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

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• The Museum Georg Schäfer Features "Magic Nocturnal Moments" From the Collection
• World Famous "Art Miami" Returns for its 22nd Edition
• The American Art Fair Celebrates its 4th Year in New York City
• Recent Works by Russian artist Vladimir Ovchinnikov at Erarta Galleries in London
• Michel Majerus' Complex Oeuvre on view at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
• Seelevel Gallery Shows "Once Removed" ~ Tania Theodorou & Adam Etmanski
• Dale Chihuly to launch Halcyon Gallery in London's New Bond Street
• St. Thomas University Presents Unique Paintings of Destry Sparks
• Sotheby's NY Auction of American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture to Feature George Catlin, Edward Hopper & Winslow Homer
• The Kunsthaus Bregenz (the "KUB") ~ Outstanding Exhibition Spaces for Contemporary Art In Austria ~ Is Toured By AKN Editor
• Cincinnati Art Museum features Masterpieces of Dada and Surrealist Art
• ' Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance ' at Museum der Moderne Salzburg
• The Gemeentemuseum The Hague Retrospective of Lucian Freud
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Acquires Fischer Collection of German Expressionism
• Toledo Museum of Art acquires Bolognese Master Guercino's Baroque Painting
• The Getty Center shows Manet’s 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère'
• At the Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but So Few Stay to Focus
• 220,0000 Blockbuster ' Monet to Dalí ' at Vancouver Art Gallery
• Works by Edward Hopper staged at Palazzo Reale / First Major Italian Exhibition
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Museum Georg Schäfer Features "Magic Nocturnal Moments" From the Collection Posted: 28 Nov 2011 09:53 PM PST Schweinfurt, Germany.- The Museum Georg Schäfer is proud to present "Magic Nocturnal Moments: Carl Spitzweg and Artists From the Collection", on view at the museum through February 19th 2012. The exhibition features more than 60 works from the museum's collection, showing how the German Romantic painters and their contemporaries illustrated night during the nineteenth century. Carl Spitzweg features frominently in the exhibition, with works including "Der Blasturm in Schwandorf", "Nachtwächter in einer alten Stadt (Nightwatchman in an Old Town)", "Der Stern von Bethlehem (The Star of Bethlehem)", "Geigender Eremit in Felsenklause Nächtliches Stelldichein", "Hexenritt (Witches Ride)", "Ein Ständchen vom Boot aus Der Astrologe (Sternengucker) (The Astrologer - Stargazing)" and many others. Schäfer's work is set in the context of the time by including a number of works by other famouse German artists and artistic schools. Other schools are represented with night pictures of the German Romanticism school by Caspar David Friedrich and Gustav Carus taking on contemplation and a timeless sense of foundation in the sense of a penetrating pantheism. In addition there are Frederick Carus , Oehme , Lessing , Schwind , Lier , Schleich the Elder , Lichtenheld , Adolph Menzel , Diez , Johann Peter Hasenclever and others. Nocturnal drinking scenes, moonlit landscapes, liaisons, fantasy and religious scenes are illustrated by moonlight, fires and candles and the then new-fangled gas lamps. Carl Spitzweg (February 5, 1808 – September 23, 1885) was a German romanticist painter and poet. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era. He was born in Unterpfaffenhofen as the second of three sons of Franziska and Simon Spitzweg. His father, a wealthy merchant, had Carl trained as a pharmacist. He attained his qualification from the University of Munich, but while recovering from an illness he also took up painting. Spitzweg was self-taught as an artist, and began by copying the works of Flemish masters. He contributed his first work to satiric magazines. Upon receiving an inheritance in 1833, he was able to dedicate himself to painting. Later, Spitzweg visited European art centers, studying the works of various artists and refining his technique and style; he visited Prague, Venice, Paris, London, and Belgium. His later paintings and drawings are often humorous genre works. Many of his paintings depict sharply characterized eccentrics, for example "The Bookworm" (1850) and "The Hypochondriac" (c. 1865, in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich). His paintings inspired the musical comedy Das kleine Hofkonzert by Edmund Nick. He is buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich. The Museum Georg Schäfer presents the most important private art collection of the German speaking world, with its focus on the 19th Century. With paintings and works on paper from the laste 18th until the beginning of the 20th Century, it offers panoramic views of the various art movements of the time - from late rococo, the classicists and romantics to the Impressionists and Secessionists. Among the oldest paintings in the collection is Januarius Zicks 'Rural Idyll' from around 1760, the youngest Max Liebermann's wife 'Martha Liebermann', created in 1930. The quality of the collection is based on a combination of top-class works with individual groups of works of major artists and new discoveries of paintings by lesser-known masters. Thus, the Georg Schäfer Museum stands in line with the collection of English art at the Tate Gallery, London, or the collections of German art in the National Gallery , Berlin, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. A characteristic of the collection is that it contains extensive porfolios, showing the individual artists in a comprehensive overview of their development work. The museum contains the largest collection of Carl Spitzweg's works with 160 paintings and 110 drawings. But, the museum also has more than 100 paintings, gouaches and drawings by Adolph Menzel, and significant collections of works by Caspar David Friedrich, Georg Ferdinand Waldmüller , Wilhelm Leibl and his friends Johann Sperl and Carl Schuch , Hans Thoma , Josef Wenglein Wopfner , Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt . Georg Schäfer (1896-1975) began actively collecting paintings in the 1950s, and architect Erich Schelling drew up plans for a museum to house the collection. A later design by Mies van der Rohe was rejected when the Schweinfurt city council declined to assume the cost of maintaining the museum. The plans were later adapted for the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The city of Schweinfurt and the Schäfer family first came to terms on housing the collection in a museum in 1988, but those plans were delayed by a financial crisis in the FAG Kugelfischer company, which led Schäfer's heirs to mortgage the art collection. By the end of 1997 the family had regained control of much of the collection and established a foundation to protect it. City officials meanwhile secured resources for the museum, and in February 1997 Volker Staab won the commission to design the museum. The museum is sited next to the city hall (Rathaus) at the southern entry to downtown Schweinfurt. The museum opened to the public on 23 September 2000. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museumgeorgschaefer.de

