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

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• The Georgia Museum of Art Presents a Dale Nichols Retrospective
• Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg Shows Exhibition by Ena Swanser & Robert Lucander
• Yayoi Kusama's Flower Sculptures Brighten the Jardin des Tuileries for the Winter
• MoMA PS1 pays tribute to George Kuchar one the most Prolific & Influential American Filmmakers
• Twentieth-century Drawings & Sketchbooks from the Royal Academy's Collection
• Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• N.C. Museum of Art presents ' Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism '
• Philip Guston ~ Major Exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum
• Walker Art Center Hosts " Body Politics: Figurative Prints and Drawings "
• Nottingham Contemporary opens Major David Hockney Exhibition
• Rijksmuseum Discovers Unknown Masterpiece at Sotheby's "Juliana Auction"
• Extraordinary Works by Austrian Artist Egon Schiele at Richard Nagy Ltd.
• Masterpieces from Russia at the Royal Academy of Arts
• Gagosian Gallery Shows Paintings & Works on Paper by Cecily Brown
• Exhibition of Monumental Sculpture by Fernando Botero at Marlborough Gallery
• Single-Owner Sale Exceeds High Estimate at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers
• The Birmingham Museum of Art will show ~ POMPEII ERUPTS
• Richard Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings at The Phillips Collection
• Christie's London Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art Realises $60.4 Million
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Georgia Museum of Art Presents a Dale Nichols Retrospective Posted: 27 Dec 2011 11:13 PM PST Athens, Georgia.- The Georgia Museum of Art is proud to present "Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism" on view through February 27th 2012. Organized by the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art in David City, Nebraska, this retrospective exhibition presents Nebraska native Dale Nichols' nostalgic images of rural America. Paintings dating from 1935 to 1972 establish Nichols not only as a regionalist in the company of such great artists as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, but one who transcended the confines of the genre to achieve universal success. This exhibition represents a recollection of Nichols' years on the farm in Nebraska but manifests those memories in a variety of styles and places. Nichols held firm to his midwestern roots while he traveled the world in search of adventure and truth. Imbued with the inherent problems of isolation, poverty and inequality within American society, Nichols' art references and upholds an American agrarian ideal. Dale Nichols (1904–1995), also published under his full name, Dale William Nichols, was an American visual artist whose works included illustrations, paintings, lithographs, and wood carvings. He is best known for his work as a rural landscape painter. Nichols' work is often classified with that of other regional American landscape artists, including Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Nichols was born on July 13, 1904 in the small town of David City, Nebraska, and began his career as an artist while studying at The Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. He spent the greater part of the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago, later becoming the Carnegie Professor in Art at the University of Illinois. Nichols would then take a position in 1943 as the Art Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Upon leaving his post at Britannica, Nichols spent the remainder of his life traveling, splitting the majority of his time between Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, and Guatemala. He died in Sedona, Arizona on October 19, 1995, at age 91. In September 1939, Nichols' was featured in Time Magazine. Said one Time reviewer in that issue, "Subjects he prefers are the prairie landscapes of his youth, usually snowed under. These famed smooth snow effects Artist Nichols gets by laying on his oils in a thin film with watercolor brushes." More recently, his art was published on postcards sold by the United States Postal Service in 1995. Three of Nichols' paintings are now listed in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Museum of Nebraska Art features four of his large oil paintings, along with four lithographs, and four sketches. The Georgia Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Georgia, in Athens, is both an academic museum and, since 1982, the official art museum of the state of Georgia. The permanent collection consists of American paintings, primarily 19th- and 20th-century; American, European and Asian works on paper; the Samuel H. Kress Study Collection of Italian Renaissance paintings; and growing collections of southern decorative arts and Asian art. From the time it was opened to the public in 1948 in the basement of an old library on the university's historic North Campus, the museum has grown consistently both in the size of its collection and in the size of its facilities. Today the museum occupies a contemporary building in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex on the university's burgeoning east campus. There, 79,000 square feet house more than 8,000 objects in the museum's permanent collection—a dramatic leap from the core of 100 paintings donated by the museum's founder, Alfred Heber Holbrook.Much of the museum's collection of American paintings was donated by Holbrook in memory of his first wife, Eva Underhill Holbrook. Included in this collection are works by such luminaries as Frank Weston Benson, William Merritt Chase, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence and Theodore Robinson. Over the years it has been impossible to separate the history of the museum from the story of Holbrook's generosity. Numerous museum exhibitions have traveled to national and international venues. When "Adriaen van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland's Golden Age" was exhibited at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, the catalogue quickly sold out, becoming a text for the study of 17th-century Dutch printmaking in classrooms across the United States. This exhibition also reflected the importance of prints and drawings in the programming of the museum, which houses one of the finest collections of works on paper in the Southeast. The collection includes Old Master prints, Parisian prints of the 1890s and American prints and drawings of the early 20th century. Exhibitions from international museums such as the National Gallery of Scotland, the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, the Rembrandt House and the San Carlos National Museum in Mexico City have all been displayed in the galleries of the museum over the past decade. The museum also offers traveling exhibitions formed from its permanent collection to other museums and art institutes around Georgia and the Southeast. Since the early 1970s the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, a support group of more than 1,200 members, have hosted fundraisers and openings for exhibitions and have sponsored exhibitions and educational programs at the museum. In April 1996, the Georgia Museum of Art opened a new building on the East Campus of the university as part of the Performing and Visual Arts Complex, which also includes the School of Music, the Performing Arts Center, and, now, the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The new building allowed for larger and more ambitious exhibitions and a new emphasis on professional practices, trends that will continue to hold true in 2011 and beyond. The museum has become a leader, in particular, among university museums, and its educational programs have been the most tangible example of the balance it strives to achieve among state, local, and university audiences as it seeks to fulfill its trifold mission of teaching, research, and service. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.georgiamuseum.org

Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg Shows Exhibition by Ena Swanser & Robert Lucander Posted: 27 Dec 2011 10:49 PM PST HAMBURG.- At the end of this year, the Sammlung Falckenberg brings together seemingly poetic-surrealist images by US painter Ena Swanser and subversive-enigmatic works by Finnish artist Robert Lucander who now lives in Berlin. The exhibition's title of "Psycho" is a reference to the eponymous horror classic by Alfred Hitchcock and calls to mind the disturbed nature of schizophrenics, psychopaths and other psychologically disturbed persons. "Psycho" is Greek for "soul" and the term referring to insanity is derived from the notion that a human's spirit or soul can become ill; psychoanalysis, for example, is used to treat deep-rooted psychological traumata and behavioral disorders. On exhibition through 25 March.

Yayoi Kusama's Flower Sculptures Brighten the Jardin des Tuileries for the Winter Posted: 27 Dec 2011 09:05 PM PST PARIS.- The Jardins des Tuileries in Paris has been enlivened by Yayoi Kusama's vibrantly colored Flowers That Bloom at Midnight, a series of unique largescale sculptures. This is the first time that these sculptures are seen in France. The presentation by the Musée du Louvre - which coincides with Kusama's major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou-is consistent with the museum's ongoing initiative to integrate contemporary art into its broader historical and cultural programme. This special project has been realized with the support of Gagosian Gallery. Flowers have continued to populate Kusama's imaginary since the beginning of her career, and it is evident that the gay yet monstrous flower sculptures of today have their origins in the surrealistic specimens that pervade the landscapes of her early paintings.

MoMA PS1 pays tribute to George Kuchar one the most Prolific & Influential American Filmmakers Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:45 PM PST LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y.- MoMA PS1 pays tribute to George Kuchar (1942-2011), one of the most prolific and influential American filmmakers of the last half century, with a new exhibition of his film, photography, painting, and comic illustration. Organized by MoMA PS1 Curator Peter Eleey and initiated with the artist prior to his death in September, George Kuchar: Pagan Rhapsodies includes more than thirty of Kuchar's films, celebrating the prolific and exuberant practice of this visionary who found high drama in low culture and the vulgarities of everyday life. On exhibition through January 15, 2012.

Twentieth-century Drawings & Sketchbooks from the Royal Academy's Collection Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:00 PM PST LONDON.- A new exhibition in the Tennant Gallery reveals the richness of the Academy's rarely seen holdings of twentieth-century drawings and sketchbooks. Although drawing is a natural human activity, only in the twentieth century have artists drawn more from inner compulsion than out of practical necessity. By including a wide range of styles, techniques and modes of draughtsmanship found in works by both Royal Academicians and students alike – everything from doodles to diploma works – the exhibition aims to capture the magic of drawing done for its own sake. On view at the Royal Academy of Arts until 12 February 2012. Also on show is a ten-minute film, made by researcher Elisa Alaluusua, in which the sculptor Michael Sandle RA talks about his sketchbooks.

Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Posted: 27 Dec 2011 08:00 PM PST MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is home to one of the world's great collections of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") prints. The museum's new exhibition, "Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints" features more than 160 masterworks that reveal the great breadth of ukiyo-e production as well as the individual artistry of about 40 artists. Organized thematically, the exhibition provides a kaleidoscopic view of popular culture in pre-modern Japan. "Pop" also aptly describes ukiyo-e produced in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1868), which reflected the tastes and proclivities of a rising class of urban commoners, known as chonin. Chnin merchants and artists grew rich providing goods and services to the inhabitants of Japan's rapidly growing cities. Strict stratification of Japanese society, however, prevented prosperous townspeople from advancing socially despite their wealth. As a result, many pursued hedonistic pleasures and pastimes. "Pop Art" usually describes the artistic movement of the 1950s, when artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein gleaned inspiration from contemporary urban life, mass-produced consumer products, and slick advertising. Picturing film stars and comic-book heroes in bright colors and crisp forms, Pop Art referred largely to the popular culture from which the movement emerged. Most ukiyo-e artists created both paintings and designs for woodblock prints, depicting the pleasures and pastimes associated with the floating world. Fine paintings commanded high prices, but mass-produced woodblock prints were within the reach of almost everyone. Low cost alone, however, did not account for the immense popularity of ukiyo-e prints. The subversive subject matter made them irresistibly intriguing. Images of women, especially entertainers and the denizens of the licensed (and unlicensed) brothels, were purchased as reminders of their sex appeal and fashionable style. Depictions of actors were procured by devotees of Kabuki, the robust and lowbrow theater. Other figural themes included sumo wrestlers, dandies and male prostitutes, ghosts and demons, mythological and legendary heroes, and ordinary townspeople engaged in seasonal pastimes. Consumer products were featured in these images, including the latest fashions and textiles, makeup, elegant pipes, lacquers, ceramics, clocks, rare plants and flowers, and even pets. Landscapes, too, became an important sub-genre, first in the form of illustrated guidebooks in the 18th century and then as single-sheet prints in the 19th. Interest in landscapes reflected the government's loosening of restrictions on travel, prompting city dwellers to take to the road in search of adventure and exotic pleasures. Ukiyo-e masters evolved a distinctive style that featured fluid yet descriptive outlines, novel vantage points, bold areas of clear color unimpeded by chiaroscuro, and audacious compositions with off-center subjects and dramatic cropping. Meanwhile, block carvers and printers developed innovative printing techniques. Consequently, ukiyo-e images were fresh and contemporary, appealing to the popular tastes of the townspeople. "Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints" also features works by contemporary artists inspired by ukiyo-e and the social and conceptual underpinnings that inform them. Iona Roseal Brown, based in Washington, D.C., sees parallels between hip-hop culture and the floating world. Graffiti artist Gajin Fujita portrays East Los Angeles gang members as Japanese warriors against a backdrop of heavily tagged walls. Nagano-based artist Tabaimo focuses on notions of transience and estrangement in her animated video titled "Hanabi-ra" (Flower Petal), which appropriates imagery from ukiyo-e prints. These works demonstrate that ukiyo-e remains a vital artistic force, as relevant today as when it was created by Japan's pre-modern Pop artists. The MIA's permanent collection has grown from eight hundred works of art to around eighty thousand objects. The collection includes world-famous works that embody the highest levels of artistic achievement, spanning five thousand years and representing the world's diverse cultures across all continents. The MIA has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; Prints and Drawings; and Textiles. Visit : http://www.artsmia.org/

