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

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• First Retrospective of Maurizio Cattelan opens at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC
• The Museum Folkwang To Display Donations to the German Poster Museum
• SOHO Galleries Shows "Annette Lodge ~ 27 Days in the World"
• The Center at Guild Hall Surveys the Works of Rafael Ferrer
• The Royal Academy of Arts Shows "Edgar Degas and the Ballet"
• The Städelmuseum's Refurbished Modern Art Galleries Reopen to the Public
• Cheim & Read Exhibit Late Paintings by Abstract Painter Joan Mitchell
• David Zwirner Displays an Exhibition by German artist Neo Rauch
• U.S. Authorities Seize Painting from Florida's Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science
• The Hamburger Kunsthalle Hosts a Comprehensive Max Lieberman Retrospective
• The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu Hawaii ~ A Delightful Contemporary Art Museum
• Julie & Edward J. Minskoff Art Collection Acquires Jonathan Prince Sculpture
• Museum of Fine Arts Houston to feature Scenes of Italy by Maurice B. Prendergast
• Frieze Art Fair 2011 ~ New Film Commissions Announced
• Francois Pinault opens The New Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Centre in Venice
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art To Celebrate its 75th Anniversary in 2010
• Vogue "ITALIA" Takes On The Gulf Oil Spill With Photographer Steven Meisel
• Frantisek Kupka ~ Art Works from the Pompidou Collection at Picasso Museum
• "All Cannibals?" at the 'me Collectors Room' in Berlin
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

