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

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• The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opens Survey Exhibition of Work by John Valadez
• Art Antiques London Returns to Kensington Gardens This Summer
• The Newport Art Museum shows "From Pennsylvania to Paradise" ~ William Trost Richards & the Art Association of Newport
• The Courtald Gallery to Show "Mangtegna to Matisse" ~ Drawings From the Collection
• The Morris Museum of Art shows English Watercolors from the Elsley Collection
• Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style at the International Center of Photography
• EXCEPTIONAL PORTRAITURE SHOWN AT CHEEKWOOD MUSEUM OF ART
• The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows "Ralo Mayer - Obviously a Major Malfunction"
• Philadelphia Museum of Art announces 'Fallen Blossoms' Exhibition of Works by Cai Guo-Qiang
• Collecting the New: Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection
• Sotheby's Paris sales of Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art brings $54.4 Mil
• Bonhams Announces October Sale of Fine Prints in San Francisco
• Rob Pruitt's Monument to the Father of Pop Art ~ Andy Warhol
• The Taubman Museum of Art features Devorah Sperber & Chris Doyle Exhibitions
• The Alan Klotz Gallery To Show Harvey Stein's Coney Island Photographs
• Pope Benedict Meets Artists from Around the World in the Sistine Chapel
• The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows Works by Markus Schinwald
• Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt Celebrates 25th Anniversary With An Exhibition of "Surreal Objects ~ Three Dimensional Works From Dali to Man Ray"
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego opens Survey Exhibition of Work by John Valadez Posted: 07 Jun 2012 10:47 PM PDT San Diego, California.-  The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is proud to present "Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez 1976 to 2011" on from June 10th through September 2nd. This is the first survey exhibition of this important Mexican-American artist and muralist, who has had profound influence on the Chicano art movement in the United States. Los Angeles-based Valadez is widely considered the most significant artist to have developed a realist pictorial language recording the Chicano experience in Los Angeles during the '70s, '80s, and '90s. His work has come to define the iconography of Chicano identity of the period, situating it within the changing dynamics of the city rather than nostalgically attempting to reconstruct a mythical and distant past. Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Valadez began as a muralist, in which he presented themes of invisible borders and histories binding together Spanish, Mexican, and American culture. Valadez's intense and colorful artworks express the Chicano experience in a contemporary representational style infused with elements of magical realism. His virtuoso pastel drawings present intense contrasts: the formal and narrative interpretations resemble unlikely photographs that offer social commentary on everyday urban life. His style is derived from street photography as he records the life of his community and of other inhabitants of downtown Los Angeles. He turns the ordinary snapshot into a source for his portrayal of a large, diverse cast of urban inhabitants drawn from his everyday life. "Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez 1976 to 2011" spans 35 years of Valadez's photographs, paintings, pastels, and other works on paper. The exhibition presents, for the first time, the development of Valadez's studio works: from his early use of documentary and street photography to the influence of European baroque and rococo painting and sculpture, and finally, to his more recent amalgamation of photography-based imagery with a spatial and temporal structure pointing towards Surrealism. Pastels and paintings from the 1990s and 2000s will also be included in the exhibition. These works, which depart from his earlier strict adherence to deadpan representation towards a more baroque compositional structure, are marked by a need to push the boundaries of structure and style. Memory, desire, intuition, and humor blend in these masterfully accomplished works on canvas and paper, which are thrust by their very excess into a territory that materializes a personal iconography beyond the limits of cultural identity. In his later works, Valadez aims to make familiar the unfamiliar—whether dreams and fantasies, or the cultural identity of others. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated 112-page color catalogue. Santa Ana Condition: John Valadez 1976 to 2011 is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Support for the exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund. Additional funding is provided by the Cochrane Exhibition Fund. Related programs are supported by the James Irvine Foundation Arts Innovation Fund. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. With two locations, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) is the region's foremost forum devoted to the exploration and presentation of the art of our time, presenting works across all media created since 1950. Located in the heart of downtown San Diego and in the coastal community of La Jolla, MCASD provides an unprecedented variety of exhibition spaces and experiences for the community, showcasing an internationally recognized collection and a dynamic schedule of exhibitions and public programs. At MCASD in Downtown, experience contemporary art in a historic setting - the Jacobs Building, formerly the Santa Fe Depot baggage building - and view site-specific installations by artists Jenny Holzer and Richard Serra. At MCASD in La Jolla, take in the fabulous ocean view from the Edwards Garden Gallery, or lunch on the patio at the Museum Cafe. The La Jolla location also houses the Museum's X Store, filled with a selection of contemporary art books, apparel, and innovative design objects. The collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego includes more than 4,000 works created after 1950, representing a variety of media and genres: painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation. MCASD is known for collecting works by promising emerging artists and under-recognized, mid-career artists, as well as by major figures in international contemporary art. Among the greatest strengths of the MCASD collection are minimalism and Pop Art of the 1960s and 1970s, conceptual art from the 1960s to the present, installation art, art from Latin America, and art from California and the San Diego/Tijuana region. Many works in the collection are the result of artists' residencies or works commissioned for MCASD exhibitions. In response to new local, national, and international developments in art, the Museum continually seeks to enhance its strengths and to expand the representation of artistic trends in its collection. At the same time, MCASD preserves, presents, documents, and interprets its holdings for current and future audiences. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mcasd.org

