Art Knowledge News - Keeping You in Touch with the World of Art... |
- Marlborough Fine Art presents New Paintings and Graphics by Paula Rego
- The Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem to Show 3 Exhibitions of Polish Art
- The Cincinnati Art Museum showcases Henry Ossawa Tanner in Major Retrospective
- The Guggenheim Museum to feature "Art of Another Kind ~ International Abstraction & the Guggenheim, 1949-1960"
- Trinity House Paintings to show "Portrait of an Age: John Singer Sargent and Paul César Helleu"
- MoMA Presents "Exquisite Corpses ~ Drawing and Disfiguration"
- The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens to Host Two New Exhibitions
- The Smithsonian Museum of American Art Shows New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image
- Gibbes Museum to exhibit Landscape of Slavery
- The Museum Tinguely shows Robert Rauschenberg's Sculptural Oeuvre of the Late Eighties
- Zhong Gallery for Contemporary Chinese Art opens in Berlin
- First Atlas Printed in Colors at the Miami International Map Fair
- The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to show a Retrospective of William Kurelek
- Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Shows Exhibition by Danish Designer Verner Panton
- Catto Gallery debuts New Work by Seven Shanghai Artists
- The Corrigan Gallery Presents ~ "Celebration" ~ Works by Richard Hagerty
- Arab Museum Approves Nudity
- GERMAINE RICHIER: SCULPTURES AND DRAWINGS AT THE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION
- Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review"
| Marlborough Fine Art presents New Paintings and Graphics by Paula Rego Posted: 02 Jun 2012 10:11 PM PDT  London.- The Directors of Marlborough Fine Art are delighted to announce their exhibition of new paintings and graphics by Paula Rego. This exhibition coincides with the publication of the revised and updated Catalogue Raisonné by Tom Rosenthal of Thames & Hudson. One of Honoré de Balzac's most celebrated tales, The Unknown Masterpiece is the story of a painter who, depending on one's perspective, is either an abject failure or a transcendental genius - or both. The story has served as an inspiration to artists as various as Paul Cézanne, Henry James, Pablo Picasso, and Paula Rego. "Paula Rego: Balzac and Other Stories" will remain on view at the gallery through June 30th. The sumptuously produced Catalogue Raisonné discusses and illustrates all Rego's prints, including unpublished work. The second edition includes chapters on five new series produced since 2003 – Moon Eggs, Prince Pig, Wine, Curved Planks and Female Genital Mutilation; on the influence of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's work on Rego; and an updated section of Works Out of Series. Many of Rego's prints are based on themes, as she says that one image triggers the idea for the next. Among these are Rego's Nursery Rhymes, which reveal a darkly humorous take on the difficulties of childhood, and provide a rich seam for her precocious girls and individually characterized animals. Her work is known for revealing complex stories about the sinister side of sexuality and family relations, and Rego's feminism underlies everything she does: the six works in the Female Genital Mutilation series are some of the most powerful images that she has ever produced.  A powerful original female voice, Paula Rego is now one of Europe's most sought after artists. A painter of 'stories', her characters enact a variety of roles and depict disquieting tensions below the surface. Her most recent work, large pastel paintings and sharply drawn etchings, express an extraordinary range of emotions and experiences. Paula Rego's painting 'War' and selected prints were on view at the "Only Make-Believe" exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire from 25 March - 5 June 2005. Paula's series of large scale drawings, entitled Human Cargo, were shown at the Marlbrough Chelsea Gallery, New York, April - May 2008. The catalogue introduction includes an interesting insight into Paula's work by the curator Marco Livingstone: First Principles. A recent publication by John McEwen entitled Behind the Scenes offers an interesting new approach to Paula's work through the studio and the models instillations that she uses. Works by Paula are included in the Corner Group Exhibition at the Sophienholm, Lyngby near Copenhagen, 8 January - 8 March 2009. Her Little Red Riding Hood Suite 2003 will be included in an exhibition at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston from 13 June - 6 September 2009. Other forthcoming exhibitions are The Artist's Studio at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 26 September - 13 December 2009, curated by Giles Waterfield and Decadence, the Rake's Progress at the Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden, 23rd October 2009 until February 2010, to include the Hogarth Triptych Marriage a la Mode from the Tate Britain's collection and other related works, her After Hogarth etchings and O Vinho series of lithographs. Marlborough Fine Art was founded in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer who emigrated to England from Vienna, where Lloyd's family had been antique dealers for three generations and Fischer had dealt in antiquarian books. They first met in 1940, as soldiers in the British army. In 1948 they were joined by a third partner, David Somerset, now the Duke of Beaufort, and chairman of Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd. After the wartime years of recession, London became the principal market for modern art and Marlborough's role in this changing art world was established. It set standards for exhibitions that were worthy of a modern museum. These were reviewed like museum shows, and the gallery became a focus for collectors, museum directors and connoisseurs as well as history of art students. In 1952 Marlborough was already selling masterpieces of late 19th century including bronzes by Edgar Degas and paintings by Mary Cassatt, Paul Signac, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir amongst others and drawings by Constantine Guys and Vincent van Gogh.  In the late 1950's and early 1960's Marlborough put on a string of prime exhibitions related to expressionism and the modern German tradition: Art in Revolt, Germany 1905-1925; Kandinsky, the Road to Abstraction and The Painters of the Bauhaus. These were followed by a major Kurt Schwitters show in 1963. In 1960 an exhibition of new paintings by Francis Bacon proved sensational. In 1961 Henry Moore's important exhibition of stone and wood carvings was applauded by clients and the press. The same year saw an exhibition of Jackson Pollock's paintings which included a very rare and early Self Portrait dating from 1933. In 1964 an extraordinary exhibition of paintings, watercolours and drawings by Egon Schiele were shown in London for the first time. In the 1960's Frank Lloyd moved to New York and in 1972 his son Gilbert Lloyd, who joined the gallery ten years earlier, assumed control of Marlborough Fine Art in London. At the same time Pierre Levai, Frank Lloyd's nephew, took over the running of Marlborough in New York. During the 1970's and 80's, Marlborough staged some of London's most remarkable exhibitions by such artists as: Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lynn Chadwick, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, R.B.Kitaj, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Victor Pasmore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland. Important exhibitions were held of work by Jacques Lipchitz and René Magritte in 1973; Max Beckmann and Max Bill in 1974; Henri Matisse in 1978 and the innovative Schwitters in Exile show of 1981 which reshaped opinion of the late work of this artist. During the 1980's and 90's exhibitions of work by Stephen Conroy, John Davies, Bill Jacklin, Ken Kiff, and Paula Rego were held. In 1994-95 R.B. Kitaj had a major Retrospective at the Tate Gallery, London travelling to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. In 2001 the Royal Academy London showed a Retrospective of Frank Auerbach. The same year Paula Rego showed at Abbot Hall Art Gallery & Museum in Kendal