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

---

• Works by Albert Oehlen on view in New Exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bonn
• The Neuberger Museum of Art opens "Fifty Years of Latin American Art"
• World premiere of Richard Prince's latest works opens at the Museo Picasso Málaga
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibits the Influence of the 'Stein Family Collection'
• Chinese Furniture & Jades at Bonhams Asian Decorative Arts Auction in March
• PDX Contemporary Art opens "James Lavadour ~ The Interior"
• The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art features 'Modernist Mexican Prints'
• The University of Johannesburg Art Gallery Exhibited "Transnational Modernism"
• Victor Castillo solos in New York at the Jonathan Levine Gallery
• 'The Abraham Bloemaert Effect of Color & Composition in the Golden Age' at the State Museum in Schwerin, Germany
• The Tate Modern opens Major Alighiero Boetti Retrospective
• Weserburg Museum opens exhibition dedicated to Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (WOLS)
• The Frick Collection ~ The Best Private Art Museum In New York
• Manga ~ Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure
• Heavenly, Stately, Courtly Exhibition at the Museum Kunst Palast
• The Library of Congress Displays "New Comic Art Acquisitions"
• Tate Britain Shows Major William Hogarth Exhibition
• Dutch Sculptor Folkert de Jong Returns to James Cohan Gallery
• Rago Arts Nov.12th Fine Art Auctions Feature Works by Reginal Marsh, Red Grooms & Many Others
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Works by Albert Oehlen on view in New Exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bonn Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:50 PM PST BONN, GERMANY - Albert Oehlen (born 1954, in Krefeld, Germany) is one of the most important German painters of his generation. Among the key qualities that define the significance of his 30-year oeuvre is its articulation of a fundamental scepticism toward the medium of painting within the me¬dium itself, rather than by turning away from painting – an aspect his work shares with that of Gerhard Richter. The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn presents 35 works by Albert Oehlen from every phase of his career, including the computer paintings of the early 1980s, the grey paintings of the 1990s, and the artist's current abstract-expressive works, as well as a group of his most recent works, which were created with the Bonn exhibition in mind. This exhibition is by no means conceived as a retrospective, but as an open field in which the various references and fundamental questions raised by the work as a whole are brought to life by the chosen works. Opening: February, 29th until 3rd of June. The focus of the exhibition is an investigation of two related thematic areas. The first of these is Albert Oehlen's specific approach to abstract painting, which is evident in the works chosen for the exhibition and is also reflected in the artist's often-quoted concept of "post-non-figurative" painting. Early works from the 1990s are brought into a dialogue with recent paintings, demonstrating that the entire work follows a dialectic that discards the conventional distinction between abstraction and representation, and instead treats the subject of each painting in such a formalized manner that it becomes a mere artefact, a transformation of reality into a pure and autonomous expression through painting. The second major theme addressed by the exhibition is the relationship between line and plane in this wide-ranging work, and thus also between drawing and painting – a topic that has not yet been covered in art-historical discussions of Albert Oehlen's oeuvre. This presentation of the work of Albert Oehlen at the Kunstmuseum Bonn marks the continuation of the museum's series on central positions in painting, including artists such as Brice Marden, Blinky Palermo, Helmut Federle, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Robert Ryman and Raoul de Keyser. At the same time, the show reflects the programmatic identity of the Kunst¬museum Bonn as a museum for German painting after 1945, while also drawing from a large group of works by Albert Oehlen from between 1983 and 2006 that has been part of the museum's collections since 2009. Visit the Kunstmuseum Bonn at : http://www.kunstmuseum-bonn.de/en/information/news/

The Neuberger Museum of Art opens "Fifty Years of Latin American Art" Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:13 PM PST Purchase, New York.- The Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, one of the country's premier museums of modern, contemporary, and African art, has organized a new exhibition, "Fifty Years of Latin American Art: Selections from the Neuberger Museum of Art", that brings together for the first time a selection of nearly sixty works in various media from the Museum's extraordinary permanent collection of Latin American art. "Fifty Years of Latin American Art" is on view at the museum from Februrary 28th through May 30th. An opening reception will be held on March 5th from 6 to 8pm.

World premiere of Richard Prince's latest works opens at the Museo Picasso Málaga Posted: 27 Feb 2012 11:12 PM PST MALAGA, SPAIN - Richard Prince approaches the subject of Picasso in this exhibition by using a tactic of radical cannibalization of the artist, causing the spectator to feel somewhat alienated and warning us to revise our perceptions and conventional views on the desire. Growing recognition of Prince's work by the professional art world, while not devoid of controversy, has made him one of the most closely-watched artists on the international contemporary art scene. From now until the 27th May, Museo Picasso Málaga will be hosting the world premiere of an exhibition that comprises 38 large-format paintings and 51 small-format collages and photo-collages created by the US artist over the last two years. Also on display are 26 graphite drawings and watercolours from the 1970s, and one pencil drawing on paper from the same period.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibits the Influence of the 'Stein Family Collection' Posted: 27 Feb 2012 10:41 PM PST New York City.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art is proud to present "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde", on view from February 28th through June 3rd in the Tisch Galleries. The Stein siblings—Gertrude, Leo, Michael, and his wife Sarah—were important patrons of modern art in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century. The Steins' Saturday-evening salons introduced a generation of visitors to recent developments in art, particularly the work of their close friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, long before it was on view in museums. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde—at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 28 through June 3, 2012—will unite some 200 works of art to demonstrate the significant impact the Steins' patronage had on the artists of their day and the way in which the family disseminated a new standard of taste for modern art. Beginning with the art that Leo Stein collected when he moved to Paris in early 1903—including paintings and prints by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir—the exhibition will trace the evolution of the Steins' taste and examine the close relationships that formed between individual members of the family and their artist friends. While focusing on works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, the exhibition will also include paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, André Masson, Elie Nadelman, Francis Picabia, and others. Highlights from the exhibition include Matisse's Woman with a Hat (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), purchased by Leo Stein from the famous "fauve" Salon d'Automne of 1905, and Picasso's painting of Gertrude Stein (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), which will be presented alongside additional portraits of the Stein family by Matisse, Picasso, and Vallotton. Life-size photographic enlargements of the Steins' Parisian apartments will be displayed throughout the exhibition to show how the art was installed in the Steins' residences. Additional themes covered in the exhibition include Sarah Stein's role in the formation of the Académie Matisse, the influential art school that operated from 1908 to 1911; Sarah and Michael's commission of a villa from Le Corbusier; and Gertrude's later collaborations with Juan Gris, Élie Lascaux, Francis Rose, and Virgil Thomson. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially The Met) is an art museum on the eastern edge of Central Park, along "Museum Mile" in New York City, United States. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, often called "the Met", is one of the world's largest art galleries; there is also a much smaller second location, at "The Cloisters", in Upper Manhattan, which features medieval art. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. Today, the Met measures almost 1/4-mile (400 m) long and occupies more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2). The Met's permanent collection is cared for and exhibited by seventeen separate curatorial departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as four dedicated conservation departments and a department of scientific research. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine and Islamic art. After negotiations with the City of New York in 1871, the Met was granted the land between the East Park Drive, Fifth Avenue, and the 79th and 85th Street Transverse Roads in Central Park. A red-brick and stone "mausoleum" was designed by American architect Calvert Vaux and his collaborator Jacob Wrey Mould. Vaux's ambitious building was not well-received; the building's High Victorian Gothic style being already dated prior to completion, and the president of the Met termed the project "a mistake." Within 20 years, a new architectural plan engulfing the Vaux building was already being executed. Since that time, many additions have been made including the distinctive Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade, Great Hall, and Grand Stairway. These were designed by architect and Met trustee Richard Morris Hunt, but completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt in 1902 after his father's death. The wings that completed the Fifth Avenue facade in the 1910s were designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The modernistic sides and rear of the museum were the work of Roche, Dinkeloo, and Associates in the 1970s and 1980s. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.metmuseum.org/

