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

---

• Please Excuse Our 24 Hour Delay For Maintenance
• Dallas Museum of Art presents a Landmark Exhibition of Normandy Coast Masterworks
• Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao Celebrates Roberto Matta's Centennial
• Palestinian-British Artist Mona Hatoum Announced Winner of the 2011 Joan Miró Prize
• Vasily Kafanov exhibits at Grant Gallery
• Musée Granet and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux show "The Picasso/Cézanne Exhibition"
• Our AKN Editor Visits The Unique Buchheim Museum In Germany ~ A Treasure Of Diversity
• Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy
• Edward Kienholz ' naughty ' sculpture at LA County Museum of Art
• Smart Museum of Art shows Master Drawings from Yale Collection
• Fifty Million Years of the Evolution of the Horse
• Vancouver Art Gallery To Host 'The Colour of My Dreams ~ The Surrealist Revolution'
• The Museum of Modern Art to show Eight Comedies by Italian Director Dini Risi
• Whitney Museum to show A Retrospective Alice Guy Blaché ~ Cinema Pioneer
• Jane Davis Doggett Installation Showcases Unique "Visual Language"
• Avant-Garde Artist Christo Coetzee on Show at the University of Pretoria
• Yale University Art Gallery exhibition of Photographs by Abelardo Morell
• Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art Sale Announced by Sotheby's New York
• 'The Orient Expressed: Japan's Influence on Western Art, 1854-1918' On View at the Mississippi Museum of Art
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Please Excuse Our 24 Hour Delay For Maintenance Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:29 AM PDT ANNOUNCEMENT: Art Knowledge News will be taking a One Day break during a 24 hour, or less, period required for maintenance of our equipment. We are posting many interesting articles from our archives, some of the BEST Articles and Art Images that appeared in your magazine during the past six plus (6+) years . . and we are also publishing current art news articles on the left hand side under RECENT NEWS .. Enjoy

Dallas Museum of Art presents a Landmark Exhibition of Normandy Coast Masterworks Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:27 AM PDT DALLAS, TX.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents a landmark exhibition exploring the influential and profound relationship between photographers and painters who lived and worked along the Normandy coast in France during the mid-19th century. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 reveals how the convergence of social, technological and commercial forces within the region affected artistic production and dramatically transformed the course of photography, impressionism and modern painting. The exhibition will feature some 100 works, including vintage prints, paintings, pastels and watercolors, by artists and photographers including Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Le Gray, and Claude Monet. On view through May 23, 2010, The Lens of Impressionism will be complemented by the presentation of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea, a special exhibition drawn from the Museum's collections opening in April that will explore how coastal landscapes have been portrayed by artists throughout the past century. The Lens of Impressionism has been organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation, which marks the final stop of this major exhibition, will feature important loans and a new section exploring early photographic techniques and technology. "The Lens of Impressionism provides a wonderful opportunity to connect visitors with masterpieces by some of the greatest impressionist artists, including Monet and Degas, and also to offer insight and exposure to their colleagues, the pioneers of the art of photography," said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. "The presentation at the DMA is enhanced by our forthcoming exhibition Coastlines, which will further explore the theme, as well as in our own collection of impressionist works from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which this year celebrates its 25th year as part of the DMA." The exhibition will showcase paintings, photographs and drawings by some of the most treasured artists in the Western canon—Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas among them—as well as by pioneering photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq. Inspired by the scenic Normandy coast of France, these works include representations of beach scenes, seascapes, fishing villages, resorts and the region's pastoral beauty. Archival materials related to early tourism will also be included in the exhibition to provide an innovative examination of the impact of the then-new medium of photography on ideas of image making, the recording of passing time, the capacities of painting and the rise of impressionism itself. "The Lens of Impressionism presents new insight into and scholarship on the response of impressionist painters to early photography within the context of a single geographic locale," said Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and the coordinating curator for the exhibition. "The work that was developed in the second half of the 19th century in the Normandy coast—a region that was intensely explored and celebrated by artists during this time—tells a revealing story about the cross-pollination of ideas between the emerging impressionist art movement and the new field of photography." Exclusive to the Dallas presentation is a special section that illustrates the technology and techniques of early photography through works from the Dallas Museum of Art's collections as well as loans from the Amon Carter Museum. As early as the 1820s, painters were attracted to the rugged north coast of France, with its towns and fishing villages little changed from medieval times. Richard Parkes Bonington looked through the eyes of the luminous English pastoral tradition, while the Frenchman Eugène Isabey favored rough-hewn surfaces. The latter'sBoat Dashing Against a Jetty captures the stormy surge and onlookers in violent strokes and squiggles of paint. The opening of rail connections from Paris, beginning in 1847, soon made the Normandy coast a favored holiday destination for the newly prosperous middle class. The sea replaced sulfurous spa waters as a therapeutic agent, and new hotels and casinos sprang up almost overnight. The little Norman towns could seem oases far removed from the political turmoils and invasions that rocked Paris every 20 years or so. Even as the Franco-Prussian War was threatening, Monet, on his honeymoon in Trouville, could paint smartly dressed vacationers promenading outside a grand Second Empire hotel. Both painters and photographers marketed their wares to the new waves of tourists. And both were of two minds about the explosion of human activity on formerly unspoiled beachfronts. After viewing The Lens of Impressionism, visitors are encouraged to explore the Museum's Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which is acclaimed for its impressionist and post-impressionist works by such artists as Bonnard, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, and van Gogh. Encompassing more than 1,400 works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative arts objects, the collection is displayed at the DMA in a re-creation of the couple's Riviera home, Villa La Pausa. This spectacular bequest, which was presented to the Museum 25 years ago, transformed the DMA's collection of late 19th-century French art and founded the institution's collection in European decorative arts. Special audio tours for The Lens of Impression exhibition and the Reves Collection will highlight works in the exhibition along with select masterpieces from the Reves Collection. Additional background information and material on the exhibition and from the Reves Collection can also be accessed by visitors on Wi-Fi enabled smartphones and media players.  Visit the The Dallas Museum of Art at : www.dm-art.org/

Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao Celebrates Roberto Matta's Centennial Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:26 AM PDT BILBAO, SPAIN - The year 2011 marks the centenary of the birth of Roberto Matta, one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century art because of his importance as a member of the Surrealist group and his enormous influence on the development of American Abstract Expressionism, and above all because he was an absolute artist, a visionary and a precursor of the relationships of art, science and nature and the fundamental role of art in the complete development of the human being.

Palestinian-British Artist Mona Hatoum Announced Winner of the 2011 Joan Miró Prize Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:25 AM PDT BARCELONA.- The jury of the 2011 Joan Miró Prize has granted the award to the Palestinian-British artist residing in London and Berlin, Mona Hatoum, for her great skill in connecting personal experience with universal values. Hatoum's sculptures, installations, performances and videos set her among the most outstanding artists on the international art scene. The Joan Miró Prize is organised by Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona in collaboration with Obra Social "la Caixa", which assumes as its own the agreement existing with Fundació Caixa Girona. It is worth €70,000, awarded biennially, and is one of the highest awards among current art prizes. Previously this prize has been awarded to Olafur Eliasson (2007) and Pipilotti Rist (2009) in recognition of their work.

Vasily Kafanov exhibits at Grant Gallery Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:22 AM PDT   New York City - Grant Gallery is proud to announce a new show a prominent Russian-American artist, Vasily Kafanov. On exhibition September 14 through October 1, 2007.

Musée Granet and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux show "The Picasso/Cézanne Exhibition" Posted: 26 Oct 2011 01:21 AM PDT AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE - The Picasso / Cézanne exhibition focuses on the subtle links between these two giants in art: the direct influence of the force of the "father of modern art" on the young artist arriving in France in 1900, or the mature musings of the man who liked to say I live with Cézanne? Even if it is not flagrant in his work, Cézanne was much admired by Picasso and often in his thoughts: Cézanne! He was like a father to us all. On exhibition at the Musée Granet from 25th May through 27th September, 2009.