World Famous "Art Miami" Returns for its 22nd Edition Posted: 28 Nov 2011 09:19 PM PST Miami, Florida.- Known as Miami's premiere anchor fair, Art Miami kicks off  the opening day of Art Week — the first week of December when thousands of collectors, dealers, curators, and artists descend upon Miami. World-famous for its stylish gallery-like decor, its extraordinary variety and outstanding quality, Art Miami showcases the best in modern and contemporary art from 100 international art galleries and prominent art institutions.With over 110 prestigious international galleries participating, Art Miami is a "can't miss" event for collectors, curators, museum professionals and art enthusiasts to acquire some of the finest and most important works of art that the contemporary market has to offer.

The American Art Fair Celebrates its 4th Year in New York City Posted: 28 Nov 2011 08:51 PM PST New York City.- The American Art Fair moves to a new venue as it celebrates its fourth year and will be held through December 1st at the Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, New York City. The gala preview on Sunday, November 27 marks the beginning of American Paintings week in New York. Inaugurated in 2008, the fair focuses on the grand tradition of American art established early in the 19th century and gathers more than 300 works including landscapes, portraits, still lifes, studies, and sculpture. The Fair assembles the premier specialists in 19th and early 20th century American art.

Recent Works by Russian artist Vladimir Ovchinnikov at Erarta Galleries in London Posted: 28 Nov 2011 07:57 PM PST LONDON.- Erarta Galleries London presents a selection of new and recent works by Vladimir Ovchinnikov. One of the most significant artists to emerge from St. Petersburg during the Soviet era, Vladimir Ovchinnikov is known for his paintings that blur the boundaries between realism and surrealism, fusing together contemporary Russian subject matter with magical, fantastic elements, often derived from myth and religion. His distinctively rotund, heavy-bodied, yellow-skinned figures have a primeval, statuesque quality, as if stemming from ancient monuments or religious icons – and yet at the same time his works also allude to social and political conditions, vividly satirizing contemporary mores, and puncturing the hypocrisy and spiritual bankruptcy at the heart of everyday life.

Michel Majerus' Complex Oeuvre on view at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart Posted: 28 Nov 2011 07:13 PM PST STUTTGART. - Michel Majerus only lived to the age of thirty-five and nevertheless the artist left behind a complex and comprehensive oeuvre. In a creative period of just ten years he produced a unique statement about painting that remains relevant today. Majerus worked with diverse techniques and varied subjects and motifs taken from the realm of computers, comics, and advertising. At the same time he made use of art history, drawing on works by artists such as Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, and other representatives of Pop Art and Minimal Art. With his sampling method of combining various elements in a free and nonhierarchical manner, he created his own world of imagery and thereby gave painting an important impulse. Because of his works' large size and their installation character, very few museums have been able to show them in all their complexity. From November 26, 2011 to April 9, 2012 the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart fills this gap with a comprehensive exhibition of more than one hundred of the artist's paintings and installations, including works on loan from Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Stuttgart.

Seelevel Gallery Shows "Once Removed" ~ Tania Theodorou & Adam Etmanski Posted: 28 Nov 2011 07:12 PM PST AMSTERDAM.- The exhibition "Once Removed" at Seelevel Gallery is an open ended visual chitchat between Tania Theodorou, Adam Etmanski and the audience about the way they both approach meaning, photography, and the presentation of it in an original and idiosyncratic way. The Greek artist Tania Theodorou uses images and objects that already sustain evidence of significance or function. She attempts to set them loose, into a new context, and see to what kind of meaning they are able to attach themselves. She likes to see the process by which the very meaning of a work can take on different nuances. This leads to layered installations where the work is in a kind of open-ended conversation with itself and the audience. Adam Etmanski (1971) exhibited twice at Foam, the Photography Museum of Amsterdam; he also exhibited at projectspace Le Bal in Paris and during the festival Les Rencotre d'Arles in Arles (France) at W139 and at ACF in Amsterdam. He lives and works in Amsterdam.

