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

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• The Peabody Essex Museum Features "Man Ray-Lee Miller ~ Partners in Surrealism"
• The Davis Museum at Wellesley College To Show "Botanical Imagery & Exploration"
• The Whitney Museum Hosts "David Smith ~ Cubes and Anarchy"
• Phillips de Pury & Co. Auction Celebrates the Life & Work of Decorator Muriel Brandolini
• The Mike Weiss Gallery Hosts an Exhibition by Trudy Benson
• Frans Hals Museum Shows John Currin Contemporary Art with Master Paintings
• Haunch of Venison Hosts an Exhibition of Frank Stella's Work
• "Proto-Pop: The Elegant Object" Exhibition at International Poster Gallery
• Debut of David Hockney's "Fresh Flowers" Opens at the Royal Ontario Museum
• The Tel Aviv Art Museum ~ The World’s Finest Collection Of Israeli Art & International Fine Art
• Nicolaas Wijnberg "Figura" on View at Arnhem Museum for Modern Art
• Modern Russian Art Gaining Interest Despite Rocky Economics
• J. Paul Getty Museum presents 'Ten Years in Focus: The Artist and the Camera'
• Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art"
• Irish Museum of Modern Art hosts 'Collectors’ Choice' in Co Tyrone
• The Art Fund sponsors ' The WOW Factor' an Art Research Study
• 8th Annual "Erasing Borders Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art" Opens
• Russian Art Auction announced at Gene Shapiro Auctions LLC, NYC
• Frida Kahlo's Self-Portraits at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Peabody Essex Museum Features "Man Ray-Lee Miller ~ Partners in Surrealism" Posted: 09 Oct 2011 12:17 AM PDT Salem, Massachusetts.- The Peabody Essex Museum is currently showing "Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism", on view at the museum until December 4th. At the center of modern art history is a love story between two artists who could not live with or without each other. "Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism" features 76 works by two giants of the Surrealism movement and other renowned artists in their circle including Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, and Le Corbusier. From 1929 to 1932, Man Ray and Lee Miller lived together in Paris, first as teacher and student, and later as lovers. Their mercurial relationship resulted in some of the most powerful work of each artist's career and helped shape the course of modern art. Combining rare vintage photographs, paintings, sculpture and drawings, this exhibition tells the story of the artists' brief but intense relationship in Paris, their lifelong friendship, and the unique nature of their creative partnership. It also offers a window into the maelstrom of artistic and social experimentation that animated Paris in the 1930s and gave inspiration to writers, poets, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists of all stripes. Despite the impact their relationship had on both artists, this will be the first exhibition ever organized that features Man Ray and Lee Miller together on equal terms. Lee Miller is regarded here as an artist and potent Surrealist force in her own right rather than a mere foil for Man Ray's work. Historically, Miller has been described as Ray's muse, but their love affair was in fact a key source of mutual and sustained inspiration which pushed the art of their time in a new direction. Man Ray was a leader in two pioneering Modern art movements, Surrealism and Dada, but was never deeply invested in either categorization. Although accomplished as an avant-garde photographer, he defied labels and thought of himself as a painter first, ultimately wed to no single medium. Man Ray's camerawork marked a turning point in the integration of photography among other visual art forms. An artist with great clarity of intention, Ray combined incongruous objects, asking the viewer to make sense of the result. In tune with Duchamp, Man Ray was also a master of the Readymade, elevating ordinary objects as art. He channeled his agony over Lee Miller's departure into a life of productive creativity, often lovingly and cleverly referring to her via coded motifs.The Anti-Muse Lee Miller started her career as a fashion model, the ultimate 'it-girl' of 1920s America. With the encouragement of Edward Steichen for whom she was a favorite subject, she moved behind the camera and sought out Man Ray as a teacher. She quickly gained mastery of darkroom and camera techniques to become a photographer with her own vision to impart. So completely did she absorb Man Ray's instruction that for a time, Miller persuaded Ray to let her take on their photography projects enabling him to devote more time to painting and other media. Their collaboration resulted in technical innovations such as the effect of solarization and the coalescence of the surrealist idiom. Working in tandem and separately, Ray tended more to the studio and she took to the streets. After she and Ray parted, she remained a photographer for two decades, including a seminal period as World War II war correspondent for Condé Nast. A first-hand witness to some of the worst atrocities of her time, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder that later hampered her productivity. Her works are rarely seen outside the UK. Lee Miller's photographs as well as the work of many of the other Surrealist artists in this exhibition appear courtesy of the Lee Miller Archives housed at Farley Farm House in Chiddingly, England. Farley Farm House is the family estate of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, and was a regular stop for some of the world's most important modern artists including those represented in this exhibition. The roots of the Peabody Essex Museum date to the 1799 founding of the East India Marine Society, an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The society's charter included a provision for the establishment of a "cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities," which is what we today would call a museum. Society members brought to Salem a diverse collection of objects from the northwest coast of America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, India and elsewhere. By 1825, the society moved into its own building, East India Marine Hall, which today contains the original display cases and some of the very first objects collected. Salem was also home to the Essex Historical Society (founded in 1821), which celebrated the area's rich community history, and the Essex County Natural History Society (founded in 1833), which focused on the county's natural wonders. In 1848, these two organizations merged to form the Essex Institute (the "Essex" in the Peabody Essex Museum's name). This consolidation brought together extensive and far-ranging collections, including natural specimens, ethnological objects, books and historical memorabilia, all focusing on the area in and around Essex County.In the late 1860s, the Essex Institute refined its mission to the collection and presentation of regional art, history and architecture. In so doing, it transferred its natural history and archaeology collections to the East India Marine Society's descendent organization, the Peabody Academy of Science (the "Peabody"). In turn, the Peabody, renamed for its great benefactor, the philanthropist George Peabody, transferred its historical collections to the Essex. In the early 20th century, the Peabody Academy of Science changed its name to the Peabody Museum of Salem and continued to focus on collecting international art and culture. Capitalizing on growing interest in early American architecture and historic preservation, the Essex Institute acquired many important historic houses and was at the forefront of historical interpretation. With their physical proximity, closely connected boards and overlapping collections, the possibility of consolidating the Essex and the Peabody had been discussed over the years. After in-depth studies showed the benefits of such a merger, the consolidation of these two organizations into the new PEM was effected in July 1992. The museum possessed extraordinary collections — more than 840,000 works of art and culture featuring maritime art and history; American art; Asian, Oceanic, and African art; Asian export art; two large libraries with over 400,000 books, manuscripts, and documents; and 22 historic buildings. Today's collection has grown to include approximately 1 million works and Yin Yu Tang, the only complete Qing Dynasty house outside China.True to the spirit of its past, PEM is dedicated to creating a museum experience that celebrates art and the world in which it was made. By presenting art and culture in new ways, by linking past and present, and by embracing artistic and cultural achievements worldwide, the museum offers unique opportunities to explore a multilayered and interconnected world of creative expression. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.pem.org

