 marks the two hundredth anniversary of his death – who developed this school of anthropology, setting out not only the character traits he claimed were found in criminals, but also the physiological features, like stigmata, all transmitted genetically, in his view, through atavism. Acceptance of this theory also decriminalised the individual to some extent and criminalised his social class and then his race, or at least made them open to scientific investigation, the procedures for which Bertillon would later develop. This theory of anthropology concluded that a man whose fate is preordained by his anatomy, could not be held fully accountable. Theories such as these would have a considerable influence on images in painting, sculpture and photography. As a regular visitor to the courts, like Daumier whom he greatly admired, Degas liked to examine and decipher the faces of the accused, hoping to detect the " science" of the criminologists. And his little Rat in a tutu (The adolescent corps de ballet at the Paris Opera were known as petits rats), far from being an innocent young girl, is a dangerous, plague-mongering animal. Sexual violence also haunted Degas; it could well have led to the excesses of Neo Baroque freneticism in Cézanne's early works; it then appeared in Picasso's work, before finding its full expression in the works of Dix, Grosz and the later works of Munch. Finally we should remember that the motif of the gibbet, the garrotte and the guillotine was ever-present, even though architects were creating panoptic designs for prisons where the individual could be observed at any time. For several years now, a new issue has arisen in relation to crime and punishment: the crime of passion, the compulsive crime of the serial killer, should they be subject to psychiatric investigation and commitment to an asylum, or to the judgement of the court and imprisonment? Beyond crime, there is still the perpetual problem of Evil, and beyond social circumstances, metaphysical anxiety. Art, particularly art between 1820 and1920, can provide a spectacular expression of this. The aesthetic of violence and the violence of the aesthetic - the exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay aims to bring them together through music, literature and a wide range of images. Visit : http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

Bonhams To Sell Bansky Poster For Greenpeace Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:49 PM PDT London -  An original art work by the legendary street artist, Banksy, for a Greenpeace Save or Delete campaign photographic poster, is to be sold at Bonhams, New Bond Street, as part of its Urban Art sale on 11 January 2011. Estimated at £60,000 - 80,000, the unique piece was given to the vendor by the artist himself. The image, which features some of the main characters from Disney's The Jungle Book transposed onto a picture of a devastated forest, was intended for use on posters, billboards and postcards. The previously unseen work shows a masked axe-man preparing to execute Shere Khan, Mowgli, Baloo the Bear, King Louie and baby elephant Hathi Junior, all of whom are blindfolded with their arms tied. King Louie, however, seems more concerned about undoing a banana with his feet. While it was printed, it was never put into circulation because of the protectionist policies at Disney. A version of this poster is illustrated in Banksy's Wall and Piece book. 'Banksy created it with acrylic and marker pen on card and the characters were on a pink background.

Age of Splendor expands at Metropolitan Museum of Art Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:48 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.

"In His Sixth Decade ~ Prints by Peter Milton" at Jane Haslem Gallery in Washington D.C. Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:47 PM PDT Washington D.C.- The Jane Haslem Gallery is pleased to present "In His Sixth Decade: Prints by Peter Milton" until June 30th. Peter Milton is now in his sixth decade as an artist. His most recent prints, which embrace digitally produced imagery, have sent him in another new and perhaps unexpected direction. These new prints are more luminous and three dimensional. Proving, once again, that Milton continues to reinvent himself by pushing his art to another level of visual experience.

Mead Art Museum at Amherst College Reopens with Fresh Look Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:46 PM PDT AMHERST, MA.- On Saturday, July 3, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College unveiled the first in a series of new displays that promise to refresh every gallery in the museum before the start of the 2010-11 academic year. A computer-animated tour of each room as it will appear at the conclusion of the project is available on the Mead's website, www.amherst.edu/museums/mead.

