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

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• The Carmen Thyssen Museum shows "Paradises & Landscapes ~ From Brueghel to Gauguin"
• The Kunsthalle Vienna shows "The Circus as a Parallel Universe"
• The Met in NYC goes "Naked Before the Camera"
• VMFA exhibits "Bold Cautious True ~ Walt Whitman & American Art of the Civil War Era"
• The Gallery of Lower Austria to show "Manfred Wakolbinger ~ Up From the Skies"
• The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu Hawaii ~ A Delightful Contemporary Art Museum
• The Wichita Art Museum Celebrates Printmaking from the Lawrence Lithography Workshop
• Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Welcomes Six-Millionth Visitor
• Bonnefantenmuseum delivers 'Exile on Main St.' ~ Humour, exaggeration & anarchy in American Art
• MoMA presents "Pictures by Women - A History of Modern Photography"
• 'China Welcomes You' ~ at Kunsthaus Graz
• Krannert Art Museum opens Artists Exhibiting in “Under Control”
• Christie's Hong Kong Asian 20th Century & Contemporary Art Achieves Milestone
• Museum Ludwig presents 'Looking for Mushrooms and Counterculture'
• The Deichtorhallen Shows Works from the Collections of Thomas Olbricht & Harald Falckenberg
• Chelsea Art Museum Exhibits 'Dangerous Beauty'
• Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 opens at Martin-Gropius-Bau
• Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"

