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

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• Phillips de Pury & Company in London will feature Contemporary Art Auctions June 21-28
• The Schirn Kunsthalle and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung to highlight Jeff Koons as Painter & Sculptor
• The Oklahoma City Museum of Art shows "FUSION ~ A New Century of Glass"
• The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek presents New Display of French Paintings
• The Georgia Museum of Art Presents a Dale Nichols Retrospective
• Martin Lawrence Gallery exhibition marks the 25th Anniversary of Warhol's death
• The Singapore Tyler Print Insitute Showcases BMW Young Asian Artists
• Pablo Picasso's Original Vollard Prints on View at LewAllen Modern
• "Babar the Elephant" Is Coming to The Tyler Museum of Art
• Yves Saint Laurent retrospective comes to the Denver Art Museum
• The William J. Dane Fine Print Collection at the Newark Public Library
• The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Presents "The Impressionist Revolution"
• "Louvre Atlanta" Partnership Brings in Over 1.3 Million Visitors to the High Museum of Art
• Hood Museum of Art presents a Comprehensive Display of European Art at Dartmouth
• Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) opens First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria
• The Milwaukee Art Museum presents The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs
• The Kunsthaus Zürich presents Albert Welti ~ Landscapes in Pastel
• This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Phillips de Pury & Company in London will feature Contemporary Art Auctions June 21-28 Posted: 13 Jun 2012 10:16 PM PDT London.- Phillips de Pury & Company is pleased to announce the highlights from its London Contemporary Art auctions which will feature 278 lots with a combined pre-sale low estimate of £21,236,000 and a pre-sale high estimate of £29,883,000. Lots will be available to view at Phillips de Pury in Howick Place from June 21st through June 28th, before being auctioned at the evening sale on June 28th and the day sale the following day. Highlights of the Evening sale  include Jean-Michel Basquiat's, "Irony of Negro Policeman", 1981, estimated at £6,000,000–8,000,000. In the majestic Irony of Negro Policeman from the pivotal year of 1981, Jean-Michel Basquiat expounds upon the most important theme in his oeuvre, the issue which underlines his entire artistic premise: race. As an artist of mixed racial origin, the plight of black people in America fascinated Basquiat throughout his tragically short but highly prolific career. Whether in dealing with sports stars, musicians or himself, Basquiat constantly placed the black figure at the centre his artistic dialogue. His figures are heralded, commemorated and honoured as kings, heroes and martyrs valiantly battling against the odds to overcome the cynical oppression of the white man and his oppressive establishment. In this work Basquiat brilliantly depicts man at his primal core with all of his complexities, paradoxes and inner most demons laid bare for the world to see. Other highlights from the evening sale include, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat's, "Olympics", 1984, estimated at £2,000,000–3,000,000. In the summer of 1984 with Los Angeles hosting the games of the XXIII Olympiad, Warhol and Basquiat appropriated the emblematic Olympic rings as the underlying motif for several of their collaborative efforts. Andy Warhol's, "Diamond dust shoes", 1980, estimated at £1,000,000–1,500,000, belongs to an iconic series of works by Andy Warhol that epitomise his fascination for glamour and celebrity. Andy Warhol's, "Princess Diana", 1982, estimated at £900,000–1,200,000 is instantaneously recognizable as both a product of Andy Warhol's artistic output and a portrayal of one of the most iconic women of the twentieth century, The painting was executed in 1982 shortly after the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles, though the source, the couple's official engagement photograph, was taken by Lord Snowdon the previous year. Andy Warhol's, "Gun", 1981–82, estimated at £600,000–800,000 is a double image silkscreen of a .22 calibre handgun, the same style of deadly revolver that nearly ended Warhol's life. Richard Prince's, Untitled (cowboys), 1986, estimated at £500,000–700,000 comes from the Cowboy series, which appropriated images directly from the glossy, high aesthetic Marlboro cigarette mid-1950s advertisements. Glenn Brown's, Kinder Transport, 1999, estimated at £500,000–700,000 is typical of Glenn Brown's paintings, being full of contradictions; comically subversive, attractive yet repulsive, the big brushmarks as impenetrable as the photographic like sheen that disguises the layers of paint. Brown's paintings seem timeless, borrowing from a variety of genres and epochs from Old Master to Gothic, Surrealism to science fiction and reworking