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

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• The Wellcome Collection in London Shows Mexican Miracle Paintings
• The Oceanside Museum of Art Shows the Art of the Duckman Creator ~ Everett Peck
• The Evansville Museum of Arts & Science exhibits "Mars Update"
• The Detroit Institute of Arts To Display "Detroit Revealed: Photographs, 2000-2010"
• The Weatherspoon Art Museum Presents Visiting Artist ~ Tom Burckhardt
• The Museo del Prado shows Goya's "The Victorious Hannibal" for Six Years
• Bonhams to Sell JMW Turner painting of Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard
• Portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron at Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs
• The Frick Collection Features "Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921 ~ Reinventing Tradition"
• Salvador Dali and Contemporary Surrealism on View at the Kunsthalle Vienna
• The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts To Host "Fabergé Revealed"
• STUX Gallery presents "On Love? On War?" ~ Contemporary Chinese Artists
• Chelsea Art Museum shows Federico Uribe’s "Human Nature"
• Alejandra Laviada Presents Her First Solo Exhibition in Madrid
• Seven New Oil Paintings by Malcolm Morley at Xavier Hufkens
• First Solo Exhibition of Paintings by Roya Akhavan at LTMH Gallery
• Chen Qiuchi Solos at Art Statements Gallery
• Arne Quinze Builds a New Installation on a Bridge in Rouen
• The ArtScience Museum Exhibits Salvador Dali "Mind of a Genius"
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Wellcome Collection in London Shows Mexican Miracle Paintings Posted: 04 Oct 2011 11:07 PM PDT London.- The Wellcome Collection is pleased to present "Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings" on view from October 6th through February 26th 2012. Mexican votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. 'Infinitas Gracias' features over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the north: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition will illustrate the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico. Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories, from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence, through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read. The votives displayed in 'Infinitas Gracias' date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The votives are intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life - lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment - in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve. 'Infinitas Gracias' will explore the reaction of individuals at the moment of crisis in which their strength of faith comes into play. The profound influence of these vernacular paintings, and the artists and individuals who painted them, can be seen in the work of such figures as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who were avid collectors. The contemporary legacy of the votive ritual will be present in the exhibition through a wall covered with modern-day offerings from one church in Guanajuato: a paper shower of letters, certificates, photographs, clothing and flowers, through which the tradition of votive offering continues today. The sanctuaries at Guanajuato and Real de Catorce remain centres of annual pilgrimage, attracting thousands of people to thank and celebrate their chosen saints. The Wellcome Collection is a unique mix of galleries, and events, the world-famous Wellcome Library, a café, bookshop, conference centre and members' club. It brings to life Sir Henry Wellcome's vision of a place where people could learn more about the development of medicine through the ages and across cultures. The Wellcome Collection is free to visitors and describes itself as the "destination for the incurably curious". Located at 183 Euston Road, London, it explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. The venue offers visitors contemporary and historic exhibitions and collections, lively public events, the world-renowned Wellcome Library, a café, a bookshop and conference facilities. Established under Sir Henry Wellcome's will in 1936, the Wellcome Trust is now the world's largest independent charitable foundation funding research into human and animal health. Part of Wellcome Collection, the Library has more than 750 000 books and journals and an extensive range of manuscripts, archives and films. The Library also includes Wellcome Images, a major visual collection. Through its collections and services, the Wellcome Library provides insight and information to anyone seeking to understand medicine and its role in society, past and present. More than 30 000 readers visit each year, including historians, academics, students, health professionals and members of the general public. Wellcome Images is one of the Wellcome Library's major visual collections and also forms part of Wellcome Collection. Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique image collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and science. Whether you're looking for medicine or magic, the sacred or the profane, or science or satire - you'll find more than you expect. This unrivalled collection contains historical images from the Wellcome Library collections, Tibetan Buddhist paintings, ancient Sanskrit manuscripts written on palm leaves, beautifully illuminated Persian books and much more. The Biomedical Collection holds more than 40 000 high-quality images from the clinical and biomedical sciences. Selected from the UK's leading teaching hospitals and research institutions, it covers disease, surgery, general healthcare, and sciences from genetics to neuroscience, including the full range of imaging techniques. The Wellcome Image Awards reward contributors for their outstanding work; winners are chosen by a panel of experts. Visit the collection's website at ... http://www.wellcomecollection.org

The Oceanside Museum of Art Shows the Art of the Duckman Creator ~ Everett Peck Posted: 04 Oct 2011 10:30 PM PDT Oceanside, CA.- The Oceanside Museum of Art is pleased to present "It's Not My Fault: The Art of Everett Peck", on view at the museum through January 29th 2012. Although most well-known for his television series Duckman (1994-1997, USA Network), Everett Peck is a multifaceted artist: an animator, a cartoonist, an illustrator, and a painter. "It's Not My Fault" showcases Peck's work over the past thirty years and traces his evolution as an artist from his early concept sketches to his recent large-scale paintings, which humorously explore the pop culture of modern America and its intersection with everyday life.  Also on display will be illustrations, sketch books and preliminary and concept drawings from Peck's extensive animation work. Regardless of the medium, Peck uses his unmistakable illustrative style to humorously point out the quirks and eccentricities of our time.

