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

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• First ever Exhibition in Australia dedicated to Renaissance Paintings opens in Canberra
• The California African American Museum Features Miguel Covarrubias
• Saatchi Gallery "New Sensations" nominee Ross Brown at EB&Flow in London
• The N2 Gallery in Barcelona Displays Sixeart's Andean Inspires Street Art
• The Bass Museum of Art Presents "Portrait of a Young Man ~ Laurent Grasso"
• The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to Show Barbara Sparks Photography
• The Stedelijk Museum Bureau Presents New Works by Tala Madani
• The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum Shows Oda Krohg & the Edvard Munch Circle
• National Gallery in London presents " Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian "
• 'Transformed Gods' ~ Classical Sculptures from the Museo del Prado in Dresden
• Tate Modern Presents First Large-Scale Showing of Futurism in Britain in Thirty Years
• Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Large-Scale Solo Dedicated to the Work of Anish Kapoor
• Sculpture by Painters - Painting in Dialogue with Plastic Art at Museum Frieder Burda
• Pablo Picasso "Three Lovers" Sold at Christie's Impressionist Modern Art Sale
• Christie's December Sale Celebrates New York’s Historical Design Gallery
• The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco
• K21 Kunstsammlung open Major Retrospective of Wilhelm Sasnal
• Guggenheim Announces Online Auction to Benefit Exhibition Programming
• The Fondation Beyeler honors French Artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) ~ 100 Years
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

First ever Exhibition in Australia dedicated to Renaissance Paintings opens in Canberra Posted: 10 Dec 2011 09:49 PM PST CANBERRA, AU - The National Gallery of Australia opened the first ever exhibition in Australia dedicated to Renaissance paintings. The exhibition is titled Renaissance – 15th & 16th Century Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, it is the Gallery's major summer exhibition. The exhibition features more than 70 paintings including works by Italian masters such as Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini and Mantegna – artists whose paintings have never been seen in Australia before. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of Italian art are the foundation of the grand tradition of European painting. The genius of artists such as Raphael, Botticelli and Titian is known to most Australians, but visitors to this exhibition will also discover the talents of less well known painters such as Tura, Crivelli, Lotto, Vivarini, Carpaccio, Perugino and Moroni. On view from 9 December through 9 April. None of the works in the exhibition has ever left Europe before. The paintings are only able to be loaned by the National Gallery of Australia because the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo is renovating its display spaces and is closed. The National Gallery of Australia has organised the exhibition in partnership with the City of Bergamo and its Pinacoteca Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. The city of Bergamo is situated in the province of Lombardy in Northern Italy, near Milan. 'Renaissance is an unparalleled opportunity for Australians to see works of extraordinary quality created by masters of the Early and High Renaissance period without having to travel overseas. There has never been an exhibition in Australia that has included fifteenthcentury Italian art, and this period is barely represented in Australian collections,' said Dr Ron Radford AM, Director of the National Gallery of Australia. 'Some of the most famous names in the history of art are represented in the exhibition. No paintings by Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini or Perugino have ever been shown in Australia before,' he said. The paintings emanate from cities and courts of Renaissance high culture. In Venice, Florence, Bergamo, Padua, Ferrara and Siena, the Church and private patrons commissioned religious scenes as well as magnificent portraits. Some of the paintings in this exhibition were originally sizeable church altarpieces, the like of which have rarely been seen in Australia, but the majority of the paintings are intimate devotional panels commissioned for private use. Christine Dixon, Senior Curator of International Painting and Sculpture, National Gallery of Australia and Co-ordinating Curator of the exhibition said, 'The Renaissance exhibition will provide visitors with an intriguing view of the beliefs and lifestyles of both the elite and the ordinary Italian citizen of the time. The Gallery is proud to present such a unique show which will allow visitors to appreciate the beauty of these 500 year old works which still speak to us today.' The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery. The Gallery has been extended twice, the first of which was the building of new temporary exhibition galleries on the eastern side of the building in 1997, to house large-scale temporary exhibitions, which was designed by Andrew Andersons of PTW Architects. This extension includes a sculptural garden, designed by Fiona Hall. Western art is arranged into a number of stylistic periods, which, historically, overlap each other as different styles flourished in different areas. Broadly the periods are, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Modern and Postmodern. Each of these is further subdivided. Out of the naturalist ethic of Realism grew a major artistic movement, Impressionism. The Impressionists pioneered the use of light in painting as they attempted to capture light as seen from the human eye. Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were all involved in the Impressionist movement. As a direct outgrowth of Impressionism came the development of Post-Impressionism. Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat are the best known Post-Impressionists.  Visit : http://www.nga.gov.au/Home/Default.cfm

