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

---

• The National Museum of Singapore Shows Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay
• The Moscow Museum of Modern Art Presents a Retrospective of Ignacio Burgos
• Getty Villa opens Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, & Picabia in the Presence of the Antique
• Christie's Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in NYC totals $140,773,500
• The Lucca Center of Contemporary Art Shows Hidden Treasures from the Guggenheim Collection
• Galerie Trois Points to Show 3 Abstract Artists from the p|m Gallery
• Woodward Gallery to Show Lady Pink's Graffiti Based Art
• The Museum of the City of New York Features Iconic Works by the Legendary Cecil Beaton
• Our Editor Visits The Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria ~ Home To The Rudolf & Elisabeth Leopold Collection
• Collodion Images of Ken Merfeld
• Abstract Art in South & North America at the Amon Carter Museum
• Salvador Dalí ~ Rare Prints & Drawings ~ at William Bennett Gallery
• First Retrospective of Artist & Critic Lil Picard Debuts at Grey Art Gallery
• THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM SHOWS THE FRED EBB BEQUEST
• Rare Screens Believed to be from Chinese Imperial Palace for Sale at Bonhams
• The British Museum opens 'The Intimate Portrait' ~ Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels
• The Science Museum Shows Dr John Taylor's "Time Eating" Chronophage Clock
• Tel Aviv Museum of Art Reconstructs 1907 Berlin Exhibition of Jewish Artists
• The Uffizi Gallery In Florence ~ The Finest Collection Of Renaissance Art In The World
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The National Museum of Singapore Shows Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay Posted: 03 Nov 2011 11:29 PM PDT Singapore.- The National Museum is proud to host "Dreams & Reality: Masterpieces of Painting, Drawing & Photography from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris", on view at the museum until February 5th 2012. Instead of travelling 12 long hours to Paris to appreciate the world's finest  collection of modern art, Singaporeans can now view over 140 Salon, Realist, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from the greatest painters in the likes of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and many more at the National Museum of Singapore.Titled "Dreams & Reality: Masterpieces of Painting, Drawing  & Photography of  the Musée d'Orsay, Paris", the exhibition is a rare opportunity for the art works to travel out of the Musée d'Orsay is possible only because the museum is undergoing renovation works of its galleries. At the turn of the century from 1848 to 1914, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, a rapidly urbanising social and economic landscape in Europe compelled Man to react towards modernity. The arts particularly grew in prominence as artists were confronted by a whole new world of ideas, possibilities and influences. Some chose to pursue their desire to capture contemporary subjects; others who were anguished and disorientated by the onslaught of massive change, sought refuge in their dreams and imagination founded on mythologies, legends and ancient civilisations. Their varied response generated new ways of depicting reality and a proliferation of artistic styles, redefining their own identities amidst the radical transformations taking place around them. This exhibition is divided into four main sections: Allegory and History, Man and Contemporary Life, Man and Nature and Solitude. Allegory and History is illustrated with works by artists such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who blended myths of classical antiquity with history and reality, creating a new trend that was perpetuated in the Salons during the second half of the 19th century. Gods and goddesses were increasingly depicted as stylised figures, stripped of meaning. During the Romantic period in the 19th century, the links between literature, theatre, music and painting grew. Artists sought to free themselves of classicism; yearning freedom, they embraced a dark melancholy and rebellious pessimism. After France surrendered and lost two provinces Alsace and a large part of Lorraine to Prussia in the 1870 War, many artists were affected by the tragic events and dedicated paintings and drawings to the defence of Paris and the Commune – a resistance movement against the Empire's defeat. Man and Contemporary Life Family Family was the only constant source of stability, comfort and moral support for the artists. Family members thus became tractable models with whom the artists could share their difficulties in artistic creation. When the once agrarian society transited into an urban one, some artists  felt nostalgic towards the countryside as a sort of "lost paradise", while others denounced the archaic conditions and exploitation of peasants. Another group of artists looked at a different reality – contemporary life in the city and the exalted heroism of factory workers. As Paris modernised, an array of new leisure activities sprung up. Artists began to discover the beauty of modern life by painting new places like theatres, public gardens and railways. Man and Nature The Human Figure From the mid-19th century, traditional approaches to figure-painting, portraits and nudes were widely challenged and succeeded by new artistic styles which included informal poses, people donning their own clothes performing daily tasks in their homes or on the streets. While landscape in art was initially linked to history, mythology and the Bible, it moved towards a more subjective and lyrical interpretation from the second half of the 18th century onwards. Towards the end of the 19th century, landscapes became increasingly devoid of human presence, underlining the insignificance of man as a subject compared to the forces of Nature. Man as a solitary being Surrounded by progress on all fronts, a group of artists were concerned about the irreversible changes made to the fast urbanising environment, hence, they set out to depict Man as a solitary being. In the artists' perspective, the only way humans can escape the weight of science and technology is through the individual's mind. With a history dating back to its inception in 1887, the National Museum of Singapore is the nation's oldest museum with a progressive mind. The National Museum is a custodian of the 11 National Treasures, and its Singapore History and Living Galleries adopt cutting-edge and varied ways of presenting history and culture to redefine conventional museum experience. A cultural and architectural landmark in Singapore, the Museum hosts vibrant festivals and events all year round – the dynamic Night Festival, visually arresting art installations, as well as amazing performances and film screenings – in addition to presenting lauded exhibitions and precious artefacts. The programming is supported by a wide range of facilities and services including F&B, retail and a Resource Centre. The National Museum of Singapore reopened in December 2006 after a three-year redevelopment. The museum used to house a vast collection of zoological items, but were transferred to the National University of Singapore (NUS) and other museums in the Commonwealth. Among the highlights of the collections are the Singapore Stone, the Gold Ornaments of the Sacred Hill from East Java, a Dagguerreotype of Singapore Town which was one of the earliest photographs of Singapore, the will of Munshi Abdullah, the portrait of Frank Athelstane Swettenham, the hearse of Tan Jiak Kim, a Peranakan coffin cover, the mace of the City of Singapore commemorating King George VI's raising of the island's status to a city in 1951, the Xin Sai Le puppet stage, William Farquhar's drawings of flora and fauna and the portrait of Shenton Thomas, who was the former governor of Singapore. Rocks from the nearby Fort Canning Hill were used to create two sculptures commissioned from Cultural Medallion-winner Han Sai Por. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.nationalmuseum.sg