these themes into his own unique contemporary language. Kinder Transport, from 1999, is the second within a series of seven portraits Brown executed. He was inspired by a reproduction of a 1973 Frank Auerbach painting, J.Y.M. The subject, Julia Yardley Mills, modelled for Auerbach from the 60s until 1997. Brown's seven different paintings differentiate themselves through their different shades of colour and backdrop. Here, with no background to distract us from, the focus stays on the figure. The figure's mouth just a blue slit, her chin up sideways, her gaze, a mixture of defiance and sorrow. The light liquid smoothness translates the metamorphosis of the figure surrounded by a darker purple halo. Brown's source looks familiar, recognisable under the layers but subverted into its own personality, highlighting the interplay of the familiar and the unknown. Other works to be sold include Rudolf Stingel's "Untitled" from 2007 (estimated at £500,000–700,000), Anselm Kiefer's, Die Woge (The Wave), 1995 (estimated at £350,000–450,000) and Sherrie Levine's, "Dada" from 2008 (estimated at £250,000–350,000). The Day auction will comprise of 248 lots with a low estimate of £5,811,000 and a high estimate of £8,248,000. Highlights of the Contemporary Day auction include; Matias Faldbakken, "Untitled (Canvas #01)", 2007, estimated at £10,000–15,000. The Oslo-based artist explores the languages of underground cultures, extremism and vandalism through his highly eclectic work. Using fine art, the artist merges the concepts of the normative and the rebellious. In the present lot, Faldbakken employs the most conventional medium – canvas – but uses abstracted, barely decipherable letters as the subject of the painting, showing a conceptual debt to anti-establishment movements such as Dada and punk. Believing that contemporary art is not the tool with which to dictate moral or political views, Faldbakken does not wish to impose his ideas on the spectator: "I use my art as a tool [for] doing silent, negativistic gestures without any intention of convincing, impressing or communicating with an audience". Robert Longo's, "Black Revolver", 2008 estimated at £100,000–150,000 possesses a three dimensional quality, as if sculptured out of the paper's surface. To create this effect, Longo initially rubbed a heavy layer of charcoal into the paper by hand, producing a dense, velvety surface. He then applied, with a brush, charcoal powder of difference densities. Finally, with the erasers, Longo carved out the image leaving behind the white, untouched surface of the paper. The chiaroscuro formed by the deep, velvet blackness and the intense glow of the highlights bestows physicality to the image, maintaining a directness and tactility to the work. By drawing these images on such a monumental scale, Longo elevates the medium to the status of painting, whilst exploring the shifts in perceptions such an image can evoke in relation to its environment. The technical precision of the work undermines photographic procedure and reflects Longo's interest in the impact of photography and film; he believes that the world has become photogenic – not merely informed by photography and film but adjusted to them. Additional highlights include: George Condo's "Mental States (The Women of Tisbury Court)", 2000, estimated at £100,000–150,000; Carsten Höller's, "Dandelion" 1995, estimated at £60,000–80,000; Yayoi Kusama's "Heart", 1999, estimated at £60,000–80,000; and Tomas Saraceno's, "SE 60 Flying Garden", 2006, estimated at £10,000–15,000. Phillips was founded in London in 1796 by Harry Phillips, formerly senior clerk to James Christie. During his first year of business, Phillips conducted twelve successful auctions and soon the business was holding sales for some of the most distinguished collectors of the day including Marie Antoinette, Beau Brummel and Napoleon Bonaparte. To win business, Phillips combined business acumen with a flair for showmanship, introducing new ways to promote his sales such as elaborate evening receptions before auctions - an essential part of the auction business today. Phillips quickly gained the confidence of British society and remains the only auction house ever to have held a sale inside Buckingham Palace. When he died in 1840, Harry Phillips' son, William Augustus, inherited a strong and successful legacy and business. In 1879, William changed the firm's name to Messrs Phillips & Son.  