The California African American Museum Features Miguel Covarrubias Posted: 10 Dec 2011 09:41 PM PST Los Angeles, California.- The California African American Museum is proud to present "The African Diaspora in the Art of Miguel Covarrubias: Driven By Color, Shaped By Cultures", on view at the museum through February 26, 2012.  The exhibition explores the representations of people of African descent in the work of Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957).  Covarrubias was a prolific painter, illustrator, caricaturist, writer, curator, archeologist and anthropologist.  Relocating from Mexico to New York City in 1923, he quickly became a member of the cultural elite whose many friends included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and the Rockefellers.  Through a renowned mural, colorful paintings, sketches, prints, books and magazines, this extensive CAAM curated exhibit highlights Covarrubias' multi-cultural depictions of the African Diaspora throughout the world.

Saatchi Gallery "New Sensations" nominee Ross Brown at EB&Flow in London Posted: 10 Dec 2011 09:24 PM PST LONDON.- EB&Flow gallery presents an exhibition of new work from Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4's New Sensations nominee Ross M.Brown. Brown's oil paintings explore the experience of built environments and focus on architectural landscapes in which abandoned structures take on a filmic appearance and a frail dystopian beauty. Brown's work investigates changes in usage that occur throughout the lifespan of built spaces. His new work is based on the history of the former USA Listening Station at Teufelsberg in Berlin. Originally built by the US National Security Agency during the Cold War to intercept radio transmissions, the site fell vacant after the fall of the Berlin wall and has become an impromptu venue nurturing the growth of certain subcultures. Like many locations in Berlin, the space at Teufelsberg is saturated by fragments of past ideologies which reside uncomfortably beneath the shifting landscape of the present.

The N2 Gallery in Barcelona Displays Sixeart's Andean Inspires Street Art Posted: 10 Dec 2011 08:53 PM PST Barcelona, Spain.- The N2 Gallery is proud to present "Sixeart: Cosmovisión Andina y los Hijos del Inti (Andean worldview and the Sons of Inti)", on view at the gallery through January 9th. "Cosmovisión Andina y los Hijos del Inti" is an approach to ancient Andean cultures, full of colour, wisdom and mysticism. Sixeart use his pictorial language in order to reinvent a new idea of ancestral reconnection. The conceptual part in Sixe's work has aroused the interest of Casa America in Madrid, where they will show an installation made specifically to coincide with ARCO (International Contemporart Art Fair in Madrid, Febraury 15th through February 19th 2012) and later, in March, an exhibition with all his latest work.

The Bass Museum of Art Presents "Portrait of a Young Man ~ Laurent Grasso" Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:51 PM PST Miami Beach, Florida.- The Bass Museum of Art is proud to present "Portrait of a Young Man: Laurent Grasso", on view at the museum through February 12th 2012. French artist Laurent Grasso investigates shifting and multiple time frames in his conceptual art practice. His project at the Bass Museum of Art juxtaposes historical works from our permanent collection of Renaissance and Baroque art with his own series of paintings, sculptures, videos and neons. Here, Grasso provocatively forms literal and figurative connections between the past and the present. The exhibition takes as its departure point Laurent Grasso's reflections on the rationality of the Renaissance, "the age of discovery," a period in time when man began seeing the world in a completely different manner, becoming interested in individuality, the natural world, science, cosmology and the study of geography. A time when science and the arts were not disparate fields but rather informed one another. In the exhibition, Grasso's fascination with history and science culminates in a recent series of paintings entitled Studies into the past.