which travelled to the Yale Center for British Art. In 2003 a Stephen Conroy Retrospective was shown at the Schloss Gottorf Museum in Schleswig-Holstein. John Davies's major Retrospective at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao closed in 2005 and travelled to the Valencia Institute of Modern Art also in 2005. The Marlborough stable of international artists continues to exhibit worldwide. In 2005 London held an exhibition of prints by the 90 year old Louise Bourgeois who currently lives and works in New York. This was followed by the British artist Bill Jacklin, who also lives and works in New York, showing his New York Skaters. Lucian Freud's Etchings was followed by the American artist Dale Chihuly's installation of glass flowers and shells, which were subsequently shown at Marlborough Monaco. In 2006 Marlborough London held exhibitions by the abstract painter Therese Oulton, followed by Claudia Bravo's paintings which were also shown in Madrid and Monaco. The Italian artist Daniela Gullotta showed her large paintings of Forgotten Spaces and R. B. Kitaj's exhibition Little Pictures was shown at the end of the year. A Memorial to R. B. Kitaj, who tragically died in October 2007, was shown at the Marlborough Gallery, New York in April 2008. During the 1990's, Marlborough took another new step in becoming one of the first galleries in the Western world to exhibit contemporary art from China. In 1953 Marlborough had already staged a small exhibition of two Chinese painters in London and during the 1960's Marlborough exhibited the abstract paintings of the Chinese artist Lin Sho-Yu (who worked in London under the name of Richard Lin). The gallery's relationship with Chinese art took on a different dimension with the exhibition, New Art from China: Post 1979, which took place at the London gallery, from December 1994 to January 1995. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.marlboroughfineart.com  |
| The Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem to Show 3 Exhibitions of Polish Art Posted: 02 Jun 2012 09:20 PM PDT  "Forward! Polish social realism 1945-1955" (through September 3rd) shows the development of art in Poland in the post-war years. Communist leaders in Poland disapproved of twentieth-century avant-garde art movements like cubism, surrealism, and abstraction. From 1949, every work of art had to be 'national in its form and content.' Polish artists were required to express themselves in a realistic style and present ideologically sanctioned themes such as labourers and farmers at work, the reconstruction of the country, portraits of Joseph Stalin or still-lifes. Warsaw's National Museum has lent the MMKA for the exhibition the most significant paintings from its social realist collection. Complemented with a few key pieces from other Polish museums, this exhibition provides a look at the aesthetic norm imposed by the government from 1945-55, a view which has not been seen before outside of Poland.  The artists featured in Forward! include: Xawery Dunikowski, Eugeniusz Eibisch, Wojciech Fangor, Stanislaw Horno-Poplawski, Tadeusz Kantor, Aleksander Kobzdej, Helena Krajewska, Juliusz Krajewski, Alfred Lenica, Bronislaw Wojciech Linke, Zygmunt Radnicki, Kazimierz Sramkiewicz, Henryk Stazewski, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Juliusz Studnicki, Wojciech Stanislaw Weiss, Romuald Kamil Witkowski, Marek Wlodarski, Józefa Wnukowa, and Jan Wodynski. Also on view will be "We want to be modern. Polish design 1955-1968" (May 27th through September 3rd), the first Dutch exhibition of Polish design from the 1950s and '60s. For the West, this is a little-known period in Polish (design) history. More than 200 objects will be on display, including furniture, ceramics, and textiles. The exhibition investigates the importance of objects from daily life and how they gave shape to Polish identity. This was a rich period for Polish design, with colours, shapes and materials influenced by abstract art, organic forms, and Western designers like Alvar Aalto and Charles and Ray Eames. The objects are on loan from collections of the National Museum in Warsaw. "Transgression. Katarzyna Kozyra" (June 3rd through October 7th) will feature the multimedia installations, videos and performances of Katarzyna Kozyra (1963) which always elicit strong reactions in Poland.  The Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (The Arnhem Museum of Modern Art) is located at the site of a former gentlemen's club, created for the sugar planters who were repatriated from India. The club closed in 1920 and the building became the Gemeentemuseum. Over time much has changed in the building, a new wing, built by Eschauzier, was completed in 1956 and a more recent extension was added, designed by Hubert January Henket. This created a space for shops, cafes and museum entrance with an optimal view of the sculpture and the Rhine river. The museum has three special exhibition spaces, the Dome Room, the former ballroom of the club, the Rhine Hall, in the Eschauzier wing, and the Garden Room. The basis of the museum's collection is the legacy of Alexander Verhuell. In 1897 he bequeathed almost his entire estate, including his collection of paintings, drawings, prints and crafts, to the city of Arnhem. From this beginning, the collection has expanded and by the 1990's had become so large that it had to be split, the archeology, history, topographical works and crafts moving to the Historical Museum, housed in a magnificent 18th-century merchant's house in the Arnhem area in 1996. Highlights of the museum's collection include works of the magical realists, Pyke Koch's "Street Women", a jewelry collection that includes unique pieces by Gijs Bakker and Emmy van Leersum and a fascinating sculpture garden with a magnificent view over the Rhine. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mmkarnhem.nl  |
| The Cincinnati Art Museum showcases Henry Ossawa Tanner in Major Retrospective Posted: 02 Jun 2012 08:13 PM PDT  Cincinnati, Ohio.- The Cincinnati Art Museum is proud to present "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit", on view at the museum through September 9th. "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit" will contain over 100 works, including 12 paintings that have never been shown in a Tanner retrospective and the only two known sculptures that Tanner completed. The exhibition also includes Tanner's famed Resurrection of Lazarus, from the collection of the Musée d'Orsay, a career-making canvas that earned Tanner his first international praise when it was exhibited in 1897 and which has never before crossed the Atlantic. Showcasing Tanner's paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, watercolors, and drawings, "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit" was organized by, and first shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where the artist studied from 1879 to 1885, and touring to the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. "Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit" delves into the life and career of Henry O. Tanner from his upbringing in Philadelphia in the years after the Civil War; through the artist's training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; his success as an American artist at the highest levels of the international art world at the turn of the 20th century; his role as an elected leader of an artist's colony in rural France; his unique contributions in aid of servicemen during World War I through the Red Cross in France; his modernist invigoration of religious painting deeply rooted in his own faith; and Tanner's depiction of the Holy Land and North Africa. The exhibition also presents the first scientific and technical analysis of his artistic materials and methods. The most substantial scholarly catalogue to date on Tanner's life and work accompanies the exhibition. This book includes 14 essays written by established and emerging scholars from the United States and France, and is published by University of California Press. Additionally, the first-ever children's book about Henry O. Tanner has been published by PAFA and Bunker Hill Press. Written and illustrated by the renowned artist-author Faith Ringgold, this publication will inspire generations of young people through the extraordinary accomplishments of Tanner.  