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

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• Tate Livepool to Celebrate "Alice in Wonderland" in an Exhibition
• The Laura Russo Gallery Exhibits New Works by Roll Hardy
• Open Eye Opening its New Liverpool Gallery Photographic Show by Mitch Epstein
• The Museo del Prado Now Open Every Day of the Week to Cover Costs
• The Gering & Lopez Gallery to Show the "Masters of Reality"
• The Latvian National Museum of Art Celebrates Karlis Padegs' 100 Years
• MoMA Presents an Exhibition of the Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of James Ensor
• Victoria & Albert Museum opens Art Objects from the Horace Walpole Collection
• Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing showcases "Woman of Many Faces"
• Jan Senbergs opens at Art Gallery of New South Wales
• The Magnificent Bergen Art Museum In Norway Is Toured By Our Editor
• British-Born Surrealist Painter Leonora Carrington Dies at Age 94 in Mexico City
• Edvard Munch ~ The Decorative Projects ~ at The NMWA
• Marc Chagall Discovery Adds Excitement to Bonhams Impressionist Auction
• Work by Weston and Avedon Amongst Highlights at Bonhams Sale
• National Gallery of Australia Presents Major Retrospective on Richard Larter
• Park West Gallery Loses ~ Arts Registry Awarded $500,000 by Jury
• Ten Museums Seek £100,000 For "Museum of the Year" Art Fund Prize 2011
• The Malmö Konsthall Presents "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble"
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Tate Livepool to Celebrate "Alice in Wonderland" in an Exhibition Posted: 01 Nov 2011 11:24 PM PDT Livepool, UK.- The Tate Liverpool is proud to present "Alice in Wonderland", on view at the museum from November 4th through January 29th 2012. Lewis Carroll's timeless novels, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass', have fascinated and inspired many generations of artists since the first novel was published over 150 years ago. "Alice in Wonderland" at Tate Liverpool is the first exhibition to provide a comprehensive historical exploration of how the stories have influenced the visual arts, providing insight into the creation of the novels, the adoption of the text as an inspiration for artists and the revision of its key themes by artists up to the present day. The starting point for the exhibition is Carroll's original manuscript, given to the twelve year old Alice Liddell as a Christmas present in 1864. Carroll's own illustrations in the manuscript, and the famous illustrations by Sir John Tenniel in the first published edition, indicate that images were an integral part of the story, creating a visual world which took on a life of its own. Carroll was very much part of the art scene of his day: a photographer and art connoisseur, he mixed in artistic circles and counted artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir John Everett Millais amongst his friends. Work by Rossetti and Millais will feature, alongside paintings by William Holman Hunt and Arthur Hughes, referenced in Carroll's diaries. There will be a rare opportunity to view Carroll's own drawings, photographs and photographic equipment, alongside Victorian Alice memorabilia, documents from early stage adaptations, and original drawings by Sir John Tenniel. Carroll's stories were soon adopted by artists, both inspiring and providing an expression for themes within their work. Surrealist artists from the 1930s onwards were drawn towards this fantastical world where natural laws were suspended. There will be the opportunity to see Salvador Dalí's series of twelve Alice in Wonderland illustrations and work by Max Ernst, René Magritte and Dorothea Tanning. The British Surrealists, dubbed 'the children of Alice,' will be examined, with key pieces from Paul Nash, Roland Penrose, Conroy Maddox and F.E. McWilliam. From the 1960s through the 1970s, conceptual artists took Alice as foil for exploring our relationship to perception and reality, and the stories inspired responses in both Pop and Psychedelic art. This section will bring together work by Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Dan Graham, Yayoi Kusama, Adrian Piper, and Marcel Broodthaers amongst others to highlight the era's responses to the novel as it reached its centenary.  Mel Bochner will reprise his seminal 1969 work "Measurement: Perimeter "in the Wolfson Gallery. The work displays the exact measurements of the room, with a unique 'Alice' twist, giving the viewer a new perspective of the scale of their surroundings. The artist has entitled the piece "Measurement: Eye-level Perimeter (Ask Alice) 1969/2011" especially for the exhibition. Contemporary artists continue to take inspiration from the books, exploring ideas such as the journey from childhood to adulthood; language, meaning and nonsense; scale and perspective; and perception and reality. The photography of Anna Gaskell, alongside more recent pieces by AA Bronson, Joseph Grigely, Torsten Lauschmann, Jimmy Robert and Annelies Štrba demonstrate how the continuous revision of the form and themes within Carroll's novels have preserved their artistic relevance. Tate Liverpool presents displays of work from the Tate collection alongside special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. The special exhibition programme, presented on the Gallery's fourth floor, brings together works from national and international collections, both public and private. Since the gallery opened in 1988, Tate Liverpool has presented over 150 different exhibitions and collection displays of work by hundreds of different artists, some seen for the first time in the UK at Tate Liverpool. Major exhibitions in the past five years include Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era (2005), Jake and Dinos Chapman: Bad Art for Bad People (2006-7), Peter Blake: A Retrospective (2007) and The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China (2007), Turner Prize (2007) and Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 (2008). Tate Liverpool continues to play an active role in the Liverpool Biennial. Tate Liverpool has an established reputation for working with, and touring exhibitions to international institutions as far afield as France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, United States, Canada, Ireland, Korea, Austria, Italy and Japan, as well as other institutions within the UK. Visit the Tate Liverpool website at ... http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool

The Laura Russo Gallery Exhibits New Works by Roll Hardy Posted: 01 Nov 2011 11:16 PM PDT Portland, Oregon.- The Laura Russo Gallery is pleased to present "Roll Hardy: New Paintings" on view at the gallery from November 3rd through November 26th. There will be an opening reception on Thursday November 3rd from 5 - 8 pm. A second exhibition at the same time will feature new ceramic works by Geoffrey Pagen. Roll Hardy depicts society's bleak urban cast-offs with a lively and impressionistic touch that focuses new attention on forgotten spaces. The derelict and abandoned locales that Hardy paints come to embody a mysterious history of intended and illicit uses. Working further afield and occasionally in a larger scale for these new works, Hardy reveals a profusion of dispossessed places.

Open Eye Opening its New Liverpool Gallery Photographic Show by Mitch Epstein Posted: 01 Nov 2011 09:44 PM PDT Liverpool, UK.- Open Eye is proud to present American photographer Mitch Epstein's first solo show in the UK, as the opening exhibition at their new Waterfront gallery. "American Power (2003-9)", on view from November 5th through December 23rd,  examines how energy is produced and used in the American landscape, questioning the power of nature, government and corporations. Mitch Epstein will be present for a very special breakfast talk at the gallery on November 5th. A second 'archive exhibition will feature Chris Steele-Perkins' photographic portrait of England in the 1980s. "Chris Steele-Perkins - The Pleasure Principle" will also be on view from November 5th through December 23rd.

The Museo del Prado Now Open Every Day of the Week to Cover Costs Posted: 01 Nov 2011 09:11 PM PDT MADRID.- The Museo del Prado took the decision to increase its opening hours to every day of the week in order to improve and expand its cultural activities and thus guarantee its commitment to covering 60% of its budget through self-financing. This new initiative starts with the exhibition 'The Hermitage in the Prado', which will be open every day of the week, from Mondays to Sundays, from the day it opens on 8 November. The Museum's Permanent Collection will also have new opening hours from 16 January.  The Royal Board of Trustees of the Museo del Prado approved the initiative to extend the Museum's opening hours to every day of the week. This decision falls within the "Current Situation Reaction Plan" that the Museum has set in motion in the light of the ongoing reduction of public funding arising from the present economic circumstances in Spain. It includes a wide-ranging series of actions aimed at improving the service offered to the visiting public and at increasing the Museum's activities in order to guarantee its financial stability and viability over the coming years.

The Gering & Lopez Gallery to Show the "Masters of Reality" Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:54 PM PDT New York City.- The Gering & Lopez Gallery is proud to present "Masters of Reality" on view from November 3rd through December 23rd. In a contemporary art landscape often criticized for a dearth of figurative painting, several artists are pushing the notion of the mimetic on canvas to its limits. Taking its cue from the Black Sabbath album, this exhibition seeks to highlight a group of artists that have mastered reality through their own unique vision. Whether it be ecology, popular culture, counter-culture, politics, sexuality, or mundane aspects of day to day life, these paintings are composed of images initially familiar to their viewer. However, the artists have altered this iconography giving us their takes on reality.