The Evansville Museum of Arts & Science exhibits "Mars Update" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 10:08 PM PDT Evansville, IN. - The Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science is pleased to present "Mars Update" at the Koch Planetarium through November 27th. It has been seven years since the two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, touched down on Mars and began their mobile exploration of the red planet. Where are they now? Are they still working? Three years ago, another Lander, Phoenix touched down and operated for five months in the artic region of Mars. What did it find? This special planetarium show, "Mars Update", will answer these questions and in the process, share with its audience the latest news from Mars.

The Detroit Institute of Arts To Display "Detroit Revealed: Photographs, 2000-2010" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 09:53 PM PDT Detroit, MI.- The Detroit Institute of Arts is proud to present "Detroit Revealed: Photographs, 2000-2010", on view at the museum from October 16th through April 8th 2012. The exhibition provides windows into the experience and meaning of Detroit in the first decade of a new millennium, and explores recent photographic practice grounded in the character of the Motor City. The exhibition presents portraits, architecture and documentary photographs and videos by eight artists inspired by Detroit. The artists shed light on life in the city during a time characterized by unique challenges that continue to influence the landscape and society of Detroit in the post-automotive era. More than 50 large-scale color and traditional black-and-white photographs by Michelle Andonian, Carlos Diaz, Scott Hocking, Andrew Moore, Alec Soth and Corine Vermeulen are included. Photography and video by Dawoud Bey and Ari Marcopoulos are also featured.

The Weatherspoon Art Museum Presents Visiting Artist ~ Tom Burckhardt Posted: 04 Oct 2011 09:15 PM PDT Greensboro, NC.- The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is pleased to present "Tom Burckhardt: Falk Visiting artist". Tom Burkhardt investigates the artistic process, particularly the dilemma of the contemporary painter, in his innovative and humorous works. His exhibition at the Weatherspoon includes Elements of a Painting, a large-scale wall installation that destabilizes the grand tradition of painting through the use of old book pages as a surface. In the work, Burckhardt asks us to "read" and dissect a library of shapes associated with the painted image. Similarly, he uses vintage, clothbound book covers to create a large series of acrylic and colored pencil works (the titles of the works are derived from the titles of the books). Though these works may initially appear as geometric abstractions, Burckhardt's ambiguous forms and the suggestion of either a horizon line or division between two planes (created by the seam between the two parts of the book cover) beckon towards a narrative interpretation.

The Museo del Prado shows Goya's "The Victorious Hannibal" for Six Years Posted: 04 Oct 2011 08:39 PM PDT MADRID.- The display of The Victorious Hannibal at the Museo del Prado offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to see one of the most important and impressive works from Goya's early career. Painted in the spring of 1771, it falls within a period not previously represented in the Prado's rich and remarkable collection of the artist's works. Through an agreement reached between the Museum and the Fundación Selgas-Fagalde to promote and disseminate their respective collections and the artistic heritage that these institutions house, Goya's work is being shown at the Prado alongside his Italian Notebook, a sketchbook that he acquired during his time in Italy (1769-71). Among numerous other drawings and annotations, it contains sketches for the composition of The victorious Hannibal and its principal figures, namely Hannibal and the bull's head of the allegorical figure of the River Po, which the Carthaginian general crossed. The painting was restored and studied at the Prado in 1993 and exhibited there from January to March 1994 in conjunction with the Museum's acquisition of Goya's Italian Notebook.

Bonhams to Sell JMW Turner painting of Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard Posted: 04 Oct 2011 08:15 PM PDT LONDON.- A beautiful watercolour of Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard by Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851) is to be offered for auction as part of the 19th Century Paintings sale on Wednesday 25th January 2012, at Bonhams New Bond Street, London. The watercolour of a lyrical English landscape has not been seen at auction since 1884 and is estimated to bring £200,000-300,000, British Pounds. In this work Turner has painted the scene of the River Lune from the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Kirkby Lonsdale, with a group of children playing in the foreground.

Portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron at Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs Posted: 04 Oct 2011 08:14 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- An exhibition of portraits by 19th century British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron will be on view at Hans P. Kraus Jr. Fine Photographs from October 4th through November 18th. Julia Margaret Cameron marks the first time in more than a dozen years that an exhibition of her work has been shown in New York City. More than 20 albumen prints from 1864 to 1874 will be on view. Most of the photographs were gifts from the artist to her niece, Adeline Maria Jackson; they have remained in the family ever since and have never been exhibited. A fully illustrated catalogue by the photographic historian Dr. Larry J. Schaaf will accompany the exhibition.

The Frick Collection Features "Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921 ~ Reinventing Tradition" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:59 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Pablo Picasso was one of the world's greatest draftsmen. Drawing was his primary medium for thinking, problem solving, invention, and personal expression. It was the link that connected his work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, theater design, and ceramics, and was a direct tie to his predecessors. Picasso's diverse body of original work on paper broke new ground, while also consciously incorporating aspects of the tradition from which it sprang. This autumn, The Frick Collection presents an exhibition of more than sixty drawings (works in pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, pastel, and chalk) spanning the first thirty years of Picasso's career, from his first signed drawing to works from the early 1920's. On exhibition 4 October through 8 January. During these same years, museum founder Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) was acquiring masterpieces from the early Renaissance through the end of the nineteenth century. Frick and Picasso shared an appreciation of the same artistic heritage, the former as collector, the latter as creator. An innovator who both challenged and continued the grand European tradition celebrated at the Frick, Picasso belongs to the Collection as its most irrepressible offspring, although not actually represented in its holdings. The many references to the works of El Greco, Goya, Ingres, Renoir and others that run through his drawings link them indirectly with the museum's permanent holdings, while the sheets exude the radical new spirit of the early twentieth century. Beginning and ending in a classical mode, this period encompasses some of the most important steps in his career: his traditional academic training, his early encounters with works by modern and Old Master artists, his creative interaction with pre-classical and tribal art, his invention with Georges Braque of cubism and papier collé, and his postwar alternation between cubism and classicism—the groundwork for all the developments in his later career. This major exhibition also travels to Washington D.C. and will be shown at the National Gallery of Art from January 29 through May 6, 2012. . The exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. An accompanying catalogue has been underwritten by the Center for Spain in America and The Christian Humann Foundation. Curator comments by Galassi, "The past decade has witnessed a spurt of activity focusing on Picasso's relationship with the Old Masters and his nineteenth-century predecessors, as well as with non-Western arts. However, this topic has not been examined specifically in terms of his drawing, where many of these references and relationships first appear. As drawing is a common language passed down and embellished by artists over generations, this particular area of the art of Picasso seemed ready-made for exploration. We have not tried to make direct comparisons between Picasso's drawings and those of other artists, but to show the breadth and range of references on both a technical and stylistic level that give an historical grounding to his remarkable innovations and inventions—as well as his awareness of coming at the end of a great chain of artists." A YOUNG IN TRAINING As the son of a drawing instructor and provincial painter, José Ruiz Blasco, Picasso started to draw at a very young age. His formal academic education began in 1892 and continued over a period of five-and-a-half years. His Study of a Torso of 1895, rendered in pencil after a cast of a figure from the pediment of the Parthenon, shows the fifteen-year-old's thorough working knowledge of rules of proportion, linear perspective, and chiaroscuro. Through such exercises, he learned the conventions for rendering the illusion of three-dimensional objects on a flat surface and absorbed principles of form handed down from antiquity and the Renaissance. Academic drawings such as this one are considered a means to an end, rather than independent artworks, conduits for transmitting the common language of classical art through an approved canon of models. Picasso would undoubtedly have also grasped through these exercises a sense of the endless possibility of formal and technical variation that connect generations of artists. At sixteen, Picasso entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. After a few months, however, he felt he had absorbed what was useful to him from academic training and left. He spent his days making copies after works by the Spanish masters in the Prado, drew from life with an informal group of artists, and filled sketchbooks with observations from his everyday surroundings. His rebellion extended beyond the