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

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• The Schirn Kunsthalle opens a Major Survey of "George Condo ~ Mental States"
• Sotheby's to Offer One of the Most Famous Masterpieces in the World . . "The Scream"
• "American Landscapes of the Country Place Era" opens at Reynolda House Museum of American Art
• Paintings from National Museums Liverpool join the 'Your Paintings' website
• The Art Gallery of Ontario ~ The World’s Largest Collection Of Canadian Art ~ Plus International Masterpieces
• Smithsonian Bans Religious Artwork
• National Gallery of Art hosts The Beffi Triptych Rescued from Italian Earthquake
• Tria Gallery presents its Annual “Summer Cocktail” a Group Exhibition
• The Baltic's Comprehensive Exhibition of Works by Robert Breer ~ As A Tribute To His Life
• Leonardo Da Vinci's Notebook Travels to High Museum of Art in Atlanta
• Steve Schapiro Photographs Taken During the Shooting of "The Godfather" & "Taxi Driver"
• National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu
• Unconventional New Display at the National Portrait Gallery in London
• The June Kelly Galley To Show Recent Works by Tonya Ingersol
• Tria Gallery presents "Premonitions"
• "Van Gogh to Munch" at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art This Summer
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Schirn Kunsthalle opens a Major Survey of "George Condo ~ Mental States" Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:50 PM PST Frankfurt, Germany - The Schirn Kunsthalle is pleased to present "George Condo. Mental States"  on view at the museum from February 22nd through May 28th. Ironic, provocative, witty—since his beginnings in New York's East Village in the early 1980s American artist George Condo has produced a distinctive body of work. His paintings, characterized by mordant humor, surrealist-tinged absurdity, and exuberant pathos, make repeated reference to the traditions of American and European art history of the last 500 years, from Velázquez by way of Picasso to Gorky. In partnership with the Hayward Gallery in London and curated by Hayward Director Ralph Rugoff, the Schirn is pleased to present a comprehensive retrospective of Condo's art. Condo works in a style that can be described as artificial realism, and both his paintings and sculptures display his ongoing examination of human physiognomy and all-too-human mental states. Organized thematically and stylistically in groups, sixty-six important paintings from different creative periods, as well as a selection of roughly ten sculptures and new works by the artist will be exhibited at the Schirn. George Condo was born in New Hampshire in 1957 and studied art history and musical theory at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has maintained his outstanding position in the art world for almost thirty years. Next to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Condo exercised a decisive influence on the art scene of New York's East Village of the 1980s. His first public show was presented at Ulrike Kantor's gallery in Los Angeles in 1981. In Germany, it was Monika Sprüth's gallery in Cologne that dedicated the first solo exhibition in Germany to him in 1984. Since then, his works have been shown at numerous institutions in the United States and in Europe, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, or the Musée Maillol in Paris. Works by George Condo are part of such important collections as those of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The artist has also been influential in the world of fashion, the music industry, and the field of street culture. In 2010 George Condo collaborated with US hip hop star Kanye West and made a series of paintings which were used as album covers. In the course of his career, George Condo has developed an artistic style that mercilessly combines the beautiful and the grotesque, seriousness and absurdity and thus created one of the most provocative and imaginative oeuvres in contemporary painting. He is often called "an artist's artist," and his influence on younger generations of artists is undisputed. His paintings' figures have also provided a source of inspiration for authors like William S. Burroughs or Salman Rushdie. Condo's works abound with art historical references. Skillfully drawing on the pictorial language of past centuries, the artist incorporates a variety of painterly and pictorial styles into his works. He attaches special importance to his figures' countenances; grotesquely distorted, cubistically exaggerated, or even featureless, their faces question the identity of the individual concealed behind them. The exhibition "George Condo. Mental States" encompasses works from the last three decades. Thematically grouped into five sections – "Portraits," "Manic Society," "Pathos," "Abstraction/Figuration," and "Heads" – it offers a survey of the artist's entire production. One focus of the show is Condo's imaginary portraits, which, vacillating between absurdity and pathos, evoke different mental states. Presented on a large wall hung from the ceiling to the floor in the salon style, these portraits constitute the heart of the show. The figures depicted are archetypes – butlers, businessmen, clerical and historical personalities – familiar to us despite their humorously distorted features. Their eyes furnish a special characteristic. Frequently huge, not matching each other, protruding in panic or rage, they lend the grotesque or even monstrous figures something human and personal, as they do for example in the case of "Portrait of a Woman" (2002) or "Nude on Purple" (2007). The figures in some of the paintings present themselves as faceless. "The Objective Idealist" (1994) is primarily defined by the depicted figure's clothing and ornate jewelry; the face confronts us with a gaping void. The paintings not only question the judgment of a person's identity by appearances, but also the claim of portraiture to render a likeness of the subject's identity. Condo enters into a dialogue with the artists he takes his cues from. "Memories of Rembrandt" (1994) makes us think of this great master of chiaroscuro; the effect of light creating meaning ensured by Rembrandt is torpedoed by Condo in his portrait. He unfolds the face as a desolate, jumbled-up construction, as if he aimed at destroying its role as a crucial symbol of subjectivity. The group of paintings that make up the "Manic Society" section of the exhibition reveal unequivocal social relationships. Condo unsparingly exposes the yawning abysses and ridiculousness of modern society. The protagonists of "Couple on Blue Striped Chair" (2005) eye the viewer aggressively. The expression of their distorted faces oscillates between fear, derision, lust and greed. Condo also describes his figures as "antipodal beings," as they reveal undiscovered spheres of consciousness. Lonely, pathetic figures with equally distorted countenances, oversized ears, and conspicuous rows of teeth for which the mouths seem too small are the characters the "Pathos" selection confronts us with. The protagonists in "The Chinese Woman" (2001) or "The Janitor's Wife" (2000) convey the impression of being aware of their hopeless situation. They present themselves as outcasts vainly rebelling against their alienation. Ten sculptures of the group "Heads" complete the presentation of Condo's art of portraiture. The mostly gilt bronze heads comprise quotations from art history as well as sociocritical allusions and translate the artist's unmistakable style into the medium of sculpture. The large-format abstract paintings, which may strike us at first sight as odd next to the portraits, once again express the artist's intense involvement with Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. In many cases, abstraction seems to be a logical consequence of the manic overcrowding of the surface with pictorial motifs. In other works, figurative elements compete against abstract compositions. Condo's most recent creations like the paintings "The Fallen Butler" (2009) or "Racing Forms" (2010) swarm with bodies lost in abstract forms and landscapes. The three crucifixion pictures "Jesus" (2007), "Dismus" (2007), and "Gestas" (2007) provide a further highlight of the exhibition. These works may also be seen as examples of George Condo's continuous exploration of the contradictory. Their expressions vary between humor and pathos, contemporary imagery and the return to models from art history. The exhibition "George Condo. Mental States" has been organized by the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, in London in collaboration with the Schirn Kunsthalle. Condo's works are deeply rooted in European and American traditions of painting in spite of their frequently outrageous humor and exaggeration. By using traditional materials, techniques of painting, and stylistic forms, the artist establishes manifold cross references spanning from the Renaissance and the Baroque eras to Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is one of Germany's most renowned exhibition institutions. Since its founding in 1986, the Schirn has mounted approximately 180 exhibitions, including major survey shows devoted to the Vienna Jugendstil, Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism, to women Impressionists, to subjects such as "shopping — a century of art and consumer culture," the visual art of the Stalin era, new Romanticism in contemporary art, and the influence of Charles Darwin's theories on the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Large solo exhibitions have featured artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Ensor, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, Peter Doig, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Georges Seurat. And artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Ayse Erkmen, Carsten Nicolai, Jan De Cock, Jonathan Meese, John Bock, Michael Sailstorfer, Terence Koh, Aleksandra Mir, Eberhard Havekost, and Mike Bouchet have developed new exhibitions for the Schirn. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt showcases highly charged themes and topical aspects of artists' oeuvres with an incisive voice and from a contemporary standpoint. As a site of discoveries, the Schirn offers its visitors an original, sensory exhibition experience as well as active participation in cultural discourse. Visit the kunsthalle's website at ... http://www.schirn.de

