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

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• The Nelson-Atkins Museum Presents George Ault and 1940's America
• The Montclair Art Museum Exhibits "The Spectacular of Vernacular"
• The Henry Art Gallery at the U Washington Shows Carel Balth's "Videowatercolors"
• Alte Pinakothek’s 175th Jubilee Exhibition on Pietro Perugino
• The Kestnergesellschaft Presents New Drawings & Paintings by Daniel Richter
• Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Auction in October
• Rare Illustrated & Hand-colored Books Highlighted Bonhams Fall Auction
• The Dallas Museum of Art Surveys the Work Contemporary Artist Mark Bradford
• The Photographic Research Center at Boston University Hosts its Benefit Auction
• The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Displays Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons' Drawings
• The High Museum Features "Picasso to Warhol"
• Chaïm Soutine and Modernism at the Kunstmuseum Basel
• The Surreal Universe of Salvador Dali at the William Bennett Gallery
• Spanish Woman Claims to be Salvador Dali's Daughter
• Musee du Quay Branly assembles The Jazz Century Exhibition
• The Kunstverein Hamburg Shows the Works Of Evelyne Axelle
• Jeff Koons Shows His Contemporary Culture in The Château de Versailles
• Renaissance Armor and Portraits on View Together at the National Gallery of Art
• Our AKN Editor Tours The Thorvaldsens Museum ~ Denmark's Oldest Museum Building
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Nelson-Atkins Museum Presents George Ault and 1940's America Posted: 12 Oct 2011 11:29 PM PDT Kansas City, MO.- The Nelson-Atkins Museum is proud to present the travelling exhibition "To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America", on view at the museum from October 15th through January 8th 2012. During the turbulent 1940s, George Ault (1891-1948) created precise yet eerie pictures that have come to be seen as some of the most original paintings made in America in those years. The beautiful geometries of Ault's paintings make personal worlds of clarity and composure to offset a real world he felt was in crisis. "To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America" recreates a moment when the country was rendered fragile by the Great Depression and made anxious by World War II. Although much has been written about the glorious triumph of the war, memories of the anxious mood of life on the home front—a place far from the battlefields and yet profoundly at risk—have dimmed. To Make a World sheds light on these memories and makes them newly relevant today. The first major exhibition of Ault's art in more than 20 years, "To Make a World" includes paintings, drawings, and prints by Ault and his like-minded contemporaries. The additional 22 artists represented in this exhibition include some as celebrated as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, while others such as Edward Biberman and Dede Plummer are less widely known. Taken together, their art reveals an aesthetic vein running through 1940s American art not previously explored. Alexander Nemerov, the Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, curated the exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. When the massive Beaux Art Nelson-Atkins' Building opened in 1933, newspapers nationwide reported visitors "amazed," "gasping at its innovations and marveling at its luxury."  Still, times being what they were in the Great Depression, operations were modest: only three telephones serviced the entire building; lights in the galleries were turned off when people left a room; at opening and closing times, a huge bell was rung manually. Though the Museum has grown its collection, its audience (and its telephones), just as in 1933, bringing people together with art is central to all current Museum endeavors. And that goes for the major campus transformation project, the new Bloch Building as its jewel. The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America's finest art museums. The Nelson-Atkins serves the community by providing access and insight into its renowned collection of more than 33,500 art objects and is best known for its Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and new American Indian and Egyptian galleries. Housing a major art research library and the Ford Learning Center, the Museum is a key educational resource for the region. The institution-wide transformation of the Nelson-Atkins has included the 165,000-square-foot Bloch Building expansion and renovation of the original 1933 Nelson-Atkins Building. The museum's European painting collection is also highly-prized. It include works by Caravaggio, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Petrus Christus, El Greco, Guercino, Alessandro Magnasco, Giuseppe Bazzani, Corrado Giaquinto, Cavaliere d'Arpino, Gaspare Traversi, Giuliano Bugiardini, Titian, Rembrandt, and Peter Paul Rubens, as well as Impressionists Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh, among others. It also has fine Late Gothic and Early Italian Renaissance paintings by; Jacopo del Casentino (The Presentation of Christ in the Temple), Giovanni di Paolo and Workshop, Bernardo Daddi and Workshop, Lorenzo Monaco, Gherardo Starnina (The Adoration of the Magi), and Lorenzo di Credi. It has German and Austrian Expressionist paintings by Max Beckmann, Karl Hofer (Record Player), Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Oskar Kokoschka (Pyramids of Egypt). The museum is distinguished (and widely celebrated) for its extensive collection of Asian art, especially that of Imperial China. Most of it was purchased for the museum in the early 20th century by Laurence Sickman, then a Harvard fellow in China. The museum has one of the best collections of Chinese antique furniture in the country. In addition to Chinese art, the collection includes pieces from Japan, India, Iran, Indonesia, Korea, and Southeast, and South Asia. The American painting collection includes the largest collection open to the public of works by Thomas Hart Benton, who lived in Kansas City. Among its collection are masterpieces by George Bellows, George Caleb Bingham, Frederic Church, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. It also has fine Contemporary Paintings and Creations in the Bloch Building by; Willem de Kooning, Fairfield Porter ("Mirror"), Wayne Thiebaud ("Bikini Girl"), Richard Diebenkorn, Agnes Martin, Bridget Riley, and Alfred Jensen. In 2006, Hallmark Cards chairman Donald J. Hall, Sr., donated to the museum the entire Hallmark Photographic Collection, spanning the history of photography from 1839 to the present day. It is primarily American in focus, and includes works from photographers such as Southworth & Hawes, Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Homer Page, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Andy Warhol, Todd Webb, and Cindy Sherman, among others. Outside on the museum's immense lawn, the Kansas City Sculpture Park contains the largest collection of monumental bronzes by Henry Moore in the United States. The park also includes works by Alexander Calder, Auguste Rodin, George Segal and Mark di Suvero, among others. Beyond these, the park (and the museum itself) is well known for Shuttlecocks, a four-part outdoor sculpture of oversize badminton shuttlecocks by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. In addition, the museum also has collections of European and American sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper, Egyptian art, Greek and Roman art, modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture, pre-Columbian art, and the art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. As well, the museum houses a major collection of English pottery and another of miniature paintings. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.nelson-atkins.org

