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

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• Fantastical Costumes is What Christian Lacroix Did Next in Paris
• "Asian Art in London" Hosted by Leading UK Dealers & Auction Houses
• The Montclair Art Museum Presents "George Inness~Private Treasures"
• The Tucson Museum of Art Shows "Who Shot Rock & Roll ~ A Photographic History"
• The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Explores the "Spanish Colonial World"
• Doyle New York Mexican Print Auction to Feature Rivera, Tamayo, Siquieros & Orozco
• The National Gallery of Victoria to Show Ranjani Shettar's Spectacular Sculptures
• Lopdell House Gallery to Feature Nigel Brown 'Travel to Travel'
• The Fitzwilliam Museum Opens Renovated Impressionist Gallery
• Stadel Museum shows Expressiveness of Prints from Its Collection Made by Edvard Munch
• Christie's New York to offer Prints & Multiples: A Range of Style the Summer Sale
• Las Vegas Art Museum displays Collector's Contemporary Collections
• Royal Academy of Arts Collection Displays Major Works Given by Early Members
• 'Tigers of Wrath': Watercolors by Walton Ford at Brooklyn Museum
• Guggenheim Museum shows Acquisitions from Karl Nierendorf’s Galleries
• Ruud van Empel "Photoworks 1995-2010" to Open at the Groninger Museum
• Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art"
• Kunstmuseum Basel to show Albert Müller: Paintings, Sculptures and Prints
• The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms to exhibit "The Adam and Ron Show"
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Fantastical Costumes is What Christian Lacroix Did Next in Paris Posted: 02 Nov 2011 11:36 PM PDT PARIS — Puffs of tutus, twinkling tiaras, Cossack costumes and body suits painted with watery greenery fill a series of studios backstage at the Opéra Garnier in Paris. "This is my couture," says Christian Lacroix, before his latest creations took to the stage in "La Source," a magical realist ballet created in the 19th century and rarely seen since then.These fantastical costumes, mixing folkloric outfits with diaphanous pastel dresses, scattered with sparkling crystal, are for just one among a series of theatrical events across Europe that Mr. Lacroix has worked on since his couture house was shuttered in 2009. The list of his collaborations, for productions from Berlin to Paris, bring the beat of his work schedule back to the pulse of the annual rounds of fashion shows. The costumes for "La Source" (at the Opéra National de Paris at the Palais Garnier through Nov. 12) are indeed created in the spirit of haute couture, in different studios for firm tailoring and fluid dresses. And as the production reaches its climax in a whirl of colorful Caucasian costumes and elfin outfits, set against the classic, sugar-sweet dresses for the corps de ballet, it has all the visual drama of a fashion show. Was Mr. Lacroix always, in his heart, creating his dreams onstage? "I was often accused — when people did not like my work — of doing couture that was too 'theatrical,"' said the designer. "Yet when I was a child, I never thought about fashion but only about making costumes." He agrees that he is to a certain extent continuing the same career, keeping the kernel of the couture he worked on for nearly 30 years. And that he is fortunate in working for grand houses like the Opéra Garnier and the Comédie-Française that allow him to use couture quality fabrics and do hand-tinting and embroideries — but always with the proviso that the dancers have freedom of movement and that sweat-drenched costumes can be easily cleaned. "We even do one-of-a-kind jewels," Mr. Lacroix said, referring not to the Swarovski crystals scattered like dewdrops on the costume of the star ballerina Laëtitia Pujol, but to another atelier filled with cabinets of crowns and coronets. Mr. Lacroix said that all his visual work is intertwined. And there is plenty of it. First, there's an impressive list of past, present and future ballet, opera and theater costumes, many for shows in Berlin or other German cities, with the set designer Vincent Broussard. Then there is the decoration of tram cars in the French city of Montpellier; hotel interiors from Paris to Thailand; and his role as artistic director creating coins and medals for the Monnaie de Paris. The costumes for "La Source," illuminated by Swarovski's gift of two million crystals, have a touch of the museum show "L'Orient des Femmes" (or "Women in the Orient"), at the Quai Branly museum last year. (Mr. Lacroix was artistic director of the exhibition.) On stage, Odalisques, as if in an Ottoman seraglio imagined by Ingres, are dressed in fanciful harem pants in vivid colors, while the men appear in dense, rustic tweeds. "I wanted a timeless ballet like those in my childhood, with a touch of the 'Ballets Russes' and of the 19th century," said Mr. Lacroix. The designer, wearing a striped shirt and checked scarf with a denim vest, said that there is one major difference between designing for the stage and the catwalk: theatrical work is a team effort. "I am the illustrator — and what I was asked to do in this theater was very precise, even including the colors," Mr. Lacroix said. "What is primordial is to succeed in illustrating what the director or choreographer imagined. It's not just about me — it is about working with a team to serve the vision for those who asked me to work for them." What high fashion and exceptional theatrical work do have in common, the designer said, is the ability to arouse emotion in the audience, as they respond to the visual effects that deepen their feelings about the clothes. Significantly, while the dramatic choreography of Jean-Guillaume Bart for "La Source" is matched by complex costumes for the crowd scenes, the moments of intense love and final death are played out in simple outfits, perhaps with just a twinkle of that crystal stardust. In practical terms, Mr. Lacroix said the difference between fashion and stage is also about distance. A couture dress may not "speak" from afar, nor its delicate Lesage embroidery be visible. "Costumes from theater or ballet must tell the story as soon as the person appears," the designer explained. Up close, meanwhile, the costumes may seem "too much" or too loud. Whereas haute couture today is inevitably linked to brand building and aimed toward producing dresses for a privileged few, for Mr. Lacroix, the stage has a wider purpose. "We are working to create emotion for the thousands of spectators who come to see the performance," he said. "And also to help the dancers, actors or singers to get inside their characters as comfortably as possible. And once they are in costume, they have to forget all about what they are wearing."