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College To Show "Botanical Imagery & Exploration" Posted: 08 Oct 2011 10:59 PM PDT Wellesley, Massachusetts.- The Davis Museum at Wellesley College is proud to present "Global Flora: Botanical Imagery and Exploration", an exhibition linking the history of botanical imagery with the adventure of exploration and effects of globalization on our contemporary world. On view from October 19th through January 15th 2012 in the Morelle Lasky Levine '56 Works on Paper Gallery, the exhibition is free and open to the public. The publications on view in this exhibition hint at the links between botany, climate, geography, culture, economy, and history." Botanical imagery reveals several centuries of change in the world, reflecting a journey through exploration to knowledge, and from isolation to globalization. The natural world has changed considerably due to the acquisitive nature of human beings with an attraction to the exotic. In the process of collecting and recording specimens from distant parts of the globe, botanists contributed to the international dispersal of flora. Transferring or propagating plants in botanical gardens back home naturally led to the spreadof species, while publishing books on a region's plants provided a means of organizing, simplifying, and containing the life of that place. Naming was another means of claiming, with native plants being labeled for foreign naturalists. Colonial gardens and colonial floras, or botanical books, were powerful symbols of imperialism and control.

The Whitney Museum Hosts "David Smith ~ Cubes and Anarchy" Posted: 08 Oct 2011 10:36 PM PDT New York City.- The Whitney Museum of Art is proud to show "David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy", on view until January 8th 2012. This exhibition examines the abiding importance of geometric form in the work of American sculptor David Smith (1906-1965) from his earliest small works through the monumental late masterpieces that he created in the final years of his life. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it debuted earlier this year, the exhibition brings together approximately 60 works, including the largest grouping of Smith's Cubis and Zigs assembled in more than two decades. Cubes and Anarchy places these acknowledged masterpieces in context with Smith's earlier works in an exhibition that includes sculptures, drawings, paintings, and photographs, many provided by the Estate of David Smith.

Phillips de Pury & Co. Auction Celebrates the Life & Work of Decorator Muriel Brandolini Posted: 08 Oct 2011 09:33 PM PDT New York City.– Phillips de Pury & Company announce 'The World of Muriel Brandolini', an interiors auction celebrating the life and work of decorator Muriel Brandolini. The auction will be held at Phillips de Pury & Company, 450 Park Avenue, New York on October 21st, the lots can be viewed from until October 12th. A blaze of color on the fall calendar, Brandolini's sale will include works from her wide-ranging collection of decorative arts, contemporary design and fine art, as well as examples of her own signature line of furniture. A devotee of eclecticism, Brandolini embraces many styles; works on offer will include 19th-century decorative arts, early 20th-century Viennese modernism, postwar Italian design, and limited edition works by contemporary masters Ron Arad, Martin Szekely and Pierre Charpin, among others. Acclaimed artists Yves Klein, Takis, and Ross Blecknerwill accompany rising stars Max Snow and Oberto Gili.