Art Antiques London Returns to Kensington Gardens This Summer Posted: 07 Jun 2012 10:03 PM PDT London.- The Connoisseur's Fair In the Heart of London, Art Antiques London returns to Kensington Gardens for the third annual show from June 14th through June 20th (with a private view on June 13). Art Antiques London, which incorporates The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, was launched in June 2010 to wide acclaim, winning praise, in particular, for its central location, light and airy atmosphere and stylish presentation. Now in its third year, Art Antiques London has surpassed expectations: not only is it very commercially successful, consistently delivering excellent sales across the board, but it has also become a vital yearly meeting place for international dealers, collectors, museum curators and academics. The fair will bring together over 70 of the world's leading art dealers. The international trade has always formed an important aspect of Art Antiques London. Among those returning to the Fair from the United States are Erik Thomsen Asian Art and Jane Kahan Gallery. Erik Thomsen Asian Art, New York, specialises in Japanese screens and scrolls, early Japanese tea ceramics from the medieval through the Edo periods, masterpieces of ikebana bamboo baskets and gold lacquer objects, while Jane Kahan Gallery specializes in both tapestries and ceramics by Leger, Picasso and Chagall. Their collection of Aubusson tapestries by many of the great artists of the 20th century is one of the largest in the world and has been featured in numerous museums, art fairs and publications. From Europe, the Fair is looking forward to welcoming Swiss dealer GRIMA, one of the most iconic names in jewellery, which will show both classic and contemporary jewels at the 2012 Fair. Royalty and celebrities around the world wear their distinctive pieces. Other dealers from Europe include Christophe Perles (Porcelain), Dragesco-Cramoisan (Ceramics, Glass and Enamels), Martin du Louvre (Modern and Contemporary Art and Sculpture) and Daniela Kumpf Kunsthandel (Ceramics, Glass and Enamels). New UK dealers participating in the 2012 Fair include Stephanie Hoppen Gallery who will be exhibiting contemporary artists and photographers from the UK, Europe, America, Asia, Australia and South Africa and is also the author of many books on interior design. Other fine art dealers to come into the Fair include Rowntree Clark, specialist dealers in Modern British Art, whose expertise ranges from the early 20th century to the present day, with a particular emphasis on post-war British abstract art and The Mathaf Gallery, London's leading gallery in 19th-century Orientalist paintings. Dealers in other fields who will be new to Art Antiques London this year include, D and M Freedman who specialise in Chinese porcelain, jade and Chinese works of art; Peta Smyth has been dealing in antique textiles since 1976 and is renowned for her extensive and comprehensive stock of fine textiles, Hampton Antiques who specialize in antique boxes and objet d'art, and Martin Murray Country Antiques who will be bringing distinctive antique country furniture and folk art. The new dealers will join those for whom Art Antiques London was particularly successful in 2011 including Samina Inc who is showing a spectacular Scribe's cabinet. Adrian Sassoon (British Studio Ceramics and 18th century Sèvres) W Agnew and Co. (Sculpture and Works of Art), Lucas Rarities (Jewellery) Ted Few (Antiques and Works of Art), The Silver Fund (Georg Jensen Silver), and E & H Manners (Ceramics).The Fair's much praised lecture series is the key to its continuing success. This year Art Antiques London particularly looks forward to welcoming Jonathan Marsden, Director of the Royal Collection. His lecture, given to mark the Queen's Jubilee Year, will discuss the British Royal Collection from the time of Henry VIII to the present day and its importance as one of the last great European princely collections, which remains distinct from those owned and maintained by state authorities. Further highlights from this years lecture series will be a presentation by Dr Eva Ströber, curator of the Oriental Ceramics at the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof in the Netherlands. She will be discussing the meanings of Chinese symbols on porcelain; the lotus, the pair of mandarin ducks, the bamboo, pine and plum, unlocking the secrets of the traditional visual language of Chinese Ceramic design. Meredith Chilton a Canadian art historian will look at how developments in French horticulture and gastronomy had a significant effect on the passion for nouvelle cuisine and ceramics intended for the table. Creating a lecture programme as an integral part of a fair was an innovation made by the Haughtons and first introduced at the original International Ceramics Fair and Seminar 1989.   Lectures within art and antiques fairs have since been adopted by other fair organisers, who recognise the importance of offering a scholarly dimension. This year the Party in the Park will be in support of JDRF, the leading global organisation focused on type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. Driven by passionate, grassroots volunteers connected to children, adolescents, and adults with this disease, JDRF is now the largest charitable supporter of T1D research. The goal of JDRF research is to improve the lives of all people affected by T1D by accelerating progress on the most promising opportunities for curing, better treating, and preventing T1D. The Party in the Park will take place on the 12 June and will take the form of a cocktail party followed by a dinner and auction. Art Antiques London is situated next to the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, and the fair is delighted to display the magnificent sculpture Horse at Water by Nic Fiddian Green, courtesy of the Sladmore Gallery. The bronze sculpture, which stands at over 8 feet high, will adorn the lawn in front of the beautiful purpose built marquee. Visit the fair's website at ... http://haughton.com/international-fairs/17/fair_pages/art-antiques-london

The Newport Art Museum shows "From Pennsylvania to Paradise" ~ William Trost Richards & the Art Association of Newport Posted: 07 Jun 2012 09:27 PM PDT Newport, Rhode Island.- The Newport Art Museum is proud to present "From Pennsylvania to Paradise: William Trost Richards, Harrison Morris and the Art Association of Newport" on view at the museum through September 9th. Of the many artists who were drawn to the Narragansett Bay region during the 1800s, perhaps no other – then or in succeeding decades - has better captured the mercurial sea or "the miracle of color under a curving wave," than William Trost Richards. Born in Philadelphia, Richards spent decades living and working in Rhode Island, often depicting the scenic area near Middletown known as "Paradise" in paintings that demonstrate his concern for closely observed natural details and interest in light and atmosphere. Curator Nancy Whipple Grinnell will talk about the "From Pennsylvania to Paradise" on Thursday, August 9th beginning at 6 pm. This free event is part of Newport Gallery Night. Born in Philadelphia, Richards spent decades living and working in Rhode Island, often depicting the scenic area near Middletown known as "Paradise" in paintings that demonstrate his concern for closely observed natural details and interest in light and atmosphere.