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to Show Barbara Sparks Photography Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:35 PM PST Colorado Springs.- The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is proud to present "Coalascence: Photography by Barbara Sparks" on view from December 17th through February 19th. the exhibition features a luminous glimpse into the landscapes and cultures of Nepal, Turkey, Italy, Guatemala, New Mexico, and Colorado. "This exhibition is part of a 75-year commitment to the medium of photography that began in 1936, their founding year, with a major retrospective of Laura Gilpin," said Sam Gappmayer, the FAC President and CEO. Gilpin was a contemporary of Ansel Adams and was best known for her images of the Southwest and of the Broadmoor Art Academy (the FAC predecessor). For Sparks, a Colorado Springs native, the camera has become an essential part of her experiences traveling throughout the world.

The Stedelijk Museum Bureau Presents New Works by Tala Madani Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:15 PM PST Amsterdam.- The  Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam is pleased to present " Tala Madani : The Jinn" on view from December 10th through February 5th 2012. "The Djinn" is a powerful and elaborately constructed new body of painted, drawn and animated work by Tala Madani. Arab folklore and Islamic teachings depict the jinn as mythological creatures with magical powers who occupy a world next to our own, in which they intervene without restraint. By tracing the potential intrigues of these demons, Madani scrutinizes human obsessive behaviour and then skilfully sketches her observations – distinctly peppered with a dose of fantasy – upon canvases and sheets of paper. Madani's work is characterized by an illustrative stroke of the brush, moving back and forth across the borderline between the clear-cut line of comic strips and an expressionist use of color. Her energetic compositions situate her figures in absurd scenes touching upon the non-rational aspects of human behavior. Many of Madani's compositions are constructed as if taken by surveillance mechanisms, or candid cameras, which the figures depicted are conscious of, but ignored.