The Mike Weiss Gallery Hosts an Exhibition by Trudy Benson Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:56 PM PDT New York City.- The Mike Weiss Gallery is excited to present "Actual/Virtual", a new exhibition of paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Trudy Benson, on view from October 13th through November 12th. The show's title "Actual/Virtual" illuminates the dynamic between illusionary space and the physicality of materials as Benson pushes paint into the realm of the viewer both physically and optically, delivering a visceral punch via large-scale electric-hued abstract paintings. Benson's fervor for the physical act of painting is readily evident in her mark-making; her viscous gestures evoke the onomatopoeic language of comic books taking shape as bold splunks!, shoops!, and splats! that emerge sculpturally from the surface of the canvas.

Frans Hals Museum Shows John Currin Contemporary Art with Master Paintings Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:29 PM PDT HAARLEM, NL - From 7th October to 8th  January , the Frans Hals Museum is presenting paintings by John Currin (1962) in an encounter with the work of Cornelis van Haarlem (1562 – 1638). The American artist John Currin is well known for his realistic paintings in which commonplace scenes alternate with explicitly erotic images. Solo exhibitions of Currin's work have been staged in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In the 'Conversation Piece' series, the Frans Hals Museum would like to present the collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth century paintings in a new light.

Haunch of Venison Hosts an Exhibition of Frank Stella's Work Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:14 PM PDT LONDON.- Haunch of Venison London is presenting Frank Stella: "Connections", the most extensive exhibition of Stella's work in the UK to date. This exhibition examines Stella's long and extraordinarily diverse career and includes works from 1958 to the present day. Frank Stella (born 1936) is unarguably one of the most important and influential American artists of the last fifty years. His work transcends boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture and in the course of a five-decade career the artist has continually reinvented himself, always seeking new challenges. "Frank Stella: Connections" is organized by Haunch of Venison in collaboration with FreedmanArt, New York

"Proto-Pop: The Elegant Object" Exhibition at International Poster Gallery Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:14 PM PDT BOSTON, MA.- International Poster Gallery presents Proto-Pop: The Elegant Object, a first-of-its-kind exhibition of original vintage Object Posters from the Twenties to the 1940's, offered as precursors to the controversial and explosive Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition, featuring over 30 posters from Object Poster masters, explores the points where the two movements converge, as well as contrast. Featuring hyper-realistic drawings of everyday things, the Swiss Object Poster beginning in the Twenties focused on the beauty and precision of mundane industrial era products such as toothpaste, sunglasses, sneakers and household cleaners. These startling, larger-than-life advertisements foreshadowed by decades Pop Art's similar fascination with basic consumer products. Both styles elevate the commonplace object to a level of symbolism that elicits both shock and contemplation from the viewer. Though they display similar iconography, the Object Poster exalts the almost magical beauty of the object, while Pop Art uses the consumer object as an ironic symbol of rebellion.

