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

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• Photographer Herb Ritt's extensive career examined in Getty Museum exhibition
• One World Trade Center reaches a new milestone ~ 100 floors high
• AMSET to host the 15th Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists
• The Muck to Show Celebrated Californian Photographer Don Normark
• Zee Stone Gallery to host “The Balancing Act” ~ An Exhibition of Sculptures by Daniel Krause
• The Heckscher Museum of Art to show "Max Weber on Long Island"
• The Titanic approaching 100th Anniversary of the sinking . . . "And the band played on"
• The Albright-Knox Art Gallery opens "Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-garde Survey"
• Retrospective of the works on paper by Fanny Sanín at Frederico Sève Gallery
• Christie’s announced the sale of The Madoura Collection of Picasso Ceramics
• J. Paul Getty Museum ~ A “Must-See” Museum With A Stunning Collections in Los Angeles
• Kunstmuseum Bern shows Swiss Landscapes From 1800 to 1900 from the Collection
• ‘AGITATED IMAGES: JOHN HEARTFIELD & GERMAN PHOTOMONTAGE, 1920–1938’
• David Hockney ~ East Yorkshire Landscapes ~ at Tate Britain
• The Morgan Library & Museum Hosts a Major Exhibition Honoring the Birth of Charles Dickens
• LACMA ACQUIRES MAJOR COLLECTION OF MODERN ART
• The Fred R. Jones Jr. Museum of Art Reinstalls Their Modern Collection
• Wolfsonian Honors the New Deal
• The Kunsthal Rotterdam Shows a Sir Stanley Spencer Major Retrospective
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Photographer Herb Ritt's extensive career examined in Getty Museum exhibition Posted: 03 Apr 2012 01:19 AM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- Herb Ritts (American, 1952–2002) was a Los Angeles based photographer who earned an international reputation for his unique images of fashion models, nudes, and celebrities. From the late 1970s until his untimely death from AIDS in 2002, Ritts's ability to create photographs that successfully bridged the gap between art and commerce was not only a testament to the power of his imagination and technical skill but also marked the synergy between art, popular culture, and business that followed in the wake of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, April 3rd through August 26th, Herb Ritts: L.A. Style explores Ritts's extensive photographic career, including a selection of renowned and previously unpublished photographs, as well as his directorial projects. A major portion of the works in the exhibition was newly acquired by the Getty Museum through purchase and in the form of a generous gift from the Herb Ritts Foundation. "Through hard work and an imaginative vision, Herb Ritts fashioned himself into one of the top photographers to emerge from the 1980s," says Paul Martineau, curator of the exhibition and associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. "This exhibition will reconsider and broaden our understanding of Ritts's career, particularly in the areas of fashion and figure studies." By the mid-1980s, Ritts's aesthetic had coalesced into a distinctive style. His creative output was enormous, and he appeared to be able to switch gears effortlessly between his jobs in fashion and portraiture and his personal work with the nude. After shooting a commercial job, Ritts often took advantage of the location, props, and models to make his own pictures. To accommodate his growing business, Ritts established a studio in Hollywood and assembled a creative team of assistants, stylists, and printers who strove to exceed his high expectations. Like his contemporaries, Ritts rarely printed his own work. Through a pain staking selection process, he editioned his best pictures and had them printed in gelatin silver or platinum, varying the papers, levels of contrast, and tone to realize his artistic vision. Ritts's portraits of celebrities such as Richard Gere, Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, and Madonna introduce the exhibition. His anti-glamour style of portraiture made celebrities look more natural and allowed them to reveal inner qualities, making them more accessible to fans. By the late 1980s, Ritts's reputation as a shaper of fame made him a celebrity in his own right, and the iconic status of such photographs as Richard Gere, San Bernardino (1977) and Madonna, Hollywood (1986) made a photograph by Ritts a rite of passage among Hollywood insiders. The exhibition continues with Ritts's fashion photographs, many of which drew inspiration from painting, sculpture, film, and the work of such leading fashion and portrait photographers as Richard Avedon, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Irving Penn, and Louise Dahl Wolfe. Ritts had an extraordinary ability to synthesize and incorporate these influences into a new and easily recognizable style. As hundreds of magazine spreads demonstrate, Ritts kept top fashion editors happy by providing dazzling pictures designed to sell clothes along with others that simply celebrated beauty. Ritts also made use of locations around Los Angeles and especially loved Southern California's natural light. For instance, Ritts harnessed the forces of nature, strong sunlight and gale-force wind in Versace, Veiled Dress, El Mirage (1990) to create an unforgettable image that communicates feminine strength and beauty. Turning to Ritts's work with the nude, the exhibition examines how Ritts—along with his contemporaries Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber—provoked a radical change in how the nude was depicted. His forte was an ability to analyze the body from a variety of angles and create compositions that abstracted it in ways that communicate strength and poise. Working mostly outdoors, Ritts enjoyed relating the body to the natural world and rendered his nudes with a verve and elegance that became the dominant hallmarks of his pictures. In Man with Chain, Los Angeles (1985), model Tony Ward is seen bending at the waist, as if struggling under the chain's massive weight. The extraordinary sense of movement is not only forward but also upward in a tortuous S-curve that has been long associated with the dramatic, writhing bodies of seventeenth-century Baroque painting and sculpture. Ritts's work also includes portraits of well-known athletes and dancers. In the exhibition are a series of photographs of the critically acclaimed American dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones. In these photographs, Ritts captured Jones while he danced, framing him against a pure white background, making his muscled body look like a piece of sculpture. He also photographed famous athletes including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Olympic gold-medalist Greg Louganis. For Louganis's portrait Ritts positioned the diver on a makeshift pedestal and placed a low spotlight on him. The carefully arranged pose and lighting show off Louganis's muscled torso and back, while the prominent shadows recall the mysterious aura of film noirs of the 1940s. Although Ritts had no prior experience with film, Madonna convinced him to direct his first music video for her song "Cherish" (1989), which is included in the exhibition along with other music videos and commercials. Ritts enjoyed the creative challenge that film presented, allowing him to extend the sense of movement so important to his still photography to the moving image. From 1989 until 2002, Ritts directed thirteen music videos and more than fifty commercials. Some of his music industry clients included Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, and Shakira, while his commercial clients were mainly fashion and cosmetic companies such as Chanel, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, and Calvin Klein. Ritts's intimate portraiture, his modern yet classical treatment of the nude, and his innovative approach to fashion brought him international acclaim and placed him securely within an American tradition of portrait and magazine photography that was begun by Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Visit the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Center at : http://www.getty.edu/

One World Trade Center reaches a new milestone ~ 100 floors high Posted: 03 Apr 2012 01:18 AM PDT NEW YORK, NY - The new World Trade Center has reached a milestone: The super tall skyscraper being built to replace the terror-wrecked twin towers is now 100 stories high — on its way to becoming New York's tallest building. Just another four feet, and it will surpass the Empire State Building. That should happen within weeks, Steven Coleman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said Monday. One World Trade Center, more simply known as 1 WTC, and formerly known as the Freedom Tower or sometimes called the New World Trade Center, is the lead building of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan of New York City. The 104-story skyscraper is being constructed in the northwest corner of the 16-acre World Trade Center site, occupying the location where the original 8-story 6 World Trade Center once stood. One World Trade Center is expected to be finished by next year, its 104 floors towering over lower Manhattan.