The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum Shows Oda Krohg & the Edvard Munch Circle Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:14 PM PST Bremen, Germany.- The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum is proud to present "Oda Krohg: Painter and Muse in Edvard Munch's Circle" on view at the museum through February 26th. Oda Krohg was born Othilia Pauline Christine Lasson in 1860 in Åsgårdstrand and despit having little formal art education, she quickly absorbed the knowledge of the artistic environment she was a part of. Her first years as an artist are seen as an example of new romantic painting. Her later portrait works make another, more robust impression. Oda was a central figure in the anti-culture movement of the Christiania Bohemians ("Kristiania-bohemen") in the 1880s and 1890s. In Edvard Munch's etching "kafeinteriør" (1893), Oda is surrounded by bohemians and people close to them including Munch, Christian Krohg, Jappe Nilssen, Hans Jæger, Gunnar Heiberg and Jørgen Engelhardt. Oda is said to have had affairs with all of these men apart from Munch. Above all though, Oda Krohg was a gifted avant-garde painter, her atmospheric, impressionist paintings influenced by the artistic trends of the time. In Scandinavia, Oda Krohg is widely recognised as one of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum's exhibit is on view concurrent with the Munch exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremen, allowing visitors to see these contemporary Norwegian artists. The exhibittion contains 21 of her paintings and a drawing alongside 12 by Edvard Munch, mostly portraits, these works illustrate the lifestyle of the members of the "Kristiania bohemians". By 1900 Krohg was one of the artists in the Bohemian scene in Christiania (modern-day Oslo) and had become known as the "true bohemian princess" as the poet Hans Jæger named her (and her 2nd husband, Christian Krohg, painted her portrait). Oda Krohg's evocative images are evidence of her intense involvement with the impressionism. Her debut as an artist came in 1886 at the Salon d'Automne with the pastel "Kristianiafjord (Japanese lantern)". It shows a young woman sitting in a doorway, deep in thought and gazing at a seascape. The scenery is wrapped in the special light from a Japanese paper lantern. This image is regarded as a precursor for Edvard Munch's famous summer night pictures. After spending some time in Berlin, Oda Krohg moved to Paris in 1897 with her then husband Gunnar Heiberg, who had a teaching position at the Académie Colarossi. Within a short time she became acquainted with some of the leading artists in the city, including Henri Matisse. In 1903 she showed at the Salon de Paris, and a year later held her first exhibition at the Salon d'Automne, where she continued to be regularly involved until 1909. In these later years, portrait painting became the center of her work. Krohg returned to oslo in 1911 and died there in 1935. The picturesque winding cooper street in the heart of the Hanseatic city of Bremen enjoys world famous for its because of its rich decoration brick architecture. The art collections Böttcherstraße form the architectural and cultural highlight of this unique ensemble. They include the Museum in the Roselius House, a mansion of the 16th Altbremer Century, with works from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, and the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, a fantastic construction of the sculptor, craftsman and architect Bernhard Hoetger. It is one of the finest examples of expressionist architecture in Germany. The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen Böttcherstraße was the world's first museum was dedicated to one artist and presents permanent masterpieces by its namesake. At the same time the building with its unique and moving style is a masterpiece of expressionist architecture in Germany. The artist Bernhard Hoetger (1874-1949), commissioned the design of the building in which his collection of works by Paula Modersohn-Becker should be accommodated. On 2 June 1927 the house was opened by the client. Through acquisitions and loans to the Paula Modersohn-Becker Foundation, the collection has expanded to show the full range and importance of this artist to the beginnings of modernity. The museum also houses the largest collection of sculptures, paintings and drawings by its architect Bernhard Hoetger. The exhibition rooms are used for special exhibitions, mostly of works by modern masters. Paula Modersohn-Becker was born in Dresden in 1876, but spent a large part of her childhood in Bremen. Deciding at a young age to become a painter, she studied at a private painting and drawing school in Berlin, before moving to Worpswede in 1898 to study with the figure painters Fritz Mackensen and Heinrich Vogeler. The main subjects were the life of the farmers and the northern German landscape. At this time she began close friendships with the sculptor Clara Westhoff (1875–1954) and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). She also fell in love during this period, and in 1901 she married a fellow Worpswede painter, Otto Modersohn. Between 1900 and 1907, Paula made several extended trips to Paris for artistic purposes and took some courses at the École des Beaux-Arts. She visited contemporary exhibitions often, and was particularly intrigued with the work of Paul Cézanne. Other post impressionists were especially influential, including Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Fauve influences may also appear in such works as "Poorhouse Woman with a Glass Bottle". The influence by the work of French painter, Jean-François Millet, who was widely admired among the artists in the Worpswede group, may be seen in such pieces as her 1900 Peat Cutters. In her last trip to Paris in 1906, she produced a body of paintings from which she felt very great excitement and satisfaction. During this period of painting, she produced her initial nude self-portraits (something surely unprecedented by a female painter) and portraits of friends such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Werner Sombart. Some critics consider this period of her art production to be the strongest and most compelling. Paula Modersohn-Becker died suddenly in Worpswede on November 20 from an embolism. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.pmbm.de