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art Presents a Retrospective of Ignacio Burgos Posted: 03 Nov 2011 11:06 PM PDT Moscow. - The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMMA) continues the program of the Year of Spain in Russia with the solo exhibition of Ignacio Burgos, one of the most interesting contemporary artists in his country. His art is recognizable and self-contained; for long years, the master is faithful to his style and does not surrender to the dictation of markets, galleries, and curators. His manner can be defined as 'figurative expressionism': in his canvases, the exquisite palette of blues, purples and ochres comes into balance with a special Mediterranean light, and soft but precise brushwork. "Ignacio Burgos: A Retorspective" is on view at the museum from November 9th through December 14th.

Getty Villa opens Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, & Picabia in the Presence of the Antique Posted: 03 Nov 2011 10:36 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- The alliance between the avant-garde and the antique constitutes an extraordinary episode in the history of European modernism. Modern Antiquity: Picasso, de Chirico, Léger, and Picabia in the Presence of the Antique, on view at the Getty Villa from November 2, 2011 through January 16, 2012, focuses on how four eminent artists reinvented and transformed antiquity between 1906 and 1936. Classicizing creations such as de Chirico's enigmatic piazzas, Picasso's post-cubist women, Léger's mechanized nudes, and Picabia's "transparencies" made the arts of antiquity modern. Following its showing at the Getty, the exhibition will be on view at the Musée Picasso, Antibes from February 16 to May 20, 2012.

Christie's Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in NYC totals $140,773,500 Posted: 03 Nov 2011 08:23 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Christie's Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale achieved $140,773,500 (£88,687,305/ €102,764,655), with three works of art selling above the $10 million mark. Despite spots of selective bidding throughout the sale, Surrealist works and modern sculpture performed well overall, and buyers competed aggressively for rare works and those offered fresh to the market from private and museum collections. Christie's offered the three top private collections this season, including the Property From the Collection of Lew and Edie Wasserman, which totaled $8.5 million; The Collection of John W. Kluge, sold to benefit Columbia University, which achieved $4.9 million; and A Distinguished West Coast Collection, which realized $10.5 million.

The Lucca Center of Contemporary Art Shows Hidden Treasures from the Guggenheim Collection Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:47 PM PDT Lucca, Tuscany.- The Lucca Center of Centemporary Art is proud to be showing "Revealing Papers: The Hidden treasures of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection", on view at the museum until January 15th. Peggy Guggenheim's career, as patron and collector, was driven by her readiness to support, both financially and morally, the intellectual vanguard, whether literary or artistic, and her desire to communicate to others her own enthusiasm for the art of her time. Her vision went beyond the mere acquisition of works of contemporary art to the creation of a comprehensive collection of museum standard. Peggy worked to bring about the acceptance of the avant-garde not only in the United States, but also in Europe and in particular in Italy. This exhibition presents a selection of seldom seen works on paper from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Galerie Trois Points to Show 3 Abstract Artists from the p|m Gallery Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:34 PM PDT Montreal, Canada.- Galerie Trois Points is thrilled to feature the exhibition of three Ontarian painters from p|m Gallery in Toronto. The exhibition "p | m gallery @ Montreal " will be on view from November 12th through December 17th with an opening reception on Saturday November 12th at 3 pm. The three artists featured, William Griffiths, Meghan McKnight, and Amanda Reeves all approach their abstract practice through distinctly different layering strategies. This exhibition is part of an exhibition exchange with p|m Gallery, Toronto (who represent all three artists). In February 2012 p|m Gallery will feature the work of David Gillanders, Mathieu Lévesque and Max Wyse (artists represented by Galerie Troi Points).

Woodward Gallery to Show Lady Pink's Graffiti Based Art Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:19 PM PDT New York City.- The Woodward Gallery is pleased to show "Lady Pink - Evolution", on view at the gallery from November 5th through December 30th, with an artist reception on Saturday, November 5th from 6-8pm. Lady Pink is the first woman in graffiti based art.  In her current solo exhibition "Evolution," Lady Pink re-masters work she once created as public murals. Lady Pink muses on old lettering outlines which have evolved from three decades of writing. To the cultured eye, Lady Pink's street tag can be identified from the period in which it was deliberately constructed. The colorful POP- surreal canvases today, have her trademark name interwoven throughout the elaborate image, as if to authenticate her mark in art history. Lady Pink's unique personal vision has been communicated throughout her evolution from subway writer to fine artist.