Debut of David Hockney's "Fresh Flowers" Opens at the Royal Ontario Museum Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:13 PM PDT TORONTO, ON.- The Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents David Hockney's Fresh Flowers: Drawings on iPhones and iPads, an exhibition that reveals the artist's extraordinary use of this novel new artistic medium and its impact on shaping visual culture today. Originally presented by the Fondation Pierre Bergé/Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, this ICC presentation is the exhibition's North American debut and marks Hockney's first major show in Canada in over two decades. Curated by Charlie Scheips and engineered by architect Ali Tayar, the presentation of Fresh Flowers will be custom-designed for the Roloff Beny Gallery in the ROM's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, in collaboration with David Hockney. It will be on view from October 8, 2011 to January 1, 2012. The exhibition features approximately 100 iPhone drawings displayed on 20 iPod Touches, as well as an additional 100 iPad drawings on 20 iPads. More than 20 David Hockney drawings in the exhibition will feature playback animations, allowing viewers insight into the artist's creative process as one views the works being drawn from start to finish. Fresh Flowers will also feature two films featuring Hockney working on an iPad, eight large-scale animated projections of recent iPad drawings, and a nine-minute triptych slide show with an additional 169 images. "Technology has played a major role in how we receive and interpret culture. Fresh Flowers provides the ROM an important opportunity to examine its influence on art and design," says Janet Carding, Director and CEO of the Museum. "David Hockney's career, particularly in the last twenty years, has often explored the connections between visual art and its means of creation, often how new technology has had an impact on it. It is an honor to welcome David Hockney's work back to Canada—and to the ROM for the first time. This exhibition is fascinating in a museum setting - how technology influences the way we receive, interpret and share ideas is at the heart of the show." Exhibition Background In 2008, soon after getting his first iPhone, Hockney discovered the Brushes application as well as other apps enabling him to produce works of extraordinary variety. In his early iPhone work, Hockney used his thumb and fingers to create images directly on the device's screen—modifying colour and hue and layering brushstrokes of various width and opacity. After the introduction of the iPad in April 2010, Hockney developed a more complex and diverse oeuvre thanks to the tablet's larger size and the introduction of a stylus. To date, he has created nearly 1,000 images on his iPhone and iPad ranging in subject matter from flowers and plants, portraiture to landscapes and still lifes. "I was aware immediately when I started drawing on the iPhone that it was not only a new medium but also a very new way to distribute pictures," says Hockney. "I have always been an advocate of drawing. I always thought the teaching of drawing was the teaching of looking - very good for everybody! I joked about it - who would have thought the telephone could bring back drawing? One quickly realizes that it is a luminous medium and very good for luminous subjects. I began to draw the sunrise seen from my bed on the east coast of England. The iPhone was by my bed; it contained every thing you needed; no mess; so you didn't even have to clean up. I wouldn't have drawn the sunrise with just a pencil and a piece of paper. It was the luminosity of the screen that connected me to it." "This exhibition is novel in that until we worked out how to present this large body of work to the public, one could only view individual drawings sequentially on one's own iPhone or iPad," says curator Charlie Scheips. "Conceived before the iPad was even introduced, in the nearly three years that Hockney had been making these drawings on Apple devices, it is now an important body of work that has informed the artist's painting and drawing practice, allowing him to use the spontaneity and convenience of the medium to the large scale paintings of the Yorkshire landscape that has been his major interest during the past decade." Exhibition Origins In the summer of 2009, Pierre Bergé, co-founder of the Fondation Pierre Bergé/ Yves Saint Laurent approved a plan by Scheips to mount an exhibition of Hockney's iPhone drawings in the galleries of the Fondation in Paris, France. The original title for the Paris exhibition, Fleurs fraîches, was inspired not only by the frequent subject matter of Hockney's early drawings on the iPhone but also as a metaphor for the novel way in which he is able to inject new drawings into exhibitions via email, while being viewed in galleries around the world. Exhibition Design In designing the exhibition, architect Ali Tayar drew inspiration from the artist's studio in Yorkshire, England. The mounts for both the iTouch and iPad devices are designed using oak-lined panels of MDF fiberboard. A banquette platform where visitors may sit to view the triptych slide show is made of the same material and has been custom designed for each of the exhibition's venues. Speaking about the exhibition design, Tayar commented, "the humble materials of the armatures play down the Apple hi-tech aesthetic, while simultaneously focusing the viewer's attention on David's work. Each venue has allowed us to re-imagine the presentation of Hockney's digital images. The soaring space of the ROM gallery provides a unique opportunity to show a larger number of the drawings as projections." Visit the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) at : http://www.rom.on.ca/

