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

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• The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art Presents the First Major William Blake Exhibition in Russia
• Gary Nader Announces Auction to Coincide With Art Basel Miami Beach
• The Verve Gallery Shows Staged Photographs of Three Artists
• The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art Presents Winter Exhibitions
• The New Art Dealers Alliance in Miami Beach for the 9th edition of NADA Exhibitors
• The Complete Collection of Elizabeth Taylor Displayed at Christie's in New York
• Scottish National Portrait Gallery opens following $27.4 Million Restoration
• MAMAC Presents Figurative Works From its Collection
• The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo Exhibits "Goya from Museo del Prado"
• The Tel Aviv Art Museum ~ The World’s Finest Collection Of Israeli Art & International Fine Art
• The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia features a Retrospective of Sculptor Joe Fafard
• Christie's to Offer Magnificent Gustav Klimt Portrait in London
• "Original" Reproductions by Marcel Duchamp at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
• Fundación Barrié de la Maza presents Designer George Nelson Retrospective
• Marc Chagall in Paris During the Early 20th Century at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Van Gogh Museum Bids a Festive Welcome to the 200,000th Visitor
• Isamu Noguchi at Yorkshire Sculpture Park ~ Noguchi and Iconic Designers
• The Brighton Museum & Art Gallery Shows the Art of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell
• Gustav Klimt ~ Swingers in Vienna Art Hall Highlight Provocative Masterpiece
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art Presents the First Major William Blake Exhibition in Russia Posted: 29 Nov 2011 09:28 PM PST Moscow.- The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art is proud to present "William Blake and British Visionary Art" on view at the museum from November 29th through February 19th 2012. This is the first major exhibition to present Blake's visual art in Russia as well as being the first exhibition to explore Blake and his legacy. The exhibition is a collaborative project between the Tate and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art in partnership with the British Council.Drawn mainly from Tate's Collection alongside works generously lent from other British collections, the exhibition consists of approximately 110 of Blake's works, including many of his best known images such as The Ghost of a Flea c.1819-20. It also includes the recently discovered hand-coloured etchings from the major prophetic work The First Book of Urizen 1796 c.1818. Although mainly overlooked during his lifetime, Blake's impact and influence on later generations of artists, writers and musicians has been enormous. His visionary ideas, and his ability to convey these in both poetry and painting, remain a major reference point in British culture today and this show aims to reveal his remarkable art and its visual legacy to a Russian audience. The expression of spiritual values through bodily form is the hallmark of Blake's visionary art and came to influence both the Symbolist art of the later nineteenth century and the neo-romantic revival of the 1930s. Many of the artists associated with these movements saw Blake as a pioneer in imagining infinite possibilities for sensory and spiritual experience. His work has been a reference point for artists nationally and internationally and this exhibition will include over twenty works by British artists who have been influenced by Blake including Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Piper and Francis Bacon. As part of the Blake in Russia project a new Russian translation of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience has been jointly published by the British Council and the State Library of Foreign Literature. Blake was not so much a poet, printmaker and artist but rather that his chosen form allowed all these things to come together on one page. His illustrations were never set along aside the poems, and the poems were not typeset.  Rather he actually made prints of his poems and pictures together. This is the first time that Blake's illustrations have ever been published alongside his poetry in Russia. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The museum's name is misleading, as it has nothing to do with the famous Russian poet. It was founded by professor Ivan Tsvetaev (father of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva). Tsvetaev persuaded the millionaire and philanthropist Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov and the fashionable architect Roman Klein of the urgent need to give Moscow a fine arts museum. The museum building was designed by Roman Klein and Vladimir Shukhov and financed primarily by Yury Nechaev-Maltsov. Construction work began in 1898 and continued till 1912. Ivan Rerberg headed structural engineering effort on the museum site for 12 years, till 1909. Tsvetaev's dream was realised in May 1912, when the museum opened its doors to the public. The museum was originally named after Alexander III, although the government provided only 200,000 rubles toward its construction, in comparison with over 2 million from Nechaev-Maltsev. Its first exhibits were copies of ancient statuary, thought indispensable for the education of art students. The only genuinely ancient items - Moscow Mathematical Papyrus and Story of Wenamun - had been contributed by Vladimir Golenishchev three years earlier. After the Russian capital was moved to Moscow in 1918, the Soviet government decided to transfer thousands of works from St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum to the new capital. The entire collection of Western art from the Museum Roumjantsev was added too. These paintings formed a nucleus of the Pushkin museum's collections of Western art. But the most important paintings were added later from the State Museum of New Western Art. These comprised Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artwork, including top works by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Georges Dufrénoy and Henri Matisse. Among them Van Goghs "Le Vigne Rouge" apparently the only painting sold during the artist's lifetime. In 1937, Pushkin's name was appended to the museum, because the Soviet Union marked the centenary of the poet's death that year. The Pushkin Museum is still a main depositary of Troy's fabulous gold looted from Troy by the German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann and taken by the Soviet Army (Red Army) from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The International musical festival Svyatoslav Richter's December nights has been held in the Pushkin museum since 1981. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museum.ru/M296

Gary Nader Announces Auction to Coincide With Art Basel Miami Beach Posted: 29 Nov 2011 09:27 PM PST Coral Gables, FL.- Gary Nader is pleased to announce his next Latin American, Modern and Contemporary Art Auction. The Auction artworks will be on display from Thursday, November 17th, 2011. The Auction will take place on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 during the celebration of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011. Full color printed and online catalogues will be available. Gary Nader is requesting artworks by some of the most important Latin American, Modern and Contemporary artists for inclusion in the auciton.

