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

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• The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art to Display Gothic Artworks
• The Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair returns to the Science Museum in London
• The Evansville Museum To Show John Dowell's Large-Scale Photographs
• The Yale School of Art to Show "Malcolm Morley: In a Nutshell"
• The Tampa Museum of Art features Romare Bearden ~ Southern Recollections
• Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presents Solo of Brazilian artist Barrão
• Turner Contemporary shows how JMW Turner revolutionized Landscape Painting
• Ruven Kuperman "New Mythologies" opens at Kit Schulte Contemporary Art Berlin
• The 2nd International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Art & Documentary Photography in Buenos Aires
• The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art Presents the First Major William Blake Exhibition in Russia
• National Gallery of Victoria Acquires the John Brack Masterpiece ~ 'The Bar'
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosts ~ Radical Young British Artists ( YBA )
• The Malmö Konsthall Presents "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble"
• Picasso and the Masters opens at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais
• The Hague Museum of Photography exhibits Man Ray ~ 'Unconcerned, But Not Indifferent'
• Irish Museum of Modern Art to show William Hogarth Prints
• Mysterious Phosphorescence of the Blue Hope Diamond
• Eighteen New Paintings by Vincent Desiderio at Marlborough Chelsea
• The Fitzwilliam Museum will celebrate "Endless forms" ~ Charles Darwin Bicentenary
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art to Display Gothic Artworks Posted: 28 Jan 2012 11:03 PM PST Orange County, CA.- The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA) is pleased to present "Gothic", on view at the center from February 2nd through March 24th. "Gothic" features works from artists evincing a peculiar, perverse, idiosyncratic sensitivity, influenced by literature, movies, television and the tabloids, in painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration, fashion, graphic design, animation, photography, video, digital media, computer-based works, installation and performance. OCCCA's museum of the macabre will display supernatural mutations, bizarre curiosities permeated by fantastic and pathological themes. "Gothic" is a mix of Medievalism, Romanticism, science fiction, Victoriana, punk, the uncanny, the grotesque, and the erotic, inseparable from despair, fear and rapture. "Gothic" reveals the shadow within, the skull beneath the skin. The exhibition has been curated by Amy V. Grimm, an Independent Curator and Assistant Professor of Art History & Museum Studies at Irvine Valley College. Grimm received her B.A. in Psychology from the State University of New York in New Paltz, New York. She received a Graduate Certificate in Museum Management and a M.A. in Art History from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. Grimm's M.A. Thesis, is titled, Andy Warhol: An Inquiry into Self Identity and Portraiture. Ms. Grimm's area of specialization includes Modern and Contemporary European and American Art. Grimm's museum and academic career spans over fifteen years including work for the Albany Institute of History & Art, the South Carolina State Museum, the El Paso Museum of Art, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. As a museum curator, Grimm has developed and supervised over 40 exhibitions including independent projects and museum collaborations. Notable exhibitions include, Out of Eden: The Sculptural Work of Harry Geffert for the El Paso Museum of Art, and Sweet Subversives: Contemporary California Drawings for the Long Beach Museum of Art. Grimm's scholarship related to exhibition programming and independent critical reviews have been published as museum catalogs and articles in national publications such as Sculpture and Artlies magazines. Grimm is past president of the Border Museum Association in El Paso, Texas; an organization that sponsors events to promote international arts partnerships. Working for the College Art Association, Grimm has developed annual conference programming in cities such as Seattle, Atlanta, Boston and New York. For the College Art Association's Annual Conference in 2007, in New York City, Grimm chaired the panel Out of the Frame: Creativity and Change. This panel addressed curatorial risk taking in light of controversial