The Carmen Thyssen Museum shows "Paradises & Landscapes ~ From Brueghel to Gauguin" Posted: 31 May 2012 11:08 PM PDT Malaga, Spain.- The Carmen Thyssen Museum is currently showing "Paradises and Landscapes in the Carmen Thyssen Collection From Brueghel to Gauguin", on view through October 7th. The exhibition presents an interesting survey of landscape painting, from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, represented by significant works in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. The show examines the depiction of nature as an idyllic place by means of a fine selection of works by artists who have played a key role in shaping the history of art, among whom nineteenth-century American landscape painters and the great masters of Impressionism were most prominent. The idea of paradise appears in several ancient peoples, both in the Semitic and the Graeco-Latin tradition. The Book of Genesis describes it as a place of particular beauty, where man lived in perfect harmony with nature until the Fall, and his consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Western culture thus incorporated an idea of nostalgia and a desire to recover that lost idyllic place. Landscape painting enabled artists to reflect the myth of an idealised reality, a bucolic and serene atmosphere no longer existent. This first idea, as described in the Bible, was reflected by Jan Brueghel I in The Garden of Eden, where man lives in harmony with all other beings of Creation. The conception of landscape painting as an idealisation of nature gradually acquired greater doses of Realism in the seventeenth century in Holland, although the scenes would continue to be recreated in artists' studios, for outdoor painting did not develop until two centuries later. Painters such as Jan Josephsz van Goyen would begin to attach importance to rendering the sensations produced by the contemplation of rural nature, considered to be a reflection of the humblest reality in serene compositions. In France and Italy the opposite would occur, as the landscape genre followed the classical tradition related to Arcadia, which implied a symbolic and poetic representation of nature, in search of a balance between morality and sensitivity. Andrea Locatelli, a faithful continuator of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, managed to combine the rationality and perfection of the former with the melancholy and delicacy of the latter in highly subtle, elegant works. Such landscapes would be cultivated until the nineteenth century in Spain, in the age of the blossoming of Romanticism, and one of the most representative painters of this style would be Sevillian artist Andrés Cortés y Aguilar. During the eighteenth century the poetics of picturesqueness exerted a great influence on landscapism and nature became the backdrop against which artists reflected their ideal conception of the world. Pictorial compositions represented elaborate scenes surrounded by fantastic elements, lush vegetation and classical architecture, usually ruins. Such fantasy worlds appear most often in the works by François Boucher, who sought to offer viewers sensory experiences far removed from reality. The nineteenth century is broadly represented in the exhibition by American landscape painters who, according to the premises of Romanticism, related the idea of the arrival in paradise with the discovery of the promised land, pervaded by a spiritual sentiment provoked by contact with this impressive unspoilt nature. Among the artists present are Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt, characterised by their peculiar idealised visions that focus on sensory exaltation, and their interest in the sensuousness and exoticism of the tropical landscapes in South America. Mention should also be made of Martin Johnson Heade who, without surrendering Romantic positions, chose to depict more serene, essential landscapes in which light was of fundamental importance. The same Romantic vision was shared by Spanish painters, who developed a type of landscape devoid of drama that attached importance to the grandeur of natural scenes. This is the case of Genaro Pérez Villaamil, in whose works we discover subtle and delicate scenes of nature, almost fantastic, with spectacular light effects. This concern with depicting specific atmospheres and with rendering changes of light, despite its theatricality, would be a stepping-stone towards Realist landscape, which gradually abandoned subjectivity in favour of sincere interpretations and a Naturalistic approach. The landscape genre developed further in Spain in the works by Carlos de Haes, who in the mid-nineteenth century combined his interest in observing nature with great technical skill. Spanish Naturalist painters included Emilio Sánchez-Perrier, whose landscapes reveal a total absence of decoration and artifice and focus instead on faithful direct studies and representations from life. Within the group of painters who transformed their landscapes into rural paradises were the artists belonging to the Barbizon School, who symbolised the perfect union between man and nature. In the eighteen thirties Barbizon became a favourite place for the painters who were leaving Paris driven by the need to establish pure, sincere and harmonious relations with natural world. In this way, as they sought to create a place that would evoke sereneness and purity, they revolutionised the landscape genre by taking their easels out of doors for the very first time in history and practicing plein air painting, concerning themselves with capturing atmospheric phenomena. Their audacity heralded the great transformation that art was about to suffer with Impressionism, which, starting from the Barbizon experience, would turn the concept of pictorial representation completely inside out. In the late nineteenth century, therefore, landscape painting took centre stage and became an indispensable genre in the evolution of modern art, despite having been considered a minor genre barely one century before. The exhibition displays works by the most representative artists belonging to the Impressionist movement, such as Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who would forsake their initial interest in depicting the majesty of nature to render the simplest moments of life in the country. Their attention was focused primarily on conveying the emotion of a pleasant moment through the use of colour and a spontaneous even gestural technique. Initially linked to Impressionism by his relationship with Pissarro, another of the great talents of Modern Art present in the show is Paul Gauguin, whose landscapes represented his own personal view of paradise—exotic worlds, far from Western society, that enabled him to live in spiritual purity and perfect harmony with nature. The Impressionist revolution would prove to be a road of no return in the history of landscape painting, both in France, where Neo-Impressionism emerged out of research in the field of colour, as we see in the works by Henri-Edmond Cross, and on an international scale. We must not forget that similar developments on the other side of the Atlantic would result in an American version of Impressionism developed by artists such as Frederick Childe Hassam, Edward Henry Potthast and John Singer Sargent. Darío de Regoyos, a founding member in Brussels of the Les XX group of artists and connected to the international avant-garde, would introduce these plastic advances in Spain. In the rest of Europe many artists continued to show a preference for Romantic settings, such as Wilhelm Trübner, and even for depicting a reality highly charged with symbolism, like Edvard Munch. In all these cases, artists approached nature more freely and directly, creating compositions that would reflect their own feelings as well as become vehicles for pictorial innovation. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, one of the world's foremost art collectors, opened her eponymous museum in Malaga in March 2011. The paintings are from her personal collection, amassed over the past 30 years. The permanent collection consists of 230 works, mainly by 19th-century Spanish artists, with most of the subject matter being, unsurprisingly, Andalucia: Cordoba, Malaga, Sevilla. The most famous painters whose works feature in this collection are Zurbaran, Sorolla, Zuloaga, and Romero Torres.It is divided into four sections: Maestros Antiguos (Old Masters), Paisaje Romantico y Costumbrismo (Romantic Landscape and Costumbrism), Preciosismo y Paisaje Naturalista (Preciocism and Naturalistic Landscape), and Fin de Siglio (End of Century).Temporary exhibitions in the first year have included De Picasso a Tàpies. Pintura española del siglo XX en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza (From Picasso to Tapies. Spanish 20th-century painting in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection), and La tradición moderna en la Colección Carmen Thyssen. Claude Monet, Picasso, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró (Modern Tradition in the Carmen Thyssen Collection: Monet, Pablo Picasso, Matisse and Miro), which has art painted from 1890 to 1960. In the future, it's hoped that some exhibitions will transfer to this museum from the main Thyssen museum in Madrid. There are also short themed mini-exhibitions with complementary movie screenings and live performances, such as flamenco. Other activities include summer programmes for children, family days, and events related to major local festivals such as Semana Santa and the Malaga Feria.The home of the museum, the Palacio de Villalon is a beautiful 16th-century palace with a traditional colonnaded patio, whose refurbishment cost 20 million euros. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.carmenthyssenmalaga.org

The Kunsthalle Vienna shows "The Circus as a Parallel Universe" Posted: 31 May 2012 10:33 PM PDT Vienna.- The Kunsthalle Vienna is currently showing "The Circus as a Parallel Universe", on view through September 2nd. Presenting a number of contemporary works of art, the exhibition offers an introduction into the universe of the circus and highlights a wondrous place full of knowledge of the world, surprises and sensations, a place of poetry, but also of excitement, confusion, and unease. The circus as a parallel world has become a projection surface in film and literature, but also in the fine arts. Fascinated with the circus, its forms, and its practice, Peter Blake has created his own personal company of acrobats and fabulous circus creatures, for example. Federico Fellini has made the circus the subject of numerous films, and Charlie Chaplin's figure of the tramp transcends the norms of social life. Ulrike Ottinger's works confront us with the circus as a metaphor of a utopian perspective in which its sphere features as the gentle twin of revolution. Besides animals and acrobats, it is primarily the figure of the clown whose complexity oscillating between good and bad, funny and sad has always inspired the arts. Reaching far beyond the actual fringes of the circus ring, the exhibition assembles international artistic positions that thematize the world of the circus outside the big top and draw on its figures, forms, and metaphors.