The Museum of the City of New York Features Iconic Works by the Legendary Cecil Beaton Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:18 PM PDT New York City.- The Museum of the City of New York is proud to present "Cecil Beaton: the New York Years", on view until February 20th 2012. The exhibition traces the artist's astonishing career in New York City. Photographs of Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, Wallis Simpson (the Duchess of Windsor), and Andy Warhol, among many other 20th-century icons, taken by a man who made himself iconic—the legendary Cecil Beaton ."Cecil Beaton: the New York Years" will feature vintage fashion photographs and celebrity portraits, award-winning set and costume designs for celebrated stage productions, original drawings, and other ephemera.  A book, entitled Cecil Beaton: the New York Years, accompanies the exhibition; featuring 200 stunning images, it is published by Skira Rizzoli and will be available in the Museum's Shop and elsewhere. Susan Henshaw Jones, the Ronay Menschel Director of the Museum, commented:  "New York City provided especially fertile territory for Cecil Beaton in the mid-20th century.  Presented with its kaleidoscopic scene, he photographed everything from the jewel-toned gowns of Charles James to the scrappy t-shirts of Warhol's Factory members, and everyone from Greta Garbo to Tom Wolfe, and even himself in many guises. Cecil Beaton was enchanted by New York, and in turn he enchanted the world with its glamour." The exhibition documents the artist's colossal success in New York City from the height of the Jazz Age through the 1980s.  As a result of his prescience, which brought him to the city as it was becoming a world capital, and his talent, which catapulted him to the heights of his profession almost instantly, Cecil Beaton enthralled New Yorkers and the rest of the world with his prodigious output, blurring the boundaries between art, theater, commerce, high society, and counter-culture. "Cecil Beaton: the New York Years" is the second exhibition of the artist's work at the Museum, which in 1969 mounted 600 Faces by Beaton. Highlights of the exhibition include photographs that stunningly document the pantheon of celebrated fashion designers of the day, including Balenciaga, Irene, Charles James, Lanvin, Mainbocher, Elsa Schiaparelli, and others, drawings and photographs of the women who played key roles in Beaton's career and life—Mona Bismarck, Greta Garbo, Diana Vreeland, and Wallis Simpson (the Duchess of Windsor), material related to Beaton's firing by Condé Nast in early 1938 for an anti-Semitic comment that was inadvertently published, although Beaton was brought back to the magazine in the early 1940s, Beaton's photographs of Greta Garbo, counted among the greatest images of her ever taken, which were made when the two were romantically involved, photographs of such 20th-century figures as Adele and Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Maria Callas, Martha Graham, Elsa Maxwell, Babe Paley, Diana Vreeland, and more. The exhibition will also feature Beaton's hand-drawn portraits, caricatures, and sketches beside costume and set designs for Broadway plays, including Noël Coward's Quadrille (1954), Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956), and Lerner and Previn's Coco (1969) and the New York City Ballet productions of Camille (1946), Illuminations (1950), and Swan Lake (1951). British-born Cecil (Walter Hardy) Beaton (1904-1980) arrived in New York City in 1928, having achieved early success in his homeland.  Trans-Atlantic connections resulted in his near-instant introduction to New York City's elite, including Elsie de Wolfe and Edna Woolman Chase, the editor of Vogue magazine at the time. What followed is the stuff of legend:  a remarkably agile career which spanned fifty years and as many visionary works in which Beaton brought his rarefied vision to bear on fashion photography, illustration and caricature, portraiture (in drawings and photographs), and set and costume design for stage and film. Cecil Beaton's stratospheric ambition was nurtured and sustained by mid-20th–century New York, where his career was able to maintain a feverishly high pitch. Society figures, media giants, impresarios, celebrities, actors, artists, writers, and the merely famous passed in front of his camera in an endless parade of glamour and style. The pages of Condé Nast publications—most notably, Vogue magazine—showcased his elaborately staged photo shoots, in which his eye for opulence and drama animated such sitters as Fred (and his wife, Adele) Astaire, Maria Callas, Greta Garbo, Martha Graham, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, and the woman who would become the ultimate 20th-century icon:  Marilyn Monroe. He enlivened his photographs with sets in which he borrowed liberally and extravagantly from European art forms, incorporating formal elements of modern (and classical) painting and sculpture into his work, and bringing elements of such major aesthetic movements as impressionism, surrealism, and others into the homes of magazine readers nationwide. Beaton's photographs, in essence, were sets—or tableaux—enabling him to shift effortlessly into design for the performing arts just as post-WWII New York was becoming an international cultural capital. His extraordinary stage sets and costumes for Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet were masterful evocations of "place" in the extreme.  He depicted the ancient Chinese society of Turandot (1961) with a visual hierarchy of robed chorus members and tiered pagodas; original costumes for this opera will be on view in Cecil Beaton:  The New York Years.  The Metropolitan Opera's opening season at Lincoln Center featured Beaton's production of La Traviata; original costumes from this opera will also be on view. His costume designs for the Ascot Race scene in Broadway's My Fair Lady (1956), for which he won a Tony Award, pointedly exaggerated Edwardian fashion and later inspired Truman Capote's renowned Black and White Ball of 1966.  The facility with which he designed for the stage coupled with his mastery of photographic technique catapulted him into film, where his costume and set designs for My Fair Lady (1964) earned him two Academy Awards, both in addition to the one he'd received for his costumes in the beloved film Gigi (1958). In the 1960s Beaton turned his lens on Andy Warhol and the Factory.  Like Beaton and his close friend and confidante (and subject of numerous photographs), Truman Capote, Warhol moved easily both within New York society (where each found artistic inspiration) and outside of it (where each was able to work obsessively).  Unlike Beaton, Warhol had publicly expressed his belief that art and commerce were inextricably linked.  Unlike Warhol however, Beaton was criticized—by Hilton Kramer in The New York Times—for his proximity to society's riches.  Possibly inspired by, or recognizing a kindred spirit in Warhol, Beaton pursued a new, young generation of the rich or famous, including a study of Factory members Candy Darling and Ultra Violet, as well as others, such as Mick Jagger and Tom Wolfe. The Museum of the City of New York celebrates and interprets the city, educating the public about its distinctive character, especially its heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Founded in 1923 as a private, nonprofit corporation, the Museum connects the past, present, and future of New York City. It serves the people of New York and visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections. The museum's collections include paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs featuring New York City and its residents, as well as costumes, decorative objects and furniture, toys, rare books and manuscripts, marine and military collections, police and fire collections, and a theater collection (documenting the golden age of Broadway theater). Among the rare items in the museum's collection is a chair that once belonged to Sarah Rapelje, daughter of Joris Jansen Rapelje of Nieuw Amsterdam, and said to be the first child born in New York State of European parentage. The chair was donated by her Brinckerhoff descendants. The museum is known for its comprehensive collection of photographs, which includes works by Jacob Riis and Berenice Abbott, as well as many Depression-era Federal Art Project photographs. The museum is also home to several recreated furnished rooms from the house of John D. Rockefeller, donated by his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mcny.org