Dale Chihuly to launch Halcyon Gallery in London's New Bond Street Posted: 28 Nov 2011 07:03 PM PST LONDON.- Halcyon Gallery will open its new gallery on New Bond Street on 5 December 2011, with an inaugural exhibition by Dale Chihuly. The artist comments, "Returning to London to show this important collection of work is truly exciting. The inaugural exhibition at Halcyon Gallery, in such an incredible building, presents the ideal space to show this work - I'm pushing the boundaries of the medium as far as they can go in terms of scale and new techniques all the time." The timing of this exhibition is significant for Chihuly, as 2012 will mark fifty years of the International Studio Glass Movement. Chihuly is a founding member and leading protagonist of the Movement, which started from humble beginnings in America in 1962.Since the early days, Chihuly has done more to revolutionize how glass is perceived as an art form worldwide, than any other artist working with the medium.

St. Thomas University Presents Unique Paintings of Destry Sparks Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:24 PM PST Miami Gardens, Florida.- The Sardinas Gallery at St. Thomas University is pleased to present "Spiritual Painting with Physical Objects" by United States painter Destry Sparks . This is the artist's first exhibition in the Miami metro area after solo shows earlier this year in New York, Richmond (Virginia) and at the University of North Carolina Charlotte.  Seventeen of his assemblage paintings featuring worn found objects attached to burlap, window screens & wood pallets are on display until January 13, 2012. Sparks is known for a distinct brand of visceral painting.  The objects he attaches to a range of rough surfaces are both natural and manufactured.  The natural objects include wood sticks, dried leaves, parched white bones and seashells.  The manufactured items often consist of colorful smashed bottle caps and wires, rusted mechanical parts, and window frames well past their prime.