The Met in NYC goes "Naked Before the Camera" Posted: 31 May 2012 10:00 PM PDT New York City.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently showing "Naked before the Camera", through September 9th. Since the beginning of art and in every medium, depicting the human body has been among the artist's greatest challenges and supreme achievements, as can so easily be seen by Museum visitors walking through the galleries of Greek and Roman statuary, African and Oceanic art, Old Master paintings, or Indian sculpture. Tapping veins of mythology, carnal desire, hero worship, and aesthetic pleasure, depictions of the nude have also triggered impassioned discussions of sin and sexuality, cultural identity, and canons of beauty. Controversies are often aroused even more intensely when the artist's chosen medium is photography, with its accuracy and specificity—when a real person stood naked before the camera—rather than traditional media where more generalized and idealized forms prevail. In the medium's early days—particularly in France, where Victorian notions of propriety held less sway than in England and America, and where life drawing was a central part of artistic training—photographs proved to be a cheap and easy substitute for the live model.

VMFA exhibits "Bold Cautious True ~ Walt Whitman & American Art of the Civil War Era" Posted: 31 May 2012 08:23 PM PDT Richmond, VA.- Timed to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and Emancipation, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is reprising the exhibition "Bold Cautious True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era", and Art originally organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. The exhibition opens on June 2nd and will remain on display through August 26th. The Richmond reworking of this thought-provoking exhibition, which takes its title from Whitman's poem "As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Wood," showcases one of VMFA's seminal works—Eastman Johnson's A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves, March 2, 1862—in addition to some 30 paintings, sculpture, prints, and rare books from noted public and private collections across the country. While preserving the central focus of the original exhibition—the layered meanings and moods of 1860s American art as viewed against the poetry of Walt Whitman, one of America's chief "scribes" of the war—VMFA's reprise expands the number of featured artists. By juxtaposing the writings of Whitman with various landscapes and genre scenes by Conrad Wise Chapman, Frederic Church, Robert Duncanson, David Johnson and Winslow Homer among others, the exhibition encourages a fresh understanding of America's visual and verbal responses to the national crisis. A fully-illustrated catalogue, published by the Dixon, accompanies the exhibition. A champion of America and the individual, Whitman contributed to the war through his literary talents and by nursing wounded soldiers.  Although he published no poetry during the Civil War, he wrote many poems about his war experiences for later editions of his legendary Leaves of Grass. His poetic language and his celebration of the individual paralleled the changes taking hold in American art during and after the Civil War. Highlighting Whitman's poems such as "Drum Taps," the literature of Bold, Cautious, True helps viewers read the exhibition and the period as a whole. With Whitman's literary art along with the work of artists such as Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Frederic Church, and John Frederick Kensett trace the emotional and political themes of the fratricidal war—secession, death, emancipation, and an uncertain future for a young country. Organized into five thematic sections, The Poetics of a House Divided; The Poetics of Service; The Wound Dresser; The Poetics of Endings and Beginnings; and Bold, Cautious, True, the exhibition – with close to 60 works – is a landmark study that sheds light on the cross-currents of history, literature, and the visual arts illuminating a troubled era in American history. In the midst of the Great Depression, on January 16, 1936, Virginia's political and business leaders bravely demonstrated their faith in the future and their belief in the value of art by opening the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The English Renaissance-style headquarters building was designed by Peebles and Ferguson Architects of Norfolk. The museum's first addition was built in 1954 by Merrill C. Lee, Architects, of Richmond. By the mid 1960s, additional gallery space was again desperately needed. The museum's second addition, the South Wing, was designed by Baskervill & Son Architects of Richmond. It featured four new permanent galleries and a large gallery for loan exhibitions, as well as a new library, photography lab, art storage rooms and staff offices. As more exhibition space and visitor services were needed, a third addition, the North Wing, designed by Hardwicke Associates, Inc., Architects, of Richmond, was completed in 1976. It added three more gallery areas (two for loan exhibitions and one for the Sydney and Frances Lewis Art Nouveau Collection) as well as a new sculpture garden with a cascading fountain. In December 1985, the museum opened its fourth addition, the West Wing. It now houses the Mellon collections, consisting of major examples of French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and British Sporting art (which was permanently given to the museum in 1983); the Lewis Contemporary art collections; and the outstanding Lewis collections of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, glass and other decorative arts. The West Wing was designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York. The museum has assembled a wide-ranging collection of world art characterized by great breadth and exceptional aesthetic quality. It includes significant holdings of Classical and African art, paintings by European masters such as Nicolas Poussin, Francisco Goya, Michel Delacroix and Claude Monet, and American masters such as John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer, one of the world's leading collections of Indian and Himalayan art, an internationally important collection of fine English silver, unequaled holdings of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, ceramics, glass and jewelry, a dynamic collection of Modern and Contemporary art, a popular collection of Fabergé imperial jeweled objects and noted holdings of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including original waxes and bronzes by Edgar Degas. In 2003, a year after its selection of London-based architect Rick Mather, VMFA unveiled a master plan for a $100-million building expansion and transformation of its 13 1/2-acre campus. Mather's design will provide Virginians with a work of contemporary architecture that will display more fully the museum's extensive collection of world art. His virtuoso handling of transparency and natural light will function as both a tool and a metaphor to open the museum to its surroundings and create an inspiring atmosphere in which to view art. Visit the mueum's website at ... http://www.vmfa.state.va.us