National Gallery in London presents " Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian " Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:10 PM PST   LONDON - A landmark exhibition at the National Gallery explores the dramatic rise of portraiture in the Renaissance, through the great Masters of Northern and Southern Europe. 'Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian' features masterpieces by, among others: Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Van Eyck, Holbein, Dürer, Lotto, Pontormo and Bellini. The exhibition provides a rare opportunity to explore Renaissance portraiture in exceptional depth, displaying over 70 paintings alongside important sculptures, drawings and medals. On exhibitions 15 October through 18 January, 2009. The National Gallery houses one of the richest collections of Renaissance portraits in the world, and a selection of these works, including Holbein's 'The Ambassadors', will be shown alongside major loans from the UK, Europe and North America. Highlights include masterpieces of Habsburg court portraiture on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado, including Titian's majestic warrior portrait of the young Philip II and Anthonis Mor's 'The Court Jester Pejeron'. The exhibition features many intriguing compositions from Holbein's 'A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling' (National Gallery) to Arcimboldo's 'Emperor Rudolph II' as Vertumnus (Skokloster Castle, Sweden), on display in the UK for the first time. In the 15th and 16th centuries, portraits played a vital role in every aspect of human life: childhood, politics, friendship, courtship, marriage, old age and death. The exhibition provides fresh insights into fundamental issues of likeness, memory and identity, while revealing a remarkable community of Renaissance personalities – from princes, envoys and merchants to clergymen, tradesmen and artists (Dürer, 'Self Portrait', Kunsthalle Bremen). During the Renaissance, it was widely believed that a person's appearance mirrored their soul, with physical beauty indicating inner morality and virtue. Artists developed highly individual approaches to the representation of ideal beauty. Palma Vecchio's exquisite 'Portrait of a Young Woman' (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) and Tullio Lombardo's marble relief of 'A Young Couple as Bacchus and Ariadne' (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) introduce this key theme with dramatic effect. Portraits enabled artists and their patrons to convey powerful messages about themselves and the world around them. The use of symbolism in portraiture played a vital function in Renaissance life, not least in marriage alliances and power politics. The final room of the exhibition traces the development of the full-length court portrait and its crucial role in court propaganda. Highlights include the dramatic bronze statue of Philip II by Leone and Pompeo Leoni (Prado) and Anthonis Mor's 'Portrait of Philip II in Armour' (El Escorial). Renaissance Faces features several captivating portraits of children, both as individuals and among family groups. Young princes were often shown with their fathers, partly to reinforce dynastic continuity, as in Justus of Ghent's portrait of 'Federico de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his son, Guidobaldo' (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino). Also on display is the remarkable painted bust by Guido Mazzoni of a 'Laughing Boy' (Royal Collection), now thought to be a portrait of the young Henry VIII. Other works depict poignant details of family life such as Domenico Ghirlandaio's 'An Old Man and his Grandson' (Louvre). Renaissance Faces reveals, more than ever before, the extraordinary degree of cross-cultural exchange active in Europe at this time. Van Eyck, Titian and Memling were in demand from North to South, and the influence of their work carried far beyond the courts of their patrons. The National Gallery was established for the benefit of all. With a commitment to free admission, a central and accessible site, and extended opening hours the Gallery has ensured that its collection can be enjoyed by the widest public possible, and not become the exclusive preserve of the privileged. The Gallery continues to pursue a vigorous and socially inclusive outreach programme, and caters to the needs of all groups in society.  Visit : www.nationalgallery.org.uk

'Transformed Gods' ~ Classical Sculptures from the Museo del Prado in Dresden Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:09 PM PST Dresden, Germany - Two of the oldest collections of antiquities outside Italy have been brought together in a spectacular exhibition: classical sculptures from the Museo Nacional del Prado go on display alongside works from Dresden's Skulpturensammlung. Both collections have their roots in Rome, are similar in the diversity of their holdings and incorporate major works of classical sculpture. During the Baroque era, they were prized as particularly valuable objects and displayed in the palaces of papal families in Rome. King Philip V acquired antiquities from the collection of Livio Odescalchi for Madrid in 1724. In 1728 August the Strong succeeded in purchasing sculptures from the Albani and Chigi collections.

Tate Modern Presents First Large-Scale Showing of Futurism in Britain in Thirty Years Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:08 PM PST LONDON.- The Tate Modern presents today Futurism, on view through September 20, 2009. This exhibition will be the first large-scale showing of Futurism in Britain in thirty years. The movement set out to modernise Italian art and social attitudes and its influence spread across Europe and beyond, revolutionising the response to the dynamism of modern life. Its master of ceremonies was the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and this exhibition celebrates the centenary of his publication of The Founding and First Manifesto of Futurism in 1909. Artists who will feature include Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Natalya Goncharova, Liubov Popova, David Bomberg, Wyndham Lewis, C.R.W. Nevinson and Jacob Epstein.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Large-Scale Solo Dedicated to the Work of Anish Kapoor Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:07 PM PST BILBAO, SPAIN - The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first large-scale solo exhibition in Spain dedicated to the work of Anish Kapoor. Over the past thirty years, Kapoor has gained international acclaim as one of the most influential and significant artists of his generation. His exploration of form and space and his use of color and material have profoundly influenced the course of contemporary sculpture. Organized by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the exhibition, conceived and installed in close collaboration with the artist, offers insight into Kapoor's working method and creative process, and includes twenty major works from several series spanning the 1970s to the present. On view from 16 March to 12 October 2010.