The Verve Gallery Shows Staged Photographs of Three Artists Posted: 29 Nov 2011 09:02 PM PST Santa Fe, New Mexico.- The Verve Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition with three artists, the collaborative team of Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (known simply as Charbonneau/French) and artist Jennifer B. Hudson. These artists work narratively, using stories and ideas that play out visually in their staged imagery. Jennifer B. Hudson's small prints will grace the walls of the smaller and more intimate room in the gallery and Charbonneau/French's large scale work will be exhibited in the main gallery space. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31st. The collaborative team Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (Charbonneau / French) debut their first exhibition at Verve Gallery with 21 large-scale photographs from both their Massillon and Playground series. Their work has been appropriately described as images with Victorian-era aesthetics and a 19th century craftsmanship. They produce their work by combining traditional black and white darkroom techniques with contemporary photographic processes. The Massillon series takes its name from the Ohio town where Eliza French's great-grandmother, Zeta Eliza Woolley, lived at the turn of the 20th century.

The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art Presents Winter Exhibitions Posted: 29 Nov 2011 08:41 PM PST Toronto, Ontario.- The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art is pleased to launch its winter exhibition season with two spectacular projects; "Ineffable Plasticity: the experience of being human" and "Human / Nature" through December 31st. Taking shape according to the most current work within each artist's practice, "Ineffable Plasticity: the experience of being human" considers the idea that all human attributes and activity are an expression of nature. The exhibition looks at nature as an unstoppable force that governs and defines us, challenging the notion that anything could be construed as unnatural, whether psychological or physical. The apocalypse on people's minds these days, regardless of culture or creed, is the notion of an eco-apocalypse. What's striking is that the end of humanity is not the end of the world, but it is another extinction. The world, the universe, the nature that we are an incarnation of, won't come to a halt. It's revealing of a faulty sense of protuberance in nature to think that we are capable of destroying anything.

The New Art Dealers Alliance in Miami Beach for the 9th edition of NADA Exhibitors Posted: 29 Nov 2011 08:25 PM PST MIAMI BEACH, FL.- The New Art Dealers Alliance announces the 9th annual NADA Miami Beach on December 1st through December 4th at the Deauville Beach Resort (6701 Collins Ave) in its expansive Napoleon, Richelieu, and Le Jardin Ballrooms. NADA Miami Beach is recognized as the preeminent fair featuring the world's most significant emerging art galleries from over 30 cities worldwide. The fair is prominently recognized for celebrating new and innovative contemporary art from rising talents around the globe. In an effort to accommodate the tremendous response from the 2010 fair, NADA has expanded to the Deauville's third ballroom, called Le Jardin. This year the fair offers three booth sizes, giving NADA exhibitors a variety of options in designing their presentations. NADA Miami Beach will again present a new roster of NADA Projects - an invitational developed to showcase new, innovative and idiosyncratic programs.

The Complete Collection of Elizabeth Taylor Displayed at Christie's in New York Posted: 29 Nov 2011 08:12 PM PST NEW YORK, N.Y.- Over Thanksgiving weekend, a team of practiced installers convened at Christie's flagship headquarters in Rockefeller Center to begin construction and installation of one of the most anticipated exhibitions in U.S. auction history: the complete Collection of Elizabeth Taylor. This stunning display of nearly 2,000 individual items from the personal collection of America's last great film star and fashion icon will open to the public on Saturday, December 3rd for an unprecedented ten-day exhibition that runs through December 12. Christie's has devoted all 300,000 square feet of its facility to this museum-quality exhibition of Elizabeth Taylor's collections of jewelry, fashion, accessories, fine art, film memorabilia, costumes and decorative items. The auctions will take place December 13-16 and are expected to exceed $50 million in total.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery opens following $27.4 Million Restoration Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:55 PM PST EDINBURGH.- The Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) will open on 1 December, following an ambitious £17.6m restoration project and with an entirely new presentation of its world-famous collection. The project – the first major refurbishment in the Gallery's 120-year history – has restored much of the architect's original vision, opening up previously inaccessible parts of the building and increasing the public space by more than 60 percent. It has also added a range of new facilities that will utterly transform visitors' experience of the Gallery. Entry to the new Portrait Gallery will be completely free. The SNPG opened in 1889 as the world's first purpose-built portrait gallery and is now an iconic landmark in the heart of Scotland's capital. Over the past century, its collection of portraits has grown to become one of the largest and finest in the world, comprising 3,000 paintings and sculptures, 25,000 prints and drawings. This distinctive red sandstone building also houses the national collection of photography with some 38,000 historic and modern photographs.