The Latvian National Museum of Art Celebrates Karlis Padegs' 100 Years Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:53 PM PDT Riga, Latvia.- The Latvian National Museum of Art is proud to present "Karlis Padegs: Fragile Provocation" on view at the museum from November 4th through January 15th 2012. It is a little hard to believe that one hundred years have passed since the birth of Karlis Padegs (1911–1940), the one-time most extravagant Riga artist, who was both a dandy and an outsider at the same time. He only lived for a little over 28 years but the legends he wove around himself did not allow him to be forgotten, even in the post-war, Soviet years. This artist did not have pretensions of copying modernist art movements and remained a convinced figurist. He was sufficiently subjective, personal and sensitive for the characteristics of expressionism, the new objectivity and even surrealism to be seen in his drawings and paintings. There are also hints of the 19th century fin de siècle decadence that were more alien to the public of the day. Karlis Padegs' centenary memorial exhibition is an opportunity to reconfirm that this crisis time artist, this sophisticated draftsman and paradoxical thinker, is just as modern in today's world whose reality is increasingly being replaced by the parallel virtual reality. On show in the White Hall will be a selection of Padegs' drawings and paintings from 1928–1940 from the National Museum of Art and private collections. They include works that have not been seen in a long time or even never seen before. The Hege Hall will feature portraits and works dedicated to Padegs by Latvian artists Gotlibs Kaneps, Kurts Fridrihsons, Visvaldis Rusa, Erna Geistaute, Olgerts Skarainis, Burkards Dzenis, Bruno Strautinš, Aivars Vilipsons and others. Karlis Padegs was born on 8 October 1911 in Tornakalns, a working-class district of Riga. Padegs spent all his life in Riga with the exception of several years of his childhood during World War I when he lived in Dorpat (Tartu) Estonia. The presence of his motherland is, however, rarely felt in his art, which reflected an atmosphere more reminiscent of Chicago and Paris. Karlis Padegs became a legend within Riga's artistic life. He was a contemporary of the tempestuous Janis Tidemanis (Džonis) who spent his formative years in Belgium and the barefooted tramp Irbite (pastel painter Voldemars Irbe). Some Riga inhabitants will still recall Karlis Padegs as a most extravagant personality - his Spanish hat, a red scarf, a long black coat, pig-skin gloves, a bamboo cane, patent leather shoes and a white gaiters with little black buttons. The artist may be better remembered than his exhibitions held in quite untraditional premises (at cafes, in the street, in dancing halls) or in the show-windows of L.Kreicberga's photo salon that once even attracted the attention of the police. Padegs was a Riga dandy whose doings were described in newspapers and discussed in society and who consciously played up to his public perception before exhibitions. Karlis Padegs died in April 1940 from tuberculosis. He was only 29 years old. He suffered from it all his life and after the very productive period in the 1939 he was so exhausted that his illness finally overcame young painter and he died in warm spring night in the last months of Latvian republic. In later days he was nearly forgotten and only in the early 80s marking the end of a period of general self- complacence did one of the most peculiar Latvian artists and his work become of current interest. Over this period a great many pieces of Padeg's heritage (mostly his earlier works) were lost. Some of them may in all probability be regained. The main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Krišjana Valdemara Street is one of the most impressive in the Park and Boulevard Circle area of Riga. It was designed by the museum's first director, the Baltic German architect and art historian Wilhelm Neumann and built in 1905. The structure, as well as the parameters of the exhibition rooms, corresponded to the level of requirementsrequired standard for an art museum in the Europe of at the previous turn of the centuriescentury. The majestic façade is designed in the baroque and classicist styles; the sculptural group of the central fronton was created by the sculptor August Volz. The interior of the building – in the lobby and the ornaments of the staircase banister – feature elements of Art Nouveau. The top-floor lobby is adorned by with six decorative semi-circle circular paintings by the great Latvian painter Vilhelms Purvitis and the a master of Estonian classical art Gerhard von Rosen. The building is a listed architectural landmark of national significance. Reconstruction and restoration work is scheduled in the foreseeable future. The permanent exhibitions of the museum trace the development of professional art in the Baltic region and Latvia from the mid-1700s to the present day, as well as feature featuring a number of significant episodes periods in the Russian art of from the 18th century – to the first half of the 20th century. The Russian art collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art is the richest in the Baltic countries. The Latvian National Museum of Art regularly holds art exhibitions and scientific conferences, as well as diverse art and culture cultural events, takes part in international projects, as well as compiles compiling and editising museum publications. Alongside the permanent and temporary exhibitions, the Latvian National Museum of Art is known for its educational projects. Visitors are offered specialist-guided tours and educational programmes. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.lnmm.lv