AMSET to host the 15th Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists Posted: 02 Apr 2012 11:01 PM PDT Beaumont, Texas.- The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) is proud to present a dynamic exhibition showcasing artwork depicting classic marine and nautical life. "Contemporary American Marine Art: 15th Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists" will be on view from April 20th through June 17th. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 19th at AMSET.  American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) signature member and artist, Robert Lagasse will be present in the galleries at that time to conduct discussions about the artwork. "Contemporary American Marine Art: 15th Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists" will highlight America's long history with the sea through 111 paintings and nine three-dimensional works by national and international contemporary marine artists who join together to celebrate the rich heritage of marine inspired art. Southeast Texas has a unique connection to marine life because of its close proximity to various bodies of water which are a driving force in the local economy, outdoor entertainment and ecology. This marine art exhibit presents work not just limited to ships on an ocean, but depicts a vast array of water scenes including breezy seashores, stark lighthouses, rocky coasts, a still pond, water mammals, fish and dozens of other water related subjects, animals and habitats in a variety of different media. Every few years, ASMA holds a national juried exhibition of its members' works and this year marks the society's 15th National Exhibition. This traveling exhibition, organized by ASMA, will be hosted by eight museums across the country. In the mid-1970's a group of artists, illustrators and art directors in Manhattan found themselves drawn together in pursuing their first love – sketching and painting ships and the sea. United by common persuits and ideals, their informal get-togethers became larger, longer and more frequent, and thus the American Society of Marine Artists was founded in 1978. Today, the 570-member ASMA is a non-profit educational organization whose purpose is to recognize and promote marine art and maritime history, and to encourage cooperation among artists, historians, academics, enthusiasts and others engaged in activities relating to marine art and maritime history. Since its founding, the Society has brought together some of America's most talented contemporary artists in the marine art field. Widely respected by museums, galleries, naval maritime associations as well as devoted maritime art collectors, the American Society of Marine Artists advances its educational mission through Regional and National Exhibitions hosted by museums across the country and by publishing related exhibition catalogs as well as a quarterly, ASMA News and Journal. The Society welcomes all to membership who are interested in America's rich maritime heritage. One does not need to be an artist to join and support the Society and its mission. America has a long history as a seafaring nation. Whether our last affair with the sea was a stroll on a sandy beach or an off-shore sail, we all share a special fascination for the sea and ships. Of course, the special world of marine art is not limited to 'a painted ship upon a painted ocean'. As you will see attending the Exhibition in person, or browsing this comprehensive catalog, artists today are inspired as well to depict breezy seashores, stark lighthouses, rocky coasts, a still pond or the denizens that inhabit the open ocean, and render them in every medium imagineable. Within the Society are the Fellows, who are responsible for sustaining and elevating the artistic standards of the Society. This group of 24 active Fellows and seven Fellows Emeritus confer, through jurying, the Signature Memberships within the Society, as well as select, from hundreds of submissions, the best of member's works for national exhibitions. A high point for members and marine enthusiasts alike are our National Exhibitions that are hosted every three years by one or more museums. This one, the 15th, is the society's our most ambitious ever, presenting 122 works that will be shown over a period of twenty-two months in eight museums and will cover a distance of nearly six thousand miles. Incorporated in the state of Texas on September 14, 1950, the Beaumont Art Museum was originally housed on the lower floor of a two-story rented house on Calder Avenue in Beaumont. In September of 1956, the S. Perry Brown family donated funds to build a facility on the Southeast Texas State Fairgrounds. This building now houses the Beaumont Art League. In 1969, the family of J. Crooke Wilson donated their estate to the City of Beaumont for the purpose of housing the Beaumont Art Museum. The donation was contingent upon the City of Beaumont providing professional direction and a serious educational focus to the Museum. The five-acre property was located in Old Town, Beaumont's historic district. On September 10, 1987, after completing a comprehensive capital drive which brought in $4.2 million, the Beaumont Art Museum was re-born as the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and found its current home at 500 Main Street in Beaumont. The Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) has been acquiring works of art for its permanent collection since 1950. In those early days as the Beaumont Art Museum (BAM), new additions came from purchases from the annual members show and from gifts of generous donors. Just as each member had their own diverse taste in art, so did the collection result in a widely assorted group of various styles of artwork. As AMSET has grown into maturity, so has the focus of its collecting. As of 2009, the AMSET permanent collection includes approximately 1,000 pieces. AMSET is extremely proud to have Beaumont natives and internationally renowned artists John Alexander and Paul Manes represented in its permanent collection. The Beast by John Alexander, a large pastel and charcoal drawing of a crocodile in a swamp-lke setting, and Daedalus by Paul Manes, a large multi-panel painting of the frontal view of an airplane that hangs in AMSET's foyer, are both incredibly amazing pieces by these accomplished artists. Other highlights of the permanent collection currently include I Fled Him Down the Days and Down the Nights by Mary McCleary, which features an assortment of interesting media in collage; Ratoo Barada Nictoe by Al Souza, a large circle collage of puzzle parts; Low Tide by David Bates, an oil painting of a bird eating a fish with the ocean in the background; and X-Log by Helen Altman, a, X-shaped, lighted log sculpture which currently hangs in the Quinn Lecture Hall. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.amset.org/

The Muck to Show Celebrated Californian Photographer Don Normark Posted: 02 Apr 2012 10:42 PM PDT Fullerton, California.- Celebrated photographer Don Normark will be exhibited at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center ("The Muck") beginning Thursday, April 12th with an opening reception at 6:30 p.m. A special discussion, led by curator Matt Leslie and Don Normark, will explore the featured selections from Normark's three most famous bodies of work. Normark is most widely known for his documentation of Chavez Ravine, what is now the location of Dodger Stadium. In 1949, he spent a year capturing the last images of the close-knit Mexican-American community just before its 300 families were evicted by the city of Los Angeles. Recently, these images were featured in the PBS Independent Lens documentary "Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. "Don Normark: A Retrospective" will reiamin on view through June 10th.