MAMAC Presents Figurative Works From its Collection Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:33 PM PST Nice, France.- The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art ( MAMAC ) of the City of Nice is pleased to present a new exhibition at the Gallery Ponchettes, a selection from its collection on the theme of "Figuration Free of the Figure". The exhibition is on view through January 15th 2012. Figuration was the main motivation of many artists in the 1980s. Artists including Jean-Michel Alberola , Jean-Charles Blais , Rémi Blanchard , François Boisrond , Robert Combas and Hervé Di Rosa , addressed topics related to comics, graffiti and street slogans, in an ironic and deliberately naive fashion. This exhibition present works by these artists as well as Denis Castellas, Luciano Castelli, Keith Haring , Antonio Recalcati, Gerald Thupinier and Vladimir Velickovic , all exploring the theme of the figure in the collections of MAMAC.

The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo Exhibits "Goya from Museo del Prado" Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:32 PM PST Tokyo.- The National Museum of Western Art is proud to show "Goya: Light and Shade. Masterpieces from the Museo del Prado" on view through January 29th 2012. The Museo del Prado is continuing its rewarding collaboration with Japan in this third exhibition project, the first to be devoted to a single artist. It marks the culmination of a decade of exhibitions co-organised with leading Japanese institutions and made possible through the sponsorship of The Yomiuri Shimbun. Following the two exhibitions entitled Masterpieces from the Museo del Prado held in 2002 and 2006, which comprised rigorous selections of some of the Museum's masterpieces, this exhibition will be entirely devoted to one of the most important names within the Prado's collection: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. The Prado has placed great emphasis on the organisation of this exhibition, which will present a sizeable selection of its collection of paintings, drawings and prints by Goya, one of the artists most admired by the Japanese public. The works to be shown have been selected with the intention of offering the visiting public a chronological survey of the work of Goya. Without aiming at being exhaustive, the exhibition will be structured into different sections in the manner of small visual accounts that will analyse the principal themes depicted by the artist during the course of his career. The result will be to present a series of fundamental ideas around which Goya's artistic, political and social thinking was articulated. The different sections of the exhibition will thus reflect the social reality of Goya's life, in which monarchs, the social elite, his friends and the working people all played prominent roles. It will also focus on the thematic variety and impressive technique evident throughout Goya's oeuvre in all the different media in which he worked, as well as the fact that he simultaneously produced official commissions and other works of a freer, more critical nature that were the response to his own expressive needs. An important aspect of the exhibition is its emphasis on Goya's astonishing mastery of the different techniques employed in his paintings, drawings and prints, which laid the way for the subsequent liberation achieved by modern art. Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to appreciate technical and conceptual links between Goya and later artists that established a unique path and one that made him 'the first modern artist'. The exhibition will feature more than 100 works, including 45 prints by Goya from the National Museum of Western Art's own colleciton as well as 6 from other Japanese institutions: the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum and the Fuji Art Museum, the latter also in Tokyo. The Museo del Prado will be lending around 25 paintings and 46 works on paper. The National Museum of Western Art was established in April 1959 and was based on the Matsukata Collection focusing on the Impressionist paintings and Auguste Rodin's sculptures previously stored by the French government. The museum's purpose is to provide the public with opportunities to appreciate western art. Since its opening, the museum, as Japan's only national institution devoted to western art, has been involved in exhibitions, art work and document acquisition, research, restoration and conservation, education and the publication of materials related to western art. The museum exhibits works from the Matsukata Collection as well as works created from the Renaissance to the early 20th century that have been acquired since the museum's opening. The museum has purchased art work every year since its establishment in its efforts to build and develop its permanent collection. These permanent collection works are displayed in the Main Building (Le Corbusier, 1959) and New Wing (MAEKAWA Kunio, 1979) throughout the year. The museum is involved in the development and organization of a special exhibition every year. These exhibitions feature works on loan from private collections and museums both in and out of Japan. The museum also co-sponsors exhibitions organized jointly with outside organizations, including major newspapers, that are held held twice a year. Special exhibitions are displayed in the Exhibition Galleries completed in 1997. The museum's collection features pre-18th century paintings including those by Andreas Ritzos, Joos Van Cleve, Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens, Salomon Van Ruysdael, and Jusepe de Ribera, 19th to early 20th century French paintings including works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Gustave Moreau and works by the next generation of artists, such as Albert Marquet, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Jean Dubuffet and Jackson Pollock. Visit the museum's website at ... http://collection.nmwa.go.jp