MoMA Presents an Exhibition of the Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of James Ensor Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:43 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents James Ensor—the first exhibition at an American institution to feature the full range of his media in over 30 years— James Ensor (Belgian, 1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth. In both respects, he has influenced generations of later artists. Approximately 120 of Ensor's paintings, drawings, and prints are included in the exhibition, most of which date from the artist's creative peak, 1880 to the mid-1890s. On exhibition from June 28 through September 21, 2009. Ensor's daring, experiential work ranges from traditional subject matter such as still life, landscape, and religious symbolism to more singular visions, including fantastical scenes with masks, skeletons, and other startling figures. He made work in a wide range of styles and dimensions, from large-scale paintings and drawings to tiny prints of only a few inches. The exhibition elucidates Ensor's contribution to modern art, including his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing.  The exhibition is organized chronologically, and within that chronology are thematic groupings such as Ensor's self-portraiture, or his satirical works. A number of works, including the first two drawings from his monumental Aureoles series of 1885–86, The Lively and Radiant: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem and The Rising: Christ Shown to the People, have never before been seen in the United States. He also depicted himself in his works repeatedly, in keeping with his own sense of subversive play, while divulging the influence of theater and popular culture on his work. In Self-Portrait with Masks (1899), he portrays himself as a young artist—in the same pose as Self-Portrait with a Flowered Hat (1883/1888), finished 11 years before. His steady regard, outsize dimensions, and red hat set him apart from the masked crowd, to which he turns his back. Proclaiming his allegiance with masquerade and performance, Ensor opts for a public image that is overtly and completely contrived. The exhibition is organized by Anna Swinbourne, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Swinbourne explains, "The diversity of Ensor's work has enabled him to slip cunningly out of the grasp of anyone seeking to seize and place him, whether in an artistic movement or a historical continuum. This is part of the appeal that, then and now, has seduced viewers of his work as well as artists—who have come to revere him as an 'artist's artist,' a title bestowed only on the most deserving." The first painting on view in the exhibition is The Scandalized Masks (1883), an example of the evocative paintings of masks in portraits and fictive dramas for which Ensor is best known. Ensor lived in Ostend, Belgium—a fashionable resort known for its beaches, spas, and casino—from his birth in 1860 to his death in 1949. He left Ostend only for a brief period, from 1877 to 1880, to attend the Académie royale des beaux-arts, a prestigious training ground for young artists. Ensor was surrounded by masks throughout his life. He saw them for sale in his family's souvenir shop in Ostend, and worn by revelers in the annual Carnival celebration. The bawdry puns and silly pratfalls of traveling vaudeville acts in Ostend, and even his grandmother's eccentric penchant for dressing up in strange costumes, all nourished Ensor's appreciation for farce and disguise. Ensor's overarching interest in light soon came to dominate his artistic vision, inspiring him to develop a drawing technique that would make objects seem suffused by light. Discovering that this formal innovation had expressive potential, he soon made light a subject in itself, an agent of symbolic intention, conveying ideas and evoking mood. He perfected his drafting techniques in Visions: The Aureoles of Christ, or The Sensibilities of Light, a series of six drawings from 1885–86. The series indicates a switch from Ensor's depiction of reality-based subjects toward more imagined, fictionalized scenes. The most accomplished of these drawings, The Lively and Radiant: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1885), presents a biblical event in a contemporary, urban setting resembling Brussels, and is especially notable for its large dimensions. At nearly seven feet high, it is a scale that, at the time, was almost always reserved for painting. A restless and incessant experimenter with a variety of mediums and techniques including collage and hand-printed etching, Ensor even revisited works completed years earlier, adding colors and images that often radically transformed the originals. For example, Ensor revisited his Self-Portrait with a Flowered Hat of 1883, adding a plumed hat and other elements that make the new image resemble a self-portrait by the Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. Ensor had a number of lifelong obsessions that were prominent subjects in his work—masks, light, himself, and death. Skulls or full-body skeletons appear in his works repeatedly and in a variety of ways. In Skeletons Trying to Warm Themselves (1889), a group of skulls draped in fabric absurdly and vainly seek heat from a dead stove. Ensor used the image of death to depict people he despised, such as the two skeleton-critics ripping apart a witty, metaphorical version of himself in Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring (1891). And death was even a theme of Ensor's self-portraits, as with My Skeletonized Portrait (1889) and The Skeleton Painter (1895 or 1896). These two works were based on photographs: he transformed his pictured naturalistic countenance into skeleton versions of himself. Ensor's use of photography as pictorial source material and his practice of collage were consistent with his experimental nature, as they are both techniques that placed Ensor ahead of his time. A study room includes a wrap-around chronology on its walls that affords viewers the opportunity to learn more about the life of Ensor and his diverse range of interests. Beyond his career as an artist, he was involved in music, choreographed a ballet, and was an avid writer. This multitude of interests translates directly into the diversity of Ensor's artistic oeuvre. The exhibition concludes with satirical works focusing on contemporary political and social issues of Ensor's time, which use grotesque exaggeration and base humor to make their point. Influenced by folk tradition, satirical journals, actualités, and burlesque theater, these pieces make Ensor's radical individualism and political perspective patently clear. Examples are Doctrinaire Nourishment (1889), a scatological image of the king and other figures of Belgian authority excreting feces onto a group of citizens, and The Wise Judges (1891), a harsh criticism of the country's judicial system. Ultimately, the exhibition presents Ensor as a socially engaged and self-critical artist involved with the issues of his times and with contemporary debates on the nature of modernism. Visit The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) at : http://www.moma.org/