The Montclair Art Museum Exhibits "The Spectacular of Vernacular" Posted: 12 Oct 2011 11:29 PM PDT Montclair, New Jersey.- The Montclair Art Museum is proud to present "The Spectacular of Vernacular", on view from October 7th through January 1st 2012. The exhibition focuses on the role of vernacular forms in the work of 25 contemporary artists who utilize craft, folklore, and roadside kitsch to explore culturally specific iconography in the context of an increasingly global world of art. The exhibition will look closely at this particular brand of culture known as the vernacular, a term used to describe amateur or regional forms of expression that tend to be more homegrown than high-end. From dime-store plaques and snapshot photography to the objects attending folk rituals, these items often possess a warm familiarity. Yet for the artists who take them on as subjects, these humble forms can become nuanced and loaded symbols, offering clues about who we are and where we live.

The Henry Art Gallery at the U Washington Shows Carel Balth's "Videowatercolors" Posted: 12 Oct 2011 11:08 PM PDT Seattle, Washington.- The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington is pleased to show "Videowatercolors: Carel Balth Among His Contemporaries", on view from October 15th through January 22nd 2012. Dutch artist Carel Balth is one of a steadily growing group of artists exploring the intersections between photography, painting, and new media. In his most recent series Videowatercolors (started in 2001 and still ongoing), Balth combines on watercolor paper or canvas two or more nearly identical moments from a digital video recording, thereby drawing analogies between the constant flow of pixels and the fluidity of watercolor. Ostensibly simple, the subtle differences between the images trace complex shifts in time, movement, rhythm, orientation, light, and color, blending into a multifaceted ensemble and reflecting on essential conditions of perception, imaging, and imagination.

Alte Pinakothek’s 175th Jubilee Exhibition on Pietro Perugino Posted: 12 Oct 2011 09:51 PM PDT MUNICH.- As a highlight and to conclude the Alte Pinakothek's 175th jubilee celebrations, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen are staging the first exhibition on Pietro Perugino – one of the most successful artists of the Italian Renaissance – to be held outside Italy. It unites more than 30 works from all phases of the master's creative output, focussing in particular on the heyday of the artist's career in the late 15th century. 'The Vision of Saint Bernard', an altarpiece completed around 1490 which King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the founder of the Alte Pinakothek, managed to acquire in 1829, was the initial impetus behind this exhibition and forms its focal point. Although generally underestimated today, contemporaries heralded Pietro Perugino (c. 1450–1523) as the best painter of his generation. Prominent patrons courted his attention even some distance from Florence and Perugia, the centres in which he worked. Popes, cardinals, dukes and wealthy merchants were among his clients. He managed his workshop with astute business acumen, dealing with a surprising number of major commissions for the Church and municipalities in Umbria and Tuscany.