"Asian Art in London" Hosted by Leading UK Dealers & Auction Houses Posted: 02 Nov 2011 11:28 PM PDT LONDON.- Since its inception in 1998, Asian Art in London has become one of the world's most important focal points for international collectors of Asian art, with its series of specialist gallery exhibitions and events hosted by leading UK dealers and auction houses. In a new move that further enhances its global appeal, Asian Art in London has for the first time invited overseas specialist dealers to join its ranks for the 2011 event, to be held from 3rd to 12th November. Asian Art in London, now in its 14th year, has an established reputation as one of the most important Asian art events on the international art calendar.

The Montclair Art Museum Presents "George Inness~Private Treasures" Posted: 02 Nov 2011 10:21 PM PDT Montclair, New Jersey.- The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) proudly presents "George Inness: Private Treasures", opening Sunday, November 6th, as the first special exhibition to be held in the George Inness Gallery, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Martucci. The gallery is the only space in the world dedicated to the work of George Inness (1825-1894) and customarily houses an installation of rotating selections from the Museum's renowned collection of America's greatest landscape painter. "George Inness: Private Treasures", on view through April 1, 2012, will consist of 10 works, nine from private collections as well as one from the Montclair Historical Society. The local lenders are from various towns in New York and New Jersey, including Montclair, Glen Ridge, Essex Fells, Verona, and Irvington. Additionally, "George Inness Sketching Outside His Montclair Studio", a painting from the Museum's collection by Inness's son, George Inness, Jr., will be on display.