topics and technological challenges. Also during the 2007 conference, Grimm curated The Media Lounge, a unique space dedicated to showing contemporary new media, such as the MIT Media Lab, Potter-Belmar Labs and several independent filmmakers and videographers. Grimm continues to lecture extensively on topics such as Andy Warhol, Contemporary Art and Museum Studies. As an Assistant Professor of Art History & Museum Studies, Grimm is developing a new undergraduate program in Applied Museum Studies for Irvine Valley College. Students participating in the program will gain the knowledge and skills necessary for a variety of employment opportunities, in museums and other arts organizations. Talking of the exhibition, Grimm says: "The Gothic genre is a broad and complex interdisciplinary movement that never ceases to spark my interest. The human desire to experience pleasurable fear is evident in literature, music, film, dance, fashion, design and the visual arts. Creative expression of the fantastic and frightening are not new, but are deeply rooted in the psyche of humankind. In fact one might say that this part of our psyche is an essential part of what makes us human. The understanding and appreciation of opposites such as dark and light, good and evil, life and death are especially relevant to the Gothic genre. My intent as the Juror for GOTHIC is to understand and appreciate the widest range of creative expression within this complex genre. I would expect to see the deadly serious to the silly, from the secular to the non-secular, from the beautiful to the ugly and from the personal to the universal in a wide range of media. As I review the works, I will not only examine the work on its own merits, I will also evaluate them in context to the other entries and how they may work together to create a truly memorable, relevant and exciting exhibition." The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA) is an artist operated California non-profit corporation dedicated to the pursuit of professional excellence and freedom of expression in the arts. Since it's inception in 1980, it has provided emerging and established member and guest artists a forum to explore and develop ideas in contemporary art in an atmosphere that promotes experimentation and risk-taking, but without the specter of censorship. In addition, OCCCA develops and actively participates in public educational, outreach and community art services. Located in the heart of Santa Ana's Artist Village, OCCCA presents a variety of free programs: Films, Forums, Eclectic Company concerts and First Saturday artist receptions. OCCCA began through the vision of its five founding members, Richard Aaron, Robert Cunningham, Suvan Geer, Alhena Scott, and Carol Stella. The inaugural exhibition, in September of 1980, featured Slator Barron, George Herms, and Dustin Shuler. OCCCA has continued to function as a nurturing showplace for emerging and mid career member artists from the Orange County area. In addition to members work, OCCCA strives to exhibit a variety of artists work from all media and career levels from emerging through established late career artists. Affiliate members participate in all aspects of professional art practice, including design and installation of exhibitions, public relations/publicity, curatorial, accounting, grant and proposal writing, gallery sitting, facilities maintenance, etc. In its 30 year history, with a membership roster limited to 40 through its current by-laws, OCCCA has exhibited over 800 guest artists and held numerous solo, group and juried shows that have showcased more than 6,000 participants. Affiliate members have shown in more than 600 one-person shows and 300 group exhibitions. In addition, the organization has a long tradition of mounting non-member exhibition and performance projects, and inviting outside curators to organize shows. Over the years, the scope of OCCCA's programming has expanded to include collaborative and exchange projects with other venues throughout the United States and overseas. With the generous assistance and support of the City of Santa Ana, OCCCA was granted title and moved to its current 6,300 square-foot facility. Ownership and member management and control of our gallery makes OCCCA unique in the world of non-profit arts organizations. In the past six years OCCCA has extended its international reach. The new facility has enabled the planning of more ambitious large-scale projects most notably those in the new media areas. Visit the OCCCA's website at ... http://www.occca.org

The Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair returns to the Science Museum in London Posted: 28 Jan 2012 10:38 PM PST London.- The Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair is pleased to announce that they will be returning the Science Museum in South Kensington, London from February 2nd through February 5th 2012. The 2012 fair brings together an impressive range of art on paper exhibited by leading art dealers from across the UK. This eclectic and lively fair presents all types of art on paper from the 16th Century to the modern day. Works include original drawings, watercolours, prints, photographs and posters, all of which are for sale with prices starting at £500 rising to £100,000. The fair gives visitors the chance to view new, contemporary talent alongside works by well known artists from earlier eras shown by Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Wolseley Fine Arts and Elizabeth Harvey-Lee, for example.

The Evansville Museum To Show John Dowell's Large-Scale Photographs Posted: 28 Jan 2012 10:18 PM PST Evansville, Indiana.- The Evansville Museum's this year's art exhibition series opens with "City Lights: The Photographs of John Dowell", on view from February 1st (subject to the museum reopening on schedule) through March 4th. Philadelphia native and Professor of Printmaking at the prestigious Tyler School of Art at Temple University, John Dowell captures the pulse of various American cities in his large-scale color photographs. "City Lights" is presented as part of the Black History Month celebrations.

The Yale School of Art to Show "Malcolm Morley: In a Nutshell" Posted: 28 Jan 2012 09:13 PM PST New Haven, Connecticut. - Yale School of Art is proud to present "Malcolm Morley: In a Nutshell: The Fine Art of Painting", on view at the Edgewood Avenue gallery from January 31st through March 31st. The exhibition comprises fifteen paintings (including two painted installations being exhibited for the first time), seven watercolors, and a drawing, all selected from the expansive output of this paradigm-changing artist.Works in the exhibition range from large-scale canvases such as "Cristoforo Colombo" (1965), "Camels and Goats" (1980), and "Rat Tat Tat" (2001), to smaller sketches such as "Hollywood Film Stars and Homes Foldout" (1973) and back to the two new and previously unseen painted installations — "Biggles" and "The Spitfire" (both 2012).

The Tampa Museum of Art features Romare Bearden ~ Southern Recollections Posted: 28 Jan 2012 07:44 PM PST TAMPA, FL -  The Tampa Museum of Art is pleased to present Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections, an exhibition of approximately 80 works of art that span the career of this internationally renowned artist. Bearden (1911-1988) is widely regarded as one of the most important African-American artists who worked in the United States during the 20th century. He has been the focus of many solo exhibitions, including presentations at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. In 1987 he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Ronald Reagan. Works assembled from public and private collections will highlight Bearden's mastery of collage as well as his development of narrative and thematic explorations of his native South. This exhibition, which will be on view in Charlotte and Newark during its national tour, coincides with the centennial of Bearden's birth and will examine how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout his career (a theme that has not been previously explored). On view 28th January until 6th of May. Through visual recollections of his experiences in the South, Romare Bearden meticulously recorded the ritual forms, or the "collective beliefs," that imbue his works with archetypal significance. These visual metaphors hold in perfect balance the literal and the symbolic; with them he celebrated and eulogized a lost way of life and the feelings and values associated with the past. Among the large thematic groupings will be selections from The Prevalence of Ritual series, which includes many works referring to Bearden's childhood home in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Bearden spent many summers during his childhood with his paternal grandmother and great grandparents in Mecklenburg County, and absorbed stories and observations about the rituals of daily life—the relentless toil of cultivating crops, formidable women tending lush gardens and mixing herbal remedies, blue wash day Mondays, Friday night fish fries, Saturday night revival meetings, and church-going Sundays. These experiences, which stood in stark contrast to the urban rhythm of his parents' New York City household, left an indelible impression on him. In the early 1940s, Bearden began giving visual form to his boyhood memories. The works in his Southern Series, painted in tempera on brown paper, are characterized by strong colors, flattened perspective and stylized, highly formal compositions. Paintings such as Folk Musicians (1942) and The Visitation (1941) are examples of Bearden's depictions of agrarian life, as well as his portrayal of emotional bonds common to all humanity, but particularly informed by an African-American experience. As Bearden developed his collage technique in the mid-1960s, he made use of a wide ranges of art practices, both Western and non-Western. His studies of masters of European, African, and Classical Chinese art enabled him to draw on styles that he felt were timeless and historically durable. The fragmented images Bearden gleaned from magazines and arranged as a whole are as much a part of the content of his compositions as are the events and people depicted. His use of collage, which emphasizes distortions, reversals, telescoping of time, and Surrealistic blending of styles enabled Bearden to convey the dream-like quality of memory and active imagination and was therefore a perfect vehicle for images of his memories of the South. Bearden returned to the South in the 1970s as his career was beginning to gain momentum. This homecoming in his late mid-life proved bittersweet. The region was undergoing urban renewal, and already traces of Bearden's past had been erased. Perhaps this nostalgic experience imbued Bearden with a greater sense of urgency to both celebrate and eulogize a lost way of life, a theme that would inform his artwork for the remainder of his days. Bearden developed a complex iconography that spoke to these developments. Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections is supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and was organized by The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina. Presentation of the exhibition in Tampa is made possible with generous support from the Arts Council of Hillsborough. Additional support was provided by Hazel and William Hough and the Tom and Mary James Foundation. Visit :  http://www.tampamuseum.org/

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum presents Solo of Brazilian artist Barrão Posted: 28 Jan 2012 07:43 PM PST RIDGEFIELD, CT.- Brazilian artist Barrão re-purposes popular ceramics he finds at second-hand stores, flea markets, and dumpsters by clustering them all together for the production of his large-scale, whimsical sculptures. Mashups, the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States, will open at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum on January 29th. It will present three works built from fragments of preexisting objects, including an exotic five-foot-tall tree made from glued-together decorative porcelains. Instead of producing tropical fruits, the tree sprouts a diversity of creatures, including roosters, elephants, dogs, and swans.