Micaela Gallery to Feature "Marvin Lipofsky: 1969 - 2009" a Solo Exhibition of Sculpture Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:45 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Marvin Lipofsky's use of glass as a gestural artistic material helped to reinvent a centuries-old craft tradition as a Modernist art form. His sculptures crystallize a lifetime of travel and material investigation, as well as the sumptuous colors of the natural landscape, the visceral forms of the body, and the alchemical processes of manipulating blown glass. As an artist, educator, and inveterate traveler, Lipofsky has been an inspirational force throughout the international glass community for more than four decades.

Stephen Haller Gallery presents New Work by Lloyd Martin Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:44 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.-Stephen Haller Gallerypresents an exhibition of new work by American artist Lloyd Martin. The exhibition, entitled Shift, opens January 14th and runs through February 20th, 2010.In this new body of work Martin continues his exploration of the transformative nature of time and use; the decay as well as revitalization of the urban landscape around his studio, which provides the primary inspiration for his rhythmically constructed abstract paintings. Critic Jonathon Goodman writes: "Martin takes on the vigor and grit of modern city life…the surface is gridlike but roughed up, as if the toughness of urban existence had made its way into the painting."

Irish Museum of Modern Art hosts Lucian Freud Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:43 PM PDT Dublin, Ireland - Lucian Freud is arguably the most important and distinguished figurative painter working today. This exhibition comprises some 50 paintings, 20 works on paper and etchings, from the last six decades, several being completed just months prior to the exhibition and others never shown before in a public venue.  The exhibition also includes a selection of photographs of the artist.  Best known for his portraits and nudes, Freud's subjects include his family, friends, lovers and fellow artists. On exhibition 6 June - 2 September 2007.

Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center Receives Al Hirschfeld 'Barber Chair' Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:42 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY - Show-biz caricaturist Al Hirschfeld immortalized the world of theater with his fluid ink-and-pen portraits while seated in a barbershop chair behind a worn century-old drafting desk in the fourth-floor studio of his Manhattan town house. Now, eight years after the celebrated artist's death, his widow is donating the sturdy tools of his trade to the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Hirschfeld, who captured the appearance and personality of theater people for more than half a century with a distinct linear calligraphic style, died in 2003 at the age of 99.

Blum & Poe Presents Twelve New Works from Mark Grotjahn's "Face" Series Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:41 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- Blum & Poe presents our fifth solo exhibition of work by Mark Grotjahn. The exhibition is entitled, "Seven Faces" and will include up to twelve new paintings from Grotjahn's "face" series. Visually reminiscent of Picasso, Grotjahn's "face" paintings intermingle abstract and figurative renderings while dismantling and building on the conventions of modern and contemporary painting. Using sheets of cardboard that are primed and mounted on linen as the ground, Grotjahn employs brush and palette knife to extensively build layer upon layer of oil paint to almost sculptural ends. On View 29 February through 3 April, 2010.