The Tel Aviv Art Museum ~ The World’s Finest Collection Of Israeli Art & International Fine Art Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:19 PM PST The Tel Aviv Art Museum is Israel's leading museum of modern and contemporary art as well as being home to one of the world's largest collections of Israeli art and a fine selection of Old Masters. Since its founding in 1932, the Museum has served as one of Tel Aviv's major cultural hubs, displaying a vibrant mix of permanent collections and temporary exhibitions in a wide variety of fields. Each year, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art welcomes more than 750,000 visitors annualy. Situated in an impressive architectural complex, the Museum is an integral part of the city's major cultural center (the Golda Meir Cultural and Art Center) home to the Israeli Opera and the Cameri Theater. In addition to its collections, the Museum presents performances of music and dance, film, and lecture series on philosophy and art. The fully computerized art library and its Documentation Center for Art in Israel serve over 15,000 students, scholars and curators each year. The library subscribes to the major art journals and receives the latest catalogues of exhibitions of Israeli art, modern and contemporary art, photography, design and architecture. It is the most comprehensive reference center in the Middle East. The Museum's original building on Rothschild Boulevard was donated by Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, who gave his home over to the city to be officially transformed into the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1932. It was at this building that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948. The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959 and was fully renovated in 1989 with funds provided by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation and the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo. The museum moved to its current location on King Saul Avenue in 1971. Another wing was added in 1999 and a sculpture garden was established. Each week some 1,500 children, youth and adults from all walks of life attend classes in painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, photography, video and computer art, and printmaking at the Museum's Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Center. The Museum announced, in 2002, a competition for the design of a new building of about 22,000 square meters, enabled by a donation from Herta and Paul Amir. The design competition was won by the Preston Scott Cohen (head of the Harvard University Graduate School of Architecture). His horizontal "radiator" model is currently under construction and due for completion in late 2011. This new wing is simultaneously linear and multi-layered. A vertical "light fall" drains the building's vertical dimension, orientates the visitor, unites all spaces around it, leads from one level to another, and brings natural light to the building's lower level. The building's exterior envelope, an extended "folding" surface that breaks at disparate-angled modules, is a dynamic ornament made of 430 polished cement panels manufactured on location. The Tel Aviv Museum's Art Library serves as a research center for thousands of students, scholars, art critics, authors and curators from Israel and abroad. Known for its comprehensive collection of books, the library is often the sole resource in Israel for background information on modern and contemporary art and design. The museum also contains museum shops and a restaurant. Visit the Tel Aviv Art Museum's website at … http://www.tamuseum.com The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is Israel's leading museum of modern and contemporary art, and home to one of the world's largest collections of Israeli art. A large part of the Museum's permanent collections (consisting of over 23,000 items) has been generously donated by artists, art patrons and benefactors. The holdings are also complemented and enriched by numerous works and collections entrusted to the Museum, which serve as a testimony to the extraordinary international support this institution receives from dedicated collectors and friends around the world. The collection of modern and contemporary art encompasses works by leading pioneers of Modernism and a representative selection of the diverse postwar and contemporary trends that developed in Europe and the United States. Most major art movements of the late 19th through the mid-20th century are highlighted in the Moshe and Sara Mayer Collection, the Mizne-Blumental Collection, and the Simon and Marie Jaglom Collection. These collections include masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Bonnard, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Klimt, Mondrian, Modigliani, Braque and Miró, as well as fine works by Léger and Picasso representing different periods in their art. Important works of Surrealism and Abstract art characterize the significant donation by Peggy Guggenheim in the 1950s with masterpieces by Tanguy, Masson and Nicholson. Of particular note are works representing the beginnings of American Abstract Expressionism, among them paintings by Jackson Pollock. A sculpture collection donated by Helene and Zygfryd Wolloch spans the late 19th century through the 1980s and includes works by Arp, Giacometti, Moore and Calder. Together with works by Jacques Lipchitz, given by the Jacques and Yulla Lipchitz Foundation, they have significantly enriched the Museum's holdings of modern sculpture. Various trends in Geometrical Abstract art from Russian Constructivism through Minimalism are well represented in the important donation of the Riklis Collection of the McCrory Corporation. Postwar European trends such as Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and Arte Povera, as well as contemporary art by leading artists such as Boetti, Cucchi, and Paladino, constitute the core of the collection donated by Vera and Arturo Schwarz. Among numerous pieces of European and American art, emblematic works by Francis Bacon and David Salle highlight the gift made to the Museum by Susan and Anton Roland-Rosenberg. The Museum's major assets also include a group of early and unique works by Alexander Archipenko, a selection of paintings by Marc Chagall illustrating the variety of his styles, as well as a large mural in the Museum lobby, which was especially conceived and executed by Roy Lichtenstein as a gift to the Museum. The Museum is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Israeli art in the world. This unique collection traces the development of Israeli art from its beginnings and through the 1920s – when the Modernist style of painting in Israel emerged, to contemporary Israeli art. Israeli artists have been particularly concerned with questions of identity and conflict. They explore topics as varied as local landscapes and Mediterranean light, Jewish tradition and its complex attitude toward figurative art, and socio-political as well as urban issues: local versus universal, periphery versus center, or east versus west dialectics. Recently, Israeli artists have become much more present on the international art scene. Often, the Museum has served as a springboard for these artists, by showcasing solo exhibitions accompanied by extensive catalogues and by acquiring some of their major art works. Over the years, the Museum collection of Israeli art has been steadily enlarged through generous gifts from artists, benefactors and acquisition funds, such as the Recanati Fund, the Ettinger-Gilman Fund, the Lily Richmond Fund, the Uzi Zucker Fund, the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation, the Rappaport Prize, the Isracard Foundation and the support of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. The Department