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

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• Guggenheim Museum Announces "Chaos and Classicism 1918-1936"
• Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA) features Grant Wood is Back!
• The Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) exhibits Hudson River School Paintings
• Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao Celebrates Roberto Matta's Centennial
• Our Editor Views Many Of Max Ernst Masterpieces at The Max Ernst Museum Brühl, Germany
• The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art Opens "Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections"
• The Gering & Lopez Gallery to Show the "Masters of Reality"
• The National Museum of Singapore Shows Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay
• ' Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance ' at Museum der Moderne Salzburg
• Musée du Luxembourg opens a Louis Comfort Tiffany Monographic Exhibition
• Babcock Galleries Presents American Sculpture from Three Centuries
• New World Auction Record for Emil Filla at Bonhams & Butterfields
• New Book Featuring the Work by Diane Arbus to Be Published by Aperture
• The Mike Weiss Gallery Hosts an Exhibition by Trudy Benson
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

Guggenheim Museum Announces "Chaos and Classicism 1918-1936" Posted: 03 May 2012 09:15 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Rising from the ruins and horror of World War I, European art and culture returned to the classical past, seeking tranquility, order, and enduring values. Artists turned away from prewar experimentalism and embraced the heroic human figure and rational organization. Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936 is the first exhibition in the United States to focus on the vast transformation in European culture between the world wars. With approximately 150 works by more than 80 artists, comprising painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, film, fashion, and the decorative arts, this thematically organized exhibition examines the return to order in its key manifestations: the poetic dream of antiquity in the Parisian avant-garde; the politicized revival of the Roman Empire under Benito Mussolini; the functionalist utopianism of International Style architecture that originated at the Bauhaus; and, ultimately, the chilling aesthetic of nascent Nazi society. The exhibition presents works by established masters of the period, including Georges Braques, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Otto Dix, Fernand Léger, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Pablo Picasso, Gio Ponti, Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, and August Sander, as well as works by artists lesser known outside of their home countries, such as Julius Bissier, Felice Casorati, Achille Funi, Marcel Gromaire, Auguste Herbin, Anton Hiller, Heinrich Hoerle, Ubaldo Oppi, and Milly Steger. Many works included in Chaos and Classicism have never before been shown in the United States. Chaos and Classicism is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from October 1, 2010, through January 9, 2011, and will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, from February 21 through May 15, 2011. Chaos and Classicism is organized by New York University Professor of Modern Art Kenneth E. Silver, a renowned authority on European art between the wars, assisted by Helen Hsu, Curatorial Assistant, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, with Vivien Greene, Curator of 19th- and Early-20th- Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, as curatorial adviser. Exhibition Overview The years after World War I were marked by a striking modernist avowal of traditional aesthetics: a retour à l'ordre (return to order) in France, a ritorno al mestiere (return to craft) in Italy, and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) in Germany. Picasso was a leader of this new historicism and proved to be particularly influential in promulgating a classical aesthetic from 1918 to 1936. Picasso, although Spanish, was based in France from 1904 onward, and his great classical figure paintings of the early 1920s demonstrate how decisively the Parisian avant-garde adopted the new post–World War I aesthetic. Chaos and Classicism presents several of his works, as well as other examples of this style, such as Léger's canvases of mechanized figures and commedia dell'arte paintings by André Derain and Paris-based Gino Severini. The notion of a Latinate civilization comes to the fore in the emerging influence of Jean Cocteau, and the exhibition features excerpts from his 1930 film The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d'un poète, 1930). Le Corbusier's architecture and design, as well as the Purist paintings he created alongside Amédée Ozenfant, forge a visual link with abstraction and Synthetic Cubism. Madeleine Vionnet's neo-Greek fashion designs and Art Deco objects by Ruhlmann translate the more abstruse aspects of classicizing art and theory into functional items. In Italy, de Chirico's paintings, along with those of Carrà, bridge the transition to the New Sobriety of Italian art immediately after the war. De Chirico's essay "Il ritorno al mestiere" ("The Return to Craft"), published in 1919 in the influential journal Valori Plastici, was especially vital for this classicizing moment as it renewed interest in the Italian Renaissance painters Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca. Chaos and Classicism also includes paintings by artists such as Massimo Campigli and Giorgio Morandi. Architectural models and design objects, including a version of Giuseppe Terragni's Casa del Fascio in Como, Italy, and porcelain by Ponti, demonstrate the power of the neoclassical paradigm for postwar Italian modernists. Sculpture, the quintessential classical medium, was especially strong in interwar Italy and is represented throughout the exhibition. In Germany, Mies van der Rohe's synthesis of classical form and modern technology was central to the ethos that challenged Expressionism in interwar Germany: iconic elements of his Barcelona Pavilion (1929), including Georg Kolbe's Morning (Der Morgen, 1925), the life-size nude sculpture so well known from original photos of Mies's seminal structure, are featured in the exhibition. Renowned Bauhaus teacher Oskar Schlemmer's modernist figurative paintings testify to the German translation of the Italian revival (Schlemmer