The Tel Aviv Art Museum ~ The World’s Finest Collection Of Israeli Art & International Fine Art Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:09 PM PDT The Tel Aviv Art Museum is Israel's leading museum of modern and contemporary art as well as being home to one of the world's largest collections of Israeli art and a fine selection of Old Masters. Since its founding in 1932, the Museum has served as one of Tel Aviv's major cultural hubs, displaying a vibrant mix of permanent collections and temporary exhibitions in a wide variety of fields. Each year, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art welcomes more than 750,000 visitors annualy. Situated in an impressive architectural complex, the Museum is an integral part of the city's major cultural center (the Golda Meir Cultural and Art Center) home to the Israeli Opera and the Cameri Theater. In addition to its collections, the Museum presents performances of music and dance, film, and lecture series on philosophy and art. The fully computerized art library and its Documentation Center for Art in Israel serve over 15,000 students, scholars and curators each year. The library subscribes to the major art journals and receives the latest catalogues of exhibitions of Israeli art, modern and contemporary art, photography, design and architecture. It is the most comprehensive reference center in the Middle East. The Museum's original building on Rothschild Boulevard was donated by Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, who gave his home over to the city to be officially transformed into the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1932. It was at this building that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948. The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959 and was fully renovated in 1989 with funds provided by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation and the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. The museum moved to its current location on King Saul Avenue in 1971. Another wing was added in 1999 and a sculpture garden was established. Each week some 1,500 children, youth and adults from all walks of life attend classes in painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, photography, video and computer art, and printmaking at the Museum's Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Center. The Museum announced, in 2002, a competition for the design of a new building of about 22,000 square meters, enabled by a donation from Herta and Paul Amir. The design competition was won by the Preston Scott Cohen (head of the Harvard University Graduate School of Architecture). His horizontal "radiator" model is currently under construction and due for completion in late 2011. This new wing is simultaneously linear and multi-layered. A vertical "light fall" drains the building's vertical dimension, orientates the visitor, unites all spaces around it, leads from one level to another, and brings natural light to the building's lower level. The building's exterior envelope, an extended "folding" surface that breaks at disparate-angled modules, is a dynamic ornament made of 430 polished cement panels manufactured on location. The Tel Aviv Museum's Art Library serves as a research center for thousands of students, scholars, art critics, authors and curators from Israel and abroad. Known for its comprehensive collection of books, the library is often the sole resource in Israel for background information on modern and contemporary art and design. The museum also contains museum shops and a restaurant. Visit the Tel Aviv Art Museum's website at … http://www.tamuseum.com The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is Israel's leading museum of modern and contemporary art, and home to one of the world's largest collections of Israeli art. A large part of the Museum's permanent collections (consisting of over 23,000 items) has been generously donated by artists, art patrons and benefactors. The holdings are also complemented and enriched by numerous works and collections entrusted to the Museum, which serve as a testimony to the extraordinary international support this institution receives from dedicated collectors and friends around the world. The collection of modern and contemporary art encompasses works by leading pioneers of Modernism and a representative selection of the diverse postwar and contemporary trends that developed in Europe and the United States. Most major art movements of the late 19th through the mid-20th century are highlighted in the Moshe and Sara Mayer Collection, the Mizne-Blumental Collection, and the Simon and Marie Jaglom Collection. These collections include masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Bonnard, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Klimt, Mondrian, Modigliani, Braque and Miró, as well as fine works by Léger and Picasso representing different periods in their art. Important works of Surrealism and Abstract art characterize the significant donation by Peggy Guggenheim in the 1950s with masterpieces by Tanguy, Masson and Nicholson. Of particular note are works representing the beginnings of American Abstract Expressionism, among them paintings by Jackson Pollock. A sculpture collection donated by Helene and Zygfryd Wolloch spans the late 19th century through the 1980s and includes works by Arp, Giacometti, Moore and Calder. Together with works by Jacques Lipchitz, given by the Jacques and Yulla Lipchitz Foundation, they have significantly enriched the Museum's holdings of modern sculpture. Various trends in Geometrical Abstract art from Russian Constructivism through Minimalism are well represented in the important donation of the Riklis Collection of the McCrory Corporation. Postwar European trends such as Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and Arte Povera, as well as contemporary art by leading artists such as Boetti, Cucchi, and Paladino, constitute the core of the collection donated by Vera and Arturo Schwarz. Among numerous pieces of European and American art, emblematic works by Francis Bacon and David Salle highlight the gift made to the Museum by Susan and Anton Roland-Rosenberg. The Museum's major assets also include a group of early and unique works by Alexander Archipenko, a selection of paintings by Marc Chagall illustrating the variety of his styles, as well as a large mural in the Museum lobby, which was especially conceived and executed by Roy Lichtenstein as a gift to the Museum. The Museum is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Israeli art in the world. This unique collection traces the development of Israeli art from its beginnings and through the 1920s – when the Modernist style of painting in Israel emerged, to contemporary Israeli art. Israeli artists have been particularly concerned with questions of identity and conflict. They explore topics as varied as local landscapes and Mediterranean light, Jewish tradition and its complex attitude toward figurative art, and socio-political as well as urban issues: local versus universal, periphery versus center, or east versus west dialectics. Recently, Israeli artists have become much more present on the international art scene. Often, the Museum has served as a springboard for these artists, by showcasing solo exhibitions accompanied by extensive catalogues and by acquiring some of their major art works. Over the years, the Museum collection of Israeli art has been steadily enlarged through generous gifts from artists, benefactors and acquisition funds, such as the Recanati Fund, the Ettinger-Gilman Fund, the Lily Richmond Fund, the Uzi Zucker Fund, the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, the Rappaport Prize, the Isracard Foundation and the support of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. The Department of