The Gallery of Lower Austria to show "Manfred Wakolbinger ~ Up From the Skies" Posted: 31 May 2012 07:48 PM PDT Krems, Austria.- From June 3rd, the Gallery of Lower Austria, Krems is proud to present works by Manfred Wakolbiger from three decades under the title "Up From the Skies" in the Dominican Church on Körnermarkt in Krems. This comprehensive presentation of an artist's work marks the beginning of the activities of the Zeit Kunst Niederosterreich as the new Gallery of Lower Austria for contemporary art. The show is the first of a series of exhibitions combining monographic presentations and ambitious publications on the work of artists who live in Lower Austria or have close connections with this state and whose oeuvre enjoys international esteem. The outstanding positions of Austrian contemporary art will be presented at two venues of the Gallery of Lower Austria: in Krems and in St. Pölten. The first solo presentation "Manfred Wakolbinger: Up From the Skies" shows a representative survey of the artist's sculptural and photographic work from 1980 until today and will remain on view through October 14th.

The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu Hawaii ~ A Delightful Contemporary Art Museum Posted: 31 May 2012 07:46 PM PDT Located on Oahu in the Honolulu neighborhood of Makiki, on a hill overlooking the city and the ocean, the Contemporary Museum (TCM) is the only museum in Hawaii that is devoted exclusively to contemporary art and features artworks from 1940 to the present. TCM provides an accessible forum for provocative, dynamic forms of visual art, offering interaction with art and artists in a unique Island environment. TCM presents its innovative exhibition and educational programs at two venues, in residential Honolulu at the historic Cooke-Spalding house, and downtown at the First Hawaiian Center. In addition to preserving art from 1940 to the present, the Museum also maintains and presents the historic Cooke-Spalding house and gardens for the enjoyment and enrichment of Hawai'i's residents and visitors. The structure that houses TCM was built as a residence in 1925 by Mrs. Charles Montague Cooke. At the same time, The Honolulu Academy of Arts was being built on the site of her former home on Beretania Street. The Makiki Heights home was designed by Hart Wood and later enlarged by the firm of Bertram Goodhue and Associates. The Honolulu Academy of Arts acquired the estate as a bequest from Anna Rice Cooke's daughter, Alice Spalding, in 1968 and operated it as an annex from 1970 to 1978. After passing through the hands of a private developer in the late 1970s, the property was acquired by a subsidiary of The Honolulu Advertiser. In 1986 the Twigg-Smith family offered it as a site for The Contemporary Museum. Following interior renovation by The CJS Group Architects and the construction of the Milton Cades Pavilion, the museum opened to the public in October 1988. TCM includes a variety of off-the-beaten-path treasures. In the Café, visitors can sit indoors in a gallery-like atmosphere amid changing displays of art or outdoors in a garden setting. The J. Russell and Charlotte McLean Cades Library welcomes visitors to stop by and enjoy the collection of information on contemporary art and artists. The library houses 900 volumes of surveys, monographs, catalogues, periodicals and artist files, and is used daily by artists, students, writers, and the museum's curators and educators. In addition, books from recent TCM exhibitions are on the library shelves, including 'Enrique Martínez Celaya' and 'Drawing is another kind of language'. Another highlight of The Contemporary Museum is the gardens, which encompass 3.5 acres. These sculpture and meditation gardens are called Nu'umealani (heavenly terrace), and they are so beautiful that the museum won the American Society of Landscape Architects Millennium Award for preserving and maintaining them. Designed to provide a place to retreat, meditate and experience the harmony of nature, the gardens include a sprawling lawn, a tropical terraced garden, walking paths and places to sit. The grounds display sculpture by Satoru Abe, Charles Arnoldi, Deborah Butterfield, Jedd Garet, George Rickey, Toshiko Takaezu, DeWain Valentine and Arnold Zimmerman, and regularly changing murals on the walls. The Contemporary Museum can even provide picnic baskets for visitors who want to enjoy their lunch in the gardens. They are open to the public during museum hours. A satellite facility is located in downtown Honolulu in the First Hawaiian Center, the corporate headquarters of First Hawaiian Bank. Opened in 1996, the changing program of exhibitions focus on Hawaiian art and are underwritten by First Hawaiian Bank. Visit the museum's website at … http://www.tcmhi.org/ The Contemporary Museum has a growing collection of works in all media spanning 1940 to the present by local, regional, national and international artists. Among artists represented are Vito Acconci, Josef Albers, Robert Arneson, Jennifer Bartlett, Deborah Butterfield, Enrique Chagoya, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Sol Lewitt, Robert Motherwell, Vik Muniz, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Price, Andres Serrano, Kiki Smith, Frank Stella, Masami Teraoka, Mark Tobey, Richard Tuttle, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and Peter Voulkos. Approximately one-third of the works in the collection are by artists of Hawai`i. The remainder largely comprises works by artists from the continental United States, with a growing representation of artists from Europe, Latin America, Japan and Australia. TCM's collection has greatly expanded since its inception to reflect the achievements of both established and emerging artists. The collection comprises more than 3,400 works in the following categories: paintings; sculpture and installations; drawings and