First Retrospective of Maurizio Cattelan opens at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC Posted: 05 Nov 2011 10:30 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Maurizio Cattelan: All, the first retrospective of the internationally acclaimed artist's work, from November 4, 2011, to January 22, 2012. Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960, Padua, Italy) has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range widely, from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once humorous and profound. Working in a vein that can be described as hyperrealist, Cattelan creates unsettlingly veristic sculptures that reveal contradictions at the core of today's society. While bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing critique of authority and the abuse of power. Maurizio Cattelan: All brings together some 130 works—examples of virtually everything the artist has produced since 1989—and presents the works en masse, strung seemingly haphazardly from the oculus of the museum's rotunda in a site-specific installation. An interactive, multimedia mobile app—the first the Guggenheim has ever produced—will offer both museum visitors and users off-site an enhanced experience of the exhibition that includes images, texts about the works, and video commentary by many of the artist's key collaborators. In addition to a fully illustrated catalogue, a new edition of Cattelan's magazine Toilet Paper, featuring images conceived and photographed by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, will be presented on the occasion of the exhibition. Exhibition Overview "Cattelan's career resists summation by any traditional exhibition format," said Spector. "Many of his early, action-based meditations are impossible to reconstruct, and his singular, iconic objects function best in isolation. Maurizio Cattelan: All is thus a full-scale admission of the inadvisability of viewing his work within the context of a conventional chronological retrospective. The artist has resisted this model, creating instead a site-specific installation that cunningly celebrates its rebelliousness. Perversely encapsulating Cattelan's career to date in an overly literal, three-dimensional catalogue raisonné, the installation lampoons the idea of comprehensiveness." Cattelan's youth in the Italian city of Padua was marked by economic hardship at home, punishment at school, and a string of unfulfilling, menial jobs. These early experiences instilled in him an abiding mistrust of authority and a disdain for the drudgery of labor that haunts much of his early production. He describes his work from the late 1980s and early 1990s as being "about the impossibility of doing something…about insecurity, about failure." His pronounced anxiety about not succeeding was manifested in a series of performative escape routes from his artistic obligations. Bereft of ideas for his first solo exhibition in 1989, Cattelan simply closed the gallery and hung a sign reading Torno subito, or "Be back soon." His early contributions to group shows were equally delinquent: in 1992, his participation in an exhibition at the Castello di Rivara near Turin consisted of a rope of knotted bed sheets dangling from an open window (Una Domenica a Rivara [A Sunday in Rivara]), while his response to the pressure of exhibiting at the Venice Biennale was to lease his allotted space to an advertising agency, which installed a billboard promoting a new perfume (Working Is a Bad Job, 1993). Cattelan's disruptive and disrespectful gestures have at times taken the form of creative theft and even overtly criminal activity. For an exhibition at the de Appel arts center in Amsterdam, he stole the entire contents of another artist's show from a nearby gallery with the idea of passing it off as his own work (Another Fucking Readymade, 1996), until the police insisted he return the loot on threat of arrest. Cattelan's anarchist streak extends to works that revolve around issues of his Italian identity and the tensions of the country's ever-shifting political landscape. In response to a wave of xenophobic sentiment, he formed a soccer team composed entirely of North African immigrants who played in both outdoor competitions and in exhibition settings on an elongated foosball table (Stadium, 1991). Their uniforms bore the emblem Rauss, which recalled the Nazi phrase Juden raus, or "Jews get out." Cattelan has also turned to his own distinctive features as a mainstay of his iconography, constructing a series of sculptural vignettes that promote his image as an Everyman, playing the part of the fool so that we don't have to. Notable examples include La Rivoluzione siamo noi (We are the revolution, 2000), which presents a diminutive Cattelan dangling by his collar from a metal coat rack, impudently dressed in the signature felt suit of German artist Joseph Beuys , and a 2001 installation created for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that depicts the artist peering mischievously from a hole in the floor at a gallery of Old Master paintings. Some of Cattelan's surrogates have been more allusive, such as the 2008 work Daddy, Daddy, an installation first shown in the fountain on the Guggenheim's rotunda floor, that depicts the puppet Pinocchio—another rebellious Italian boy with an oversized nose—floating facedown as if the victim of a tragic tumble from the ramps above. Although an ironic humor threads much of his work, a profound meditation on mortality forms the core of Cattelan's practice. His recurring use of taxidermy, which presents a state of apparent life premised on actual death, is particularly apt for exploring this thematic concern. Perhaps the most poignant of his anthropomorphic animal scenes is Bidibidobidiboo (1996), in which a despairing squirrel has committed suicide in his grimy kitchen. Death stalks the artist's psyche and creeps into all manifestations of his production. With All (2007), he created what he described as a "monument to death," a sculpture that would commemorate its unrelenting presence. Derived from ubiquitous media imagery of fallen bodies, and carved from traditional marble, the nine shrouded figures appear as victims of some unnamed trauma, silently recalling the unconscionable realities of our present-day world. Among Cattelan's most startling projects is a cycle of lifelike waxworks that portray and contest iconic authority figures. The most incendiary of these works comprise La Nona Ora (The ninth hour, 1999), his notorious sculpture of Pope John Paul II felled by a meteorite, and Him (2001), a rendering of Adolf Hitler in the scale of a young boy, kneeling preposterously in a pose of supplication. Also included is the sculpture Frank and Jamie (2002), in which two New York City policemen are turned upside down and propped against a wall in a posture that has been interpreted as a visual parallel to the sense of vulnerability that permeated the country in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A more overtly elegiac scene is constructed by Now (2004), an effigy of a serene and barefoot John F. Kennedy lying in state, a martyr to a shattered American idealism seen from the perspective of a disillusioned present. The Installation The dramatic site-specific installation is visible to visitors on the ground floor and on each ascending ramp at varied heights. Hoisted by rope as if on a gallows, the objects explicitly reveal the undertone of death that pervades the artist's work. The exhibition is an exercise in disrespect: the artist has hung up his work like laundry to dry. Like all of his individual objects, the new installation resonates with multiple interpretive valences. Cattelan has certainly used the motif of suspension before, most notably in the poetically elongated sculpture created from a taxidermied horse, Novecento (1997), but here it takes on epic proportions. In total, the installation looks like a mass execution – and will, for the duration of the exhibition, constitute an overarching, tragic artwork in its own right. Artist's Retirement More than just a powerful culmination of a career, this exhibition signifies its end. With the opening of Maurizio Cattelan: All, Cattelan has announced his retirement from the art world. What this means precisely remains to be defined by the artist. Over time, we expect to see a continuation of his work with the publication Toilet Paper as part of his fascination with print media. But the rest is anyone's guess. An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums. Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by artists and critics, performances and film screenings, classes for teens and adults, and daily tours of the galleries led by experienced docents. Founded on a collection of early modern masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum today is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20th century and beyond. The metamorphosis from private collection to public museum is an extraordinary transition. For the Guggenheim, this occurred in 1937, when Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation empowered to operate a museum that would publicly exhibit and preserve his holdings of nonobjective art. Today the Guggenheim is a museum in multiple locations with access to shared collections, common constituencies, and joint programming. Nevertheless, it is the permanent collection that constitutes the very core of the institution, no matter how far-reaching the foundation's activities may be. The story of the Guggenheim Museum is essentially the story of several very different private collections. Central among these are Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective painting premised on a belief in the spiritual dimensions of pure abstraction; his niece Peggy Guggenheim 's collection of abstract and Surrealist painting and sculpture; Justin K. Thannhauser's array of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern masterpieces; and Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo's vast holdings of European and American Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, Environmental, and Conceptual art. These collections have been augmented over the last two decades by major gifts from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and The Bohen Foundation, as well as by the ongoing series of contemporary art commissions made possible by the Guggenheim's unique partnership with Deutsche Bank for the Deutsche Guggenheim , Berlin, and through the distinct but complimentary acquisitions program of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao . Together with numerous other important purchases and gifts secured by the Guggenheim's directors and curators over the years, these acquisitions have contributed to the formation of a richly layered, international collection dating from the late 19th-century to the present. Unlike most institutions dedicated to the visual arts, the Guggenheim does not divide itself into departments devoted to specific mediums or eras. Rather, the collection is conceived as an integrated whole that may be continuously enhanced in response to emerging talent as well as a mandate to fill in critical historical gaps. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.guggenheim.org

The Museum Folkwang To Display Donations to the German Poster Museum Posted: 05 Nov 2011 10:30 PM PDT Essen, Germany.- The Museum Folkswang is pleased to present "Donations to the German Poster Museum (2005 - 2011)" on view from November 12th through January 22nd 2012. As with all museums, the Folkswang Museum - and the German Poster Museum within it - obtain works through exchange, purchase and donation. This new exhibition highlights a number of the generous donations that have been made to the German Poster Museum in the past few years.The German Poster Museum is unique in Germany and has one of the largest specialized collections in the world. Today the collection holds more than 340,000 covering the fields of politics, the economy and culture. They range from the earliest posters to those of today. Its thematic focus is a documentation of the development of German posters in a European context.