N.C. Museum of Art presents ' Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism ' Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:52 PM PST   RALEIGH, N.C. - On October 21, 2007, the North Carolina Museum of Art opens Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, an exhibition of forty paintings, including many superb examples of mid- and late- nineteenth- century French and American landscape. Ranging in date from the 1850s to the early twentieth century, the exhibition offers a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by such leading French artists as Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet and their most significant American followers including Frederick Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. "The NCMA wanted to follow the successful 2006 Monet in Normandy exhibition with a show that is equally fascinating and beautiful," said Museum Director Lawrence J. Wheeler. "Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism brings impressionism across the Atlantic by presenting paintings by both French and American artists who worked in similar ways during the 19th century. The exhibition provides North Carolinians with a true sense of how American artists fit into that part of history." In the mid-19th century many American painters went to Paris. Seeking to improve their skills and find inspiration in Paris and its environs, they attended French art academies and frequented the painting locations made famous by predecessors. Some of the Americans had direct contact with leading French landscape painters, sharing landscape sites or seeking informal guidance from admired mentors. The majority of the American paintings in the exhibition depict American locales, demonstrating the eagerness of these artists to retain their progressive aesthetics after returning home, and to update the American scene in vibrant, innovative canvases. This led to the appearance of American beaches, factories, and cityscapes distinguished by brilliant colors and lively, broken brushwork including Julian Alden Weir's Willimatic Thread Factory (1893) and Willard Leroy Metcalf's Early Spring Afternoon, Central Park (1911). Among the earliest works in the exhibition are Charles-François Daubigny's The River Seine at Mantes (1856), and Gustave Courbet's Isolated Rock (1862), which reveal the impact of plein-air sketching practice on landscape art of the period. Monet is represented in Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism by several works including The Doge's Palace in Venice (1908), The Islets at Port-Villez (1897), and Houses of Parliament, Effect of Sunlight (1903). After selecting a subject, Monet positioned himself before it for hours over a series of days, substituting one canvas for another as dictated by changing lighting and atmospheric effects, and producing a series of works devoted to the same subject under different conditions. Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism will be at the North Carolina Museum of Art October 21, 2007, through January 13, 2008. General admission is $15; students, seniors, and groups of 10 or more are $12. Children six and under are free.  Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum. In Raleigh the exhibition is possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources and the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc. The North Carolina Museum of Art's permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present, making the institution one of the premier visual arts museums in the Southeast. The Museum uses its collection to provide educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond. The Museum offers a series of changing national touring exhibitions, classes, lectures, family activities, films, and concerts. For more information about the exhibition or the N.C. Museum of Art, visit www.ncartmuseum.org or call (919) 839-NCMA.

Philip Guston ~ Major Exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:51 PM PST NEW YORK CITY - The extraordinary  drawings of Philip Guston (1913–1980) are the subject of a major exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum, on view from May 2 through August 31, 2008. Together with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Guston is recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition marks the first retrospective of his drawings in twenty years and the Morgan is the only American venue.

Walker Art Center Hosts " Body Politics: Figurative Prints and Drawings " Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:50 PM PST Minneapolis, MN - Some 60 works of art by more than two dozen artists, including Egon Schiele, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, and Georgia O'Keeffe, are featured at the Walker Art Center in Body Politics: Figurative Prints and Drawings from Schiele to de Kooning, an exhibition that explores the expressive potential of the human figure.  Drawn primarily from public and private collections in the Twin Cities, the exhibition will be on view through July 15, 2007, in the Walker's Medtronic Gallery.  At any given historical moment, a great deal can be understood about a culture through its images of the human body.  These may be simply descriptive of a place and time, or they might be critiques, comments, observations, or exhortations to change.

Nottingham Contemporary opens Major David Hockney Exhibition Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:49 PM PST NOTTINGHAM, UK - A major exhibition of over 60 works by David Hockney from national and international museum collections will open Nottingham Contemporary, one of the most interesting new spaces for art in the UK. Designed by leading architects Caruso St John, the public opening is on Saturday 14 November 2009. The exhibition will re-examine Hockney's work 1960-1968, his early years in London and Los Angeles, in the context of art today. It is the first time the early work - finishing with the iconic Californian painting A Bigger Splash - has been brought together since the Whitechapel retrospective of 1970, nearly 40 years ago.

Rijksmuseum Discovers Unknown Masterpiece at Sotheby's "Juliana Auction" Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:48 PM PST AMSTERDAM.- The Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands' national museum, discovered a previously unknown masterpiece at the auction Property from the estate of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands at Sotheby's in Amsterdam. Upon closer study, the terracotta sculpture of two women, still credited to 'Louis Royer's circle' in the auction catalogue, has been attributed to court sculptor Jean-Louis van Geel, one of the Netherlands' foremost neoclassical sculptors. It is the only example of the artist's work held by a Dutch museum.