Located in scenic Eden Park, the Cincinnati Art Museum features an unparalleled art collection of more than 60,000 works spanning 6,000 years. In addition to displaying its own broad collection, the Art Museum also hosts several national and international traveling exhibitions each year. The art museum has paintings by several European Masters, including: Master of San Baudelio, Jorge Ingles, Sandro Botticelli ("Judith with Head of Holofernes"), Matteo di Giovanni, Mattia Preti, Strozzi, Frans Hals, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ("St. Thomas of Villanueva"), Peter Paul Rubens ("Samson and Delilah") and Aert Vander Neer. The collection also includes works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet ("Rocks At Belle Isle") and Pablo Picasso. The museum also has a large collection of paintings by American painter Frank Duveneck ("Elizabeth B. Duveneck"). In the late nineteenth century, public art museums were still very much a new phenomenon, especially as far west as Cincinnati. Following the success of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia, the Women's Art Museum Association was organized in Cincinnati with the intent of bringing such an institution to the region for the benefit of all citizens. Enthusiasm for these goals grew steadily and by 1881 the Cincinnati Museum Association was incorporated. Just five years later, in May 1886, a permanent art museum building was completed in Eden Park and was heralded worldwide as "The Art Palace of the West." The Cincinnati Art Museum enjoyed the support of the community from the beginning. Generous donations from a number of prominent Cincinnatians grew the collection to number in the tens of thousands of objects, which soon necessitated the addition of the first of several Art Museum expansions. In 1907 the Schmidlapp Wing opened, which was followed by a series of building projects. The addition of the Emery, Hanna and French wings in the 1930s enclosed the courtyard and gave the Art Museum its current rectangular shape and provided the space in which our American, European and Asian collections are currently shown.  Renovations during the late 1940s and early 1950s divided the Great Hall into two floors and the present main entrance to the Art Museum was established. The 1965 completion of the Adams-Emery wing increased our facility resources yet further, adding space for the permanent collection, lecture halls and temporary exhibition galleries. In 1993, a $13 million project restored the grandeur of the Art Museum's interior architecture and uncovered long-hidden architectural details. This project included the renovation of one of the Art Museum's signature spaces, the Great Hall. In addition, new gallery space was created and lighting and climate control were improved. The Art Museum's temporary exhibition space was expanded to approximately 10,000 square feet to accommodate major temporary exhibitions. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Art Museum's collection numbered over 60,000 objects and, today, is the largest in the state of Ohio. In 2003, the Cincinnati Art Museum deepened its ties with the Greater Cincinnati community by opening the popular and expansive Cincinnati Wing, the first permanent display of a city's art history in the nation. In addition, on May 17, 2003, the Art Museum eliminated its general admission fee forever, made possible by The Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation. In 2006, the Art Museum marked its 125th anniversary with 125 days of programs and events for the community to celebrate. In addition, a Facilities Master Plan, approved by the Board of Trustees in February 2006, provided a plan for growth that will serve the Art Museum for the next two decades. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org  |
| Posted: 02 Jun 2012 07:36 PM PDT  New York City.- From June 8th through September 12th, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present "Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960". Comprising approximately 100 works by nearly 70 artists, the exhibition explores international trends in abstraction in the decade before the Guggenheim's iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building opened in October 1959, when vanguard artists working in the United States and Europe pioneered such influential art forms as Abstract Expressionism, Cobra, and Art Informel. In the 1950s, many countries ended their postwar isolationism and entered a phase of cultural openness and internationalism. The prominent French art critic Michel Tapié declared the existence of un art autre (art of another kind), a term embracing a mosaic of styles, but essentially signifying an avant-garde art that rejected a connection with any tradition or past idiom. With works by Karel Appel, Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Burri, Eduardo Chillida, Lucio Fontana, Grace Hartigan, Asger Jorn, Yves Klein, Willem de Kooning, Georges Mathieu, Isamu Noguchi, Kenzo Okada, Jackson Pollock, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Takeo Yamaguchi, and Zao Wou-Ki, among others, the exhibition considers the artistic developments of the post-World War II period and draws greater attention to lesser-known artists in the museum's collection alongside those long since canonized. Abstract Expressionism encompasses a diverse range of postwar American painting that challenged the tradition of vertical easel painting. Beginning in the late 1940s, Pollock placed his canvases on the floor to pour, drip, and splatter paint onto them. This gestural act, with variations practiced by William Baziotes, De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, and others, was termed "Action painting" by American critic Harold Rosenberg, who considered it a product of the artist's unconscious outpouring or the enactment of some personal drama. The New York school, as these artists were called due to the city's postwar transformation into an international nexus for vanguard art, expanded in the 1950s with the unique contributions of such painters as James Brooks and Hartigan, as well as energetic collagist-assemblers Conrad Marca-Relli and Robert Rauschenberg. Other painters eliminated the gestural stroke altogether. Mark Rothko used large planes of color, often to express universal human emotions and inspire a sense of awe for a secular world. Welder-sculptors such as Herbert Ferber and Theodore Roszak are also counted among the decade's pioneering artists.  The postwar European avant-garde in many ways paralleled the expressive tendencies and untraditional methods of their transatlantic counterparts, though their cultural contexts differed. For artists in Spain, abstract art signified political liberation. Dissenting Italian artists correspondingly turned to abstraction against the renewed popularity of politicized realism. French artist Jean Dubuffet's spontaneous approach, Art Brut (Raw art), retained figurative elements but radically opposed official culture, instead favoring the spontaneous and direct works of untrained individuals. His work influenced the Cobra group (1948-51), which was founded by Appel, Jorn, and other artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. The Cobra artists preferred thickly painted surfaces that married realism to lively color and expressive line in a new form of primitivism. Eventually taking root in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain, Art Informel refers to the antigeometric, antinaturalistic, and nonfigurative formal preoccupations of many European avant-garde artists, and their pursuit of spontaneity, looseness of form, and the irrational. Art Informel is alternatively known by several French terms: Abstraction lyrique (Lyrical Abstraction), Art autre (Art of another kind), matiérisme (matter art), and Tachisme (from tache, meaning blot or stain). The movement includes the work of Burri and Tàpies, who employed unorthodox materials like burlap or sand and focused on the transformative qualities of matter. Asian émigré artists Kumi Sugaï and Zao were likewise central to the postwar École de Paris (School of Paris) and melded their native traditions with modern painting styles. By the end of the 1950s, artists such as Lucio Fontana, Klein, and Piero Manzoni were exploring scientific, objective, and interactive approaches, and introduced pure monochrome surfaces. Other abstractionists engaged viewers' senses and explored dematerialization, focusing on optical transformations as opposed to the art object itself, and investigating the effects of motion, light, and color.  