watercolors; prints; photographs and video works; assemblage; ceramics; glass; wood; metal; and fiberworks/textiles. The Museum have a particularly strong collection of ceramic including three works by Robert Arneson (amongst them, the monumental 'Temple of Fatal Laffs'), and important examples by Stephen De Staebler, Ken Price, Peter Voulkos, Ron Nagle, Adrian Saxe, Mark Burns, Nancy Carman, Robert Brady, and Daisy Youngblood. TCM has assembled significant holdings by artists who explore the tradition of the vessel in ceramic, wood, fiber, metal and glass. Among the artists represented are Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Beatrice Wood, Lucie Rie, Rudolf Staffel, Jay Musler, Ferne Jacobs, Richard DeVore, June Schwarz, Ron Kent, Diane Itter, and Dale Chihuly. TCM's photography collection focuses on works that are conceptually based or employ alternative processes that challenge traditional notions of photography. Artists represented include William Wegman, Robert Cumming, John Coplans and Lucas Samaras, as well as younger artists such as Catherine Opie, Gregory Crewdson, Christopher Bucklow, Candida Hofer, Bill Jacobson, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, and Liza Ryan. Highlights of TCM's print collection include "Electric Chair", a series of ten screenprints by Andy Warhol; "Savarin", a monotype by Jasper Johns; "Had Gadya", a series of ten mixed-media prints by Frank Stella; and "High Green", a color etching and aquatint by Richard Diebenkorn. Other significant holdings include an untitled oil on canvas by Robert Motherwell; "Marsaxlokk Bay", a large-scale mixed-media metal relief by Frank Stella; "The White Cup", a mixed-media assemblage by Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz; and eighteen works by Dennis Oppenheim. The Contemporary Museum hosts temporary exhibitions in both the Cooke-Spalding house, and downtown at the First Hawaiian Center. The main exhibition at the Cooke-Spalding house is 'Steven & William Ladd: 9769 Radio Drive' (until May 8, 2011). In keeping with The Contemporary Museum's mission of providing emerging artists with significant opportunities to expand and show their work, TCM presents Steven and William Ladd: 9769 Radio Drive, the first solo museum exhibition for these Brooklyn, New York based artists. The Ladd brothers have created a large exhibition specifically for the museum's spaces that provides a significant overview of their art and transforms TCM's galleries. The Ladds' work collaboratively and frequently draws upon their past experiences for inspiration. The current exhibition includes references to their parents, grandparents, and siblings, and 9769 Radio Drive, referenced in the exhibition title, is the address of the home in St. Louis in which they grew up. Their sculptures initially take the form of towers of handmade boxes, which are shown open in the exhibition to reveal dazzlingly elaborate sewn and beaded interiors that could be interpreted as fanciful, mysterious landscapes. Other works incorporate found objects. At the heart of the exhibition is a large installation titled Ant Epidemic, which fills TCM's largest gallery with images of thousands of small black ants. Together, Steven and William Ladd have forged a body of work that exists in a nexus of text, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, craft/design, and fashion. They have combined a range of techniques, forms, materials, and practices, forging something which is uniquely theirs. The First Hawaiian Center Gallery has three temporary exhibitions currently running (all until 15th July 2011). "Recent Photographs by Andrew Binkley and Inka Resch" presents recent works from two photographers capturing the daily lives of people in China and Dubai. Photographer Andrew Binkley layers multiple exposures in Photoshop to create images that capture the connections and paths between people on the streets of China below. Through images of enormous towers and the countless tiny figures building them, Hawai'i-raised artist, Inka Resch, reveals the oppositions, contradictions, and contrasts that characterize Dubai, the city in which she currently lives and works. Also on show at the The First Hawaiian Center Gallery is "Suzanne Wolfe: Cuptopia". As a faculty member at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Suzanne Wolfe's teaching specialty is in low-temperature ceramics media, mold techniques, and ceramics history. Her current work explores the process of developing layered glaze imagery, the transformation of found ceramic objects, and an investigation of the relationship between interior and exterior. In this exhibition, Wolfe will show more than 300 ceramic cups, each conveying a unique narrative through the application and juxtaposition of multiple image transfers. A third exhibition "In the News: Bernice Akamine, Deborah Nemad, Vince Hazen, Mac James, and Pearlyn Salvador" showcases works that are inspired by local, national, and/or international news. The artists take their inspiration from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, using these media to create their works utilizing techniques such as collage and image transfer. The exhibition features both two- and three-dimensional multi-media works. Artists include Bernice Akamine, Vince Hazen, Deborah Nemad, Mac James, and Pearlyn Salvador. Changing exhibits of contemporary art are also shown in the Contemporary Café, where a selection of works by local artist Jill Butterbaugh is currently displayed. This selection of two-dimensional work includes large oil paintings on wood and drawings on paper done in charcoal and conte. "Vintage Girls" explores the distinct look of the 30's, 40' and 50's in larger than life portraits. Other selected works in charcoal and conte include dramatic still life drawings of various subjects from dendrobium orchids to somber looking stuffed animals.