The Courtald Gallery to Show "Mangtegna to Matisse" ~ Drawings From the Collection Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:49 PM PDT London.- The Courtald Gallery is proud to present "Mangtegna to Matisse: Master Drawings From the Courtald Gallery", on view from June 14th through September 9th, after which it will transfer to the Frick Collection in New York. The Courtauld Gallery holds one of the most important collections of drawings in Britain. Organised in collaboration with The Frick Collection in New York, this exhibition presents a magnificent selection of some sixty of its finest works. It offers a rare opportunity to consider the art of drawing in the hands of its greatest masters, including Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. The Courtauld last displayed a comparable selection of its masterpieces more than twenty years ago and this exhibition will bring the collection to new audiences nationally and internationally. The exhibition opens with a group of works dating from the 15th century, from both Northern and Southern Europe. An exquisite and extremely rare early Netherlandish drawing of a seated female saint from around 1475-85 is rooted in late medieval workshop traditions. It was also at this time that drawing assumed a new central role in nourishing individual creativity, exemplified by two rapid pen and ink sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. These remarkably free and exploratory sketches show the artist experimenting with the dynamic twisting pose of a female figure for a painting of Mary Magdalene. For Renaissance artists such as Leonardo, drawing or disegno was the fundamental basis of all the arts: the expression not just of manual dexterity but of the artist's mind and intellect. These ideas about the nature of drawing achieved their full expression in the flowering of draughtsmanship in the 16th century. At the heart of this section of the exhibition is Michelangelo's magisterial The Dream. Created in 1533, this highly complex allegory was made by Michelangelo as a gift for a close friend and it was one of the earliest drawings to be produced as an independent work of art. More typically, drawings were made in preparation for other works, including paintings, sculptures and prints. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's engaging scene of drunken peasants cavorting at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken was drawn in 1559 in preparation for a print. Whereas Michelangelo sought ideal divinely inspired beauty in the human figure, Bruegel here revels in the disorder of everyday life. Despite the important preparatory function of drawing, many of the most appealing works in the exhibition were unplanned and resulted from artists reaching for their sketchbooks to capture a scene for their own pleasure – Parmigianino's Seated woman asleep is a wonderful example of such an informal study surviving from the early 16th century. Drawn approximately 100 years later in around 1625, Guercino's Child seen from behind retains the remarkable freshness and immediacy of momentary observation. Guercino was a compulsive and brilliantly gifted draughtsman. Here the red chalk lends itself perfectly to the play of light on the soft flesh of the child sheltering in its mother's lap. No less appealing in its informality is Rembrandt's spontaneous and affectionate sketch of his wife, Saskia, sitting in bed cradling one of her children. The exhibition offers a striking contrast between this modest domestic image and Peter Paul Rubens's contemporaneous depiction of his own wife, the beautiful young Helena Fourment. Celebrated as one of the great drawings of the 17th century, this unusually large work shows the richly dressed Helena – who was then about 17 – moving aside her veil to look directly at the viewer. Created with a dazzling combination of red, black and white chalks, this drawing was made as an independent work of art and was not intended for sale or public display. In its imposing presence, mesmerising skill and subtle characterisation, it is the equal of any painted portrait. The central role of drawing in artistic training is underlined in a remarkable sheet by Charles Joseph Natoire from 1746. It shows the artist, seated in the left foreground, instructing students during a life class at the prestigious Académie royale in Paris. Drawing after the life model and antique sculpture was considered essential in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the great champions of this academic tradition was Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The beautiful elongated forms of the reclining nude in his Study for the 'Grand Odalisque', 1813-14, represents the highest refinement of a precise yet expressive linear drawing style rooted in the academy. Outside the academy, drawing could offer the artist a means of liberating creativity. Goya's Cantar y bailar (Singing and dancing), 1819-20, comes from one of the private drawing albums which the artist used to inhabit the world of his dreams and imagination. Canaletto's expansive and meticulously composed View from Somerset Gardens, looking towards London Bridge is one of several highlights of a section exploring the relationship between drawing and the landscape. This group stretches back as early as Fra Bartolomeo's Sweep of a river with fishermen drawn in around 1505-09, and also includes a particularly strong selection of landscapes from the golden age of the British watercolour. The interest in landscape is nowhere more powerfully combined with the expressive possibilities of watercolour than in the work of J.M.W. Turner. His late Dawn after the Wreck of around 1841 was immortalised by the critic John Ruskin, who imagined the solitary dog shown howling on a deserted beach to be mourning its owner, lost at sea. For Ruskin, this was one of Turner's 'saddest and most tender works'. The Courtauld collection includes an outstanding selection of drawings and watercolours by the great French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists for whom the Gallery is most famous. Apples, Bottle and Chairback is one of Cézanne's finest late works in any technique. Here we see the artist pushing watercolour to its extreme through his extraordinary intuitive but masterful handling of successive layers of coloured washes over luminous white paper. Another highlight of this group is the equally remarkable large crayon drawing by Cézanne's younger contemporary, Georges Seurat. His standing female nude materialises in an almost unfathomable manner from an intricate web of curving crayon lines. The exhibition concludes with work by the two greatest artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso and Matisse, who reinvented the art of drawing for the modern age. The Courtauld Institute of Art is one of the world's leading centres for the study of the history and conservation of art and architecture, and its Gallery houses one of Britain's best-loved collections. Based at Somerset House, The Courtauld is an independent college of the University of London. The Director of the Institute is Professor Deborah Swallow who reports to the Governing Board. The Chairman is Nicholas Ferguson. Degree programmes on offer include a BA, Graduate Diploma and MA in the History of Art; a Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings; an MA in Painting Conservation (Wall Painting); an MA in Curating the Art Museum (new for 2007-08); and MPhil and PhD research degrees. Facilities for students are exceptional, including outstanding libraries and The Courtauld Gallery collection of paintings, drawings and prints, and sculpture and decorative arts. Courtauld staff supervise research from Antiquity to the present, and the Research Forum offers access to visiting speakers from around the world. Public lectures, short courses and lunchtime talks allow members of the public to share in the wealth of expertise at The Courtauld. The Courtauld Gallery, open daily, contains iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, as well as numerous other important paintings and works on paper from the Renaissance through to the 20th century.  Its temporary exhibitions tend to be small in scale, and are designed to offer as much food for the mind as pleasure to the eye. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.courtauld.ac.uk