In1882, William brought his son-in-law, Frederick Neale into the business, the company was renamed again as Phillips, Son & Neale. This name remained through the 1970s, when the company became Phillips. The company had a reputation for strong regional salerooms dotted throughout the British Isles, selling everything from furniture to art and estates. In 1999, the company was bought by Bernard Arnault, the chairman of the French luxury-goods brand, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH). Shortly after the transaction, Mr. Arnault merged with the esteemed private art dealers, Simon de Pury and Daniela Luxembourg who were operating the Impressionist and Modern art gallery, de Pury & Luxembourg in Zurich. The new team at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg with headquarters on East 57th street held sales in Impressionist, American and Modern works of art in addition to watches and jewelry and design. In 2002, de Pury & Luxembourg took majority control of the company and in 2003, Simon de Pury moved the headquarters to the Meatpacking District in Chelsea, which at the time was just beginning to sprout as an international art district. With a new remit to focus solely on the sale of the best works of Contemporary Art, Design, Jewelry, Photography, and Editions, Phillips de Pury & Company began business in a spectacular and spacious gallery setting on 15th Street, overlooking the celebrated Highline and The Hudson River. It is in this space today where Simon de Pury, his partners, and team of specialists are dedicated to the company's unique approach to the auction market. In October 2008, Mercury Group, the Russian luxury retail company, acquired majority share of Phillips de Pury & Company to further enable the company's expansion, including the opening of our flagship galleries at 450 Park Avenue. Visit the auction house's website at ... http://phillipsdepury.com

The Schirn Kunsthalle and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung to highlight Jeff Koons as Painter & Sculptor Posted: 13 Jun 2012 09:30 PM PDT Frankfurt, Germant - This Summer the Schirn Kunsthalle and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt will be devoted to the work of the American artist Jeff Koons (born 1955), who has played a pioneering role in the contemporary art world since the 1980's. The two concurrent exhibitions will deliberately separate the painterly and sculptural aspects of his oeuvre and present each in a context of its own.  Comprising some forty paintings, "Jeff Koons. The Painter" at the Schirn will focus primarily on the artist's structural development as a painter.  With motifs drawn from a diverse range of high and pop-cultural sources, his monumental painted works combine hyper-realistic and gestural elements to form complexes as compact in imagery as they are with regard to content. "Jeff Koons. The Sculptor" at the Liebieghaus, will present some fifty world-famous and entirely new sculptures which will enter into dialogue with the historical building and a sculpture collection spanning five millennia.  Making its debut in Frankfurt is Jeff Koons's new series Antiquity in which he explores antique art and its central motif – Eros. Both exhibitions open on June 20th and remain on view through September 23rd. Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955.  He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is today one of the world's most prominent contemporary artists.  His works are to be found at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and elsewhere.  They have moreover been featured internationally in numerous solo exhibitions.  He has been awarded many distinctions for his art, and his sculptures in the public realm, such as the monumental flower sculpture Puppy (1992), have attained far-reaching popularity. In his paintings and sculptures, Jeff Koons employs elements from the consumer world and "high culture" alike, quotes artistic epochs as readily as he does objects from everyday life and advertising, and thus draws our attention again and again to such categories as beauty and desirability.  Within this context, he has become an unequalled master of the interplay between the sublime and the banal. Although his works quote familiar motifs from the consumer context, it is not for the sake of kitsch and irony.  In an interview he commented: "I work with things that are sometimes referred to as kitsch, even if kitsch per se has never interested me.  I always try to convey self-confidence, a certain inner sense of security, to the viewer.  My chief concern in my work is the viewer."  Koons is interested "not in the complexity, but in the simplicity of being" and its acceptance.  This aspect finds expression in his oeuvre in elementary themes such as childhood or sexuality.  Contrary to the long tradition of subjectivity in art, however, Koons constantly emphasizes artistic objectivity, working in the tradition of the "ready-made".  Both his sculptures and his paintings have a particularly evocative and striking effect on the viewer through their exquisite craftsmanship and the lure of their surfaces.  The exhibition "Jeff Koons. The Painter" at the Schirn, which will occupy virtually all the gallery's exhibition space, will be the first ever to offer a comprehensive overview of the artist's painterly work, from the early machine paintings of the Luxury & Degradation series and the Made in Heaven works to the large-scale hand-painted work of the Celebration, Easyfun, Easyfun-Ethereal, Popeye, Hulk Elvis and the new Antiquity series.  