Chinese Furniture & Jades at Bonhams Asian Decorative Arts Auction in March Posted: 27 Feb 2012 10:14 PM PST San Francisco, California.- Bonhams is pleased to announce its Asian Decorative Arts sale, March 13th in San Francisco. The auction will feature a variety of fine items at this 600-plus lot session, over 400 of which are Chinese. The sale will include a broad array of late 20th century huanghuali and hardwood furniture from a Los Angeles collection, as well as a fine assortment of jade and hardstone decorations. Also on offer will be a wide assortment of fine snuff bottles from various collections. Headlining the sale is a great selection of Chinese huanghuali and hardwood pieces from various collections. The most noteworthy lots include two finely carved 18th century huanghuali veneer fragments now mounted together in a single frame (est. $8,000-$12,000), an elegant lao huali meditation chair (est. $7,000-$9,000) and a pair of huanghuali arm chairs (est. $5,000-$7,000).

PDX Contemporary Art opens "James Lavadour ~ The Interior" Posted: 27 Feb 2012 09:43 PM PST Portland, Oregon.- PDX Contemporary Art is proud to present "James Lavadour: The Interior", on view at the gallery from February 28th through March 31st. One of the Northwest's most revered painters, James Lavadour lives on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeastern Oregon. His rich and complex paintings inspired by the Oregon landscape combine loose, gestural strokes with bold colors and slashes of energy, exuding primal vigor and spiritual power. "The Interior" is comprised of a new suite of works stemming from his expressive passion for paint. At once abstract and representational, the paintings range from traditional small panels to a larger floor piece that treads the line between two-dimensional and sculptural. Ever the innovator, Lavadour's palette in this exhibition spreads from otherworldy neon to rich darkness, bridging the gap between the sensed and the observed.

The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art features 'Modernist Mexican Prints' Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:54 PM PST Madison, Wisconsin.- The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present "¡Tierra y Libertad! Revolution and the Modernist Mexican Print" on view at the museum's State Street Gallery through April 15th. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Mexico experienced an important print revival that paralleled the country's great mural movement. Many of the muralists, including the celebrated José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, also made prints. For these artists and others, prints were valued, in part, because of the influential role they could play, in keeping with the activist program of monumental frescoes appearing on buildings in Mexico City and the provinces. Like murals, prints were an accessible, populist medium, and despite their smaller format, they embodied the post-revolutionary aspirations of the larger works. Mexican artists embraced printmaking as a way to transmit their political messages to the broadest audience possible. "¡Tierra y Libertad! Revolution and the Modernist Mexican Print draws" from the permanent collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, whose holdings in Mexican prints are one of the finest and most extensive in the Midwest. The exhibition presents linocuts, woodcuts, lithographs, and etchings by Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, and also includes a broad array of prints produced by the Taller de gráfica popular (the print workshop of the people). Founded in 1937, TGP fervently believed in art's capacity for social protest and the betterment of the masses. Orignally founded by artists Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins, and Luis Arenal, TGP was primarily concerned with using art to advance revolutionary social causes. The print shop became a base of political activity and abundant artistic output, and attracted many foreign artists as collaborators. Initially called the Taller Editorial de Gráfica Popular, its founders built of a rich tradition of printmaking in Mexico, particularly the legacy of José Guadalupe Posada. During the Cárdenas presidency, the work of the Taller supported the government's policies, including the expropriation of oil. In 1940, muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros launched an armed assault on the residence of exiled Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky, using the Taller's print shop as a headquarters and including some artists affiliated with the Taller in his squad. There was some collaboration between the TGP and the artists of the New Deal-era WPA, including Rafael Tufiño. During the US civil rights movement, Chicano and African American artists such as Elizabeth Catlett produced work at the Taller. The TGP faced financial instability, and had to relocate several times. During its heyday, the Taller specialized in linoleum prints and woodcuts. It produced posters, handbills, banners, and portfolio editions. The art supported causes such as anti-militarism, organized labor, and opposition to fascism. The art was often made through the collaborative process, and the Taller took the anti-commercial policy of not numbering prints. However, it did sell prints as part of and was the first political publishing workshop in Mexico to do so. Under the brand La Estampa Mexicana, the TGP sold song lyrics, posters of heroes and Mexican culture and Left movements worldwide, and gave rise to a new generation of calaveras, the Mexican tradition of humorous poetry ridiculing politicians and other popular figures. The raised fist emerged as a graphic symbol of resistance and unity. The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is a nonprofit, independent organization that exists to exhibit, collect, preserve, and interpret modern and contemporary art. After a distinguished 105-year history in borrowed and refurbished spaces, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art opened to the public on April 23, 2006, in a new facility within the Overture Center for the Arts. Designed by world-renowned architect Cesar Pelli, the museum's exhilarating facility offers 51,500 square feet of space for the study, presentation, and conservation of modern and contemporary art, as well as a 7,100-square-foot rooftop sculpture garden. Public amenities include spacious galleries, a 230-seat lecture hall, a children's classroom, a new-media gallery, and a study center for drawings, prints, and photographs. Like the rest of Overture Center, the facility was made possible by the extraordinary generosity of W. Jerome Frautschi, a long-time friend of the museum. The museum's collection traces its origins to a major gift from Rudolph and Louise Langer in 1968.Through donations and museum purchases, the collection has grown to become an important community resource. Works span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and include paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, and drawings. Romare Bearden, Deborah Butterfield, John Steuart Curry, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Cindy Sherman are among the many esteemed artists represented in the collection. Exhibitions are the cornerstone of MMoCA's public programs and have featured many of the most respected artists of the last century, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, George Segal, Jim Dine, Rodney Graham, Georgia O'Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and John Wilde. The main galleries, located on the second floor, host the museum's major exhibitions. The Henry Street Gallery presents exhibitions from the museum's permanent collection while the State Street Gallery offers a changing roster of exhibitions and installations. MMoCA's rooftop sculpture garden presents major works on a rotating basis in an illuminated garden setting. Visit the museum's website at ... http://mmoca.org