Turner Contemporary shows how JMW Turner revolutionized Landscape Painting Posted: 28 Jan 2012 07:07 PM PST MARGATE, UK - Eighty-eight works by Britain's best-loved painter, JMW Turner , many from Tate's collection, will go on show in the major exhibition Turner and the Elements at Turner Contemporary in Margate from 28th January –13th May. The exhibition, including a number of works featuring Margate and the north Kent coast, illustrates how his painting technique and the influence of the latest scientific and technological developments of his time, revolutionized landscape painting. JMW Turner was a frequent visitor to Margate spending time there as a child and again later in his life. He is said to have remarked to John Ruskin that "the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe".

Ruven Kuperman "New Mythologies" opens at Kit Schulte Contemporary Art Berlin Posted: 28 Jan 2012 07:06 PM PST BERLIN - In New Mythologies, Ruven Kuperman attempts to connect Japanese elements of tradition and culture with a heroic contemporary imagery, based on the old and new testament. Kuperman's recent works on paper are large-format drawings with colored pencil, inspired by the Japanese woodcuts of the Edo period, especially by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Kuperman searches for an opportunity to create new mythologies, which are customized to our globalized modern world.  In his atmospheric drawings, heroes of japanese myths and Kabuki dancers in traditional costumes meet with Manga and Hentai characters. On exhibition through 26th of February at Kit Schulte Contemporary Art Berlin.

The 2nd International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Art & Documentary Photography in Buenos Aires Posted: 28 Jan 2012 07:05 PM PST Buenos Aires, Argentina.- The Borges Cultural Centre is currently hosting the second International Biennial Exhibition of Fine Art and Documentary Photography on view through February 27th. 320 images taken by 220 artists from 40 countries are being exhibited at the Centro Cultural Borges where this year The International Biennial of Art and Documentary Photography is being held. The works will be auctioned on February 14 benefiting FLENI foundation and Save the Children.The Pollux Award and The Jacob Riis Award organized by The Worldwide Photography Awards Gala and among them are the awards in several competitions. Images were selected by a jurors tem which included several well-known photographers such as Magnum's Chris Steele-Perkins, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Olivia Arthur; publishers from  Eyemazing, Zoom and Lenswork; and the curators Philip Brookman and Carol McCusker, among others. "There's everything. This is a great opportunity to see something that is not common in Buenos Aires, and it's perhaps the largest photographic Biennial in Latin America in the last years" said photographer Julio Hardy, CEO of The Worldwide Photography Awards Gala, based in UK and organizer of the Biennial. Diversity is not only in the countries of origin of the participating artists, Egypt, Lebanon, Poland, Iran, Senegal, Iraq and the U.S., among others, but also the styles and themes addressed. Photographs were selected from 17,000 images submitted to The Julia Margaret Cameron Award for women photographers. About 200 of the exhibits are of women artists. "There is a growing participation of women in fine art and documentary photography," said Hardy, who then noted the difference: "In the photograph taken by women there's a more humanistic approach. For example, in the Biennial exhibited photos of women show the aftermath or the consequences of a conflict rather than the conflict, "he said. The photographs donated by the artists will be auctioned at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA) on 14 February, however the exhibition which runs until the 27th of that month. Proceeds from the auction, which will be conducted by Enrique Scheinsohn, will be allocated equally to the FLENI Foundation and Save the Children. The image of Israeli artist Dina Bova, published on the cover of the catalog, you will leave the ring with a base of $ 2500. This is a version of the expulsion from paradise of Adam and Eve. The first Biennale was held in 2010 at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, with the exhibition of 160 works from 25 countries. For this occasion, the initiative has been declared of cultural interest by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation and is sponsored by the embassies of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Peru, Denmark, Poland and Finland. Visit the Gala Awards website at ... http://www.thegalaawards.net Located in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, the Borges Cultural Center is an important cultural undertaking created by the Foundation for the Arts (Fundación para las Artes) a non-profit organization.The center was established in October of 1995. Occupying a space of over 10,000 square meters, the Borges is located within Galerías Pacifico—a prestigious building dating back to the end of the 19th century and considered a historical national monument in Argentina. The goal of the Borges Cultural Center is to support and promote cultural and artistic expression, advance education in its areas of interest, and to promote Argentina's historical, cultural, and artistic heritage both domestically and abroad. Visitors can enjoy a wide array of cultural activities, such as art exhibits, music, dance, films, theatre, literature, and various educational programs. Following the example of the Bom Marché in Paris, Francisco Seeber and Emilio Bunge created the Argentine Bom Marché Argentino at the end of the last century. Their European-styled creation embodied the best of the period's architectural trends. Florida Street was chosen as the optimal location in which to construct this exceptional building of glass arches, inter-crossing paths, and an elegant central dome. On December 25, 1896, the Fine Arts Museum was established inside the Galerías Pacífico building. As is sometimes the case with large-scale projects, the building suffered the impact of several historical events that took place in Argentina during its construction. In 1908, circumstances forced part of the structure to be sold to the Buenos Aires railway system. In 1945, architects Jorge Aslan and Héctor Ezcurra remodelled the building according to this partition, dividing the space between the gallery/stores, and the administrative offices for the railway company employees. The inclusion of mural paintings by Spilimbergo, Berni, Castagnino, Colmeiro and Urruchua capped off the building's restoration, and added colour and life to the 450 square meter dome. The Center has previously hosted exhibits of well-known international artists including: Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Giorgio de Chirico, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Torres García, Man Ray, Robert Capa, World Press Photo, Steve McCurry and many others.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art Presents the First Major William Blake Exhibition in Russia Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:49 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