Zee Stone Gallery to host “The Balancing Act” ~ An Exhibition of Sculptures by Daniel Krause Posted: 02 Apr 2012 10:14 PM PDT Hong Kong.- Zee Stone Gallery is proud to present the second exhibition of sculptures in Hong Kong by the American sculptor, Daniel Krause. "The Balancing Act" will be on view at the gallery from April 14th through April 30th. Daniel Krause moved to China in 1987 where he started to combine his Western art training with Chinese contemporary and ancient culture.  He studied under Liang Ming Cheng, Southern China's most important contemporary sculptor of the 1980 -90s, and was the first American to be awarded a Masters degree in sculpture in China.

The Heckscher Museum of Art to show "Max Weber on Long Island" Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:47 PM PDT Huntington, NY .- The Heckscher Museum of Art is pleased to present "Max Weber on Long Island" which will be on view from April 28th through August 5th. Max Weber, who lived on Long Island from 1920 until his death, was among the most influential American artists of the 20th century. Although celebrated today for introducing Cubism to America, Weber was better known during his lifetime (1881- 1961) for his Paul Cézanne-inspired works of the 1920s and 1930s and his later lyrical expressionism. Max Weber on Long Island presents new scholarship on Weber through a selection of two dozen of the artist's finest Long Island landscapes. Focusing on the land and its domestic and industrial structures at varying times of the year, these works reveal the range of modernist strategies for which Weber was so acclaimed.

The Titanic approaching 100th Anniversary of the sinking . . . "And the band played on" Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:33 PM PDT NEW YORK (AP).- Epic disasters — the anguished cries, the stories of heroism — are the central narratives of our age, both enthralling and horrifying. And our obsession began a century ago, unfolding in just 160 terrifying minutes, on a supposedly unsinkable ship, as more than 1,500 souls slipped into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. And the band played on. It was the Titanic. And ever since, we've been hooked on disasters, in general — but the tale of the great luxury liner, in particular. And the approaching 100th anniversary of the sinking has merely magnified the Titanic's fascination. Before the Titanic there were catastrophes before that fateful Sunday night in April 1912, but nothing quite captivated the newly wireless-connected globe's attention. It was more than news. It was a macabre form of entertainment. "The story is ageless, like all great stories," said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The elements in this case of triumph, tragedy, and hubris, of bravery and cowardice, all wrapped up in one brief moment. That speaks to people." The Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic was an Olympic-class Passenger Liner owned by the White Star Line and was built at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). At the time of Titanic's construction, she was the Largest Passenger Steamship in the World. Bigger, deadlier disasters followed, but they all borrowed from the storylines — morality plays, really — established by the Titanic's sinking: The high-profile investigations ... wall-to-wall news coverage ... issues of blame, technological hubris, ignored warnings and economic fairness — all were themes that played out in the BP oil spill, the space shuttle disasters, Hurricane Katrina, the Exxon Valdez and the recent grounding of the Costa Concordia. And to this day, The Titanic is big business in movies, books, songs, poetry, and museum exhibits hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Dozens of tourists have paid tens of thousands of dollars to dive in Russian submersibles to visit the ship's watery grave and see in the ocean floor "where the Titanic dug in and the ship created this knife-like sharp edge," Delgado said. For decades that burial spot was unknown, but the discovery of the Titanic in 1985 brought Titanic back to the world's attention. Then a dozen years later, another man raised the Titanic to an even greater fame with a multi-Academy Award winning movie and follow-up documentaries. This was, he said, a parable that the storyteller in him could not ignore. "It's this great sort of metaphorical novel that actually happened," said "Titanic" director James Cameron. "You can go and visit the wreck and go and see this monument to human folly." The 882-foot long Titanic steamed from Queenstown, Ireland, on Apr. 11 toward New York, carrying more than 2,200 passengers and crew, more than 130,000 pounds of meat and fish, 1,750 pounds of ice cream, 400 asparagus tongs and only 20 of the 32 lifeboats designed to be on board. The ship ignored more than 30 different ice warnings. At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, The Titanic hit an iceberg and stalled. At 2:20 a.m., it sank. Before the Titanic, the great Chicago fire, the Galveston hurricane and the San Francisco earthquake attracted America's attention, but "the Titanic hit a nerve in a different way," said Kevin Rozario, a professor of American Studies at Smith College. "It's the dramatic quality of the Titanic." Everything about the sinking — its speed and the fact that everybody was in one place — added to the drama. In fact, the Titanic's sinking took about as long as a stage play of that era, noted John Wilson Foster, a Queens University Belfast professor who wrote several Titanic books. "The survivors did say during the sinking it seemed like a play," Foster said. The public, especially in the past century, has become increasingly fascinated with disasters, especially technological ones. That's because it helps us cope with increased mechanization, risk and deep-rooted questions about what it means to be human, said Rozario, author of the book "Culture of Calamity." He said disasters reflect everyday fears that at we often ignore. When a catastrophe happens, "we see ourselves" in the storylines that play out. And with Titanic, the storylines played out instantly thanks to the recent innovation of wireless telegraphy. Even before the Carpathia arrived in New York with survivors, the "story starts to get told in a particular way before there is any substantial information about what happened," said Harvard University professor Steven Biel. "''It's unprecedented how quickly the story goes around the world."  "I think it is no exaggeration to say that those who read of the disaster quietly at home and pictured to themselves the scene as the Titanic was sinking had more of the sense of horror than those who stood on the deck and watched her go down inch by inch," Beesley concluded in his book. "The fact is that the sense of fear came to the passengers very slowly — a result of the absence of any signs of danger." Beesley and others talked about how no one at the time thought the Titanic was going to go under. At first, they joked that they had to stop for a fresh coat of paint to be applied to where the iceberg scrapped the hull. After all, the Titanic was "unsinkable," they figured. "The improbability of such a thing ever happening was what staggered humanity," Beesley wrote. "That phrase 'unsinkable' became notorious," Foster said. The phrase was originally "practically unsinkable" and was from an obscure engineering journal, but after a while it didn't matter. On top of that, someone claims to have heard ship Capt. Edward John Smith say "Even God himself couldn't sink this ship," Foster said. So early 20th century society, especially in Sunday sermons, spun the disaster in religious terms — "you can't cheat God in that way," said Biel, author of the book "Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster." Now, Biel said, people look at the Titanic sinking and other man-made disasters as technological hubris, the misbegotten belief that something could be too good, too fail-safe to fail. The space shuttles were portrayed as such until Challenger exploded in 1986. Then the oil industry bragged that deep water drilling was safer than the space shuttle; the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 proved otherwise. Every disaster inspires investigation. There were two high profile competing government probes of the Titanic. The British thought the American investigation was too hostile to the British officers and the Americans thought the British inquiry was too much of a whitewash, said Belfast's Foster. The American press went looking for a villain and found him in the owner of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay. Not only did they fault Ismay for scrimping on safety, such as the number of lifeboats, in favor of luxury, but they blamed him for surviving the sinking. Unlike Capt. Smith, he didn't go down with the ship. He was chastised, much as Costa Concordia Captain Francesco Schettino has been branded a coward for leaving his ship when it sank in January. Initially, news reports told of selflessness of the rich men in Titanic's first class who sacrificed themselves to allow women and children on the lifeboats, Biel said. While there were some brave rich passengers who nobly stepped aside to let others survive, the numbers show that the poorer you were, the less likely you were to live. Sixty percent of the first-class passengers survived, 42 percent of the second-class passengers survived and only 25 percent of the third-class, or steerage, passengers lived. "It's quite often the case that the less privileged suffer disproportionately in disasters," Biel said. "That was certainly true in the case of Titanic." And it happened again most noticeably in Hurricane Katrina, when the predominantly black sections of the city seemed to suffer more, with less government help, Biel said. In the first few decades after the Titanic, the disparity in survival of the third-class passengers wasn't mentioned. It wasn't until Walter Lord revived the tale of the Titanic in his best-selling book "A Night To Remember" that the issue of class fairness was revisited, Biel said. And by the time Cameron's movie came out in the 1990s, the story had gone from the helpful rich to the mostly despicable first-class passengers. Biel said no blacks were aboard the Titanic, although others claim there was one black family. Blues pioneer Leadbelly sang of how black boxing champ Jack Johnson was denied passage on the ship: "Black men oughta shout for you, Never lost a girl or either a boy. Cryin' fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well." It was not the first or last song about the sinking — and in fact, one of the enduring story lines of the Titanic is about music. The band on Titanic did play as the ship went down. Experts disagree on the song, but they agree that there was a soundtrack to the disaster. Survivor Archibald Gracie, in his popular account, described the lowering of lifeboats into the water with women and children, saying "it was now that the band began to play and continued while the boats were being lowered. We considered this a wise provision tending to allay excitement. I did not recognize any of the tunes, but I know they were cheerful and not hymns." And the band played on. In observance of this memorable time in history, The MS Balmoral, a cruise ship owned by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines (whose parent company built the Titanic), is offering a 12 day cruise following the Titanic's trail from Southampton to the tragic sight of the sinking, then on to Halifax to visit 3 cemeteries where many of the Titanic victims are buried. Final destination is New York, the original destination of the Titanic. While on board, a memorial service will be held exactly 100 years after the Titanic hit the iceberg and sank. Passengers can dine on the identical menu as that of the Titanic and enjoy music and entertainment similar to that enjoyed in 1912. Talks and demos relating to the Titanic's history and lectures focusing on life on board the Titanic 100 years ago will also be presented. Books of Interest: If you're interested in learning more about the Sinking of the Titanic in April of 1912, read Walter Lord's A Night To Remember, which includes a list of passengers that survived as well as gripping interviews from over 60 of those surviving passengers describing the events leading up to the disastrous sinking. Other good books of interest regarding the Titanic include: Story of the Titanic As Told By Its Survivors - by Jack Winocur The Sinking of the Titanic - by Bruce M. Caplan, which includes survivors accounts and rare photographs The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger - by Dr. Paul Lee Websites of Interest: Titanic Trivia Titanic Historical Society Titanic Wikipedia Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery opens "Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-garde Survey" Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:32 PM PDT BUFFALO, NY.- Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-garde in the 1970's surveys a creative ecology that flourished in Buffalo in the 1970s comprising a loosely organized group of collaborative, interdisciplinary artistic communities spanning the visual arts, film, video, performance, literature, and music. Looking back on the art and ideas these groups propagated, one might argue that aspects of postmodern and contemporary art were seeded during this time, and that Buffalo was one of a group of geographic pockets that provided fertile ground for these concepts and methodologies to take hold. Wish You Were Here identifies some of these concepts and examines the various threads of connectivity and collaboration that made Buffalo a site of radical creativity. On exhibition March 30th–July 8th at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Retrospective of the works on paper by Fanny Sanín at Frederico Sève Gallery Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:07 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Frederico Sève Gallery is presenting Drawings and Studies 1960 to Now, a retrospective of the works on paper by Fanny Sanín that can be seen at the gallery through April 28. The Colombian-born, now American artist is best known for her symmetrical, geometric abstract paintings in oil and acrylic on canvas. This exhibition provides an illuminating history and insights into the methodical process leading to Sanin's larger paintings on canvas. While each drawing can be appreciated on its own, the suites of drawings that she generates for each of her final composition evince her intricate thought process using a variety of drawing media on paper to build her final compositions. This exhibition project has been organized by New York independent art curator and writer Patterson Sims, and has an accompanying publication with all images of the nearly 100 works that are on view and featuring an interview with the artist and text and commentaries by Sims.