Victoria & Albert Museum opens Art Objects from the Horace Walpole Collection Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:42 PM PDT LONDON.- A new V&A exhibition will examine Horace Walpole's extraordinary collection and evoke the magnificent interiors of his house Strawberry Hill, Britain's finest example of Georgian Gothic Revival architecture. Following extensive restoration by the Strawberry Hill Trust the house is set to reopen in 2010. The exhibition will bring together more than 250 works owned by Walpole and not seen together since 1842, when they were auctioned by his heir. It will show the breadth and significance of his collections ranging from paintings by Joshua Reynolds and Van Dyck to his unrivalled collection of portrait miniatures, from a pair of gloves that Walpole believed belonged to King James I to an Aztec mirror used by the Elizabethan magician and astrologer Dr Dee. On view through 4 July, 2010.

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing showcases "Woman of Many Faces" Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:41 PM PDT Beijing - UCCA presents, as part of Croisements Festival 2009, Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces, an ambitious photo show initiated by the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1, New York, for the first time in China. The exhibition gathers about 100 photo and video portraits of French actress Isabelle Huppert created by a multi generational, international group of leading photographers. For this unique Chinese issue, the project will include new works by the upcoming generation of Chinese artists: Yang Fudong, Wen Fang and Shi Xiaofan. On view at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing from 19 June through 19 July, 2009.

Jan Senbergs opens at Art Gallery of New South Wales Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:40 PM PDT   SYDNEY, AU - The Art Gallery of New South Wales presents Jan Senbergs – From Screenprinter to Painter, on view through 25 May 2008. This is the first survey of the development of the work of Jan Senbergs, whose beginnings as an apprentice screenprinter after he left school at fifteen (rather than attending art school), provided him with the initial means to make art. Born in Latvia in 1939, he came to Australia in 1950 as a refugee, with his mother, grandmother and younger sister, and has lived and worked in Melbourne since.