was deeply influenced by the art of Piero della Francesca, among others). Moreover, after the perceived excesses of Expressionist art, the Neue Sachlichkeit movement represented the search for aesthetic Klarheit ("clarity") in Weimar Germany. Works by Dix, Georg Scholz, Georg Schrimpf, and Wilhelm Schnarrenberger reveal this rationalist approach along with August Sander's radically pared-down photographic portraits. However, modern German aesthetics also leads viewers toward the exhibition's dramatic conclusion. As the Weimar Republic collapsed and Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the new classicism—Parisian myths, Italian role-playing, and the German search for objectivity—was monstrously transformed into a quasiscientific doctrine of human perfection under the Nazis. Exhibition Installation The exhibition is organized into eight sections that illuminate the dominant concerns and subliminal drives of European art and thought in this highly charged period. The themes are developed in a loosely chronological installation that winds up the Guggenheim Museum's ramps and on two Annex level galleries. High Gallery: In the Shadow of War: Chaos and Classicism An introductory section installed in the High Gallery features a selection of 15 prints from Dix's portfolio The War (Der Krieg, 1924), which recollect the destruction and trauma of World War I. These graphic depictions of the horrors of war are juxtaposed with works by Maillol and Picasso, as well as Italian and German sculptors such as Campigli and Hiller whose classical works can be viewed as an aesthetic rehabilitation of the ravaged body according to antique balance and measure. Ramp 1: A More Durable Self This section examines artists' enthusiasm for depicting sculpture from antiquity or incorporating sculptural models into their compositions as exemplars of the human form—as more durable versions of the self, epitomized in Bissier's painting Sculptor with Self-portrait (Bildhauer mit Selbstbildnis, 1928). Other artists represented include Hoerle, Suzanne Phocas, and Scholz. Ramp 2: The Avant-Garde Looks Backward In the years after World War I, the fragmentation and optical experiments of Cubism strikingly contrast with Picasso's voluptuous, Grecian-robed women, ambling in the Mediterranean sun, or seated in peaceful repose, and Braque's monumental canéphores (basket carriers). The postwar subjects of the classicizing artists, including Léger and Matisse, as well as photographer Edward Steichen, indicate a renewed interest in the roots of civilization, in Greece and Rome and their ruins. Several of Picasso's most important works of this period are on view in this section, including The Source (La Source, 1921), on loan from Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Woman in White (Femme assise, les bras croisés, 1924), from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Ramp 3: Classical Bodies, New Humanity The postwar search for a reassuring artistic language from the past led logically to sculpture. The idealized human form was reconceived by an international group of major sculptors including Kolbe, Maillol, and Arturo Martini. This fascination with the whole and intact body lent itself to politicized idealizations in the work of Hans Belling, Gromaire, and Léger on the left, and to the Italian Fascist art of Campigli and Oppi on the right. Ramp 4: Crazy for Classicism The revived interest in Greek and Roman history and myth, which had long provided the West with a shared narrative and archetypes, proved inspirational in not only painting and sculpture, but also photography, film, fashion, and the decorative arts. This section includes a film excerpt by Cocteau, photographs by Florence Henri and George Hoyningen-Huene, design objects by Ponti, furniture by Ruhlmann, and dresses by Edward Molyneux and Vionnet. Annex Level 5: The Constructors This section focuses on the architectural interpretations of classicism and the metaphors of construction and reconstruction that became ubiquitous in the wake of World War I's devastation. The new modernist language sought a resolution of architecture's past with the industrial present. Platonic ideas of geometric harmony and the beauty of new materials, especially glass and metal, were brought together in unprecedented combinations. Examples include Le Corbusier's architecture and design, as well as the Purist paintings he created with Ozenfant. Works on view also consist of newly fabricated models of buildings by Le Corbusier and Terragni, objects and furniture designed for Mies's Barcelona Pavilion, and chairs by Piero Bottoni for the Casa Minerbi in Milan. Ramp 5: Classicizing the Everyday Still lifes and portraits crystallizing the German Neue Sachlichkeit and Italian Novecento (1900s) movements demonstrate these rigorous approaches to representation and the desire to capture objective reality. The exhibition presents traditional painted portraits and self-portraits by Fridel Dethleffs- Edelmann, Dix, Carl Hofer, Morandi, Picasso, and Luigi Trifoglio, among others, as well as Sander's typological photographic portraits, all of which assert classic fixity amid the flux of modern life. Ramp 6: Performance/Anxiety The performing body became a key element of modern culture between the wars. Developed, remade, and "perfected," the body was the new measure of objective value, in contrast to the mind, now considered too abstract and subjective. Artists as stylistically and politically diverse as Willi Baumeister, Franco Gentilini, Gromaire, Albert Janesch, and Lorenzo Lorenzetti invoked the theme of sport in their work of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Circus, carnival, and commedia dell'arte imagery was treated by an equally diverse group including Derain, Antonio Donghi, Juan Gris, Erich Heckel, Hoerle, and Severini. Annex Level 7: The Dark Side of Classicism The exhibition concludes with a sobering look at the nationalistic pursuit of cultural roots and perfection, as gradually appropriated by the political right. Among the most notorious modern portrayals of antique Rome were paintings of gladiators by de Chirico, who was attacked by the Surrealists for his artistic collusion with the Fascist regime. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were a classicizing spectacle, recorded and refashioned by the greatest Nazi propagandist, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in her Olympia (1936–38), excerpts of which are in this final section. Visit : http://www.guggenheim.org/