National Gallery of Victoria Acquires the John Brack Masterpiece ~ 'The Bar' Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:48 PM PST MELBOURNE, AU - The National Gallery of Victoria announced that the NGV has acquired John Brack's outstanding work, "The Bar", with support from the Victorian Government. The painting, which the NGV sought unsuccessfully to purchase at auction in 2006, was offered to the Gallery for acquisition by Tasmanian collector David Walsh, who purchased it at public auction. The bar is widely regarded as the companion painting to John Brack's Collins St., 5 p.m., one of the NGV's most popular works with the visiting public.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosts ~ Radical Young British Artists ( YBA ) Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:47 PM PST HOUSTON, TEXAS - Radical London art scene as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents END GAME – British Contemporary Art from the Chaney Family Collection. From the revolutionary Young British Artists (YBA) group of the 1990s to the dynamics of today's avant-garde, 21 major works by thirteen artists and artists' collectives from this influential generation will be on view at the MFAH. The exhibition runs June 14 through September 28, 2008; an audio-tour and cell-phone tour, featuring interviews with artists, the curators, and the collectors, will be available for visitors.

The Malmö Konsthall Presents "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble" Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:46 PM PST Malmö, Sweden.-  The Malmö Konsthall is pleased to present "Misaki Kawai – Big Bubble", on view from September 10th through November 27th. The Japanese artist Misaki Kawai (b. 1978) works with painting, drawing, sculpture, installations and artists' books. Her works are filled with colourful characters, who appear to come from the dream world of film, music and comics. Strongly influenced by today's consumer society – of which she herself is a part – Kawai fuses East with West, humour with seriousness and dreams with reality. The result is both chaotic and exuberant. Misaki Kawai has been drawing since she was very young, and the drawn line forms the basis of her work. She is influenced by the Japanese manga style called heta-uma, which means "bad-good" or bad technique with good result. It refers to the minimizing of conscious decision making or intentional stylization while drawing – a sort of uninterrupted connection from the brain to the hand. In her paintings, she uses a simple drawing line filling the areas with clear, strong colour to create and intensify moods and emotions in her pictures. There is a happiness and spontaneity. We encounter the same characters, animals and people who appear in her installations. Kawai deliberately works on the border to the banal, using an understated humour that indirectly reminds us of how our society functions. Misaki Kawai has been living in New York since 2000. There she collects, as she does on her many trips abroad, ideas, materials and objects from markets and low-cost stores. Inexpensive things like mass-produced plastic toys, stickers, ceramic ware and fabrics. Her artists' books are often decorated with patterned pieces of fabric or strings, making every book unique. They can be about the adventures of a Yeti warrior or be linked to her travels, such as Nepali Special or China Special. Her latest book project, Pencil Exercise, consists of 500 drawings that she produced in the course of a year, at least one every day. In her playful installations, Kawai creates imaginative worlds in materials such as papier-mâché, wood, cardboard and fabric. These doll house-like universes feature an incredible wealth of detail. A recurring theme bas been space and the futuristic worlds of tomorrow. All the colours, shapes, textures and patterns give her installations almost a kaleidoscopic effect, and it is difficult to withstand this hubbub of sweet, dream-like fantasy beings and colourful constructions. She always depicts places filled with movement, action and events. Kawai has said that she admires the action film star Jackie Chan because he is unique and cool. He is her sensei – her master. For the exhibition at Malmö Konsthall, Misaki Kawai will create completely new works, including a large sculptural installation. She has been working on site in Malmö since June. The exhibition catalogue will be in the form of a numbered, limited edition long-sleeved T-shirt. The Malmö Konsthall was opened in 1975 and is one of Europe's largest exhibition halls for contemporary art. Architect Klas Anshelm created an exhibition hall with great flexibility, generous space and fantastic light. The construction materials are light and simple: concrete, glass, wood and aluminium. Most of the gallery has a ceiling constructed like a latticework of 550 domes with both natural and artificial light sources. The height of the ceiling varies. The light well - with the higher ceiling - has a big sloping skylight towards the north. Klas Anshelm got inspiration for the construction when visiting the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in his Paris studio. The result is a gallery that is both functional and aesthetic. An exhibition space that presents the artist with endless possibilities. Malmö Konsthall arranges exhibitions with an international focus which encompasses both the classics of modern art and current experiments. Previous exhibitions have featured Edvard Munch, Jean Debuffet, Marc Chagall, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Klee, Richard Serra, Antony Gormley, Georg Baselitz, Keith Haring and many others. Visit the exhibition hall's website at ... http://www.konsthall.malmo.se