The Magnificent Bergen Art Museum In Norway Is Toured By Our Editor Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:39 PM PDT Bergen Art Museum (Bergen Kunstmuseum) was founded in 1825 by Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie. In its early years, the museum contained numerous art collections, including several works by the painter Johan Christian Dahl, cultural artifacts, and craftwork items. In 1931, the museum moved from its location in the Seminarium Fredericianum building near Bergen katedralskole, to a new building south-west of Lille Lungegårdsvann. This was the first dedicated museum building in Norway. The current natural history building was finished in 1865, and Bergen Museum moved in during 1866. The botanical garden was laid out between 1897 and 1899, and the cultural history department got its own building in 1927. The increasing research activity at the museum from the late 19th century and onwards led directly to the founding of the University of Bergen in 1948. Bergen Art Museum's permanent exhibitions are in Lysverket and Rasmus Meyer collection. These exhibits show art from the museum's own collections and are on view long periods of time. Basic exhibitions in Lysverket is a traditional historical-chronological review of the art history of early Renaissance to the present day. The presentation is supported by important works in the museum's collections, and thus focus on Norwegian art history. Works from the Stenersen collection are included in exhibitions in Lysverket. The Rasmus Meyer Collection is a special collection of the Bergen Art Museum, shown in a building constructed for this purpose in 1924. A visitor can experience the historic original interiors, and the golden age of Norwegian painting, with works by Edvard Munch, Christian Krogh and Harriet Backer among the highlights.

British-Born Surrealist Painter Leonora Carrington Dies at Age 94 in Mexico City Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:38 PM PDT Mexico City - Leonora Carrington, the Lancashire-born former debutante who eloped with Max Ernst and became one the greatest – and last surviving – female surrealist artists has died in hospital in Mexico City at the age of 94.Carrington was also part of a famous wave of artistic and political emigres who arrived in Mexico in the 1930s and '40s. In the male-dominated realm of surrealism, she was a member of a rare trio of Mexico-based female surrealists along with Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. The artist, who had lived in Mexico since the 1940s, was the daughter of a textile magnate and was presented at court in the 1930s. But she became enthralled by surrealism as an art student and befriended many of the great artists of the 20th century, including Ernst, with whom she lived in France, Picasso, Dalí, Duchamp, Miró and Man Ray. She attended the wedding of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. During the second world war, when Ernst was interned by the Vichy regime, Carrington fled to Madrid, where she had a nervous breakdown and was briefly confined to an asylum, before being rescued by a Mexican diplomat, Renato Leduc, whom she married in Lisbon and with whom she moved to Mexico City. She subsequently married the Hungarian photographer Chiki Weisz, with whom she had two sons. In 1943, her work was chosen for an exhibition of significant women artists in New York, by Peggy Guggenheim, Ernst's new partner. Long considered a significant artist in Mexico, her work with its fantastic imaginary birds and animals and its strange hooded figures, was exhibited in London in 1991 and Chichester last year. One of her paintings, The Giantess, was sold at Christie's for $1.5m two years ago. She was awarded an OBE in 2000. Carrington's death was announced by the national council for culture and the arts in Mexico. She had been admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. She got to know Picasso and Bunuel ("uncouth Spaniards"), Dali, Man Ray, Miro, Breton, Tanguy, Peret, Belmer, Arp and many others. With her wild, dark beauty she looked the perfect submissive "femme enfant", but she rejected the notion of being anyone's muse ("all that means is that you're someone else's object") and was quick to snap if anyone took her for granted. When Joan Miro gave her some money and told her to get him some cigarettes, she told him to "bloody well" get them himself. Dali won her approval by calling her "a most important woman artist", and her work was shown at exhibitions along with the work of Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, Eileen Agar and other women. Carrington was known for her haunting, dreamlike works that often focused on strange ritual-like scenes with birds, cats, unicorn-like creatures and other animals as onlookers or seeming participants. "She was the last great living surrealist," said longtime friend and poet Homero Aridjis. "She was a living legend." Friend and promoter Dr. Isaac Masri said she died Wednesday of old age, after being hospitalized. "She had a great life, and a dignified death, as well, without suffering," he said. Leonora Carrington's great patron was Edward James, who arranged her first solo show at Pierre Matisse's gallery in New York in 1947. By 1960 she was well known in Europe and Mexico, and that year a retrospective of her work was held at the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. "She created mythical worlds in which magical beings and animals occupy the main stage, in which cobras merge with goats and blind crows become trees," the National Arts Council wrote, adding, "These were some of the images that sprang from a mind obsessed with portraying a reality that transcends what can be seen." She wrote magazine and newspaper articles, novels, essays and poems and made thousands of paintings, sculptures, collages and tapestries that were exhibited in Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Tokyo and many other artistic centers She became a Mexican citizen; she and Leduc divorced, and she married her second husband, the Hungarian-born writer-photographer Emerico "Chiki" Weisz, in 1946. They had two children, one of whom, Pablo, eventually became a painter in his own right. In Mexico, she befriended the poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, Frida Kahlo and her husband, the irascible muralist Diego Rivera, the late Spanish movie producer-director Luis Bunuel and many others. Carrington took her two sons and left Mexico in 1968 in protest against the army's Oct. 2 massacre of demonstrating university students, but returned a year later. In 1971, she went to Canada and Scotland to study Buddhism under a Tibetan monk in exile, then came back to Mexico City. She left again for New York after two earthquakes devastated the city in September 1985, and three years later moved to Chicago. She returned to Mexico a couple of years after that. The artist is survived by two sons, Gabriel and Pablo. Her body was taken to a Mexico City funeral home for viewing, and she was buried Thursday at the city's British cemetery.