Sotheby's to Offer One of the Most Famous Masterpieces in the World . . "The Scream" Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:29 PM PST New York city.- Sotheby's is honoured to announce that Edvard Munch's masterpiece "The Scream" will lead its Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on May 2nd. The iconic work is one of the most instantly recognizable images in both art history and popular culture, perhaps second only to the Mona Lisa. This version of "The Scream" dates from 1895, and is one of four versions of the composition, and the only version still in private hands. It will be on view in London for the first time ever, with the exhibition at Sotheby's opening on 13 April. In New York, and also for the first time ever, it will be on exhibition at Sotheby's in advance of the sale beginning 27 April. The work is owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen, whose father Thomas was a friend, neighbour and patron of Munch. Possible sale estimate : $80 million USD.

"American Landscapes of the Country Place Era" opens at Reynolda House Museum of American Art Posted: 21 Feb 2012 08:05 PM PST WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- Celebrate the return of spring as Reynolda House Museum of American Art opens "A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era". The exhibition will be on view in the main gallery of the Mary and Charlie Babcock Wing through Aug. 5th. Curated by landscape historian Robin Karson, who chose seven iconic American estates from coast to coast for the project, the exhibition features 70 black-and-white and seven color photographs by photographer Carol Betsch of influential landscape designs created between 1895 and the last years of the Great Depression. By documenting the estates that survive from the Country Place Era, "A Genius for Place" invites visitors to consider the importance of protecting these significant examples of American landscape