The Kestnergesellschaft Presents New Drawings & Paintings by Daniel Richter Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:58 PM PDT Hanover, Germany -  The Kestnergesellschaft is proud to present "Daniel Richter: 1001 Nights", on view at the museum through November 6th. Daniel Richter (born 1962 in Eutin, now lives and works in Berlin) is one of Germany's most important contemporary painters and has made his name with a hybrid of abstraction and figuration. The Kestnergesellschaft now presents a collection of Rickter's new paintings and drawings from 2008 to 2011 which deal with conflictual narrations and the vocabulary of the line. The starting point for these works is the collection of fantastical tales known as the "1001 Nights". Richter transforms these Arabic stories into menacing, fairytale-like scenarios that allude to an orientalism which has changed since 9/11. As the title indicates, Richter's works contain an extra zero – a Ground Zero – that gives the fantastical element an eerie and at the same time very concrete touch.

Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Auction in October Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:42 PM PDT London.- The Christie'sPost-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction on 14 October 2011 will feature an exceptional range of works dating from the height of the Post-War period to the present day. Highlights of the sale include Gerhard Richter's seminal photorealist work, Kerze (Candle); three masterpieces of British sculpture from Antony Gormley, Ron Mueck, and Damien Hirst; and major works by Richard Prince, Matthias Weischer, Martin Kippenberger, Juan Muñoz, and Miquel Barceló. Reflecting the vibrant, international flavour of London's Frieze Week, the sale also features works by, Maurizio Cattelan, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Adriana Varejão, Maria Lassnig, Gilbert & George, Sigmar Polke, Glenn Brown, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, ZhangDaliand Antoni Tàpiesamongst many others

Rare Illustrated & Hand-colored Books Highlighted Bonhams Fall Auction Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:41 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- On October 10, collectors focused their attention on Bonhams highly anticipated Fine Books & Manuscripts auction. Simulcast to New York, the Los Angeles-based sale was comprised of fine and rare first edition books, maps, manuscripts, ephemera and illustration art. Bonhams is the only auction house to offer bi-coastal previews to Books & Manuscripts clients. Dr. Catherine Williamson, Department Director, Fine Books and Manuscripts at Bonhams, said of the auction: "It was a very good day for a sale, with bidders in the room, on the phone, and via the internet. The large collection of early printed material offered in this sale attracted buyers from around the globe, pushing prices well above expectations."

The Dallas Museum of Art Surveys the Work Contemporary Artist Mark Bradford Posted: 12 Oct 2011 08:31 PM PDT Dallas, Texas.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents the first museum survey devoted to one of the leading figures in contemporary art, Mark Bradford. The critically acclaimed exhibition, on view from October 16th through January 15th 2012, features over forty works spanning a decade of Mark Bradford's career. Bradford is best known for his collaged paintings that express the energy and poetry of life in the city, particularly Los Angeles, where the artist lives and works. The New York Times praises Bradford for tackling "the full spectrum of subjects, [making] his abstraction feel deep." A recipient of a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Award, Bradford uses found materials including merchant posters, homemade flyers, salvaged plywood, and permanent wave endpapers to create his vibrant, textured compositions.

The Photographic Research Center at Boston University Hosts its Benefit Auction Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:59 PM PDT Boston, Massachusetts.- The Photographic Research Center (PRC) at Boston University is holding its annual benefit auction on October 15th. This year will be the most enjoyable and successful event ever that will meet your needs as artists and collectors and our needs to gain support for all of our programs — exhibitions, Master Lecture Series, workshops, Loupe — and all the other programs that you have come to associate with New England's most dynamic center for creative photography. They have made many exciting changes to this year's auction. This year the auction will have two separate components in one evening. The Live Auction will come first. This will be limited to not more than 35 of the most sought after work by the most sought after artists. Tickets to the Live Auction are $100. Immediately following the Live Auction will be the Silent Auction with tickets starting at $25 for members.