Our Editor Visits The Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria ~ Home To The Rudolf & Elisabeth Leopold Collection Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:11 PM PDT In 1994, with support from the National Bank of Austria, the Leopold Museum was founded by Professor Rudolf Leopold and the Republic of Austria. The first task of the foundation was to grant public access to the comprehensive collection (over 5,700 artworks from the Leopold's private collection) through the construction of a new 11,500 m2 modern museum. The result, the Leopold Museum, occupies a striking modern building designed by Pritzker Prize winning architects Ortner & Ortner, which opened in 2001. Located in Vienna's Museum Quarter, the building appears as a light-flooded cube of shell-white limestone. The building's interior only allows daylight to penetrate at specific points along the length of the rooms (with side light along the breadth) and only allows one-sixth of the exhibition area to be lit by daylight from above. A few very deliberately positioned picture windows create the kind of randomness found in "bourgeois" homes, consistent with the pictures having been painted for that certain stratum of society. The voluminous building could almost be said to house two museums, one above the other. The part of the building above ground level is entirely dedicated to the Leopold Collection, the three lower floors are mainly used for the graphics collection, temporary exhibitions, communication (the auditorium) and storage. Visitors enter at the high atrium level, and can either take the single-flight staircase to the right, or enter the Klimtsaal (Klimt gallery), the first large gallery on the left. The top of the main stairs overlooks another big gallery which is in fact accessed on a lower floor and is part of the temporary exhibition area. The staggered heights of these galleries create a mezzanine which houses the museum shop, which in turn leads up to the café above the entrance hall. The functional "confusion" of the spatial order in the entrance area is presumably not an artistic principle but a response to a simple need, one which has been translated into an instrument of spatial perception throughout the entire museum. It is on the next floor that the whole concept of the sequence of interlocking rooms becomes clear, both in terms of the simplicity of the arrangement and the variations in the repeated basic configuration. In Addition to featuring the works of the expressionist Egon Schiele, the Leopold Museum has also made a name for itself as the museum of Viennese Art Noveau. No other museum offers a comparable cross section of the exceptional achievements of this uniquely Viennese tradition. The finest examples of turn-of-the-century Viennese craftsmanship are combined with a presentation of painting, graphic art and sculpture, providing insight into this remarkable era. Designed by artists like Kolo Moser or Josef Hoffmann and produced by the Wiener Werkstätte, these objects bear witness to the timeless elegance of art in Vienna around 1900. Visit The Leopold Museum at : www.leopoldmuseum.org/ Professor Rudolf Leopold (1925-2010) was born in Vienna, and obtained his doctoral degree in medicine in 1953. During his medical studies, he began to attend art history lectures and to collect paintings and objects of art at the same time, above all, works of the then little-respected Egon Schiele. He purchased his first painting ("The Hermits" by Egon Schiele) using the 30,000 Austrian Schillings that his mother had promised him for a car as a reward for completing of his medical studies. But Rudolf Leopold decided against the car and bought the Schiele, thus beginning his collecting career with a brilliant coup. Over the years, professor Leopold not only amassed a large and significant collection (extending to other significant Austrian artists), but became the foremost expert on Schiele, curating exhibitions of his work and publishing a critical catalogue of Schiele's works with a detailed list of his motifs. The museum owns 44 oil paintings and 180 gouaches and watercolours by Egon Schiele (the largest collection of Egons Schiele's art in the world), as well as other Austrian art of the 20th century, including key paintings and drawings by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Richard Gerstl, Albin Egger-Lienz, and paintings and prints by Herbert Boeckl, Hans Böhler, Anton Faistauer, Anton Kolig, Alfred Kubin, and Wilhelm Thöny. The historical context is illustrated by major Austrian works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries.The panoramic windows of the museum offer a unique view of the Vienna city centre, with Maria Theresien-Platz and the Imperial Palace. Two exhibitions are currently on view at the Leopold Museum. "Cezanne – Picasso – Giacometti" (extended until 2 February 2011) provides an opportunity to see masterpieces from the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. The main interest of the Beyelers lay mainly in collecting "well-approved" works of art. The approval process entailed a private ambience that allowed the works to be viewed over a long period of time, under varying conditions. The main purpose was not to reflect a history of modern art but rather the deep relationship the couple had built to the work they had collected, the accent lying always on the singularity and permanence of each work. Key works by artists like Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol stand out in an abundance of distinguished names. Over time, a series of work groups emerged, for which the Beyeler Foundation enjoys worldwide acclaim. These include groups of work by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Fernand Leger, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet. A second exhibition, "Florentina Pakosta" (until 18 April 2011) provides an overview of work to date by the contemporary Viennese artist Florentina Pakosta. Her work takes socially critical realism as its starting point. Beginning in the late 1950s, Florentina Pakosta used pencil drawings and India ink works to examine anonymous character types whom she met at inns, on the streets or in train stations. Parallel to this, she was also experimenting with a cubist formal language. Over the course of time, her psychology-focused portrayals of human beings were reduced to stereotypical characters which she sometimes alienated to the point of becoming caricatures, and which occasionally even ended up as monstrosities. In the 1970s, Pakosta began creating the monumental character heads which were to garner her widespread fame. Further themes in Florentina Pakosta's works from the 1980s are uniformity and control.