Sculpture by Painters - Painting in Dialogue with Plastic Art at Museum Frieder Burda Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:06 PM PST BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY - This year's comprehensive exhibition at the Museum Frieder Burda puts the emphasis on the dialogue between painting and sculpture. The show, that runs from July 5 to October 26, 2008, is entitled "Sculpture by Painters – Painting in Dialogue with Plastic Art". It displays approximately 140 20th century art works by Degas, Miró, Picasso, Modigliani, Giacometti, Chagall, Kirchner, Beckmann and Baselitz. For the first time ever, the Museum in Baden-Baden presents an exhibition combining painting with sculpture on a large scale.

Pablo Picasso "Three Lovers" Sold at Christie's Impressionist Modern Art Sale Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:05 PM PST LONDON (REUTERS).- Portraits of three different lovers of 20th century master Pablo Picasso fetched the three highest prices at a London auction at Christie's on Tuesday, June 21st, the first in a key series of art sales over the coming weeks. Top lot on the night at the impressionist and modern art evening sale was a depiction of Dora Maar, who became Picasso's lover and muse at the expense of Marie-Therese Walter. The 1939 work, which had been unseen in public since 1967, sold for 18.0 million pounds ($29.1 million), several times the pre-sale estimate of 4.0-8.0 million pounds.

Christie's December Sale Celebrates New York’s Historical Design Gallery Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:04 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- This December 8th Christie's celebrates New York's Historical Design Gallery and surveys the entire modern movement with selected iconic designs spanning the late 19th, 20th and 21st centuries including French ceramics, New York related objects, Scandinavian Design, photographs, American Mid-Century Design and Bauhaus. The auction contains 197 lots, with the majority offered without reserve, and is expected to realize in excess of $800,000.

The de Young Museum and Musée d'Orsay Announce Two Impressionist Exhibitions to Debut in San Francisco Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:03 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musée d'Orsay jointly announce two consecutive special exhibitions, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay and Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay which will be on view at the de Young Museum for a combined eight months beginning in May 2010 and ending in January 2011. Each exhibition will include approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d'Orsay's permanent collection and highlights the work of nearly 40 artists including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Vuillard. The Musée d'Orsay will loan the exhibitions while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the Musée's 25th anniversary in 2011. The de Young will be the only museum in the world to host both exhibitions. Tickets for the general public will go on sale on April 6, 2010. "These two exhibitions present a rare and unique opportunity for Americans to see the evolution and incubation of the Impressionist style from the collection of the most important repository of French 19th and early 20th century art — the Musée d'Orsay," says John E. Buchanan, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "These exhibitions give us the opportunity to share with visitors some of the most seminal works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art that they would only be able to see in Paris or in an art history book as the likelihood of them traveling en masse again is slim." The first exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay opens in the Herbst special exhibition galleries at the de Young on May 22, 2010 and runs through September 6, 2010. This exhibition puts forth nearly 100 works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. This exhibition begins with paintings by naturalist artists such as Bougereau and Courbet and presents American expatriate James McNeil Whistler's Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as "Whistler's Mother." Early work by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley are on view as well as a selection of Degas' paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack and life in "la Belle Époque." Notable works in this exhibition include: The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866) Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867) Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist's Mother by James McNeil Whistler (1871) The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879) The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872) Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877) The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876) Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866-1868) The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873-1876) Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878-1879) The second exhibition, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post- Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay, opens on September 25, 2010 and runs through January 18, 2011. This exhibition presents 120 of the Musée d'Orsay's most famous late Impressionist paintings including those by Monet and Renoir, followed by the more individualistic styles of the early modern masters including Cézanne, Gauguin, Lautrec and van Gogh, and the Nabis painters, Bonnard and Vuillard. The exhibition will also provide a unique look at the Orsay's spectacular collection of Pointillist painters including work by Seurat and Signac. Notable works in this exhibition include: A Dance in the Country by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883) The Circus by George Seurat (1891) Self Portrait by Vincent van Gogh (1887) Starry Night over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh (1888) The Artist's Bedroom at Arles by Vincent van Gogh (1889) Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin (1889) Tahitian Women, On the Beach by Paul Gauguin (1891) Still Life with Onions by Paul Cézanne (1895) The Snake Charmer by Henri Rousseau (1907) Tickets for both exhibitions will be timed and dated. Group tickets will be available on October 1, 2009. Member tickets will be available March 2, 2010. Concurrent Exhibitions at the Legion of Honor Two special exhibitions that provide context and heighten the understanding of the Musée d'Orsay exhibitions will run concurrently at the Legion of Honor. Impressionist Paris: City of Light (May 22–September 6, 2010) transports visitors to Paris circa 1874 as represented in over 100 paintings, photographs, prints, drawings and illustrated books from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and several private collectors. The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism (September 25, 2010 – January 2, 2011) presents a chronological survey of the development of the Japanese print and its influence on the Impressionist painters.