Picasso and the Masters opens at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:45 PM PST   PARIS - Pablo Picasso was trained in the strict rules of academic painting at a very early age, first by his father, José Ruiz-Blasco, a teacher at the fine art school in Málaga and director of the Malaga Museum, and then as a student (1893-1899) at the fine arts school of La Corùna, at La Lonja (Barcelona).  Drawings from the antique, statuary and architectonics, copies of paintings by the great Spanish masters formed the core of this training, rooted in the humanist pictorial tradition which reminds us that Picasso was born in the 19th century (1881).

The Hague Museum of Photography exhibits Man Ray ~ 'Unconcerned, But Not Indifferent' Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:44 PM PST THE HAGUE - Man Ray (1890-1976) used his camera to turn photography into an art – no mean feat for a man who tried almost all his life to avoid being described as a 'photographer'. He preferred to be identified with his work in other media: drawings, paintings and Dadaist ready-mades. The exhibition entitled Unconcerned, but not indifferent at the Hague Museum of Photography is the first exhibition to reveal Man Ray's complete creative process: from observations, ideas and sketches right through to the final works of art. It links paintings, drawings and (of course) photographs to personal objects, images and documents drawn from his estate to paint a picture of a passionate artist and – whatever his own feelings about the description – a great photographer.

Irish Museum of Modern Art to show William Hogarth Prints Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:43 PM PST DUBLIN, IRELAND - An exhibition of prints by one of England's most celebrated artists, William Hogarth (1697 – 1764) opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 6 June. Comprising some 50 prints from the Madden Arnholz Collection , it includes many of Hogarth's most famous print series such as A Harlot's Progress and Marriage-á-la-Mode. The collection of some 2,000 Old Master prints was donated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1988 by Claire Madden, in memory of her daughter Étaín, and son-in-law Dr Friedrich Arnholz. Now housed as part of the IMMA Collection , the Madden Arnholz Collection constitutes an important part of the nation's artistic archive. On exhibition until 9 September, 2007. Hogarth was one of the most innovative, versatile and influential of British artists, to the extent that the phrase "The Age of Hogarth" is frequently used to describe the first half of the 18th-century. A self-appointed commentator on the morals of his day, Hogarth made works that appear distinctly modern, as they address subjects such as crime, political corruption, sexuality and patriotism, issues which continue to preoccupy the contemporary world. A highly reputable painter, it is in the medium of copper-plate engraving that Hogarth truly excelled and for which he is arguably most famous. With his wit and satirical eye he used print-making to document the social and political mores and follies of the rich and poor of his day as he observed them in the urban setting of his native London.  