The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Displays Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons' Drawings Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:58 PM PDT Nashville, Tennessee.- The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons—Mama/Reciprocal Energy", on view from October 13th through December 8th. María Magdalena Campos-Pons is one of the most significant artists to emerge from the Cuban post-revolutionary era. While installation art, performance art, photography, and cultural activism continue to define the core of Campos-Pons' work of the last two decades, this exhibition will be the first that almost exclusively highlights her drawings. The drawings found within the Vanderbilt exhibition are a direct reflection of the artist's exploration of themes central to her practice, such as issues of identity, exile, and displacement as an Afro-Cuban artist living in America.

The High Museum Features "Picasso to Warhol" Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:57 PM PDT Atlanta, GA.- The High Museum of Art is proud to present "Picasso to Warhol" from October 15th through April 29th 2012. The exhibition will present approximately 100 works of art created by 14 of the most iconic artists from the 20th century: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio De Chirico, Joan Miró, Romare Bearden, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. The exhibition will be one of the largest concentrations of modern art masterpieces to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States. The achievements of these pioneers of modern art will be presented in depth, exploring each artist's stylistic development and highlighting their role in the most important artistic developments of the twentieth century, including the invention of Cubism, the emergence of abstraction and the development of Surrealism. Highlights of the exhibition include, "Dance (I) by Henri Matisse, "Girl Before a Mirror" and "Night Fishing at Antibes" by Pablo Picasso, "Map" by Jasper Johns, "Self-Portrait (1966)" by Andy Warhol, "Bird in Space" by Constantin Brancusi and "Number 1A" by Jackson Pollock. The exhibition is a continuation of the High Museum's collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), who have loaned all the pieces on show. The High Museum of Art (coloquially the High), located in Atlanta, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. Located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district, the High is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center. The Museum was founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association. In 1926, the High family, for whom the museum is named, donated their family home on Peachtree Street to house the collection following a series of exhibitions involving the Grand Central Art Galleries organized by Atlanta collector J. J. Haverty. Many pieces from the Haverty collection are now on permanent display in the High. A separate building for the Museum was built adjacent to the family home in 1955. On June 3, 1962, 106 Atlanta arts patrons died in an airplane crash at Orly Airport in Paris, France, while on a museum-sponsored trip. Including crew and other passengers, 130 people were killed in what was, at the time, the worst single plane aviation disaster in history. Members of Atlanta's prominent families were lost including members of the Berry family who founded Berry College. During their visit to Paris, the Atlanta arts patrons had seen 'Whistler's Mother' at the Louvre. In the fall of 1962, the Louvre, as a gesture of good will to the people of Atlanta, sent 'Whistler's Mother' to Atlanta to be exhibited at the Atlanta Art Association museum on Peachtree Street. To honor those killed in the June 3, 1962 crash, the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center was built for the High. The French government donated a Rodin sculpture "The Shade" to the High in memory of the victims of the crash. In 1983, a 135,000-square-foot (12,500 m2) building designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Meier opened to house the High Museum of Art. The Meier building was funded by a $7.9 million challenge grant from former Coca-Cola president Robert W. Woodruff matched by $20 million raised by the Museum. In 2002, three new buildings designed by Renzo Piano more than doubled the Museum's size to 312,000 square feet (29,000 m2). The Piano buildings were designed as part of an overall upgrade of the entire Woodruff Arts Center complex. In 2008, the Museum inked an US$18 million deal for a three-year revolving loan of art from the Musée du Louvre in Paris, resulting in the museum's highest attendance ever. The Museum has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art. The High Museum holds more than 12,000 works of art in its permanent collection. Included in this collection are 19th and 20th century American art; European art; decorative arts; modern and contemporary art and photography. Highlights of the permanent collection include works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Claude Monet, Martin Johnson Heade, Dorothea Lange, Clarence John Laughlin, and Chuck Close. The High places special emphasis on supporting and collecting works by Southern self-taught artists, such as Howard Finster, and includes a contextual installation of sculpture and paintings from his Paradise Gardens. The Museum includes a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of self-taught art, a distinction unique among North American museums. The High's Media Arts department produces an annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic film. Special exhibitions at the High feature strong global partnerships with other museums such as the Louvre and with the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Opificio delle pietre dure in Florence. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.high.org