Our AKN Editor Visits The Unique Buchheim Museum In Germany ~ A Treasure Of Diversity Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:17 PM PDT The Buchheim Museum in Germany is located north of Bernried in Höhenried Park, directly on the banks of Lake Starnberg. The path from the visitors' parking area to the museum is lined with old trees, charming ponds, pagodas, as well as works fashioned out of wood and metal. For the collections of Lothar-Günther Buchheim – painter, photographer, publisher, author of art books and novels – architect Günter Behnisch has designed an open and multi-segmental structure that reflects the museum's extraordinary diversity. The legendary core of the collection, works of expressionism predominantly by the artists' group "Brücke" (1905–1913), are shown in spacious halls. The more intimate rooms of the "towers" are reserved for the collections of folk art and ethnological artistry, as well as for Buchheim's own work. A unique architectural feature is the deck that is suspended twelve-meters high over the lake, providing museum visitors with a view of the town of Starnberg and the Alps. For nearly 40 years, Buchheim has pursued a museum concept that reverses conventional divisions – a painting gallery, a graphic arts gallery, a European crafts collection and a museum for ethnological art – and seeks to mix and connect the individual, yet richly interrelated collection areas: a pan-cultural encounter and an exciting dialogue between the art of the Expressionists and their inspirational sources from Africa and the South Seas. Buchheim's collection, which was essentially compiled in the 1950's, encompasses an extraordinarily wide spectrum of outstanding expressionist art. At the heart of the collection are paintings, watercolors, drawings, woodcuts, etchings and lithographs by artists of the group "Brücke", which included the artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, as well as Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde and Otto Mueller, who joined the group briefly. After an initial late-impressionistic approach, the artists developed an expressive visual language, which is characterized by simplified, daring forms, monumentality and vivid colors, and was inspired by African and South Sea art, as well as by the works of Gauguin, van Gogh, Munch, the "Fauves" and early woodcuts. Since the worldwide exhibition tour in the early 1980's, the Buchheim collection of Expressionist art has enjoyed international recognition. The holdings found in the Buchheim collection not only provide an impressive overview of "Brücke" art, which marks the beginning of modern art in Germany. Groups of works by Lovis Corinth, Max Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka complement the "Brücke" art, as do works from the ensuing so-called second Expressionist generation. Water-colors and graphic arts by Otto Dix form a bridge to Veristic art. Interrelatedness and characteristic differences between the individual artists are highlighted, as is the link between drawings, woodcuts and paintings. Visit website:_ www.buchheimmuseum.de/

Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:15 PM PDT FRANKFURT.- The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became known in Germany through his formative work as a teacher at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1928. His pioneering theories on art as a testing ground for new forms of expression and their application to all areas of modern life are still influential today. Comprising roughly 170 works – paintings, photographs and photograms, sculptures and films, as well as stage set designs and typographical projects - the retrospective encompasses all phases of his oeuvre. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, it will thus offer a survey of the wide range of Moholy-Nagy's creative output to the public for the first time since the last major exhibition of his work in Kassel in 1991. On exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle from 8 October through 7 February, 2010. No other teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, nor nearly any other artist of the 1920s in Germany, an epoch so rich in utopian designs, developed such a wide range of ideas and activities as Moholy-Nagy. His work bears evidence to the fact that he considered painting and film, photography and sculpture, stage set design, drawing, and the photogram to be of equal importance. Whether in his early work at the Bauhaus or in his late work in the USA, he continually fell back upon these means of expression. Using them alternately, he varied them and took them up again as parts of a universal concept whose pivot is to be seen in the alert, curious, and unrestrained experimental mind of the "multimedia" artist himself. Long before the word "media designer" was invented and people began to talk about professional "marketing," Moholy-Nagy worked in these fields, too – as a guiding intellectual force concerned with new technical facilities, design and educational instruments. "All design areas of life are closely interlinked," he wrote about 1925. Despite his motto expressing "the unity of art and technology," Moholy-Nagy was no uncritical admirer of the machine age, but rather a humanist who was open-minded about technology. His fundamental attitude as an artist may be summed up as aimed at improving the quality of life, avoiding specialization, and employing science and technology for the enrichment and heightening of human experience. Moholy-Nagy's aesthetically and conceptually radical approach already becomes apparent in the classical arts, in painting and sculpture. His so-called Telephone Pictures, which he dictated to somebody by telephone, exemplify this dimension: using a special graph paper and a color chart, he worked out the composition and colors of the pictures and had them executed according to his telephonic instructions by the employees of a sign factory. He also pursued new paths with his famous Light-Space Modulator of 1930, describing his gesamtkunstwerk composed of color, light, and movement as an "apparatus for the demonstration of the effects of light and movement." It was equally new territory he conquered in the fields of photography and film: with his cameraless photography, his photograms, and his abstract films such as Light Play Black, White, Gray from 1930, Moholy-Nagy is still regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century photographers. Presenting his The Room of Our Time, the Schirn offers a concise abstract of the artist's work. The sketches for this environment, which assembles all his theories, date back as far as 1930 and will be realized in the Schirn on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2009 for the first time. This theory and presentation space will confront the visitor with Moholy-Nagy's innovations in the new media, in exhibition design, and in light projection in a condensed form. The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT is one of Europe's most renowned exhibition institutions. Since 1986, more than 180 exhibitions have been realized, among them major surveys dedicated to Vienna Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, to "Women Impressionists" and the history of photography, to subjects like shopping and the relationship between art and consumerism, the visual art of the Stalin era, the Nazarenes, or the new Romanticism in present-day art. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Bill Viola, Arnold Schönberg, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, and Carsten Nicolai were presented in comprehensive solo shows. Visit : www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/index.php?lang=en