The quotations from everyday life and various art-historical as well as general-historical epochs which Koons interweaves in his paintings are free-floating compositional elements assigned a modulatory or repetitive function.  With the aid of image-editing computer programmes, he succeeds in superimposing many layers and creating a whole without a centre.  By means of analytical attention to detail, he dissolves the pictorial composition which has thus evolved into a spectrum of multiply differentiated colours, only to have them then painstakingly transferred to canvas. Cool, mechanical, and absolute perfection are the qualities that characterize these paintings which – even though they have been painted by hand – follow a clearly defined route.  In the Made in Heaven series of 1989-91 that show the artist having sex with the Hungarian-Italian adult film actress and politician Cicciolina (Ilona Staller), who would later become his wife, the sculptures and paintings still differ distinctly with regard to motif.  The mingling of the two media began in the context of Celebration, a series developed from 1994 onwards.  A heart, a piece of cake or a children's birthday party hat, placed on shiny, colourful gift-wrapping paper, stands out three-dimensionally while at the same time merging with the foil reflecting it, its background.  In the two consecutive series Easyfun (1999-2000) and Easyfun-Ethereal (2000-02) – collages of body parts, food, landscapes, everyday objects, quotations from past art, etc. – foregrounds and backgrounds, centres and edges are virtually no longer distinguishable from one another.  With them, Koons attains a simultaneity and hybridity which virtually defy decipherment.  On the other hand, in his more recent series Antiquity, he draws on the bountiful repertoire of antique art and combines it with his own iconography. The Schirn exhibition will bring the quotations as well as the thematic and compositional development of Jeff Koons's painting oeuvre to the fore.  What is more, throughout the 140 metres of the gallery's length, the paintings will create a virtually magnetic force that – far from keeping the viewer at arm's length – will ply him with universally understandable pictorial worlds. In the exhibition Jeff Koons. The Sculptor at the Liebieghaus, the artist's sculptures will be integrated into the museum's own collection, which mirrors the history of sculpture from antiquity to Neoclassicism.  In close cooperation with the artist, one of his numerous and often iconic sculptural works will be introduced to each of the Liebieghaus's various sections, causing a range of widely different dialogues to ensue.  The entire Liebieghaus ensemble – the richly detailed historicist villa, the gallery buildings and the large, fairy-tale-castle-like garden – will together present the sculptures by Jeff Koons as if on a single big stage. In various galleries, the presence of the Koons works will create visual plays in which they will often be discerned only on closer inspection.  In his Statuary series, Koons consistently adheres to the motifs and forms of the European Baroque.  It is left to the idiosyncratic choice of materials alone to trigger a suspenseful encounter between the modern Baroque forms cast in highly polished steel and the historical Baroque portraits in the Frankfurt collection.  Other works, for their part, demonstrate astounding proximity to the historical works as regards material.  In those cases, however, it is the motifs that will contrast strongly, for example when the colourfully glazed terracotta altarpiece by Andrea della Robbia is juxtaposed with the polychrome porcelain figure of a Woman in Tub (from the Banality series).  In another room, Koons's famous porcelain sculpture of pop idol Michael Jackson, showing him in a golden suit with his monkey Bubbles, will bask in the wide-eyed gazes of the partially gilded Egyptian death masks of Priestess Takait and the gods of the Egyptian pantheon.  The chief focus of the encounter between Koons and the history of sculpture so uniquely represented by the Liebieghaus will be the matter of the "migration of images" – Koons's quotations and borrowings from past art-historical epochs.  The story of Eros in his original Greek significance – above all in the pictorial context of Aphrodite, the goddess of love – will provide the leitmotif that links famous Jeff Koons works with masterpieces of antiquity.  The affinity will perhaps be most evident in works from Koons's most recent series, entitled Antiquity, which has not been shown to the public before.  These creations make direct reference to grandiose sculptures of Greek antiquity conjuring up the world of Dionysus and the goddess of love.  At the same time, they illustrate the degree to which Koons translates antique traditions into modern forms – and proposes a modern approach to grasping their meaning in the process.