Christie’s announced the sale of The Madoura Collection of Picasso Ceramics Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:55 PM PDT SOUTH KENSINGTON, UK - Christie's announced the sale of The Madoura Collection of Picasso Ceramics – the last ever opportunity for collectors to purchase these works by Picasso directly from where they were made, at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris, France. The Collection is offered for sale by Alain Ramié, a friend and colleague of Picasso's for many years, the author of the catalogue raisonné of Picasso ceramic editions, and the son of the owners of the Madoura Pottery, Georges and Suzanne Ramié. The Ramié family first inspired Picasso to enter into the world of pottery in 1946, the beginning of a fascination that would last until the final years of his life. This unrivalled Collection is expected to realise a total in the region of £2 million, and will be offered at Christie's South Kensington saleroom over two days – at 4pm on 25th June and at 10am on 26th June. The auctions will comprise of around 550 ceramics in perfect condition, many of which have remained untouched since they were created, as well as prints, posters, photography and furniture from the Pottery. A broad selection of Picasso's catalogue raisonné is on offer, dating from his earliest ceramics in 1947 through to his last in 1971, and estimates range from £100 up to £100,000. Highlights from the collection will be on exhibition in Paris, Hong Kong and Christie's King Street premises prior to the full-sale exhibition in South Kensington, London.