Extraordinary Works by Austrian Artist Egon Schiele at Richard Nagy Ltd. Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:47 PM PST LONDON.- More than forty-five extraordinary works by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, previously unseen in the UK, will be unveiled at Richard Nagy's new gallery on Old Bond Street from 19 May – 30 June 2011. Much of the four thousand works Schiele produced during his short lifetime can only be seen in Vienna; at the Belvedere, the Albertina and the Leopold Museum, or New York, primarily at the Neue Galerie. While Schiele is recognised as one of the greatest draftsmen of the 20th Century, with watercolours making over $11 million at auction, his work is absent from museum collections in the United Kingdom and has been given little public attention in the past twenty years.

Masterpieces from Russia at the Royal Academy of Arts Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:46 PM PST LONDON - In January 2008, the Royal Academy of Arts will stage a landmark exhibition presenting modern masterpieces drawn from Russia's principal museum collections: the State Pushkin Museum and the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Over 120 paintings by Russian and French artists working between 1870 and 1925 will be displayed together for the first time ever in the United Kingdom in an exhibition which surveys the main directions of modern art from Realism and Impressionism to Non-Objective painting. Works will include paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse together with those by Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich. This exhibition will be a unique opportunity to explore the fascinating exchange that existed between French and Russian art during a crucial period that was witness to upheaval and revolution. On exhibition 26 January – 18 April 2008. Selected from Russia's premier museums, this exhibition will be a testimony to the glorious history of Russian collecting and Russia's influence in the development of modern art. The exhibition will be structured around four main themes starting with a presentation of works by the Russian realists, namely the Wanderers, an important group of Russian artists who broke away from the St Petersburg Academy and focused on Russian landscape, contemporary social issues, scenes from traditional peasant life and Russian history. Works by Ilya Repin, Ivan Kramskoy, Isaak Levitan, Valentin Serov and Mikhail Nesterov and others will be shown with paintings by French artists of the Barbizon school such as Théodore Rousseau, Charles Daubigny and Jean-François Millet as well as the Salon painters Jules Bastien-Lepage and Albert Besnard. The second section of the exhibition will display not only masterpieces from the two great Moscow collections, those of Ivan Morosov and Sergei Shchukin, but also demonstrate their differing points of emphasis. These two Moscow textile merchants were, without doubt, the most brilliant and daring Russian collectors of their day. They scoured Paris for paintings by the Impressionists and Post- Impressionists and accumulated works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso. Shchukin became Matisse's greatest patron, commissioning the celebrated The Dance as part of an astonishingly bold scheme to decorate the grand staircase of his Moscow mansion. The Dance will be perhaps the most sensational highlight of the exhibition and shown here in Gallery III. The third section of the exhibition will be devoted to the famous theatrical impresario and exhibitionmaker Sergei Diaghilev, who was at the forefront of the World of Art movement. He played a vital role not only in presenting modern French art in Russia but also in taking Russian art to the West, particularly in Paris. Vasily Kandinsky drew on the imagery of Russian fairy tales and combined it with Fauvist colour as a starting point for his daring steps towards abstraction, and Marc Chagall adapted elements of French Cubism to his highly individual and poetic distillation of Russian-Jewish folklore. Artists presented in this section of the exhibition will also include Alexander Benois and Leon Bakst, Boris Kustodiev, Nochiolas Roerich, Alexander Golovinund Valentin Serov as well as a selection of impressive portraits of great figures of Russian cultural life such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Feodor Chaliapin and Anna Akhmatova. Cross-currents between Russian and French art were particularly fertile in the early twentieth century. The final section of the exhibition will encompass the exhilarating kaleidoscope of rapidly succeeding artistic developments. Mikahail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova responded to both the French Post- Impressionists, particularly Cézanne and Gauguin, and the vigour of Russian folk art in their unique Neo-Primitive style. Bold reinterpretations of Cubism, as well as Italian Futurism, resulted in the brilliant Cubo-Futurist works by Jean Pougny, Pavel Filonov and a remarkable group of experimental women artists including Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova and Alexandra Exter. Included will be Vladimir Tatlin's ground-breaking three-dimensional constructions which heralded the advent of Constructivism and Kazimir Malevich's celebrated triptych Black Square, Black Circle, and Black Cross rejecting all forms of pictorial tradition and an icon of the purely abstract style of Suprematism. ORGANISATION From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg has been curated by the Royal Academy of Arts and organised in conjunction with Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf. It has been initiated and made possible by E.ON. The exhibition has been co-curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts, Ann Dumas, Exhibitions Curator at the Royal Academy or Arts and Mattijs Visser, Museum Kunst Palast, Duesseldorf. SPONSOR E.ON UK Chief Executive Paul Golby said: "E.ON is delighted to be associated with this landmark exhibition co-curated by the Royal Academy of Arts and the Museum Kunst Palast. As the UK's leading power and gas company and one of Europe's largest utilities, we have been instrumental in initiating this idea. E.ON's contacts through its long-standing and close energy partnership with Russia helped in securing agreement from the four largest and best-known Russian galleries to bring these major works to the Royal Academy. The exhibition will come to London from Russia via the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf where it will be displayed for four months – again, sponsored by E.ON. At a time when the energy relationship between Europe and Russia continues to deepen, E.ON is proud to play a pivotal role helping foster a similar relationship in the world of art." EXHIBITION TOUR : Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf 15 September 2007 – 6 January 2008. CATALOGUE To accompany this outstanding exhibition, the Royal Academy will be publishing a catalogue exploring the connections between French and Russian art from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1920s, a period that witnessed the emergence of some of the most important developments in modern art. Entitled From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870 – 1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the book will include essays by Albert Kostenevich, Curator of Modern European Art at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg and Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Tickets are available daily at the RA. To book tickets in advance please tel: 0870 848 8484, or visit www.royalacademy.org.uk For public information, please print 020 7300 8000 or Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD 22/10/07