Collodion Images of Ken Merfeld Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:10 PM PDT   San Pedro, CA - One of the few masters producing images in this 19th Century photographic art process is Los Angeles artist, Ken Merfeld, who will be premiering his new, exquisite body of Collodion work at Flazh!Alley Studio.  On exhibition 31 March - 3 May, 2008.

Abstract Art in South & North America at the Amon Carter Museum Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:09 PM PDT FORT WORTH, TX.- On June 26, the Amon Carter Museum presents Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s–50s. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first to bring together South American and U.S. geometric abstraction and includes a range of paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films. Constructive Spirit will be on view through September 5; Admission is free.

Salvador Dalí ~ Rare Prints & Drawings ~ at William Bennett Gallery Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:07 PM PDT New York City - A retrospective two years in the making providing a fresh insight to the lifelong dialogue Salvador Dal í had with Love, Poetry, Religion, Bullfighting and Surrealism. Featuring a selection of original works on paper and Dalí's rarest graphic portfolios. On exhibition through March 31st, 2009, showing Alice in Wonderland | Paradise Lost | Divine Comedy | The Biblia Sacra | The Hippies | The Tauromachie Surréaliste | Greek Mythology | Carmen | and other selected works at William Bennett Gallery.

First Retrospective of Artist & Critic Lil Picard Debuts at Grey Art Gallery Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:05 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Debuting at New York University's Grey Art Gallery on April 20, Lil Picard and Counterculture New York comprises over 70 works by a pioneering feminist artist who played varied and vital—but under-acknowledged―roles in the New York art world during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. This first comprehensive American museum exhibition presents paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and several landmark installations and performances. Also included are photographs, writings, and films. All the works are drawn from the collections of the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA), which organized the show, and from the University of Iowa Libraries, which houses the artist's extensive papers. Lil Picard and Counterculture New York remains on view at the Grey Art Gallery through July 10th. The life of this self-described "primitive sophisticated artist" is as intriguing as her art. Born Lilli Elisabeth Benedick in Landau, Germany, in 1899, the multitalented Picard worked as a cabaret actress, accessories designer, and writer in the heady, avant-garde scene of Berlin between the wars. In the 1930s, she focused on writing and criticism, working as a cultural reporter for Berliner Tageblatt, and asa fashion editor for Zeitschrift für Deutsche Konfektion. Best known there as a journalist and critic, she emigrated to the U.S. in 1937, following the rise of Nazi Germany and the revocation of her press credentials due to her Jewish heritage. In New York, she opened a custom millinery shop on Madison Avenue, selling her designs to Lord & Taylor, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's. After studying at the Art Students League and with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, she began painting in earnest in 1939; less than a decade later, she was exhibiting in Greenwich Village's Tenth Street galleries. "A very early practitioner of socio-political Happenings and installations," notes Kathleen A. Edwards, UIMA's chief curator, who organized the show, "Picard was several generations older than groundbreaking female performance artists such as Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke. The Estate of Lil Picard, which came to the University of Iowa in 1999, is a remarkable treasure trove of the artist's work as well as a resource for scholars and students working on New York's underground art scene in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s." Studying and making art in New York in the 1940s, Picard met artists such as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. Later she frequented Andy Warhol's Factory and participated in the nascent performance scene with colleagues like Schneemann, Claes Oldenburg, and Yoko Ono. Her personal photographs and letters document her love affairs with artists Al Jensen and Ad Reinhardt. By the 1950s, she had resumed her journalistic career to support her art, most notably as the New York art correspondent for Die Welt, a prominent German daily. Through these writings, she was instrumental in shaping German perceptions of American art, especially Pop art, which she championed vigorously. She also contributed articles to Kunstforum International, Das Kunstwerk, Arts Magazine, East Village Other, and Interview. Throughout her career, Picard referenced her own life in her art. Her autobiographical observations and experiences―recorded in personal journals, snapshots, and notes―as well as drafts, published articles, and images of her past work, all provided fodder for her visual and performance art. Beginning with her early work