Sotheby's NY Auction of American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture to Feature George Catlin, Edward Hopper & Winslow Homer Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:22 PM PST New York City.- Sotheby's New York auction of American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture on 1st December 2011 will feature a strong selection works across the diverse genres that the category encompasses, with many of the highlights on offer from distinguished institutions and celebrated collections. Following Sotheby's 2004 sale of a group of 31 George Catlin paintings, on offer from The Field Museum in Chicago and originally in the collection of Benjamin O'Fallon,  the December 2011 sale will be led by four additional works from the collection that represent the finest from the original group. The sale will be on exhibition in Sotheby's York Avenue galleries beginning 26th November. George Catlin was a 19th century painter who specialized in depicting Native American tribes of the Old West, and Benjamin O'Fallon – nephew of William Clark and the 'United States Indian Agent' for the Missouri River Tribes – was one of his first patrons. The collection that O'Fallon assembled is remarkable for including only works that Catlin painted in the West during the first two years of his effort to visit every tribe in the United States, as opposed to those he painted later from Europe. The paintings have resided in the collection of The Field Museum in Chicago since 1894, when it purchased the 35 surviving Catlin paintings from Benjamin O'Fallon's collection. In December 2004, the museum consigned 31 of the canvases to Sotheby's, which sold them at auction as a single lot to a private collector. At the time of the 2004 sale, the Field Museum retained what were arguably the four finest canvases from the O'Fallon Collection, which are the four works on offer this December in New York. The group features two portraits and two scene paintings. "One Horn, Head Chief of the Miniconjou Tribe, Teton Dakota (Western Sioux)" is one of the first portraits that Catlin made in the field (estimate $1/1.5 million), while "Black Hawk, Prominent Sauk Chief, Sauk and Fox" depicts the man who gave his name to a brief but bloody war in the summer of 1832 (estimate $1/1.5 million). "Interior of a Mandan Lodge" is one of six surviving pictures from the collection that depict Mandan sitters (estimate $800,000/1.2 million), and "Buffalo Chase, a Surround by the Hidatsa" is a dramatic and chaotic hunting scene that is among the most dynamic of Catlin's canvases (estimate $800,000/1.2 million). The December sale will feature Winslow Homer's rare oil painting "Reverie" (estimate $1.2/1.8 million) from the collection of Joan Whitney Payson. The work is from a small series of four canvases executed in the summer of 1872, while the artist was staying in Hurley, New York. Each shows a young woman in a dark interior, beside a bright window view of the outdoors – the composition and costume of the girl recalling the tradition of 17th century Dutch interiors. The works stand alone in Homer's career, as nothing the artist did before or after these works directly refers to them. Relatively small in scale, they are gem-like in execution. They are the work of an artist who had already made his mark critically both in the United States and abroad, but was still striving to find his own voice and to establish his own market. Another rare work from the 19th century will be "Red Hollyhocks" by John La Farge, an artist whose works infrequently appear at auction (estimate $500/700,000). La Farge was known for experimenting with color and technique, and in this spirit he painted his 1860s hollyhock compositions in encaustic – a mix of oil and wax credited to the ancient Greeks that gives the present work its unique texture and striking coloration. Sotheby's is honored to offer a group of 18 works from the highly personal collection of Helen Marx this December. As a successful publisher under the imprint Helen Marx Books, she specialized in literary fiction, biographies and works in French. Over a period of 30 years, Mrs. Marx assembled a collection that reflected both her sophisticated taste and lifelong dedication to the arts, including beautiful examples by several of the most notable American artists of the 19th century. Property from the Estate of Helen Marx will be led by works from Martin Johnson Heade and Winslow Homer. Heade's "Orchids and Hummingbirds" is an example of the artist's coveted pairings of the flora and fauna he first witnessed in Brazil in 1863 (estimate $500/700,000). "Orange Trees and Gate" is one of a series of watercolors executed by Homer during his first trip to Nassau, Bahamas in 1884-85 (estimate $500/700,000). Recognized as one of the 19th century's most gifted masters of this medium, Homer's work captures the brilliant sunshine and the abundant tropical foliage of the islands. The Marx collection will also feature still lifes by artists including Severin Roesen and William Michael Harnett, as well as a charming group of genre paintings. The American Paintings, Drawings  & Sculpture auction will feature two works executed in 1946 by iconic American artists visiting Mexico. Made after a three-month long trip to Mexico in that year, "Crucifixion" exemplifies Milton Avery's ability to create works appealing to serious and popular audiences, while responding to a contemporary cultural dialogue between the United States and Mexico around the time of World War II (estimate $1/1.5 million). The work depicts a local woman worshipping in the Parrochia church of San Miguel de Allende. To escape the tense climate of New England, Edward Hopper and his wife Jo began visiting Mexico for their summers in 1943. On their first trip they discovered the small town of Saltillo, and they returned there each summer for several years. Always painting en plein air and after 5 pm in order to record the best late afternoon light, Hopper produced an impressive group of watercolors inspired by the old town, including "Construction in Mexico" in 1946 (estimate $800,000/1.2 million). In addition to the Catlin paintings from the Field Museum, Sotheby's is pleased to offer works from several  additional museums as part of the December auction. Property from the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery features Marsden Hartley's "Untitled (Still Life)" from 1919, which depicts a blooming cactus in a Pueblo Indian blackware olla, set on a red and white striped table cloth with a view of the New Mexico landscape behind (estimate $700/900,000). Johan Oscar Thorsen – a colleague of artist Birger Sandzén at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas – had purchased the work directly from Hartley after a trip to Santa Fe, and on his death it was bequeathed to the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery at Bethany. Property from the Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. will include a bronze portrait medallion of Robert Louis Stevenson that documents his friendship with the artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the acclaimed sculptor of the monument to Civil War hero David Farragut installed in Madison Square Park (est. $100/150,000). Property from the Amerind Foundation Collection features Robert Henri's "Untitled [Alanna]" from 1928 (estimate $400/600,000). The work is among Henri's last paintings, and depicts a young girl from Achill Island, Ireland, where the artist and his wife lived in the 1920s. And Property from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem will offer works by Thomas Hart Benton and Marsden Hartley. American Illustration in the sale will be led by a group of eight works by quintessential American artist Norman Rockwell. The group will feature the Saturday Evening Post cover "Couple with Milkman", which depicts a couple on their way home from an evening event, stopping a milkman to check the time (estimate $1.2/1.8 million). The work reflects the central role that young romance had come to play in Rockwell's life – after divorcing his first wife Irene O'Connor in 1930, he married the young schoolteacher Mary Barstow – and further conveys the inherent humor the artist found in all walks of daily American life. The December auction will also feature Rockwell's work in advertising. "Whispering sweepstakes" is a group of four paintings commissioned by the Corn Products Company for use in ads for Skippy peanut butter (estimate $200/300,000), while both "Young Husband Checking Grocery List" (estimate $250/350,000) and "Pregnant Woman Drinking Tea" (estimate $200/300,000) were commissioned by the Brooke Bond Foods Company for use in ads for its Red Rose Tea label. Sotheby's was founded in London on March 11, 1744, when Samuel Baker auctioned "several Hundred scarce and valuable books" from the library of the Rt Hon Sir John Stanley for a few hundred pounds. The story of Sotheby's expansion beyond books to include the best in fine and decorative arts and jewellery is also the story of the global auction market, defined by extraordinary moments that continue to capture the world's attention. Since 1744, Sotheby's has distinguished itself as a leader in the auction world. Their auctions, conducted in the venerable salerooms in London and Paris, the museum-quality galleries of their headquarters in New York and the spirited environs of Hong Kong rivet audiences worldwide. Season after season, the depth and excellence of Sotheby's offerings have produced watershed, record-breaking sales. They were the first international auction house to expand from London to New York in 1955, and the first to conduct sales in Hong Kong and the then–Soviet Union. Today they maintain 90 locations in 40 countries and they conduct 250 auctions each year in over 70 categories. In addition to their four principal salerooms, the company, recognising the potential in new markets, also conducts auctions in six other salerooms around the world, further expanding its global reach. Visit the auction house's website at ... http://www.sothebys.com