K21 Kunstsammlung open Major Retrospective of Wilhelm Sasnal Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:02 PM PST DUSSELDORF, GERMANY - The exhibition at K21 is the first comprehensive presentation of Wilhelm Sasnal's work outside Poland where he was born in 1972. It offers an extensive overview of the ten years from his studies until today and will be shown only in Düsseldorf. This show comprises 89 pictures and is organised around recurring central topics in the artist's oeuvre. Among these works are paintings not only of his family and friends but also historical figures. Further topics are the continuity of modernity symbolised by flying, but also the depiction of intimate feelings, cliché-ridden views of Sasnal's hometown Krakow, and the ubiquity of the church in Poland. On view 5 September through 10 January, 2010.

Guggenheim Announces Online Auction to Benefit Exhibition Programming Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:01 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- As a finale to the Guggenheim's 50th anniversary celebrations, the museum will auction works donated to benefit the museum's exhibition programming, now on view in the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum. The works in this eclectic presentation include nearly 200 submissions from international artists, architects, and designers who were asked to imagine their own visionary interventions in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda. The works will be previewed at an auction benefit event on March 4, 2010, which will be followed by a performance by Animal Collective and Danny Perez. The auction items will be sold online from March 4 through 18 at charitybuzz.com/guggenheim.

The Fondation Beyeler honors French Artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) ~ 100 Years Posted: 10 Dec 2011 07:00 PM PST BASEL.- One hundred years after the death of the French artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), the Fondation Beyeler is devoting an exhibition to this pioneer of modernism. Forty outstanding works provide a concise overview of the development and diversity of his oeuvre. A customs official, Rousseau had no formal art training and initially painted in his free time. Many years passed before his art, non-academic and long considered merely naive, found recognition in the Paris salons. In addition to the legendary jungle pictures characteristic of his late work, Rousseau also painted views of Paris and environs, as well as figures, portraits, allegories and genre scenes. With Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin, Rousseau was one of the artists whose visual inventions paved the way for incipient modernism. On exhibition 7 February though 9 May, 2010. After the great Impressionists and their direct heirs had developed a new view of the visual world, Rousseau tapped sources beyond the academic tradition for modern artists to come. Never having attended an art school and supposedly naive, he brought genres such as the imaginary, dreamlike landscape to an unexpected culmination in his jungle paintings. The exhibition illustrates how Rousseau brought together aspects of civilization and nature and adapted highly diverse themes to his visual conception. Individual motifs such as leaves and trees, but also figures and entire compositional schemes or elements were transferred from picture to picture. These basic patterns, expanded by means of combination and variation into a rich range of motifs and genres, were applied both to French and exotic subject matter. Rousseau defined the picture space by staggering pictorial elements from background to foreground, a method that would later be adopted by the Cubists. This additive pictorial structure, in the form of painted collage, anticipated the autonomy of the picture plane that would become so characteristic of modernism and fascinated young artists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger. In order to bring out these special aspects of Rousseau's oeuvre, the exhibition employs two forms of presentation. On the one hand, it shows Rousseau's thematic focuses on the basis of groups of works distributed among the different exhibition rooms. An introductory documentation room is followed by rooms devoted to portraits and the small-format French landscapes, and finally by the large hall, whose effect is primarily determined by the jungle pictures. Within this arrangement, space is reserved for a selection of special groupings and pairs of paintings in which the conventional genre borderlines are purposely transcended. This enables us to trace the migration of motifs and play of oppositions that are so typical of Rousseau. For instance, the late jungle painting Forêt vierge au soleil couchant, c. 1910, is directly confronted with the figurative Les joueurs de football, 1908. The ball hovering over the players recalls a setting sun, spirited from the forest picture – a well-nigh surrealistic composition that would later inspire Max Ernst and René Magritte. Also for the first time in the present exhibition, three major Rousseau works will be shown in immediate proximity with