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

---

• The Yale Center for British Art opens a Retrospective of Johan Zoffany,RA
• New Wing Opens at the Fred R Jones Museum of Art in Oklahoma
• Kettle's Yard Gallery Celebrates Bridget Riley's 80th Birthday
• The Joslyn Art Museum Presents American Illustrations by Wendell Minor
• The Cheekwood Museum of Art Displays Masterworks From the Buffalo Bill Historical Center
• The Liebieghaus in Frankfurt Shows "Niclaus Gerhaert: The Medieval Sculptor”
• "Art Toronto" ~ Canada's Modern and Contemporary Art Fair
• The Frick Collection opens New Portico Gallery for Decorative Art & Sculpture
• Shannon's Fine Art Auction To Feature Cropsey, Rembrandt and Lichtenstein Among Others
• The Inaugural Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath Opens in London
• Scandinavia House in NYC Shows Early Modern Scandinavia Painting
• The Katonah Museum of Art Shows Works of Art Inspired by New York City
• The Royal Academy of Arts hosts a Vilhelm Hammershøi Retrospective
• 30th Anniversary of Video Art
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Large-Scale Solo Dedicated to the Work of Anish Kapoor
• British Realist Painter Lucian Freud ~ Distinguished & Highly Regarded ~ Dies Aged 88
• Kate Gilmore at ICA
• Aspen Art Museum features Fred Tomaselli's Largest Museum Survey to Date
• Getty Museum to host Extraordinary Exhibition of Iconic Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Yale Center for British Art opens a Retrospective of Johan Zoffany,RA Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:16 PM PDT NEW HAVEN, CT.- This fall the Yale Center for British Art will be the first and only US venue for a major retrospective of Johan Zoffany, considered one of the most fascinating and visually captivating artists of the eighteenth century. Opening October 27th, Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed will feature sixty-five oil paintings and a selection of drawings and prints—many of which have rarely or never been exhibited—from public and private collections around the world, including Britain, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, and the United States. Incorporating revelatory new research carried out over the past decade in Europe and India, the exhibition will constitute a timely and radical re-evaluation of the extraordinary life and career of this brilliant and enigmatic artist. It is the first exhibition devoted to the artist to be held in the United States and the first in Britain since 1976. Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed has been organized jointly with the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Of all the major artists working in eighteenth-century England, none explored more inventively the complexities of Georgian society and British imperial rule than Zoffany. Born near Frankfurt, Zoffany moved to London in 1760. Despite achieving considerable success in England, he remained in many ways an outsider, looking dispassionately at British society. His body of work offers a unique perspective on key British institutions, including the art academy, the Court, the theater, the aristocratic and bourgeois family, and the British Empire. Zoffany adapted brilliantly to the art culture and patterns of patronage in England, creating virtuoso portraits and subject pictures that proved to be highly desirable to a wide range of patrons. In spite of his accomplishments, Zoffany resisted complete integration into his adopted country and traveled for extended periods in Italy and India, incorporating visits to Austria and his native Germany. After his death, however, there was no move to recognize Zoffany as one of the key figures in the burgeoning British school of art. This exhibition aims to correct that oversight and will bring to the forefront the central importance of Zoffany to the artistic culture of eighteenth-century Europe. A substantial section will be devoted to the works Zoffany produced during his six year residence in India between 1783 and 1789. His depictions of the court at Oudh and of emerging colonial society constitute a penetrating account of public and domestic life in northern India at a critical transitional moment in its complex history. Major loans for this section of the exhibition will travel from Britain's Royal Collection, Tate Britain, and the India Office Library. Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed will be divided into eight thematic sections that trace the trajectory of the artist's career. The Early Years explores Zoffany's artistic training in Germany and Italy, as well as his art from the 1750s, when he worked for important German patrons, producing Baroque history paintings. Zoffany, Garrick, and the London Stage considers Zoffany's brilliance in capturing the excitement of live performance on canvas. He was introduced to the English stage by the actor, David Garrick, and painted many of Garrick's most memorable portraits. Portraits and Conversations considers Zoffany's family group portraits, most notably his small conversation pieces. These intimate and informal portraits reveal the dynamics of ordinary, everyday family life. At the same time, they were produced for some of the wealthiest and most in?uential members of society Zoffany at Court focuses on the importance of court patronage in the artist's portrait career, from his introduction to the court of George III in the early 1760s to his portraits of the Grand Ducal Court of Tuscany and the family of the Empress Maria Theresa. Zoffany and the Royal Academy looks at Zoffany's major Royal commission, The Academicians of the Royal Academy (Royal Collection) of 1771–72. Through this work and others associated with the Academy, the exhibition reveals Zoffany's attitude toward the academic infrastructure of British artistic society. Italy, Old Masters, and the Antique traces Zoffany's sojourn in Italy from 1772 to 1779, which resulted in his celebrated painting, The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Royal Collection). Upon his return to London, imbued with the spirit of the Grand Tour, Zoffany painted one of his greatest works, Charles Towneley's Library in Park Street (Townley Hall). A Passage to India looks at Zoffany's time in India from 1783 to 1789. The complex power relations between Indian rulers and the East India Company, lavish Indian court life, and cosmopolitan and often decadent lifestyles of the European merchants, soldiers, and adventurers are vividly captured in his portraits, genre paintings, and landscapes. Revolution, Reaction, and Retirement takes us to the end of Zoffany's career through the 1790s. His most ambitious paintings of this final period were the pictures portraying the atrocities of the French Revolution. Their shocking iconography reveals the intensity of Zoffany's response to recent events in France and his desire to make a deeply personal statement through his art. Visit The Yale Center for British Art at : britishart.yale.edu/