The Kunsthaus Bregenz (the "KUB") ~ Outstanding Exhibition Spaces for Contemporary Art In Austria ~ Is Toured By AKN Editor Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:09 PM PST In August 1993 the district administration office of Bregenz issued the building permit for the construction of a new art museum. Planning and negotiation had begun some years before, and construction started the following year. Both the museum itself and adjacent administration building were designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor a Pritzker Prize winner. The Kunsthaus Bregenz ( the KUB) was opened on July 25, 1997. The architect described the building as: "The art museum stands in the light of Lake Constance. It is made of glass and steel and a cast concrete stone mass which endows the interior of the building with texture and spatial composition. From the outside, the building looks like a lamp. It absorbs the changing light of the sky, the haze of the lake, it reflects light and colour and gives an intimation of its inner life according to the angle of vision, the daylight and the weather." Within the Urban Context The Kunsthaus Bregenz was built as a solitary construction in a prominent location not far from the lakefront bank. It filled the space on "Seestraße" between the Theater for Vorarlberg and the main post office. Fresh air is conducted through a gap between the floor and the outer walls to the halls. The used air is sucked in through the gaps between the sheets of glass of the light ceiling and flows out through this space, requiring no mechanical air conditioning. The entrance lies on the eastern side of the building facing the town. The administration building, situated in front of the museum towards the city centre, acts as a transitional structure to the smaller and low buildings of the old part of the town. All functional facilities of the Kunsthaus other than those directly associated with the presentation of art are housed separately in this smaller building, which accommodates a library, the museum shop and a café besides the administrative offices. The striking facade consists of etched glass shingles that lend the building lightness and transparency, provide insulation and form an essential part of the lighting arrangement for the building. The refractive properties of the glass shingles and a 90-centimetre wide light pit between the glass cladding and the concrete structure of the building proper makes it possible to direct daylight to the first subterranean level and illuminate the building at night. Three exhibition floors are used to exhibit the museum's own collection and featured thematic or solo artist exhibitions. As a new institution, the Kunsthaus' own collection is still very young, but focuses on contemporary Austrian art The collection begins in the 1980s with works by the younger generation of artists which broke away from the determining traditions of postwar Austrian art in favor of a more international orientation (for example Bohatsch, Brandl, Kogler, Kopf, F. Pichler, Rockenschaub, Scheibl, Schmalix, Ströhle, Türtscher, West, Wurm, Zobernig, among others). Acquisitions of groups of works by the most important artists set focal points. In parallel to these exhibitions, the KUB Arena's program examines examples of differing forms of curatorial practice (such as the current Antony Gormley installation in the high Alps). Visit the museum's website at : www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at Currently, the Kunsthaus are showing three exhibitions. Haegue Yang's "Arrivals" runs until 4th March 2011 and features both the artist's older work as well as 33 new light sculptures, which enigmatically populate the third floor like alien life-forms and her largest installation to date, specifically for the Bregenz show, consisting of approximately 200 aluminum venetian blinds, which occupy KUB's entire second floor with an impressive weightlessness. These complex installations, sculptures, objects, photographs, videos, and slide projections, which in their atmospheric intensity appear equally poetic and conceptual, negate any unequivocal interpretation. Haegue Yang's work captivates precisely because of its ambiguity, which is rooted as much in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, as in an engagement with current theoretical discourses. Also 'Living Archives' - Cooperation Van Abbemusem (which runs until 4th March 2011) explores artistic archives. What is an archive? What is a collection? What are the relationships between the documents stored in archives and objects stored in collections concerned with memory, identity, history, and politics? The collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven is a joint consideration of the significance of archives and collections, which play a major role in the current reconsiderations of artistic practices and conservations in the realm of the museum. Alongside the exhibit Living Archive – Mixed Messages of the Van Abbemuseum, which includes works by Francis Bacon, Robert Indiana and Paul McCarthy, works by Michal Heiman, Hannah Hurtzig (both from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum) and Katrin Mayer offer a range of processual and amenable strategies of collecting and archiving. Meanwhile, for the more adventurous visitor, The KUB Arena presents Antony Gormley's "Horizon Field" which can be found in the High Alps of Vorarlberg, a short journey from Bregenz. The Kunsthaus Bregenz and the British artist Antony Gormley (born in 1950) realized a unique project in the mountains of Vorarlberg. Horizon Field is the first art project of its kind erected in the mountains and the largest landscape intervention in Austria to date. Horizon Field consists of 100 life-size, solid cast iron figures of the human body spread over an area of 150 square kilometers. The work forms a horizontal line at 2,039 meters above sea level. This height has no specific metaphorical or thematic relevance in the placement of the figures. It is an altitude that is readily accessible but, at the same time, lies beyond the realm of everyday life. Some of the figures are installed in places one can hike to or ski past in the winter. Others are unapproachable though visible from certain vantage points. The works are neither representations (statues) nor symbols, but represent the place where a human being once was, and where any human being could be. Horizon Field engages the physical, perceptual, and imaginative responses of anyone coming within its relational field. Over the 2 years during which this installation is in place, the work will be exposed to the elements, to different lighting conditions, and to the changing seasons, thus enabling constantly new perceptions and impressions.

Cincinnati Art Museum features Masterpieces of Dada and Surrealist Art Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:08 PM PST CINCINNATI, OHIO - The Cincinnati Art Museum  is the sole U.S. venue for an exhibition that features works by the greatest masters of Dada and Surrealist art, including Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Jean (Hans) Arp, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch and Paul Delvaux. Surrealism and Beyond: In the Israel Museum, Jerusalem provides a comprehensive survey of Surrealist art from its roots in the beginnings of the Dada movement in 1916, through recent manifestations in international contemporary art. The exhibition—on view from February 15 through May 17, 2009—will showcase over 200 works.

' Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance ' at Museum der Moderne Salzburg Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:07 PM PST   SALZBURG, AUSTRIA - Museum der Moderne Salzburg presents today Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance, on view through February 1, 2009. The exhibition "Paul Klee. Melody / Rhythm / Dance" is dedicated to Paul Klee's (1879—1940) intensive involvement with music, with melody, rhythm and polyphony, as well as with dance . .  these topics represented central elements in his work, in terms of both content and form.