The Tucson Museum of Art Shows "Who Shot Rock & Roll ~ A Photographic History" Posted: 02 Nov 2011 09:48 PM PDT Tucson, Arizona.- "Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present", is the first major museum exhibition to acknowledge photographers for their creative and collaborative role in the history of rock and roll. "Who Shot Rock & Roll" is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and has been seen at a number of east coast museums. Now it will be on view in Tucson, Arizona at the Tucson Museum of Art on view through January 15th 2012. From its earliest days, rock and roll was captured in photographs that personalized and frequently eroticized the musicians. Photographers were handmaidens to the rock-and-roll revolution, and their work communicates the social and cultural transformations that rock helped bring about from the 1950's to the present. This exhibition is a history not of rock and roll, but of the men and women who have photographed it and given the music its visual identity.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Explores the "Spanish Colonial World" Posted: 02 Nov 2011 08:57 PM PDT Los Angeles, California.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), in partnership with the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Mexico, is proud to present "Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World", the first exhibition in the United States to examine the significance of indigenous peoples and cultures within the complex social and artistic landscape of colonial Latin America. On view from November 6th through January 29th 2012, the exhibition offers a comparative view of Mexico and Peru, the two principal viceroyalties of Spanish America, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and includes a selection of approximately 200 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, codices, manuscripts, queros (ceremonial drinking vessels), featherworks, and other extraordinary objects.

Doyle New York Mexican Print Auction to Feature Rivera, Tamayo, Siquieros & Orozco Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:56 PM PDT New York City.- Doyle New York will host an auction of Mexican prints on November 8th. The auction features prints and books from the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation Collection. Featured in the Fath Collection are numerous works by Mexico's most prominent Social Realist artists of the 20th century. The public is invited to the exhibition on view from Friday, November 4th through Sunday, November 6th. Doyle New York is located at 175 East 87th Street in Manhattan. In addition to the Mexican prints in the November 8 auction of the Fath Collection, there will be eight prints by Rufino Tamayo in Doyle New York's November 7 auction of Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints.

The National Gallery of Victoria to Show Ranjani Shettar's Spectacular Sculptures Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:24 PM PDT Melbourne, Australia.- The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is proud to present "Ranjani Shettar: Dewdrops and Sunshine", on view from November 4th through Feburary 26th 2012. The exhibition will showcase the artist's unique approach to sculpture including material experimentation, relationship to space, engagement with nature, exploration of tradition and resonance with modernism. Often transforming natural phenomena into magical forms, Shettar creates sculptures informed by a material openness that borrows from Indian craft traditions filtered through her own novel sensibility.Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV, said: "We are delighted to be opening this new space dedicated to contemporary art in our 150th anniversary year. Visitors to Ranjani Shettar will be amazed by the diversity of the materials used, the biological and cultural concepts Shettar explores and the spatial engagement one has with the works – truly a phenomenal experience."

Lopdell House Gallery to Feature Nigel Brown 'Travel to Travel' Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:24 PM PDT Waitakere City, Auckland.NZ - The Lopdell House Gallery is proud to present "Nigel Brown - Travel to Travel" on view at the museum from December 8th through Feburary 12th 2012. Nigel Brown is an inveterate traveller and observer. This exhibition is based on his overseas travels to Europe, Russia, Japan, the Pacific and Antarctica spanning 30 years. Nigel Brown is acknowledged as a leading narrative artist whose distinctive works use a blend of symbolic and expressionistic approaches to voice deep social concern. Employing history, literature and politics as devices to draw attention to individual and environmental issues Nigel Brown conveys emotional and intuitive sympathy within the confines of the works in an accurate and incisive reading of the human condition. 'Travel can be described as a kind of 'invasion of the mind' by outside influences. I come home with a mind shifted in subtle ways. And from one journey to the next, you are no longer the same.' – Nigel Brown.