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art shows "FUSION ~ A New Century of Glass" Posted: 13 Jun 2012 09:05 PM PDT Oklahoma City.- Organized by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, "FUSION [A New Century of Glass]", on view from June 14th through September 9th will feature 47 works from the twenty-first century that embrace the diversity and depth of the human experience. This profound and thought-provoking exhibition will include examples by 20 contemporary artists working nationally and internationally who have engaged the medium of glass as part of their artistic practice. The objects reflect a range of subject matter and style and relate to concerns of the present day. Artists explore themes of social isolationism, paranoia, the passage of time, and also address the impact of technology on humanity and the environment, while exploring the dichotomy of utopian ideals and the realities of modern daily existence. The safety and sacredness of the home, family life, gender roles, and interpersonal relationships are also questioned. Artists offer a new context for historical models and art forms, contrasting the inherent beauty and intrigue of glass with the artists' introspective and personal approaches to the medium. The exhibition is curated by the Museum's Curator for Collections Alison Amick and Associate Curator Jennifer Klos. The exhibition celebrates the Museum's 10th anniversary in downtown Oklahoma City and is for exclusive presentation at the Museum. Key works include Andrew Erdos' Texture of a Ghost (2011), a 6 x 8 foot room featuring hand-blown glass sculptures and a video installation; Josiah McElheny's Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction (I) (2004); Luke Jerram's E. coli (2010), which explores the tension between scientific objectivity and cultural perceptions of viruses, diseases, and bacteria; twelve snow globes by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz from the Travelers series; three stained glass light boxes by Judith Schaechter; and a recent body of work by Czech Republic-based artist Karen LaMonte that highlights the role of the kimono in Japanese culture. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Beth Lipman's monumental sculpture, Bride (2010), a ten-foot, five-tiered dessert stand featuring handmade glass objects that rise, overflow, and then spill on the floor. The Oklahoma City Museum of Art has a long tradition of collecting and exhibiting glass. In 2002, the museum inaugurated the Donald W. Reynolds Visual Arts Center with an exhibition of glass and drawings by Dale Chihuly. Bolstered by enormous public support, the Museum purchased the exhibition in June of 2004, which included works from Chihuly's best-known series, in addition to drawings, and was anchored by the 55-foot Eleanor Blake Kirkpatrick Memorial Tower in the Museum's atrium. Since, the collection has grown to include gifts to the Museum by the artist. Today, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Chihuly glass in the world. Dale Chihuly's well-grounded academic and practical background includes a B.A. in interior design from the University of Washington, a M.S. in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a M.F.A. in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and honorary doctorates from the University of Puget Sound and the Rhode Island School of Design. He also was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant for work in glass and studied at Italy's prestigious Venini glass factory on a Fulbright Fellowship. Chihuly's work is included in over 200 museum collections, including the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and he has received world renown for his extensive glass series, international projects, and large architectural installations such as the Museum's Eleanor Blake Kirkpatrick Memorial Tower. The Museum's collection represents over three decades of Chihuly's finest work and heralds this brilliant luminist as the most important artist working in glass since Louis Comfort Tiffany. Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art serves over 125,000 visitors annually from all fifty states and over thirty foreign countries and hosts special exhibitions drawn from throughout the world. The Museum's collection covers a period of five centuries with strengths in American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and includes a comprehensive collection of glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. The Museum's collection of American art includes paintings and sculptures by artists from the colonial era through 1960. Highlights include works by Hans Hofmann, Thomas Moran, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Willson Peale. The collection includes twenty-eight works donated by the Works Progress Administration in 1942. This gift formed the core collection of the Oklahoma Art Center, the predecessor of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The American Art collection includes numerous examples by artists who were active in Oklahoma, such as Oscar Brousse Jacobson, Doel Reed, Nellie Shepherd, and Nan Sheets. Also represented are later examples by artists such as Isabel Bishop, Jack Levine, and Moses Soyer, who came to prominence during the interwar decades. The European art collection contains examples from the Baroque-era through the early twentieth-century. Highlights of the European art collection include English genre painting of the nineteenth-century as well as examples of French post-Impressionistic painting from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Key artists in the European art collection are Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Gustave Courbet, André Derain, Francis Hayman, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Paintings and sculptures created from 1945 to the present include works by Alexander Calder, Don Eddy, Eric Fischl, Ellsworth Kelly, Alfonso Ossorio, and Philip Pearlstein. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.okcmoa.com