Edvard Munch ~ The Decorative Projects ~ at The NMWA Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:37 PM PDT Tokyo, Japan - The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch has been featured in a number of exhibitions in Japan, where his works on the theme of "the scream of the human soul" and its aspects in love and death, joy and despair are extremely popular. Among his works, Munch named the Frieze of Life series as his pivotal oeuvre.

Marc Chagall Discovery Adds Excitement to Bonhams Impressionist Auction Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:36 PM PDT LONDON.- A masterpiece by Marc Chagall rarely before seen in public is to headline the Impressionist and Modern Art auction at Bonhams on Tuesday 22nd June, and is estimated to bring  £1,200,000-1,800,000. Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century - a pioneer of modernism whose haunting yet exuberant works are also quintessentially Jewish. Born in Russia, he spent most of his life in France and in his works can be seen a merging of his Jewish heritage, his Russian background and the influence of the modern artistic trends he encountered while living in Paris.

Work by Weston and Avedon Amongst Highlights at Bonhams Sale Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:35 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Collectors are eagerly awaiting Bonhams New York's May 18th Fine Photographs sale. Consisting of just over 130 lots, the upcoming auction offers work spanning from the early 19th century to today and will feature images by such legendary photographers as Richard Avedon, Edward Weston, Helmut Newton, and Ansel Adams. Iconic photographs available and many for the serious collector to choose from.

National Gallery of Australia Presents Major Retrospective on Richard Larter Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:34 PM PDT CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - A major retrospective exhibition on Australian artist Richard Larter, featuring approximately 90 works from public and private collections and brought together for the first time, opened at the National Gallery of Australia. Featured in the exhibition are the works that Larter painted of the Canberra bushfires as well as other paintings inspired by journeys from Yass to Sydney. Canberra has been home to Larter for the past 8 years and prior to this, he lived in Yass for 18 years.

Park West Gallery Loses ~ Arts Registry Awarded $500,000 by Jury Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:33 PM PDT Detroit, MI - Southfield-based Park West Gallery took a $500,000 hit Wednesday in a legal brawl with a Phoenix-based Web site that said the gallery defrauded customers in art auctions aboard cruise ships."The verdict vindicates everything my client ever said about Park West," Farmington Hills lawyer Donald Payton said after a federal jury in Port Huron awarded $500,000 to Global Fine Arts Registry and its founder, Theresa Franks, for trademark violations involving registry Web sites.