Old Masters was established (as an independent department) in 1988. The Museum's Old Masters Collection, which includes about 150 paintings and sculptures and some 50 works on loan, is presented in six galleries: four galleries in the Museum's main building, and two galleries dedicated to decorative art at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion. The Museum's Old Masters Collection specializes in 16th to 18th century Italian art and 16th to 17th century Flemish and Dutch art, with paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Honthorst, Teniers, Van Goyen, Canaletto, Rigaud and Reynolds. Works by 19th century Jewish artists are also included, among them, Maurycy Gottlieb and Jozef Israëls. Recently, the Danek and Jadzia Gertner Collection of decorative art has enriched the Department's collections. Works of Meissen porcelain and glassware by Emile Gallé are currently on display at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion in the Danek and Jadzia Gertner Galleries. Helena Rubinsteins' Miniature Rooms is also part of the Department. The Department of Drawings and Prints houses a collection of 25 thousand works on paper including sketches, drawings, prints, artists' books, and illustrated books of artists from all periods, with a special emphasis on artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An important and unique component of the collection is the assemblage of drawings and prints representing early twentieth century German Expressionism. The Dr. Karl Schwarz Collection, the Goeritz Collection, and the Hermann Struck Collection which were donated to the Tel Aviv Museum in its early years led to the donation of another important collection, that of Avraham Horodisch from Amsterdam, a collector and publisher of prints from Germany in the 1920s. An important unit of the collection consists of 150 prints by the renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch donated in 1986 by Charles and Evelyn Kramer of New York. The Munch Collection at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, as one of the largest collections in the world of prints by this artist, offers a representative selection of Munch's graphic work including etchings, lithographs, and colored woodcuts, with the earliest of them created in Berlin (1894-95) through to prints made in his last years. An additional component of the collection consists of 300 prints and books by Surrealist artists which were also donated by Charles and Evelyn Kramer of New York in 1990. This collection directs attention to the close collaboration between the artists, writers, and poets who created in the spirit of Surrealism. The Museum's photography collection was begun in 1977 with Israeli photographer Micha Bar Am, and encompasses important pictures of the Middle East taken by 19th and early 20th century European photographers, such as Francis Frith and Félix Bonfils, and a collection of rare glass negatives of E.M. Lilien donated by the Schocken family; works by American photojournalists W. Eugene Smith and Weegee, donated by Michael S. Sachs; as well as photographs by Robert Capa donated by Cornelia and Edith Capa, and other international Modernist and Post-Modernist artists. A collection of Soviet photography from the 1930s to 1970s was donated by Howard Schickler and David LaFaille and an anonymous donor. Courtesy of the Marc Rich Foundation for Education, Cultura and Welfare, the Department has a strong representation of works by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Thanks to donations by Michaela and Leon Constantiner, who initiated the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, the representation of contemporary Israeli photography in the collection has been growing steadily, now including works by internationally renowned photographers Adi Nes, Pavel Wolberg and Barry Frydlender. The exhibitions of the Department of Design and Architecture are cutting edge. In the Department's collection are included works that represent a prospectus of solo exhibitions and thematic exhibitions that were held in the Department, among them: Gaetano Pesce, Ron Arad, Chanan de-Lange, Charles and Ray Eames, Enzo Mari, Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, Ron Gilad, Yaacov Kaufman, Tal Gur, Ayala Tzarfati, Fernando and Huberto Campanga, Esther Knobel, and Irit Abba. The Tel Aviv Art Museum hosts more than twenty temporary exhibitions every year, focused both on local and international artists. Amongst the exhibitions currently on show is "More than Canvas", until 27 October 2011 features a fascinating collection of works, showing the diverse range of materials that artists have worked on. It includes works on paper, canvas, wood, leaves glass and computer screens and shows that any surface can serve as support for a painting on which color, lines and forms merge into one whole. This interactive exhibition exposes children and adults to works of art executed on traditional as well as other kinds of support: traffic lights, leaves, stones, walls and the body. Children will have an opportunity to actually feel the various kinds of supports, in order to better understand how the material of the support affects the choice of medium and technique. "Neo-Expressionist Painting From Berlin – Gift of Susan and Martin Sanders" (until 27 March 2011) is held in honor of the generous gift of Susan and Martin Sanders, New York, to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, that includes important works by some of the prominent Neo-Expressionist artists active in Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s: Karl Horst Hödicke, Rainer Fetting, Salomé, Helmut Middendorf and Peter Chevalier. Their works represent interesting aspects of the "back to painting" trend that had swept over the centers of the western world, in Europe and the USA, as a backlash to the minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. The Neo-Expressionist artists reacted to their complex reality in West Berlin in the shadow of the Cold War, through sensuous, tactile painting that assimilated the colorful intensity and formal elements of German Expressionism of early 20th century and of American Abstract Expressionism. The fresh and lively aesthetic approach of these paintings was characterized by large formats, bold color, narrative, upfront exposure of the self, provocativity, seductiveness and assimilation of images outside the realm of art. "Avi Ganor: RealityTrauma" opens on March 19th 2011. Artist Avi Ganor has been involved in photography since 1975. A Science Studies graduate at the Technion, he studied Business Management at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Pratt Institute, New York; and Digital Media Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. He has taught at the Departments of Photography and of Visual Communication at Bezalel, Jerusalem, and held solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1985 and The Israel Museum in 1990. Alongside his photographic work, Ganor researches theoretical aspects of the medium. His works deal with the necessity of using forced metaphors, and the fluid moderation of the relationships between actuality and physical existence, between trauma and reality. The exhibition presents some 30 works from the series "RealityTrauma" (2003–2010), in direct "close to home" documentary diary style, through an allegorical poetic observation of both concepts and their conversion into a third, unified concept into which they collapse. In their reductive manner, the works offer a way to deal with horror as the concept of trauma escapes an appropriate interpretation, whether literal or visual. Beyond description, they seek to represent the indefinable, conducting a complex, tortuous discourse with the medium and with the way various genres deal with representation.