The Morris Museum of Art shows English Watercolors from the Elsley Collection Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:39 PM PDT Augusta, Georgia.- Organized by the Morris Museum of Art from the collection of horticulturist John Elsley , "Golden Afternoon: English Watercolors from the Elsley Collection " is on view at the museum through July 1st. The exhibition includes forty exquisite watercolors of many of the most famous gardens of the Victorian and Edwardian eras painted by some of the foremost garden painters of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. "This breathtaking collection of English watercolors recording the Golden Age of the English garden—lovingly assembled over the past forty years by English-born horticulturist John Elsley, a resident of Greenwood, South Carolina—captures images of some of the most beautiful garden designs created at the turn of the last century," said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. Patronage of the arts during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras took distinctly different, though complementary, forms, resulting from the commissioning of the foremost garden designers of the period and a group of remarkable artists who recorded the landscaped splendor of the age.

Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style at the International Center of Photography Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:22 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- In the ten years since Glenda Bailey became Editor in Chief of Harper's Bazaar, she and Creative Director Stephen Gan have carried on the magazine's tradition of publishing innovative, high-impact photography. Harper's Bazaar: A Decade of Style, on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from September 9, 2011 through January 8, 2012, distills that decade into a choice group of nearly thirty images by some of the most important photographers working today. To emphasize the work's original context and the magazine's award-winning design, the exhibition will include several vitrines with issues open to display extended stories alongside the striking covers, swept clean of cover-line text, that are sent to Bazaar's subscribers. Photographers in the exhibition include Peter Lindbergh, Jean-Paul Goude, David Bailey, William Klein, Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Camilla Akrans, Sølve Sundsbø, Mark Seliger, Tim Walker, Mario Sorrenti, and Karl Lagerfeld. The magazine has also regularly featured artists who are not usually associated with fashion, so Nan Goldin, Ralph Gibson, and Chuck Close are in the mix, along with two photographers who have a long, legendary history at Bazaar, Hiro and Melvin Sokolsky. In addition to inventive fashion images in a wide range of styles, from classic to cinematic, there are vivid portraits of designers Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, and Diane Von Furstenberg, and celebrities, including Daphne Guinness and Lady Gaga. "Fashion magazines have always considered it an important part of their mission to combine art and commerce," said ICP Guest Curator Vince Aletti, who organized the exhibition. "Harper's Bazaar has a particularly distinguished history of hiring great photographers, printing important writers, and training a keen eye on the arts." "Fashion reflects what's going on in our world, and Bazaar makes pop culture fashionable," said Bailey. "This exhibition is the culmination of a decade in a new world where every popular phenomenon comes with a fashion spin." Under Bailey, Bazaar has been especially alert to shifts in the culture, casting Ellen DeGeneres as a successful presidential candidate in one wish-fulfilling fashion feature and imagining the second chapter in the life of an abruptly downsized female exec in another. Photographers are encouraged to borrow freely from the wide world of pop, so Seliger is inspired by iconic shots of Barbra Streisand for his black-and-white portraits of Jennifer Aniston, Demarchelier casts Stephanie Seymour as a Warhol superstar, and Julianne Moore looks like she stepped out of a John Currin painting in Peter Lindbergh's witty transformation. An accompanying book, Harper's Bazaar: Greatest Hits collects these alluring, lively, and humorous visions into a single volume that celebrates the best of Bazaar from 2001 to 2011. Aletti previously co-curated ICP's dramatic "Year of Fashion" in 2009, including the shows Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now, and This Is Not a Fashion Photograph. Interpreting the power and evolution of photography, the International Center of Photography (ICP) is a museum and school dedicated to the understanding and appreciation of photography. ICP creates programs of the highest quality to advance knowledge of the medium. These include exhibitions, collections, and education for the general public, members, students, and professionals in the field of photography. Photography occupies a vital and central place in contemporary culture; it reflects and influences social change, provides an historical record, is essential to visual communication and education, opens new opportunities for personal and aesthetic expression, has transformed popular culture, has revolutionized scientific research, and continually evolves to incorporate new technologies. Visit : http://www.icp.org/

EXCEPTIONAL PORTRAITURE SHOWN AT CHEEKWOOD MUSEUM OF ART Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:21 PM PDT NASHVILLE, TN – Cheekwood's holdings in portraiture, whether oil on canvas, photography, or sculpture, have become a major aspect of Cheekwood's art collection.  Portraiture: Private Lives/Public Faces: highlights this special collection at Cheekwood through December 31., 2006.

The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows "Ralo Mayer - Obviously a Major Malfunction" Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:20 PM PDT Linz, Austria.- The Lentos Museum of Modern Art is pleased to present "Ralo Mayer: Obviously a Major Malfunction", on view at the museum through October 23rd. Featuring 4.56-billion-year-old meteorites, a painting from the collection of the Lentos, a closed eco system and a checklist that travelled to the moon and back with the astronauts on board Apollo, such diverse objects are used by Ralo Mayer in the first part of his exhibition to throw light on his own work from the last few years. Ralo Mayer is the winner of the Triennale Linz Award, which was first presented in summer 2010. Space, the history of its exploration and utopias that tried (in the past) to predict what the world would look like in the future form the thematic backdrop for these works. Like all science fiction that deserves the name, they are deeply rooted in present-day reality and transfer social and economic facts into multifaceted stories.