Leopold Museum Explores Love, Fear and Death in Edvard Munch's Work Posted: 31 Jul 2011 07:40 PM PDT VIENNA.- Edvard Munch, one of the most important European artists, stands at the center of the main autumn exhibition of the Leopold Museum. The themes of love, fear and death dominate Munch's oeuvre. The symbol-laden atmosphere lends many of his works an air of uncanniness. The artist's emotional states and inner conflict manifest themselves in drastic pictorial inventions, such as in the works "Angst" and "The Scream." Tragedy in a sexual relationship becomes clear in the painting "Vampire," in which the woman with the snake-like red hair sucks out the blood of her 'male victim.' On view 16 October through 18 January, 2010. The exhibition "Edvard Munch and the Uncanny" contains works ranging from the late 18th century (Piranesi, Goya's "Caprichos") up to the early 20th century. In his 1919 essay on "The Uncanny," Sigmund Freud was then to examine the artistic and psychological concepts that are associated with this term. The uncanny, the inexplicable and the incomprehensible have always been topics in the visual arts (see for example Albrecht Dürer's "Knight, Death and Devil," the uncanny fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch, and Johann Heinrich Füssli's "The Nightmare"). The famous "Carceri" by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, created between 1745 and 1750, impressed his 18th-century audience with their atmosphere of uncanniness and inaccessibility. Francisco de Goya's famous etching "The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters" (ca. 1799) is a step into new thinking; a hundred years later, Sigmund Freud wrote the epochal work The Interpretation of Dreams. After the masterful series by Goya around 1800, it was primarily the works of the Symbolists in Germany, France, Belgium and Italy that were permeated by uncanny ideas. At the end of this long line of artists stand the figures of Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Alfred Kubin, whose works portrayed their own exaggerated fears and emotional states in artistically consummate form. A painting might not, as for example with Munch, seem so uncanny at first, but one senses subliminally the unsettledness from which it arose. Munch and others had the ability to make the hidden visible. In his early Expressionist period (1911 and 1912), Egon Schiele created a number of unsettling, mystical paintings such as "Revelation," "Dead City," "The Self Seer" and "The Hermits," a modern danse macabre. The exhibition offers an in-depth view into the emotional abysses of artistic imaginations. These 'visions of the invisible' transport us into the world of dreams (or nightmares) and ghosts, into the sphere of the occult. The depictions of various fears tell of death, loss and sexuality, or also of 'evil.' 'Symbols of the subconscious' can be discovered behind masks, at the end and the beginning of stairways, in mirrors and in water surfaces of indeterminate depth. The power of secret, unimaginable stories fascinated the artist in many respects. Another recurring theme is 'the uncanny home': Insecurity, fear and danger break into the seemingly secure and familiar ambience of the home. The highlights of the exhibition include, alongside works by Edvard Munch (including "Angst," "Puberty," "The Sick Child," "Madonna" and "Self-Portrait in Hell"), those of Belgian painter James Ensor, paintings by Arnold Böcklin and Gustave Moreau, and Cuno Amiet's triptych "Hope-Caducity," a key work of symbolism. The various connections to the literature of that period can be seen for example in Ensor's and Kubin's reactions to Edgar Allan Poe, or in the illustrations by Felicien Rops for Les Diaboliques by Barbey d'Aureyville. Fascinating are also the works by Fernand Khnoppf and Georges Minne based on Georges Rodenbach's novel Bruges, the Dead City. Alongside the Munch Museum in Oslo, which at over 30 objects is the main lender for this exhibition, other prominent lending institutions include the Musée Victor Hugo in Paris, Kunsthaus Zurich, the National Museum in Oslo, the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, the Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Arts in Turin, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. The 300-page, completely color-illustrated catalog features contributions by art historians, culture experts and psychologists focusing on various aspects of the theme: they examine the significance of the uncanny in the work of Edvard Munch and James Ensor, as well as the influence which 'occultism,' 'magnetism' and 'Mesmerism' had on artists of the day. The 'tipping' of the idyll into the horrifying or irritating in the works of Max Klinger is also examined, as is the special stylistic device of twilight and its meaning. Finally, the psychology of perception is drawn upon in order to shed light on the reasons why we find something to be irritating or fear-inducing or uncanny. Without question, this exhibition owes its character and importance to the great number of major, large-format works by Edvard Munch that will be presented. On the other hand, works by James Ensor (which are seldom seen in Vienna), Alfred Kubin, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and other artists will serve to emphasize the general theme and offer a wider view of the limitless human imagination's artistic offshoots. But most importantly, things that are mysterious or inexplicable will always evoke curiosity and interest. In 1994, the LEOPOLD COLLECTION was consolidated into a foundation by Rudolf Leopold with support from the Republic of Austria and the National Bank of Austria. The core of the collection consists of the most important compilation of works by Egon Schiele in the world. In addition, Austria's Classical Modernism movement is represented by major works by Gustav Klimt, Albin Egger-Lienz, Oskar Kokoschka, Richard Gerstl, and Alfred Kubin among others. There were 5,266 inventoried works of art at the time of the foundation's establishment. Visit : http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/index_en.html

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