academy, and he rejected the conventional career path his father had envisioned for him: climbing the ladder to a professorship through juried exhibitions. Returning to Barcelona, Picasso immersed himself in the thriving Catalan fin-de-siècle movement of Modernisme and worked briefly as an illustrator and designer of posters. Following his debut in February 1900 in his first solo exhibition at a local tavern, Picasso drew the Self-Portrait of 1901–2. The drawing captures the energy and searching quality of a young artist attempting to establish himself in both modernist circles and in the grand tradition. Allusions to self-portraits by Poussin and Delacroix in the Louvre give a sense of his expanded horizons and of the place he sought to claim in his new milieu. In technique, the black chalk strokes form a force field around the head, recalling portraits by Van Gogh. The combination of references to Old Master and modern art would remain a feature of his drawing. MOVE TO PARIS In Paris, where he settled permanently in 1904 and where he would spend most of his career, Picasso was uniquely situated in time and place to create his combustive mix of traditional means and new formulations. Available to him were the Louvre's extraordinary collections of painting and sculpture from antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century, and also an abundance of work by the revolutionary artists of the preceding generation—Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Gauguin—many of whom were still active. More to the point for his development as a draftsman, he also had access to the sweep of Western European drawing from the medieval period to the present. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, Paris was a major center for the display and sale of historic drawings. Paradoxically, as the emphasis on training in the classical manner diminished with the decline of the academic system and the rise of modern art, Old Master and nineteenth-century drawings were being more widely shown in exhibitions than they had been at any other time in the past. At the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Roger Marx, a critic and passionate advocate for drawing, helped to organize a temporary exhibition on an unprecedented scale, featuring 1,400 sheets from public and private sources. A 1900 handbook of the Louvre lists 2,500 works on display on two floors. Original works by Pisanello, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Dürer, Correggio, Rembrandt, and Ingres, to name only a few, were accessible to the public in Paris in the early twentieth century in greater quantity than at any previous point. At the same time, new developments in photographic methods of reproduction were bringing master drawings out of the connoisseur's cabinet and making them available to a broader public through both luxury editions and more widely mass-produced portfolios. Picasso's academic training connected him to generations of artists who were formed through the same methods. His discerning eye would have quickly picked up ideas from his predecessors wherever he saw them. Although this kind of theft is part of the normal process for every artist, the wealth and breadth of direct and indirect references in his work to motifs, manners, and techniques of earlier artists strongly suggest that Picasso envisioned from the outset a place for himself in the grand tradition of drawing, which he aimed to perpetuate in reinvented form. Drawing was both a deeply serious and a playful pursuit for Picasso, and he took enormous pride in it. Throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, he made use of drawing in the traditional way as preparatory studies leading to multi-figure compositions in oil, and as independent works in pastel, watercolor, and gouache, examples of which are included in the show. Driven by his own expressive imperatives and responding to the general zeitgeist, he experimented with a variety of manners of representation. Some works in the exhibition show him weaving together disparate manners of different eras into a new, complex entity. His large-scale gouache on cardboard, Acrobat in Blue of 1905, depicting a brooding adolescent in worker's overalls, shows his awareness of Cézanne's pared-down portraits. It has affinities as well with the simple and direct manner of early Renaissance artists, such as the Italian and French primitives, whose works were then the subjects of an important publication and a ground-breaking exhibition. While the head of the acrobat is delicately modeled with touches of pink and white, the outlines of the body are pronounced, emphasizing the hybrid nature of this work as a drawn painting. REWORKING THE HUMAN BODY, EXPERIMENTS IN FORM AND SPACE In Yellow Nude of 1907, at right, a figure study related to his landmark painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of the same year, Picasso, like his Spanish forebears Jusepe Ribera and Francisco de Goya, found an outlet for his prodigious imagination through radical reworkings of the human body. The aggressiveness of the posture, ferocity of the masklike head, vibrant color, and bold brushwork encapsulate in one full-scale study of a single figure Picasso's violent breaking away from the accepted norms of representation. In the final painting, he confronted head-on the concept of mimetic depiction that underlies Western European art from the Renaissance onward; in the study, however, aspects of traditional draftsmanship remain. The figure, seen from below, stands in contrapposto and strikes a pose with hands behind the back, like a live model on a dais. The slashing red and black parallel lines suggest the striations often found on tribal masks. During the years between 