of Old Masters was established (as an independent department) in 1988. The Museum's Old Masters Collection, which includes about 150 paintings and sculptures and some 50 works on loan, is presented in six galleries: four galleries in the Museum's main building, and two galleries dedicated to decorative art at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion. The Museum's Old Masters Collection specializes in 16th to 18th century Italian art and 16th to 17th century Flemish and Dutch art, with paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Honthorst, Teniers, Van Goyen, Canaletto, Rigaud and Reynolds. Works by 19th century Jewish artists are also included, among them, Maurycy Gottlieb and Jozef Israëls. Recently, the Danek and Jadzia Gertner Collection of decorative art has enriched the Department's collections. Works of Meissen porcelain and glassware by Emile Gallé are currently on display at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion in the Danek and Jadzia Gertner Galleries. Helena Rubinsteins' Miniature Rooms is also part of the Department. The Department of Drawings and Prints houses a collection of 25 thousand works on paper including sketches, drawings, prints, artists' books, and illustrated books of artists from all periods, with a special emphasis on artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An important and unique component of the collection is the assemblage of drawings and prints representing early twentieth century German Expressionism. The Dr. Karl Schwarz Collection, the Goeritz Collection, and the Hermann Struck Collection which were donated to the Tel Aviv Museum in its early years led to the donation of another important collection, that of Avraham Horodisch from Amsterdam, a collector and publisher of prints from Germany in the 1920s. An important unit of the collection consists of 150 prints by the renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch donated in 1986 by Charles and Evelyn Kramer of New York. The Munch Collection at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, as one of the largest collections in the world of prints by this artist, offers a representative selection of Munch's graphic work including etchings, lithographs, and colored woodcuts, with the earliest of them created in Berlin (1894-95) through to prints made in his last years. An additional component of the collection consists of 300 prints and books by Surrealist artists which were also donated by Charles and Evelyn Kramer of New York in 1990. This collection directs attention to the close collaboration between the artists, writers, and poets who created in the spirit of Surrealism. The Museum's photography collection was begun in 1977 with Israeli photographer Micha Bar Am, and encompasses important pictures of the Middle East taken by 19th and early 20th century European photographers, such as Francis Frith and Félix Bonfils, and a collection of rare glass negatives of E.M. Lilien donated by the Schocken family; works by American photojournalists W. Eugene Smith and Weegee, donated by Michael S. Sachs; as well as photographs by Robert Capa donated by Cornelia and Edith Capa, and other international Modernist and Post-Modernist artists. A collection of Soviet photography from the 1930s to 1970s was donated by Howard Schickler and David LaFaille and an anonymous donor. Courtesy of the Marc Rich Foundation for Education, Cultura and Welfare, the Department has a strong representation of works by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Thanks to donations by Michaela and Leon Constantiner, who initiated the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, the representation of contemporary Israeli photography in the collection has been growing steadily, now including works by internationally renowned photographers Adi Nes, Pavel Wolberg and Barry Frydlender. The exhibitions of the Department of Design and Architecture are cutting edge. In the Department's collection are included works that represent a prospectus of solo exhibitions and thematic exhibitions that were held in the Department, among them: Gaetano Pesce, Ron Arad, Chanan de-Lange, Charles and Ray Eames, Enzo Mari, Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, Ron Gilad, Yaacov Kaufman, Tal Gur, Ayala Tzarfati, Fernando and Huberto Campanga, Esther Knobel, and Irit Abba. The Tel Aviv Art Museum hosts more than twenty temporary exhibitions every year, focused both on local and international artists. Amongst the exhibitions currently on show is "More than Canvas", until 27 October 2011 features a fascinating collection of works, showing the diverse range of materials that artists have worked on. It includes works on paper, canvas, wood, leaves glass and computer screens and shows that any surface can serve as support for a painting on which color, lines and forms merge into one whole. This interactive exhibition exposes children and adults to works of art executed on traditional as well as other kinds of support: traffic lights, leaves, stones, walls and the body. Children will have an opportunity to actually feel the various kinds of supports, in order to better understand how the material of the support affects the choice of medium and technique. "Neo-Expressionist Painting From Berlin – Gift of Susan and Martin Sanders" (until 27 March 2011) is held in honor of the generous gift of Susan and Martin Sanders, New York, to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, that includes important works by some of the prominent Neo-Expressionist artists active in Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s: Karl Horst Hödicke, Rainer Fetting, Salomé, Helmut Middendorf and Peter Chevalier. Their works represent interesting aspects of the "back to painting" trend that had swept over the centers of the western world, in Europe and the USA, as a backlash to the minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. The Neo-Expressionist artists reacted to their complex reality in West Berlin in the shadow of the Cold War, through sensuous, tactile painting that assimilated the colorful intensity and formal elements of German Expressionism of early 20th century and of American Abstract Expressionism. The fresh and lively aesthetic approach of these paintings was characterized by large formats, bold color, narrative, upfront exposure of the self, provocativity, seductiveness and assimilation of images outside the realm of art. "Avi Ganor: RealityTrauma" opens on March 19th 2011. Artist Avi Ganor has been involved in photography since 1975. A Science Studies graduate at the Technion, he studied Business Management at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Pratt Institute, New York; and Digital Media Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. He has taught at the Departments of Photography and of Visual Communication at Bezalel, Jerusalem, and held solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1985 and The Israel Museum in 1990. Alongside his photographic work, Ganor researches theoretical aspects of the medium. His works deal with the necessity of using forced metaphors, and the fluid moderation of the relationships between actuality and physical existence, between trauma and reality. The exhibition presents some 30 works from the series "RealityTrauma" (2003–2010), in direct "close to home" documentary diary style, through an allegorical poetic observation of both concepts and their conversion into a third, unified concept into which they collapse. In their reductive manner, the works offer a way to deal with horror as the concept of trauma escapes an appropriate interpretation, whether literal or visual. Beyond description, they seek to represent the indefinable, conducting a complex, tortuous discourse with the medium and with the way various genres deal with representation.