The University of Johannesburg Art Gallery Exhibited "Transnational Modernism" Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:44 PM PST Johannesburg.- An exhibition entitled Transnational Modernism:  The Gutai Art Association, Christo Coetzee and the legacy of Abstract Expressionism in South Africa, was presented by University of Johannesburg Arts and Culture at the UJ Art Gallery during February. In the wake of a renewed, global interest in the work of the Japanese avant-garde art movement, Gutai (1954 – 1972), Wilhelm van Rensburg, Research Associate, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) curated this special exhibition, featuring amongst others, 11 drawings of the Gutai group in the UJ Art Collection. These drawings by founder members of the Gutai group were donated to the University by South African artist, Christo Coetzee in 1975. He acquired these drawings, considered to be one of the largest collections of Gutai drawings outside Japan, in 1959/60 when he studied with the group in Japan. The Gutai has recently received an upsurge in prominence in the global art world chiefly through amongst others an exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale and through such publications as Ming Tiampo's 2011 book, Gutai: Decentering Modernism (University of Chicago Press).

Victor Castillo solos in New York at the Jonathan Levine Gallery Posted: 27 Feb 2012 08:14 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- Jonathan LeVine Gallery announces The Jungle, a series of new works by Chilean-born, Los Angeles-based artist Victor Castillo, in what is his debut solo exhibition in New York. On exhibition from 25 February through 24 March. The title of the show, The Jungle, came to the artist's mind while working on the exhibition and seeing innumerable images in the media of global protests and violence. The artist feels the future is uncertain in these times; when all the power structures have lost credibility, and we are left with chaotic effects of self-interest. Consequently, this new body of work explores the "law of the jungle" and the age-old story that "man eats man."