Chaïm Soutine and Modernism at the Kunstmuseum Basel Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:37 PM PDT BASEL - The Kunstmuseum Basel opened the exhibit Chaim Soutine and Modernism through July 6. In comparison to the much more renowned work of friends and contemporaries, such as Amedeo Modigliani or Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine's oeuvre still has an aura of discovery. In a representative survey at the Kunstmuseum Basel, a reassessment of Soutine's position as a painter will be presented within the framework of the complex fabric of movements that marks 20th-century art. Born in Belarus in 1893, Soutine was confronted with unimaginable, in part religious opposition to his desire to become an artist. The decision to study art in Vilna showed great daring and courage. His path took him to Paris in 1913, the capital of the European avant-garde. Like many Jewish newcomers from Eastern Europe, Soutine initially found refuge in the sociotope of the studio residence, La Ruche, and later at the Cité Falguière, where he worked alongside such artists as Chagall, Modigliani and Jacques Lipchitz. Beyond this small circle, Soutine led a largely isolated life. While artistic movements, some of them originating in Paris, made waves throughout Europe – Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism – Soutine remained relatively unimpressed by these ramifications of modernism and instead cultivated a distinctive, highly intense painting of his own, informed with an unprecedented degree of profound and palpable emotion. His pictures are freighted with the tension of collapsing perspective and hyperbolically distorted figuration, reinforced by a powerful, gestural brushstroke. The revolutionary potential inherent in this painting exerted an influence well into the 20th-century and was a seminal force in the work of artists like Francis Bacon or Willem de Kooning. Paradoxically, Soutine is as much a visionary as he is a traditionalist: he was quite indifferent to one of the greatest achievements of modernism, the freedom of subject matter; he maintained an unwavering, lifelong devotion to the triad of still life, landscape and portrait. There is, in fact, not a single subject in Soutine's art for which one could not find a 17th-century model. It almost seems as if art historically sanctioned genres afforded him the security that he needed in order to venture into uncharted territory as a painter. The exhibition comprises some 60 works by Soutine, one point of departure of being the works of the Im Obersteg Collection on permanent loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel. Insightful juxtapositions with paintings by Soutine's friends – Modigliani, Chagall, or Utrillo – and artists like Picasso, Braque or Munch highlight the artistic context of Soutine's oeuvre. The selection clearly shows that Soutine was faced with the same artistic issues as his contemporaries, despite the fact that his extremely idiosyncratic trajectory eludes classification. The exhibition presents a new image of Soutine as the central figure at the intersection of the various artistic tendencies of his day. The Kunstmuseum Basel possesses the worlds largest collection of works by the Holbein family. Further examples of Renaissance art include major pieces by such masters as Konrad Witz, Martin Schongauer, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Mathias Grünewald. Most of these early treasures originally belonged to the collection of a Basel lawyer, Basilius Amerbach. Purchased by the city in 1661, they formed the core of the worlds first public municipal museum. Paintings by Basel-born Arnold Böcklin feature among the 19th-century highlights. In the field of 20th-century art, the accent is on Cubism (Picasso, Braque, Léger), German Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism and American art since 1950. Contemporary art is exhibited at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Museum of Contemporary Art).  Visit : www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/home/

The Surreal Universe of Salvador Dali at the William Bennett Gallery Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:36 PM PDT New York City.- The William Bennett Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its newest show, "The Surreal Universe of Salvador Dalí". Featuring exceptional unique works, rare prints and the unveiling of Dalí's never before seen Twelve Signs of the Zodiac bas-relief sculptures. The bas reliefs are vivid expressions of the 12 signs of the zodiac --- Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Each offers Dalí's impressive interpretations of these popular signs.

Spanish Woman Claims to be Salvador Dali's Daughter Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:35 PM PDT MADRID - A 52 year old Spanish woman, Pilar A., had a DNA test made eight months ago which she hoped would help her prove that she is the daughter of famous painter Salvador Dali. The woman had a DNA test made eight months ago and her story was confirmed by Nicolas Descharnes, son of friend and biographer of Salvador Dali, Robert Descharnes. Dali's DNA samples were given to the scientist who made the test by the Descharnes family who kept them alter the Spanish painter died.

Musee du Quay Branly assembles The Jazz Century Exhibition Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:34 PM PDT PARIS - Jazz, along with cinema and rock music, constitutes one of the major artistic developments of the 20th century. Born at the beginning of that century, this musical hybrid marked every aspect of world culture with its sounds and rhythms. More than a simple musical genre, jazz not only revolutionized music but also introduced a new way of life in 20th century society, which has deeply influenced the history of art of the last century. The Century of Jazz, shown at the musée du quai Branly offers a new perspective on a section of African American art, a specific aspect of American culture still little known on this side of the Atlantic and which has resulted in numerous artists being shown in the exhibition.