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia features a Retrospective of Sculptor Joe Fafard Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:18 PM PST   Halifax, Nova Scotia -  The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia will have an opportunity to admire the impressive works – ceramic, bronze, plaster, and steel sculptures, as well as works on paper – of artist Joe Fafard. Considered one of Canada's finest sculptors, people are "fascinated by his skill and ability to observe the minute" says National Gallery of Canada director Pierre Théberge.  Organized by the NGC in partnership with Regina's MacKenzie Art Gallery, Joe Fafard is the artist's first major retrospective, covering a period of more than forty years. On view through 8 February, 2009.

Christie's to Offer Magnificent Gustav Klimt Portrait in London Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:17 PM PST LONDON.- Christie's announced that they will offer one of the last of the great female portraits painted by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) at the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 23 June 2010. Executed in 1917-18, Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III) is the third and final painting in a series of three portraits commissioned by the Munk family of their daughter Ria. One of the last and most modern of Klimt's full-length female portraits, the painting offers a glimpse into the working methods of one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century and is expected to realise £14 million to £18 million.

"Original" Reproductions by Marcel Duchamp at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:16 PM PST TEL AVIV.- "Impossible for me to recall the original phrase", Duchamp noted alongside his signature on the replica of the readymade Bottle Rack in 1960. The first Bottle Rack that was found-chosen by Duchamp in 1914, was lost shortly after being chosen, and its caption remains unknown. The replica was purchased by Robert Rauschenberg for three dollars, following its presentation in the 1959 "Art and the Found Object" exhibition. It was preceded by two signed replicas (circa 1921; and 1936) and followed by three more approvals; but it was only in the act of signing this replica in 1960 that Duchamp made a double contradictory move: on the one hand, he re-applied the step of turning something into art—the signature—onto a mass-produced, practical object whose validity as an artistic object is based not on the appreciation of contemporary authorities (the scholar or the curator) but on its very announcement as such by the artist; on the other hand, he approved this replica, sold to Rauschenberg, as "an original" by the very sentence revealing the existence of a previous original.

Fundación Barrié de la Maza presents Designer George Nelson Retrospective Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:15 PM PST A CORUNA, SPAIN.- In the year 2008, the American designer George Nelson (1908-1986) would have celebrated his 100th birthday. To commemorate this occasion, the Vitra Design Museum is planning the first comprehensive retrospective of his work. Nelson was one of the most influential figures in American design during the second half of the twentieth century. With an architectural degree from Yale, he was not only active in the fields of architecture and design, but was also a widely respected writer and publicist, lecturer, curator, and a passionate photographer. His office produced numerous furnishings and interior designs that became modern classics, including the Coconut Chair (1956), the Marshmallow Sofa (1956), the Ball Clock (1947) and the Bubble Lamps (1952 onwards).