Paintings from National Museums Liverpool join the 'Your Paintings' website Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:49 PM PST LONDON.- The Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF), in partnership with the BBC, today announced that all oil paintings in National Museums Liverpool have been added to the Your Paintings website for the nation to enjoy. Your Paintings is a project to create a complete online catalogue of every oil painting in the national collection, whether on display or in store, at www.bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings Paintings by Old Masters such as Gainsborough, Martini, Rembrandt and Rubens , along with later works by artists such as Cézanne, Degas , Freud, Monet and Spencer are among the 3,000 paintings from National Museums Liverpool that can now be seen on Your Paintings. The National Museums Liverpool collection joins 3,150 other paintings from 35 collections across Merseyside that joined the site in 2011. The National Museums Liverpool paintings are drawn from seven museum sites in Liverpool. These include the Lady Lever Art Gallery and the Walker Art Gallery which both boast outstanding collections of paintings including Old Masters, Victorian art, notably Pre-Raphaelite works, and post-war British painting. Important holdings of paintings can also be found at Sudley House and The Museum of Liverpool . Merseyside Maritime Museum's collection of marine artworks serves to remind us that the sea and shipping are key to Liverpool's identity, whilst the smaller collection at the UK Border Agency National Museum gives a fascinating glimpse of British social and political history. Together these collections provide a unique insight into the history and artistic heritage Liverpool. To help the BBC and PCF identify and catalogue what can be seen in each painting, the public is being invited to 'tag' the nation's paintings. Tagging is fun, easy and you don't need to be an art expert to do it. The results will allow future users of the Your Paintings website to find paintings of subjects that interest them. Your Paintings Tagger is at http://tagger.thepcf.org.uk Ann Bukantas, Head of Fine Art, National Museums Liverpool, said: "This project means thousands of works can be enjoyed by people all around the globe. We expect that many people will be inspired by these works and will be encouraged to experience the wonder of fantastic art in person through visiting our galleries and museums." National Museums Liverpool is a museums and galleries group comprising a range of venues. We attracted over 3 million visitors last year. Using all our assets - staff, collections and buildings - we enable millions of people, from all backgrounds, from all over the world to enjoy the benefits of engagement with a world-class museum service. Visit : www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/