Edward Kienholz ' naughty ' sculpture at LA County Museum of Art Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:14 PM PDT   LOS ANGELES, CA - When the artist Edward Kienholz was scouring the neighborhoods of this sprawling city in the early 1960s in search of a 1938 Dodge coupe to use in a sculpture, he probably had little idea that he was on the verge of creating a work that would one day become a significant symbol of Southern California art of the 1960's.

Smart Museum of Art shows Master Drawings from Yale Collection Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:13 PM PDT   Chicago, IL - This exhibition, organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and traveling to the Smart Museum of Art, provides a compelling survey of European draftsmanship, with masterworks by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Edgar Degas, Guercino, Jacob Jordaens, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among many others. The selections come from the Yale University Art Gallery's substantial collection of European drawings and include examples of nearly every artistic movement and drawing technique used by European artists from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century. On exhibition October 4, 2007 – January 6, 2008.

Fifty Million Years of the Evolution of the Horse Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:12 PM PDT   New York City - The American Museum of Natural History today announced a major new exhibition, The Horse, opening May 17, 2008 and remaining on view through January 4, 2009. The Horse will examine the powerful and continuing relationship between horses and humans and explore the origins of the horse family, extending back more than 50 million years.

Vancouver Art Gallery To Host 'The Colour of My Dreams ~ The Surrealist Revolution' Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:10 PM PDT Vancouver, Canada - 'The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art' is the most comprehensive exhibition of surrealist art ever presented in Canada. Included are outstanding works by Hans Bellmer, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, Yves Tanguy and other leading figures of Surrealism. Guest curator Dawn Ades, a renowned scholar and leading expert on the movement, has selected more than 300 works of art that underscore the radical sense of experimentation that contributed to the founding of Surrealism in the 1920s and resulted in a rich diversity of painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and film in the ensuing decades.

The Museum of Modern Art to show Eight Comedies by Italian Director Dini Risi Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:09 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art,  MoMA, will screen eight films by Italian director Dino Risi (1916–2008), from December 10 through 17, 2009 in the exhibition "Dino Risi: Comedy with a Twist". Among the acclaimed films presented here are Risi's masterpiece 'Il sorpasso' (The Easy Life) (1962); 'Profumo di donna' (Scent of a Woman) (1974), which was remade as the 1992 English-language film starring Al Pacino; and the first screening outside Italy of the documentary profile of Risi made for his 90th birthday, 'Una bella vacanza' (A Beautiful Vacation) (2006), directed by Fabrizio Corallo and Francesca Molteni, with segments from his most famous films, and commentaries from such personalities as Monica Bellucci, Umberto Eco, Giancarlo Giannini, Martin Scorsese, and Carlo Verdone.