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA) features Grant Wood is Back! Posted: 03 May 2012 09:14 PM PDT CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA - The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA) is excited to announce that the entire Museum will be open once again on Saturday, June 20 and admission will be free all day! With that in mind, we have many things planned to celebrate this special day… Help us welcome back Grant Wood in the exhibition Grant Wood: In Focus. Culled from the CRMA's extensive collection of work by Grant Wood, this single-gallery installation will serve as an introductory overview of the artistic achievements of this important American painter.

The Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) exhibits Hudson River School Paintings Posted: 03 May 2012 09:14 PM PDT ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- On the anniversary of the 400th year since Henry Hudson's exploration of what came to be called the Hudson River, Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) presents Poetic Journey: Hudson River School Paintings from the Grey Collection, an exhibition based the extraordinary holdings of Long Island art collectors David and Laura Grey. Included in this exhibition are works by masters of the genre such as Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, George Inness and John Frederick Kensett, among others. Poetic Journey is on view from January 18, 2009 through March 15, 2009. The exhibition is organized by Constance Schwartz and Franklin Hill Perrell.

Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao Celebrates Roberto Matta's Centennial Posted: 03 May 2012 09:13 PM PDT BILBAO, SPAIN - The year 2011 marks the centenary of the birth of Roberto Matta, one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century art because of his importance as a member of the Surrealist group and his enormous influence on the development of American Abstract Expressionism, and above all because he was an absolute artist, a visionary and a precursor of the relationships of art, science and nature and the fundamental role of art in the complete development of the human being.