The Fitzwilliam Museum Opens Renovated Impressionist Gallery Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:23 PM PDT Cambridge, UK.- Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne all return to the Fitzwilliam as the Museum's famous Impressionist artworks go back on display. One of the most popular galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum has undergone a full renovation and reinstallation. Gallery 5, housing the museum's remarkable collection of paintings and sculpture by the French Impressionists and other late 19th and early 20th-century artists has re-opened with a striking new look, colour and display. The works have involved many of the same improvements, including enhanced natural lighting, restoring the richly-coloured scagliola (imitation marble) of the Grade I-listed building and a dramatic dark blue-grey wall covering. The new, more atmospheric, space will offer visitors the opportunity to re-encounter some of the most famous works in the Fitzwilliam's collection, and includes more information on the history of Impressionism and how these works came to be at the Museum. Featuring artists such as Monet, Henri Matisse, Cézanne, Pissarro, Degas, Alfred Sisley and Renoir, the refurbished Impressionist gallery follows on from the restoration in 2010 of its sister-space housing 19th and 20th-century British art, Gallery 1.  Highlights of the new displays include famous works such as "Le Printemps (Springtime)" and "Les Peupliers (Poplars)" by Claude Monet, "La Place Clichy" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Degas's enigmatic "Au Café (At the Café)", 19th-century French sculpture including work by Rodin, Renoir, Degas and Jules Dalou and recently conserved paintings including "The Flood at Port-Marly" by Alfred Sisley and Monet's "Belle-Île". The Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Dr Timothy Potts commented: "The Fitzwilliam is engaged in a staged programme of refurbishment of its galleries which provides an opportunity not only to refresh the displays but, just as importantly, to bring the fruits of new research and interpretations to bear on the understanding of our works. The beautiful new Impressionist gallery, one of the jewels of the Founder's Building, achieves all of these aims in what is sure to be one of our most popular displays." The museum is fortunate in being able to display in the gallery works by Seurat and Cézanne on long-term loan from King's College, Cambridge, bequeathed to the college in 1946 by the economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes not only played a key role in ensuring the nation acquired works at Degas's posthumous sale in 1918, but as a collector himself showed a keen appreciation for Cézanne's work. The Fitzwilliam Museum was described by the Standing Commission on Museums & Galleries in 1968 as "one of the greatest art collections of the nation and a monument of the first importance". It owes its foundation to Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion who, in 1816, bequeathed to the University of Cambridge his works of art and library, together with funds to house them, to further "the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation". Fitzwilliam's bequest included 144 pictures, among them Dutch paintings he inherited through his maternal grandfather and the masterpieces by Titian, Veronese and Palma Vecchio he acquired at the Orléans sales in London. During a lifetime of collecting, he filled more than 500 folio albums with engravings, to form what has been described as "a vast assembly of prints by the most celebrated engravers, with a series of Rembrandt's etchings unsurpassed in England at that time". His library included 130 medieval manuscripts and a collection of autograph music by Handel, Purcell and other composers which has guaranteed the Museum a place of prominence among the music libraries of the world. In recent years, the Museum's traditional base of support from alumni and private collectors has been augmented by generous provision from the National Art Collections Fund and other charitable organisations and public bodies, including H M Treasury (under the provision for the allocation to Museums of works of art accepted in lieu of capital taxes). Today, the Museum pursues a vigorous acquisitions policy as one aspect of its abiding commitment to hold the nation's "treasures in trust". The Standing Commission's view is both echoed and expanded by the University itself: "The Fitzwilliam Museum is one of the greatest glories of the University of Cambridge. It is a museum of international stature, with unique collections most splendidly housed... Like the University itself, the Fitzwilliam Museum is part of the national heritage, but, much more, it is part of a living and continuing culture which it is our statutory duty to transmit". Few museums in the world contain on a single site collections of such variety and depth. Writing in his Foreword to the catalogue of the exhibition for Treasures from the Fitzwilliam which toured the United States in 1989-90, the then Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, wrote that "like the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam addresses the history of culture in terms of the visual forms it has assumed, but it does so from the highly selective point of view of the collector connoisseur. Works of art have been taken into the collection not only for the historical information they reveal, but for their beauty, excellent quality, and rarity... It is a widely held opinion that the Fitzwilliam is the finest small museum in Europe". Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Stadel Museum shows Expressiveness of Prints from Its Collection Made by Edvard Munch Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:09 PM PDT FRANKFURT.- The Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings holds more than 80 prints by the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944), among them donations by the artist and many acquisitions already made during his life-time. Presenting these impressive treasures, the exhibition "Edvard Munch. Prints in the Städel Museum" pays tribute to the outstanding expressiveness of Edvard Munch's prints and illustrates their landmark importance for twentieth-century art. Like in his paintings, Munch mainly gave expression to psychological states and interior processes in his prints, too. With his scenic descriptions and symbolic mental landscapes, he created sheets thematizing moods and life experiences such as love, jealousy, anxiety, angst, disease, loneliness, or grief. On view through 18 October, 2009. Portraits, however, also play an important role within Munch's work as a printmaker. He captured friends from the bohemian world such as Henrik Ibsen, Stéphane Mallarmé, or August Strindberg in psychologically profound pictures. The show contextualizes this oeuvre by confronting it with selected positions of artists such as Beckmann, Gauguin, Heckel, Klinger, Redon, or Toulouse-Lautrec as they become manifest in works from the Städel's collection.  