one another, works in quite different genres yet based on a nearly identical compositional scheme: the rural scene La noce, 1904-05, La muse inspirant le poète, 1909 (from the series known as "portrait landscapes"), and Joyeux farceurs, a jungle painting of 1906. Initially Rousseau painted mostly small-format pictures representing French suburbs and the surrounding countryside in his immediate environment. There gradually crystallized out a special interest in motifs in which transitional zones from rationally organized civilization and unorganized, wild nature came to the fore. In the small French landscapes, the wildnerness appears in the form of dense woods in the background, a separate visual realm where nature is visible through a fence or behind a fortification wall. In L'octroi, c.1890, for example, the transition point is marked by one of the customs offices in which the Douanier served until 1893. This passage from the well-ordered and familiar to the unknown and alien was an ongoing and crucial feature of Rousseau's compositions, as can be seen in Promeneurs dans un parc, 1907-08. In his famous jungle paintings the artist, who had never actually set foot in a jungle, finally succeeded in leaving the sphere of domestication behind – at least in imagination – and taking sides with the wilderness. Using much larger formats than previously, Rousseau lent these dreamed-of forests a compelling visual reality. The culmination of the exhibition is accordingly formed by a significant group of Rousseau's renowned jungle pictures. Apart from his very first work in this genre, Surpris! of 1891 (National Gallery, London), the major, mysterious La charmeuse de serpents, 1907 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) deserves mention. A direct link with the Beyeler Collection is formed by the monumental major work Le lion, ayant faim, se jette sur l'antilope, 1895/1905, shown at Rousseau's first appearance at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905. In March 1906, Ambroise Vollard acquired the sensational painting – the first Rousseau ever to enter the art trade. It came into Ernst Beyeler's collection in 1988, and, upon the inauguration of the Fondation Beyeler in 1997, the painting was given a room to itself and thus a special place of honor. In addition, the exhibition focuses on Rousseau's well-documented interest in photography. A few of his compositions – such as La carriole du père Junier, 1908 – were provably based directly on photographs. In the course of the painting process he created an entirely new world, arranging its elements into an image layer by layer in front of his imaginary camera lens. Yet for all his photographic realism, Rousseau always strove to keep the depicted world at a distance, as in La noce, 1904-05, whose distortions of scale and proportions with respect to the original model are immediately obvious. Rousseau introduced a new approach to imaginative vision into painting. His perception of reality was based primarily on observation, imitation and transformation of the visible. In this way, he taught modern artists how things unknown could be constructed using the building blocks of the known. He established a new logic and mechanics of compositional structure that profoundly affected subsequent artists, all the way down to the Surrealists. Among the first to realize Rousseau's outstanding significance were his close friend, the young Robert Delaunay, and Wassily Kandinsky. The "Banquet Rousseau", held in his honor at Picasso's studio in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre in November 1908, has since become legendary. The guests included George Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Gertrude and Leo Stein. To reflect this link, works from the collection by Cubist artists, Picasso and Léger will be on view in adjacent rooms. This provides viewers with an opportunity to trace the way in which Rousseau's methods were adopted and developed by following generations. Many renowned museums and collections in Europe and America have contributed to the success of the exhibition by their generous provision of loans. A great number of pictures come from the Musée national de l'Orangerie and Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Further lenders are the Musée national Picasso and Musée national d'art moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the National Gallery, The Samuel Courtauld Trust / The Courtauld Gallery, and The Mayor Gallery, London; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; the Kunstmuseum Basel; the Kunsthaus Zurich; and a number of private collections. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue were conceived by Philippe Büttner, Curator at the Fondation Beyeler, in collaboration with Christopher Green, Professor emeritus for Art History at the Courtauld Institute, London. Green was co-curator of the exhibition "Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris," shown in 2005-06 at the Tate Modern, the Grand Palais, Paris, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Visit :  www.beyeler.com/

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