New Wing Opens at the Fred R Jones Museum of Art in Oklahoma Posted: 26 Oct 2011 11:15 PM PDT Norman, Oklahoma.- Four years of planning, construction and preparations are about to pay off when the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma opened its new Stuart Wing to the public on Saturday, October 22nd, followed by a special community celebration on Sunday, October 23rd. Admission is free to the public both days. The Stuart Wing provides a new 18,000-square-foot expansion of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art to house the museum's many collections acquired within the past 15 years. Designed by noted architect Rand Elliott, the new addition is named the Stuart Wing for OU Regent Jon R. Stuart and his wife, Dee Dee, a member of the art museum's board of visitors, in recognition of their $3 million lead gift to the campaign to fund the expansion project for the museum and their dedication to the university.

Kettle's Yard Gallery Celebrates Bridget Riley's 80th Birthday Posted: 26 Oct 2011 10:28 PM PDT Cambridge, UK.- 2011 sees Bridget Riley celebrating her 80th birthday. It also brings the 50th anniversary of Movement in Squares, the break-through black and white painting that marked her out as one of the world's leading abstract painters. To celebrate these events, Kettle's Yard Gallery in Cambridge is showing "Bridget Riley: Colour, Stripes, Planes and Curves" through November 20th. For most of her working life colour and our perception of its fleeting nature have been at the heart of her endeavour. This exhibition, organised uniquely for Kettle's Yard, takes paintings and studies from the last thirty years to trace her progress through four chapters of stripes, planes, curves and stripes again. Despite being abstract, Bridget Riley's paintings are rooted in a Cornish childhood of looking at nature. 'My mother ... would always point things out: the colours of shadows, the way water moves, how changes in the shape of a cloud are responsible for different colours in the sea, the dapples and reflections that come up from pools inside caves.' Art school training in life drawing instilled a sense of structure, since when a continuing study of the art of the past has stimulated and informed her work.

The Joslyn Art Museum Presents American Illustrations by Wendell Minor Posted: 26 Oct 2011 10:16 PM PDT Omaha, NE.- The Joslyn Art Museum is pleased to present "Wendell Minor: In the American Tradition", on view at the museum through December 31st. A lifelong fascination with America's national heroes, traditional folkways, classic literature, and natural wonders great and small inspires the accomplished work of Wendell Minor. While countless adult readers have enjoyed Minor's jacket designs for bestselling novels such as '1776' and 'Truman' (David McCullough), 'Prince of Tides' (Pat Conroy), and 'Terms of Endearment' (Larry McMurtry), young readers have had the more rewarding experience of joining the artist on picture book-length visual explorations to far-flung places such as the Arctic and the Moon. His paintings for Jack London's 'Call of the Wild' and Diane Siebert's 'Mojave', and his own picture book adaptation of Katharine Lee Bates' 'America the Beautiful', express his sense of amazement at the sweep and grandeur of our nation's natural inheritance. Through much of his work, Minor brings to mind the urgent need to protect America's wildlife and unspoiled places. Nowhere has he done so more eloquently than with Jean Craighead George's 'Everglades', a celebration of nature's bounty and a dramatically clear reminder of why the world's wonders are worth saving.