J. Paul Getty Museum ~ A “Must-See” Museum With A Stunning Collections in Los Angeles Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:38 PM PDT The J. Paul Getty Museum is located within the Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The Center sits atop a hill, connected to a visitor's parking garage at the bottom by a three-car, cable-pulled tram. With more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the Getty Museum is one of the most visited art museums in the USA. It is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the second being the 'J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in Malibu', dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The 'J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Centre' is the branch of the museum specializing in "pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs". Besides the Museum, the Center's buildings house the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which owns and operates the Center. The Center was designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Meier and includes a central garden designed by artist Robert Irwin. GRI's separate building contains a research library with over 900,000 volumes and two million photographs of art and architecture. Originally, the Getty Museum started in J. Paul Getty's house located in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, when in 1954, he expanded the house with a museum wing. In the 1970's, Getty built a replica of an Italian villa on his property to better house his collection, which opened in 1974. After Getty's death in 1976, the entire property was turned over to the Getty Trust for museum purposes. However, the collection outgrew the site, which has since been renamed the Getty Villa, and management sought a location more accessible to Los Angeles. The purchase of the land upon which the Center is located (a campus of 24 acres on a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by 600 acres kept in a natural state) was announced in 1983. The top of the hill is 900 feet (270 m) above Interstate 405, high enough that on a clear day it is possible to see not only the Los Angeles skyline but also the San Bernardino Mountains to the east as well as the Pacific Ocean to the west. The Center opened to the public on December 16, 1997. After the Center opened, the villa closed for extensive renovations, and reopened on January 28, 2006. The Center museum building consists of a three-level base building that is mostly closed to the public and provides staff workspace and storage areas. Five public, two-story towers on the base are called the North, East, South, West and the Exhibitions Pavilions. The Exhibitions Pavilion acts as the temporary residence for traveling art collections and the Foundation's artwork for which the permanent pavilions have no room. The permanent collection is displayed throughout the other four pavilions chronologically. The first-floor galleries in each pavilion house light-sensitive art, such as illuminated manuscripts, furniture, or photography. Computer-controlled skylights on the second floor galleries allow paintings to be displayed in natural light. The second floors are connected by a series of glass-enclosed bridges and open terraces, both of which offer views of the surrounding hillsides and central plaza. Sculpture is also on display at various points outside the buildings, including on various terraces and balconies. The lower level (the highest of the floors in the base) includes a public cafeteria, the terrace cafe, and the photography galleries. Visit The J. Paul Getty Museum at : www.getty.edu/museum/ It all started with the museum's namesake, J. Paul Getty, an oil executive and art collector who lived from 1892 until 1976. He founded the famous Getty Oil Company which eventually became Texaco. Getty began collecting art in 1930 and, upon his death, left his entire estate to the J. Paul Getty Museum Trust. Eventually, the trust grew to over $4.5 billion, a sum which has allowed the Trust to continue updating the Getty Museum art collection with some of the finest, most sought-after pieces of art in the world. One publication noted that the Getty Museum has about 25 times the budget of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Getty Museum specializes in Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, sculpture, manuscripts, furniture and photographs, split between the two California locations. Whilst the collection may lack the breadth of some longer-established museums, the depth and quality of the collection in those artistic areas that interested its founder more than compensate for any possible omissions. The works of European sculpture are a particular strength, and these are located throughout the museum's pavilions (and outside spaces) and include work from the Renaissance through to 1900. The oldest painting at the Getty dates from 1295 and the collection continues up to the early 1900s, including paintings by Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Pieter Breughel (both the elder and the younger), Rembrandt, Jan van Goyen, Jean-Baptiste Raguenet , Jean-Étienne Liotard, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. Amongst the highlights of the collection are Van Gogh's "Irises", "Rue Mosnier With Flags" by Manet and "La Promenade" by Renoir, Jacopo da Pontormo's "Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici" and a rare bronze sculpture of a male figure by the 16th-century Dutch artist Adriaen de Vries. J.M.W. Turner's "Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino", which the Getty Museum purchased at auction in 2010, should be joining these other masterpieces on display later in 2011. With extensive exhibition spaces available, the Getty Museum hosts a constantly changing series of temporary exhibitions. Currently (until 24th April 2011) the Getty Museum are presenting "Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road". In a career that spanned five decades, the photographer Felice Beato (1832–1909) covered a wide swath of East Asia. Following in the wake of Britain's vast colonial empire, he was among the primary photographers to provide images of newly opened countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, and Burma. A pioneer war photographer, Beato recorded several conflicts: the Crimean War in 1855–56, the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858–59, the Second Opium War in 1860, and the American expedition to Korea in 1871. His photographs of battlefields, the first to show images of the dead, provided a new direction for that genre. Catering to a Western audience, Beato produced an exceptionally diverse oeuvre: topographical and architectural views, including panoramas, as well as portraits and costume studies of the countries he visited or in which he resided. Beato spent more than 20 years in Japan (1863–84), his longest residency in one country and the most prolific period of his career. Despite restrictions on foreigners, Beato was able to take numerous photographs, including the monumental sculpture of the Dai Bouts (Great Buddha), which had been the centerpiece of a temple that was destroyed by a typhoon. In 1871 Beato was the first to make photographic images of Korea. He was hired to document an American punitive expedition to Korea, Beato's images helped perpetuate the illusion of victory for this unsuccessful military campaign. After speculative ventures in Japan ruined him financially, Beato set off for new lands once more. He went first to Sudan to record the Anglo-Sudan War and finally settled in Burma in 1887. Beato quickly established himself as a photographer by traveling throughout Upper Burma documenting sites of interest. His landscapes, architectural views, and portrait studies offer a glimpse into Burmese life at the end of the 19th century. After a life of wandering, Beato returned to Italy, his birthplace, where he died in 1909. "Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road", is showing concurrently with "Photography From the New China", an exhibition featuring a selection of Chinese photographs produced since the 1990s, when People's Republic leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the current period of opening and reform. These two exhibitions create a powerful contrast between the nineteenth-century views of China and other parts of East Asia and the contemporary works. 8 other exhibitions can currently be seen at the Getty Centre, with a further 3 at the Getty Villa. Coming to the Getty "Spirit of an Age: Drawings from the Germanic World", 1770–1900 on exhibition March 29–June 19, 2011 Unveiling recent acquisitions that reflect a new area of the Museum's collection, this exhibition features about forty German and Austrian drawings and watercolors. The works reflect the profound changes—intellectual, social, and political—that the Germanic world underwent from about 1770 to 1900. Events such as the publication of the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the formal unification of Germany contributed to shaping the artist's world. Drawing captured the spirit of the age and evolved quite dramatically over the course of this period, which is rarely showcased by North American museums. The J. Paul Getty Museum seeks to further knowledge of the visual arts and to nurture critical seeing by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting works of art of the highest quality. To fulfill its mission, the Museum continues to develop its collection through purchase and gifts, complementing its impact through special exhibitions, publications, educational programs developed for a wide range of audiences, and a related performing arts program. The Museum strives to provide its visitors with access to the most innovative research in the visual arts while they enjoy a unique experience in viewing works of art at our Getty Center and Getty Villa sites. While benefiting from the broader context of the Getty Trust, the Museum also extends the reach of its mission via the internet and through the regular exchange of works of art, staff, and expertise. The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs.

Kunstmuseum Bern shows Swiss Landscapes From 1800 to 1900 from the Collection Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:37 PM PDT BERN, SWITZERLAND - Gottfried Keller's enthusiasm for what he sees before him is the motto for the exhibition on the 19th-century image of Switzerland from the Kunstmuseum Bern collection. The museum presents not only works that are strange or have hardly yet been seen, or visionary and realistic, but also well-known and familiar pieces from the rich fund of hidden museum treasures. With imagery that is deeply rooted in the national pictorial memory of the Swiss, a multi-facetted panorama enfolds in the exhibition that, still today, models the tourists' image of the country. On exhibition 13th July through 4th October, 2009.