The Kunstverein Hamburg Shows the Works Of Evelyne Axelle Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:33 PM PDT Hamburg.- The Kunstverein Hamburg presents "Evelyn Axelle: The World is Round" until June 13th. Evelyne Axell (1935-1972) was an actress and newsreader, an icon in the French-speaking world, and for many, her beauty made her a sex symbol. But in 1963 she brought her film and television career to an end, reversing roles to become a painter. A key figure in Belgian pop art, she is among the artists whose work is just emerging from the shadow cast by male pop heroes for reassessment, for instance in the exhibitions "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958—1968" at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery of the University of the Arts, Philadelphia last winter or "Power Up—Female Pop Art" at the Kunsthalle in Vienna, as well in recent publications.

Jeff Koons Shows His Contemporary Culture in The Château de Versailles Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:32 PM PDT   PARIS, FRANCE - The Château de Versailles will present the exhibition Jeff Koons at Versailles, which will be held from September 10th 2008, to December 14th, 2008 in the Royal Apartments and in the gardens of the Castle. This unique event will present seventeen Jeff Koons' works, including his most significant works from the Eighties to these days. Paris is no stranger to rows over modern additions to historic spaces, from Marc Chagall's fresco at the Opéra Garnier to the glass Pyramid at the Louvre, both now hailed as masterpieces.

Renaissance Armor and Portraits on View Together at the National Gallery of Art Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:31 PM PDT WASHINGTON, DC.- Armor from the renowned Spanish Royal Armory in Madrid will be paired for the first time with portraits by masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Alonso Sánchez Coello, Anthony van Dyck, and Diego Velázquez depicting emperors and kings wearing the same armor in The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. This unprecedented exhibition, which explores how armor was used to cultivate the image of royal power in late15th- to 18th-century Spain, highlights some 75 armors and paintings, in addition to magnificent tapestries and works on paper that depict armor worn in the courtly, chivalric context of parades, pageants, and jousting tournaments and occasionally, battles. On view June 28 through November 1, 2009, the sole venue worldwide.