Philadelphia Museum of Art announces 'Fallen Blossoms' Exhibition of Works by Cai Guo-Qiang Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:19 PM PDT PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum will present a multi-site exhibition of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, one of the most prominent contemporary artists on the international art scene. Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms consists of a poetic meditation on the passing of time, memory, and memorializing. One of the artist's signature "explosion events," Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project has been specifically commissioned for the exhibition and will take place at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; a second explosion event will follow at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Inspired by the memory of Anne d'Harnoncourt (1943-2008), late director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her long friendship with the founder and artistic director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Marion Boulton Stroud, Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms addresses themes of memory, loss and renewal on a personal and public level. Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms includes four components, distributed between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum. In addition to the explosion event on December 11, a series of four gunpowder drawings and a sculptural installation will be on view inside the Museum in a presentation titled Light Passage. Two newly commissioned works, Time Flies Like a Weaving Shuttle and Time Scroll, will be on display on the seventh and eighth floor of the Fabric Workshop and Museum. It is Cai's first solo exhibition in Philadelphia and the first in the United States since his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in early 2008. "The concept for this collaborative exhibition actually began in a conversation between Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kippy Stroud several years ago, and it has now become, in part, a memorial to Anne," said Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Museum. "We are grateful to Kippy Stroud for her commitment to realize the exhibition, both in appreciation of the Museum's extraordinary late director and as a reflection on universal themes." "Anne d'Harnoncourt and I were friends for more than 40 years," said Ms. Stroud. "Among the things we had in common were a shared commitment to public service in the arts, to Philadelphia, and to Pennsylvania. Before she died we both had in mind doing an exhibition devoted to Cai Guo-Qiang in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Afterward, in discussions with the artist I began to see that in his hands a larger meditation embracing the memory of Anne d'Harnoncourt might emerge, something that would find in the expression of the momentary something infinite." PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART (December 11, 2009 – March 21, 2010) Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project will occur in front of the Museum's East Façade, where the image of a blossoming flower will appear at sunset, suggesting the ephemeral beauty of a spring blossom as the sky darkens behind it. The December 11 event is open to the public, beginning with remarks at 4 p.m. Inside the Museum, an exhibition of four gunpowder drawings will be on view in the Honickman Gallery 172. The drawings, which follow the cycle of the four seasons, were created by igniting patterns of gunpowder on paper, evoking and renewing the spirit and tradition of Chinese literati ink painting. In the same gallery will be 99 Golden Boats (2002), an installation consisting of leaf-shaped boats made of gold and suspended as if floating on an invisible river. FABRIC WORKSHOP AND MUSEUM (December 11, 2009 – March 1, 2010) Themes of friendship, the passage of time, and loss will be reflected at the Fabric Workshop and Museum through its presentations incorporating textiles, fibers, and other media. An audio recording of Stroud's reminiscences of her friend Anne d'Harnoncourt, which the artist used to create the exhibition's works, will be heard in the galleries where Cai Guo-Qiang's work is on view. Second Floor: The passage of time will be slowed on the second floor, where the explosion event realized at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be shown in a high-definition video that will stretch the 10-second explosion event to several minutes. Cai Guo-Qiang Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. He initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppression that he felt from the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China at the time. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, which led to the development of his signature explosion events. His installation works draw upon feng shui, philosophy, Chinese medicine and history, employing a site-specific, interdisciplinary approach that cuts across diverse mediums including drawing, painting, video and performance art. Cai was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 20th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009. He was Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In 2008, he was the subject of a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He has lived in New York since 1995. Visit The Philadelphia Museum of Art at : http://www.philamuseum.org/

Collecting the New: Recent Acquisitions to the IMMA Collection Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:18 PM PDT DUBLIN.- An exhibition presenting artworks recently acquired for IMMA's Collection, marking the first occasion that these works have been shown at the Museum as part of that Collection, opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 19 May 2010. Collecting the New comprises some 42 works which have, for the most part, been acquired since 2005, through purchase, donation and loans. Twenty-six Irish and international artists are represented, including Amanda Coogan, Patrick Hall, Stefan Kürten, Catherine Lee, Janet Mullarney, Makiko Nakamura, Hughie O'Donoghue, and Susan Tiger. The exhibition reflects the Museum's acquisition policy that the Collection should be firmly rooted in the present, concentrating on acquiring the work of living artists, but also accepting donations and loans of more historical art objects with a particular emphasis on work from the 1940s onwards.

Sotheby's Paris sales of Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art brings $54.4 Mil Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:17 PM PDT   PARIS, FRANCE - Paris Week, the inagural series of events organised this week by Sotheby's France, has concluded tonight on a high note, with the results of the sale of Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art bringing the total for the week to €37,165,325 ($54,477,158), the best result achieved in Paris for a series of sales at Sotheby's to date.