An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums. Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by artists and critics, performances and film screenings, classes for teens and adults, and daily tours of the galleries led by experienced docents. Founded on a collection of early modern masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum today is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20th century and beyond. The metamorphosis from private collection to public museum is an extraordinary transition. For the Guggenheim, this occurred in 1937, when Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation empowered to operate a museum that would publicly exhibit and preserve his holdings of nonobjective art. Today the Guggenheim is a museum in multiple locations with access to shared collections, common constituencies, and joint programming. Nevertheless, it is the permanent collection that constitutes the very core of the institution, no matter how far-reaching the foundation's activities may be. The story of the Guggenheim Museum is essentially the story of several very different private collections. Central among these are Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective painting premised on a belief in the spiritual dimensions of pure abstraction; his niece Peggy Guggenheim's collection of abstract and Surrealist painting and sculpture; Justin K. Thannhauser's array of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern masterpieces; and Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo's vast holdings of European and American Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, Environmental, and Conceptual art. These collections have been augmented over the last two decades by major gifts from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and The Bohen Foundation, as well as by the ongoing series of contemporary art commissions made possible by the Guggenheim's unique partnership with Deutsche Bank for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, and through the distinct but complimentary acquisitions program of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Together with numerous other important purchases and gifts secured by the Guggenheim's directors and curators over the years, these acquisitions have contributed to the formation of a richly layered, international collection dating from the late 19th-century to the present. Unlike most institutions dedicated to the visual arts, the Guggenheim does not divide itself into departments devoted to specific mediums or eras. Rather, the collection is conceived as an integrated whole that may be continuously enhanced in response to emerging talent as well as a mandate to fill in critical historical gaps. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.guggenheim.org  |
| Trinity House Paintings to show "Portrait of an Age: John Singer Sargent and Paul César Helleu" Posted: 02 Jun 2012 07:09 PM PDT  London.- Trinity House Paintings will present an exhibition of pictures by master portrait artists John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) and Paul César Helleu (1859-1927) at their gallery in Broadway, UK, from June 8th through 15th. The show will then travel to their Mayfair gallery at 50 Maddox Street, London W1 from 18 - 22 June, and latterly will be on their stand at the Masterpiece London fair , 28 June – 4 July. The exhibition provides an excellent opportunity to view the work of these two artists and great friends alongside each other. Sargent was the most celebrated portrait painter of the Edwardian age. In 1885, Sargent caused a scandal when he painted Madame X, a sensual portrait of Mme Gautreau, a noted society beauty. He fled Paris and over the next five years he used his new found freedom and flamboyant social network to his advantage. This period of development coincided with his time spent in Broadway, a quiet Cotswold village that had been 'discovered' and 'colonised' by various artists as well as wealthy artistic Americans. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887, with the Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. This large piece painted on site of two young girls lighting lanterns in an English garden was produced during his time in Broadway, on the same High Street as Trinity House's flagship gallery.  |
| MoMA Presents "Exquisite Corpses ~ Drawing and Disfiguration" Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:42 PM PDT  New York City.- The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is proud to present "Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration" on view at the museum through July 9th. In a collaborative, chance-based drawing game known as the exquisite corpse, Surrealist artists subjected the human body to distortions and juxtapositions that resulted in fantastic composite figures. This exhibition considers how this and related operations – in which the body is dismembered or reassembled, swollen or multiplied, propped with prosthetics or fused with nature and the machine – recur throughout the twentieth century and to the present. Artists from André Masson and Joan Miró, to Louise Bourgeois and Robert Gober, to Mark Manders and Nicola Tyson, and Picasso distort and disorient our most familiar of referents, playing out personal, cultural, or social anxieties and desires on unwitting anatomies. If art history reveals an unending impulse to render the human figure, as a symbol of potential perfection and a system of primary organization, these works show that artists have just as persistently been driven to disfiguration. The exhibition is organized by Samantha Friedman, Curatorial Assistant, with Jodi Hauptman, Curator, Department of Drawings, The Museum of Modern Art.  The Museum of Modern Art (stylized MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been singularly important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview in modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media. MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. When The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929, its founding Director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., intended the Museum to be dedicated to helping people understand and enjoy the visual arts of our time, and that it might provide New York with "the greatest museum of modern art in the world." The public's response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and over the course of the next ten years, the Museum moved three times into progressively larger temporary quarters, and in 1939 finally opened the doors of the building it still occupies in midtown Manhattan. 1951 the Grace Rainey Rogers Annex, designed by Philip Johnson (winner of the inaugural Pritzker Prize for architecture) opened beside the original building and MoMA later expanded into neighbouring buildings that it acquired. In 1984, a major renovation designed by famous Argentinian archiect Cesar Pelli doubled the Museum's gallery space, enhanced visitor facilities and added a residential tower above the museum. On May 21, 2002 the museum closed for extensive rebuilding works, the largest and most ambitious building project in its history. This project nearly doubled the space for MoMA's exhibitions and programs. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the new MoMA features 640,000 square feet of new and redesigned space and opened to the public on November 20, 2004. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building on the western portion of the site houses the main exhibition galleries, and The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Building, containing classrooms, auditoriums, teacher training workshops, and the Museum's expanded Library and Archives subsequently in November 2006. These two buildings frame the enlarged Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.  