The Städel Museum will set up a special microsite under http://munch.staedelmuseum.de , which offers detailed information on the various printing techniques, the life and work of the Norwegian artist, and the works by Edvard Munch in its collection. Edvard Munch began to dedicate himself to printing at the age of 31 when he lived in Berlin. The year was 1894. The extensive oeuvre of prints he produced in Germany, Paris, and Norway throughout the following decades into his old age mirrors both his life and his fascination with the specific qualities of the chosen means of expression. Fond of experiments, he succeeded in combining the peculiar possibilities of the etching, the lithograph, and the woodcut with complex contents in a masterly and innovative way. Most of the motifs he chose resemble those of his paintings executed before. In 1894, Munch was as well known as he was controversial. It was especially the scandal around the exhibition of his paintings at the Association of Berlin Artists in 1892 – which was closed down because of the public's and the critics' outrage – that provoked a discussion on the free treatment of his objects' colors and forms. Like the French Impressionists, the Scandinavian was vehemently rejected by the conservative voices in the Berlin of that day. Doing without color, Munch at first translated decisive motifs of his paintings like "The Girl by the Window," "The Day After," or "The Sick Child" into etchings in Berlin. These early dry-point works made in the knowledge of contemporary masterpieces such as the etchings by Max Klinger (1857–1920), but obviously without having received any lengthy instructions show an astounding quality and evince Munch's promising talent. Together with five other engravings, these works are part of a portfolio with intaglio prints by Edvard Munch published by Julius Meier-Graefe in Berlin in 1895 and unsuccessfully offered for sale at the time. The Städel has been in the possession of the complete portfolio of a special edition printed on rice paper in only ten copies. Munch's first lithographs date from as early as 1894 when he did his first etchings. The more than 30 examples in this technique presented in the exhibition include impressive pictures depicting changing moods of love ("Sea of Love," "Separation," and "Vampire"). Two lithographed versions of "Jealousy" (1896) suggest a comparison with the later painting of the same name in the gallery of the Städel. Munch's "Cordon" offers a visionary commentary on the "female as an object of desire" that has a forebear in Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographic oeuvre. In an unrivaled way, Munch captures difficult-to-grasp psychological states and emotions between the sexes. It is hardly perceptible how his motifs transcend the everyday world and find their equivalent in today's emotional life. As simple as his symbolically condensed feelings seem to be, as profound is the meaning pervading them. Both Eros and Thanatos are among the fundamental experiences of life which occupied the artist throughout his career. The pictures of his 15-year old sister Sophie's demise in 1877, which he witnessed and depicted again and again in varied forms in paintings and prints, number among his most powerful documents concerning the subject of death. In Paris, where he took up residence in 1896/97, he had "Death in the Sickroom" (in black on blue-grey deckle-edged paper) and "The Sick Child," an incunabulum of color lithography, printed by Auguste Clot. It was under Clot's hand, who, commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, began working on series of prints by Les Nabis (Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis) at that time, that color lithography blossomed as a new late-nineteenth-century achievement in printing technology. Many of Munch's lithographs are empathic portraits of contemporaries. He rendered his patron and friend "Harry Graf Kessler" as a subtle aesthete in 1895, working with the model in front of him and drawing directly on the stone. The portfolio "From the Linde Villa," a special kind of family portrait, was executed on behalf of the Lübeck ophthalmologist and significant sponsor Max Linde in 1902. Since the work was intended exclusively for the family's personal use, only a few copies were printed, which is why it is only rarely to be found in public collections. The exhibition also includes a number of portraits of his bohemian comrades such as the Polish poet Stanisław Przybyszewski, the writer Henrik Ibsen, and the Swedish playwright August Strindberg – the latter Munch's partner "in regard to the feminine, in drinking, and in neurosis," as Meier-Graefe put it in 1915. After having done etchings and lithographs, Munch began to try his hand at woodcuts, too, in 1896. Comparing the dry-point work "Two People" from 1894 with a color woodcut exploring the same subject from 1899 reveals the technically caused differences. But such juxtapositions also disclose how the atmosphere of silence and isolation translates into the idiom of the respective printing medium – a creative process always accompanied by the condensation of the pictorial idea and its expression in increasingly concrete terms. There were only a few artists such as Paul Gauguin and Félix Vallotton who, like Munch, in those days made use of the Japanese woodcut as the oldest known printing technique against the background of the interest developed for it in Paris. As Gauguin, thanks to his experimental attitude, began to break new ground for the woodcut around 1895, Munch also developed innovative methods of production in this field. While he printed his color woodcut "Seascape" (1897) from two blocks in the traditional way, "Two People" (1899) and "To the Forest II" (1915) are the result of a procedure hitherto unknown in this technique. Munch cut up the block with a fretsaw to apply different colors to the various parts and achieve a wide range of variants after assembling them like a puzzle. The influence Munch would exercise on subsequent artists was also based on this method, which would be taken up by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Today, the Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings holds 81 prints by Edvard Munch. Edvard Munch was still alive, when, under Georg Swarzenski's directorship, the outstanding color lithograph "The Sick Girl" and two etchings were purchased for the Städtische Galerie. Further acquisitions could be made in 1912, 1914, 1916, and 1918. After the artist himself had donated 11 lithographs and woodcuts to the collection in the early 1930s, the holdings had increased to 40 works. While two of three paintings by the artist purchased in the 1920s were confiscated as "degenerate" in 1937, his prints were spared. The losses to be lamented by the Städel in the field of Expressionist prints were generously made up for by Dr. Carl Hagemann's legacy after World War II in 1948. The transferred prints of his collection also included works by Edvard Munch. Since those days, well-considered purchases were made at auctions to complement and extend the extant holdings in a reasonable manner.