Bonhams Announces October Sale of Fine Prints in San Francisco Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:16 PM PDT San Francisco, California.- Bonhams is excited to announce its sale of Fine Prints on October 25th in San Francisco, and simulcast to Los Angeles, will feature a wide range of lithographs, woodcuts, etchings and screenprints spanning myriad centuries. The sale is led by a brightly-colored lithograph of "Ambassadeurs, Aristide Bruant," 1892, by French Post Impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (est. $30,000-40,000). The piece depicts Parisian singer and restaurateur Aristide Bruant, and demonstrates the unique style that Toulouse-Lautrec introduced to the art world at the time. Also of the same period is a poster of Fernand Toussaint's "Cafe Jacqmotte," 1894 (est. $20,000-40,000). Not far prior to the creation of these works, James Abbott McNeill Whistler created "Little Venice, from Twelve Etchings," in 1880. At the opposite end of the color spectrum, this print was done in dark brown ink on antique cream laid paper (est. $12,000-18,000). Moving farther backward in time, significant 17th century highlights of the sale will include an etching with drypoint and engraving of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn's "Christ Healing the Sick: 'The Hundred Guilder Print'," 1649, (est. $12,000-20,000), and Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn's "A Beggar Seated on a Bank," 1630, etching (est. $12,000-18,000). The sale will also feature the 15th century work of an engraved "The Prodigal Son," 1496, by Albrecht Dürer ($15,000-25,000). Bonhams' Fine Prints Department Director Judith Eurich said of the sale, "There are a number of fine and important examples by some of the most important artists from the Renaissance to the Present including Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Marc Chagall, Picasso, Frankenthaler and Warhol." Works of Pop Art, which are prominent in the sale, will include Andy Warhol's offset color lithograph of "Liz," 1964 (est. $25,000-30,000); a color screenprint of "Mick Jagger," 1975 (est. $20,000-30,000); a color screenprint of "One Plate, from Flowers," 1970 (est. $20,000-25,000); and a color screenprint of "Jane Fonda," 1982 (est. $15,000-20,000). There will also be highlights by David Hockney, including a color paper pulp of "Sunflower," 1978 (est. $15,000-25,000) that is Property from the Collection of Lauren Bacall, and "An image of Gregory, from Moving Focus Series," 1984-85, color lithograph with collage on two sheets (est. $14,000-16,000); as well as James Rosenquist's "Crosshatch and Mutations," 1986, a unique color monoprint with lithographic collage (est. $12,000-18,000). Famous for his Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism "combines," Robert Rauschenberg's work is also represented in the sale with his "Plus Fours, from Hoarfrost Editions," 1974, which features offset color lithograph and screenprint transfers on silk chiffon and two silk satin panels (est. $25,000-35,000). Additional Abstract Expressionism highlights include "Tales of Genji I," 1998, by Helen Frankenthaler, a color woodcut on handmade paper (est. $25,000- 35,000). A range of works by Pablo Picasso also stand out. Works of note include "Femme Endormie," 1962, a color linocut (est. $20,000-30,000); "Grand Nu de Femme," 1962, a tonal linocut in brown and black (est. $10,000-15,000); and "Les Danseurs au Hibou," 1959, color linocut (est. $15,000-25,000). Earlier pieces, during a period when he embraced surrealism, include an etching of his "Sculpteur, Modèle accroupi et Tête sculptée, from La Suite Vollard," 1933 (est. $10,000-15,000); "Rembrandt et Femme au Voile Pl. 36, from La Suite Vollard," 1933, etching, watermarked 'Picasso' (est. $10,000-15,000); and "Femme et Enfant," 1923, lithograph on wove paper (est. $10,000-15,000). Also included in the sale is a "Nature Morte au Citron et au Pichet Rouge," 1960, color aquatint, after Pablo Picasso (est. $10,000-12,000). Marc Chagall is a great mentionable of the October sale, with "The Sky," 1984, color lithograph (est. $12,000-18,000); "Le Square de Paris," 1969, color lithograph (est. $15,000-20,000); "Daphnis et Lycénion, from Daphnis and Chloé," 1961, color lithograph (est. $10,000-15,000); and "Les Coquelicots," 1949, color lithograph (est. $12,000-16,000). Additional highlights will include Emil Nolde's "Unterhaltung," 1917, woodcut on heavy cream wove paper (est. $20,000-30,000) and "Nadia au Regard sérieux," 1948, aquatint by Henri Matisse (est. $18,000-25,000). During 2005, Bonhams continued to expand its presence in the USA and acquired a new saleroom on Madison Avenue in New York. The company also expanded further in Europe with the opening of the Paris office in June 2005. In October 2005, Bonhams gained full independence after buying back a 49.9% stake held by French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH. In 2005 Bonhams magazine was launched. Published quarterly, the magazine feature articles written by curators, dealers, valuers, and also art critics such as Matthew Collings and Brian Sewell. In 2007 Bonhams opened an office in Dubai as part of a joint venture with the family of former Ambassador to the UK Mohammed Madhi Al Tajir. The first sale held in Dubai on 3rd March 2008 was of Modern & Contemporary Arab, Iranian, Indian & Pakistani Art, and achieved total sales of over US$13million – almost three times the expected amount. Bonhams opened a new office in Hong Kong in 2007, to further support its expansion into the Asian market. The business in Hong Kong works with clients in mainland China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore. In March 2008, Bonhams New York moved to new salerooms on the corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue - formerly the home of the respected Dahesh Museum. The inaugural sale featured 20th century furniture and decorative arts. By 2007 Bonhams sales totalled US $600million. In 2009 Bonhams announced that it has taken market leadership in ten key areas of the UK art market for the first time. The company now dominates the following specialist areas in the UK: Antiquities, Arms & Armour, Design Prior to 1945, Ceramics, Clocks, Glass, Jewellery, Japanese Art, Miniatures and Watches. During 2009 these departments all sold more by value in the UK than any competing auction house. With Christie's, Bonhams is a shareholder in the London-based Art Loss Register, a privately-owned database used by law enforcement services worldwide to trace and recover stolen art. Visit the auction house's website at ... http://www.bonhams.com

Rob Pruitt's Monument to the Father of Pop Art ~ Andy Warhol Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:15 PM PDT NEW YORK, N.Y.- Public Art Fund presents Rob Pruitt's The Andy Monument, until October 2, 2011, at the northwest corner of Union Square. The monument to Andy Warhol, the father of Pop Art and one of New York's enduring cultural icons is installed just outside the building that housed Warhol's "Factory" for more than ten years in the 1970s and early 1980s, and just down the street from an earlier "Factory" site. Adapting the visual language of formal statuary, like the nearby monuments to Gandhi, Lincoln, and Washington, the seven-foot-tall figure stands atop a concrete pedestal, its chromed surface reflecting the surrounding neighborhood where Warhol worked for much of his life: Max's Kansas City—a favorite Warhol hangout—once stood nearby, Interview magazine was launched in the neighborhood, and Valerie Solanas attempted her assassination of Warhol there.

The Taubman Museum of Art features Devorah Sperber & Chris Doyle Exhibitions Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:14 PM PDT ROANOKE, VA.- The Taubman Museum of Art just opened will open three new exciting exhibitions on March 20 and will offer a full schedule of exhibition-related programs. "These new and exciting exhibitions of the work of Devorah Sperber, Chris Doyle, and the regional instrument makers, all organized by the museum, are part of our on-going strategy to engage the various segments of our growing community," said David Brown, director of art for the Taubman Museum of Art.