The Gemeentemuseum The Hague Retrospective of Lucian Freud Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:06 PM PST THE HAGUE, NL - The Gemeentemuseum The Hague presents Lucian Freud, on view through June 8, 2008. German-born British painter Lucian Freud (b. 1922) is famous around the world for his intimate and revealing portraits and nudes. With his keen eye and highly personal approach, he lays bare the hidden feelings and thoughts of his subjects. The aim is not to achieve any superficial or flattering likeness, but to reveal the essence of the subject's inner being. The results are impressive and extremely private portraits of vulnerable individuals. The first ever Dutch retrospective of this extraordinary and unconventional artist. Lucian Freud, grandson of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin in 1922. He moved with his parents to London in the thirties and in 1939 acquired British nationality. Following his training in London and East Anglia, he quickly became friends with Francis Bacon, with whom he was to be one of the founders of the 'London School'. In 1954, together with Bacon and Ben Nicholson, he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. Ever since then, he has been regarded as one of Britain's greatest living artists. Through into the 1950s, Freud worked in a flat, schematic style that seemed to leave little room for personal interpretation. In the late '50s, however, he abandoned his precious sable brushes in favour of broader hog's hair ones and started to work on his feet rather than sitting down. The change had a major impact on his style: his work became looser, with a heavier impasto, more voluptuous models and more use of light and shadow. He uses this highly distinctive new style to depict his models in merciless detail. His view of the world leaves no room for sentimentality or embarrassment. Sagging bellies, wrinkles, bags under the eyes, double chins and folds - nothing about his models escapes him. Yet his pictures are by no means a mechanical reproduction of what he sees before him; they are autonomous works of art created not with the aim of achieving a mere likeness, but rather to create a portrait of what the subject actually is. And Freud is merciless not just to other people, but also to himself. When he heard that two of his incisors would have to go, he immediately started planning a 'self portrait without front teeth'. Lucian Freud asks a great deal of his models. They have to pose many times, at frequent intervals and for long periods. Because he believes that the subject influences the whole world around them, they have to be present and in the right pose even when Freud is working on a completely different part of the canvas. His subjects are often people close to him: friends, family, fellow-artists, children or lovers. As a result, his portraits and nudes possess an extraordinary intensity. For example, Night Portrait, Face Down, painted in 1999/2000, is an intense depiction of a naked woman slumped on her belly across a bed. She lies with her eyes closed, entirely at the mercy of the artist's gaze. At a time when abstraction and minimalism reigned supreme, Freud remained faithful to his realistic manner of painting, in which both form and subject were rooted deeply in the classical tradition. His heroes were masters of the past like Chardin, Constable and Frans Hals. It was not until the 1980s, with the revival of interest in figurative painting, that his work began to be internationally appreciated. Around that time, his paintings tended to be increasingly large and therefore monumental. His 1994 portrait Leigh under the Skylight shows a corpulent man seen from a low angle – a classical nude, but big, rough and impressive. The memorable female nude Standing by the Rags, painted in 1988/89 and on loan from the Tate Gallery, will also be on show at the Gemeentemuseum. The exhibition has been put together by guest curator Catherine Lampert and is being held in collaboration with the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue (price: € 29.95).

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Acquires Fischer Collection of German Expressionism Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:05 PM PST RICHMOND, VA.- One of the finest remaining refugee collections of German Expressionist art has a new home – at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection includes works assembled by the couple in Frankfurt, Germany, between 1905 and 1925, the most creative years of German Expressionism. No state funds were spent by the museum. VMFA used donor funds restricted to the purchase of art for the commonwealth.

Toledo Museum of Art acquires Bolognese Master Guercino's Baroque Painting Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:04 PM PST TOLEDO, OH.-Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has been trying to fill for more than 50 years. A work by Bolognese master Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, commonly known as Guercino ("the squinter"), has been a long-sought-after addition to the TMA collection. Guercino's vibrant "Lot and His Daughters" (about 1651-1652) was acquired by the Museum in October of 2009. The large painting (176 x 231 cm / 69 ¼ x 90 7/8 inches) will be unveiled to Museum members and the general public on Friday, Jan. 22 during a 7 p.m. ceremony in the Museum's Great Gallery. "Lot and His Daughters" will temporarily hang in the gallery's most prominent location, normally reserved for Peter Paul Rubens' "Crowning of St. Catherine", which will be relocated to an adjacent wall. The move will result in several additional works being relocated within the gallery in order to show the new Guercino to its best advantage.