The rich and varied collection of The Museum of Modern Art constitutes one of the most comprehensive and panoramic views into modern art in the world. From an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing, The Museum of Modern Art's collection has grown to include over 150,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects. MoMA also owns approximately 22,000 films and four million film stills, and MoMA's Library and Archives, the premier research facilities of their kind in the world, hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, and extensive individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The collection houses a number of important and familiar works including; "The Dance I", "The Plum Blossoms" and "View of Notre-Dame" by Henri Matisse, "The City Rises" by Umberto Boccioni, "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali, "Broadway Boogie Woogie" by Piet Mondrian, "Paintin" by Francis Bacon, "Starry Night" and "The Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background" by Vincent van Gogh, "The Sleeping Gypsy" and "The Dram" by Henri Rousseau, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by Pablo Picasso, "Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, "Te aa no areois" (The Seed of the Areoi) by Paul Gauguin, the "Water Lilies" triptych by Claude Monet, "The Bather" by Paul Cézanne, "Vir Heroicus Sublimis" and "Broken Obelisk" by Barnett Newman "Flag" by Jasper Johns, "Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale" by Max Ernst and "Suprematist Composition: White on White" by Kazimir Malevich. It also holds works by a wide range of influential European and American artists including Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Helen Frankenthaler, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Dorothea Lange, Fernand Léger, Roy Lichtenstein, Morris Louis, René Magritte, Aristide Maillol, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Kenneth Noland, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Auguste Rodin, Mark Rothko, Stanley Spencer, David Smith, Frank Stella, and hundreds of others. MoMA developed a world-renowned art photography collection, first under Edward Steichen and then John Szarkowski, which included photos by Todd Webb, as well as an important film collection under The Museum of Modern Art Department of Film and Video. The film collection owns prints of many familiar feature-length movies, including Citizen Kane and Vertigo, but the department's holdings also contain many less-traditional pieces, including Andy Warhol's "eight-hour Empire" and Chris Cunningham's music video for Björk's "All Is Full of Love". MoMA also has an important design collection, which includes works from such legendary designers as Paul László, the Eameses, Isamu Noguchi, and George Nelson. The design collection also contains many industrial and manufactured pieces, ranging from a self-aligning ball bearing to an entire Bell 47D1 helicopter. Visit the museum's website at ... www.moma.org/  |
| The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens to Host Two New Exhibitions Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:41 PM PDT  Delray Beach, Florida.- Two exhibitions recently opened at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, "Zenmi - A Taste of Zen: Paintings, Calligraphy, and Ceramics from the Rival Lee Asbell Collection" and "Small Wonders: Japanese Snuff Bottles from the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art" are both on view until January 22nd 2012. Zen is a form of Buddhism known for its reliance on personal introspection as a means of achieving enlightenment. Zen has always been iconoclastic as well; whereas even the Buddha can be the object of irreverence. The exhibition features over 80 works of art including paintings and calligraphy mounted as hanging scrolls, inscribed ceramics used in the tea ceremony, and other objects associated with the practice of Zen. All works are examples of the genre of Japanese art called zenga, which is believed to have originated in the 17th century as spiritual exercises, aids to meditation, and visual sermons showing the path to Zen enlightenment. The artists are venerated Zen teachers who took up the brush late in life to create unique works of religious art noted for their drama, boldness, seeming impulsiveness and immediacy of expression. This exhibit features paintings, calligraphy, and ceramics by Zen masters of the 17th to the 20th centuries from the collection of Riva Lee Asbell.  |
| The Smithsonian Museum of American Art Shows New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:40 PM PDT  Washington, D.C.- The Smithsonian American Art Museum opened a new gallery dedicated to examining the history and the latest developments in the art of the moving image. This permanent-collection gallery, located on the museum's third floor, allows for the presentation of the full range of media art practices. "Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image", the current exhibition in the gallery features key artworks from the history of video art and a new generation of artists on the cutting edge of media arts.  |
| Gibbes Museum to exhibit Landscape of Slavery Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:39 PM PDT
Charleston, SC – The Gibbes Museum of Art has organized a groundbreaking exhibition entitled Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art to offer a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of plantation images in the American South. Traveling exhibition organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art presents plantation-related images of the American South from the eighteenth century to the present.  |
| The Museum Tinguely shows Robert Rauschenberg's Sculptural Oeuvre of the Late Eighties Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:38 PM PDT
For nearly a decade, Rauschenberg frequented the Gulf Iron and Metal Junkyard outside Fort Myers, Florida, near his home, gathering metal parts from traffic signs, exhaust pipes, radiator grills, metal awnings, and so on, which he incorporated into these poetic, humorous assemblages, where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The Museum Tinguely, having for some time envisaged organizing a Rauschenberg exhibition, was thrilled to receive an invitation from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, to take over their exhibition "Robert Rauschenberg : Gluts" in autumn 2009. The decision to put on the show was met with enthusiasm, all the more so as it introduces the tenure of its new Director. The Museum is fortunate in having this possibility of showing Rauschenberg's significant sculptural oeuvre of the late Eighties in Basel. Both the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the city of Venice figure importantly in Rauschenberg's career; one could speak of a special relationship with each. As early as 1961, works by Rauschenberg were included in two exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 1963, Lawrence Alloway, then curator of the Guggenheim Museum, organized the exhibition Six Painters and the Object, which included six works by Rauschenberg. In 1992 the Guggenheim Museum SoHo presented "Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s," curated by Walter Hopps for the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas. In 1997–99 the Guggenheim Museum, led by Thomas Krens, organized what is surely the most important retrospective of Rauschenberg's career, "Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective," in three venues in New York. The retrospective was curated by Hopps and by Susan Davidson (co-curator of this exhibition), and travelled to Houston, Cologne, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. The catalogue for "Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective" has assumed the status of a canonical text. On that occasion, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao jointly acquired Rauschenberg's monumental early work Barge (1962¬–63), the largest of his silkscreened paintings.