The Wichita Art Museum Celebrates Printmaking from the Lawrence Lithography Workshop Posted: 31 May 2012 07:45 PM PDT Wichita, Kansas.- The Wichita Art Museum is proud to present "The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Suites and Portfolios" on view at the museum through February 12th 2012. For more than 30 years artists have come to work at The Lawrence Lithography Workshop with master printer Mike Sims. This exhibition features more than 70 prints including noted local artists such as Peregrine Honig and Roger Shimomura, along with William T. Wiley of California and the late Luis Jimenez of New Mexico. "Suites and Portfolios" is a collaboration between the Belger Arts Center, TLLW, and the Wichita Art Museum. Stephen Gleissner, Chief Curator of Wichita Art Museum, curated many of the works for the exhibition, which will be supplemented with some artwork from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation collection. A catalog is being produced by the Wichita Art Museum with support from the Belger Cartage Service, Inc.

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park Welcomes Six-Millionth Visitor Posted: 31 May 2012 07:42 PM PDT GRAND RAPIDS, MI.-Just one week after Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park opened its large-scale indoor and outdoor exhibition "Chihuly: A New Eden," the organization to welcomed its six-millionth visitor. Graham and Grace Clark of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario were greeted by Fred Meijer and David Hooker, Meijer Gardens' CEO yesterday at 11 AM.The couple received a one-year membership to Meijer Gardens and two tickets to the special 15th anniversary concert with Lyle Lovett on August 7.Meijer Gardens originally calculated the visitor milestone to occur in late May. Chihuly's 15 site-specific installations across the 132-acre campus have attracted more than 17,000 visitors in the first week alone. The exhibition earned instant popularity and ushered in the six-millionth visitor much sooner than expected.

Bonnefantenmuseum delivers 'Exile on Main St.' ~ Humour, exaggeration & anarchy in American Art Posted: 31 May 2012 07:39 PM PDT Maastricht, NL - February saw the opening of the exhibition Exile on Main St. Though the title comes from the famous double LP by the Rolling Stones, the exhibition concentrates on the work of nine North-American artists who have not yet reached the general public, despite the fact that they have been active for some time already. A continent with such a penchant for mainstream expression in all areas of culture will necessarily be confronted with a counter movement that questions the drive for success and puts it in perspective. On display through 16 August, 2009 at the Bonnefantenmuseum. As Main Street and Wall Street tumble over one another at the present juncture, and Wall Street is forced into a well-nigh marginal position, the 'undercurrent' in society and art begins to carry more weight. One omen was the fact that the Republican election candidates McCain and Palin presented themselves as mavericks. In art, we talk about 'outlaws', 'independents' or 'artist's artists', etc. From a social point of view, we equate this turnaround with crisis, but in art we can catch our breath a little, leave behind the saying 'diamonds are a girl's best friend' and once more attach importance to content and authenticity. Such apparently intangible artists as Richard Artschwager, William Copley, Steve Gianakos, Alfred Jensen, Peter Saul, John Tweddle, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann and Joe Zucker deserve attention because their completely independent and highly individual positions, which undermine all traditional values, are less subject to the terrorisation of superficiality and the market. It is an era in which we can look at things afresh and search for real values. The exhibition resembles a remake of the 'Club des Incomparables' from Raymond Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique, which was once filmed by Federico Fellini as E la nave va. A complete catalogue will accompany the show, with essays by Robert Storr and Alexander van Grevenstein, and reproductions of all the works presented in the show. An extended parallel programme will be developed in the fields of arts, literature, music (the phenomenon of singer songwriter by example) and film; with debate and lectures under numerous activities. A series of nocturnes will further take place on Thursdays in the museum, from March to July. The power of independence Music, film and debate during Exile on Main St. From 5 March to 16 July, the museum is open on Thursday evenings from 20:00 to 22:30. Thanks to a subsidy from the Mondriaan Foundation, the museum is able to provide twenty evening programmes of music, film and debate. The aim is to show the theme of creative individuals who follow their own path outside the commercial mainstream, in topical matters seen from various perspectives: five concert evenings with Live in the Living, five film evenings, five debate evenings and five programmes of initiatives from the vicinity of the museum. To give you an impression: on 5 March, Henk Hofstede and Perry Blake will give a concert, and on 16 April, George Lawson from the Fund for the Performing Arts and Lex ter Braak from the BKVB Fund will come and explain their approach to subsidy criteria and mavericks. You can find the complete programme on www.bonnefanten.nl

MoMA presents "Pictures by Women - A History of Modern Photography" Posted: 31 May 2012 07:37 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y. - The Museum of Modern Art's photography collection is so rich that it can present virtually the entire history of the medium using only images taken by women and in many cases, of women. It's instructive to realize that whatever genre or style in which men worked, even industrial photography, women were doing the same. The show is organized chronologically, beginning with a gallery of 19th and early 20th century photographs that illustrate the two traditions of documentary and pictorial photography. For much of photography's 170-year history, women have expanded its roles by experimenting with every aspect of the medium.Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography  presents a selection of outstanding photographs by women artists, charting the medium's history from the dawn of The show continues with a stunning array of photographs by European artists in the 1920s and 1930s, including Ilse Bing's 1931 "Self-Portrait in Mirrors," which shows her looking straight at the viewer and in profile at the same time, an illusion made possible by using her camera as a third eye. the modern period to the present.