'The Abraham Bloemaert Effect of Color & Composition in the Golden Age' at the State Museum in Schwerin, Germany Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:10 PM PST SCHWERIN, GERMANY - With fifty paintings and forty works on paper, The Bloemaert Effect, Colour and Composition in the Golden Age is the first major survey exhibition ever organised of Abraham Bloemaert's work. Thanks to the stunning generosity of our lenders – museums, art dealers and private collectors in the Netherlands and around the globe – we can provide a comprehensive overview that does justice to Bloemaert's versatility and to his technical mastery. Like the exhibition, the catalogue is organised on the basis of the hierarchy of genres recognised by Karel van Mander and other art theorists of Bloemaert's day. At the top is history painting. A distinction is made between religious paintings, with major altarpieces carrying the greatest prestige, and paintings with mythological themes. Just below that is a broad category known as genre painting, which includes allegories consisting of a single figure. The catalogue closes with landscapes, including some with religious or mythological subjects as staffage, as well as Bloemaert's few known still lifes. Each section includes paintings, drawings and prints, and sometimes two or more works are presented together. Within each category, the main organising principle is chronology, but because Bloemaert regularly returns to the same themes, works produced in different years are sometimes combined under a single catalogue number. The exhibition is the first large-scale retrospective of Bloemaerts work and runs from 24 February to 28 March. When Peter Paul Rubens visited Utrecht in 1627 on a diplomatic mission, he met his fellow artist Abraham Bloemaert, who was eleven years older. During that visit, Rubens praised Bloemaert's 'sublime draughtsmanship'. And indeed, Bloemaert's study sheets bespeak such pleasure, such consummate skill and such astonishing workmanship that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that drawing was his greatest passion. He also left a large and impressive body of painted work, in which – aside from his use of colour – he does not present himself to the viewer as a man of grand gestures and violent passions. His work is monumental, but also reserved, and his compositions are often most striking upon closer scrutiny. It is more than a coincidence that Mary Magdalene's moving gesture in The Lamentation of Christ, pressing the hand of the dead Christ to her face, is positioned at the exact centre of the painting. The Bloemaert Effect will go further towards correcting popular misconceptions about seventeenth-century Dutch painting and drawing. There is more to the story than the well known Dutch masters Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer , more than Jan Steen's genre pieces and the many familiar views of the Dutch landscape. There is also Bloemaert, an influential, internationally-oriented Utrecht artist with an oeuvre that, in all its facets, ranks among the greatest achievements of the Dutch school. The painter was born in Gorinchem in 1566. His father was the sculptor, architect and engineer Cornelis Bloemaert. Six months after Abraham's birth, the family moved to Den Bosch. In 1571 they returned to Gorinchem, and in 1576 Abraham moved to Utrecht with his father. Bloemaert's time as an apprentice was chaotic and unsatisfactory, as he later told van Mander. For a short while, he worked with several masters, including Gerrit Splinter and Joost de Beer. In the 1580s he travelled to Paris, where he studied, in consecutive order, with Iehan Bassot (possibly the same person as Jehan Cousin the Younger), Maistre Herry and Hieronymus Francken. Around 1585 he returned to Utrecht. In 1591 he was living in Amsterdam, and in 1593 he again returned to Utrecht, this time to stay. He was involved in the founding of the city's Guild of Saint Luke in 1611, when Utrecht's painters left the Saddlers' Guild, and he became dean of the new guild in 1618. He was also one of the initiators of the Utrecht drawing academy in 1612. Bloemaert was married twice, first to Judith van Schonenburch in 1592 and then to Gerarda de Roij in 1600. It is reported that fourteen children were born of this second marriage. Abraham Bloemaert died in 1651 and was buried in Utrecht's Catharijne -kerk. Father of the Utrecht School of Painting We do not know who first called Abraham Bloemaert the 'father of the 'Utrecht School' , but the title is fitting. Thirty-three of his pupils are known by name, but more than one hundred artists are thought to have begun their careers in his studio. These include his own sons, Hendrick, Cornelis, Frederick and Adriaen. But the Caravaggisti Hendrick ter Brugghen, Jan van Bijlert and Gerard van Honthorst, the Italianate painters Andries and Jan Both, Cornelis van Poelenburch and Jan Baptist Weenix and the Leipzigborn Nicolaus Knüpfer also learned the essentials of their profession from Bloemaert. The sheer number of Bloemaert's pupils and the many published prints after his drawings contributed to his wide-ranging influence on the painter's and draughtsman's arts. The idea of compiling a pattern book for training young artists may have come from Abraham Bloemaert himself, or from his son Frederick, who collaborated with his father on the project. Frederick engraved the plates after 'inventions' (designs) by his father and was the publisher of the first edition, which appeared around 1650. Numerous editions followed, with varying contents and sizes. The book was used by artists in the Netherlands and elsewhere until late in the nineteenth century. As van Mander predicted, Bloemaert's name has lived on, and not just in Utrecht, but all over the world. In short, he is the embodiment of the Utrecht school of painting. A Magnificent Painter and Masterful Draughtsman The painted oeuvre of Abraham Bloemaert consists of more than 200 works. The estimated number of drawings is 1,700, and he provided the models for more than 600 prints. The bulk of his painted oeuvre is made up of history pieces, paintings with large figures depicting an episode from a story. These include biblical and other religious scenes, representations of themes from classical mythology and literature, and allegorical works. The greatest challenge was the ordinantie – the composition or arrangement of human figures. Since the fifteenth century, art theorists had regarded history painting as the apex of the hierarchy of painterly genres. For viewers to comprehend such a picture, they have to know the story. Although Bloemaert's landscapes almost always include biblical or mythological staffage, they are not counted among his history paintings, because their primary subject is the natural setting – the staffage is secondary. Bloemaert's oeuvre also includes genre pieces and studies of elderly people. According to van Mander, Bloemaert did not wish to trouble his mind with portrait painting. This genre, placed at the bottom of the ladder by theoreticians, is entirely absent from his oeuvre. Yet the dominance of history paintings in Bloemaert's oeuvre ultimately damaged his reputation. The conventional wisdom in later times, particularly the nineteenth century, was that history painting was un-Dutch.This misunderstanding was corrected in 1980 by the exhibition Gods, Saints and Heroes, which refuted the idea that the Dutch masters of the Golden Age had focused exclusively on representing the world of their direct experience. Abraham Bloemaert's paintings are diverse not only in size and subject matter, but also in style. This makes it difficult to categorise him. His early work thoroughly exemplifies the Mannerist style, which originated in Italy around 1525. Mannerist paintings are characterised by extreme idealisation. The true proportions of the human body give way to highly elongated forms, which are all the more striking for their long, slender limbs and small heads. These superhumans, with their abnormally twisted torsos and unnatural poses, inhabit mythological scenes that are often erotically charged. The palette emphasises pastel hues placed side by side to bring out contrasts between complementary colours; for instance, lemon yellow next to lilac next to pink and light blue. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Mannerism swelled into an international movement. The major centres in the Northern Netherlands were Haarlem (home to Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem ) and Utrecht (with Joachim Wtewael and Abraham Bloemaert). The main European centres were considered to be the Fontainebleau School, to which Bloemaert must have been exposed during his time in France, and the court of Rudolf II in Prague (reigned 1576–1612). Bloemaert's work seems particularly indebted to Bartholomeus Spranger (1546– 1611), who worked at the court in Prague. The most impressive painting produced by Bloemaert during his early career, partly in view of its large dimensions, is The Death of Niobe's Children of 1591. The exhibition includes several magnificent examples of his early Mannerist work, including the Miracle of the Loaves of 1593, The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis of circa 1595, Joseph and His Brothers of 1595–1600, The Preaching of John the Baptist of circa 1600 and Moses Striking the Rock of 1596, as well as a much later Mannerist painting, the Mary Magdalene of 1619. Utrecht remained entirely uninvolved in the emergence around 1610 of the distinctively Dutch schools of painting that would dominate the country's Golden Age. This is when many Dutch painters seem to have begun painting 'reality' – that is, their own environment and the everyday objects around them. In contrast, Utrecht had strong, longstanding ties with Rome. This Italian orientation led the new generation of Utrecht painters, most of whom had studied with Abraham Bloemaert, to journey south over the Alps. In Italy, they were galvanised by the revolutionary work of Caravaggio (1571–1610), and after returning to the Dutch Republic, they introduced their teacher to this new style. A small number of works painted by Bloemaert around 1621–1622 depart from his earlier oeuvre in their strong light-dark contrasts, one of the stylistic marks of Caravaggio and his followers. The Flute Player of 1621 is the best example of this category in the exhibition. The isolated half-figure of a musician, originally an Italian theme, emerged as a subject in Utrecht painting in the early 1620s. The Flute Player is the earliest painting in Bloemaert's oeuvre with a single half-figure filling nearly the entire picture. In the 1620s, Bloemaert's style evolved in the direction of Classicism, but without entirely relinquishing its Mannerist elements. In his introduction to the catalogue Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting, Albert Blankert correctly noted that a painting like The Adoration of the Magi of 1624, although Classicist in its composition and use of monumental figures, shows all sorts of Mannerist features. Spranger's influence is unmistakable in the group of soldiers in the background and the unruly curls of the eldest king in the foreground. For this reason, Bloemaert was not included in the exhibition of Dutch Classicists in Rotterdam and Frankfurt in 1999–2000.15 Other examples include the Crucifixion of Christ of 1629, The Lamentation of Christ of circa 1625 and the two paintings of episodes from the story of Theagenes and Chariclea. It was not until the 1640s that Bloemaert embraced realism – for instance, in his studies of elderly men and women. Bloemaert collaborated with the most talented engravers of his day: Jan Saenredam (1565–1607), Jacob de Gheyn II (c. 1565–1631), Jan Harmensz. Muller (1571–1628) and Jacob Matham (1571–1631). Their engravings after his designs are phenomenally sharp and beautiful. Reception Even though the life and work of Abraham Bloemaert have been a topic of academic research for eighty-five years, and his oeuvre has been charted almost completely, his name is still not very familiar to the general public. His best known contemporaries are Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals. In the exhibition Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijd -genoten ('New Light on the Golden Age: Hendrick ter Brugghen and Contemporaries') in 1986–1987, Albert Blankert and Leonard Slatkes tried to make a major adjustment to this established public image. Specifically, their objective was to add ter Brugghen to the canon of the three Dutch masters. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, Utrecht was a hotbed of artistic activity, where all sorts of new styles and themes were being pioneered. Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals were influenced by the work of the Utrecht masters. In the exhibition Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age (San Francisco/Baltimore/London) in 1997–1998, museum-goers overseas had their first encounter with this surprising and unparalleled internationally-oriented school of painting. The reviews in the British press spoke volumes: 'This exhibition will be sure to change the perceptions of Dutch art for many British visitors' and 'It is as spectacular as unexpected'. In the United States, where the leading Utrecht masters of the early seventeenth century had been studied and collected since the Second World War, the Utrecht painters were described as 'A Radiant Exception': 'These paintings are worth traveling a long distance to see' (The New York Times).18Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerard van Honthorst were represented in this exhibition, with fourteen and eight paintings respectively. Nine paintings by Bloemaert's associate and close contemporary Joachim Wtewael were exhibited, along with nine of Bloemaert's own paintings, including six from American collections. Less than half of Bloemaert's paintings (about 90) are now in public collections. The Netherlands is in the lead, with 35. Germany, with 30, takes second place, and American museums come in third, thanks to a number of major purchases in recent decades, bringing the total to 24 pieces. The Centraal Museum has 14 paintings executed by Bloemaert himself, the world's largest collection. The earliest acquisitions were purchases made in 1918 and the most recent one was in 1987. It is hardly surprising that Utrecht's museum has the largest collection, considering all the effort invested, from the moment the museum was founded, in collecting the finest works of the Utrecht painters. In the early years, this policy could be pursued quite successfully, because there was little or no competition on the art market. Bloemaert is represented in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam by three paintings, purchased in 1902, 1949 and 1950. The Mauritshuis in The Hague also has three, two of which come from the collections of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik and Prince William V (cat. no. 50). Only the Feast of the Gods was a deliberate purchase, made in 1973. Two paintings in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, the Christmas Angel and the superb Crucifixion (cat. no. 9), came to that museum from the art collection of the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands. In 2010 the Catharijneconvent purchased The Four Church Fathers at an auction in London. The iconography of this work made it an especially fitting addition to the museum's collection.19 The Lamentation of Christ in Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen , the only painting in that museum's collection executed by Bloemaert himself, was a gift from the Friends of the Museum in 1937.