The Cheekwood Museum of Art Displays Masterworks From the Buffalo Bill Historical Center Posted: 26 Oct 2011 09:52 PM PDT Nashville, TN.- The Cheekwood strong>Botanical Garden and Museum of Art is proud to present "Visions of the American West: Masterworks from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center", on view at the museum through March 4th 2012. The American West is a remarkable and storied place; both the real, history-baked landscape and the "Wild West" that lives in the world's imagination. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming is one of the best destinations in the world to learn about every side of the West. Native Americans and Cowboys, landscape, technology, history, art, and, of course, Buffalo Bill -- the BBHC tells these stories and more through a vast collection contained within five distinct museums. Cheekwood is fortunate to partner with The Buffalo Bill Historical Center to bring these treasures to Nashville. We are excited to reintroduce you to Buffalo Bill, the star of the world-traveling Wild West show of the late 1800s. The show came through Nashville and several other cities in Tennessee on numerous occasions-- around the same time that Joel Cheek was perfecting the Maxwell House coffee blend that built the Cheekwood estate.

The Liebieghaus in Frankfurt Shows "Niclaus Gerhaert: The Medieval Sculptor” Posted: 26 Oct 2011 09:07 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germany  -  The Liebieghaus is proud to present "Niclaus Gerhaert: The Medieval Sculptor" from October 27th through March 4th 2012. Organised in cooperation with the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg, the Liebieghaus is staging the first major special exhibition on Niclaus Gerhaert von Leyden (ca. 1430–1473), one of the most important and influential sculptors of the Late Gothic period. The Frankfurt presentation will showcase approximately seventy impressive works from such internationally renowned collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Bode-Museum in Berlin, and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich.

"Art Toronto" ~ Canada's Modern and Contemporary Art Fair Posted: 26 Oct 2011 08:42 PM PDT Toronto, Canada  - Collectors, curators and art enthusiasts will converge on Toronto at the end of October to experience the twelfth edition of Art Toronto - a four-day fair which showcases exhibits by 109 leading and emerging international galleries from 13 countries. Art Toronto 2011 runs from October 28 to 31, and features alternative spaces curated by The Drake Hotel, Canadian Art magazine, the Art Gallery of York University and the Art Dealers Association of Canada. Other highlights of the fair include solo exhibitions, installations and curated projects by renowned artists such as Andy Warhol, Kent Monkman, Edward Burtynsky, Chuck Close and many more. An Opening Night Preview to benefit the Art Gallery of Ontario will launch the fair on October 27. Media are invited to a special preview tour of the fair on October 27, before it opens to the public.

The Frick Collection opens New Portico Gallery for Decorative Art & Sculpture Posted: 26 Oct 2011 08:03 PM PDT New York City.- From October 25th, visitors to The Frick Collection will be able to enjoy a new gallery—the first major addition to the museum's display spaces in nearly thirty-five years. The inspiration for this initiative, which involves the enclosure of the portico in the Fifth Avenue Garden, comes from the intention of museum founder Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) to build an addition to his 1914 mansion for his growing collection of sculpture. The project was postponed in 1917 following the United States entry into World War I and Mr. Frick died before it could be resumed. When talks began with renowned porcelain collector Henry H. Arnhold about a promised gift, the idea to create a gallery both for sculpture and the decorative arts was revisited. The architecture firm Aedas developed a plan to integrate the outdoor garden portico into the fabric of the museum, and groundbreaking occurred last winter. The Portico Gallery for Decorative Arts and Sculpture opens in late October with an inaugural exhibition of works drawn from Henry Arnhold's promised gift of 131 examples of Meissen porcelain from the early years of this Royal Manufactory's production. On view through April 29th 2012, "White Gold: Highlights from the Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain" will feature approximately seventy of these objects, presented along with a group of eighteenth-century sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1740–1828). Among the latter works is the full-length terracotta Diana the Huntress, a signature work at the Frick that returns to view having been recently cleaned and treated.  It finds a permanent home in the new portico gallery, while the ongoing display of other sculptures and ceramics will rotate periodically.