Our Editor Views Many Of Max Ernst Masterpieces at The Max Ernst Museum Brühl, Germany Posted: 03 May 2012 09:12 PM PDT The Max Ernst Museum Brühl of LVR is the world's first and only museum that is the work of this seminal artist and world citizen Max Ernst (1891-1976) dedicated. It shows an overview of the extensive work of the Dadaists and Surrealists, whose imagery - as with almost any other artist of the 20th Century - are distinguished by astonishing creativity and inspiring genius. Max Ernst not only created a large number of paintings, collages, graphics, sculptures and assemblages, and his boundless creativity was reflected in numerous books, artist portfolios and poems. In his world of images we encounter poetic landscapes, fantastic compositions and bizarre creatures whose powers of invention and clever wit and fascinating at the same time and cause confusion in the viewer inexorably lead an effeminate wake of the suggestion. The painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet Max Ernst is one of the most important representatives of the Dadaism and Surrealism. Early in his life he breaks with conventional painting and turns towards the use of indirect techniques such as over-paintings, collage, frottage (rubbing technique), grattage (scrapping technique) and decalcomania (tracing technique with oil colours). These techniques serve the systematic survey of the realms „Beyond Painting" (Max Ernst). By exploiting his hallucinatory capabilities Max Ernst reinterprets objects and structures of his environment to then fix his visionary perception of the world. The alienation of the ordinary as well as the irritating orchestration of the inexplicable and the dreamlike are consistently broken up by irony and humor in his many works of art. During the summer of 1934, German-born artist Max Ernst executed a mural for the Dancing Mascotte, the bar at Zürich's Corso Theatre. One of the largest painted works of the artist's seven-decade career, Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie (Petals and Garden of Nymph Ancolie) adorned a wall of the popular nightspot in Zurich. Based on an illustration found in a Victorian-era botanical encyclopedia, the surrealist imagery features a dancing bird-like figure emerging from a lush backdrop of red and gold flower petals. This amazing huge nightclub mural has been full restored and on display until March, 2011. The Max Ernst Museum Brühl of LVR also presents five major works by Max Ernst from the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, makes for a whole year under the "collection on display in the change." The Menil Collection is one of the world's largest private art collections. Given the Menil's preeminent Ernst holdings – the result of a lifelong friendship between the artist and John and Dominque de Menil – the Houston museum was the ideal venue for the debut of the fully restored Pétales et jardin de la nymphe Ancolie. The de Menils met the artist for the first time, in Paris, in 1934 – the year Ernst completed the Zürich mural. The building complex is a combination of old and new: far from the palace of Augustus, with its castle park stands the classical three wings of the 19th Century, which was extended by a centrally inserted glass pavilion and a "floating" entrance plateau and supplemented in the basement with additional exhibition and meeting rooms.For four years, the conversion work continued by the Cologne architect Thomas van den Valentyn and Seyed Mohammad Oreyzi. The restoration of the heritage-listed building was there a main idea, visited but also the young Max Ernst that "Brühler pavilion, a picnic area, in 1844, so at the same time, the construction of the railway line between Cologne and Bonn, as a further attraction of the recreation area Brühl built. For the realization of the project, the existing building with the requirements of a museum and the aesthetic standards of contemporary architecture to agree harmoniously, received the Max Ernst Museum awarded "exemplary building in North Rhine-Westphalia". Since 1 July 2007 is the Max Ernst Museum to the Museum Association of the Rhineland Regional Council. Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism. He was born in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp Ernst was a teacher of the deaf and dumb and an amateur painter. Ernst visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting this year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist. In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work is exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913. In 1914 Ernst met Hans Arp in Cologne. The two soon became friends and their relationship lasted for fifty years. Next year Ernst visited Paul Klee in Munich and studied paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, which left a deep impression on him. The same year, inspired partly by de Chirico and partly by studying mail-order catalogues, teaching-aide manuals, and similar sources, he produced his first collages (notably a portfolio of lithographs), a technique which will come to dominate his artistic pursuits in the years to come.Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called frottage which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images. He also created another technique called 'grattage' in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. He uses this technique in his famous painting 'Forest and Dove' (as shown at the Tate Modern). Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped inspire the development of abstract expressionism. Ernst died on 1 April 1976, 1 day before his birthday, in Paris.