The Art Gallery of Ontario ~ The World’s Largest Collection Of Canadian Art ~ Plus International Masterpieces Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:31 PM PST The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is located in Toronto's downtown Grange Park district. With almost 50,000 square meters of physical space, the AGO is the 10th largest art museum in North America. Its collection includes more than 70,000 works spanning the 1st century to the present-day. The museum was originally founded in 1900 by a group of private citizens, who incorporated the institution as the Art Museum of Toronto. The museum was renamed the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919, and subsequently the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1966. The current location of the AGO dates to 1910, when the gallery was willed the estate known as the Grange, a historic Georgian manor built in 1817, upon the death of Goldwin Smith. In 1911, the museum leased lands to the south of the manor to the City of Toronto in perpetuity so as to create Grange Park. In 1920, the museum also allowed the Ontario College of Art to construct a building on the grounds. The museum's first formal exhibitions were opened in the Grange in 1913. In 1916, the museum decided to begin construction of a small portion of a planned new gallery building. Designed by Pearson and Darling in the Beaux-Arts style, excavation of the new facility began in 1916, and the first galleries opened in 1918. Expansion throughout the 20th century added various galleries, culminating in 1993, which left the AGO with 38,400 square meters of interior space. Under the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million (later increased to $276 million) redevelopment plan by Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB). Although Frank Gehry was born in Toronto, and as a child had lived in the same neighborhood as the AGO, the expansion of the gallery represented his first work in Canada. Gehry was commissioned to expand and revitalize the AGO, not to design a new building; as such, one of the challenges he faced was to unite the disparate areas of the building that had become a bit of a "hodgepodge" after six previous expansions dating back to the 1920s. Kenneth Thomson was a major benefactor of Transformation AGO, donating much of his art collection to the gallery as well as providing $50 million towards the renovation. Thomson died in 2006, two years before the project was complete. The AGO reopened in November 2008, with the transformation project having increased the art viewing space by approximately 50%. Notable elements of the expanded building include a new entrance aligned with the gallery's historic Walker Court and the Grange, and a new four-storey south wing, clad in glass and blue titanium, overlooking both the Grange and Grange Park. The most characteristic outward-facing element of the design however is a new glass and wood façade called the Galleria Italia (named in recognition of a $13 million contribution by 26 Italian-Canadian families). The completed expansion received wide acclaim, notably for the restraint of its design. As well as the galleries, AGO contains world-class conservation, research and education facilities as well as a restaurant, café, bar and museum shop. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.ago.net The Art Gallery of Ontario includes the world's largest collection of Canadian art, which depicts the development of Canada's heritage from pre-Confederation to the present. The Canadian Collection includes major works from 19th century Canadian artists, with a particular emphasis on the paintings of Cornelius Krieghoff, the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, through strong holdings of the work of Tom Thomson, Lawren S. Harris, J.E.H. Macdonald, David Milne and James Wilson Morrice to significant paintings by post-war artists Paul-Emile Borduas and William Kurelek. The AGO has one of the finest collections of Inuit art in the world. The inaugural exhibition of Inuit art in the Samuel and Esther Sarick Gallery focuses on transformation, which occurs during the traditional spiritual practice of shamanism and when the ancient culture of the North came into contact with Southern newcomers. Over 500 sculptures are also exhibited in the Inuit Visible Storage Gallery on the concourse level. Almost 1,500 works (plus a further 1,000 projectile points) covering 11,000 years of history are on display in the AGO's Canadian galleries. The museum also has an impressive collection of European art, including the most important collection of Medieval and Renaissance decorative arts outside Europe and the United States, featuring major works by Tintoretto, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony van Dyck, Emile Antoine Bourdelle, and Frans Hals, and works by other renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Vincent Van Gogh, and Edgar Degas. In addition to these, the AGO also has one of the most significant collections of African and Oceanic art in North America, and a contemporary art collection illustrating the evolution of modern artistic movements in Canada, the United States, and Europe, including works by Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and Jenny Holzer. The AGO is home to the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, which houses the largest public collection of works by this British sculptor. Moore's bronze work, Two Large Forms (1966–1969) greets visitors at the museum's north façade. The AGO also have significant collections of photographs and prints and drawings. A key component of the collection was newspaper tycoon, Ken Thomson's gift of his art collection, the most significant private art collection in Canada, which added 2,000 outstanding works, including signature works by Canadian artists from the 19th to mid-20th century, with some 300 works from the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. The collection also includes a remarkable 145 paintings by the 19th century artist Cornelius Krieghoff and 100 works by the early 20th century luminary David Milne, as well as key paintings by Paul Kane, Paul-Emile Borduas and William Kurelek. The gift also includes a compelling collection of 130 mainly British ship models from the 17th century through the Napoleonic era to the 20th century. About The Walter Trier Gallery - Devoted to the work of Walter Trier, this gallery features small rotating exhibitions of the artist's watercolours, drawings, paintings and sculpture along with satirical works on paper by other artists from the AGO collection. Walter Trier was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1890. He moved to Berlin at age 20 where he became known for his caricatures and childrens' book illustrations. Trier fled to England from Nazi Germany in 1936 and eventually immigrated to Canada in 1947. In Toronto he illustrated books and designed posters for Canada Packers Limited. He died in Collingwood, Ontario in 1951. In 1976 the AGO received a gift from the Trier-Fodor Foundation of over 1100 works by Trier and 345 folk toys. The gift was accompanied by an endowment to support the acquisition of humorous, satirical and illustrative art. Trier was born to a middle class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. In 1905, Trier entered the Industrial School of Fine and Applied Arts; he later moved to the Prague Academy. In 1906, he entered the Royal Academy, Munich, where he studied under Franz Stuck and Erwin Knirr. In 1910, Trier moved to Berlin where he spent most of his career. An anti-fascist, Trier's cartoons were bitterly opposed by the Nazis. In 1936 he emigrated to London. During the Second World War, Trier helped the Ministry of Information produce anti-Nazi leaflets and political propaganda. He and his wife became British citizens in 1947, the same year that they moved to Canada to be near their daughter, who had moved to Toronto with her husband in the late thirties. Among a number of exhibitions currently on show at the AGO, "Black Ice: David Blackwood - Prints of Newfoundland" until June 12th 2011 features one of Canada's leading printmakers and popular artists. This exhibition showcases some iconic works for the first time, revealing the richness of Blackwood's imagination and his working methods. Blackwood has been telling stories about Newfoundland in the form of epic visual narratives for 30 years. To bring this narrative to life, the exhibition will situate Blackwood's prints in time and space by looking at the history of Newfoundland and the people who settled there. Blackwood explores the timeless theme of the struggle for survival between humans and nature in one of the most exposed and hostile environments on earth. He depicts a town and a centuries-old way of life that has disappeared. "Paterson Ewen: Inspiration and/et Influence" until May 22nd 2011 showcases the work of this towering figure in the recent history of Canadian art. Since his death in 2002 there has not been a major showing of his work. When he made the transition from painting on canvas to painting on plywood in the early 1970s he seemed, to many who had followed his work, to have bridged an extraordinary divide: between painting and sculpture, and between representation of images and the actual process of making them. His work subsequently influenced and encouraged many artists – to experiment, to engage with personal subject matter and reintroduce representational appearances. This exhibition highlights the major works in the AGO's authoritative collection of Ewen's work, yet places this collection in a larger context, displaying, for the first time, works by Ewen alongside artwork by the artists and movements that influenced and encouraged him. "Where I was born… : A Photograph, a Clue, and the Discovery of Abel Boulineau", from March 5 to August 21, 2011 features the work of a completely unknown French photographer and his photographs of French regional life at the turn of the 20th century. The group of 1,702 gelatin silver printing out paper prints was acquired by the AGO as the work of Émile Fréchon but recent research has revealed the work to be by Abel Boulineau, a painter and teacher at the Association polytechnique in Paris, not known until now to have made photographs. It is unclear how or why Boulineau learned photography, but every summer from 1897 to 1916, he traveled through different regions of France taking photographs. Many of the photographs he made became the basis for paintings. He was drawn to similar subjects no matter where he traveled: to washerwomen and tradespeople, shopkeepers and children, markets and villages, as well as the landscape. Through a focused selection of more than 70 works in the AGO's Tanenbaum Gallery, visitors will find out how they came to be attributed to Boulineau and will discover Boulineau's gem-like photographs of the regions of Brittany, Aquitaine and the Rhône-Alps. On now until April 3, 2011 "Maharaja: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts" brings to Canada for the first time more than 200 spectacular works of art created for India's great kings, including paintings, furniture, decorative arts, jewelry and even a custom made Rolls Royce. These magnificent objects chronicle the many aspects of royal life and celebrate a legacy of cultural patronage by generations of maharajas, both in India and in Europe.