Whitney Museum to show A Retrospective Alice Guy Blaché ~ Cinema Pioneer Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:08 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- An unprecedented large-scale retrospective of the films of Alice Guy Blaché (1873–1968)—the first woman director in the history of cinema—will be presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, from November 6, 2009, to January 24, 2010. Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer features more than eighty rare films that will be screened in the Whitney's second-floor Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video Gallery. Until a decade ago, only forty of her films were known to exist; today, some 130 works have been identified in archives internationally. The recovery of Alice Guy Blaché's work—both its identification as hers and its conservation and restoration—has involved an enormous worldwide undertaking by film historians, archivists, and preservationists. After a pioneering decade working in Paris at Gaumont (1896–1907) as its first director and head of production, Alice Guy Blaché came to the United States where she was the first woman to establish and run her own film company, Solax (1910–1914), located initially in Flushing, New York, and then in Fort Lee, New Jersey; she continued working in the US as an independent director through 1920. During these formative years of cinema's evolution, Blaché wrote, directed, or produced more than 1,000 films, ranging from under a minute long to multi-reel features. She made films in a wide range of genres, including comedies, dramas, Westerns, fables, detective stories, a biblical epic, and films based upon literary classics. She wrote scripts, experimented with camera techniques, made films that were color-tinted by hand, and shot more than one hundred synchronized sound films between 1902 and 1906, decades before sound became the standard for the medium. Joan Simon, the Whitney's curator-at-large and organizer of the exhibition, notes: "Alice Guy Blaché—cinema's first woman director, screenwriter, producer, businesswoman, and studio owner—is unique in film history. This exhibition introduces new audiences to a little-known but historically key figure who had decade-long careers in France and the US, and affords film scholars a 'critical mass' of Blaché's body of work by which to place her films within the international context of early cinema. Her films are important examples of film's evolution as popular entertainment: they are bold, her stories fascinating, her point of view singular, her comedies raucous, and her characters (especially her women and child heroes) complex. Her career is worthy of renewed investigation and she deserves recognition as a pioneer of early cinema." Born in Paris in 1873, and raised in Switzerland, Chile, and France, Alice Guy, as she then was known, studied the new "sciences" of typewriting and stenography, and began working as secretary to Léon Gaumont in 1894 at Le comptoir général de photographie, a manufacturer of still cameras and other optical equipment. This was the corporate predecessor of L. Gaumont & Cie, established in 1895, soon to become one of the world's leading film companies and today the oldest in continuous operation. Guy learned the photography business through correspondence, familiarizing herself with clients, marketing, and the company's stock of cameras, and became acquainted with the new technologies being invented for shooting and exhibiting motion pictures. Inventors Gaumont and the Lumière Brothers were friends as well as competitors; both were trying to solve the problem of projecting film. Alice Guy and Léon Gaumont were among the audience at a private screening in March 1895, when the Lumières presented their projection of a film of workers leaving a factory. Until this time at Gaumont, filmmaking had been in the service of science or used as a promotional tool for selling cameras. "In the beginning, everyone was always shooting street scenes, parades, or moving trains, which I did not find terribly interesting," Guy later recalled. "So one day I said to Monsieur Gaumont: 'It seems to me we could do something better.'" Perhaps with the courage of youth, Guy asked Gaumont if she could try making a film that would tell a story. He said yes. Thus, Alice Guy became Gaumont's first director (although the term did not yet exist) and soon became head of production, spending the next decade making films at Gaumont's studios in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, between 1896 and 1907. Guy's earliest films at Gaumont share certain subjects and visions with some of her colleagues, such as the Lumières. As Joan Simon writes in her catalogue essay, "The magical antics when body parts come undone from a body, as in Guy's Chirurgie fin de siècle (Fin de Siècle Surgery, 1900), are in the spirit of Méliès's famous and numerous deconstructions. She also, like many of her contemporaries, made travel films and dance films, sometimes the two genres conveyed in one moving picture, such as her dances filmed in Spain, particularly the beautiful hand-tinted films Le Bolero (1905), performed by Miss Saharet, and Tango (1905)." Guy's distinct point of view was to be seen in her story films, and she was among the first to make them. She worked from scripts, which she wrote as well as directed. Though she produced such typical period genres as chase films or those derived from fairy tales, these often featured a twist. The folktale of children born in a cabbage patch is the subject of her first film, La Fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy). In the story, babies are presented as if they are new cameras for sale. The theme of the complications of parenthood recurs in many of