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art Opens "Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections" Posted: 03 May 2012 09:11 PM PDT Cedar Rapids, Iowa.— The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CRMA) presents "Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections from the Columbus Museum of Art". On view from May 21st through  September 4th, "Shout Freedom!" comprises fifty-five photographs by forty-seven photographers who were active in the Photo League, including Berenice Abbott, Sid Grossman, Lisette Model, W. Eugene Smith, Aaron Siskind, and Weegee. The Photo League chronicled turbulent chapters in our history,  from the Great Depression to the World War II to the Cold War. "Shout Freedom!" acknowledges the importance of the League's contribution to our broadening understanding of the twentieth-century American experience. "These photographs are stunning pictorial records and visual stories from our history, as well as striking works whose messages transcend the written record," said Catherine Evans, Chief Curator, Columbus Museum of Art. "Their immediacy resonates today as a potent voice that alerts us to the present by evoking the past."

The Gering & Lopez Gallery to Show the "Masters of Reality" Posted: 03 May 2012 09:10 PM PDT New York City.- The Gering & Lopez Gallery is proud to present "Masters of Reality" on view from November 3rd through December 23rd. In a contemporary art landscape often criticized for a dearth of figurative painting, several artists are pushing the notion of the mimetic on canvas to its limits. Taking its cue from the Black Sabbath album, this exhibition seeks to highlight a group of artists that have mastered reality through their own unique vision. Whether it be ecology, popular culture, counter-culture, politics, sexuality, or mundane aspects of day to day life, these paintings are composed of images initially familiar to their viewer. However, the artists have altered this iconography giving us their takes on reality.