1909 and 1914, Picasso worked in a close creative collaboration with Georges Braque. The two artists embarked on a series of exhilarating formal experiments that changed the course of twentieth-century art. Picasso's 1909 drawing Still Life with Chocolate Pot partakes of a long tradition by Spanish masters of austere still lifes depicting a few everyday objects but shows Picasso's movement toward a more structural language, building on the example of Cézanne's constructive brushstroke and the loosening of linear perspective. Here, the objects rest on a radically upturned tabletop that pushes them to the surface of the sheet, and he creates tension between the sleek planes and sharp angles. Such experiments with form and space led to cubism, which we see here in its early stages. PAPIER COLLÉ AND BEYOND In his Cup of Coffee of 1912, Picasso takes inventive aim at the underlying methods and assumptions of naturalistic representation. This work and several other papiers collés form a climactic endpoint to a suite of works in various media on the time-honored theme of the still life with a musical instrument. Here, a guitar and a cup of coffee rest on a table with a fringed covering in an interior setting (referred to through a scrap of actual wallpaper). The drawing is an exhilarating battleground for dominance between different modes and methods of representation, and between the real and the represented. Hand-drawn parts of the guitar work with and against cutout shapes of paper that stand for other parts of the instrument. Picasso challenges the viewer to assemble the whole made of disparate parts that collide spatially and conceptually. The papier collé challenges previously held concepts of what constitutes a drawing and enlarges the field on multiple levels. While bursting boundaries, literally and figuratively, in their intrinsic beauty and grandeur, works such as the Cup of Coffee, at right, also appear to be homages to the grand tradition of drawing. The blue and gray pieces of pasted paper and the tan ground are all standard colors of fine art paper used as drawing supports by artists for centuries. They lend to this radical work the look of an Old Master sheet, as if Picasso had literally cut up the past—the methods, materials, techniques, and supports of the rich history of drawings—and reassembled them to form a new order that literally incorporates into itself the history against which they are to be read. By the onset of World War I, cubism was becoming the lingua franca of the avantgarde, and Picasso chose to distance himself from any semblance of a "school." He worked instead in a variety of manners simultaneously. For example, he made occasional drawings in a meticulous style inspired by Ingres, as seen at left in his Portrait of Madame Georges Wildenstein of 1918. Such delicately rendered portraits showcase his graphic skills as on a par with Ingres. Here he renders the heavy volumes of the chair and figure of the subject in pure line, depicting her head and neck in a contrasting sculptural, illusionistic mode. Yet, Picasso introduces disjunctions in his drawing that carry his cubist sensibility back into the realm of naturalism and which mark this portrait as distinctly his own creation. An invitation from the poet Jean Cocteau to collaborate on a ballet that was to be produced by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes opened new vistas to Picasso through his working with avant-garde musicians and choreographers. The experience also renewed his longstanding love of the commedia dell'arte, which had featured prominently in his art in the early years of the century. Following the premiere of the Ballets Russes's production of Pulcinella, for which Picasso made set and curtain designs and one costume design, he created his dazzling gouache Pierrot and Harlequin, in a flattened cubist manner. Here he continues to play with representational modes, juxtaposing realistically and diagrammatically defined hands. INSPIRED BY THE ART OF ANTIQUITY Picasso's work with the ballet took him to Rome in the spring of 1917, his first direct contact with the art of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. He traveled to the sites and museums of Florence, Naples, Herculaneum, and Pompeii, and renewed his powerful ties to the classical Mediterranean heritage of his homeland. Picasso returned to a sculptural mode in many of his drawings of the early 1920s. In 1921 he spent the summer in the village of Fontainebleau, in close proximity to the Renaissance château with its frescoes by Italian mannerist artists and gardens with fountains and statuary. During this exceptionally fruitful period and in the months following his return to Paris, Picasso produced a group of works in a variety of media featuring robust, monumental female figures, both contemporary and classical. In the one of these drawings, Head of a Woman, the chalky surface and chiseled features evoke a generic GrecoRoman head with its smooth surface, deep-set blank eyes, and simplified form, as seen in the continuous line of the arc of the brow and the straight line of the nose. This sheet recalls the drawings Picasso made from prints and casts after classical sculpture during his first years at the academy to learn the conventions of classical draftsmanship. Like the most disembodied of his cubist figure drawings, this monumental work is about the artifice of art—particularly of drawing. With equal affinity to both painting and sculpture, this tour-de-force of draftsmanship takes a place in a long line of variations on classical forms and themes with a contemporary twist: the close-up view and cropping of the image are also evocative of photography. Visit The Frick Collection at : http://www.frick.org/