her films, whether La Fée Printemps (1906), in which a fairy magically transforms winter to spring and delivers a newborn from a garden to expectant parents, or Madame a des envies (Madame Has Cravings, 1906), a new kind of chase film, where a pregnant woman races through town, husband and child in tow, stealing foods to satisfy her cravings. Guy also addressed the duplicity and brutality of a stepmother (La Marâtre, 1906) and the same year made her epic La Vie du Christ, with sets and costumes based on the realist illustrations in a famous James Tissot bible, using some twenty-five sets and hundreds of extras, for a film running ca. thirty-four minutes long, at a time when the norm was a maximum of six or seven minutes. Guy's decade-long career at Gaumont alone would have earned her a place in cinema history. However, this was followed by a second decade in the United States, from 1910 to 1920, where she was known as Madame Blaché (or Alice Blaché). Here she worked at her own company, Solax, which existed from 1910 to 1914, first in Flushing, New York, and later in Fort Lee, New Jersey (where she built a studio plant at a cost of $100,000), and subsequently as an independent for companies such as Metro and Pathé. While some of her American films explore genres new for the filmmaker, including detective stories and Westerns, others address in new ways themes she had already considered in France. Several Solax films continue her use of cross-dressing—Officer Henderson (1913), for example, in which undercover police dress in drag to pursue purse-snatchers—that was earlier employed to great comic effect in Les Résultats du féminisme (1906) to depict a world where male and female roles are reversed (the latter also re-told in her Solax film In Year 2000, made in 1912, whereabouts unknown). Others again ponder the nuances, the difficulties, and the human comedy of domesticity, such as Mixed Pets (1911), in which neither baby nor dog is wanted in a household, or A House Divided (1913), in which a couple estranged by suspicions of infidelity must live together under one roof and communicate exclusively by handwritten notes. She also continued to make films which feature child heroes and heroines, such as Falling Leaves (1911), as in the earlier Gaumont film Une Héroine de 4 ans (1907). Madame Blaché also addressed modern social problems in several of her films. The Making of an American Citizen (1912) is a story of immigration and relearning the expected roles of husbands and wives. Other films explore prejudicial views toward the poor (The Thief, 1913), and, in the case of A Fool and His Money (1912), the follies of social climbers and the well-off. This last film is also significant for being the earliest known film to feature an all black cast. In her three surviving feature-length films, The Ocean Waif (1916), The Empress (1917), and The Great Adventure (1918), her leading women demonstrate increasing sophistication, finding their way by using their wits and with the help of some surprising comrades. Her characters (and relationships between characters) are psychologically complex, even as they play out the kind of melodramas that were becoming the standard in the industry at that time. Alice Guy Blaché (the name she chose to use after her divorce and return to France in 1922) produced a singular body of work that spans the evolution of filmmaking on two continents. Her oeuvre in both her French and American periods reveals her to have been a gifted scriptwriter who transformed imagined picture-stories into motion pictures and a new kind of director who asked actors to "be natural." She established the house style at Gaumont, trained its next generation of directors (including Ferdinand Zecca, Etienne Arnaud, Louis Feuillade), and then did the same at her US company, Solax. Her role as a studio owner is still rare in the film industry; among the few women who followed her were Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball. Although her moviemaking career ended in 1920, when she was only forty-seven years old, cinema occupied her whole life. She corresponded with historians and others, sharing documents with them, to correct early film histories that had not included her work. Well into her eighties, she gave lectures and was interviewed on radio and television about her roles in the nascent film industries of the US and France. In 1955, she was recognized with the Legion of Honor (France's highest non-military honor), and in 1957 was honored by the Cinémathèque Française. The posthumous publication of her memoirs, first in French in 1976 and then in English in 1986, with the assistance of film historian Anthony Slide, initiated an important cycle of rediscovery. In his catalogue essay, film historian Alan Williams calls Blaché's memoirs "one of the very best books of its kind…a basic text in the history of early cinema." This exhibition underscores the importance of film preservation in the study of early cinema. From the American portion of Madame Blaché's career, five films that are in the collection of the Library of Congress have been restored by the Whitney, including the feature The Ocean Waif. Two others, also in the collection of the Library, have been restored by gift: Falling Leaves (1911), thanks to Dayton Digital Filmworks, and Mixed Pets (1911), with a grant from New York Women in Film and Television, Women's Film Preservation Fund and contributions by the Whitney. The occasion of this exhibition has been the catalyst for other archives to begin to restore films in their collections, including the Academy Film Archive Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles; BFI, London; and the Filmoteca Española, Madrid. Visit the Whitney Museum of American Art at : http://whitney.org/