Our AKN Editor Tours The Thorvaldsens Museum ~ Denmark's Oldest Museum Building Posted: 12 Oct 2011 07:30 PM PDT Thorvaldsens Museum is Denmark's oldest and also most extraordinary museum building. It is situated in the centre of Copenhagen. The museum opened on September 18, 1848. It houses nearly all of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen's original models for the sculptures he created for numerous European countries. The collections at Thorvaldsen's Museum consist of Thorvaldsen's own sculptures and his extensive collections of contemporary art of his time, of antique Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman objects, of other artists' sculptures, his own medals, letters, books, personal objects etc. The collections at Thorvaldsens Museum have for the most part been collected by Thorvaldsen himself. Every work and object in the collections has an inventory number, which begins with a letter followed by a number. The online catalogue of Thorvaldsen's collections is under construction and not all works and objects are searchable as yet. The museum building is very characteristic with its strong colours, the unusual façade with its large gates and sloping lines around all gates and windows. On the roof the goddess of victory, Victoria, drives her four-in-hand and expresses the fame, which Thorvaldsen achieved in both his time and today. Inside the Museum the colours are equally strong both on the lavishly decorated ceilings, in the patterns of the floors and in the colours of the walls. And the light is fantastic in the Museum when it falls through the windows set high up and gives shape and shadow to the sculptures and reliefs. Thorvaldsens Museum was built from 1839 to 1848, next to Christiansborg Palace, occupied by a building housing the royal coaches and wagons. Parts of the old palace building are still inside the walls of the Museum. The Museum's architect was the young Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll (1800 – 1856), who had stayed in Rome in the 1830s and was familiar with Thorvaldsen and his sculptures. Bindesbøll drew several fantastic projects for the museum while in Rome, but in the end the result was instead a complete conversion of the existing wagon building. The Christ hall and the entrance hall were, however, newly erected. The museum remains Bindesbøll's most famous building as his career as a working architect was to last a mere 18 years during which he became architect to the State and, in his final year, professor at the Royal Academy. He was the first and finest architect of the young democracy of 1849. The exterior part of the museum, facing the canal, has frescos depicting the return of Thorvaldsen from Rome in 1838. After the death of this renowned artist he was buried in the inner courtyard of the Thorvaldsen Museum in September 1848. Website: _ www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/ Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) is one of Denmark's best known sculptural artists. For more than 40 years he lived in Rome where he became one of the most important European representatives of Neo-Classicist sculptural art. Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen on November 19th, 1770, to poor parents. His father was a carver and immigrant from Iceland. The young Bertel entered the Art Academy in Copenhagen age 11 recognized as an unusually bright talent and was educated there as a sculptor until 1793. In 1796 he got the opportunity of traveling to Rome as the Academy's scholar for three years to be further schooled. He stayed in Rome, received numerous commissions and became one of Europe's best known sculptors. The sculpture, which laid the foundation of Thorvaldsen's fame, was Jason with the golden fleece from 1803. Contemporaries saw the sculpture as no less than an image of the ideal future for human kind. Art and life was to be inspired by Roman and Greek Antiquities, called Neo-Classicism. Rome was the cultural centre of Europe and attracted art interested people who could afford his works in marble or bronze. Thorvaldsen gradually had many employees and no less than five studios in Rome, and his works were placed all over Europe. It says much about Thorvaldsen's fame that he received the commission to make the monument to Pius VII in the principal cathedral of the Catholic Church in the Vatican.The aged pontiff Pope Pius VII sits on his throne with his tiara on his head. He is holding out his hand in blessing while looking straight towards us. On the other hand, the allegorical female figure on the right representing Divine Wisdom, is looking emotionally up to Heaven, while the woman on the left, Divine Power is looking down, thoughtfully engrossed in the book, the Bible, which she is holding. Sitting at the centre, the Pope thus becomes the balanced conveyor of a message consisting of equal parts of Christian sentiment and Christian wisdom. During a whole lifetime Thorvaldsen created more than 550 sculptures, reliefs and portrait busts and in his will bequeathed a large collection of his works - as well as collected works of other artists to the city of Copenhagen in 1830. In 1839 the city began building a museum - appropriately designed in the neoclassical style - to house the aging sculptor's valuable collection. Among his most famous works are the sculptures with motifs from Classical mythology, Venus, Mercury, Ganymede, Hebe, Cupid and Psyche. To this comes a number of monumental sculptures of historical persons, e.g. Pope Pius VII (a grave monument in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome) and the equestrian statue of Jozef Poniatowski (Warsaw). Thorvaldsen also carried out large orders for Denmark; most famous of these are the statues of Christ and the Apostles (in Vor Frue Kirke – Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen). Thorvaldsen's museum collection includes the original plaster models of his sculptures, the original design sketches, and many original pieces of his artwork, including his "Self Portrait" (1839). It also houses a huge collection of some 4500 documents and letters from, to and about the world-famous sculptor. Now the letters are being published in their original languages, Danish, German, Italian, French etc. in a user-friendly work of reference. At the same time they are being provided with explanatory commentaries, illustrations, registers, search tools, reference articles etc. The Thorvaldsen Museum is today one of the most visited sites in Copenhagen with an outstanding collection of his sculptures and Danish art from the Golden Age 1800-1850. On the representation of the Three Graces, Pausanias wrote . . "Who it was who first represented the Graces naked, whether in sculpture or in painting, I could not discover. During the earlier period, certainly, sculptors and painters alike represented them draped. At Smyrna, for instance, in the sanctuary of the Nemeses, above the images have been dedicated Graces of gold, the work of Bupalus; and in the Music Hall in the same city there is a portrait of a Grace, painted by Apelles. At Pergamus likewise, in the chamber of Attalus, are other images of Graces made by Bupalus; and near what is called the Pythium there is a portrait of Graces, painted by Pythagoras the Parian. Socrates too, son of Sophroniscus, made images of Graces for the Athenians, which are before the entrance to the Acropolis. All these are alike draped; but later artists, I do not know the reason, have changed the way of portraying them. Certainly to-day sculptors and painters represent Graces naked." The Charities are depicted together with several other mythological figures in Sandro Botticelli's painting "Primavera" among other artistic depictions, they are the subject of famous sculptures by Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen. ( Graces and Amor, by Bertel Thorvaldsen 1817-18, in Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen)

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