‘AGITATED IMAGES: JOHN HEARTFIELD & GERMAN PHOTOMONTAGE, 1920–1938’ Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:36 PM PDT   Miami Beach, FL - Agitated Images: John Heartfield & German Photomontage, 1920–1938, at The Wolfsonian, explores the wide impact of John Heartfield's politically charged works. John Heartfield (German, born Helmut Herzfeld, 1891–1968) was a pioneer of modern photomontage and one of the most significant practitioners of the technique. A member of Berlin Dada, Heartfield developed a unique method of appropriating and reusing photographs to disclose what he saw as the "truth" obscured by fascist propaganda and the mainstream press. Working in Germany and Czechoslovakia in the chaotic period between the two world wars, he had a deep understanding of an image's power. His ability to assemble visual statements that spoke louder than words transformed photomontage from a vehicle of advertising and avant-garde art into a broadly significant mode of mass communication. Organized by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and curated by Andrés Mario Zervigón, assistant professor of art history at Rutgers University, Agitated Images concentrates on the interwar world of publishing in which Heartfield's images appeared. The exhibition will be on view at The Wolfsonian through February 10, 2008. Heartfield envisioned his photomontages as a crucial way to reveal what he saw as a distortion between reality and appearance in messages carried by the mainstream media during a time of increasing uncertainty. He concentrated on using published photographs that had already played a role in shaping public perception, choosing recognizable press pictures of politicians or events, and juxtaposed these images to radically alter their meaning. "Agitated Images is a natural fit with the Wolfsonian's mission to offer insights about design's active role in shaping everyday experiences," notes Marianne Lamonaca, chief curator and associate director for curatorial affairs and education. "Heartfield captured the disjunctive experiences of modernity through his clever appropriation of imagery, and gave visual form to his social and political convictions." In a piece for the independent leftist publication AIZ (Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung or Workers Illustrated Magazine), Heartfield overlaid a photograph of Hitler delivering a speech with a chest X-ray, adding the caption "Adolf, the superman, swallows gold and spouts tin." Heartfield's image reveals the contradictions between Hitler's financial support from wealthy industrialists and his working-man rhetoric as a "National Socialist." When this photomontage was reproduced as a political poster in 1932, Communists and Nazis brawled on the street as the former sought to preserve the posters and the latter struggled to rip them down. Heartfield's images, however, were not always critical. When praising his political allies, he often did not convert a photograph's meaning but, instead, simply presented or amplified that meaning uncritically through existing associations. The exhibition includes a large number of Heartfield's book cover designs, his only complete book design project, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles (Germany, Germany above All Else), and many of his best-known works for the magazine Die Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (The Workers' Illustrated Magazine or AIZ ). Also featured are original press photographs used by Heartfield and examples of the 19th-century satire on which Heartfield based many of his images. To provide context for his photomontages, the magazine articles Heartfield illustrated are also included. Trained in advertising, Heartfield found his political voice soon after he was drafted into World War I. He anglicized his name in protest and began sending subversive photomontaged postcards to the front that mocked the pro-war culture of the national leadership. After the war in 1918, Heartfield joined Germany's new Communist Party, the KPD, and began using his art to agitate for their cause through bold poster designs that used a spare set of symbols or faces to create a strong impact. Equally arresting were his book jacket designs using dramatic photographs, unusual spatial compositions, and dynamic typesetting to call attention to obscure or foreign left-wing titles. The German translation of California author Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (Der Sumpf) was noted for the extended scale of its cover image, spreading over the front, back, and spine of the book, and for its integration of text and image. Heartfield was most prolific in newsprint. He began contributing photomontages to publications such as the KPD newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) and its satirical magazine Der Knüppel (The Cudgel) in the 1920s, and later to the AIZ. The AIZ's high print quality gave Heartfield the opportunity to cultivate subtle visual details in his photomontages. From the intimate act of reading the magazine, Heartfield's powerful full-page images could nearly overwhelm the reader with a visual encounter that turned the news into an agitating experience. About The Wolfsonian–Florida International University The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 120,000 objects from the period of 1885 to 1945—the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals. The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Fla. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at www.wolfsonian.org.

David Hockney ~ East Yorkshire Landscapes ~ at Tate Britain Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:35 PM PDT LONDON - Five new paintings from David Hockney's East Yorkshire landscape series will be exhibited for the first time in the UK at Tate Britain from 11 June 2007.  David Hockney is arguably the most versatile and popular British artist of the 20th century. The exhibition of new paintings marks the artist's 70th birthday in July.  David Hockney: The East Yorkshire Landscape will include five large new paintings, each one around 12ft long.  The new works were all painted from the same spot in Woldgate Woods over the course of one year.

The Morgan Library & Museum Hosts a Major Exhibition Honoring the Birth of Charles Dickens Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:34 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was Britain's first true literary superstar. In his time, he attracted international adulation on an unprecedented scale, and many of his books became instant classics. Today, his popularity continues unabated, and his work remains not only widely read but widely adapted to stage and screen. The Morgan Library & Museum's Dickens collection is the largest in the United States and is one of the two greatest in the world, along with the holdings of Britain's Victoria and Albert Museum. Charles Dickens at 200 celebrates the bicentennial of the great writer's birth in 1812 with manuscripts of his novels and stories, letters, books, photographs, original illustrations, and caricatures. Sweeping in scope, the exhibition captures the art and life of a man whose literary and cultural legacy ranks among the giants of literature. On view through 12 February, 2012.