Crossing, 1947, with its vigorous, expressive brushstrokes, the exhibition follows Picard's move toward the dynamic and brightly colored collaged canvases of the 1950s. Layered with the detritus of her everyday existence—theater tickets, wine bottles, cigarette labels, and scraps of clothing—paintings such as the four-paneled Love, 1958–59, and the complex Collage in Blue, 1957, with their active, highly tactile surfaces, reflect the artist's simultaneous engagement with both past and present. With the advent of the 1960s, Picard first concentrated on sculpture and assemblage, and later moved toward Happenings and installations. Her playful yet haunted Hide and Seek House, 1960, is featured, along with a series of mixed-media assemblages dating from 1962 to 1964. Both socially and politically aware, Picard demonstrated her feminist concerns in Lady Woolworth, 1963, a work that functions as an early critique of mass media's manipulation of women. A participant in the NO! art movement who embraced its strategy of melding artistic production with socio-cultural action, Picard explored the trauma of war. She soon preferred performances and installations as vehicles for the expression of her views on the Vietnam War and social oppression, as seen in Construction-Destruction-Construction. This 1967 installation and performance piece incorporated collaged paintings, maimed mannequins, vibrantly painted costumes, spray-painted Associated Press photographs, and an altered American flag quilt, and will be represented in the exhibition by original props and a slide show. Picard was keenly aware of the intellectual and aesthetic currents of her time. For example, the title of her series of drawings from the mid-1970s known as "dematerializations" was inspired by Lucy Lippard's book Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Object, published in 1973. Picard's Napkinian Portraits series also demonstrates the depth of her involvement in New York's art and literary world, and works such as Socialite Napkin, 1975, with its collaged photograph and mirrored drawings, hint at the artist's interest in the notion of celebrity. By the time of her death in 1994, Picard had had 15 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Germany, and her work had been included in more than 40 group shows. Her first solo show was at the David Anderson Gallery in 1960. In 1976, she enjoyed simultaneous exhibitions at New York's Goethe House, Ronald Feldman Gallery, and Holly Solomon Gallery. Her last major show was a 1978 retrospective at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin. "The Grey Art Gallery is thrilled to host this important and overdue exhibition," notes Lynn Gumpert, the Grey's director. "It reinforces the Grey's mission to focus on Lower Manhattan's amazing history of avant-garde art and culture, where artists from a surprisingly broad range of backgrounds converged in a rich and fertile mix. University museums are uniquely equipped to present such scholarly reassessments, and we are pleased to work with Kathy Edwards and the UIMA to reintroduce Lil Picard to New York audiences." The show will also include two films about Picard by New York filmmaker Silviana Goldsmith: Art is a Party, the New Party is Art and Lil Picard. Lil Picard and Counterculture New York will be accompanied by a state-of-the-art interactive web site, which will include hundreds of photographs of both Picard's artworks and the artist with art-world friends. It will also present selected critical writings by Picard, pages from her diaries, some of her recorded interviews with artists, and film clips. Following its debut at the Grey, the exhibition will be on view at the Black Box Theater at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City in Spring 2011. Picard pursued a remarkable career devoted to art, writing, performance, and fashion that spanned a century. Living in Berlin in the 1920s, she studied art, literature, ballet, and voice. Associated with the Berlin Dada group―which included George Grosz, Hugo Ball, and Richard Huelsenbeck―and influenced by Brecht's "epic theater" and use of critical satire, she performed in prominent cabarets as well as film. Celebrated as a muse to the postwar New York art world, she became a member of Andy Warhol's inner circle and counted among her friends numerous art-world luminaries. Drawn entirely from the artist's estate and its extensive archives at the University of Iowa, Lil Picard and Counterculture New York sheds welcome light on the life and work of an important German-born American artist and critic. Visit New York University's Grey Art Gallery at : http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM SHOWS THE FRED EBB BEQUEST Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:04 PM PDT New York, NY - An extraordinary collection of forty-three early-twentieth-century German and Austrian drawings by some of the leaders of the German expressionist movement and the Vienna Secession will go on view at The Morgan Library & Museum from April 20 through September 2, 2007.  The exhibition, entitled From Berlin to Broadway: The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings.  Most of the drawings and watercolors date from 1910 to 1925, when expressionism dominated the avant-garde in Germany and Austria.