SOHO Galleries Shows "Annette Lodge ~ 27 Days in the World" Posted: 05 Nov 2011 10:30 PM PDT Sydney, NSW, AU - SOHO Galleries are pleased to exhibit "Annette Lodge: 27 Days in the World", currently on view at the gallery. This new exhibition features work inspired by a recent trip through Morocco, Southern France and Spain. The work is a reflection of her reactions and observations as a stranger in the different cultures she travelled through and records each day of the trip. There are 27 pieces of work, one for each day she was away from home. It is not a travelogue, but rather the visual diary of a traveller, scratching beneath the surface of appearances. She is most interested in the extreme diversity of humans through our simultaneous conditioning to culture, environment and the randomness of where we find ourselves:  in danger, lucky, safe, vulnerable, detached. It is not a philosophical narrative, but rather an attempt to experience a bigger world and the marvelous  wonder that goes beyond the four walls of home.

The Center at Guild Hall Surveys the Works of Rafael Ferrer Posted: 05 Nov 2011 09:21 PM PDT East Hampton,New York.- The Guild Hall is proud to present "Rafael Ferrer: Contrabando", on view at the museum from November 5th through January 16th 2012. The show celebrates Ferrer's many significant and diverse artistic contributions and continues the recognition he so richly deserves following his well-received one person show at the El Museo del Barrio in New York City. Guild Hall will feature works from the early 70s to the present, including new pieces and there will be a 12-page, full-color bilingual catalogue that will include the curatorial essay by guest curator Esperanza León,  Ferrer's biography, and acknowledgements "Rafael Ferrer is an acute observer of past and current events.  He accurately and justifiably comments on all that surrounds him, 'smuggling' information through his artwork with an attentiveness to detail, fact, sentiment, and opinion that results in stimulating, insightful, and inciting visual and conceptual statements," says Esperanza León, guest curator.  "Contrabando" furnishes a renewed opportunity for complicity with and regard for the artist."

The Royal Academy of Arts Shows "Edgar Degas and the Ballet" Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:37 PM PDT London.- The Royal Academy of Arts is proud to present "Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement", comprising around 85 paintings, sculptures, pastels, drawings, prints and photographs by Edgar Degas, as well as photographs by his contemporaries and examples of early film. It will bring together selected material from public institutions and private collections in Europe and North America including both celebrated and little-known works by Degas.The exhibition will explore the fascinating links between Degas's highly original way of viewing and recording the dance and the inventive experiments being made at the same time in photography by Jules-Etienne Marey and Eadweard Muybridge and in film-making by such pioneers as the Lumiere brothers. By presenting the artist in this context, the exhibition will demonstrate that Degas was far more than merely the creator of beautiful images of the ballet, but instead a modern, radical artist who thought profoundly about visual problems and was fully attuned to the technological developments of his time. "Degas and the Ballet" will be on view in the main galleries through December 11th.

The Städelmuseum's Refurbished Modern Art Galleries Reopen to the Public Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:17 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germany.- The Städelmuseum is pleased to announce that the latest phase of its expansion and refurbishment work will open to the public when the Modern Art (1800-1945) collection goes back on view in the garden wing of the renovated old building on November 17th. Since its founding in 1815, the Städelmuseum has increased its holdings through an active Acquisition policy and is constantly expanding. The collection currently comprises about 2,900 paintings, 600 sculptures, 500 drawings and photographs, and over 100,000 Graphic prints. With its rich collection the Städelmuseum presents an overview of over 700 years of European art history - from the early 14th Century on the Renaissance, Baroque and classical modernism to the present.

Cheim & Read Exhibit Late Paintings by Abstract Painter Joan Mitchell Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:17 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Cheim & Read presents an exhibition of late paintings by Joan Mitchell. The show brings together 13 works, dating from 1985–1992, that represent Mitchell's exploration of painting in the last decade of her life. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with a text by Richard D. Marshall. Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) moved from Chicago to New York in 1947. Early in her career, she was included in the historically significant 1951 Ninth Street Exhibition. Organized by Leo Castelli, the show was renowned for its championship of Abstract Expressionism, and positioned Mitchell with older, mostly male painters: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline among them. Mitchell met de Kooning early on—inspired by his painting, she sought out an introduction—and was a rare female participant in artistic debates at the notorious Cedar Tavern. In 1952, she had her first solo exhibition at the New Gallery.

David Zwirner Displays an Exhibition by German artist Neo Rauch Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:57 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- David Zwirner presents an exhibition of new works by Neo Rauch, on display at the gallery's 533 West 19th Street space. The exhibition, the artist's fifth solo show at the gallery, consists of small and large format paintings—several larger-than-life—as well as a bronze sculpture, representing one of the first instances Rauch has worked in three-dimensional form. Rauch's paintings are characterized by a unique combination of realism and surrealist abstraction. In many of his compositions, human figures engaged in manual labor or indeterminable tasks work against backdrops of mundane architecture, industrial settings, or bizarre and often barren landscapes. These figures, though squarely centered in his paintings, often have the appearance of being part of still lifes devoid of a human presence or collaged elements belonging to different time zones. Scale is frequently arbitrary and non-perspectival, which adds to an overall dream-like atmosphere; the spatial relationships construct their own imaginary realm.

U.S. Authorities Seize Painting from Florida's Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:56 PM PDT TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA - U.S. authorities on Friday seized a nearly 500-year-old Italian painting that has been on display at a Florida museum, saying it was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II and should be returned to the family's heirs. U.S. Attorney Pamela Marsh announced Friday that the federal government will hold onto the painting until a federal judge can determine the rightful owners. The Baroque painting was one of 50 lent to the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee by a Milan museum for an exhibit that closed earlier this year. Federal authorities took custody of the painting after three museum employees wearing white gloves took it down from the wall and placed it in a custom-made padded crate.