Nicolaas Wijnberg "Figura" on View at Arnhem Museum for Modern Art Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:08 PM PDT   ARNHEM, NL - Nicolaas Wijnberg became widely known as a scenery- and costume designer. He was also a painter, graphic artist, and a sought-after illustrator and poster designer. Wijnberg's work evidenced a distinct sense of colour. He was a virtuoso in mastering techniques and in his own way interwove half of art history in his 'un-Dutch-looking' paintings. The Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem presents a retrospective exhibition entitled Nicolaas Wijnberg: Figura.

Modern Russian Art Gaining Interest Despite Rocky Economics Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:07 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY (REUTERS).- With hopes for recovery in fine art prices running high, attention is trained on second-tier markets such as Russian collecting for signs of renewal. Sotheby's conducts the season's first Russian art sales next week, led by a pair of important collections including one of 86 works by Ukrainian avant-garde artists being sold as a single lot. The auctions come on the heels of strong Asia Week sales at both Sotheby's and rival Christie's in New York, and last month's Hong Kong results, where salesrooms were filled to capacity, estimates were exceeded and records fell.

J. Paul Getty Museum presents 'Ten Years in Focus: The Artist and the Camera' Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:06 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA - The J. Paul Getty Museum opened the exhibit Ten Years in Focus: The Artist and the Camera through August 10. Since the beginning of photography in the 1830s, painters and sculptors took up the new medium as a tool. The theme of the artist and the camera has been an important aspect of the Getty's photographs collection since its inception in 1984 and continues to shape its holdings. This can be seen in the selection for this exhibition of acquisitions made in the last decade, which explores the interconnectedness of art and photography.

Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art" Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:05 PM PDT BERLIN.- The Ahlen Art Museum will be presenting in this exhibit the historical developments, contextual significance, and especially the artistic reflections of the topic 'bathing.' In the exhibit, 140 works by 90 artists will be presented, including Pierre Bonnard, Louise Bourgeois, Gustave Caillebotte, William N. Copley, Gregory Crewdson, Edgar Degas, Albrecht Dürer, Eric Fischl, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Xenia Hausner, David Hockney, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Édouard Manet, Bettina Rheims, Norbert Tadeusz, and Bill Viola. On view 31 January through 25 April, 2010.

Irish Museum of Modern Art hosts 'Collectors’ Choice' in Co Tyrone Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:04 PM PDT Co Tyrone, Ireland - An exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art's Collection, organised as part of IMMA's National Programme, opens to the public in Omagh, Co Tyrone on Saturday 1 September 2007. Collectors' Choice: An Exhibition of Works Selected by Maura and George McClelland from their Personal Collection and the McClelland Collection at IMMA marks the first partnership between the IMMA National Programme and Omagh's Strule Arts Centre. The exhibition also celebrates the life of Maura McClelland who died in July 2007.

The Art Fund sponsors ' The WOW Factor' an Art Research Study Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:03 PM PDT LEICESTER, UK - What links a neuroscientist with a social anthropologist and the UK's premier independent art charity? The answer is the visual perception of art. When, why and how are individuals moved by a piece of art in a museum or gallery? These are the questions to be examined between the world renowned Department of Museum Studies and the Department of Engineering at the University of Leicester, in collaboration with The Art Fund.

8th Annual "Erasing Borders Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art" Opens Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:02 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- The Indo-American Arts Council's 8th Annual Erasing Borders Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora features work by 43 artists whose origins can be traced to the Indian subcontinent. This group of multinational and intergenerational artists, chosen by curator Vijay Kumar, reflects a broad range of life experiences and aesthetic values. The artists interpret diverse subject matter—figurative, abstract and conceptual—in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, video, sculpture and installation. The resulting works often meld Indian and Western ideas about color, form and subject. This traveling exhibition is presented as part of Asian Contemporary Art Week 2011 and the opening reception at the Queens Museum of Art is scheduled for Sunday, March 27, 2011.

Russian Art Auction announced at Gene Shapiro Auctions LLC, NYC Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:01 PM PDT   NEW YORK CITY - Gene Shapiro Auctions LLC has announced an important auction of Russian, European, and Latin American art, to take place on November 5, 2008 in New York. The catalog for the auction has now been posted online at http://www.geneshapiro.com , and the printed full color catalog is available for purchase. The total estimate of the November auction is approximately $4,000,000 – 6,000,000, and the per-lot average is more than $20,000.