The Getty Center shows Manet’s 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère' Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:03 PM PST LOS ANGELES, CA - Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, one of the great masterpieces of 19th-century French art, is coming to the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center this summer.  To celebrate this loan from the Samuel Courtauld Trust, Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London, the Getty Museum has organized the special installation Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère to showcase the painting and its visual complexities.  The painting will be on view concurrently with the Drawings Department's exhibition of 19th-century French works of art on paper Defining Modernity:  European Drawings 1800-1900, an exhibition also featuring works by Manet and several loans from the Courtauld. On exhibition June 5 - September 9, 2007. "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is one of the most intriguing works of Manet's career and of 19th-century European art in general," observes Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.  "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to share this masterpiece with Getty audiences, and we are incredibly grateful to our colleagues at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Samuel Courtauld Trust for making this possible." A Bar at the Folies-Bergère has not been seen in the United States since 1988, and has never been exhibited on the West Coast. The painting is an excellent complement to the Getty's rich holdings in Impressionist art, which include another significant work by Manet, The Rue Mosnier with Flags.  As an emblematic image of a working woman in modern Paris, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère provides a fascinating comparison to Edgar Degas' The Milliners, recently acquired by the Getty Museum. The installation of a mirror opposite the painting, the dominant motif of which is itself a mirror, will set up a play of reflections encouraging visitors to reflect on the optical conundrums Manet's painting poses. Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère will be accompanied by a detailed illustrated brochure providing visitors with essential historical, social, and critical context, summarizing some of the extensive debates surrounding the painting in recent years, and providing viewers with some interesting perspectives on the painting's visual oddities and ambiguities. Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère is curated by Scott Allan, assistant curator in the department of paintings, with Scott Schaefer, curator of paintings, the J. Paul Getty Museum. The accompanying exhibition Defining Modernity: European Drawings 1800-1900, surveys the J. Paul Getty Museum's 19th-century drawings collection, and features a number of recent acquisitions, as well as loans from the Courtauld Institute of Art's drawings collection.  The development of new artistic materials, the expansion of artistic themes to include subjects from modern life, and the increased demand for images created by new print media all invigorated the practice of drawing during the 1800s. Defining Modernity will feature 46 drawings, including works by Manet, Degas, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat, who exploited the new subjects and materials of drawing and used traditional subjects and media in innovative ways.   This exhibition inaugurates the new galleries for drawings on the Plaza Level of the West Pavilion at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, and is curated by Christine Giviskos, assistant curator of drawings, the J. Paul Getty Museum. The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that features the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu. Visiting the Getty Center: The Getty Center is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. It is closed Mondays and major holidays.  Admission to the Getty Center is always free.  Parking is $8; no reservations required. Reservations are required for event seating and groups of 15 or more.  For more information, call 310-440-7300 (English or Spanish); 310-440-7305 (TTY line for the deaf or hearing impaired). Additional information is available at www.getty.edu

At the Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but So Few Stay to Focus Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:02 PM PST PARIS - Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around great museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar. At the Louvre the other day, in the Pavillon des Sessions, two young women in flowered dresses meandered through the gallery. They paused and circled around a few sculptures. They took their time. They looked slowly. The young women were unusual for stopping. Most of the museum's visitors passed through the gallery oblivious.

220,0000 Blockbuster ' Monet to Dalí ' at Vancouver Art Gallery Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:01 PM PST   VANCOUVER, BC. - The most successful exhibition in the Vancouver Art Gallery's history, Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art closed Sunday, September 16th with a record day's attendance of more than 7600 visitors, bringing the total number of people to see the blockbuster exhibition to more than 220,0000. The previous record attendance for an exhibition at the Gallery was in 2002, when 95,000 people viewed the summer exhibition Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own.