The Hamburger Kunsthalle Hosts a Comprehensive Max Lieberman Retrospective Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:23 PM PDT Hamburg, Germany.- The Hamburger Kunsthalle is delighted to present "Max Liebermann. Pioneer of Modern Art", on view at the museum until February 19th 2012. Max Liebermann (1847-1935) is credited with introducing Modernism to German painting. For the first time, a new exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents a comprehensive retrospective revealing how this process took place and the impressive oeuvre Liebermann was executing at the time. Disillusioned by German academia, the young Berliner turned to France and Holland where he immersed himself in the progressive trends of the day. Liebermann studied outdoor painting in Barbizon, the cradle of naturalism; in Paris he came into contact with French Impressionism and in Holland he met supporters of The Hague School. In taking what he absorbed there and allowing it to flow into his work, Liebermann entered new territory both stylistically and in terms of subject. Liebermann's rendition of simple rural labor without literary and historical references drew harsh criticism at first, eventually culminating in the epithet "filth painter." As cofounder and president of Berlin Secession Liebermann became the engine of an oppositional movement opposing the Prussian Wilhelmine art policy. This comprehensive retrospective unites over one hundred paintings from all phases of his creative development. They range from rustic, rural subjects to depictions of bourgeois leisure activity to his unerring portraits and the late, color-drenched garden paintings. Complementing the Hamburger Kunsthalle's large holdings are several other key pieces on loan from national and international museums, supplemented by work generously loaned from private collectors. The show is rounded off with examples of work by Liebermann's influences Mihaly Munkácsy, Adolph Menzel, Paul Cézanne and Auguste Renoir. A separate room is dedicated to Liebermann's pastel works with its Hamburg motives from the collection of the Kunsthalle. The exposure to Liebermann's work in German museums in the time of National Socialism is presented in a documentary way in a separate room of the exhibition. There will be a film on display portraying the artist and the part on Liebermann of the film 'Schaffende Hände (producing hands)' (1922) of Hans Cürlis will be shown. Liebermann is also present with his voice in the radio broadcast 'Aus meinem Leben (From my life)' (1932). The Hamburger Kunsthalle is one of the largest and most important museums of art in Germany. Its superb permanent collection takes visitors on a journey through seven centuries of art history, from the medieval altars of Master Bertram through to the stars of the contemporary art scene such as Gerhard Richter and Neo Rauch. Among the highlights of the collection are Dutch paintings of the 17th century, including works by Rembrandt and Ruisdael, German painting of the Romantic period with extensive groups of works by Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, as well as important paintings by Adolph Menzel and Max Liebermann. The outstanding collection of classical modernist art features works by Max Beckmann, Edvard Munch and the painters of the "Brücke" group. In addition to its permanent collection, the Hamburger Kunsthalle has also won international acclaim for the quality of its special exhibitions, which attract thousands of visitors to the city every year. The Hamburger Kunsthalle consists of three striking buildings: the brick building from 1869 with its ornamental facade, the neoclassical extension building from 1919 made of light-coloured shell limestone, and the white cube of the Galerie der Gegenwart designed by architect Oswald Mathias Ungers and opened in 1997. Centrally located between Hamburg's main railway station and the Alster lakes, the Kunsthalle is therefore also one of the city's architectural highlights. Besides offering wonderful surroundings for the appreciation of art, the Kunsthalle also houses two museum shops with a large selection of international art books, posters, postcards and design objects for sale. Visitors can enjoy one of the finest views of the city from the Bistro in the Galerie der Gegenwart, which together with Café Liebermann in the historical section of the museum and the new Café George Economou in the rotunda offers a relaxing dining experience. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de