Smithsonian Bans Religious Artwork Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:30 PM PST LOS ANGELES (AP).- After complaints prompted him to cut a 4-minute video from an exhibition about gay contributions to art, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution became the target in a national censorship debate. Wayne Clough didn't publicly defend his decision until earlier this week when he told The Associated Press he pulled the video because the controversy had overshadowed the exhibition and threatened to spiral beyond control into a debate on religious desecration. On Thursday, he used the Internet, a Town Hall Los Angeles luncheon and a brief news conference to say he would make the same decision over again — but he would handle it better. He's working on a more efficient way to round up advice from his directors and consultants when events move swiftly and he is looking at ways people can tell him what they want, he told reporters. He said he'd talked to hundreds of people in the last few weeks and had received piles of e-mails.

National Gallery of Art hosts The Beffi Triptych Rescued from Italian Earthquake Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:29 PM PST WASHINGTON, DC.- The National Gallery of Art presents The Beffi Triptych: Preserving Abruzzo's Cultural Heritage, on view in the West Building's Rotunda from June 15 to September 7, 2009. The first work of art to be transported out of the region of Abruzzo, Italy, in the aftermath of a violent earthquake, the triptych is one of the most important works from the National Museum of Abruzzo in the city of L'Aquila. The Italian government has loaned the altarpiece for display at the National Gallery of Art until Labor Day in gratitude to the United States for being among the first to offer assistance to the region after the earthquake and as testimony to the Italian commitment to restore fully the cultural heritage of the region.

Tria Gallery presents its Annual “Summer Cocktail” a Group Exhibition Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:28 PM PST New York, NY :   Tria Gallery presents its annual "Summer Cocktail" from July 9 through August 7, 2009.   On display to help viewers escape the heat will be a cool mix of artwork, including mixed media sculpture by jazz great Oliver Lake and vibrant and colorful works by painters Giuliano Guarneri, Suejin Jo, and Nicole Parcher.   The works in Tria Summer Cocktail  vary in terms of medium and style, but are united in their undeniably playful quality.   Each presents the viewer with its own type of innocent joy; some conjuring up childhood memories of trips to the beach, or the feeling of a hot summer day with grass underfoot, others the simple and almost innocent thrill of viscerally connecting to a vibrant color or compelling arrangement of geometric shapes.   In the dog days of summer, this "Summer Cocktail" is intended to provide viewers with some respite and to impart a cool, colorful and joyful experience – a visual popsicle, if you will.