The Tate Modern opens Major Alighiero Boetti Retrospective Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:09 PM PST London.- The Tate Modern is pleased to present "Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan", on view at the museum from February 28th through May 27th. One of the most influential Italian artists of the twentieth century, The exhibition will be the first large-scale retrospective of Boetti's work to be held outside Italy in over a decade highlighting his often playful exploration of numeric, linguistic and classificatory systems, as well as his engagement with the people and politics of Afghanistan. Boetti has most commonly been associated with the Italian Arte Povera artists of the late 1960s. While this exhibition begins with his Arte Povera objects made from everyday materials, including Stack 1966 and Little Coloured Sticks 1968, it also reveals his early scepticism about art movements through such works as his mock Manifesto 1967. In the late 1960s Boetti began to explore the figure of the artist, showing how it embodied the dual roles of divine shaman and public showman.

Weserburg Museum opens exhibition dedicated to Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (WOLS) Posted: 27 Feb 2012 07:08 PM PST BREMEN, GERMANY - He is one of the most prominent artists of the 20th century, yet scarcely anyone knows his name. Art history views him as the pioneer of Art Informel painting, and yet the complexity of his artistic existence defies any categorization. In 1932, just nineteen years old, he leaves Germany to have his finger on the pulse of time in Paris. He gains access to bohemian circles there but continues to be a loner. For throughout his life he struggled for an existence beyond the middle-class, and in doing so not lastly slid into the vicissitudes of the National Socialist war against European culture. Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, who began calling himself WOLS in 1937, is one of the most colorful artist personalities of the last century.