The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu Hawaii ~ A Delightful Contemporary Art Museum Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:18 PM PDT Located on Oahu in the Honolulu neighborhood of Makiki, on a hill overlooking the city and the ocean, the Contemporary Museum (TCM) is the only museum in Hawaii that is devoted exclusively to contemporary art and features artworks from 1940 to the present. TCM provides an accessible forum for provocative, dynamic forms of visual art, offering interaction with art and artists in a unique Island environment. TCM presents its innovative exhibition and educational programs at two venues, in residential Honolulu at the historic Cooke-Spalding house, and downtown at the First Hawaiian Center. In addition to preserving art from 1940 to the present, the Museum also maintains and presents the historic Cooke-Spalding house and gardens for the enjoyment and enrichment of Hawai'i's residents and visitors. The structure that houses TCM was built as a residence in 1925 by Mrs. Charles Montague Cooke. At the same time, The Honolulu Academy of Arts was being built on the site of her former home on Beretania Street. The Makiki Heights home was designed by Hart Wood and later enlarged by the firm of Bertram Goodhue and Associates. The Honolulu Academy of Arts acquired the estate as a bequest from Anna Rice Cooke's daughter, Alice Spalding, in 1968 and operated it as an annex from 1970 to 1978. After passing through the hands of a private developer in the late 1970s, the property was acquired by a subsidiary of The Honolulu Advertiser. In 1986 the Twigg-Smith family offered it as a site for The Contemporary Museum. Following interior renovation by The CJS Group Architects and the construction of the Milton Cades Pavilion, the museum opened to the public in October 1988. TCM includes a variety of off-the-beaten-path treasures. In the Café, visitors can sit indoors in a gallery-like atmosphere amid changing displays of art or outdoors in a garden setting. The J. Russell and Charlotte McLean Cades Library welcomes visitors to stop by and enjoy the collection of information on contemporary art and artists. The library houses 900 volumes of surveys, monographs, catalogues, periodicals and artist files, and is used daily by artists, students, writers, and the museum's curators and educators. In addition, books from recent TCM exhibitions are on the library shelves, including 'Enrique Martínez Celaya' and 'Drawing is another kind of language'. Another highlight of The Contemporary Museum is the gardens, which encompass 3.5 acres. These sculpture and meditation gardens are called Nu'umealani (heavenly terrace), and they are so beautiful that the museum won the American Society of Landscape Architects Millennium Award for preserving and maintaining them. Designed to provide a place to retreat, meditate and experience the harmony of nature, the gardens include a sprawling lawn, a tropical terraced garden, walking paths and places to sit. The grounds display sculpture by Satoru Abe, Charles Arnoldi, Deborah Butterfield, Jedd Garet, George Rickey, Toshiko Takaezu, DeWain Valentine and Arnold Zimmerman, and regularly changing murals on the walls. The Contemporary Museum can even provide picnic baskets for visitors who want to enjoy their lunch in the gardens. They are open to the public during museum hours. A satellite facility is located in downtown Honolulu in the First Hawaiian Center, the corporate headquarters of First Hawaiian Bank. Opened in 1996, the changing program of exhibitions focus on Hawaiian art and are underwritten by First Hawaiian Bank. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.tcmhi.org/ The Contemporary Museum has a growing collection of works in all media spanning 1940 to the present by local, regional, national and international artists. Among artists represented are Vito Acconci, Josef Albers, Robert Arneson, Jennifer Bartlett, Deborah Butterfield, Enrique Chagoya, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Sol Lewitt, Robert Motherwell, Vik Muniz, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Price, Andres Serrano, Kiki Smith, Frank Stella, Masami Teraoka, Mark Tobey, Richard Tuttle, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and Peter Voulkos. Approximately one-third of the works in the collection are by artists of Hawai`i. The remainder largely comprises works by artists from the continental United States, with a growing representation of artists from Europe, Latin America, Japan and Australia. TCM's collection has greatly expanded since its inception to reflect the achievements of both established and emerging artists. The collection comprises more than 3,400 works in the following categories: paintings; sculpture and installations; drawings and watercolors; prints; photographs and video works; assemblage; ceramics; glass; wood; metal; and fiberworks/textiles. The Museum have a particularly strong collection of ceramic including three works by Robert Arneson (amongst them, the monumental 'Temple of Fatal Laffs'), and important examples by Stephen De Staebler, Ken Price, Peter Voulkos, Ron Nagle, Adrian Saxe, Mark Burns, Nancy Carman, Robert Brady, and Daisy Youngblood. TCM has assembled significant holdings by artists who explore the tradition of the vessel in ceramic, wood, fiber, metal and glass. Among the artists represented are Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Beatrice Wood, Lucie Rie, Rudolf Staffel, Jay Musler, Ferne Jacobs, Richard DeVore, June Schwarz, Ron Kent, Diane Itter, and Dale Chihuly. TCM's photography collection focuses on works that are conceptually based or employ alternative processes that challenge traditional notions of photography. Artists represented include William Wegman, Robert Cumming, John Coplans and Lucas Samaras, as well as younger artists such as Catherine Opie, Gregory Crewdson, Christopher Bucklow, Candida Hofer, Bill Jacobson, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, and Liza Ryan. Highlights of TCM's print collection include "Electric Chair", a series of ten screenprints by Andy Warhol; "Savarin", a monotype by Jasper Johns; "Had Gadya", a series of ten mixed-media prints by Frank Stella; and "High Green", a color etching and aquatint by Richard Diebenkorn. Other significant holdings include an untitled oil on canvas by Robert Motherwell; "Marsaxlokk Bay", a large-scale mixed-media metal relief by Frank Stella; "The White Cup", a mixed-media assemblage by Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz; and eighteen works by Dennis Oppenheim. The Contemporary Museum hosts temporary exhibitions in both the Cooke-Spalding house, and downtown at the First Hawaiian Center. The main exhibition at the Cooke-Spalding house is 'Steven & William Ladd: 9769 Radio Drive' (until May 8, 2011). In keeping with The Contemporary Museum's mission of providing emerging artists with significant opportunities to expand and show their work, TCM presents Steven and William Ladd: 9769 Radio Drive, the first solo museum exhibition for these Brooklyn, New York based artists. The Ladd brothers have created a large exhibition specifically for the museum's spaces that provides a significant overview of their art and transforms TCM's galleries. The Ladds' work collaboratively and frequently draws upon their past experiences for inspiration. The current exhibition includes references to their parents, grandparents, and siblings, and 9769 Radio Drive, referenced in the exhibition title, is the address of the home in St. Louis in which they grew up. Their sculptures initially take the form of towers of handmade boxes, which are shown open in the exhibition to reveal dazzlingly elaborate sewn and beaded interiors that could be interpreted as fanciful, mysterious landscapes. Other works incorporate found objects. At the heart of the exhibition is a large installation titled Ant Epidemic, which fills TCM's largest gallery with images of thousands of small black ants. Together, Steven and William Ladd have forged a body of work that exists in a nexus of text, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, craft/design, and fashion. They have combined a range of techniques, forms, materials, and practices, forging something which is uniquely theirs. The First Hawaiian Center Gallery has three temporary exhibitions currently running (all until 15th July 2011). "Recent Photographs by Andrew Binkley and Inka Resch" presents recent works from two photographers capturing the daily lives of people in China and Dubai. Photographer Andrew Binkley layers multiple exposures in Photoshop to create images that capture the connections and paths between people on the streets of China below. Through images of enormous towers and the countless tiny figures building them, Hawai'i-raised artist, Inka Resch, reveals the oppositions, contradictions, and contrasts that characterize Dubai, the city in which she currently lives and works. Also on show at the The First Hawaiian Center Gallery is "Suzanne Wolfe: Cuptopia". As a faculty member at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Suzanne Wolfe's teaching specialty is in low-temperature ceramics media, mold techniques, and ceramics history. Her current work explores the process of developing layered glaze imagery, the transformation of found ceramic objects, and an investigation of the relationship between interior and exterior. In this exhibition, Wolfe will show more than 300 ceramic cups, each conveying a unique narrative through the application and juxtaposition of multiple image transfers. A third exhibition "In the News: Bernice Akamine, Deborah Nemad, Vince Hazen, Mac James, and Pearlyn Salvador" showcases works that are inspired by local, national, and/or international news. The artists take their inspiration from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, using these media to create their works utilizing techniques such as collage and image transfer. The exhibition features both two- and three-dimensional multi-media works. Artists include Bernice Akamine, Vince Hazen, Deborah Nemad, Mac James, and Pearlyn Salvador. Changing exhibits of contemporary art are also shown in the Contemporary Café, where a selection of works by local artist Jill Butterbaugh is currently displayed. This selection of two-dimensional work includes large oil paintings on wood and drawings on paper done in charcoal and conte. "Vintage Girls" explores the distinct look of the 30's, 40' and 50's in larger than life portraits. Other selected works in charcoal and conte include dramatic still life drawings of various subjects from dendrobium orchids to somber looking stuffed animals.