 In 1964 Rauschenberg was awarded the Grand Prix for Painting at the 32nd Venice Biennale—an event that established his reputation internationally. It also brought into sharp focus the rivalry between New York and Paris for leadership in the visual arts. By winning the Grand Prix at the age of 38, Rauschenberg interrupted the post-war sequence of prizes awarded to elderly European masters of the pre-war. Alan Solomon, the US Pavilion commissioner, brought to Venice iconic Combines, such as "Factum I" and "Factum II" (both 1957), "Bed" (1958), "Canyon" (1959), "Winter Pool" (1959), and "Third Time Painting" (1961). In 1975 Rauschenberg returned to Venice for a month-long show in Cà Pesaro, the city's modern art museum, including the "Cardboards" (1971), "Early Egyptians" (1973–74), "Hoarfrosts" (1974–75), and "Jammers" (1975–76). In 1996 he was invited to exhibit three bodies of work on the Island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, including a collaboration with Darryl Pottorf (Quattro Mani, 1996). "Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts," thirteen years on, is therefore the artist's fourth show in this city, and the first posthumous homage. Of the Gluts series, Susan Davidson, Senior Curator for Collections & Exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum New York, relates that Rauschenberg's artistic attention in the 1980s turned toward an exploration of the visual properties of metal. Whether assembling found metal objects or experimenting with his own photographic images screen-printed onto aluminum, stainless steel, bronze, brass, or copper, Rauschenberg sought to capture the reflective, textural, sculptural, and thematic possibilities of the material. Rauschenberg's first body of work in this new material was the Gluts. The series was inspired by a visit to Houston on the occasion of "Robert Rauschenberg, Work from Four Series: A Sesquicentennial Exhibition" at the Contemporary Arts Museum. In the mid 1980s, the Texas economy was in the throes of a recession due to a glut (or surplus of supply) in the oil market. Rauschenberg took note of the economic devastation of the region as he collected gas-station signs and deteriorated automotive and industrial parts littering the landscape. Upon his return to his Captiva, Florida, studio, he transformed the scrap-metal detritus into wall reliefs and freestanding sculptures that recalled his earlier Combines. Asked to comment on the meaning of the Gluts, Rauschenberg offered: "It's a time of glut. Greed is rampant. I'm just exposing it, trying to wake people up. I simply want to present people with their ruins […] I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia. What they are really meant to do is give people an experience of looking at everything in terms of what its many possibilities might be." Rauschenberg chose these objects not only for their everydayness but also for their formal properties. Individually and collectively, materials such as these are the very foundation of his artistic vocabulary. His empathy for such detritus was visceral. "Well, I have sympathy for abandoned objects, so I always try to rescue them as much as I can." Visit The Museum Tinguely at : http://www.tinguely.ch/index.  |
| Zhong Gallery for Contemporary Chinese Art opens in Berlin Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:37 PM PDT  BERLIN.- The Zhong Gallery in Berlin will open its doors on January 21 as Europe's first gallery for contemporary art founded by Chinese gallerists, presenting perspectives on Chinese art which have received little attention from the European art scene so far. The opening exhibition "Dawn – New Art from China" will be showing work by the artists Chen Yujun, Li Jikai, Li Qing, Wang Guangle, Wang Yabin, Wu Di, Yuan Yuan, Zhong Zhang and UNMASK. Over the course of the last decade, Chinese art has succeeded in establishing itself on the international art market, however its real market value is not to be measured purely in terms of the activities of largely foreign art dealers. In order to really ascertain its worth, what is required is contextualization, critical engagement and an understanding for the complex and often conflict-laden relationship between Chinese and western culture.  |
| First Atlas Printed in Colors at the Miami International Map Fair Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:36 PM PDT  LONDON.- Daniel Crouch Rare Books, leading specialist in rare maps and atlases, will be exhibiting two fine and rare cartographic works at the Miami International Map Fair; by Ptolemy, and Jesuit monk Ferdinand Verbiest. Verbiest, (known as Nan Huairen in Chinese) was a Flemish Jesuit missionary in China, who became a close friend and aid to the Kangxi Emperor. Verbiest was highly skilled in astronomy, mathematics, and geometry, and successfully introduced European astronomy to China. Daniel Crouch will be exhibiting his 'Wall Map of the Western Hemisphere' (1674) ($130,000) – one of the largest maps of the western hemisphere ever printed. It combines Chinese and European cartographic knowledge of the globe at that time. Panels of Chinese characters offer geographical information and even non-Chinese place-names are written in Chinese characters, either as phonetic conversions or by translating the meaning of the name.  |
| The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to show a Retrospective of William Kurelek Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:35 PM PDT  Victoria, British Columbia.- The Art Gallery of Greater Victora (AGGV) is proud to present "William Kurelek: The Messenger", on view at the gallery from May 25th through September 3rd 2012. Throughout a career that spanned from mid-1950s until his death, William Kurelek (1927-1977) and his art have meant many different things to many people. The Alberta-born, Manitoba-raised artist was a painter of innocence and fun, his scenes reminiscences of a simpler and timeless past.He was also a chronicler of the experiences of various cultural groups in Canada, devoting entire series to Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Irish, French Canadian, and Inuit peoples. Then there is Kurelek the anguished prophet of a modern apocalypse, his art an indictment of the secular age and a testament to unwavering faith. An important and unique aspect of this exhibition for Canadian audiences will be the inclusion of several works from Kurelek's highly formative period in England from 1952 to 1959. During this time the young artist underwent psychiatric treatment and converted to Roman Catholicism, which profoundly altered his subsequent approach to life and art making. It is in consideration of these early works that the exhibition reveals Kurelek's complex psyche and the central role it played in everything he produced. As the first large-scale survey of William Kurelek in thirty years, The Messenger seeks to bring together the most important and engaging works executed by the artist during his career and includes over 80 paintings and drawings that encompass the artist's entire practice. The works are drawn from major private, corporate, and public collections in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.  