Shannon's Fine Art Auction To Feature Cropsey, Rembrandt and Lichtenstein Among Others Posted: 26 Oct 2011 07:18 PM PDT Milford, CT.- Original works of art by such renowned painters as Jasper Cropsey, Birge Harrison, Martha Walter, John White Alexander and others – plus a pair of original etchings by Rembrandt and a rare etching by the Italian master Campagnola – will be sold Thursday, October 27th, by Shannon Fine Art Auctioneers, at their semi-annual fine art auction. The auction will be held in Shannon's spacious gallery facility, located at 354 Woodmont Road in Milford, located just off I-95 just south of New Haven. Previews will be held from October 17th up until auction day, October 27th from 9-5:30. Shannon's only conducts two fine art auctions per year – in April and October – and when they happen, collectors do take notice. In the sale held this past April, bidders from 18 countries and 42 states participated, and the full bank of 20 phones was ringing all evening. As with last the sale, a live crowd of about 100 people is expected when bidding begins at 6 p.m. "Thanks to some wonderful pieces already consigned, plus a museum collection that we expect to come in, this auction should be very strong," said Gene Shannon of Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers. "And, typically, we experience a spurt of other great consignments in the three weeks leading up to sale.

The Inaugural Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath Opens in London Posted: 26 Oct 2011 07:05 PM PDT London.- The Affordable Art Fair Hampstead Heath launches on October 27th and runs through october 30th. Taking place the week after its established big sister is held at Battersea Park, the new fair will bring together an impressive line up of contemporary UK galleries, all in the idyllic setting of Hampstead Heath. The Affordable Art fair is always a relaxed, unstuffy environment and lots of good quality contemporary art. The price ceiling of £4,000 and the compulsory labelling of all artwork ensures you know what you can and can't afford, and the huge array of paintings, sculpture, photography and prints means there is something to suit every taste. The artists shown at the spring and autumn fairs in London are entirely different, so even if you don't find your perfect piece the first time it is always worth coming back!

Scandinavia House in NYC Shows Early Modern Scandinavia Painting Posted: 26 Oct 2011 07:04 PM PDT New York City.- Scandinavia House is proud to present "Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America 1912", an international loan exhibition of paintings by Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Anders Zorn, and other Scandinavian pioneers of modernism, opened October 25th at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America. The exhibition, which remains on view through February 11th, 2012, brings together approximately 50 works by leading late 19th- and early 20th-century Nordic artists from more than 20 public and private collections in Europe and America. The last of three exhibitions presented by The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) in recognition of its centennial, Luminous Modernism revisits the landmark ASF sponsored exhibition of 1912 — a groundbreaking display of contemporary Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painting that gave many in the USA, including emerging modern artists, their first introduction to Scandinavian art.  While "Luminous Modernism" features 20 of the same artists and eight of the same works presented in the 1912 exhibition, it has been expanded in scope to encompass all five Nordic countries, including Finland and Iceland, illustrating the richness of artistic expression throughout the region during this period.