The Alan Klotz Gallery To Show Harvey Stein's Coney Island Photographs Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:13 PM PDT New York City.- The Alan Klotz Gallery is pleased to present "Harvey Stein: Coney Island 40 Years", an exhibition of Harvey Setein's photographs of Coney Island from 1970 to 2010, This exhibit coincides with the publication of "Coney Island 40 Years" (published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd). Harvey Stein has been a fixture on the New York photo scene for many years. He has photographed the city from every angle with every kind of camera, at every time of day and night.  Beyond these shores he has led photographic seminars and workshops all over the world. He's gone everywhere, and for the last 40 years he's been going to Coney Island, where New York City flows into the Atlantic Ocean at the end of Ocean Avenue, in Brooklyn. There is a particularly Brooklyn flavor to Coney Island, and it's not just the Nathan's hot dogs or the cloyingly sweet smell of cotton candy mixed in with the salt air, it's the beckoning path of the boardwalk, the signature architectural landmarks of the parachute jump, the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone, but mostly it's the people who go there. They are the old Brooklyn Middle Class, and yet they are different from the crowds at The Rockaways, just to the south and east, or even to the Ukrainians and Russians who have annexed Brighton Beach right next door, little Odessa, as it is now called. They have an attitude which is about themselves, and how they identify and display themselves, but it's also about the character of the place where they have chosen to go to play out their small exuberant public performances.  Make no mistake about it, Coney Island is a theater, always was, and there is no shortage of actors here. And that's where Harvey Stein comes in. "Harvey Stein: Coney Island 40 Years" is on view at the gallery from July 7th through August 19th. Harvey is an affable guy who likes to hang around the edges of the action, he views things with a wry eye and a knowing smile, although he often just waltzes in and becomes part of the dance. That's when he's at his best, when he sees things from no remove at all. His just published book, "Coney Island 40 Years", published by Schiffer is the reason for this show (there will be a book signing at the opening on July 7th from 6-8 pm). Although Harvey has done another Coney Island book in color, this one is in gritty black and white, which contributes to the nostalgic feeling for the past, that is informing the present, while it rapidly becomes the future.  Harvey was around for a lot of transitions, starting at the end of Coney Island's post-war Golden Era, to it's slide into seediness, and now it's renaissance at the hands of the moneyed developers, into what is sure to be reminiscent of Times Square's Disneyfication. Stein shows us that there is a Coney Island continuity that maintains itself through all this, that the place is greater than the forces molding it. It's denizens are the ones projecting its aura, not the sanitizing marketing of the developers. Harvey Stein is seconding that motion in every picture he takes. The Alan Klotz Gallery (formerly Photocollect, Inc.) have been dealers in fine 19th and 20th century vintage photography and emerging contemporary work for the past 25 years. During that time they have sold many important photographs to the finest museums and private collections from New York to Tokyo, Sydney and Hong Kong. The Alan Klotz Gallery is a member of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. They attend all the major trade shows and travel extensively to buy as well as to sell. At home they hold Collector's Seminars to attract and encourage new collectors. They also act as auction purchasing consultants and agents. Alan Klotz definitely comes to photography from the academic side. He has an MFA in photography with a concentration in museum practice from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. While there he studied primarily with Nathan Lyons the Workshop's director, and the late Beaumont Newhall, the preeminent photographic historian, and the then director of the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House. Mr. Klotz was an intern at the Eastman House where he worked with the Alvin Langdon Coburn Estate. He studied printmaking and bookmaking with Joan Lyons and took workshops with such notables as Robert Frank, Frederick Sommer and Dave Heath. While in Rochester he also worked for channel 21 (PBS Rochester) as a cultural reporter and critic and produced a documentary film on dissent in the Soviet Union which aired in several PBS venues. His teaching career spans 25 years beginning in Rochester where he taught history and criticism at the Rochester Institute of Technology and supervised the graduate photography gallery. Since then he has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, the ICP/NYU program, and at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He has lectured extensively here and abroad and has written numerous articles, reviews and book essays on photography. He began Photocollect gallery in 1977 and divides his time between New York City and Stone Ridge, NY. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.photocollect.com

Pope Benedict Meets Artists from Around the World in the Sistine Chapel Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:12 PM PDT VATICAN CITY (REUTERS).- Pope Benedict met artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged them to inject spirituality into their work, saying contemporary beauty was often "illusory and deceitful." The Pope told the gathering of hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and directors, held beneath the vaulted ceiling of the chapel painted by Michelangelo, that he wanted to "renew the Church's friendship with the world of art." Against the backdrop of Michelangelo's vast fresco of the Last Judgment, which adorns the chapel's altar wall, Benedict lamented that the once-close cooperation between the Church and the artistic community had weakened.

The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows Works by Markus Schinwald Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:11 PM PDT Linz, Austria.- The Lentos Museum of Modern Art is pleased to show "Markus Schinwald", on view  through February 12th 2012. Markus Schinwald is one of the most internationally acclaimed artists of his generation. In 2011 – almost at the same time as the major solo exhibition in LENTOS Kunstmuseum – he is presented at the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The graduate from the Linz Art University creates fascinating, highly independent work that makes masterly use of all contemporary artistic media and formats. Sculpture and the staging of spaces, film, photography, painting and reproduction techniques are used to trace out an artistic framework interest in manifold ways: the human body as a cultural construct between self-presentation and disciplining, convention, correction, neurotic ticks and unsuspected grace. Deformations of the psyche find disconcerting physical correspondences. Influences from art history and consumer culture, from critical theory, film history and contemporary TV, choreography, stage set and the world of cabaret come into view: sensual, humorous, intelligent unmistakable.

Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt Celebrates 25th Anniversary With An Exhibition of "Surreal Objects ~ Three Dimensional Works From Dali to Man Ray" Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:10 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germany -  "Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an autopsy table" – this famous description by the poet Comte de Lautréamont captures a central dimension of Surrealist art theory. The interplay of opposites and the shift of reality that hints at the unconscious and dreamlike particularly manifest themselves in the Surrealists' strange and bizarre objects and sculptures. On the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary, the Schirn presents an exhibition that focuses exclusively on the Surrealists' three-dimensional production which has never been on display in its full range before. Comprising about 180 works by 51 artists, the show with its international loans, on exhibit from February 11 until May 29, 2011, will include items by both very popular artists like Duchamp, Magritte, Dalí, Picasso, and Man Ray, and many others whose astounding and fascinating achievements still wait to be discovered by a wider public. Many of the three-dimensional works from the Surrealist period from 1925 to 1945 do not strike us as historical at all today, but rather present themselves as surprisingly fresh and contemporary. The exhibition is sponsored by the Société Générale. Additional support comes from the Georg und Franziska Speyer'sche Hochschulstiftung. The common ground of Surrealist objects is not to be found in their provenance, the artists' working methods, or the materials used, but rather in their psychological impact, the amazement they cause, the shock and change of mind they are meant to trigger. "Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life," states André Breton in his "First Manifesto of Surrealism" (1924). Influenced by Sigmund Freud's theories, the Surrealists strove to bring forgotten and suppressed things to light and to integrate them into art and life. The exhibition opens with several objects from the preceding Dada movement, which anticipated the Surrealists' approach both in regard to their exhibition practices and the understanding of objects. Both movements were intensely concerned with what an art object might actually be. Though "Der wildgewordene Spießer Heartfield" (The middle-class Philistine Heartfield gone wild) by George Grosz and John Heartfield articulates a far more direct political critique than the Surrealists' generally ironic and poetic objects, its combination of completely disparate things makes it an immediate precursor of Surrealist object art. The Surrealists' penchant for the deliberately non-artistic, for the everyday world, for trite, borderline, forgotten, repressed, sordid, and remote things made not only artists, but also poets and writers browse the flea markets of Paris in search of suitable finds from the 1930s on. Such acts of "objective chance" resulted in the production of a great number of objects combined of violins, bottles, clocks, cutlery, and other elements of the world of consumerism. A landmark exhibition in the Ratton Gallery in Paris in 1936 was the first show presenting nothing but objects. It comprised things found and worked on, pieces made from a variety of materials, which we would refer to as assemblages today. Yet considering the plaster sculptures by Max Ernst or Alberto Giacometti presented in the Ratton Gallery show, there can be no doubt that the Surrealists' idea of an object was a very wide one and also included sculptures. Giacometti was the first artist who explicitly spoke of his works as objects and thus detached himself from the term "sculpture." Objects always played a crucial role in Surrealist exhibitions from the 1930s to Breton's death in 1966 when it came to blurring the boundaries between place of exhibition and place of experience, to leaving the observer in the dark about whether the thing he was confronted with three-dimensionally and physically was a work of art or something to be used, touched, or changed. The negation of traditional aesthetics set in train a process from which the arts still benefit today. This process provided the basic framework for present-day strategies in the arts, as it were. The exhibition in the Schirn will also for the first time investigate the role of objects in numerous Surrealist group exhibitions like especially the famous "Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme" in 1938, for which sixteen artists contributed a mannequin each. Photographically documented by Raoul Ubac and Denise Bellon, the mannequins evidence the Surrealists' passion for the iconography of puppets and reflect the pleasure in the sexualization of bodies through their methods like combinatorics, disguise, and disclosure. In addition, the Schirn also highlights less known actions like the "Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme" (EROS) in 1959. While Marcel Duchamp conceived a blanket that rose and fell with the rhythm of breath for EROS, Meret Oppenheim created her famous banquet on a mannequin's nude body. The great variety of objects as to their material, origin, treatment, and contents also confirms that it is impossible to define a Surrealist style and that the group of artists may rather be described as a circle of friends and kindred spirits with Breton as their theoretical head. The objects address numerous dimensions of the body and, thus, a central theme of Surrealism interpreted in many different contexts. Hans Bellmer's puppets are probably one of the best known examples for the fetishization of the object. Mimi Parent's whip object "Maitresse" made from women's hair and leather or Valentine Hugo's red leather glove "Objet à fonctionnement symbolique" (1931) exemplify the Surrealists' examination of Marquis de Sade's writings. While Ángel Ferrant's machine woman "Maniquí" (1946) thematizes the idea of a mechanized body, Dalí's "Venus de Milo with Drawers" (1936/1964) is clearly indebted to the classical style. Beyond that, black humor, irony, and wit, which always plays with cultural and philosophical contexts, are of essential importance for the Surrealists and particularly their object art. Numerous objects have an everyday origin and were worked on and transformed until their meaning changed into something strange. The Surrealists' objects are not only the result of the application of all principles central to the movement's theory, such as defamiliarization, combinatorics, and metamorphosis. They also pose new questions still reverberating in contemporary art. Until now, art-historical research has never reserved more than a short chapter for these objects, because Surrealist art was mainly seen as comprised of prose, poetry, collages, and paintings. This is why the Schirn regards its exhibition as more than a contribution to the study of Surrealism: the show clearly widens our view of one of the most important chapters of Modernism. In its twenty-five years of existence, the Schirn has repeatedly concentrated its endeavors on Surrealist art. 1989 saw the presentation of the major survey "The Surrealists." In the following year, the exhibition "The Word-Image in Dada and Surrealism" thematized the famous word-images' originality and variety of meanings. Monographic presentations dedicated to Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray, and René Magritte followed. With its comprehensive anniversary exhibition "Surreal Objects," the Schirn presents a further show in this series, which underscores the outstanding significance of three-dimensional works for this art movement for the first time. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is one of Germany's most renowned exhibition institutions. Since its founding in 1986, the Schirn has mounted approximately 180 exhibitions, including major survey shows devoted to the Vienna Jugendstil, Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism, to women Impressionists, to subjects such as "shopping—a century of art and consumer culture," the visual art of the Stalin era, new Romanticism in contemporary art, and the influence of Charles Darwin's theories on the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Visit the gallery's website at: http://www.schirn.de/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News Posted: 07 Jun 2012 08:09 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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