Jane Davis Doggett Installation Showcases Unique "Visual Language" Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:07 PM PDT NEW HAVEN, CT.-The Yale University Art Gallerypresents a special installation of images by Jane Davis Doggett, m.f.a. 1956. Jane Davis Doggett: Talking Graphics features the work of Doggett, a pioneer in the field of architectural and environmental design. She is best known for her career in creating graphic identities and wayfinding systems for massive public spaces, including cultural institutions and forty international airports. On exhibition 26 January through 7 March, 2010.

Avant-Garde Artist Christo Coetzee on Show at the University of Pretoria Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:05 PM PDT Pretoria, SA - The University of Pretoriais showing a retrospective of the controversial avant-garde South African artist Christo Coetzeeuntil July 31st. This extraordinary exhibition of 64 of his works is on view in the Edoardo Villa Museum, Old Merensky Building on the main campus of the University. In 2000 Christo Coetzee bequeathed his entire collection to the University of Pretoria. This temporary exhibition showcases some of the greatest works of Christo Coetzee in the collection of the University of Pretoria, as well as some of his best personal works recently acquired from his home in Tulbach. Also represented in the exhibition will be the artworks of his late wife, Ferrie Binge-Coetzee who was tragically killed in a fire in 2010.

Yale University Art Gallery exhibition of Photographs by Abelardo Morell Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:02 PM PDT NEW HAVEN, CT - Best known for his extraordinary images of interiors created with the ancient technology of the camera obscura, contemporary artist Abelardo Morell has been actively exploring the photographic medium for the past thirty years. Behind the Seen: The Photographs of Abelardo Morell provides an in-depth look at the role that artworks and monuments play in the artist's major photographic series. Approximately forty images are on display, featuring Morell's work in black and white alongside his newest color photographs, and including twenty of the camera obscura images.

Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art Sale Announced by Sotheby's New York Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:01 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby's sale of Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art on 25 March 2011 will be led by one of the most important paintings by a modern Indian painter ever to have appeared on the market - Akbar Padamsee's Untitled (Reclining Nude) which carries an auction estimate of $500/700,000. It was acquired by the current owners from the artist over 50 years ago and has never before appeared at auction. Sotheby's presented the painting to collectors at the recent Indian Art Summit in New Delhi- the first time it had been returned to India since 1960. In addition to the Padamsee the masters of modern Indian painting are well represented in the auction, with major works by MF Husain, SH Raza, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna and Jagdish Swaminathan among others.