'China Welcomes You' ~ at Kunsthaus Graz Posted: 31 May 2012 07:35 PM PDT Graz, Austria - Everyone is talking about China. Reports on the development of the economy, the political situation, and also about the booming Chinese art market feature almost daily in the media and serve as a kind of attractant for curious Westerners. One major point of interest is the question of the Other, an emerging image of this unknown, massive, new player on the global field.

Krannert Art Museum opens Artists Exhibiting in “Under Control” Posted: 31 May 2012 07:34 PM PDT CHAMPAIGN, ILL.- Unofficially sanctioned corporate malfeasance, pre-emptive wars, torture, misinformation, government-sponsored spying and other routine assaults on civil liberties. None of the above paints a pretty picture of life in the 21st century. And yet, Judith Hoos Fox and Ginger Gregg Duggan, the curators of the exhibition "Under Control," which opens Oct. 23 at the University of Illinois' Krannert Art Museum, believe these activities and practices have inspired and spawned some provocative art-making over the course of the past decade. On View through 3 Januay, 2010.

Christie's Hong Kong Asian 20th Century & Contemporary Art Achieves Milestone Posted: 31 May 2012 07:32 PM PDT HONG KONG.- Christie's concluded its Hong Kong Spring Evening and Day sales of Asian 20th Century and Contemporary Art on 29 May, 2011, totaling HK$761,514,250/ US$97,854,581. The sales were 82% sold by lot and 94% sold by value. Five lots sold in excess of HK$30,000,000 /US$3,855,000 and seventeen lots over HK$10,000,000 /US$1,285,000. Eighteen world auction records were achieved for a broad range of works, including twelve lots by Chinese artists, three by Japanese artists, two by Koreans and one Indian work. These included Japanese artist Zenzaburo Kojima's 'Nude Reclining on Yellow Chair' (HK$2,660,000 / US$341,810) and Chinese artist Pang Jiun's 'A passerby hears a fair maiden's laughter in the garden ring' (HK$2,420,000 / US$310,970). The Evening Sale – the highest ever sale in this category - totaled HK$492,660,000/US$63,306,810 and particularly demonstrated the solid demand for the most exceptional works. The top lot of the Chinese 20th Century art day sale was Zao Wou-ki's '5.6.63', which sold for HK$1,858,000 / US$2,390,000, and the top lot in the Asian Contemporary day sale was Zeng Fanzhi's - 'Andy Warhol', which sold for HK$9,620,000 /US$1,240,000. A special highlight of the Evening Sale was 'The Leopard', a work by renowned Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi that sold for HK$36,000,000 /US$4,630,000, with all commissions waived to benefit The Nature Conservancy. Alongside the Spring sale was a solo exhibition entitled 'Being', which was organized by Christie's and the Rockbund Art Museum, and supported by the François Pinault Foundation. Eric Chang, International Director of Chinese 20th Century and Asian Contemporary Art, said, "The strong results of our sales over two days demonstrate the Asian art market's move towards alignment with the global contemporary and modern art markets. Chinese 20th Art proved to be especially strong, with the day sale recording 98% sold by value and 67% of lots sold over the high estimate. With an overall 64% of the lots sold over the high estimate, a 94% sold by value across the three sales and an average lot value of HK$1,937,695/ US$248,994– our highest ever - we see a growing recognition of quality and a demand for top-tier Asian contemporary and 20th Century works. Looking at the tremendous success of works by 20th Century Japanese and Korean masters that were offered at our Evening Sale for the first time, we are delighted to have achieved another innovative milestone in our continuing journey to build a global platform for Asian art."

Museum Ludwig presents 'Looking for Mushrooms and Counterculture' Posted: 31 May 2012 07:31 PM PDT   Cologne, Germany - Museum Ludwig presents Looking for Mushrooms - Beat Poets, Hippies, Funk and Minimal Art: Art and Counterculture in San Francisco 1955 - 1968, on view through March 1, 2009. Forty years on from 1968, the year that spelt radical change for society, it is time to turn our minds back to the art scene in a city that was regarded in the 1960s and 1970s as the Mecca of experimental culture and lifestyles (beat poets, hippie movement, counterculture).

The Deichtorhallen Shows Works from the Collections of Thomas Olbricht & Harald Falckenberg Posted: 31 May 2012 07:29 PM PDT Hamburg - The Deichtorhallen in Hamburg is proud to present its summer exhibition "Two Collectors: Thomas Olbrecht and Harald Falckenberg", on view in the Halle fur Aktuelle Kunst until August 21st. The exhibition features works from two of the most important private collections of contemporary art in Germany. One main feature of the collection of doctor and chemist Thomas Olbricht (who lives in Essen and Berlin), is a clear proclivity for eclecticism, in which context his programmatic focus lies on memento mori depictions. By contrast, Hamburg-based lawyer Harald Falckenberg is more interested in the grotesque, the political and the provocative.