The Frick Collection ~ The Best Private Art Museum In New York Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:46 PM PST The Frick Collection is a not-for-profit educational institution originally founded by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), the Pittsburgh coke and steel industrialist. In 1913, construction began on Henry Frick's New York mansion at Seventieth Street and Fifth Avenue, designed by Carrère and Hastings to accommodate Mr. Frick's paintings and other art objects. The house cost $5,000,000, but from its inception, took into account Mr. Frick's intention to leave his house and his art collection to the public. Mr. Frick died in 1919 and in his will, left the house and all of the works of art in it together with the furnishings ("subject to occupancy by Mrs. Frick during her lifetime") to become a gallery called The Frick Collection. He provided an endowment of $15,000,000 to be used for the maintenance of the Collection and for improvements and additions. After Mrs. Frick's death in 1931, family and trustees of The Frick Collection began the transformation of the Fifth Avenue residence into a museum and commissioned John Russell Pope to make additions to the original house, including two galleries (the Oval Room and East Gallery), a combination lecture hall and music room, and the enclosed courtyard. In December 1935 The Frick Collection opened to the public. In 1977, a garden on Seventieth Street to the east of the Collection was designed by Russell Page, to be seen from the street and from the pavilion added at the same time to accommodate increasing attendance at the museum. This new Reception Hall was designed by Harry van Dyke, John Barrington Bayley, and G. Frederick Poehler. Two additional galleries were opened on the lower level of the pavilion to house temporary exhibitions. The nearby Frick Art Reference Library was founded in 1920 to serve "adults with a serious interest in art," among them scholars, art professionals, collectors, and students. The Library's book and photograph research collections relate chiefly to paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints from the fourth to the mid-twentieth centuries by European and American artists. Known internationally for its rich holdings of auction and exhibition catalogs, the Library is a leading site for collecting and provenance research. Archival materials and special collections augment the research collections with documents pertaining to the history of collecting art in America and of Henry Clay Frick's collecting in particular. The Frick Collection developed the "Art of Observation" training course, initially for medical students, but now used by police, security and defense personnel throughout the USA. Using works of art to train students in observation techniques proved so effective that enquiries were received from as far as way as London's Metropolitan Police Force. Visit the museum's website at … www.frick.org Chief among Henry Frick's bequests, which also included sculpture, drawings, prints, and decorative arts such as furniture, porcelains, enamels, rugs and silver, were one hundred thirty-one paintings. Forty-seven additional paintings have been acquired over the years by the Trustees and the Frick Collection now has a permanent collection of more than 1,100 works of art from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. The paintings in the Frick Collection include works by Hans Holbein, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Bellini, El Greco, Titian, Diego Velazquez, Frans Hals, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Johannes Vermeer, Francois Boucher, Thomas Gainsborough, Anthony van Dyck, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Claude Lorrain, Francisco Goya, Joseph Mallord William Turner, James McNeill Whistler, Francesco Laurana, Jean-Antoine Houdon, John Constable, Edgar Degas, and Severo Calzetta da Ravenna. Vermeer's "Mistress and Maid", the last painting Mr. Frick bought, is one of three pictures by that artist in the Collection, while Piero della Francesca's image of St. John the Evangelist, dominating the Enamel Room, is the only large painting by Piero in the United States. Most of the sculpture purchased by Mr. Frick for the Collection was from the Italian Renaissance. Notable in the Collection are works by Vecchietta, Laurana, Francesco da Sangallo, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Riccio, and Severo da Ravenna. French sculpture includes the Lemoyne Garden Vase for the interior courtyard and remarkable works by Coysevox, Houdon, and Clodion. A number of splendid early North European sculptures are also in the Collection, above all the bust of the Duke of Alba by Jonghelinck, the Multscher reliquary bust, and bronzes traditionally ascribed to Adriaen de Vries and Hubert Gerhard. The collection also includes the furniture in the house, typical of a grand New York residence at the beginning of the twentieth century, covers a variety of periods and places of origin including, French works of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, some English pieces in the Library and Dining Room and in the bedrooms, and furniture especially designed and made for the house by the architect or interior designer. The collection contains Oriental porcelain dating from the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties and embracing a range of types including blue and white, famille verte, famille noire, and famille rose. French porcelain pieces include remarkable examples of Vincennes and Sèvres soft-past porcelains of the eighteenth century, as well as a rare sixteenth century ewer of Saint-Porchaire earthenware. The thirty-one exceptionally fine drawings in The Frick Collection are by such masters as Pisanello, Altdorfer, Rubens, Claude, Rembrandt, Greuze, Gainsborough, Goya, Ingres, Corot, and Whistler. Included in the impressive group of fifty-nine prints are four superb impressions by Dürer, three engravings by Van Dyck, eleven of Rembrandt's most celebrated etchings and drypoints, thirteen of Meryon's pivotal Etchings of Paris, twelve Whistler prints comprising the First Venice Set, and twelve eighteenth-century English reproductive portrait prints. The Limoges enamels in the collection reveal the broad range of applications to which this brilliant but delicate medium was applied in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France from secular objects such as portraits, a casket, and tableware - to objects of religious association, such as devotional images and triptychs. The impressive collection of textiles includes, most notably, two magnificent carpets from the court of the Mughal emperors and two tapestries with scenes from the story of Don Quixote by Peter van den Hecke. In 1999, the holdings of The Frick Collection were substantially expanded by the bequest of twenty-five clocks and fourteen watches from the estate of the celebrated New York collector Winthrop Kellogg Edey. This small but exceptionally fine collection, illustrates both the stylistic and the technical development of clocks and watches from about 1500 to 1830. Several special exhibitions are scheduled annually at the Frick Collection. Currently visitors can see "Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections", which runs from February 15, through May 15, 2011. Of the five paintings from the Frick's permanent collection, four were acquired by Henry Clay Frick between 1899 and 1919, and the fifth by the trustees in 1943 from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. Three of these works are unquestionable masterpieces by the artist, "Nicolaes Ruts", "The Polish Rider", and the "Self-Portrait" of 1658. Two of the paintings ("Portrait of a Young Artist" and "Old Woman with a Book") were acquired by Frick as Rembrandts but are today attributed to artists in his entourage. This will be the first time that all five paintings have been united in a monographic display. A selection of etchings and drawings by Rembrandt acquired by Henry Clay Frick at the end of his life is also featured. These works on paper, part of the founding bequest and therefore unavailable for loan, are rarely on display. A loan exhibition of 66 works on paper by Rembrandt and his school from the collection of Frits Lugt, now housed in the Fondation Custodia, Paris, will be displayed alongside the Frick's own pieces. Eighteen drawings by the artist as well as a group of his prints will be accompanied by 36 master drawings by his most prominent pupils and students, including Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Carel Fabritius, Govaert Flinck, Jan Lievens, and Nicolaes Maes. Among the exhibitions scheduled for later in 2011 is "In a New Light: Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert", from May 22, 2011, through August 28, 2011, which presents this painting from the collection along with the findings of a recent detailed technical examination by the Department of Paintings Conservation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette" from June 8, 2011, through September 11, 2011 will present some of the rare surviving pieces of furniture from the craze for "a la Turc" or Turkish style, that swept through French high society in the late 18th century. "Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition", from October 4, 2011, through January 8, 2012, will look at the dazzling development of Picasso's drawings, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso classical works of the early 1920s. Through a selection of more than fifty works at each venue, the presentation will examine the artist's stylistic experiments and techniques in this roughly thirty-year period, which begins and ends in a classical mode and encompasses the radical innovations of Cubism and collage. The show (which opens at the Frick in the fall of 2011 and moves on to the National Gallery of Art in February of 2012) will demonstrate how drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso's multifaceted art, while its centrality in his vast oeuvre connects him deeply with the grand tradition of European masters.

Manga ~ Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:45 PM PST LONDON (REUTERS).- Japanese manga artist Hoshino Yukinobu has brought his popular character Professor Munakata to London's British Museum, featuring some of the collection's most famous treasures in his drawings. In a single-room display near the entrance to the famous museum, a giant picture of folklore expert Munakata donning his trademark bowler hat and black cape includes the Sutton Hoo helmet dating from the 7th-century. The exclusive new manga by Hoshino Yukinobu at the British Museum. Manga is a Japanese comic book art form which has become an international phenomenon in recent years. On exhibition through 3 Januray, 2010.