Christie's New York to offer Prints & Multiples: A Range of Style the Summer Sale Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:08 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's presents the mid-season Prints & Multiples sale on July 22. Comprised of a cross section of movements and styles, this well selected offering includes work by James Jacques, Joseph Tissot, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Paul Gauguin, Joan Miró, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Rachel Whiteread, among others. This sale is the ideal opportunity to begin or expand collections for new bidders and seasoned print enthusiasts alike. A broad selection of Pop and abstract art complete the Prints & Multiples sale. A unique example is A Dedicated Follower of Fashion (estimate: $3,000-5,000) by Richard Hamilton, a founder of the Pop movement in Britain.

Las Vegas Art Museum displays Collector's Contemporary Collections Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:07 PM PDT Las Vegas, NV - The Las Vegas Art Museum shows the exhibition Las Vegas Collects Contemporary presented by City National Bank. This exhibition features works of contemporary art on loan from Southern Nevada's most important privately held fine art collections. Artists featured in the show include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Uta Barth, Dan Flavin, Andreas Gursky, Michael Heizer, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Donald Judd, Jason Martin, Takashi Murakami, Ken Price, David Reed, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Venske & Spänle, and Andy Warhol among others.

Royal Academy of Arts Collection Displays Major Works Given by Early Members Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:06 PM PDT LONDON - History painting was regarded as the pinnacle of High Art and strongly promoted by Sir Joshua Reynolds above other genres such as portraiture, landscape and still life. This new display includes major works given by early Members of the Royal Academy of Arts to the Collection including biblical subjects by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley and John Francis Rigaud, as well as Henry Fuseli's fantastical Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent. On exhibition through 29 November, 2009.