The Baltic's Comprehensive Exhibition of Works by Robert Breer ~ As A Tribute To His Life Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:27 PM PST Gateshead, UK.- The Baltic Centre is currently showing "Robert Breer" in its Level 3 and Level 4 Galleries. This major exhibition of American artist Robert Breer brings together his paintings, ground-breaking films and radical sculptures from the last 60 years. Considered one of the most influential animator/film-makers in history, this is the artist's most comprehensive exhibition to date. Sadly, Robert Breer died on Saturday August 13th at the age of 85, and did not live to see this exhibition close. "Robert Breer" remains on view at the Baltic, and then travels to the Tinguely Museum in Basel where it will be on display from October 26th through January 29th 2012. Breer's first real passion in art was the reductive purity of Piet Mondrian's grid-based abstract paintings. Moving to Paris in 1949, Breer developed his own take on hard edge abstraction, exhibiting at the Galerie Denise René. He soon rejected the stability and harmony of Mondrian's compositions, introducing implied movement and free-floating lines into his paintings. His forms became irregular and wrestled against each other, appearing in a permanent state of unrest. Around ten canvases from the 1950s, including "Composition with Three Lines", 1950, "Time Out", 1953 and "Three Stages Elevators", 1955 will be included. Many have not been exhibited for several decades. Developing the implied movement of his paintings Breer also started experimenting with animation, first with flip books and then with film. In his first film, "Form Phases", 1952, the designs of his paintings were set into motion, morphing from one thing into another and shifting in colour and cinematic space. "Form Phases IV", 1954, a tour de force of movement and instability sees forms, colors, lines and actions burst, complement and contradict each other across every square inch of screen. A tension between the moving and still image defines many of these early works: "Recreation I", 1956-57 uses a different image for every single frame (24 frames per second), rejecting the supposed reality that traditional film represents and revealing movement as nothing but a repetition of static film cells. As his career progressed Breer became ever-concerned with the interplay between abstraction and representation. "Fuji", 1974 jumps from filmed footage of Breer's wife by a train window to a rotoscoped sequence of a ticket collector and countless drawn depictions of Mount Fuji, all of which slip back and forth into and out of abstraction. In "Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons", 1980 the functional form of the knife and its red colour separate and dance around each other before reuniting. The exhibition includes these and other pioneering works from 1952 into the 1990s. BALTIC's Level 4 gallery will be devoted to another important body of Breer's work, the motion sculptures or 'floats', begun in the 1960s. These simple, almost minimalist forms, move at speed that is almost imperceptible before changing direction upon a collision. Recreating the motion and flux of his films in three dimensions, works such as "Zig", 1965, "Column", 1967 and "Sponge", 2000 surround the viewer, allowing form and change to be experienced in real time and space. Breer's greatest achievement, perhaps, has been to use one force to define its opposite – movement to counteract movement, pause to dramatise speed, and representation to concentrate abstraction. Organised in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will be the first to bring Breer's work in all media together for several decades, revealing him to be as vital a today as he was in the 1950s. Housed in a landmark industrial building on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, UK, the Baltic Centre is a major international centre for contemporary art. The Baltic itself has no permanent collection, providing instead an ever-changing calendar of exhibitions and events that give a unique and compelling insight into contemporary artistic practice. Baltic's dynamic, diverse and international program ranges from blockbuster exhibitions to innovative new work and projects created by artists working within the local community. The Baltic was founded with funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Gateshead Council, Northern Rock Foundation, the European Regional Development Fund and One NorthEast, and receives continued support from Arts Council England and Gateshead Council. The notion of Baltic began in 1991 when Northern Arts (now Arts Council England North East) announced its ambition to achieve 'major new capital facilities for the Contemporary Visual Arts in Central Tyneside'. The Baltic Flour Mill was closed in 1981. Dominic Williams of Ellis Williams Architects won an architectural competition in the mid-1990s to convert the old mill building into a centre for art. Construction began in 1998, and only the south and north facades of the original 1950s building were retained. A new structure consisting of six main floors and three mezzanines was secured between the facades which contain 3, 000 square meters of arts space (four galleries and a flexible performance space), artists' studios, cinema/lecture space, shop, a library and archive for the study of contemporary art and the Rooftop Restaurant on Level 6 (providing stunning views over the River Tyne). An additional two-story structure: The Riverside Building, was constructed to the west of the main building, providing the main entrance into BALTIC, which looks out across Baltic Square and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. After ten years in the planning and a capital investment of £50m, BALTIC opened to the public at midnight on Saturday 13 July 2002. The inaugural exhibition, 'B.OPEN', featured work by Chris Burden, Carsten Holler, Julian Opie, Jaume Plensa and Jane & Louise Wilson, and attracted over 45,000 visitors in the first week. Since then the Baltic has presented over 40 exhibitions and welcomed more than 3 million visitors. As well as contemporary art exhibitions, the Baltic also offers a range of spaces for hire, and can accommodate a wide range of events, from meetings and workshops to banquets and conferences. Since opening in July 2002 the Baltic has hosted a range of high profile events including The Channel 4 Stirling Prize 2002, Audi Young Designer of the Year Competition Final 2002-2005, University of Northumbria final year fashion show 2003, BBC Question Time and Prime Minister's Newsnight. Even though BALTIC opened to the public in July 2002, the first exhibition which was seen on the site of the building was "Tarantantara" by Anish Kapoor in 1999. "Tarantantara" formed part of 'B4B', the Baltic's pre-opening series of exhibitions and events. A site-specific installation by Anish Kapoor, "Tarantanrara" was commissioned specially for the site before the construction of the new building began. Over 50m long and 25m wide, the work filled the shell of the Baltic Flour Mills and was in-situ for eight weeks and seen by over 16,000 people. In 2011 the Baltic is to be the venue for the Turner Prize, this would be the first time the event has been held outside of a London or Liverpool Tate in its 25 years, a major exhibition from 21 October 2011 to 8 January 2012 will coincide with the final stages of the competition and the winning artist will be announced at a celebratory event at BALTIC in December 2011. Visit the Baltic's website at … http://www.balticmill.com

Leonardo Da Vinci's Notebook Travels to High Museum of Art in Atlanta Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:26 PM PST   ATLANTA, GA - An exhibition of 44 medieval and Renaissance masterpieces from one of the world's finest collections will be on view at the High Museum of Art beginning September 13, 2008, through January 4, 2009. This internationally traveling exhibition of rare treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) presents works dating from 300 to 1600 AD, many of which have never before traveled to the U.S. Following the tour, the works will be returned to newly restored galleries at the V&A in London.

Steve Schapiro Photographs Taken During the Shooting of "The Godfather" & "Taxi Driver" Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:25 PM PST PARIS.- In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola started work on « The Godfather », one of the most acclaimed films ever made. Steve Schapiro, then a 37-year old established photojournalist was hired by Paramount as the special photographer for the film. This title gave Schapiro unprecedented access to one of the most stellar casts ever assembled, photographing whichever film scenes he chose, capturing the memorable moments often cited when referencing this film, including "the whisper", and Marlon Brando with the cat. The exhibition at A.Galerie runs through May 14, 2011.