Works by Edward Hopper staged at Palazzo Reale / First Major Italian Exhibition Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:00 PM PST MILAN, ITALY - For the first time in Italy, Milan and Rome, are set to pay tribute to the entire career of Edward Hopper (1882-1967), the 20th century's most popular and best known American artist, with a major anthological exhibition that is the first of its kind in this country. The exhibition presents more than 160 works, including famous masterpieces such as "Summer Interior" (1909), "Pennsylvania Coal Town" (1947), "Morning Sun" (1952), "Second Story Sunlight" (1960), "A Woman in the Sun" (1961) and various paintings that have never been exhibited, like the stunning "Girlie Show" (1941). It explores the whole of Hopper's oeuvre, and all the techniques used by an artist now viewed as one of the classic painters of the twentieth century. The exhibition will be staged in Palazzo Reale in Milan from October 14, 2009 to January 31. Immediately after that it will be held in Rome, at the Fondazione Roma Museum, from February 16 to June 13, 2010, and then at the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne, from June 25 until October 17, 2010. The Hopper event also exceptionally heralds the beginning of a cultural partnership between Comune di Milano and Fondazione Roma, set to give rise to the first in a series of joint projects involving the City Council of Mayor Letizia Moratti and the Fondazione Roma, chaired by Prof. Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele. "It is with immense pleasure and great satisfaction that today we launch this important collaboration between Comune di Milano and the Fondazione Roma, presenting the first major anthological exhibition dedicated to Edward Hopper", explain Letizia Moratti and Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele. "This is an extremely high level cultural project that involves a public body and one of the main protagonists on the Italian and international cultural scene, united by their devotion to and love of art and culture". The Artist Hopper was born and grew up in Nyack, a small town in New York State. He studied illustration for a short period, then painting at New York School of Art under legendary masters William Mer­ritt Chase and Robert Henri. He visited Europe three times (from 1906 to 1907, in 1909 and 1910) and his experiences in Paris, above all, made a lasting mark on him: he remained a lifelong Francophile, even after settling permanently in New York in 1913. Despite his imposing physical presence – he was six foot two – he was famous for his reserve, and very rarely wrote or spoke about his work. He died at the age of 84 and his work enjoyed the esteem of critics and the public throughout his career, despite the success of the up-and-coming avant-garde movements, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. In 1948 the magazine "Look" named him one of America's greatest artists; in 1950 the Whitney Museum dedicated an important retrospective to him, and in 1956 he appeared on the cover of"Time". In 1967, the year of his death, he represented the United States at the prestigious Bienal di São Paulo. Since then Hopper's work has been celebrated in numerous exhibitions and has inspired countless painters, poets and filmmakers. In a 1995 essay the great novelist John Updike paid an eloquent tribute to his "calm, silent, stoic, luminous, classic" works. The exhibition Edward Hopper's career is closely linked to the Whitney Museum of American Art, which hosted various exhibitions of his works from the first in 1920 at the Whitney Studio Club, to the memorable shows held in the museum in 1960, 1964 and 1980. Since 1968, thanks to the bequest of the artist's widow Josephine, the Whitney has been home to his entire legacy: more than 3,000 works which include paintings, drawings and etchings. Curated by Carter Foster, the Whitney Museum curator who granted the loan of the largest nucleus of works, the exhibition, realized with the technical coordination of Carol Troyen, also boasts other important loans from the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago and the Columbus Museum of Art. Structured in seven sections according to chronological order and theme, the Italian exhibition covers Hopper's entire oeuvre, from his education, to his years as a student in Paris, up to his "classic" and best-known period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, closing with the large, intense images of his later years. The show explores all of the artist's favorite techniques: oil, watercolor and etching, and devotes special attention to the fascinating relationship between his preparatory drawings and his paintings: a vital aspect of his work that up till now has not been greatly explored in the exhibitions dedicated to him. The first three sections: "Self Portraits", "Education and Early Works. Hopper the Illustrator" and "Hopper in Paris", present a group of promising self portraits, the works from his academic period and the light-filled sketches and works of his Paris period, such as the well-known painting "Soir Bleu" (1914). The room dedicated to "Defining the Image: Hopper the Etcher", with masterpieces such as "Night Shadows" (1921) and "Evening Wind" (1921), highlights his elegant technique and that "sense of the incredible potential of everyday life" that brought him great success and marked the start of a distinguished career. The section entitled "Hopper's Method: from Sketch to Canvas", which celebrates the artist's extraordinary talent for drawing, and explores his modus operandi, presents a significant set of preparatory drawings for paintings such as "Morning Sun" (1952) and the earlier work "New York Movie" (1939), the sketches for which clearly reveal how his female figure takes shape: starting out almost as a portrait of his wife Jo (his only model), the figure gradually evolves into the pensive usherette with film star looks standing in the movie theatre – one of the artist's favorite subjects. This section shows how Hopper's realism is often the result of an amalgamation of several images and situations captured at different times and places, not a simple reproduction from life. The exhibition also exceptionally includes one of his Artist's Ledger Book, the famous ledgers he and his wife compiled, and which contain sketches of many of his oil paintings. In the rooms dedicated to "Hopper's Eroticism" the exhibition gathers some of his most significant images of women absorbed in contemplation, for the most part nude or partially undressed, alone in interiors. Together with the works in the section "Artist's Essence: Time, Space, Memory" these works are a consummate representation of the artist's aesthetic, his understated form of realism and above all his ability to reveal beauty in the most common subjects, often with a cinematographic slant that was much appreciated by the critics. Hopper has long been associated with atmospheric images of urban buildings and the people who inhabit them, but rather than skyscrapers – emblems of the aspirations of the jazz age – he preferred the dilapidated red facades of anonymous shops, and lesser-known bridges. Some of his favorite subjects are images of life in tranquil middle class apartments, often glimpsed through a window from a passing train, and settings like diners and movie theatres; images that have acquired iconic status, as in some of the famous masterpieces presented here: "Cape Cod Sunset" (1934), "Second Story Sun­light" (1960) and "A Woman in the Sun" (1961). Hopper also painted some stunning watercolors during summers spent in Gloucester (Massachusetts), in Maine, and in Truro (Cape Cod) as of 1930. The sea rarely features in these paintings, which show sun-baked sand dunes, lighthouses and humble cottages, enlivened by sensuous contrasts of light and shade; paintings which always hint at a story yet leave the motivations of the protagonists unclear. The exhibition also features an important photographic, biographical and historical component, tracing American history from the 1920s to the 1960s: the Depression, the Kennedys, the boom years. An opportunity for greater insight into today's global recession and Barack Obama's America. Installation Friday, 29th August 1952, 6 A.M., New York The Edward Hopper exhibition aims to see people as "active subjects" rather than "consumers", with a view to creating an event that, first and foremost, will be a unique, engaging experience for visitors. With this objective in mind, for the first time in Italy the exhibition exceptionally hosts an interactive and multimedia installation by Gustav Deutsch, the renowned Austrian film maker and video artist (Vienna 1952), who has produced countless films, videos and performances throughout the world. Chosen by Arthemisia, in agreement with Palazzo Reale in Milan, the installation entitled "Friday, 29th August 1952, 6 A.M., New York" will enable visitors to physically enter Hopper's world, with a reconstruction of the setting depicted in the painting "Morning Sun" (1952). In this way visitors will be able to appear in the painting, entering the "set" and moving around at will, like actors in a series of brief plays, filmed by a camera and projected onto a screen.  Visit : http://www.comune.milano.it/portale/wps/portal/CDMHome

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:00 PM PST 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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