'Tigers of Wrath': Watercolors by Walton Ford at Brooklyn Museum Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:05 PM PDT Brooklyn, NY - More than fifty of Walton Ford's meticulously rendered, large-scale watercolors of vividly imagined birds, animals, and flora will be on view in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum through January 28, 2007.  Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford, which will tour to venues to be announced, comprises watercolors created between 1990 and the present exploring such themes as colonialism, the naturalist tradition, and the extinction of species.  Using the animal kingdom as a mirror of the human world, Ford employs his skill as an artist and observer to communicate his views on society.  In The Starling, 2002, he depicts an enormous European starling presiding over a desert-like landscape and being fed by exotic birds from around the world. Also included in the exhibition are Dirty Dick Burton's Aide de Camp, 2002, in which a monkey represents the nineteenth-century naturalist Richard Burton, who employed primates in his house to learn their language; Jack on His Deathbed, 2005, in which the primate is a stand-in for the eighteenth-century British ambassador to Naples, Sir William Hamilton, a diplomat who owned a pet monkey; and Delirium, 2004, which makes reference to John James Audubon's practice of killing animals in order to study them more closely.  In this image the golden eagle, still attached to a trap, flies to freedom, while the tiny figure of Audubon lies flat in the snow below. Ford drew his early inspiration from the work of nineteenth-century artist and naturalist John James Audubon—particularly his prodigious Birds of America series–as well as from visits to the American Museum of Natural History.  Other influences include J.J. Grandville and Sir John Tenniel, the French artists whose caricatures of part-human, part-animal subjects satirized nineteenth-century French and British society; Edward Lear, an artist and writer known for his nonsensical poetry and limericks; George Catlin, a self-taught painter of Native Americans; and Francisco Goya, the Spanish artist working at the turn of the nineteenth-century. Born in Larchmont, New York, in 1960, Walton Ford is a 1982 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.  He is the recipient of several national awards and honors including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  In conjunction with Tigers of Wrath, four prints from the original edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America series (1827-1838) will be presented in the American Identities galleries on the Museum's fifth floor. They will remain on view throughout the run of the exhibition.  Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford is organized by Marilyn Kushner, Chair and Curator, Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is made possible in part by Bloomberg, with additional support from the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Council of the Brooklyn Museum.  Visit : www.brooklynmuseum.org/

Guggenheim Museum shows Acquisitions from Karl Nierendorf’s Galleries Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:04 PM PDT   New York City - This permanent collection installation features both acquisitions from Karl Nierendorf's galleries in Berlin and New York and from the gallerist's estate. Formerly a banker, German-born Karl Nierendorf (1889–1947) began his career in the art trade in 1920 in Cologne. In 1936 Nierendorf immigrated to the U.S. and established the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, where he encountered Hilla Rebay (1890–1967) and the newly established Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Ruud van Empel "Photoworks 1995-2010" to Open at the Groninger Museum Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:03 PM PDT GRONINGER.- From 10 September to 27 November 2011, the Groninger Museum will present the exhibition entitled Ruud van Empel. Photoworks 1995-2010. Ruud van Empel (1958) is one of the most extraordinary photographic artists of this moment, both nationally and internationally. From hundred of fragments adopted from digital photos, he compiles new images that seem very life-like and realistic, but also conjure up a world that has never existed. The exhibition is the first large-scale museum overview of the work of Van Empel.

Ahlen Art Museum to Present a Special Exhibition "Intimacy! Bathing in Art" Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:02 PM PDT BERLIN.- The Ahlen Art Museum will be presenting in this exhibit the historical developments, contextual significance, and especially the artistic reflections of the topic 'bathing.' In the exhibit, 140 works by 90 artists will be presented, including Pierre Bonnard, Louise Bourgeois, Gustave Caillebotte, William N. Copley, Gregory Crewdson, Edgar Degas, Albrecht Dürer, Eric Fischl, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Xenia Hausner, David Hockney, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Édouard Manet, Bettina Rheims, Norbert Tadeusz, and Bill Viola. On view 31 January through 25 April, 2010.