Heavenly, Stately, Courtly Exhibition at the Museum Kunst Palast Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:44 PM PST   DUSSELDORF, GERMANY - Düsseldorf is currently holding a Jan Wellem Year to commemorate the 350th birthday of the Prince Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz (1658-1716), lovingly called "Jan Wellem" by the local population. Special features of the exhibition include a range of marble and bronze sculptures and several artistic jewellery items from the Jan Wellem and Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici Collection. On exhibition 20th September through 11th January, 2009. The main exhibition of the anniversary is being organised by museum kunst palast, and comprises approx. 150 exhibits from international collections, including some splendid paintings, prints, sculptures and precious objects from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and from Hamburger Kunsthalle. Over a dozen works from the Uffizi Gallery, the Galleria Palatina and the Museo degli Argenti of the Palazzo Pitti are shown in Düsseldorf for the first time. All of them were originally from the collection of the Prince Elector and his wife. They include self-portraits of Düsseldorf court painters and works by the Dutch Leyden School, i.e. Jan Frans van Douven, Adriaen van der Werff and the still life painter Rachel Ruysch, as well as a range of largely unknown portraits and costume paintings of the princely couple. The starting point of this exhibition, presented by museum kunst palast on the occasion of this anniversary, is a number of works from the Prince Elector's gallery that are still available and which form part of the museum's own inventory. These items include works by Peter Paul Rubens, Johann Friedrich Ardin, Antonio Bellucci, Gabriel Grupello, Gian Antonio Pelligrini, Paul Pontius, Rachel Ruysch, Eglon Hendrik van der Neer, Adriaen van der Werff, Jan Frans van Douven and Frans van Mieris the Elder. It was a great loss for Düsseldorf when the vast majority of Jan Wellem's amazingly large gallery with approx. 760 paintings was moved to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich during Düsseldorf's evacuation from French cannon fire and as a result of the princely succession in 1806. Nevertheless, a number of important works remained in Düsseldorf. Dr. Bettina Baumgärtel, the curator of the anniversary exhibition, decided that its centrepiece should be the newly researched monumental painting by Peter Paul Rubens "The Ascension of St. Mary" (on permanent loan from Kunstakademie). This large-format painting was moved from Brussels to Düsseldorf in 1712, where it is now the most important legacy of this legendary gallery in Düsseldorf. "The painting has an exciting history that reads like a detective story. It has survived fires, bombardments and overpainting by academic artists and was nearly lost in the chaos of war." (Dr. Bettina Baumgärtel) The dramatic ups and down of these wooden panels, their different versions, copies, successor works and numerous responses by artists and literary figures are for the first time highlighted in the exhibition "Heavenly - Magnificent - Courtly". The development of the painting is reflected in a selection of loans from international collections which are closely related to these works, thus helping us understand the imagery of Rubens in the light of the Catholic Reform and also the Prince Elector's political schemes that were associated with it. Visitors can look forward to a special experience at the exhibition. Using state-of-the-art technology, the original festive frame of the monumental painting "The Ascension of St. Mary" is presented in a virtual motion-picture 3D reconstruction, so that visitors feel transported to the original church environment in Brussels. The frame was recently discovered by Dr. Baumgärtel in a church in Brussels. It has always been the dream of the Curator of this exhibition and head of the Gallery of museum kunst palast that the original Brussels frame - or at least a reconstruction - should be reunited with the original painting. The frame includes a semi-circular marble relief showing God the Father. For the time being, this can only be done through a virtual presentation. Not only Rubens but also Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Jan Wellem's second wife, and her father Cosimo III contributed greatly to the Prince Elector's passion as a collector, helping and enabling him to set up a unique collection of works, based on a gallery in Florence. They include self-portraits of Düsseldorf court painters and works by the Dutch Leyden School, i.e. Jan van Douven, Adriaen van der Werff and the still life painter Rachel Ruysch, as well as a range of light-hearted costume paintings of the princely couple. Special features of the exhibition are a range of marble and bronze sculptures from the Courts of Florence and Düsseldorf, particularly by Gabriel Grupello, and several artistic jewellery items. These objects give us an idea of the aesthetic culture of the Prince Elector and his wife. Visit the Museum Kunst Palast at : www.museum-kunst-palast.de/forceses/lang1/doc1A.html

The Library of Congress Displays "New Comic Art Acquisitions" Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:43 PM PST Washinton, DC.- The Library of Congress is pleased to present "Timely and Timeless: New Comic Art Acquisitions" on view from September 15th through March 10th 2012. Political and social satire, comic-strip and comic-book drawings, New Yorker magazine illustrations and graphic narratives — original cartoon art that was added to the Library of Congress collections during the past decade — will all be featured in the new exhibition. "Timely and Timeless" celebrates and demonstrates the multi-faceted development and impressive growth of the comic art collections at the Library of Congress. The 48 works on display are grouped primarily by genre, including editorial cartoons, caricatures, comic strips, cover art and humor cartoons, comic-book drawings and graphic narratives.  Among the cartoonists represented are historical masters James Gillray and Honoré Daumier, as well as modern and contemporary creators such as Jazz Age cartoonist John Held, Jr.; African American artist Oliver Wendell Harrington; New Yorker cartoonists Charles Addams and Roz Chast; and comic-strip creators Bill Griffith and Aaron McGruder.

Tate Britain Shows Major William Hogarth Exhibition Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:42 PM PST LONDON - The most comprehensive exhibition for over thirty years of the leading eighteenth-century artist, William Hogarth (1697-1764), opens at Tate Britain on 7 February 2007.  No other artist's work has come to define a period of British history as powerfully and enduringly as that of Hogarth.  He was also greatly admired and collected on the international stage, influencing a broad range of artists across the centuries, including Greuze, Goya, the Pre-Raphaelites, Whistler and Hockney.  The exhibition incorporates the full range of Hogarth's work, highlighting his unique contribution to the development of modern British art.  On exhibit until 29 April, 2007. exhibition includes over 200 works and showcases every aspect of Hogarth's multi-faceted career: his remarkable paintings, ranging from elegant conversation pieces to salacious brothel scenes; his vibrant drawings and sketches; and the numerous engraved works for which he is perhaps most famous today, including Gin Lane and Beer Street (both 1751).  Hogarth includes a large number of major loans from private and public collections around the world, such as David Garrick as Richard III (1745) from the Walker Art Gallery, The Rake's Progress (1734) and Election series (1754) from the Sir John Soane's Museum, Marriage A-la-Mode (1743-5), The Shrimp Girl (1740-5) and The Graham Children (1742) from the National Gallery, London, Captain Thomas Coram (1740) and The March to Finchley (1749-50) from the Foundling Museum and Before and After (both c.1731) from the J. Paul Getty Museum.  To these will be added iconic works from the Tate Collection including The Painter and his Pug (1745), Heads of Six of Hogarth's Servants (1750-5) and O, the Roast Beef of Old England (Calais Gate) (1748). The exhibition examines the whole of Hogarth's life and work, from his beginnings as a young and ambitious engraver in the 1720s, through to his rise to fame and fortune in the 1730s and 1740s, and on to the controversial years of the 1750s and early 1760s.  Hogarth is both broadly chronological and themed in structure, each gallery functioning as an in-focus introduction to a genre of painting, such as portraiture and conversation pieces, or to a single work, such as Marriage A-la-Mode, or to a group of similarly themed works, such as Industry and Idleness (1747) and The Stages of Cruelty (1751). In telling this story, the exhibition not only examines an individual artist, but also provides a fresh look at the world of British art in the first half of the eighteenth century.  Hogarth - which will include painted and graphic works by other leading contemporary artists - will highlight the themes and issues that preoccupied painters and engravers in the period, and reveal how these artists responded to the important cultural and social developments of Georgian Britain.  In doing so, the exhibition will explore an artist, and an art-world, that were strikingly modern in character, confronting subjects and themes – the city, sexuality and behavior, social integration, crime, political corruption, charity and patriotism– that continue to preoccupy us today.  The exhibition will argue that Hogarth was in fact Britain's first truly modern artist, and suggest the relevance of his work to British art now.  Works by living contemporary artists including Diary of a Victorian Dandy series (1998) by Yinka Shonibare and The Betrothal: Lessons: The Shipwreck, after 'Marriage a la Mode' by Hogarth (1999) by Paula Rego will also be displayed. The exhibition is curated by Christine Riding, Curator of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Art at Tate Britain and Mark Hallett, Professor of History of Art at the University of York.  It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by Tate Publishing (softback £29.99, hardback £40.00).  The exhibition opens at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (18 October 2006-7 January 2007). Visit the Tate Britain at : www.tate.org.uk/britain/