Julie & Edward J. Minskoff Art Collection Acquires Jonathan Prince Sculpture Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:17 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Jonathan Prince, a sculptor whose recent works were the subject of a solo exhibition at Cynthia-Reeves in Chelsea, has placed a key sculpture, Light Box, in the noted collection of 20th- and 21st-century art of Julie and Edward J. Minskoff. Mr. Minskoff, President of Edward J. Minskoff Equities, Inc., a New York-based real estate acquisition and development company, creates buildings that are widely acclaimed as art forms themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Minskoff generously display much of their art collection in public view throughout their buildings.

Museum of Fine Arts Houston to feature Scenes of Italy by Maurice B. Prendergast Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:16 PM PDT HOUSTON.- Prendergast in Italy, the first exhibition devoted entirely to the watercolors, monotypes, and oil paintings by the American modern artist Maurice Prendergast, will open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on February 14, 2010. Featuring more than 60 views of Venice, Rome, Siena, and Capri, Prendergast in Italy also includes the artist´s personal sketchbooks, letters, photographs, and guidebooks from his two trips to Italy, in 1898 and 1911. Prendergast was born and raised in Boston but developed his mature style during early trips abroad to France (1891-1895) and Italy (1989-1989). Renowned for his paintings full of joie de vivre, the view of Italy that Prendergast presents was informed by European trends filtered through the eyes of an American artist and tourist encountering Venice for the first time. This exhibition demonstrates the advances of abstract color and form that put Prendergast on the cutting edge of American modernism.

Frieze Art Fair 2011 ~ New Film Commissions Announced Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:15 PM PDT LONDON.- Frieze Film is a programme of artist films screened to coincide with Frieze Art Fair. This year it is curated by Sarah McCrory and includes five newly commissioned films that will be shown in the Frieze Art Fair auditorium throughout the duration of the fair. The artists commissioned to make new work for Frieze Film are: Ed Atkins, Lutz Bacher, Anthea Hamilton, Judith Hopf and Katarina Zdjelar. The artists commissioned this year present a range of generations, from recent graduate Atkins, whose work was included in New Contemporaries 2010, to Bacher, who has been making film, sculpture and installations since the 70s and has a cult following in the USA. Hopf's influential role as a Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt informs her practice, and has made her an influential figure to a number of younger artists.