The National Museum of Singapore Shows Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay Posted: 03 May 2012 09:09 PM PDT Singapore.- The National Museum is proud to host "Dreams & Reality: Masterpieces of Painting, Drawing & Photography from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris", on view at the museum until February 5th 2012. Instead of travelling 12 long hours to Paris to appreciate the world's finest  collection of modern art, Singaporeans can now view over 140 Salon, Realist, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from the greatest painters in the likes of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and many more at the National Museum of Singapore.Titled "Dreams & Reality: Masterpieces of Painting, Drawing  & Photography of  the Musée d'Orsay, Paris", the exhibition is a rare opportunity for the art works to travel out of the Musée d'Orsay is possible only because the museum is undergoing renovation works of its galleries. At the turn of the century from 1848 to 1914, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, a rapidly urbanising social and economic landscape in Europe compelled Man to react towards modernity. The arts particularly grew in prominence as artists were confronted by a whole new world of ideas, possibilities and influences. Some chose to pursue their desire to capture contemporary subjects; others who were anguished and disorientated by the onslaught of massive change, sought refuge in their dreams and imagination founded on mythologies, legends and ancient civilisations. Their varied response generated new ways of depicting reality and a proliferation of artistic styles, redefining their own identities amidst the radical transformations taking place around them. This exhibition is divided into four main sections: Allegory and History, Man and Contemporary Life, Man and Nature and Solitude. Allegory and History is illustrated with works by artists such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who blended myths of classical antiquity with history and reality, creating a new trend that was perpetuated in the Salons during the second half of the 19th century. Gods and goddesses were increasingly depicted as stylised figures, stripped of meaning. During the Romantic period in the 19th century, the links between literature, theatre, music and painting grew. Artists sought to free themselves of classicism; yearning freedom, they embraced a dark melancholy and rebellious pessimism. After France surrendered and lost two provinces Alsace and a large part of Lorraine to Prussia in the 1870 War, many artists were affected by the tragic events and dedicated paintings and drawings to the defence of Paris and the Commune – a resistance movement against the Empire's defeat. Man and Contemporary Life Family Family was the only constant source of stability, comfort and moral support for the artists. Family members thus became tractable models with whom the artists could share their difficulties in artistic creation. When the once agrarian society transited into an urban one, some artists  felt nostalgic towards the countryside as a sort of "lost paradise", while others denounced the archaic conditions and exploitation of peasants. Another group of artists looked at a different reality – contemporary life in the city and the exalted heroism of factory workers. As Paris modernised, an array of new leisure activities sprung up. Artists began to discover the beauty of modern life by painting new places like theatres, public gardens and railways. Man and Nature The Human Figure From the mid-19th century, traditional approaches to figure-painting, portraits and nudes were widely challenged and succeeded by new artistic styles which included informal poses, people donning their own clothes performing daily tasks in their homes or on the streets. While landscape in art was initially linked to history, mythology and the Bible, it moved towards a more subjective and lyrical interpretation from the second half of the 18th century onwards. Towards the end of the 19th century, landscapes became increasingly devoid of human presence, underlining the insignificance of man as a subject compared to the forces of Nature. Man as a solitary being Surrounded by progress on all fronts, a group of artists were concerned about the irreversible changes made to the fast urbanising environment, hence, they set out to depict Man as a solitary being. In the artists' perspective, the only way humans can escape the weight of science and technology is through the individual's mind. With a history dating back to its inception in 1887, the National Museum of Singapore is the nation's oldest museum with a progressive mind. The National Museum is a custodian of the 11 National Treasures, and its Singapore History and Living Galleries adopt cutting-edge and varied ways of presenting history and culture to redefine conventional museum experience. A cultural and architectural landmark in Singapore, the Museum hosts vibrant festivals and events all year round – the dynamic Night Festival, visually arresting art installations, as well as amazing performances and film screenings – in addition to presenting lauded exhibitions and precious artefacts. The programming is supported by a wide range of facilities and services including F&B, retail and a Resource Centre. The National Museum of Singapore reopened in December 2006 after a three-year redevelopment. The museum used to house a vast collection of zoological items, but were transferred to the National University of Singapore (NUS) and other museums in the Commonwealth. Among the highlights of the collections are the Singapore Stone, the Gold Ornaments of the Sacred Hill from East Java, a Dagguerreotype of Singapore Town which was one of the earliest photographs of Singapore, the will of Munshi Abdullah, the portrait of Frank Athelstane Swettenham, the hearse of Tan Jiak Kim, a Peranakan coffin cover, the mace of the City of Singapore commemorating King George VI's raising of the island's status to a city in 1951, the Xin Sai Le puppet stage, William Farquhar's drawings of flora and fauna and the portrait of Shenton Thomas, who was the former governor of Singapore. Rocks from the nearby Fort Canning Hill were used to create two sculptures commissioned from Cultural Medallion-winner Han Sai Por. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.nationalmuseum.sg

' Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance ' at Museum der Moderne Salzburg Posted: 03 May 2012 09:05 PM PDT   SALZBURG, AUSTRIA - Museum der Moderne Salzburg presents today Paul Klee: Melody / Rhythm / Dance, on view through February 1, 2009. The exhibition "Paul Klee. Melody / Rhythm / Dance" is dedicated to Paul Klee's (1879—1940) intensive involvement with music, with melody, rhythm and polyphony, as well as with dance . .  these topics represented central elements in his work, in terms of both content and form.

Musée du Luxembourg opens a Louis Comfort Tiffany Monographic Exhibition Posted: 03 May 2012 09:04 PM PDT PARIS.- The Musée du Luxembourg is hosting the first monographic exhibition ever devoted in France to the famous American creator Louis Comfort Tiffany, a show conceived by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition brings together some 160 works (stained-glass windows, vases, lamps, objects, jewels and mosaics, drawings, watercolours and photographs), to reveal Tiffany's outstanding contribution to the glass industry as well as to decorative arts in general. On exhibition 16 September until 17 January, 2010.