The Katonah Museum of Art Shows Works of Art Inspired by New York City Posted: 26 Oct 2011 07:03 PM PDT Katonah, NY.- The Katonah Museum of Art is pleased to present "New York! New York! The 20th Century", on view at the museum through December 31st. Empire City, Gotham, The Big Apple — whatever you call it, there's no doubt that New York City has impacted millions of hearts, minds, and imaginations throughout history. Organized by the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL, this exhibition features over 50 works from the Norton collection, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, and works on paper, which capture the essence of New York throughout the 20th century. "New York! New York!" includes works by Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Stuart Davis, Andreas Feininger, William Gropper, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Reginald Marsh, and Edward Steichen, among others, and celebrates the city as muse to photographers, painters, and sculptors, encompassing the varied cultures and lifestyles of its inhabitants. Looking back on a century of tumultuous change, this exhibition is divided into five themes. 'On the Waterfront' showing the docks of the Hudson and East Rivers which have seen the arrival of industry and immigrants, marking the beginning of a new life for millions of people. The bridges that connect Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens are emblematic of the five boroughs' consolidation in 1898 into what we know now as New York City. 'Avenues and Streets' looks at the architecture and life of the city itself. Fifth Avenue evokes style and society, while power and money are the hallmarks of Wall Street. Sidewalks, storefronts, and public spaces reflect the vibrant character of the city's hundreds of distinct neighborhoods. 'In the Park' looks at how artists have long found inspiration in the abundance of life found within the city's parks. Whether picnicking in the grass or people-watching on a bench, the modern day flâneur can enjoy nature's wonders away from the hustle and bustle of crowded urban streets. 'On the Town' presents views of New Yorks social life. Teeming with culture and entertainment, New York is a place where there's always something happening no matter what the hour. The kinetic energy of gallery openings, concerts, and restaurants are the pulse of the "city that never sleeps." Finally, 'Tall Buildings' considers New York's famous skyline. A view of the top of the Empire State Building above a sea of clouds is the unofficial "welcome" to the city for air travelers. New York's inimitable skyline, which was considered daring in the early twentieth century, made way for today's aesthetic and environmental progress in architecture. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Katonah Museum of Art originates ten to twelve exhibitions annually, covering a broad range of art and humanities topics. As a non-collecting Museum, the KMA has the opportunity to develop an aspect of art historical concern from a focused and original point of view, and presents it within a fully developed educational context. Committed to making itself accessible and relevant to its community, the Museum offers lectures, symposia, films, workshops, concerts and other events for a general audience; and presents innovative and substantive programs for its member schools. The Children's Learning Center, which is open to the public free of charge, is the only interactive space in the community where children can come on a daily basis to explore, interpret, and create art. The Katonah Museum of Art serves a primary population of 850,000, with an annual attendance of approximately 40,000 people. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.katonahmuseum.org

The Royal Academy of Arts hosts a Vilhelm Hammershøi Retrospective Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:46 PM PDT London - The Royal Academy of Arts will be holding the first Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) retrospective in the UK this June. The exhibition will feature over 60 paintings spanning the career of this celebrated Danish artist. The works have been selected from museums and private collections in Europe, the United States and Japan.  On exhibition 28 June – 7 September 2008 in the The Sackler Wing of Galleries. Hammershøi's most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist's wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection.  Hammershøi portrays in muted tones and with decisive geometric stringency his sparsely-furnished apartments. In so doing, Hammershøi consistently dispenses with anecdotal detail transforming the interiors into hermetically-sealed places of disturbing emptiness. With refined discretion Hammershøi uses the apartment as a pictorial laboratory to make us sense the emotional abyss behind the façade. In addition to his interiors, the exhibition will also include Hammershøi's arresting portraits, landscapes and deserted, urban spaces in his home town of Copenhagen and in London, recording these in the sombre light of overcast winter days where time seems to have stood still. Hammershøi travelled extensively throughout Europe, visiting London on several occasions. The magical introspection and psychologically charged nature places Hammershøi within the context of the international Symbolist movement at the turn of the nineteenth century. Yet the overtly personal references that occur throughout his art make it unique. During his lifetime Hammershøi was compared to artists such as Eugène Carrière, Fernand Khnopff and – most importantly – James McNeill Whistler with whom his paintings share both a limited palette and a severe simplification of form and composition. ORGANISATION : Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the National Museum of Western Art and NIKKEI, Tokyo. The exhibition has been cocurated by Dr Felix Krämer, Curator, Hamburger Kunsthalle, and Dr Naoki Sato, Curator, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, with Maryanne Stevens, Director of Academic Affairs, Royal Academy of Arts. EXHIBITION TOUR : 30 September – 7 December 2008, the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan CATALOGUE : To accompany this outstanding exhibition, the Royal Academy will publish a catalogue exploring the singularity of Hammershøi's vision and examining his links with Dutch masters of the seventeenth century and art of the Danish Golden Age. The book, beautifully illustrated with works that span all stages of Hammershøi's career, includes essays by Felix Krämer, Naoki Sato and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark. ADMISSION : £8 full price; £7 Registered Disabled and 60 + years; £6 NUS / ISIC cardholders; £4 12–18 years and Income Support; £3 8–11 years; 7 and under free.  For public information please print 020 7300 8000 and visit : www.royalacademy.org.uk Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J OBD