Francois Pinault opens The New Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Centre in Venice Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:14 PM PDT VENICE.- Punta della Dogana, the new art center for contemporary art of the François Pinault Foundation, opens its doors after fourteen months of renovation entrusted to the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The first exhibition Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection, curated by Alison M. Gingeras and Francesco Bonami, is shown simultaneously at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi and is shaped in response to the particular atmosphere of each space. With its triangular shape, Punta della Dogana split the Grand Canal from the Giudecca Canal. As center for contemporary art , the former monumental port of the city present a permanent exhibition of works from François Pinault Collection. Undisputed masterpieces of contemporary art by such figures as Jeff Koons, Sigmar Polke, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Cy Twombly, Takashi Murakami or Jake & Dinos Chapman are presented alongside pieces by emerging talents such as Matthew Day Jackson, Adel Abdessemed, Wilhelm Sasnal, Richard Hughes, Nate Lowman, Mark Bradford and Kai Althoff. Conceived as a single exhibition that will unfold over the two venues, this presentation will be shaped in response to the particular atmosphere of each space: the inward-looking private sphere on one side, and the outward looking, world-at-large on the other. The two halves of the exhibition will constitute a dialogue between artists of different generations, covering a vast range of practices and aesthetic sensibilities. François Pinault has entrusted the renovation of this 17th century edifice to Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Respecting the spirit of the original building, he has renovated the space in order to house a selection of works from the François Pinault Foundation, one of the world's most important collections of contemporary art. Punta della Dogana project Tadao Ando drew up his plans for the new centre quickly. In effect, if one looks at his drawings one sees that, from the first, the broad outlines of the project were clear in his mind. The characteristic layout of the former warehouses, which occupy the triangular tongue of land where the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal, was to be maintained. And while extensive work on the foundations was to be carried out – to safeguard the structure from humidity and high water – the layout of the existing lofts was to be modified in order to create a space able to house the artworks of the François Pinault Collection. At a point almost dead-centre of the triangular floor plan, Ando immediately envisaged the creation of a new space standing the entire height of the building: a sort of pivot for the entire layout, this would occupy one of the middle warehouse aisles and was to be created in smooth and polished cement, a material that is now a recognised leitmotif of Ando's architecture. This axial point – through which run all the routes within the structure – forms a cube, rising vertically within the volume of the building. The work of restoration had to remove the unwanted accretions that had accumulated over time, with the new partition walls, stairs, walkways and service facilities all clearly identified as such. In effect, there is no attempt to disguise these new additions within the old body of the structure. Instead, there is a continual play of juxtaposition – almost as if Ando's intention were to insert within the ancient building new volumes and levels that seem to mark out the stratifications added over time, organising them into a veritable spectacle of the structure's own history. Finally, he had the idea of creating gates for the water entrances that are explicit quotations of the wonderful gate that Carlo Scarpa designed in 1956. The design of these new doors and windows, though very modern, effectively employed Venetian traditional craft. Tadao Ando has thus succeeded in establishing a dialogue between old and new elements, creating a link between the history of the building, its present and its future. François Pinault (born 21 August 1936) is a billionaire French businessman who runs the retail company PPR. He is a friend of former French President Jacques Chirac. According to Forbes List of billionaires (2008) he is ranked 39th in the world, with an estimated fortune of US$16.9 billion. His holding company Artemis S.A., owns (or owned), among others, Converse shoes, Samsonite luggage, Château Latour, the Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, and Christie's auction house. Artemis also owns Executive Life (now Aurora Life) in California, which was sued by policy holders when the company failed. Pinault owns one of the biggest collections of contemporary art worldwide. On the magazine ArtReview's 2006 list of most powerful people in modern art, he was ranked in first place. In 2006 he obtained the ownership of Palazzo Grassi in Venice to display the collection. Pinault led PPR through a long battle over control of Gucci, the Italian fashion house, which began with an attempted takeover of Gucci by LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. In March of 1999, Gucci asked PPR to acquire an ownership interest in Gucci to help fend off LVMH. The result was a struggle between the two richest men in France, both self-made billionaires — Pinault and Bernard Arnault, the Chairman of LVMH. The dispute ended in September 2001, when LVMH agreed to sell its shares in Gucci to PPR for $94 a share. As part of the agreement, PPR promised to tender for the balance of the publicly traded shares at a later date. It completed that buy-in in July 2004 and took full control of Gucci. In 1998, Pinault purchased a majority share of Christie's auction house. In February 2000, A. Alfred Taubman, majority shareholder of rival company Sotheby's stepped down amidst a scandal after the Federal Bureau of Investigation had investigated commission-fixing between the two companies. Pinault was not implicated, but rather it was his actions which precipitated the scandal. He fired Christie's CEO Christopher Davidge over an allegation of extravagant spending. Davidge then admitted the collusion, which had gone on since about 1995, to Artemis' CEO Patricia Barbizet. In October 2000, Sotheby's CEO, Diana Brooks admitted her guilt in hopes of receiving a reduced sentence, and implicated Taubman. In December 2001, jurors in a high profile New York City courtroom found Taubman guilty of conspiracy. He served a year and a day in prison and Mrs. Brooks got 3 months of home confinement and a penalty of $350,000. International law permitted Christie's to avoid prosecution (other than civil penalties). Currently partnered to Mexican actress/producer Salma Hayek on March 9, 2007, they confirmed they were expecting their first child. On September 21, 2007, she gave birth to daughter Valentina Paloma Pinault at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. On July 18, 2008, Hayek and Pinault announced the end of their engagement. They later reconciled and were married on Valentine's Day, 2009 in Paris. On April 25, 2009, they were married a second time in Venice.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art To Celebrate its 75th Anniversary in 2010 Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:13 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO, CA. - In 2010, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will mark its 75th year as a pioneering force in art worldwide and an unparalleled destination for the people of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through special exhibitions, events, public programs, and an anniversary publication, the museum will offer visitors new insight into the artists and individuals that have made SFMOMA a center of innovation and risk-taking in the art world and a cultural beacon on the West Coast. Special programming will also tell the story of how museum staff, artists, and people from the Bay Area and beyond have established at SFMOMA one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in the world. Throughout the anniversary season, SFMOMA will present a series of exhibitions under the heading 75 Years of Looking Forward that will tell the story of the artists, collectors, cultural mavericks, and San Francisco leaders who founded, built, and have animated the museum.

Vogue "ITALIA" Takes On The Gulf Oil Spill With Photographer Steven Meisel Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:12 PM PDT MIAMI (AP).- The model is in black, prone and dirty on jagged rocks, netting draped around her legs like a dead sea creature. There she is again, lying on her back in a feathered dress, and in close up, her hair and face sleek with oil. A stirring photo spread in the August issue of Vogue Italia was inspired by the Gulf oil spill, leaving readers wondering if the magazine crossed from evocative to insensitive. Editor-in-Chief Franca Sozzani understands the debate stretching from blogosphere to beaches and said the motivation is straightforward. "The message is to be careful about nature," she said by telephone from Milan, Italy. "Just to take care more about nature. ... I understand that it could be shocking to see and to look in this way these images."