Dutch Sculptor Folkert de Jong Returns to James Cohan Gallery Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:41 PM PST NEW YORK, NY.- James Cohan Gallery New York welcomes the return of Dutch sculptor Folkert de Jong for the artist's third solo exhibition Operation Harmony opened on April 1st and running through May 7th, 2011. Following his solo exhibition last year at the Groninger Museum, his inclusion in the Sydney Biennial 2010 and in anticipation of the sculpture exhibition The Shape of Things to Come at the Saatchi Gallery opening in May, for which his work is the cover image, Folkert de Jong's career has been firmly launched on the international stage.

Rago Arts Nov.12th Fine Art Auctions Feature Works by Reginal Marsh, Red Grooms & Many Others Posted: 27 Feb 2012 06:40 PM PST Lambertville, New Jersey.- The Rago Arts and Auction Center is holding two auctions on Saturday November 12th, the 19th and 20th century American and European Art auction starts at 11am and will be followed in the afternoon by the Post-War and Contemporary Fine Art sale. The auctions include a group of paintings from a local Pennsylvania collection passed down directly from the artist to the family and by descent to the present owner, along with many works from private collections throughout the U.S. Top lots include works by Evan penny, Raymond Pettibon, Reginald Marsh, Kees Verkade, Werner Drewes, William Langson Lathrop, Robert Alexander Darrah Miller, Otto Dix, Michael Corinne West, James Bishop, William Joseph Anastasi, Beverly Pepper, Bill Woodrow, Chuck Close and Marilyn Minter. The lots can be viewed from Saturday, November 5th through Thursday, November 10th between 12–5 pm and by appointment. Open until 7 pm on Friday, November 11th. The 19th/20th century American and European Art sale features paintings, works on paper, sculpture and prints in 122 lots: Paintings by Werner Drewes, Jean Jansem, Nicola Simbari, Pedro Angel Gonzalez, Robert Philipp, Hermann Ottomar Herzog, William Gropper, Thomas Rathbone Manley and an exceptional selection of work by the New Hope Impressionists, including a collection direct from the artists to the family selling: Walter Emerson Baum, Giovanni Martino, Alfred Nunamaker, William Langson Lathrop, Robert Alexander Darrah Miller, Harry Leith-Ross, Henry Bayley. Works on paper by Reginald Marsh, Otto Dix, Henry Martin Gasser, Francisco Zuniga, Martha Walter and Andre Lhote. Sculpture by Kees Verkade, Allan Clark, Henry Schoenbauer, Augusto Perez, Dorothea Greenbaum and Boris Lovet-Lorski. Prints by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rembrandt van Rijn, Paul Gauguin and Armand Seguin, Leonard Tsugoharu Foujita, Martin Lewis, Romare Howard Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Marc Chagall. The Post-War and Contemporary auction includes paintings, works on paper, sculpture, prints and photographs in 278 lots:  Paintings by Michael Corinne West, Maureen Gallace, Mathieu Mercier, David Korty, James Bishop, Sergio Romiti, Julian Lethbridge, Matt Mullican, William Wood, Ed Templeton, Jean Pellotier, Gustavo Foppiani. Works on paper include a selection of images by Raymond Pettibon, work by William Joseph Anastasi, Franz Ackermann and Karen Kilimnik. Sculpture by Evan Penny, Beverly Pepper, Jessica Stockholder, Peter Shelton, Bill Woodrow, Hannah Wilke and Alan Rath. Prints include a selection of Warhols, as well as work by Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Damien Hirst, Paula Scher, Russell Young, Jennifer Bartlett, Willem de Kooning, Sol LeWitt, Josef Albers, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Photographs by Lucien Clergue, Marilyn Minter, Andreas Feininger, William Christenberry, George Hurrell, Annie Leibowitz, Justin Kurland and Catherine Opie. Since 1994, Rago's has served thousands of sellers and buyers with a singular blend of global reach and personal service. Originally specialists in 20th century design, today Rago's expertise covers centuries of fine art, decorative arts, furnishings, jewelry and ethnographic property.  It is a world-class venue through which to buy and sell. It is also a destination for those who seek to learn and share knowledge about art, antiques and collecting, offering free valuations for personal property (from a single piece to collections and estates), appraisals and auction exhibitions in house and online. Rago's, the largest and leading auction house in New Jersey, is located midway between Philadelphia and New York. At the age of sixteen, David Rago began buying and selling pottery from the early 20th C. design movement known as Arts & Crafts at a flea market in his home state of New Jersey. Today, he oversees the auction house that bears his name, sells privately in the field of Arts and Crafts and publishes two quarterly magazines about 20th century decorative arts and furnishings. He is an author who lectures nationally and an expert appraiser for the hit PBS series, Antiques Roadshow. David Rago entered the world of auctions in 1984. Since 1994, the Rago Arts and Auction Center (known to most as Rago's) has served thousands of sellers and buyers with a singular blend of global reach and personal service. First specializing in 20th century design, Rago's expertise now covers centuries of fine art, decorative arts, furnishings, jewelry and ethnographic artifacts. It is a world-class venue through which to buy and sell, with sales of over $25 million in the 2008 season. It is also a destination for those who seek to learn and share knowledge about art, antiques and collecting, with free valuations for personal property (from a single piece to collections and estates) and auction exhibitions in house and online. Visit the auction house's website at ... http://www.ragoarts.com

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 27 Feb 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.

You are subscribed to email updates from Art News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610