Salvador Dali and Contemporary Surrealism on View at the Kunsthalle Vienna Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:51 PM PDT Vienna.- The Kunsthalle Vienna is proud to present "Le Surréalisme, c'est moi!" from June 22nd through October 23rd. "Le Surréalisme, c'est moi!" continues the Kunsthalle Vienna's series of exhibitions which presents the work of major artists from the first half of the twentieth century in a fascinating dialogue between Modernism and present day art based on philosophical, art historical and sociological questions in order to reassess the role of art and the artist in society and popular culture. "Le Surréalisme, c'est moi!" presents the works of Salvador Dalí alongside the contemporary artists Louise Bourgeois, Glenn Brown, Markus Schinwald and Francesco Vezzoli. Eccentric, madman, or genius? Both with his oeuvre and his provocative manner, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) abandoned the boundaries between art and life, originality and commercialism as nearly no other twentieth century artist did. He gave form to his visions of Surrealism, the aesthetic fusion of dream and reality, which manifests itself in delusions, states of fever and intoxication or delirium, in almost all media of art, but also in the way he presented himself. Translating the principles of his so called paranoiac critical method and being recognized all over the world with such motifs as the melting clock, the burning giraffe, or endlessly vast landscapes steeped in cool sunshine, Dalí not only ranks among the most famous painters. He was also one of the first artists who devoted himself to design, cinema, and the sphere of mass media and pursued marketing strategies that have come to be primarily associated with the name of Andy Warhol. Dalí countered the method preferred by the Surrealists around André Breton, who strove to evoke images of the unconscious through a passive state of the ego by means of the écriture automatique, with an ostentatious individualism and reacted polemically to the group's accusations denouncing him as a fascist and his expulsion: "I am not a Surrealist. I am Surrealism. Surrealism is not a party or a label; it is a state of mind, unique, to each his own, that can be affected by no party line, taboo, or morality. It is the total freedom to be and the right to absolute dreaming." Surrealism was regarded as a way of living by the multimedia artist, who engaged himself in almost every field of cultural production, designed stage sets, perfume bottles and jewelry, worked with Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, shot commercials, appeared in TV shows, and made his paintings available as cover motifs to Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Country House. Dalí made scores of different roles his own and cultivated his appearance which became a trademark and, finally, a caricature. On the occasion of the artist's one hundredth birthday, Peter Bürger wrote: "Dalí, who died in 1989, has not found a place in twentieth century art yet." The Kunsthalle Wien's exhibition reaccentuates Dalí's controversially perceived production in the mirror of contemporary art and highlights the affinities revealing manifold points of contact with today's art scene: about seventy selected works by Salvador Dalí are confronted with the internationally established positions of Louise Bourgeois, Glenn Brown, Markus Schinwald, and Francesco Vezzoli. The visitor follows the exhibition's course through a mise en scène of atmospheric rooms in which four exemplary artistic positions enter into a dialogue with Dalí for a discussion of current tendencies and variants of Surrealist aesthetics. The work developed by Markus Schinwald specifically for the exhibition deals with perspective and weightlessness. His installation of a showcase filled with water reminds us of Dalí's popularly surreal space of experience at the World's Fair in New York in 1939 for which the artist designed a swimming pool with live mermaids. Presented as objects in a kind of cabinet of curiosities, the sculptures and drawings by Louise Bourgeois visualize the psychoanalytic approach to art, the unconscious coming to light in dreams. Glenn Brown thematizes the history of art and the tradition of painting: technically brilliant paintings unfolding illusionist color surfaces center on the concepts of reception and appropriation, post modernism and mannerism. Francesco Vezzoli's work takes its inspiration from the phenomenon of renown and relies on medially constructed projection surfaces for fantasies and desires. It is the interest in the visualization of irrational knowledge and the fascination for a world between dream and reality which the selected artists share with Dalí. The Kunsthalle Wien is the exhibition institution of the City of Vienna for international contemporary art. It established itself as one of the most vital facilities for contemporary art in Vienna at two locations in the centre of the city (Karlsplatz and the MuseumsQuartier). In the interest of an expanded understanding of art, the Kunsthalle Wien emphasizes cross-genre, cross-border trends in the arts. Program highlights range from photography, video, film, and installations to new media. Large, subject-specific exhibitions present developments and correlations from Modernism to the present-day art world. Other program elements are dedicated to retrospectives of important contemporary artists and significant contributions in Austrian art after 1945. The Kunsthalle Wien considers itself a workshop, a lab, a forum for contemporary aesthetic and social positions and as a hot zone of communicative transfer. And as a bridge between classical modernity and the visions of the future that redefine the strategies, venues, and materials of present-day art. The idea of temporariness was an integral part of the Kunsthalle history from the very beginning. Designed by architect Adolf Krischanitz as a temporary building shaped like a cargo container, the Kunsthalle Wien on Karlsplatz was opened in 1992. Fiercely controversial in its beginnings, the yellow container was not only an element that changed the cityscape of downtown Vienna, but also brought a lasting new impulse to the local art and gallery scene. Since 1992, more than two million visitors have seen exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien. 160 exhibitions presented almost 10,000 works by more than 2,000 different artists, which makes the Kunsthalle Wien one of the best-frequented, but also on e of the most active exhibition venues for contemporary art in Europe. In 2002, the Italian arts magazine ARTE ranked the Kunsthalle Wien among the six best modern art institutions in Europe (together with Tate Modern, London, the Kiasma, Helsinki, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Bilbao Guggenheim). The New York Times called the Kunsthalle simply an 'art mecca' (NY Times, March 11, 2001). The new Kunsthalle Wien building located in the in the Museum Quarter opened in 2001. In order to create public awareness of the Museum Quarter as the new home of the Kunsthalle Wien, a number of exhibitions have already been shown in the provisional Kunsthalle premises in the Museum Quarter ever since December 1995. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.kunsthallewien.at