National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Features Dutch Genius Gabriel Metsu Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:24 PM PST Washington D.C.- Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his life and career were very short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. Featuring some 35 paintings, this exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States. Organized by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, in association with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of Art inWashington, the exhibition will be on view at the NGA in Washington from April 10 to July 24, 2011. The son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsue, Gabriel Metsu was born in Leiden in 1629. In 1644, at the age of fifteen, Metsu is recorded as one of a group of artists who were lobbying for the establishment of a Leiden Guild of St. Luke, and in 1648 he became a founder-member of the organization. With the exception of short absences in the early 1650s, he spent the next decade in Leiden. By July 1657, however, he had moved to Amsterdam. On April 12, 1658 he married Isabella de Wolff, a relative of the Haarlem classicist painter Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1652/1653). In January of the next year, Metsu became a citizen of Amsterdam, where he died in 1667 at the age of only thirty-eight. It has been assumed that in addition to the early artistic training he would have received from his father, Metsu also must have studied with Gerard Dou, who was Leiden's leading genre painter during the 1640s. This assumption may well be correct, but is not without problems, given that early works from Metsu's Leiden period tend to be executed in a fairly broad and fluid manner far removed from the meticulously crafted, small-scale paintings of Dou and the other Leiden fijnschilders. With the possible exception of the local painter Jan Steen, Metsu, in fact, seems to have been influenced more by the Utrecht artists Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-c. 1660) and Nicolaus Knüpfer (c. 1603-1655). Interestingly, after moving to Amsterdam, Metsu's style demonstrates more of the high level of detail and finish associated with the Leiden school. The influence of several other artists (notably Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, and Pieter de Hooch) is sometimes very evident in Metsu's work, but despite the existence of a sizeable number of dated paintings, these influences occur without any clear chronological pattern, and it is difficult to establish a structure for Metsu's stylistic development. Metsu's most widely acclaimed paintings are the genre pictures, generally depicting a small number of relatively large figures within an upright composition. In addition to his indoor genre scenes Metsu painted a handful of depictions of outdoor markets, a number of religious subjects and portraits, and a few still lifes. His only known pupil was the genre and portrait painter Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705). Now visited by more than 4.5 million people annually, the National Gallery of Art (NGA) is now one of the world's leading art museums. The NGA was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. Since its inception, the mission of the NGA has been to serve the United States of America in a national role by preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the understanding of works of art, at the highest possible museum and scholarly standards. The original West Building, designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives), is a neoclassical marble masterpiece with a domed rotunda over a colonnaded fountain and high-ceilinged corridors leading to delightful garden courts. At its completion in 1941, the building was the largest marble structure in the world. The modern East Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect I. M. Pei and opened in 1978, is composed of two adjoining triangles with glass walls and lofty tetrahedron skylights. The pink Tennessee marble from which both buildings were constructed was taken from the same quarry and forms an architectural link between the two structures. The East Building provided an additional 56,100 m2 of floor space and accommodated the Gallery's growing collections and expanded exhibition schedule as well as housing an advanced research center, administrative offices, a great library, and a burgeoning collection of drawings and prints. The two buildings are linked by an underground concourse featuring sculptor Leo Villareal's computer-programmed digital light project "Multiverse". The National Gallery of Art has one of the finest art collections in the world, including an outstanding and highly representative collection of European art. The permanent collection of paintings spans from the Middle Ages to the present day. Visit the museum's thorough website at .. http://www.nga.gov

Unconventional New Display at the National Portrait Gallery in London Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:23 PM PST LONDON.- Opening this weekend, 'Only Connect' is an unconventional new display at the National Portrait Gallery presenting a web of portraits connecting sitters across three centuries. Comprising paintings, sculpture, photographs, engravings, drawings, miniatures and works in other media from the National Portrait Gallery's holdings, the display uses musical connections to explore new ways of looking at the Collection.

The June Kelly Galley To Show Recent Works by Tonya Ingersol Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:22 PM PST New York City.- The June Kelly Gallery is pleased to present "Tonya Ingersol: Through the Woods", on view at the gallery from September 8th through October 4th. The exhibition includes recent paintings by Tonya Ingersol — large, colorful tableaux inhabited by fantastical imagery that chronicles our contemporary times in the tradition of fairy tales. Entitled "Through the Woods", the works on show represent a departure from Ingersol's earlier realistic and detailed but still mystical style.  The artist notes that fairy tales have long been used as a source of inspiration in many artistic disciplines. Here, Ingersol deploys her visual imagery to portray the timeless and universal themes of life and to emphasize the importance of passing eternal and vital truths from generation to generation.

Tria Gallery presents "Premonitions" Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:21 PM PST   New York, NY - Tria Gallery presents Premonitions through February 9, 2008.  On display will be oil on steel paintings by Jovan Villalba, with sculpture by John R.G. Roth and short films by Kun-I Chang and Youngwoong Jang.