'The Orient Expressed: Japan's Influence on Western Art, 1854-1918' On View at the Mississippi Museum of Art Posted: 25 Oct 2011 10:47 PM PDT Jackson, MS.- 'The Orient Expressed: Japan's Influence on Western Art, 1854-1918', will be on display at the Mississippi Museum of Art through July 17, 2011. Visitors to this eleventh exhibition in 'The Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series' will learn about the cultural phenomenon known as Japonisme, through the presentation of more than 200 works of art from the 19th and early 20th centuries. First identified by French art critic Philippe Burty in 1872, Japonisme became a worldwide movement that deeply impacted the visual arts. The resulting influence of these pieces on the visual and decorative arts as well as architecture, music, theater, literature, graphic design, and even fashion was overwhelming and continues to this day. According to Mississippi Museum of Art Director Betsy Bradley, "The Museum has secured works from some of the most prestigious collections in France, Belgium, and throughout the United States. With the high caliber of' The Orient Expressed', we expect to host more visitors than any other exhibition the Museum has had previously." Mississippians and other visitors to 'The Orient Expressed' will be inspired by the impact of Japan on the West prior to World War I through paintings, printmaking, decorative arts, graphic design, and more. The Museum is working with guest curator and scholar Gabriel P. Weisberg to put together this insightful exhibition. In addition to the exemplary Western objects that will be showcased in 'The Orient Expressed', a select group of works from the Japanese art tradition will be incorporated to clarify specific influences. Dan Piersol, the Mississippi Museum of Art's Deputy Director for Programs, states, "All of these aspects will elucidate the impact of Japonisme, and how it hastened the development of art nouveau and symbolism during the 1890s, and the advent of modernism." Works of art will be borrowed from major museums and private collections around the United States and abroad including Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi; and the Mississippi Museum of Art's own collection. On view will be works by noted artists and manufacturers such as Robert Frederick Blum, Pierre Bonnard, Félix Buhot, Felix Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Charles Caryl Coleman, James Sidney Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Gorham Manufacturing Company, Childe Hassam, Utagawa Hiroshige, Helen Hyde, Georges Lacombe, John La Farge, Bertha Boynton Lum, Minton and Company, Charles Sprague Pearce, Rookwood Pottery, Henry Somm, James McNeill Whistler, Alfred Stevens, Theodore Wores, Tiffany & Co., and many more. Following its presentation in Jackson, The Orient Expressed will be on view at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, from October 5, 2011 through January 15, 2012. Construction is complete on the newly renovated Mississippi Museum of Art, creating a beautiful new home for the Museum and its permanent collection of art. The renovation project, which took just under a year to complete, marks a historical day for Mississippi and its artistic legacy. Although the move from the Mississippi Arts Center to the new facility is small geographically, amounting to no more than a city block, it pushes the Museum light years ahead in terms of capabilities, technology, and the overall philosophy of what an art museum means to the community. The facility's brilliant architectural makeover reflects the museum's mission to become a symbolic "museum without walls"—an inviting public space that offers relevant and meaningful cultural experiences to both the Jackson community and the state of Mississippi. The architecture of the Museum is a tangible manifestation of a philosophical mission. For many years, the mission of MMA was "collecting, preserving and exhibiting art," a typical museum mission statement. However, when the board of Trustees of the Museum began to plan the building process more than five years ago, the mission was changed to "engage Mississippians in the visual arts," a statement that focuses on community interaction and personal experience. The Architects, Glavé and Holmes in Richmond, Virginia, and Dale & Associates locally, applied this new philosophical mission to the architecture of the building, creating a sleek, open design for the once-rectangular building. The museum lobby and entryway is filled with light through the use of a large amount of glass and by raising the roof of the entryway. Museum visitors plainly see not only the entrance to the Museum but other visitors inside the building, breaking down barriers and creating a transparent front door that makes everyone feel welcome. A vibrant café with wireless Internet encourages visitors to sit and relax, and a newly-added front porch creates a welcoming and comfortable space that is, literally, the front porch of the downtown cultural district. The Mississippi Museum of Art has been a community-supported institution for more than 100 years, and was at its former location since the late 1970s. The Museum boasts a seasoned staff of museum professionals and fiscally responsible administrators who have been managing operating budgets for over 30 years. These individuals have worked to ensure that this move is the best thing for the art of Mississippi and for the people of Mississippi. The Museum's twenty-nine affiliate museums across the state will continue to benefit from the loan of artwork and traveling exhibitions, ensuring that even those Mississippians who cannot make the trip to Jackson can enjoy our rich cultural history. MMA will use its new and larger home to expand its programs and community outreach that are already in place. The new museum will also play a pivotal role in the revitalization of downtown Jackson. Situated between Thalia Mara Hall and the new convention center, the Museum will serve as the centerpiece of Jackson's cultural district. Visitors to the convention center will get a grand impression of Mississippi's creative heritage. And meeting goers, as well as everyday downtowners, can adjourn to the Museum for particularly inspirational coffee breaks. It sets the stage for a remarkable rebirth. Mississippi has always had an abundant supply of creative energy. The Mississippi Museum of Art will be the new fountainhead attracting people from all walks to discuss the issues and glories of the past and present, while inspiring the future. Visit the museum's website at ... www.msmuseumart.org

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 25 Oct 2011 10:46 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.

You are subscribed to email updates from Art News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610