LACMA ACQUIRES MAJOR COLLECTION OF MODERN ART Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:33 PM PDT Los Angeles, CA - The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced the acquisition of a major collection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings by leading modern artists that will significantly transform the museum's collection of twentieth-century art. The fractional and promised gift of 130 works is remarkable for its concentration on the leading figures of modern art and for individual objects that in many cases represent LACMA's first major work by that artist. Among the highlights of the gift are twenty works by Picasso—paintings, drawings, and sculpture that span the years 1905 to 1970, including bold portraits of Dora Maar from the 1930s. Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, who both taught at the revolutionary Bauhaus school in Germany in the 1920s, are represented by twenty-one watercolors and paintings that form a fundamentally interrelated group. Seven bronzes and one painting by the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti are a particular strength of the collection. Numerous works by Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brancusi, Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, Lyonel Feininger, Fernand Léger, Henry Moore, and Camille Pissarro are also included as part of this transformative addition to the museum's collection. "We are deeply grateful to Janice and Henri Lazarof for bringing this collection to LACMA," said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "At a time when the art market has made it nearly impossible for museums to purchase works of this quality, this important acquisition brings to the people of Los Angeles works by key figures that define the modern century." Mr. Lazarof, a well-known composer, was on the faculty of UCLA for many years. In making the gift to the museum, Mrs. Lazarof explains, "Having been residents of Los Angeles for most of our lives, we decided the Los Angeles County Museum of Art should become the permanent home for our Collection. Gathering this art has been an exhilarating and meaningful experience for us. We hope the many visitors that view the Collection in our Gallery will share the same experience." Stephanie Barron, the museum's senior curator of modern art, who has worked for several years to bring the Lazarof collection to the museum commented, "This is a collection that has been built carefully and painstakingly over several decades. Having these works available at LACMA will forever change how future generations of visitors will understand modern art in Los Angeles. That these marvelous works of art will have a permanent home in the museum, is an example of the greatest philanthropy." Kevin Salatino, the museum's curator of prints and drawings remarked, "The extraordinary quality, and equally extraordinary number of superb drawings, watercolors, and gouaches by the great twentieth-century triumvirate of Picasso, Leger, Klee, and Kandinsky, among others, utterly and permanently changes LACMA's modern works on paper." Works from the collection will be on view beginning January 13, 2008. They will be installed in three galleries on the plaza level of the Ahmanson Building within the 22,000 square foot modern art galleries where a new presentation of paintings, sculpture, and selections of works on paper and decorative arts collection will be exhibited. Highlights of the Collection PICASSO Among the twenty works by Picasso are seventeen portraits, many of them women with whom he shared his life. The Picasso group includes three portraits of Dora Maar with whom Picasso lived for a decade beginning in the mid 1930s: Bust of a Seated Woman (1938), Head of a Woman with a Hat (1939), and Bust of a Woman (1941). His portraits of her are among his most searing: she is alternately depicted as the weeping woman, the harpy, the woman with basketwork hat: a disfigured and monstrous subject that inspired some of his most haunting works. At the end of 1954 Picasso began a series of fifteen paintings based on Delacroix's Women of Algiers. Completed in February 1955, this series, known by the same name, reveals his fascination with the harems of North Africa and their milieu of sexual abandon. The collection includes the fourth in the series depicting women in repose. GIACOMETTI The collection includes seven bronze sculptures by the Swiss Alberto Giacometti, as well as a single great oil painting. Postwar Giacometti sculptures were created as deliberate images of a humanity brutalized by recent events, or as spare existential images. In The Cage (1950) his thin, fragile, almost dematerialized figures convey a sense of profound loss and reflect a personal struggle for the impossible unity of world and ego. The Leg (1958) is a representation of a body fragment, suggested perhaps by the mutilation that Giacometti witnessed in survivors of the War. Here he elevates the lowly foot, places it on a pedestal, and makes a memorial of it. The collection includes Monumental Head (1960) one of a group of larger-than-life size figures conceived for the headquarters of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. Bronze portraits of his wife Annette and his brother Diego, both frequent subjects, as well as a painting of the Japanese philosopher Isaku Yanaihara are part of the collection. KANDINSKY Wassily Kandinsky, often credited with the initial transition from representational to abstract art (suggested in Untitled [Composition no. 1], 1915) was a crucial figure in the development of twentieth - century modernism. Between 1909 and 1914 Kandinsky's landscapes evolved into increasingly abstract compositions, to which he gave musical titles, including Improvisations, Impressions, and Compositions. Intense and sometimes dissonant color harmonies began to dominate his compositions, while representational elements were reduced to dark lines and compact colored shapes. He hoped these works would convey what he called the "largely unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner character, non-material nature" in his 1912 book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. KLEE A spectacular ensemble of eleven works affords an overview of Swiss artist Paul Klee's illustrious career as one of the most imaginative artists of the twentieth century, and an inspirational teacher at the Bauhaus. His luminous watercolors such as In the Kairouan-Style, Transposed in a Moderate Way and Motion of a Landscape both from his trip to Tunisia in 1914, abstract the bright sunlight and pure colors of the North African landscape and villages into compositions of colored squares and churning circular forms. So important was this new style for Klee that he wrote in his journal, "Color and I are one. I am a painter." Lightning Stroke (1920) exemplifies his masterful combination of line and color, as well as his lifelong procedure of occasionally cutting and reassembling his compositions in a collage-like fashion. Using the simplest means, a zigzag line of lightning becomes a fallen figure. This line is rendered using an oil transfer drawing process that Klee invented, which often enlivens his compositions with rich textures and smudges. In Pride of the Gate Keeper (1929) Klee's interest in children's art and gentle humor are combined in a charming and sly watercolor. Using a radically simplified vocabulary of fields of colored squares upon which simple configurations similar to ancient runes were painted in bold black lines, he created lucid works of child-like simplicity. BRANCUSI One of the sculptors who revolutionized modern art, Constantin Brancusi, while relying upon natural forms, increasingly abstracted and simplified them into essential organic shapes. Not interested in traditional modeling, he preferred to carve directly into wood or stone to create his forms. In his bronzes, he sought a specific golden-yellow finish that was his particular invention. He would frequently polish the surfaces of the sculpture to enhance the reflection of light, and repeatedly returned to the same forms, altering the sculpture through changes in dimensions and materials. DEGAS Edgar Degas was one of the great masters of pastel, a medium he favored throughout his career. Beginning in the 1870s, in a series of pastels devoted to the subject of dancers, Degas tirelessly explored movement, light, and color, producing a body of work unrivalled in beauty and innovation. In The Dancers  (1898) a late masterpiece, Degas used the medium with a freedom and power that belie his failing sight. He deftly defined forms with short, vigorous parallel strokes of pastel in bold colors, adding dabs of white chalk like strings of dazzling pearls to enliven the surface of his dancers' dresses. Degas's composition is daring; he decapitates one dancer, dangles the truncated leg of another, and slashes the left foreground with a prop tree, thus framing and isolating his balletic trio, who are caught, snapshot-like, frozen between rest and movement. The Dancers, whose subject is iconic within the artist's oeuvre, is only the second Degas pastel to enter the collection. PISSARRO Three paintings by Camille Pissarro illustrate the artist's versatility: a rare snow scene from 1871 was executed during the artist' stay in England. The Path to Les Pouilleux, Pontoise  (1881) is a bold composition reflecting the influence of Paul Cézanne. The 1884 image of a peasant's house at Eragny shows Pissarro's interest in pointillism. About LACMA LACMA—the largest encyclopedic museum in the Western United States—is the only museum of its kind to make contemporary art a principal area of activity with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). The Renzo Piano-designed BCAM is a cornerstone of the museum's ten-year project to dramatically renovate and expand LACMA's twenty-acre campus. This evolving contemporary collection, coupled with the museum's robust permanent collection of more than 100,000 works spanning the history of art, and extensive free public programming, make LACMA the definitive cultural town square for the city of Los Angeles and its visitors. General Information: LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles CA, 90036. For more information about LACMA and its programming, call 323 857-6000 or visit www.lacma.org . Museum Hours and Admission: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon–8 pm; Friday, noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesday. Adults $12; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $8; children 17 and under are admitted free. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is free the second Tuesday of every month, and every evening after 5 pm.