Rare Screens Believed to be from Chinese Imperial Palace for Sale at Bonhams Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:03 PM PDT LONDON.- When the British Expeditionary Force of 1901 was sent to lift the siege of the British Legation in Beijing and quell the Boxer Rebellion it is known that they entered the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace. As a result of this military initiative Chinese works of art including two monumental screens were brought to Britain and are now for sale at Bonhams Chinese Art Sale on May 13 in London. The screens are estimated to sell for £50,000 to £80,000 and £12,000 to £18,000. The monumental hardwood screens are said to have returned to Britain with Major General Sir Ivor Philipps.

The British Museum opens 'The Intimate Portrait' ~ Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:02 PM PDT LONDON - The first ever major UK exhibition to examine a fascinating but relatively unknown aspect of British portraiture opens at the British Museum. The Intimate Portrait will explore the period between the 1730s and the 1830s – the heyday of British portraiture – when some of the country's greatest artists produced beautifully worked portraits in pencil, chalks, watercolours and pastels that were often exhibited, sold and displayed as finished works of art. On exhibition 5 March through 31 May, 2009.

The Science Museum Shows Dr John Taylor's "Time Eating" Chronophage Clock Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:01 PM PDT London.- The Science Museum in South Kensington is proud to present "A time-eating clock – a story of invention" on view until October 30th. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Dr John Taylor's 'Midsummer Chronophage Clock", one of only two clocks in the world to show the experience of relative time. Developed by British inventor Dr John C Taylor, the clock is inspired by the idea that everyone experiences time differently. Alongside the 'Midsummer Chronophage' clock are two important clocks from the history of timekeeping – one of the earliest examples of pioneering clockmakers, the Fromanteel family's work, and a workshop clock of British clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776).

Tel Aviv Museum of Art Reconstructs 1907 Berlin Exhibition of Jewish Artists Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:01 PM PDT TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - The Tel Aviv Museum of Art has reconstructed an "Exhibition of Jewish Artists," which opened in Berlin in 1907. The original show featured over 200 works of painting and sculpture, and Judaica objects. Among the noted artists represented in the exhibition were Jozef Israëls, Lesser Ury, Camille Pissarro, Maurycy Gottlieb, Samuel Hirszenberg, and more. A café area in the Tel Aviv exhibition provides a fascinating insight into the period with letters from the artists to the 1907 exhibition committee, local press reviews and even satiric jokes and anti-Semitic broadsheets of the period. Exhibition open through September, 2009.