Babcock Galleries Presents American Sculpture from Three Centuries Posted: 03 May 2012 09:02 PM PDT New York City.- Babcock Galleries are pleased to present "The American Hand - Sculpture from Three Centuries", on view at the gallery from February 2nd through March 16th. Masterpieces of American sculpture help commemorate Babcock Galleries' historic 160th Anniversary celebration. This exhibition is carefully curated from the gallery's holdings and includes superb works by such notable masters as Hiram Powers, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, William Zorach, Seymour Lipton and Dorothy Dehner. "Stories that attend the art we encounter are often as vivid as the art itself," observes John Driscoll in his introduction to the exhibition's full-color catalogue.  The American Hand celebrates some of the greatest achievements of American sculptors and some of the great stories that accrue when works of art subsequently pass from hand to hand, collection to collection. "A work of art has its own life through time, through various additional hands, through generations…when the artist's work is done, the life of the work of art begins...." Among the two dozen sculptures that compose this exhibition are Augustus Saint-Gauden's iconic 1899 "Diana of the Tower", which was originally modeled to stride atop Stanford White's new Madison Square Garden; Theodore Baur's poignant "The Buffalo Hunt", an 1876 commission for the United States Centennial Celebration; William Zorach's introspective female nude, "Young Woman", 1956 that Marilyn Monroe gave to her husband, Arthur Miller, as a Hanukkah gift; and the haunting Felix Weihs de Weldon "Bust of John F. Kennedy", commissioned by Mrs. Kennedy in the spring of 1963 a few months before his tragic assassination. Important works by William O'Donovan, Frederic Remington, Elihu Vedder, Paul Manship, Abe Ajay and Deborah Butterfield are among those featured. From the Babcock Gallery's earliest years it has been an important source for major works by America's greatest masters. Highlights of Babcock Galleries' history include the 1866 George Inness exhibition, which featured the monumental "Peace and Plenty" now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the Inness paintings they have placed in recent years are "Sunset at Montclair" acquired by the Montclair Art Museum and "Sunburst", an exceptional masterwork acquired through Babcock Galleries by the Palmer Museum of Art. Babcock Galleries has handled many works by Winslow Homer, including the famous "The Gale" sold to the Worcester Art Museum in 1916 for a then record price of $30,000. The Gallery was also agent for the Estate of Thomas Eakins, placing significant paintings in major museums from New York to Honolulu. In recent years we have sold a number of significant Eakins works, including one of his largest paintings: "A Street Scene, Seville". For the past half century Babcock Galleries has also been the leading source for works by Marsden Hartley. More than fifty museums, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the Huntington Museum and Library have acquired Babcock Hartleys. During the past few years the gallery has sold nearly twenty major Marsden Hartley paintings, including one of his most famous works, "Mountains of Stone, Dogtown", 1931, which was featured in both the National Gallery's Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum's retrospective exhibition Marsden Hartley. For more than ten years Babcock Galleries has been the exclusive agent for the heirs of Edwin Dickinson. In that role they have sold more than one hundred works to important public and private collections nationwide. Similarly, as agent for the Estate of Charles Hawthorne, we have recently placed more than thirty works in collections. Today, Babcock Galleries remains a key source for important American art of all periods. In the past few years the gallery has sold many exceptional works including a life portrait of George Washington by Edward Savage; Charles Deas' famous "Long Jakes", Randolph Rogers' iconic "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii", a major luminist painting by Jervis McEntee; a classic Frederic Church American landscape; and Robert Duncanson's amazing 1850 "View of Ashville, North Carolina". In recent years five museums have acquired six highly important Severin Roesen still life paintings from the gallery. We have sold important works by Fitz Hugh Lane, Asher B. Durand, William Sidney Mount, Sanford Gifford, and placed more than twenty-five works by John F. Kensett, including what is perhaps his finest Beacon Rock, Newport painting. Masters such as Ralph Blakelock, Winslow Homer, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Mary Cassatt, and Childe Hassam have figured in sales and exhibitions. We are particularly pleased to have sold some of the finest works that have entered the market place by George Luks, Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies, John F. Carlson, Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, Max Weber, Milton Avery, and Franz Kline. Our current inventory includes landmark works by John F. Kensett, Severin Roesen, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Edwin Dickinson, George McNeil, Will Barnet, and Paul Wonner. Babcock Galleries' long and distinguished tradition of connoisseurship and service assure the highest quality of important American art to their clientele, museums and private collectors alike. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.babcockgalleries.com