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts To Host "Fabergé Revealed" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:50 PM PDT Richmond, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is proud to present the largest collection of Fabergé on public view in the United States. The exhibition, "Fabergé Revealed", includes works from four collections in America, totaling more than 500 objects. It will be on view at VMFA from July 9th through October 2nd. The Russian jeweler Karl Fabergé, arguably the most famous jeweler of all time, crafted objects for the families of the last two tsars of Russia and for most of Europe's nobility. He is best known for his Imperial Easter eggs. On exhibition from 9 July through 2 October at the VMFA.

STUX Gallery presents "On Love? On War?" ~ Contemporary Chinese Artists Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:49 PM PDT New York, NY - STUX Gallery, in collaboration with Carrie Clyne, is pleased to announce the opening of On Love? On War? : Prominent Contemporary Chinese Artists. Stux Gallery is presenting this exhibition as part of the art program China in Chelsea  hosted by the Carnegie Hall in New York for the upcoming event " A Festival Celebrating Chinese Culture" (October 21st - November 14th) with an aim to enhance the visibility and accessibility of Chinese culture including contemporary art, theatre and music in New York.

Chelsea Art Museum shows Federico Uribe’s "Human Nature" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:48 PM PDT   NEW YORK CITY - Uribe's rain forest installation consists of animal, insect and plant sculptures that are produced solely from PUMA shoes, with every part of the shoe being used in the exhibition. The sculptures are installed exclusively in a landscape of shoe laces and shoe parts creating a magical transformation that is the very substance of art-making. "Human Nature" challenges the individual to witness the violent, voracious and self-destructive characteristics innately found in humans. On exhibition through August 18th, 2007, at The Chelsea Art Museum.

Alejandra Laviada Presents Her First Solo Exhibition in Madrid Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:46 PM PDT MADRID.- The young Mexican artist Alejandra Laviada took part in the portfolio presentation which took place in Mexico City in 2009, later receiving the Descubrimientos PHE (Discoveries PHE) Brugal Extra Viejo Award for her series Photo Sculptures, in which she photographs ephemeral sculptures created from discarded objects. This group of photographs alters the concept of daily objects, it registers spaces which are completely demolished or transformed and implies the stories of the people who live there.   She was awarded honorable mention at the XII Photography Biennial in Mexico, and her work was singled out by critics when it was most recently shown as part of the exhibit "Chisel" at the first New York Photo Festival.

Seven New Oil Paintings by Malcolm Morley at Xavier Hufkens Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:45 PM PDT BRUSSELS.- Xavier Hufkens presents a new exhibition of Malcolm Morley. It comprises seven new oil paintings made by the artist in 2008 and 2009. On view in these paintings are Morley's signature subjects, ships and old airplanes. The artist bases his work on models and found or remembered images that he paints to dramatic effect in unnatural colours. His objective is to achieve a rhythm, abstraction, the expressive power of the canvases or to be more precise, the way in which he transfers his keenly observed images to the canvas via the act of painting. Upon close inspection, each square centimetre of Morley's paintings is nothing less than a small masterwork. Through a combination of sensuousness and intellect the artist develops a metalanguage, as it were, of painting. On view through 10 April.

First Solo Exhibition of Paintings by Roya Akhavan at LTMH Gallery Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:44 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- The first solo exhibition of paintings by Roya Akhavan in New York City will be on view at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller (LTMH) Gallery from October 14 through November 7, 2009. Roya Akhavan: Nexus will feature 13 new paintings and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an essay by curator Sam Bardaouil.  Many of the works in this new series evolve around the circle. A reception for the artist will be held on October 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Chen Qiuchi Solos at Art Statements Gallery Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:43 PM PDT Hong Kong - China's post-1989 Cynical Realism Movement has shaped and defined what we have come to understand as the major force behind Chinese contemporary art, and the leading artists of this movement, such as Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun, have undoubtedly achieved international status.  On exhibition January 19 to February 28, 2007 at Art Statements Gallery.  The exhibition 'Chen Qiuchi --- The Last Cynical Realist', as the title suggests, is the first platform to introduce Chen, a yet to be internationally discovered and recognized artist, to the larger public outside of Mainland China.

Arne Quinze Builds a New Installation on a Bridge in Rouen Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:42 PM PDT ROUEN, FRANCE - For the festival Rouen Impressionnée, the city of Rouen asked Arne Quinze to create an installation, Camille, on the Boieldieu bridge in the center of Rouen. This installation (metal, concrete, fluorescent paint and wood) is going to be 120 meters long, between 6 and 20 meters high and contains 45 kilometres of wood. Eighteen concrete foots carry the weight of the installation, which weights 110 ton in total. The model for Camille is exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Rouen.