Frantisek Kupka ~ Art Works from the Pompidou Collection at Picasso Museum Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:11 PM PDT MALAGA, SPAIN - František Kupka took painting to its essential elements: the plane, line and dot. Over the course of his career he developed a highly distinctive and unique style that still defies any attempt to classify it due to its focus on science, philosophy and mysticism. In addition, Kupka's work suggests new approaches to interpreting the birth and evolution of modern art. The exhibition held at the Museo Picasso Málaga brings together around 90 works, including oil paintings, drawings, gouaches and prints. They span the career of this unique artist, from his earliest academic studies to his pioneering discoveries within the field of abstract painting. On view though 25 April, 2010.

"All Cannibals?" at the 'me Collectors Room' in Berlin Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:10 PM PDT Berlin.- The exhibition "All Cannibals?" at me Collectors Room from May 29th to August 21st, scrutinizes the topic of cannibalism (anthropophagy) in art. Curator Jeanette Zwingenberger fosters a dialogue between historical works (etchings, paintings, ethnographic  photographs, and cult objects) and works from contemporary art. Shown are current works from the mediums of video, installation, photography, sculpture, drawing, and  painting that explore the issue of anthropophagy in a mindscape that is often both uncanny and playful at the same time. The juxtaposition of past and present reveals intersections between metaphorical and literally concrete planes. Various motif-related aspects — like sacrifices, primordial fears, and sensually narrated elements of creepiness — are presented from an art-historical perspective, their many layers illuminated. A total of 100 works, most of which originate from private collections, by 40 international artists are being shown in the exhibition, partly chronologically and partly thematically presented. The arrangement follows headings like History, Myths & Fairy Tales, Solidarity of the Flesh, Goya and His Successors, and Holy and Secular Cults. Anthropophagy can be found in the myths of all cultures and ages, with examples ranging from antiquity, the Bible, or folk tales to classicist authors and modern horror movies. The recurring motifs of desire and brutality can likewise be found in modern and contemporary art. The concept for the exhibition emerged from the observation that the theme of consumable flesh seems to be gaining in significance within many current art works. Due to today's clinical distance to one's own body, a need arises to probe that which is hidden inside of us. These contemporary works demonstrate a tendency to represent this consumption in a more radical and direct (but also violent) manner than was the case in works of classic modernism, which often had a playful or ironic note. The Surrealists, for instance, though quite fascinated by cannibalistic delicacies, remained focused on the erotic aspects of cannibalism. The exhibition fields the question as to whether we as people are not, fundamentally speaking, all potential cannibals. Along this vein, the exploration of cannibalism should always first start with us. The issues manifesting in the artistic representation of cannibalism reference basic problems relating to one's self-perception, to associations with one's own flesh, and also to dealings between  people. Thus, the metaphorical consumption is able to encourage the fostering of solidarity with others and to expose victim-perpetrator associations. In art, this bipolarity is shown through the oscillation between desire and violence, eroticism and power. Artists included in the exhibition are Makoto Aida, Gilles Barbier, Norbert Bisky, Michaël Borremans, Patty Chang, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Erik Dietman, Wim Delvoye, Marcel Dzama, Renato Garza Cervera, Will Cotton, James Ensor, Camille de Galbert, Francisco de Goya, J. J. Grandville, Pieter Hugo, Melissa Ichiuji, John Isaacs, Oda Jaune, Michel Journiac, Dana Schutz, Sandra Vasquez de la Horra, Adriana Varejâo, Saverio Lucariello, Frédérique Loutz, Patrizio Di Massimo, Yasumasa Morimura, Théo Mercier, Philippe Mayaux, Vik Muniz, Wangechi Mutu, Álvaro Oyarzún, Chantalpetit, Giov. Battista Podesta, Odilon Redon, Félicien Rops, Bettina Rheims, Cindy Sherman, Toshio Saeki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Ralf Ziervogel and Jérôme Zonder. In a series of rotating exhibitions, the 'me Collectors Room' showcase the Olbricht Collection, containing works ranging from the early 16th century up to the present day. Selected curators are invited to give their own perspective on the collection, whose driving focus draws on the core themes of human existence: life, love, eros, transience and death. A set fixture at the venue is the Wunderkammer (or 'cabinet of art and marvels'), containing works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Besides works of art though, other collector's items are on display, such as rare postage stamps, art nouveau objects and toys. In the café, shop and lounge, visitors can find room to exchange ideas, as well as reflect on and enjoy a sensual experience of art. During 2011 the theme of 'collecting' itself is also central to the programme. Besides discussions with international collectors (primarily, but not exclusively, of art), towards the end of the year they will also for the first time be holding reciprocal events with other private art collections. The residential and exhibition building, situated in the immediate vicinity of the Kunst-Werke Berlin, was designed by the architectural firm Düttmann + Kleymann in conjunction with Thomas Olbricht. The generous 1.300 sq m exhibition space enables a division of the room, which invites both a direct engagement with the collection, as well as flexible open spaces for visitors. Behind the high glass façade there are a number of amenities, such as a Café, a Shop and a lounge area, spread across two floors. Ample space then for visitors to exchange ideas about the things they have seen. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.me-berlin.com

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 05 Nov 2011 07:09 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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