New World Auction Record for Emil Filla at Bonhams & Butterfields Posted: 03 May 2012 09:00 PM PDT LOS ANGELES, CA.- Seasoned collectors and new bidders from across the United States and around the globe vied for Modern, Contemporary and Latin American works of art at Bonhams & Butterfields on November 17, 2009 in Los Angeles. Simulcast to the firm's San Francisco auction rooms, the more than 200-lot auction attracted strong buyer interest for a variety of high quality works by well-known artists.  Highlights from the well rounded fall auction included pieces by Emil Filla, Maurice Utrillo, Pedro Coronel, Alexander Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jack Bush, Tom Wesselmann, Amedeo Modigliani and Jim Dine, among others. Sales totaled more than $2-million with a new world auction record established for a painting by Emil Filla.

New Book Featuring the Work by Diane Arbus to Be Published by Aperture Posted: 03 May 2012 08:58 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Diane Arbus: A Chronology (October, 2011) reads like a contemporaneous diary by one of the most daring, influential, and controversial artists of the twentieth century. Drawn primarily from Arbus's extensive correspondence with friends, family, and colleagues; personal notebooks; and other unpublished writings, this beautifully produced volume exposes the private thoughts and motivations of a photographer whose astonishing vision revolutionized the medium. Further rounding out Arbus's life and work are exhaustively researched footnotes that amplify the entire Chronology. A section at the end of the book provides biographies for fifty-five personalities, family members, friends, and colleagues, from Marvin Israel and Lisette Model to Weegee and August Sander.

The Mike Weiss Gallery Hosts an Exhibition by Trudy Benson Posted: 03 May 2012 08:42 PM PDT New York City.- The Mike Weiss Gallery is excited to present "Actual/Virtual", a new exhibition of paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Trudy Benson, on view from October 13th through November 12th. The show's title "Actual/Virtual" illuminates the dynamic between illusionary space and the physicality of materials as Benson pushes paint into the realm of the viewer both physically and optically, delivering a visceral punch via large-scale electric-hued abstract paintings. Benson's fervor for the physical act of painting is readily evident in her mark-making; her viscous gestures evoke the onomatopoeic language of comic books taking shape as bold splunks!, shoops!, and splats! that emerge sculpturally from the surface of the canvas. The singularity of the mark – as considered from an art historical context – is important to the artist who says "I want the brushstrokes to be a 3D image of what a drawing of a brushstroke would look like." These marks are simultaneously expressive and graphic, rhythmic and frenzied, appearing as if they could float away were they not tethered to the canvas via an underlying grid or background of solid color—a device frequently used by the Abstract Illusionists of the mid 1970s in order to generate the semblance of depth and space.  It is in this space that Benson's interest in emergent geographies is revealed. Allusions to the flattened screenscapes of virtual worlds can be found in Benson's intuitively constructed compositions and the tension between forms and voids speak to her fascination with the cosmos as filtered through cosmetically altered space photography. Benson's color palette is decadent.  Pure unadulterated color, lustily saturated, is often squeezed from the tube directly onto the canvas.  Non-traditional tools such as brooms, squeegees, and even hair picks are used to slather, drag and manipulate the thick paint. There is an element of chance as thick paint pulled by its own weight breaks and tumbles leaving a trail of marks.  Areas of raw canvas or panel are left exposed to break the illusion and thick globs of paint protrude from the picture plane reminding the viewer that this is a painting in-and-of-itself. Born in 1985 in Richmond, Virginia, Benson received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009 and her MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2010. This is her first exhibition at Mike Weiss Gallery and second solo exhibition in New York.  Her works have been included in multiple group exhibitions in both New York City as well as the Richmond, Virginia area. Mike Weiss Gallery was founded in 2003 as being an innovative showcase for the ongoing presentation and promotion of strong, visceral, and visionary contemporary art worldwide. The gallery is dedicated to exhibiting the work of ambitious contemporary artists at all levels of their careers and development. The gallery also maintains Mike Weiss Editions for the publications of books, prints and multiples by gallery artists. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.mikeweissgallery.com

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 03 May 2012 08:41 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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