A Harlot's Progress (1732) deals with the hapless life of a prostitute. Her male counterpart in A Rake's Progress (1735) describes the decline of a vain profligate young man into a life of debauchery and his ignominious death in Bedlam. His masterpiece Marriage-á-la-Mode (1743) questions the upper class folly of marriage for money while Beer Street (1751) and Gin Lane (1751) warn against the unpleasant consequences of alcoholism. The Times (1762) is Hogarth's anti-war satire. The exhibition also includes a rich selection of individual prints including Self Portrait with Pug (1794); Southwark Fair (1733); The March to Finchley (1750); The Distrest Poet (1736) and Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn (1738). Hogarth's relevance today is best illustrated in his later political works. Addressing the state of electioneering during this time, William Hogarth turned from his usual practice of social satire to make a series of politically motivated prints entitled Four Prints of an Election (1755-1758). The first of the prints, An Election Entertainment (1755) depicts a feast, held by the Whig Party candidates, which has turned into a drunken and debauched affair. The following print, Canvassing for Votes (1757), shows the opposing party, the Tories, participating in underhanded campaigning tactics, such as the solicitation of votes in exchange for money. The third print in the series, The Polling (1758), shows what an absolute mess the polling process was, while the fourth and final print, Chairing the Member (1758), depicts the resultant riotous Tory victory. These works represent the extension into the political realm of Hogarth's unprecedented knack for representing moralistic tales of everyday life degraded by social ills. Hogarth was the son of a shopkeeper mother and his father was a schoolmaster and publisher. After a brief apprenticeship as a silversmith, Hogarth studied for a time at Sir James Thornhill's then recently opened art school. His first employment was in designing plates for booksellers until he began producing work on his own account. His first big financial success was with A Harlot's Progress, a series of paintings from which he produced engravings in 1732. This was the first of the wholly innovatory genre that Hogarth called his 'modern moral subjects' and which first gave him his position as a great and original artist. Their humorous quality had little precedent in England and aided their wide reception, facilitated too by the new practice of exhibiting prints in shop windows, taverns and other public buildings, as well the newly established printseller shops. The piracy of his prints, which Hogarth fought fervently, led to the introduction in 1735 of a copyright law which became known as Hogarth's Act. An exhibition guide accompanies the exhibition. Visit the Irish Museum of Modern Art at: www.imma.ie

Mysterious Phosphorescence of the Blue Hope Diamond Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:42 PM PST   WASHINGTON, DC - A study released in the January 2008 edition of the Journal Geology proves that a blue diamond's rare appeal goes far beyond its beauty. The study was conducted by Jeffrey Post, curator of the National Gem Collection and mineralogist, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Post and six other researchers probed the mysterious phosphorescence of the hope diamond and other natural blue diamonds and discovered a way to "fingerprint" individual blue diamonds.

Eighteen New Paintings by Vincent Desiderio at Marlborough Chelsea Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:41 PM PST NEW YORK, N.Y.- Marlborough Chelsea presents an exhibition of new work by Vincent Desiderio. Featuring eighteen new paintings in oil and mixed media, this is Desiderio's seventh exhibition with Marlborough Gallery. The show will be on view through October 15th. Vincent Desiderio's new work revels in the uninhibited toughness of paint. He exploits this toughness to underscore the absolute presence of the work in all its unapologetic materiality. As such this work demonstrates the unique capacity of painting to anchor the viewer in a tangible present tense of viewing, while inducing a trance of speculation regarding, among other things, the nature of illusion.