The Uffizi Gallery In Florence ~ The Finest Collection Of Renaissance Art In The World Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:00 PM PDT The Uffizi Palace is one of the most loved monuments in Florence and contains the world's leading collection of renaissance art. Originally commissioned by Cosimo I, Duke of Florence and the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Uffizi was designed by Giorgio Vasari in the middle of the 16th century. The intention of Cosimo I was to build a palace that could host the thirteen administrative and judicial Magistrature or Uffizi, from which the palace would take its name. Vasari was also responsible for the building, five years later, of an overhead corridor passing above Ponte Vecchio and the Church of Santa Felicità, to link the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace, the new residence of the Medici family, and which provides stunning views of the palace courtyard and Arno river. The building has an unusual and singular horseshoe shape, which opens towards the Arno River. The two floors of the building, rise above a pillared portico that runs along the whole length of the palace. The portico niches contain statues of Florentine dignitaries and artists from the middle Ages to the 19th century. It was Francesco I de' Medici, Cosimo I's son, who first created an art Gallery on the second floor of the Palazzo degli Uffizi to entertain himself, during his walks, with the collection of paintings, sculptures and arrases belonging to the Medici family. The key point in the history of the Uffizi came in 1737, when the last Medici heiress, Anna Maria Luisa moved to France and signed an agreement that all the Medici artworks were not to be removed from Florence. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1765 it was officially opened to the public. Over the years, the Uffizi has survived wartime bombing, flooding in 1966 and 2007 and a terrorist car bombing (attributed to the Sicilian Mafia) in 1993 which damaged some frescoes in the Niobe room beyond repair. In addition to its galleries, the Uffizi contains teaching facilities, an art restoration laboratory, photographic studio and research center. Rennovations are currently under way on parts of the building, under the "New Uffizi" project. When completed these will increase the gallery space, allow more of the collection to be put on public display and reduce the overcrowding caused by almost 2 million visitors every year. Visit the Uffizi's website at … http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/english/musei/uffizi/ The exhibition rooms are composed of over 45 rooms containing about 1,700 paintings, 300 sculptures, 46 tapestries and 14 pieces of furniture and/or ceramics. The Uffizi actually owns about 4,800 works, the remainder are either in storage or on loan to other museums. On the ground floor, is the series of frescoes by Andrea del Castagno as well as an Annunciation by Botticelli (a fresco detached from the church of S. Martino alla Scala). A large staircase, built by Vasari, leads to the second floor, were the Medici theatre once stood. This area now contains the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, an exceptional graphic collection comprising more than 120,000 works, from the 14th to the 20th century. On the third floor are two vestibules, which lead into the galleries and which contain a collection of busts of grand dukes and Roman statues. Three corridors on this floor contain the bulk of the visible collection. The first corridor contains the religious art of the Renaissance and the artworks by Flemish artists. Along the perimeter of the corridor is the Medicean collection of head moulds, on the vaulted ceilings are frescoes representing animals, imaginary monsters, satyrs and the Medicean achievements. The first rooms are dedicated to the art of the 13th and 14th centuries, including "The Madonna d'Ognissanti" by Giotto, "The Maestà di Santa Trinita" by Cimabue and "The Maestà" by Duccio di Buoninsegna. From the 14th century the "Triptych of San Matteo" by Andrea di Cione, the "Polyptych of San Pancrazio" by Bernardo Daddi and the "Presentation to the Temple" by Ambrogio Lorenzetti lead into the collection of international Gothic works. These include "The Adoration of the Magi" by Lorenzo Monaco. Among the artworks of the early Renaissance the "Coronation of the Blessed Virgin" by Beato Angelico, the "Battle of San Romano" by Paolo Uccello, "Portrait of the Dukes of Urbino" by Piero della Francesca and "The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin" by Filippo Lippi. These are followed by the collection of Boticelli masterpieces, including "La calunnia", "Primavera", "The Birth of Venus", "The Adoration of the Magi", "Madonna della Melagrana", and "Coronation of the Blessed Virgin". The Renaissance is celebrated by two magnificent paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, "l'Adorazione dei Magi" and "The "Annunciation" alongside works by Pietro Perugino and Piero di Cosimo. Superb examples of Florentine portraiture from the 16th century include Medici portraits by Pontormo, 'l'Angiolino musicante' by Rosso Fiorentino and 'la Dama col Petrarchino' by Andrea del Sarto. In a series of adjoining rooms are the works of German art from the 15th and 16th century and paintings from Lombardia and Emilia that evoke mythological tales and detailed Flemish landscapes, including "Adam and Eve" by Lucas Cranach, "Adoration of the Magi" by Andrea Mantegna and "The Blessed Virgin adoring the Child" by Correggio. The second corridor contains Roman statues and portraits under the frescoed vaulted ceilings. The miniatures Cabinet opens off this corridor. The third Corridor contains the 16th century artworks by Michelangelo ("The Tondo Doni") and Rafael ("Madonna of the Goldfinch" and "Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi"), Titian ("Flora" and "Venus of Urbino), Parmigianino ("The Madonna of the Long Neck") amongst others. From the 17th century works, highlights include, Peter Paul Rubens ("Judith with the Head of Holofernes", "Portrait of Isabella Brant", "Henry IV at the Battle of Ivry", "Self-Portrait without a Hat" and others), Caravaggio ("The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "Medusa"), Rembrandt Van Rijn ("Self-portrait as a Young Man", "Self-portrait as an Old Man" and "Portrait of an Old Man") and views by Canaletto. The Uffizi now houses a huge artistic heritage consisting of thousands of paintings from medieval to modern times, a great number of antique sculptures, illuminations, and tapestries. It is also famous for its collection of self-portraits, which constantly grew through new acquisitions and donations of contemporary artists, as well as for another remarkable collection, that of the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints. Throughout the 19th century, new rooms were opened and the picture gallery continued to expand through the addition of major works including Botticelli's famous The Birth of Venus (acquired in 1815) and Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation (acquired in 1867). The acquisition of the Primavera, the splendid panel painted by Botticelli around 1482, dates to 1919. The 20th century led to the re-arrangement of the works, on various occasions, much restoration and, in recent times, the definitive arrangement of the Contini Bonacossi collection. From March 11th 2011 until June 12th 2011, the Uffizi is hosting "Figure, memory, Space", a selection of drawings from the 15th century taken equally from the Uffizi and British Museum collections. The exhibition unites two of the most important graphics collections in the world in a partnership symbolically using an identical number of loans from each collection. The intention is to focus on the decades from the start of the fifteenth century to the early years of the sixteenth when drawing established its role as an independent artistic expression. The artists featured are all outstanding and include Florentine and central Italian artists such as Lorenzo Monaco, Beato Angelico, Filippo and Filippino Lippi, the Pollaiolo, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Perugino and Ghirlandaio right through to Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo. Alongside these, northern Italian artists represented include Pisanello, Amico Aspertini, the Ferrara school, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Mantegna and Titian. Each of them offers their own interpretation of drawing, an intimate expression of their individual draughtsmanship, elaboration of a style, experimentation of a technique and meditation on the subject. In conjunction with this exhibition, in the Reali Poste, the Prints and Drawings Department will be displaying a further selection of fifty drawings, engravings and jewelry, again inspired by the three categories of Figures, Memories and Space. These are works visible only in Florence (the main exhibition had previously been on show at the British Museum), such as Mantegna's Judith or the small cartoon for the Equestrian Monument to Sir John Hawkwood by Paolo Uccello and two small sketches once attributed to Cimabue, possibly by Giorgio Vasari himself. Finally, in the actual Gallery around twenty paintings by Renaissance artists have been provided with informative panels designed to connect the paintings with the preparatory studies on show in the Reali Poste. The shows are accompanied by two catalogues published by Giunti. The first of these is an Italian version of the preceding English publication, while the second is devoted to the works on display in the Prints and Drawings Department and to issues connected with collecting, taste and the critical reception of fifteenth-century Italian drawings and Florentine prints from Vasari to Berenson.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:00 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