30th Anniversary of Video Art Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:45 PM PDT   COVENTRY, UK - An exhibition to mark the 30th anniversary of a pioneering video art show is to be launched at The Herbert in Coventry next month. Video Art '78 showcased work at The Herbert by pioneers of the genre in the late 1970s such as Bill Viola who is regarded as one of today's leading artists in establishing video as contemporary art.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Large-Scale Solo Dedicated to the Work of Anish Kapoor Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:44 PM PDT BILBAO, SPAIN - The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first large-scale solo exhibition in Spain dedicated to the work of Anish Kapoor. Over the past thirty years, Kapoor has gained international acclaim as one of the most influential and significant artists of his generation. His exploration of form and space and his use of color and material have profoundly influenced the course of contemporary sculpture. Organized by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the exhibition, conceived and installed in close collaboration with the artist, offers insight into Kapoor's working method and creative process, and includes twenty major works from several series spanning the 1970s to the present. On view from 16 March to 12 October 2010.

British Realist Painter Lucian Freud ~ Distinguished & Highly Regarded ~ Dies Aged 88 Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:43 PM PDT London.- Lucian Freud 1922 – 2011. Lucian Freud was born in Berlin, the son of architect Ernst Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud.  In 1933, his family fled to London to escape the rising tide of Nazism, and Lucian and his two brothers were enrolled in English schools.  Largely untrained as an artist, he was intermittently enrolled in various schools and received nominal artistic instruction as a youth. His early paintings, dating to the 1940s, depict people, animals, and plants in unusual juxtapositions.  In delicately painted, thinly applied oils, Freud rendered his subjects with ultra-fine precision and crisp, clean contours.  In the mid-1950s, Freud traded his sable brushes for ones of coarse hog hair and began working with looser brushwork, thereby "liberating" his subjects from his prior meticulous technique. Freud died after an illness at his London home late Wednesday night at age 88. Over the course of the '50's, Freud gradually honed in on the portrait, which has become the core of his oeuvre.  Painting his first characteristic nude in 1966, over the next few decades his nudes became ever more exposed, genuine, and revealing. By the 1980s, Freud was painting with thick paints and heavily built-up impasto.  For Freud, the thick application of paint conveyed a tactile and tangible sense of reality: "I want paint to work as flesh ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me as flesh does (Lawrence Gowing, Lucian Freud, 1982, Thames & Hudson, p. 190-1)."  Though his style has dramatically evolved over his seventy years of painting, he has remained committed to realism and the unembellished portrayal of his own perceptions. From the very young to the old, the small to the gigantic, Freud has depicted his subjects with penetrating honesty and psychological depth. Most of Freud's sitters have been his lovers, family, and friends, including fellow artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney as well as his dealer, William Acquavella.  He has occasionally done commissions, painting portraits for the Baron Thyssen, Lord Rothschild, and the Queen of England.  Drawn to people for both their looks and character, he invited his subjects to sit with him and subject themselves to his unrelenting scrutiny in order to realize their truest likeness. The process is long and laborious, completed in up to six-hour sessions held daily for weeks, months, or even years. Freud could only finish his paintings once he felt that they have a life of their own.  As he explained in "Some Thoughts on Painting," first broadcast on the BBC: "The picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life." His works have been increasingly sought after at recent auctions and his portrayal of an overweight nude woman sleeping on a couch sold in 2008 for $33.6 million (£20.6m) - a world record for a work by a living artist. Freud stubbornly refused to follow the trends of that world, insisting on using his realist approach even when it was out of favor with critics and collectors. He developed his own unique style, eventually winning recognition as one of the world's greatest painters. "He certainly is considered one of the most important painters of the 20th and 21st Centuries," said Brett Gorvy, deputy chairman of the postwar art department at Christie's auction house in New York. "He stayed with his figurative approach even when it was extremely unpopular, when abstraction was the leading concept, and as time moved on his classic approach has proven to be very important. He fought the system and basically won." Acquavella Galleries has been the worldwide representative for Lucian Freud since 1992 and has held four exhibitions of the artist's work. Freud has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives and exhibitions, including shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Museo Correr in Venice, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Britain, the Scottish National Gallery of Art, the Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen in Germany, the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London, the Fundació La Caixa in Barcelona, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and the Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo. Freud was a member of the Order of Merit, one of Britain's most prestigious chivalry honours presented to individuals by the Queen for great achievement in the fields of the arts, learning, literature and science. The honour is restricted to 24 members at any one time, plus additional foreign recipients and past recipients include Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Edward Elgar and Mother Teresa.