The ArtScience Museum Exhibits Salvador Dali "Mind of a Genius" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:40 PM PDT Singapore.- The ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands is proud to present "Dalí: Mind of a Genius" on view at the museum until October 30th. This unprecedented collection of over 250 Dalí artworks will be the first time ever that such a large number of his masterpieces have been shown within a single venue in Singapore. Salvador Dalí, the most iconic figure of the surrealist movement, explored a wide range of artistic expressions ranging from paintings, sculptures, literature, cinema to decorative art, fashion, furniture, jewelry and last but not least advertising. Visitors to the exhibition will be immersed in three themed areas; Femininity and Sensuality; Religion and Mythology; and Dreams and Fantasy, that will transfer them to a place where the conscious and subconscious mind become intertwined, with time becoming a soft, fluid medium. "Femininity and Sensuality" features Dalí artworks depicting the female form and its sensuality. Important pieces include the sculpture of Women Aflame that unites two of Dalí's obsessions: A female form with drawers set aflame. Highlights include "Space Venus" and "Anthropomorphic Cabinet". "Religion and Mythology" reflects Dalí's tempestuous and ambiguous relationship with the Church. Artworks found in this gallery include renowned sculptures such as "The Snail" and the "Angel, Adam and Eve", and "Vision of the Angel". Dreams and Fantasy" embodies Dalí's enduring fascination with the subconscious mind as the true canvas for expression of personality. This comes into vivid focus through sculptural works such as "Persistence of Memory" and "Dance of Time I". Other works that refer to a life lived through dreams and distorted visions of reality include the alluring "Alice in Wonderland" and "Spellbound", a huge 11 meter by 5 meter visually spectacular 1945 painting born from Dalí's collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.In order to highlight the creativeness of Dalí across different mediums, the exhibition will also highlight bronze sculptures, rare graphics, furniture and gold jewelry. A dedicated space will showcase the collaboration between Dalí and Crystal Daum, the crystal maker. The use of glass offered Dalí the perfect medium for the expression of metamorphoses which communicated his surrealistic perception of reality. Pieces under this realm include the "Venus with Drawers". An additional gallery will showcase gold objects designed by Dalí which include the Dalí tortoise charm and Dalí Flower. A dedicated space will showcase Dalí's surrealistic transformations in furniture, displaying pieces such as the Mae West Lips Sofa, Vis-à-vis Sofa and Bracelli Lamp. Mr. Tom Zaller, Director, ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, said, "Dalí: Mind of a Genius" showcases the best works of Salvador Dalí under one roof. Visitors to the exhibition will be transported into the eccentric mind of Dalí, and discover his version of reality and his interpretation of art. The ArtScience Museum explores Dalí's inspiration and creative processes, and is the perfect venue for an exhibition showcasing the art of such a genius and his infinite innovations. Visitors will leave the exhibition spellbound and captivated, viewing the world from a whole new perspective." Marina Bay Sands is the leading business, leisure and entertainment destination in Asia. It features large and flexible convention and exhibition facilities, 2,560 hotel rooms and suites, the rooftop Sands SkyPark, the best shopping mall in Asia, world-class celebrity chef restaurants, a casino, Paiza Club for premium players and an outdoor event plaza. Its two theaters showcase a range of leading entertainment acts, including the resident performance "The Lion King". Completing the line-up of attractions is the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands which plays host to permanent and marquee exhibitions. Designed as a symbolic gesture of welcome to guests from across the globe, the lotus-inspired ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands is the premier museum destination in Singapore for major international touring exhibitions from the most renowned collections in the world. Embracing a spectrum of influences from art & science, to media & technology, to design & architecture, ArtScience Museum features over 50,000 square feet of galleries to inspire visitors of all ages, walks of life and from shores near and far. The Museum's showpiece exhibition, ArtScience: A Journey Through Creativity, is an homage and introduction to the nascent field of ArtScience. What unites Art and Science is the instinct to observe, connect, take risks and explore new ideas and ways of understanding nature's wisdom and experiences that shape our culture. Visitors to the ArtScience exhibition will explore these mysterious connections between the arts and the sciences through three galleries – Curiosity, Inspiration and Expression – thus undergoing their own journey of creativity. The Museum will also play host to marquee exhibitions curated by leading museums and collections. These visiting exhibitions will be recast through the lens of ArtScience, allowing visitors to experience the creative process and interaction of influences that gave rise to great moments, movements and inspirations in time. Unique to the region, ArtScience Museum expresses Singapore's priorities and ambition to be the exchange capital of the world, providing an internationally renowned forum for the exchange of the latest ideas and theories. ArtScience Museum is an endowment to Singapore's creative class, and it is Singapore's gift to the world.Visit the Marina Bay Sands website at ... www.marinabaysands.com

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 04 Oct 2011 07:39 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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