William Kurelek was born near Whitford, Alberta in 1927, the oldest of seven children in an Ukrainian immigrant family: Bill, John, Winn, Nancy, Sandy, Paul, Iris. His family lost their grain farm during the Great Depression and moved to a dairy farm near Stonewall, Manitoba. He developed an early interest in art which was not encouraged by his hard-working parents. He studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and at the Instituto Allende in Mexico, but was primarily self-taught from books. By his mid-twenties he was living in England. In 1952, suffering from clinical depression and emotional problems he was admitted to the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London. There he was treated for schizophrenia. In hospital he painted, producing "The Maze", a dark depiction of his tortured youth. His experience in the hospital was documented in the LIFE Science Library book The Mind, published in 1965. He was transferred from the Maudsley to be at Netherne Hospital from November 1953 to January 1955, to work with Edward Adamson (1911-1996), a pioneer of art therapy. At Netherne he produced two masterpieces - Where Am I? Who Am I? Why Am I? (donated to the American Visionary Arts Museum by Adamson) and I Spit On Life (still in the Adamson Collection). Originally Ukrainian Orthodox, Kurelek converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1957. He painted a series of 160 works on the Passion of Christ, and a series of 20 depicting the Nativity as if Christ had been born in Canadian settings: an igloo, a trapper's cabin, a boxcar, a motel. He maintained a cottage near Wilno, Ontario, where he got his inspiration for a book of paintings entitled The Polish Canadians, and was a friend of the nearby Madonna House Apostolate. He returned to Toronto, writing and illustrating a series of children's books, several of which have become modern classics. In 1974 he illustrated a new edition of W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen The Wind. He won the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award for A Prairie Boy's Winter in 1974 and A Prairie Boy's Summer in 1976. In 1976, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. He visited Ukraine in 1970 and again in 1977, publishing To My Father's Village. He died in Toronto in 1977. His archives, and a substantial body of his work, including the Passion mentioned above, are held at Niagara Falls Art Gallery.  The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria prides itself on presenting a diverse assortment of exhibitions including showcases of own Canadian, historical and world-class Asian collection, as well as creating, commissioning and hosting important contemporary exhibitions. Both the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council recognized the Art Gallery for its outstanding presentations in recent years. On permanent display is the work of British Columbia's foremost historical artist Emily Carr. An exhibition including paintings, excerpts from her books and archival images offers an insightful look at this inspiring local artist who captured the BC landscape and the lives of its First Nations peoples in paint. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is home to one of Canada's most important Asian art collections, second only to the Royal Ontario Museum. The collection of amber and ivory carvings is one of the largest and most exquisite in North America. The Gallery's collection has grown under the careful watch of internationally recognized Asian Curator, Barry Till. Several impressive objects d'art are on permanent exhibition including a grand Chinese Bell, cast in 1641 during the Ming dynasty that was presented to the City of Victoria in 1903. A popular attraction, it hung in Beacon Hill Park until 1989, when it came to the Art Gallery to ensure its long-time preservation. The Gallery's Asian Garden boasts the only authentic Japanese Shinto Shrine in North America. It is a fine example of the architecture of a Meiji period Shinto Shrine, now perfectly situated among bamboo and Japanese maples. Visit the museum's website at ... http://aggv.ca/  |
| Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery Shows Exhibition by Danish Designer Verner Panton Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:34 PM PDT
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| Catto Gallery debuts New Work by Seven Shanghai Artists Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:33 PM PDT
LONDON - The Catto Gallery, London is proud to announce the debut exhibition of seven Contemporary Chinese artists from the Shanghai School . These artists, although established in China , have never been seen in London . Their works range from traditional, satirical, to political, tender and sexual – all topics which have had a difficult journey in China 's political climate. Their art captures China in a moment of rapid transition in society, where Communism lives in parallel with expanding capitalism.  |
| The Corrigan Gallery Presents ~ "Celebration" ~ Works by Richard Hagerty Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:32 PM PDT  Surgeon Richard (Duke) Hagerty began painting before medical school honed his eye and hand coordination. He is a self taught artist who draws his surreal, fantasy based imagery from dreams, mythology, history, science, and stories. Painting, he believes, is the language of the unconscious; the act of painting itself is as close as we get to dreaming in the conscious state. He works in a variety of media, including pen and ink, watercolor and oil. He has been a working artist for thirty years. This former Charleston City Councilman is widely acclaimed for his fantasy paintings in which he utilizes free association to craft psychologically potent dreamscapes. The symbolic art movement preceding World War II and the influence of the iconographic mark making of the Latin American and Asian cultures is evident in his work. Often works are based on the artist's personal myth experiences and their connection to the collective unconscious. His works captured the viewer's attention with movement, color and a complex story tantalizes far beyond a simple viewing of the work. Whether figurative or geometric, the work is familiar yet not. It carries the audience on a journey beyond time and place to an arena where all is possible and fantastical scenarios can play out. References are many; stories behind the imagery often remain untold; and the complexity of the repetition of images over the 30 years of painting remains to be unraveled. Hagerty was the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Children's Festival Poster Artist with his painting "Dream Children." He was also selected as the Piccolo Spoleto poster artist, in 1984 and 1990 and was the 2003 Piccolo Spoleto Invitational Exhibition artist. His paintings have appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1979 throughout the southeastern region and in New York. His work is in the collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art. He had a solo show at the Gibbes Art Gallery (now Museum of Art) in 1991. The Tippy Stern Fine Art gallery exhibition entitled Paintings in May 2001 featured works by Richard Hagerty along with two other artists. Corrigan Gallery opened its doors September 1, 2005 at 62 Queen Street, Charleston, South Carolina, just off the corner of Meeting and Queen streets in the historic French Quarter. The gallery exhibits works of art both representational and abstract possessing the charm of old Charleston with a contemporary edge. Representing artists whose work is beyond the traditional approach to the southern landscape of marshes and palmettos, there are new works to see on a regular basis. Artistic vision partnered with an intellectual strength and astute handling of the materials describes the work on display. Visit : www.corrigangallery.com/  |
| Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:31 PM PDT  DOHA, QATAR - The Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art has created controversy by announcing that it will exhibit works containing nudity and politically radical ideas. They will not be subject to censorship, according to Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator of the Mathaf. The museum was founded by powerful Qatari art patron and vice president of the Qatar Museum Authority, Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al-Thani and it is due to open in Qatar's capital, Doha, on December 30th. The museum aspires to highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East that might challenge some preconceptions. It will also serve as a research center, an exciting prospect for the regional arts community. Mathaf, which simply means "museum" in Arabic, will be housed in a in a 5,500-square meter former school that has been converted by the French architect Jean-Francois Bodin. The inaugural exhibition, titled, "Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art," will include works from Mathaf's permanent collection of over 6,200 pieces dating from the late 1800s to the middle of the 20th century, all of which were donated from Sheik Hassan's private collection. Skeptics have wondered aloud whether politics will play a role in the acquisition and exhibition of certain works, excluding pieces that might be considered politically or sexually provocative. "Sajjil," which roughly translated as the act of recording features paintings and sculptures by more than 100 key modernists, is aimed at bringing contemporary Arabic art to a wider audience. "Our first exhibition, 'Sajjil' is about the interaction and about the contribution of Arab artists to a larger art historical context," Al-Khudhairi said. "By making it public, we are able to open it up to everyone in Qatar, in the region, internationally. "Crucially, adds Al-Khudhairi, it will also draw attention to a contemporary art scene that developed in parallel with European movements but has been largely overlooked. "The exhibition will give exposure to these artists to fit into history a period of time that's missing from art historical books and accounts," she said. "The collection has nudes; the collection has political works. These things are part of the collection -- we can't deny it "We are not trying to present some sort of new canon, this is why we stress multiple modernities and contemporary art. She added that Mathaf was willing to risk criticism for showing controversial works. "I think there will be all kinds of feedback and the museum is about creating a space for dialogue; a platform for discussion," Al-Khudhairi said. Saleh Barakat, a Beirut-based leading expert in contemporary Arab art, described the museum's opening as "an exceedingly important moment in the history of modern and contemporary art."  |
| GERMAINE RICHIER: SCULPTURES AND DRAWINGS AT THE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:30 PM PDT Venice, Italy - GERMAINE RICHIER, on view from October 28, 2006 to February 5, 2007, is the first retrospective dedicated to the French sculptor in Italy. The exhibition marks the return of the artist to the limelight as one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century. Germaine Richier (1902-1959) was, along with Alberto Giacometti and Marino Marini, one the protagonists of the post-war avant-garde and she was considered a 'maestro' by critics and international collectors alike. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is honored to present to the Italian and international public the most complete retrospective since the 1996 exhibit at the Fondation Maeght in Saint Paul, France. Luca Massimo Barbero curated the selection of almost 60 works, including bronze sculptures, small casts, lithographs and drawings, and created a chronological and analytical view of the tortured artistic path of the sculptor. The presence of an important work by Richier, Tauromachy (1953), in the collection of Peggy Guggenheim originated the exhibition: the sculpture is emblematic of Peggy Guggenheim's love of Richier's work, which she had already begun to collect in 1960. The show, which will extend from the temporary exhibition galleries to the garden is made possible by the collaboration with the Archives Françoise Guiter in Paris.
Though she never embraced any artistic or political movement, Richier participated in the cultural atmosphere of her time, frequenting Henri Favier, Celebonovic Marko, Massimo Campigli, Alberto Giacometti, Raymond-Jacques Sabouraud, and her dear friend Marino Marini. World War II brought her to Zurich, where she was followed by some of her students and where she recreated her studio. There, she was continued to interact with all the friends who had also emigrated, such as Jean Arp, Le Corbusier, Fritz Wotruba, and others. In 1945, she returned to Paris. World War II had provided her with a new source of experimentation based on form and space, which created the strongest expressive force in her sculpture.
Germaine Richier often admitted: "I love tension, dryness, anxiety." The small 1946 bronzes, The Fight andThe Struggle, together with Le Griffu (1952), indeed show her preference for "beings" deprived of the "flesh" metabolized by an all devouring environment, from which "beings"should be shielded and protected, as with the webs enveloping her sculptures and creating an intermediary space between figures and environment. The works of Richier express, in addition to suffering and torture, the anguish of deformity, the imperative sense of position in space, the elegant rigor of posture, or in other words, the sense of humanity: "all of my sculptures," the artist wrote, "even those that seem to be inspired by imagination, are based on something real, on an organic truth … imagination needs a start-line." The human being represents both the start-line and the inspiration of Germaine Richier's oeuvre, which depicts both the dramas and the dreams of her time, by combining in a revolutionary way the violence of the expressionist language with the mysterious fantasy of "surrealistic" sculptures from the 1950s." The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, with essays by the Archives Françoise Guiter, Luca Massimo Barbero, and Giorgio Mastinu, which will devote particular attention to the iconographic repertoire of Germain Richier, including photographic prints of the works that Germaine Richier commissioned from Brassaï. Visit The Peggy Guggenheim Collection at: www.guggenheim-venice.it/english/index.htm  |
| Art Knowledge News Presents "This Week In Review" Posted: 02 Jun 2012 06:29 PM PDT This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here . When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page. You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article. Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.   |
Germaine Richier was born in 1902 in Grans (Bouche-du-Rhone, France). She attended the Academy of Art in Monpelier and in 1926 moved to Paris, where she worked in the studio of Louis Guigues, one of Auguste Rodin's assistants. In Paris, she began to visit Emile-Antoine Bourdelle's studio, where she learned the difficult technique of sculpting busts. It is from this particular aspect of her work that the present exhibition commences: Bust of the Christ (1931), Bust no. 12 (1933-34), and Régodias (1938)—statuesque works which still bear realistic features—will all be on view. In 1934, the Galerie Max Kaganovich held her first solo exhibition. In 1936 she received the prestigious Blumenthal Prize for sculpture. In 1937, she was invited to the Exposition Universelle de Paris, and in 1939 some of her pieces were shown in the New York World's Fair. 
From 1945 to 1959, the year of her death, Germaine Richier completed an intense artistic journey, moving from an expressionistic analysis of the figure, such as in The Forest Man (Large Version) (1945-46), The Ogre (1949), The Hurricane Woman (1948-49), which attests to a future osmosis of man and nature, to a more aesthetic composition that is nonetheless fascinated by the representation of deformity (Diabolo, 1950, The Couple, The Ant, 1953). It served as a metaphor for the brutal relationship between living creatures and their environment, in which a surrealist composition completes the hybridisation of human and animal—Tauromachy and The Hydra both of 1954—in which the metamorphoses is an integral part of the sculptural language. | You are subscribed to email updates from Art News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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