Gagosian Gallery Shows Paintings & Works on Paper by Cecily Brown Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:45 PM PST LONDON.- Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Cecily Brown, on view from June 8th until July 29th, 2011. Drawing broad inspiration from many forbears, from Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Breughel the Elder, and James Ensor to the abstractions of Arshile Gorky and Philip Guston, Brown brings to the conventions of a traditionally male-dominated history an assertive and, at times, ribald femininity. Revisiting scenes from popular culture as well as Old Master imagery, she creates a personal vision that transcends classical notions of genre and narrative.

Exhibition of Monumental Sculpture by Fernando Botero at Marlborough Gallery Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:44 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- On April 29, 2010, Marlborough Gallery presented an exhibition of monumental sculpture by the world-renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. The exhibition will feature work with classical subjects such as Leda and the Swan, 2007 (67 x 127 x 55 in.), and Rape of Europa, 2007 (114 x 120 x 62 in.). Botero's large-scale sculptures have been exhibited to critical and popular acclaim in public exhibitions around the globe, including on the Champs Elysées in Paris, Park Avenue in New York, Chicago, Venice, and most recently in Berlin, Athens and Seoul.

Single-Owner Sale Exceeds High Estimate at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:43 PM PST CHICAGO, IL.- Amongst a room full of active bidders, property from the Estate of Ronald C. Sloter surpassed its high estimate at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers with buyers participating in person, over the telephone and on the internet. Proceeds from the auction will be used by the Columbus College of Art & Design to create a named scholarship memorializing Mr. Sloter's parents, Wilford and Dorothy. Sloter was a longtime Columbus resident and generous supporter of charity and the arts.

The Birmingham Museum of Art will show ~ POMPEII ERUPTS Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:42 PM PST BIRMINGHAM, AL - The largest collection of artifacts from the ancient Italian city of Pompeii ever to leave Italy will be shown at the Birmingham Museum of Art, October 14 to January 27, 2008.  Birmingham is the only city in the southeast and in the state of Alabama to host "Pompeii: Tales of an Eruption," an exhibition of nearly 500 stunning works of art and artifacts ─ many of which have never been seen outside Italy ─ that offers a rare glimpse of life in the ancient world.  The exhibit travels to only two other US cities: Chicago's Field Museum and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.  Exhibition Tells the Stories of Final Moments.