Marc Chagall in Paris During the Early 20th Century at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:14 PM PST PHILADELPHIA, PA.- As a center of cosmopolitan culture and a symbol of modernity, Paris held a magnetic attraction for artists from Eastern Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. Most painters and sculptors settled around Montparnasse, which was sprinkled with cafes, and art galleries. It was here that Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Margit Pogany, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine established studios and discovered each other's work. This exhibition will include around 40 paintings and sculptures by these émigrés, whose work was both imbued with the spirit of modernism and informed by their own cultural heritage. The exhibition will focus in particular on the paintings Chagall made between 1910 and 1920, including Half Past Three (The Poet), of 1911, one of the treasures of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle", which highlights an exceptional strength of the museum's holdings of early modern art, is presented in conjunction with a new international arts festival in Philadelphia that is being organized by the city's Kimmel Center and will run from April 7 to May 1, 2011. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle represents the Museum's contribution to this festival and will focus on the powerful influence that Paris had on Chagall and his contemporaries," said Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Museum. The curator of the exhibition, Michael R. Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Museum, continued: "This exhibition provides a unique opportunity to reconsider the cross-fertilization of ideas that took place in the French capital during the 1910s and 1920s, which was one of the most experimental and creative periods in Western art." Shortly after arriving in Paris in 1911, Marc Chagall rapidly assimilated the pictorial language of the most avant-garde artistic styles of the day, especially Cubism, and married it with the artistic traditions of his native Russia. Chagall developed his own remarkably inventive visual language while living and working at La Ruche (the beehive), so named because of its distinctive cylindrical shape and honeycomb-like maze of artists' studios. Located on the southwestern fringe of Montparnasse, La Ruche was a three-story-high building with a staircase in the center and studios radiating out from its core. Founded by the French sculptor Alfred Boucher, who converted the original domed central building into a series of small, wedge-shaped studios with large windows that provided excellent lighting, La Ruche opened in 1902 and, since the rent was minimal and artists' models were supplied free of charge, it quickly became a thriving artists' community, with its own theater and exhibition schedule. "In La Ruche," Chagall later said, "you either came out dead or famous." By the time Chagall moved there, La Ruche already held a large population of Eastern European artists who had moved to Paris to discover firsthand the most recent trends in modern art. Liberated from the often strict and rigid academic training of their former homelands, they experienced the vibrant artistic interchanges that made Paris such an attractive place to live and work as well as unparalleled exhibition opportunities. Among the other artists to live in or frequent La Ruche in the 1910s were Archipenko, Kisling, Lipchitz, Soutine, and Zadkine, who will be represented in the exhibition by two monumental sculptures in cedar wood that have not been displayed at the Museum since 1963. These émigrés, many of whom were Jewish, were also attracted to the religious tolerance of the French capital, which provided a safe new working environment free from the pogroms and persecution that their families had endured for generations in their former homelands of Russia, Poland, and other Eastern European countries. The French artist Fernand Léger also worked at La Ruche during this time, as did the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani, whose libertine behavior made him one of the most colorful personalities of this bohemian enclave. While sculptors and painters like Archipenko, Lipchitz, Marcoussis, and Zadkine experimented with the interlocking planes and sharply angled forms of Cubism, other artists attempted to reconcile modern art's abstract geometries with the folk traditions of their native lands. Chagall's brightly colored, folkloric paintings often make reference to the customs and rituals of Jewish life in Vitebsk in his native Russia (now Belorussia), although his monumental 1911 painting Half-Past Three (The Poet), made shortly after his arrival in Paris from art school in Saint Petersburg, reveals—quite literally—the head-spinning impact of Cubism, which encouraged him to incorporate fragmented planes and diagonal shafts of color into his compositions. During his early years in Paris, Chagall studied at the Académie de la Palette with the French Cubist painter Jean Metzinger, whose brightly colored geometric compositions undoubtedly informed Half-Past Three (The Poet) as well as other works from this period. The exhibition will be largely drawn from the Museum's outstanding collection of modern painting and sculpture, but this will be supplemented with a handful of key loans from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe. These include one of Chagall's most famous works, the early masterpiece Paris Through the Window, of 1913, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which presents a kaleidoscopic impression of the city of Paris as seen from Chagall's studio window at La Ruche. The deployment of strong, non-naturalistic color in this painting reveals the influence of Chagall's friend Robert Delaunay, who developed a more colorful and poetic variant of Cubism known as Orphism. The motif of the Eiffel Tower, which dominates the background of Paris Through the Window, was also a central feature of Delaunay's work at this time, although the Janus-headed man and the sphinx-like cat in the foreground belong to Chagall's imagination alone and imbues the work with a dream-like otherworldliness. Another important loan to the exhibition is the 1915 painting The Poet Reclining from the Tate Modern in London, which belongs to the same series of euphoric poet paintings as Half-Past Three (The Poet), which Chagall made four years earlier. In his first years in Paris, the artist counted among his closest friends the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, both of whom wrote eloquently about his work, and these delightfully tumultuous paintings address the themes of poetic reverie, fantasy and inspiration that also characterized his own approach to art-making. Like many of the La Ruche artists, Chagall returned to his homeland following the outbreak of World War I, which would have a deep impact on his future work, as seen in Wounded Soldier, of 1914, and The Smolensk Newspaper of the same year. In this poignant painting, a young man reacts to the newspaper headline regarding the outbreak of the global conflict with a mixture of terror and disbelief, surely realizing that he would be called up for military duty in the Russian army, while the older bearded man pensively reflects on the wars he has seen during his long life. During the war years Chagall continued to paint scenes that are evocative of his childhood in Vitebsk, such as Purim, of 1916-18, which remains one of his best-known and most beloved paintings of Jewish village life before the Russian Revolution. In 1923 Chagall returned to Paris at the request of the French art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned the artist to create a 100-plate cycle illustrating La Fontaine's Fables, one of the most revered works of French literature. This project dominated his work from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, as seen in The Watering Trough, of c.1925, where the bent-over female figure and smiling pig share the sense of otherworldly fantasy and charm that Chagall similarly expressed in the gouaches and prints that he made for the Fables project. The community of artists, writers, and musicians that sprang up in Montparnasse before World War I thrived for three decades, until the occupation of Paris by German troops on June 14, 1940. Like many Jewish artists, including Kisling and Lipchitz, Chagall spent World War II as a refugee in New York, having fled the catastrophe that now enveloped his beloved Paris.  Visit the website : http://www.philamuseum.org/