The Fred R. Jones Jr. Museum of Art Reinstalls Their Modern Collection Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:32 PM PDT Oklahoma City.- In preparation of the reopening of the museum's Stuart Wing in October 2011, the Sandy Bell Gallery of the Fred R. Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma will be reinstalled with selected works from the permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, as well as works on loan from a private collector. Works by Leon Polk Smith, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha and other important contemporary artists will be included in the installation. The opening reception on June 3rd and 4th will feature a special choreographed dance inspired by Rauschenberg's "The Lotus Series" and a live concert in conjunction with the Norman Music Festival.

Wolfsonian Honors the New Deal Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:31 PM PDT MIAMI, FL - A Bittersweet Decade: The New Deal in America, 1933-43 considers the impact of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs on American culture. The exhibition explores how the government's patronage of art, design, and architecture were integral parts of the larger project of the New Deal, which aimed to spur recovery from the Great Depression and change American society. Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the New Deal, the exhibition is on view at The Wolfsonian–FIU through January 19, 2009.

The Kunsthal Rotterdam Shows a Sir Stanley Spencer Major Retrospective Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:30 PM PDT Rotterdam, Netherlands.- The Kunsthal Roitterdam is proud to present "Sir Stanley Spencer: Between Heaven and Earth" on view at the museum through January 15th. "Between heaven and Earth" is the first major retrospective of Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) to be held in contintal europe androfiles one of the most important British painters of the twentieth century. His work is characterized by a wealth of topics such as Bible stories, landscapes, portraits and domestic scenes. Through his figurative, narrative painting and its subject matter Spencer has made a significant contribution to the development of modern art. The exhibition includes more than eighty paintings and drawings in a broad art-historical context by the addition of some twenty works by English contemporaries including Lucian Freud and Dora Carrington. Spencer's artistic influence in the Netherlands is shown through several works of his admirers Dick Ket and Charley Toorop. Generous loaned for the exhibition is a generous selection of Stanley Spencer's finest works made from museum collections and private collections including Andrew Lloyd Webber. Tate Britain and the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham set very generously of their biggest and most important works available. The exhibition is the result of new research by guest curator Dr. Alied Ottevanger. Spencer was born and spent much of his life in Cookham in Berkshire. From 1908 to 1912, Spencer studied at the Slade School of Art at University College, London under Henry Tonks and others. His contemporaries at the Slade included Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Isaac Rosenberg and David Bomberg. After a long period of agonising whether or not to join up, in 1915 Spencer volunteered with the Royal Army Medical Corps and worked as an orderly at the Beaufort War Hospital. In 1916, the 24-year-old Spencer volunteered for service with the RAMC in Macedonia, and served with the 68th Field Ambulance unit. He subsequently volunteered to be transferred to the Berkshire Regiment. His survival of the devastation and torment that killed so many of his fellows indelibly marked Spencer's attitude to life and death. Such preoccupations come through time and again in his religious works. Towards the end of the war he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to paint what became "Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing Station at Smol, Macedonia, September 1916" (now in the Imperial War Museum). A further major commission was to paint murals for the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Burghclere dedicated to the war dead. The altarpiece depicts the Resurrection of the Soldiers. In 1939, he went on a painting holiday at the suggestion of one of his friends, William Rothenstein, to Leonard Stanley in Gloucestershire. This holiday extended to two years, Stanley stayed at the White Hart Inn and created many of his important works in his room above the bar which he used as a studio including 'Us in Gloucestershire' and 'The Wool Shop'. Spencer's work as a war artist in the Second World War included his epic depiction of shipbuilding workers and their families at Port Glasgow on the Clyde. When the war ended he again took up, as did certain other British neo-romantic artists of the time, his visionary preoccupations—in Spencer's case with a sometimes apocalyptic tinge. In 1925, Spencer married Hilda Carline, then a student at the Slade and sister of the artist Richard Carline. A daughter, Shirin, was born in November of that year and a second daughter, Unity, in 1930. Spencer met the artist Patricia Preece in 1929 in Cookham. He became infatuated with her. Carline divorced Spencer in 1937. A week later he married Preece, who persuaded him to sign over his house to her; she, however, was a lesbian. She continued to live with her partner, Dorothy Hepworth, and though she frequently posed nude for her husband, she refused to consummate the marriage. When Spencer's bizarre relationship with Preece finally fell apart (though she would never grant a divorce), he would visit Hilda, an arrangement that continued throughout the latter's subsequent mental breakdown. Hilda died from cancer in November 1950. Spencer was knighted in 1959. He died of cancer at nearby Cliveden later that year. Spencer has been described as an early modernist painter. His works often express his fervent if unconventional Christian faith. This is especially evident in the scenes that he envisioned and depicted in Cookham. Very evident in these too is the compassion that he felt for his fellow residents. His quirky romantic and sexual obsessions were also expressed within this home environment, but it is a mistake to regard him merely as some sort of quaint village innocent, inextricably tied to small-town England. His works originally provoked great shock and controversy. Nowadays, they still seem stylistically avant-garde, whilst the nudes that arose through the futile relationship with Patricia Preece, such as the Leg of mutton nude, foreshadow some of the much later works of Lucian Freud, who has expressed admiration for Spencer. Spencer's early work is regarded as a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism, exemplified for instance by Paul Gauguin, plus early Italian painting typified by Giotto. This was a conscious choice, and Spencer was a key member of a group who called themselves the "Neo-Primitives." Allied with him were David Bomberg, William Roberts and other young contemporaries at the Slade. The Kunsthal is a museum in Rotterdam, which opened its doors in 1992. The museum is situated in the Museumpark of Rotterdam next to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, and in the vicinity of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The Kunsthal has no permanent collection, but organises a wide range of temporary exhibits. The large space available 3,300 m2 (36,000 sq ft) allows various exhibits in parallel. The Kunsthal stages some 25 exhibitions a year, presenting culture in the widest sense of the word: old art, new art, design, photography - from elitist to popular. The Kunsthal frequently experiments with themes which in many cases provide the first impulse for an exhibition. This approach has resulted in an exciting and varied exhibition repertoire highlighting Impressionism, lingerie, Leonardo da Vinci, Blackfoot Indians, Jewels of the Orient, Pop-art. More than 3300 square metres of exhibition space are available in the striking building designed by Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas - a work of art in its own right, making a visit to the Kunsthal well worth your while. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kunsthal.nl

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:29 PM PDT 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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