Kate Gilmore at ICA Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:42 PM PDT Philadelphia, PA - Kate Gilmore loves a challenge. For her performance-based video works, she sets up a difficult physical task—a precarious tower of strung-together furniture to climb, for instance—dons lipstick and a fancy dress, and documents herself making the attempt. She has jumped rope on a perforated wooden platform while wearing stilettos (Double Dutch, 2004), ascended a slippery ramp in rollerskates (Cake Walk, 2005), and forced her satin-clad body through a tiny tunnel (Main Squeeze, 2006).

Aspen Art Museum features Fred Tomaselli's Largest Museum Survey to Date Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:41 PM PDT ASPEN, CO.- Beginning with a free public reception with the artist at 3:00 p.m., on Saturday, August 1, 2009, the Aspen Art Museum is proud to announce the debut of internationally celebrated American artist Fred Tomaselli's largest museum survey exhibition to date—featuring a curatorial selection of the artist's two-dimensional work from the late 1980s to the present. Fred Tomaselli is organized by the Aspen Art Museum and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.

Getty Museum to host Extraordinary Exhibition of Iconic Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:40 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Museum has organized an extraordinary exhibition, which is the result of more than 30 years of scholarly research on the working practice of the great Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and the teaching process he employed in his studio. Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference will be on view exclusively at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from December 8, 2009-February 28, 2010. The exhibition will explore the differences between Rembrandt's drawings and those of his most important pupils-- artists such as Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Carel Fabritius, and Nicolaes Maes-- many of whose identities and artistic styles have been revealed and clarified by decades of research. On view will be many of Rembrandt's most arresting sheets, as well as those of comparable beauty and importance by his students. "Only a handful of artists have become so iconic that we refer to them by one name, and few have been hailed with more superlatives than Rembrandt," says Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. "I am pleased that the Getty Museum has organized this remarkable exhibition based on decades of research by leading scholars-bringing to Los Angeles Rembrandt's finest drawings from around the world." For centuries, scholars have struggled to discern the difference between drawings by Rembrandt and those of his pupils. From the time of his early success in Leiden and Amsterdam, Rembrandt maintained one of the most active studios of the 17th century-with more than 50 students passing through during its nearly 40 years of operation. In the studio, Rembrandt's numerous students imitated the master's drawing style, rendering the same subjects that he did, drawing from the same models, and even accompanying him on sketching trips outdoors. Because his pupils drew so assiduously in his style, there was confusion about the authorship of the work - even immediately after his death. Distinguishing drawings by Rembrandt from those of his pupils poses a special challenge because unlike paintings and prints, 17th century drawings were rarely signed and later attributions to "Rembrandt" were often incorrect. Over the past 30 years, however, scholars have developed and refined their methods, and have brought extraordinary clarity to this massive body of work. First, they identified core groups of drawings, often preparatory to paintings or prints, which can be confidently attached to Rembrandt or to different artists who studied with him. These core groups provide the standard against which more questionable attributions can be tested by closely investigating characteristic visual traits. These visual traits comprise an artist's style-the handling of line, the description of space and volume, the evocation of light, and the rendering of expressions and gestures. The once amorphous body of drawings regarded as "Rembrandt" has yielded many newly differentiated artistic personalities. The difference between Rembrandt's artistic personality and those of his pupils is highlighted by the exhibition's organization as a series of carefully selected pairs of drawings. These pairs, with Rembrandt typically on the left and the pupil on the right, depict the same or similar subjects and usually date to the period when the pupil studied or worked with Rembrandt, taking the visitor on a chronological tour through Rembrandt's studio, from its earliest days to the end. This journey begins with Rembrandt and Jan Lievens (1607-1674), the only artist in the exhibition who was not Rembrandt's pupil, but rather his close, early artistic compatriot in their native city of Leiden . In their beautiful, moving early drawings, which are very close in style, Rembrandt and Lievens originated the subject of elderly men and women that would become so widespread in Dutch 17th-century art. After Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631 his teaching moved into high gear and he took on a steady stream of talented and uniquely gifted pupils, many of whom went on to become famous artists themselves. Govert Flinck (1615-1660) entered Rembrandt's studio in about 1635. The Rembrandt and Flinck pairings within the exhibition includes powerful studies of a famous Amsterdam actor and moving biblical narratives. Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) came to study with Rembrandt in about 1637. The Rembrandt and Bol group includes portraits and a beautiful pair of studies of the Annunciation. Another of these earlier pupils, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674) was one of the most talented and versatile draftsmen to come out of the studio. Rembrandt made a few spectacular brush drawings, which greatly influenced Van den Eeckhout as he went on to make his most celebrated sheets. In the 1640s and 1650s, a diverse group of pupils studied with Rembrandt, including Abraham Furnerius (ca. 1628-1645), Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), Nicolaes Maes (1634-1673) and Constantijn Daniel van Renesse (1626-1680). Furnerius was exclusively a landscapist and his drawings indicate that he accompanied Rembrandt on sketching trips in and around Amsterdam . Carel Fabritius, one of the most famous and beloved painters to come out of Rembrandt's studio, is almost unknown as a draftsman until now. The exhibition will include several impressive drawings newly attributed to him. Maes further developed and popularized the "Rembrandtesque" theme of old women, which will be featured in the Rembrandt and Maes pairings in the exhibition. Van Renesse is especially interesting for being the only amateur draftsman documented as studying with Rembrandt. His drawings are especially revealing because Rembrandt himself corrected them, which in turn yields insight into Rembrandt's teaching methods. Studying the nude in life drawing sessions emerges as an important theme in Rembrandt's late studio work. Among the most spectacular pairs in the exhibition is one depicting seated female nudes by Rembrandt and his late pupil, Arent de Gelder (1645-1727). Both drawings show the same model but from different vantage points, and recent observations about the handling of light, shadow, and line enable us to distinguish Rembrandt's drawing from that of De Gelder, which at one time was also thought to be by Rembrandt. The controversy surrounding the authorship of works of art by Rembrandt and his pupils can be mystifying to all but specialists. Opinions about authorship have often been delivered with little explanation as to the method used for arriving at them. The subtitle of this exhibition - Telling the Difference-emphasizes its goal of showing visitors what to look for in order to enable them to understand the methodology for themselves. Details of the drawings are highlighted and reproduced on labels, which also use clear and precise terms to describe differences. Various other tools are available throughout the exhibition, so that gradually visitors will be more and more confident and proficient at "telling the difference" on their own. Covering its nearly 40 year span and fifteen pupils, the exhibition offers what may be the most comprehensive coverage of the Rembrandt studio ever attempted. Visitors will come away with a rich experience of the studio's workings, as well as a better understanding of the issues of authorship. Visitors will also confront the massive and recent changes in scholarly understanding of these drawings, with over 70 of the more than 100 drawings in the exhibition either currently or formerly assigned to Rembrandt. Because of their fragility, and the importance of drawings by iconic artists such as Rembrandt, it is often difficult to secure loans for exhibitions. However, colleagues at institutions in America and abroad understood the significance of this exhibition, and nearly all the Getty's loan requests were approved. The Museum is profoundly grateful for the more than 100 drawings being generously lent by 33 institutions, including the British Museum, London; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York; and several private collections in Europe and America. The exhibition will also include six drawings from the Getty's own collection. Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference is organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and curated by Lee Hendrix, the Getty's Senior Curator of Drawings and Peter Schatborn, Emeritus Head of the Rijksprentenkabinet of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This landmark exhibition will take place only at the Getty and will be the subject of a symposium open to the public (reservations required) on February 2, 2010. Consult the Getty website for lectures and other related programs. Visit : http://www.getty.edu/

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 26 Oct 2011 06:39 PM PDT This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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