Van Gogh Museum Bids a Festive Welcome to the 200,000th Visitor Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:13 PM PST AMSTERDAM, NL - Director Axel Rüger welcomed the 200,000th visitor to the exhibition Van Gogh and the colours of the night in the Van Gogh Museum. The show, which opened to the public on 13th February, has gained enthusiastic press reviews both nationally and internationally. The New York Times wrote "Gain new insight into one of the 19th century's most influential artists with this unprecedented exhibition" while The International Herald Tribune concluded "A dazzling show charts Van Gogh's metamorphosis." Especially for this exhibition the museum has extended its opening hours, in addition to the Friday night the museum is also open until 22 hours on Thursdays and Saturdays.

Isamu Noguchi at Yorkshire Sculpture Park ~ Noguchi and Iconic Designers Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:12 PM PST WEST BRETTON, UK - Works range from monumental sculpture situated in landscaped gardens to smaller interior works, designs, drawings, furniture, dance sets, and works on paper. The first major European exhibition of work by renowned Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–88) opens on July 18, 2008, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, England.

The Brighton Museum & Art Gallery Shows the Art of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:11 PM PST Brighton, England.- The Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in the Royal Pavillion is pleased to present "Radical Bloomsbury: The Art of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell 1905-25" until October 9th. "Radical Bloomsbury" establishes a new understanding of the pictorial imagination of Bloomsbury by re-evaluating the unique painting partnership of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, exploring their relationship with avant-garde art from 1905 to 1925. It demonstrates how these Bloomsbury painters were among the earliest British artists to look at new developments in European art, such as French Post-Impressionist practices, and the importance of their role in modernising British art.

Gustav Klimt ~ Swingers in Vienna Art Hall Highlight Provocative Masterpiece Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:10 PM PST VIENNA, Austria — In the name of art, an Austrian landmark is encouraging visitors to confront their sexual inhibitions by having them walk through a swingers club to reach one of Gustav Klimt's masterpieces. The Secession - a world-renowned venue for contemporary art in downtown Vienna - has temporarily incorporated a sex club named "Element6" as part of a project by Swiss artist Christoph Buechel. The swingers are not there during the day, but their mattresses, erotic pictures, bar and whirlpool are. Secession spokeswoman Urte Schmitt-Ulms said Buechel hoped to spark a stir reminiscent of the scandal Klimt caused when his "Beethoven Frieze" was first exhibited in 1902. Now considered one of the Austrian painter's key pieces, it was once thought of as obscene and pornographic because of the way women's bodies were depicted. One section of the mural shows three mostly naked women, one with very large breasts who looks pregnant and the other two covered only by their long flowing tresses. Another includes naked mythical figures and a zombie-like, seminude female with stringy black hair. Three important innovations can be observed in the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt: the two-dimensional depiction and the monumental isolation of the human figure, the expressive use of line and the dominating role of ornament. Klimt's participation in the Beethoven experiment marks the beginning of his famous 'golden period'. Today, the monumental allegory is seen as one of the key works in the artist's development. The theme of the frieze is based on Richard Wagner's interpretation of the 9th Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. The Beethoven Frieze was originally intended as an ephemeral work of art and, like the other decorative paintings, it was to be removed after the close of the exhibition. It was only owing to fortunate circumstances, that the frieze was not destroyed as planned: the Secession was to present the following year a major Klimt retrospective (XVIIIth exhibition, 1903), and it was decided to leave the work of art in place.  While the club only opens at night long after the art hall closes, daytime visitors aged 18 and older pass through its dimly lit rooms on their way to see the Klimt wall painting located in the basement of the building. The room where the frieze is exhibited is locked at night for security reasons. But it too has its share of mattresses, surrounded by fake tropical plants and a life-size stuffed lion. Just outside the room is a non-working sauna, complete with a towel rack and bathrobes. Buechel declined to comment on his project, but the club, normally located in another part of town, said its participation "aims to give as many people as possible the opportunity to overcome their inhibitions." "In the framework of this exhibition at the Secession, each individual can test for himself or herself whether this opens up new dimensions for his or her own sexuality," the club said in a statement. There's no question that Buechel has succeeded in igniting a debate. "Group sex in the Secession - has our society completely lost it?" Austria's far-right Freedom Party asked. Yet on the streets of Vienna, people appeared more amused than appalled. "I think it's perfectly OK," said Moritz Wagner, a 26-year-old medical student. "It's not my thing but why not?" echoed a laughing Ute Wegscheider as she pushed her young daughter's stroller. "Maybe I should go check it out with my husband!" Gerald Adler of Britain's Kent School of Architecture, who was taking students to see the Secession, said Buechel should have chosen a different site - such as St. Stephen's Cathedral - if he wanted to make a real splash. "He's putting it in a place that's an accepted venue for avant-garde art, so it loses its effect," Adler said. The project runs until April 18. On the Net: The Secession: http://www.secession.at/e.html Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 29 Nov 2011 07:09 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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