"Van Gogh to Munch" at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art This Summer Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:20 PM PST Santa Barbara, CA.- From June 4 to August 28, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is pleased to present a selection of important paintings that have been generously lent by two Foundations: the Armand Hammer Foundation and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation. "Van Gogh to Munch: European Masterworks from the Armand Hammer Foundation and Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation" presents nearly 30 works, combining 12 paintings from SBMA's permanent collection with 17 extraordinary loans from two of the most important American collections of Impressionist and Modern art in the last century. Upon conclusion of this special summer exhibition in McCormick gallery, the loans from the two Foundations will be reintegrated into the Museum's permanent collection installation in Preston Morton and Ridley-Tree galleries, where they will be on view for the next two years. The paintings on view from the Armand Hammer Foundation represent just a small fraction of the ravishing collection put together by Dr. Armand Hammer (1898-1990), an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades; but also well-known for the extraordinary works of art he gifted to his namesake, the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1965 through 1990. His interest in art originated during his travels to the former Soviet Union in the early 1920s, where he had initially hoped to practice medicine, but realized the greatest need of the people was a reliable source of food – which turned into one of his first business ventures. Hammer began collecting art as he decorated his home in Moscow, and brought many of the works back when he returned to the United States in 1929. These pieces were the foundation for the Hammer Galleries in New York, which continues to operate today. The works on loan in this exhibition complement beautifully many of the most beloved works of art in SBMA's collection of 19th-century French art and have been installed so as to demonstrate this easy dialogue. Works by Corot, Chagall, Degas, Fantin-Latour, Morisot, and Renoir from the Hammer Foundation are presented side-by-side with canvases by the same or related masters from the Museum's own collection or from area private collections.  For example, the exquisite van Gogh from the Hammer Foundation dates from just one year after the landscape on deposit here from a private collection of the outskirts of Paris; and yet there is a dramatic transformation of the artist's palette from the earthy tones of the landscape to the bursts of pigment swagged on with a loaded brush in the floral still life.  Alongside the Museum's Villas in Bordighera (1884) by Monet, the Hammer Foundation's Renoir landscape instances these two artists' shared passion for the Mediterranean landscape in the 1880s. Native Texan Sarah Campbell Blaffer (1885-1975) was an art patron and philanthropist, and daughter of William Thomas, one of the founders of the Texas Company (later Texaco). Her devotion to the visual arts began during a visit to the Louvre on her wedding trip to Europe in 1909 after her marriage to Robert E. Lee Blaffer, one of the founders of Humble Oil and Refining. Blaffer formed her Foundation in 1964 with the primary goal to bring the visual arts to people throughout the state of Texas. The Foundation's collection, comprises mostly old master paintings dating from the Renaissance through the 18th century. The handful of early 20th-century, northern modernist paintings were available for extended loan, offering a rare means of counterbalancing the Museum's recognized strength in the area of French 19th- and early 20th-century European paintings. The large canvases by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, in particular, are powerful embodiments of Western sensibilities at the turn of the last century, when cutting-edge art strove to represent the angst-ridden experience of the modern individual, alienated from society and suffering from the neuroses that Sigmund Freud would so eloquently describe in his Civilization and its Discontents (published in 1930). The paintings by Lyonel Feininger and Max Beckmann exemplify the German adaptation between the World Wars of French avant-garde technique, meshing van Gogh's expressive facture with the Fauves' willful rejection of a conventional palette in favor of strident, anti-naturalistic hues characteristic of the movement generically termed German Expressionism. American artist Feininger and his work "Zirchow 1" makes for an intriguing, but perhaps less obvious, comparison with SBMA's painting by German painter Max Pechstein, "Die Alte Brücke (The Old Bridge)" Zirchow I is part of a series of increasingly abstract landscapes, centering on the architectural motif of a church.  The sharply delineated shards of color reflect the artist's debt to Cubism. By contrast, Pechstein's landscape, which was probably done just after his visit to Paris where he encountered the strident hues of Matisse and the Fauves, is more blatantly anti-naturalistic in palette. Despite these differences, the works were completed only a year apart when both artists were members of the Dresden-based alternative art movement group, Die Brücke (in English, 'the Bridge'), whose name alludes to the artists' aspiration to create a new pictorial language that would pave the way to the future. The Santa Barbara Museum of Art opened to the public on June 5, 1941, in a building that was at one time the Santa Barbara Post Office (1914–1932). Chicago architect David Adler simplified the building's façade and created the Museum's galleries, most notably Ludington Court which offers a dramatic sense of arrival for museum visitors. The newly renovated Park Wing Entrance and Luria Activities Center open in June 2006. Over its history the Museum has expanded with the addition of the Stanley R. McCormick Gallery in 1942 and the Sterling and Preston Morton Galleries in 1963. Significant expansions came when the Alice Keck Park Wing opened to the public in 1985 and the Jean and Austin H. Peck, Jr. Wing in 1998. The Ridley-Tree Education Center at McCormick House, a center for art education activities, was established in 1991. Today, the Museum's 60,000 square feet include exhibition galleries, a Museum Store, Cafe, a 154-seat auditorium, a library containing 50,000 books and 55,000 slides, a children's gallery dedicated to participatory interactive programming and an 11,500-square-foot off-site facility, the Ridley-Tree Education Center at McCormick House. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.sbmuseart.org

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 21 Feb 2012 07:19 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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