Ten Museums Seek £100,000 For "Museum of the Year" Art Fund Prize 2011 Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:32 PM PDT LONDON.- The long list of ten museums that are in the running for the UK's largest arts prize – theArt Fund Prize 2011 – will be revealed on BBC Radio 4's Front Row. The long list of museums competing for the 'Museum of the Year' accolade has been selected by an independent panel of judges, chaired this year by broadcaster and former cabinet minister Michael Portillo. The Art Fund Prize 2011 rewards excellence and innovation in museums and galleries in the UK for a project completed or undertaken in 2010. Following a short list of four museums to be announced on 19 May, the £100,000 cash prize will be awarded to the 'Museum of the Year' at a ceremony on 15 June, 2011.

The Malmö Konsthall Presents "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble" Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:30 PM PDT Malmö, Sweden.-  The Malmö Konsthall is pleased to present "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble", on view from September 10th through November 27th. The Japanese artist Misaki Kawai (b. 1978) works with painting, drawing, sculpture, installations and artists' books. Her works are filled with colourful characters, who appear to come from the dream world of film, music and comics. Strongly influenced by today's consumer society – of which she herself is a part – Kawai fuses East with West, humour with seriousness and dreams with reality. The result is both chaotic and exuberant. Misaki Kawai has been drawing since she was very young, and the drawn line forms the basis of her work. She is influenced by the Japanese manga style called heta-uma, which means "bad-good" or bad technique with good result. It refers to the minimizing of conscious decision making or intentional stylization while drawing – a sort of uninterrupted connection from the brain to the hand. In her paintings, she uses a simple drawing line filling the areas with clear, strong colour to create and intensify moods and emotions in her pictures. There is a happiness and spontaneity. We encounter the same characters, animals and people who appear in her installations. Kawai deliberately works on the border to the banal, using an understated humour that indirectly reminds us of how our society functions. Misaki Kawai has been living in New York since 2000. There she collects, as she does on her many trips abroad, ideas, materials and objects from markets and low-cost stores. Inexpensive things like mass-produced plastic toys, stickers, ceramic ware and fabrics. Her artists' books are often decorated with patterned pieces of fabric or strings, making every book unique. They can be about the adventures of a Yeti warrior or be linked to her travels, such as Nepali Special or China Special. Her latest book project, Pencil Exercise, consists of 500 drawings that she produced in the course of a year, at least one every day. In her playful installations, Kawai creates imaginative worlds in materials such as papier-mâché, wood, cardboard and fabric. These doll house-like universes feature an incredible wealth of detail. A recurring theme bas been space and the futuristic worlds of tomorrow. All the colours, shapes, textures and patterns give her installations almost a kaleidoscopic effect, and it is difficult to withstand this hubbub of sweet, dream-like fantasy beings and colourful constructions. She always depicts places filled with movement, action and events. Kawai has said that she admires the action film star Jackie Chan because he is unique and cool. He is her sensei – her master. For the exhibition at Malmö Konsthall, Misaki Kawai will create completely new works, including a large sculptural installation. She has been working on site in Malmö since June. The exhibition catalogue will be in the form of a numbered, limited edition long-sleeved T-shirt. The Malmö Konsthall was opened in 1975 and is one of Europe's largest exhibition halls for contemporary art. Architect Klas Anshelm created an exhibition hall with great flexibility, generous space and fantastic light. The construction materials are light and simple: concrete, glass, wood and aluminium. Most of the gallery has a ceiling constructed like a latticework of 550 domes with both natural and artificial light sources. The height of the ceiling varies. The light well - with the higher ceiling - has a big sloping skylight towards the north. Klas Anshelm got inspiration for the construction when visiting the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in his Paris studio. The result is a gallery that is both functional and aesthetic. An exhibition space that presents the artist with endless possibilities. Malmö Konsthall arranges exhibitions with an international focus which encompasses both the classics of modern art and current experiments. Previous exhibitions have featured Edvard Munch, Jean Debuffet, Marc Chagall, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Klee, Richard Serra, Antony Gormley, Georg Baselitz, Keith Haring and many others. Visit the exhibition hall's website at ... http://www.konsthall.malmo.se

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 01 Nov 2011 08:29 PM PDT This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page.  You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article.  Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

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