Frida Kahlo's Self-Portraits at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Posted: 08 Oct 2011 08:00 PM PDT San Francisco, CA - From June 14 to September 28, 2008, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present the exhibition Frida Kahlo. Organized by world-renowned Frida Kahlo biographer and art historian Hayden Herrera, the presentation will include approximately 50 paintings from the beginning of Kahlo's career in 1926 to her death in 1954. The San Francisco presentation is organized by John Zarobell, SFMOMA assistant curator of painting and sculpture. While concentrating on Kahlo's hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits, the exhibition also will include those particular portraits and still-life paintings that amplify her sense of identity. The peculiar tension between the intimacy of Kahlo's subject matter and the reserve of her public persona gives her self-portraits the impact of icons. As her practice progressed, her images grew in confidence and complexity, reflecting her private obsessions and political concerns. Kahlo struggled to gain visibility and recognition both as a woman and an artist, and she was a central player in the political and artistic revolutions occurring throughout the world. The exhibition also will feature photographs that once belonged to Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection, many of which have never before been published or exhibited. Emblematic images of Kahlo and Rivera by preeminent photographers of the period (Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Gisele Freund, Tina Modotti, Nickolas Muray) will be on view alongside never-before-seen personal snapshots of the artist with family and friends, including such cultural and political luminaries as André Breton and Leon Trotsky. These photographs—several of which Kahlo hand-inscribed with dedications; effaced with self-deprecating marks; and kissed, leaving a trace of lipstick—pose fascinating questions about an artist who was both the consummate manufacturer of her own image and a beguiling and willing photographic subject.  During her lifetime, Kahlo was best known as the flamboyant wife of renowned muralist Rivera. Today she has become one of the most celebrated and revered artists in the world. Between 1926, when she began to paint while recuperating from a near-fatal bus accident, and 1954, when she died at age 47, Kahlo painted some 66 self-portraits and about 80 paintings of other subjects, mostly still lifes and portraits of friends. "I paint my own reality," she said. "The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to." Her reality and her need to explore and confirm it by depicting her own image have given us some of the most powerful and original images of the 20th century. Paradoxically, her work allowed her to both express and continually fabricate her own subjectivity. Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, then a southern suburb of Mexico City. Three years after the 1925 bus accident, she showed her paintings to Rivera. He admired the paintings, and the painter, and a year later they married. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship: Rivera once declared himself to be "unfit for fidelity," and Kahlo largely withstood his promiscuity. As if to assuage her pain, Kahlo recorded the vicissitudes of her marriage in paint. She also recorded the misery of her deteriorating health—the orthopedic corsets she was forced to wear, the numerous spinal surgeries, plus a number of miscarriages and therapeutic abortions. Her painful subject matter is distanced by an intentional primitivism, as well as by the canvases' small scale. Kahlo's sometimes grueling imagery is also mitigated by her sardonic humor and extraordinary imagination. Her sense of fantasy, fed by Mexican popular art and pre-Columbian culture, was noted by surrealist poet and essayist Breton when he came to Mexico in 1938 and claimed Kahlo for Surrealism. She rejected the designation but clearly understood that doors would open under the surrealist label—and they did: Breton helped secure exhibitions for her in New York in 1938 and Paris in 1939. Soon after Kahlo returned from attending her Paris show, Rivera asked her for a divorce. They remarried a year later. In the second half of the 1940s Kahlo's health worsened; she was hospitalized for a year between 1950 and 1951, and in 1953 her right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene. Her insistence on being strong and joyful in the face of pain sustained her, however; she drew a picture of her severed limb in her journal and wrote, "Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly?" Kahlo had her first exhibition in Mexico in 1953. Defying doctor's orders, she attended the opening and received guests while reclining on her own four-poster bed. Because she could not sit up for long and she suffered severe effects from prescribed painkillers, her paintings in the period from 1952 to 1954 lost the jewel-like refinement of her earlier works. Her late still lifes and self-portraits—many of which proclaim Kahlo's allegiance to Communist doctrine—testify to her passion for life and her indomitable will, however.  Frida Kahlo brings together works such as Henry Ford Hospital (1932), depicting the artist's miscarriage in Detroit (a first in terms of the iconography of Western art history), and The Broken Column (1944), painted after she underwent spinal surgery. It also includes self-portraits such as Me and My Doll (1937) and Self-Portrait with Monkeys (1943), both of which explore the theme of childlessness. The artist's suffering over Rivera's betrayals is reflected in paintings like her masterful double-portrait The Two Fridas (1939); created during her separation and divorce from Rivera, the work presents a powerful depiction of pain inflicted by love and Kahlo's divided sense of self. Collectively, these images suggest the extent to which, for Kahlo, painting served as catharsis, as well as an opportunity to redefine and critique modern bourgeois society. Collectors of Kahlo's work can be found around the world—the paintings in the exhibition come from some 30 private and institutional collections in France, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Several paintings have never before been on public view in the United States. Two of the most important and extensive collections of Kahlo's work—the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño Collection in Mexico City and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art, currently housed in the Centro Cultural Muros in Cuernavaca—have loaned some of their most treasured Kahlo paintings to the exhibition. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated 304-page catalogue featuring more than 100 color plates, as well as critical essays by Herrera, exhibition co-curator Elizabeth Carpenter, and Latin American art curator and critic Victor Zamudio-Taylor. A separate plate section is devoted to works from the Vicente Wolf Photography Collection. The catalogue also includes an extensive illustrated timeline of relevant socio-political world events, artistic and cultural developments, and significant personal experiences that took place during Kahlo's lifetime, along with a selected bibliography, exhibition history, and index. Visit The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) at : www.sfmoma.org

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 08 Oct 2011 07:58 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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