Chelsea Art Museum Exhibits 'Dangerous Beauty' Posted: 31 May 2012 07:27 PM PDT New York City - In the wake of the controversial ban on underweight models by Madrid's fashion week, and the recent publicized death from anorexia of a Latin American model, the fashion industry and the media went into a short-lived frenzy of self reflection asking, what is too thin?  The proposed ban drew support from only two other countries – Israel and India – while it was flatly rejected by the major fashion capitals of the world: Paris, London and New York.  In a climate where whoever is thinner gets the job, the pressure to be thin is enormous and as these are the women and girls who are relentlessly photographed, they become style role models for a population fascinated with celebrity.  On exhibit until 21 April, 2007.

Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 opens at Martin-Gropius-Bau Posted: 31 May 2012 07:24 PM PDT BERLIN.- The Exhibition "Architects of Revolution" sheds light on an area of the Soviet avant-garde that has remained relatively unknown in Europe and beyond: architecture. Even in Russia and the other successor states of the former Soviet Union the names of most of the architects have been largely forgotten. Their structures have not become part of the collective cultural memory to the extent that the "New Building" movement in the West has. The exhibition presents this impressive chapter in the history of the avant-garde in an unusual way in that it binds together three thematic strands. Selected works of the early avant-garde, such as those of El Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, Liubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko or Vladimir Tatlin, show the artists' intense preoccupation from 1915 onwards with questions of form, space and texture. After the Revolution they were active in the various bodies concerned with the implementation of these ideals, such as the Commission for the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1919-20). It was there that the architects Nikolai Ladovskii, Vladimir Krinsky and the painter Rodchenko created the first designs for town planning and communal housing. In 1919 Tatlin produced his famous design for a "Monument to the Third International" – a complex engineering structure with moving spaces. Although never built, its visionary potential, and dynamic formal language influenced the later architecture of Constructivism. Whereas the impressive pictures and drawings of the Costakis Collection in Thessaloniki make clear what a role was played by architectural themes in the early artistic designs, vintage prints from the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow give an idea of the unleashing of architectural energies which took place a few years later. The historical photographs show that the new structures embodied a new age, not only in a typological sense, but in terms of scale. They towered above the old urban buildings and acted as a torch signalling the coming industrialization and transformation of the country. The photographs of the renowned British architectural photographer, Richard Pare, on the other hand, lead the viewer back to the present. Pare had begun to rediscover this lost avant-garde in 1993. In the course of several trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as to the former Soviet republics, he documented what remained of the buildings. His shots bring out their beauty and the inventiveness of their creators while at the same time tracing the course of their decay. In that sense they draw a picture of a post-Soviet society that is unaware of its extraordinary heritage. What was new about this architecture was not only the formal idiom, but also the tasks it was supposed to perform. With the building of the new society workers' clubs, trade union houses, communal apartments, sanatoria for the workers, state-owned department stores, party and administrative buildings, as well as power stations and industrial plants to modernize the country. The first important structure to be erected after the Revolution was Vladimir Shukhov's Shabolovka Radio Tower, built in the years 1919-22 and consisting of six hyperboloids mounted on top of one another. At 150 metres it was the tallest tower in the world of its kind at the time. Its elegant filigree structure became a symbol of how all that was old and ponderous could be surmounted. Rodchenko's well-known photos of the radio tower – today seen as icons of avant-garde photography – stress the dynamics from above and below. Pare's shots of the tower focus more on details, thus emphasizing the construction techniques of the time. The achievements of Russian engineers like Shukhov, with their novel technical designs, influenced the development of an architecture that used clear, geometrical forms that were in keeping with its functions. In the course of the 1920s there arose two clearly defined tendencies in architecture: Rationalism and Constructivism. In 1923 representatives of the first founded the Association of New Architects (ASNOVA), whose leading light was Ladovskii. Among the Constructivists Alexander Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg played major roles. In 1925 the Constructivist architects of Moscow joined together to form the Society of Contemporary Architects (OSA). There were also other tendencies as well as outstanding individualists, such as Konstantin Melnikov. Despite polemical squabbles among the tendencies a modern style of building had consolidated itself by the end of the 1920s. In the course of the industrialization of the country under the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32) the building of new towns proceeded apace. This gave rise to questions concerning the concept of the city, for which various solutions were proposed, such as the "horizontal skyscrapers" for Moscow or Ladovskii's "parabola" as the basic pattern of urban development. Quite a few of the buildings photographed by Pare were developed for communal living. The Narkomfin (People's Commissariat for Finance) residential block built in Moscow in 1930 by Ginzburg and Ignati Milinis was one of the most experimental projects of that era. In addition to two floors of apartments it contained a communal canteen, a crèche, a gymnasium and a scullery. Other types of construction designed to promote the collectivist way of life were canteen kitchens, three of which were built in what was then Leningrad by a group associated with Iosif Meerzon and representing Rationalism. Workers' clubs and palaces of culture offered numerous educational opportunities, symbolizing with their dynamic forms the role of the new class in the urban environment. When in the mid-1930s the political climate in the Soviet Union underwent a fundamental change, and a monumental style of architecture based on Classical models found favour with the powers that be, this exciting chapter of avant-gardism came to an end and sank into oblivion.

Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 31 May 2012 07:23 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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