Kunstmuseum Basel to show Albert Müller: Paintings, Sculptures and Prints Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:01 PM PDT BASEL.- The Basel painter, draftsman, printmaker and sculptor Albert Müller (1897–1926) is considered one of the main exponents of Swiss Expressionism. Müller received his initial artistic training in his native city, at a glass-painting studio and at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule, the local vocational arts school. Galvanised by the example of Cuno Amiet, he was soon using luminous colours that diverged strongly from the dark tones typical of the established painters of the area. His work first began attracting the notice of a wider audience in 1919.

The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms to exhibit "The Adam and Ron Show" Posted: 02 Nov 2011 06:00 PM PDT LONDON - The Elms Lesters Painting Rooms will present The Adam and Ron Show, on view May 2-31, 2008. When Adam Neate was still an unknown artist leaving his painted cardboard works out on the street, he wrote to Ron English in New York to say how much he admired his work. For the first time, The Adam and Ron Show brings together these two urban art painters, both masters of their own style, in a major heavyweight show at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms. The exhibition will include a 50' site-specific painting by Ron English, recreating Picasso's Guernica. Over the past few years, Ron has created dozens of versions of Picasso's masterpiece, transforming the original Spanish civilian characters into Disney characters, Peanuts characters, soccer players, schoolchildren, and many others. As part of this series he painted the world's largest version of Guernica at the Station Museum in Houston, being one foot longer and one foot wider than Picasso's original and featuring schoolchildren playacting the violent scene of the original. Adam Neate is a fearless painter who is constantly experimenting with styles and techniques, and continually pushing forward with his work. Paintings selected for this forthcoming show will demonstrate how he is mastering the mediums of both cardboard and canvas, with complex layering and bold use of paint. As well as a series of his coveted self portraits, the show will include a collection of his narrative, social documentary paintings. His fluid brush strokes, and impeccable line are apparent in both his two dimensional pieces and his multi-layered three dimensional works. Adam Neate's extraordinary development in the past 12 months has not gone unnoticed by international collectors, and his works are contended by major collectors and celebrities and lauded by international critics. Neate's work has recently sold impressively at both Sotheby's and Bonham's auction houses, exceeding original estimates up to tenfold. Adam Neate – Adam Neate first came to the public's attention by bounteously leaving thousands of his paintings on the street of London, for people to take, or leave, at will. Since then he has rapidly become Britain's most exciting young artist and a much heralded painter at the forefront of a radical new movement in contemporary art. Whilst the world is sitting up and taking notice of a host of emerging urban/ graffiti artists - Neate is a street artist with a difference. His work is technically expert and has won him acknowledgement from Tate, National Portrait Gallery and The National Gallery. Last August, Adam's first one man show at Elms Lesters, the sell-out exhibition entitled Paintings,Pots and Prints demonstrated his masterful use of different materials, garnering global interest; Adam's works have been included in major auctions of Contemporary and Urban Art in the past months. His gallery pieces, the majority of which are still painted on cardboard, have immediacy and a raw energy, through the use of aerosols, marker pens, and acrylic and gloss paints. Ron English - Ron English first hijacked billboards when he was an art student as a way of displaying his art to as many people as possible – it was later that he realised he could make political statements by the same means. Since then Ron has 'pirated' or 'liberated' over one thousand billboards, replacing existing advertisements with his own hand-painted "subvertisements." getting his own socio-political messages across. He is recognised as the father of AGIT-POP, a hybrid of Pop Art that is fuelled by a more personal, hands-on socially responsible attitude. His gallery works on canvas contain an equally biting commentary whilst being flawlessly painted in a hyperreal style, loaded with the iconography of his generation. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and his work is included in prominent collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris and the Whitney Museum in New York; few of them were also featured in Morgan Spurlock's film 'SUPER SIZE ME". His film "POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English" was released in 2006.

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 02 Nov 2011 05:50 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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