The Fitzwilliam Museum will celebrate "Endless forms" ~ Charles Darwin Bicentenary Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:40 PM PST Cambridge, UK - The fascinating interchange between the revolutionary theories of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and art of the late nineteenth century is explored in a ground-breaking interdisciplinary exhibition opening at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in Summer 2009. Organised by The Fitzwilliam Museum in association with the Yale Center for British Art—two of the world's leading university art museums — "Endless forms"  will coincide with the global celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of naturalist Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). The exhibition will show at the Yale Center for British Art from 12 February – 3 May 2009, and at The Fitzwilliam Museum from 16 June to 4 October 2009. The idea of a link between Darwin, the scientist, and the visual arts is at first surprising. Yet, as this landmark exhibition demonstrates, Darwin was highly receptive to the visual traditions he inherited. In turn, his ideas about the natural world and man's place in it had a profound impact on European and American artists of the late nineteenth century. By opening a new perspective on man and his origins, Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection provided fertile territory for the creative imagination. Artistic responses were wide-ranging: from imaginative projections of prehistory to troubled evocations of a life dominated by the struggle for existence to fantastic visions of life-forms in perpetual evolution. Darwin's response to the beauties of the natural world also permeated artistic images of color and pattern in nature, particularly his theories concerning protective camouflage and sexual display.  In Darwin's day scientific discoveries were widely discussed by the public at large. William Dyce's iconic Pegwell Bay and early photographs by William Henry Fox Talbot show just how directly his contemporaries engaged with new research in geology and paleontology. Darwin began his career as a naturalist in the field of geology and was impressed by emerging theories about the age of the earth and the forces that had shaped its crust. In the exhibition, this changing view of the landscape is reflected in the shift from paintings (by J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Cole) that evoke biblical notions of a universal flood to those by John Brett, Thomas Moran, Paul Cézanne, and Claude Monet, which focus on landscape features shaped by the action of dynamic natural forces such as glaciers, geysers, and erosion. For Darwin, the great age of the earth had made possible the slow evolution of species by "natural selection." This could only happen through an endless "struggle for existence" among animals and humans. Many artists of the nineteenth century shared Darwin's fascination with the idea of struggle, and they were increasingly influenced by Darwin's vision of the complex interplay among all living things. Examples range from Sir Edwin Landseer's scenes of nature "red in tooth and claw" to the lyrical paintings of the great Swedish wildlife artist Bruno Liljefors. The struggle also took on a human guise, in pictures of the dark underside of Victorian society by Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer. In his seminal book On the Origin of Species, Darwin hinted at man's ape origins, a theory that was famously, and controversially, spelled out in The Descent of Man (1871). Artists and the public at large soon reacted to the disturbing implications of this theory. Satirical caricatures abounded, but imaginative images of prehistoric life by academic painters and illustrators (Fernand Cormon and Ernst Griset) also proliferated, as well as visions of human ancestry that were more fantastic and introspective, such as Odilon Redon's rare lithographic series, Les Origines. In formulating his theory of natural selection, Darwin also set out to explain the "preservation of favored races in the struggle for life." A remarkable series of anthropological photographs explores the new concepts of race and human cultural development that emerged in response to his ideas. Elsewhere, artists reacted to the disturbing possibility that humankind could regress as well as progress. Most notable in this respect is Edgar Degas who, after reading Darwin's works, explored the possibilities of degeneration in a series of images of criminals and dancers. A wealth of paintings, drawings, and sculpture will explore the ways in which Darwin's ideas of man's relation to animals, particularly apes, shook religious belief and redefined man's place in the natural world. Visual sources used by Darwin for his Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) are drawn from the collections of original Darwin material at Cambridge University Library, which will be on display to the public for the first time. The exhibition will also explore what Darwin found beautiful in the natural world, especially the courtship behavior of birds and its analogy to sexual attraction in humans. These ideas are played out in the work of artists as diverse as James Tissot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Martin Johnson Heade, and Edward Lear.  "Endless forms" brings together a remarkable variety of nearly two hundred objects and works of art, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, early photographs, caricatures, illustrated books, and a spectacular range of natural history specimens. It features loans from more than one hundred institutions, including Tate Britain; the British Museum; the J. Paul Getty Museum; the National Gallery, London; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art; the Natural History Museum, London; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; Nationalmuseum Stockholm; the Louvre; and Musée Marmottan, Paris; as well as from private collections. In this way "Endless Forms" unites world-renowned masterpieces by artists such as Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Turner, Church, and Landseer, with intriguing works by fascinating, lesser-known artists such as Bruno Liljefors and Félicien Rops. A notable feature of the exhibition will be the telling juxtaposition of art works and scientific material, from maps of geological stratification and botanical teaching diagrams to colored ornithological specimens and a dazzling array of minerals. CATALOGUE : A fully illustrated publication, edited by Diana Donald and Jane Munro, will be published by The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press (January 2009). CREDITS :"Endless Forms": Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts has been organised by The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, in association with the Yale Center for British Art. The exhibition has been curated by Diana Donald, independent scholar and former Professor of Art History and Head of the Department of History of Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Jane Munro, Curator of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints at The Fitzwilliam Museum. The organizing curator at the Yale Center for British Art is Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. Visit The Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB : www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/ Tuesday - Saturday: 10.00 - 17.00 Sunday:  12.00 - 17.00

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 28 Jan 2012 06:39 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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