Richard Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings at The Phillips Collection Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:41 PM PST WASHINGTON, DC.- Pousette-Dart: Predominantly White Paintings, an exhibition of important postwar (1949–1954) paintings by Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992), will be on view at The Phillips Collection from June 5 to Sept. 12, 2010. In 1955 at Betty Parsons Gallery, Richard Pousette-Dart exhibited a cycle of paintings that presented a radically innovative approach to the picture plane. Utilizing a restrained palette of graphite drawn on titanium white grounds, he realized an exceptional range of tonality and emotion. Through the variability of the drawn line and the occasional applications of tints of color, the artist achieved both depth and an effect of ethereal luminosity.

Christie's London Auction of Impressionist and Modern Art Realises $60.4 Million Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:40 PM PST LONDON.- A "musketeer" painted by Pablo Picasso was one of the big attractions at an auction of impressionist and modern art at Christie's held in London, where it sold for 5.7 million pounds ($9.3 million). The 1969 work, "Homme a l'Epee," was the second most expensive lot of the session, after Monet's "Au Parc Monceau," that went for 6.3 million pounds ($10.3 million). Painted on canvas, the Picasso work shows an exhuberant and colorful swordsman in a scene that mixes thick brush strokes in which red and yellow predominate. Just by chance the rival auction house Sotheby's is offering this Wednesday to the highest bidder another musketeer - this one painted on wood - by Picasso, executed on July 25, 1969, one day before the one sold at Christie's. Both works figured in the famous 1970 exhibition at the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France, together with other musketeers, lovers and gentlemen, all charged with energy and a contagious humor. Another important Spanish artist, Joan Miro (1893-1983), led the bidding Tuesday at Christie's, where his "Peinture (Femme se poudrant)" sold for 3.9 million pounds ($6.4 million). Giovanna Bertazzoni, Director and Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie's London: "During the last 6 months, our auctions of Impressionist and Modern Art in London, Paris and New York have produced consistently solid results and this evening's sale confirms that collectors, both new and established, have confidence buying works by established artists in this category. We see consistent demand throughout and overall the prices of individual works remain stable. At the top end of the market we continue to see strong interest and bidding as collectors seize opportunities to acquire rare and beautiful works of art." The top price was paid for Au Parc Monceau, 1878, by Claude Monet (1840-1926), an important painting from the vintage years of Impressionism which realised £6,313,250 / $10,284,284 / €7,392,816. It had been sold at auction only once before when it realised £3.7 million in June 2001 in London. At this evening's auction, 2 works of art sold for over £5 million / 9 for over £1 million. Buyers (by lot / by origin) were 83% UK and Europe, 14% Americas and 3% Asia. Further leading highlights of the sale included: Painting, 1949, by Joan Miró (1893-1983), one of an outstanding group of pictures described as being among the most important of the artist's career which sold for £3,961,250 / $6,452,876 / €4,638,624 against a pre-sale estimate of £2.2 million to £2.8 million. Two large, bold works from the 1960s by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973); Homme à l'épée, 1969, which was last sold at Christie's London in February 2005 for £2.7 million, and which realised £5,753,250 / $9,372,044 / €6,737,056 at this evening's auction (estimate: £5 million to £7 million), and Nu assis et joueur de flûte, 1967, which realised £3,401,250 / $5,540,636 / €3,982,864 (estimate: £3 million to £4 million). Springende Pferde, 1910, by Franz Marc (1880-1916), an exciting breakthrough painting in which the artist embraces the influences of the avant gardes of the period, which was offered at auction for the first time and which sold for £3,737,250 / $6,087,980 / €4,376,320 (estimate: £3 million to £4 million). Elsewhere in the sale, Hélène by Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) sold for £1,721,250 / $2,803,916 / €2,015,584; Mohn by Emil Nolde (1867-1956) realized £1,273,250 / $2,074,124 / €1,490,976, and Composition by Fernand Léger (1881-1955) sold for £1,217,250 / $1,982,900 / €1,425,400. Further highlights included Buste de Diego sur tige, a bronze by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) which sold for £1,026,850 / $1,672,739 / €1,202,441 (estimate: £750,000 to £950,000) and Mont-roig, le pont, an important early landscape by Joan Miró (1893-1983) which was painted in 1917 near his family home in Catalonia and which sold for £541,250 / $881,696 / €633,804 (estimate: £400,000 to £600,000).

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 27 Dec 2011 07:39 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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