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek presents New Display of French Paintings Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:33 PM PDT Copenhagen, Denmark.- This Summer, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen offers visitors world-famous classics of art. Friday 15th June sees the opening of a new display of the Glyptotek's collection of French painting, which contains Northern Europe's finest Impressionist collection. The Glyptotek's collection of French paintings is a sequence of masterpieces. Throughout the summer visitors can experience some 150 works, a cornucopia, including work by such great masters as Claude Monet , Paul Cézanne , Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin . The new arrangement invites one to take a pleasurable stroll through one of the most radical and visionary periods in the history of painting – the years from 1850 up to the beginning of the 20th century. Eugène Delacroix , Jacques-Louis David and  Édouard Manet played crucial roles in the development of French painting in the first half of the 19th century. The Glyptotek owns a number of major works from this period. Here you can see works by artists as mutually different as Jean-Francois Millet , Henri Rousseau , Honoré Daumier , Gustave Courbet and J ean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – each one important in the story of art before it became "modern". In the first half of the 19th century, painting can be divided into two major currents: a Neo-Classical tradition with strict lines and meticulous draughtsmanship (Jacques-Louis David) – and an expressive "Romantic" use of colour (Eugène Delacroix). Three pictures by Manet demonstrate his unique way of depicting his contemporaries and their actions. Daumier's caricatures of politicians are a commentary on the period's political unrest and its frequently dramatic effects on society. Several artistic tendencies emerged in parallel in the search for a new way of looking at the world and representing it in paint: Naturalism, the Barbizon School and Realism. In the course of the 1860s these trends helped to shape the development of Impressionism. The Glyptotek holds Scandinavia's largest collection of French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, which numbers such works as "Shadows on the Sea" by Claude Monet, "Landscape from Saint-Rémy" by Vincent van Gogh, "Tahitian Woman with a Flower" by Paul Gauguin, "Toilette after the Bath" by Edgar Degas and "The Absinthe Drinker" by Édouard Manet . Also featured is a selection of works of French sculpture from the same period, most notably the Glyptotek's collection of sculptures by Edgar Degas – one of only four complete sets in the world. This collection owes its existence primarily to Helge Jacobsen, who took over its direction from the founder of the museum, his father, Carl Jacobsen, in 1914. French Impressionism is an important part of the developmental history of painting, towards an individual, sensuous expression. The Impressionists were a loosely associated group of artists who were united in their desire to change the practical and aesthetic terms of painting. Like the authors of the period, Baudelaire, Flaubert and Zola, they wanted to show contemporary life and culture rather than historical or mythological subjects. They were the first artists to exhibit independently of the official Paris Salon. The Glyptotek displays a wide range of major works, from Monet's atmospheric landscapes to Degas' dancing girls – and the bustle of Parisian boulevards in the work of Camille Pissarro and  Pierre-Auguste Renoir . Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne belong to the generation which came after the Impressionists. Impressionism had paved the way for utterly new ways of painting, and the period 1885-1900 was that of artistic experiment. The desire to try something new, both in the choice of motifs and technique, as well as in combination of colours, brought about the emergence of several different artistic trends. These artists were not bound by academic norms, but decided their own premises for their painting. There was no longer a single predominant style, dictated by salons and academies of art, but several different approaches to painting. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek mseum was founded by the brewer Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914) who created one of the largest private art collections of his time. It was named after his brewery, Ny Carlsberg, with the addition of "Glyptotek", meaning collection of sculpture. Jacobsen was interested in contemporary French and Danish art, as well as ancient art from the cultures surrounding the Mediterranean. To secure the future of the collection, Carl Jacobsen and his wife Ottilia donated it to the public in two deeds of gift from 1888 and 1899. The Museum's buildings were created to house these works of art. "With a beauty all its own", Carl Jacobsen wrote about his museum on Dantes Plads. This quote still carries weight at the Glyptotek, where the staff see it as their most cherished duty to maintain, develop and strengthen the museum's particular profile as an art collection, an architectural monument and a cultural institute. Today, the museum houses the largest collection of ancient art in Northern Europe, primarily sculpture, from Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Italy. The main focus of the French Collection is 19th century French painting and sculpture. The painting collection contains works by such painters as Jacques-Louis David and Édouard Manet, as well as a large collection of Impressionist painters such as Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard. The single painter represented with most paintings is Paul Gauguin with more than 40 works. The museum also holds a large collection of French 19th century sculpture by artists such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Rodin, the Rodin collection being one of the largest in the world, as well as a complete collection of Degas' bronze sculptures. The Danish Collection contains a large collection of Danish Golden Age paintings by painters such as Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Christen Købke and Johan Lundbye. It also contains the largest representation of Danish Golden Age Sculpture in the country. The European Collection comprises works from the 18th to the 20th century. Represented sculptors include Neoclassicists such as Antonio Canova, Johan Tobias Sergel, Asmus Jacob Carstens, John Flaxman, Christian Daniel Rauch and Edward Hodges Baily, as well as Modernists like Constantin Meunier, Julius Klinger, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti . The collection also comprises a small collection of Modern paintings of artists such as Jean Arp , Max Ernst , Joan Miró , Serge Poliakoff and Gilioli. The unique surroundings with the Winter Garden, the Larsen Building for the Collection of French painting (inaugurated in 1996) and the Café each create a beautiful frame for the enjoyment of art and culture of a high standard. Since 1996 the Glyptotek has received approximately 350,000 visitors per year, making it one of the most popular art museums in Denmark. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.glyptoteket.dk

The Georgia Museum of Art Presents a Dale Nichols Retrospective Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:17 PM PDT Athens, Georgia.- The Georgia Museum of Art is proud to present "Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism" on view through February 27th 2012. Organized by the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art in David City, Nebraska, this retrospective exhibition presents Nebraska native Dale Nichols' nostalgic images of rural America. Paintings dating from 1935 to 1972 establish Nichols not only as a regionalist in the company of such great artists as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, but one who transcended the confines of the genre to achieve universal success. This exhibition represents a recollection of Nichols' years on the farm in Nebraska but manifests those memories in a variety of styles and places. Nichols held firm to his midwestern roots while he traveled the world in search of adventure and truth. Imbued with the inherent problems of isolation, poverty and inequality within American society, Nichols' art references and upholds an American agrarian ideal. Dale Nichols (1904–1995), also published under his full name, Dale William Nichols, was an American visual artist whose works included illustrations, paintings, lithographs, and wood carvings. He is best known for his work as a rural landscape painter. Nichols' work is often classified with that of other regional American landscape artists, including Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Nichols was born on July 13, 1904 in the small town of David City, Nebraska, and began his career as an artist while studying at The Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago. He spent the greater part of the 1920s and 1930s in Chicago, later becoming the Carnegie Professor in Art at the University of Illinois. Nichols would then take a position in 1943 as the Art Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Upon leaving his post at Britannica, Nichols spent the remainder of his life traveling, splitting the majority of his time between Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, and Guatemala. He died in Sedona, Arizona on October 19, 1995, at age 91. In September 1939, Nichols' was featured in Time Magazine. Said one Time reviewer in that issue, "Subjects he prefers are the prairie landscapes of his youth, usually snowed under. These famed smooth snow effects Artist Nichols gets by laying on his oils in a thin film with watercolor brushes." More recently, his art was published on postcards sold by the United States Postal Service in 1995. Three of Nichols' paintings are now listed in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Museum of Nebraska Art features four of his large oil paintings, along with four lithographs, and four sketches. The Georgia Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Georgia, in Athens, is both an academic museum and, since 1982, the official art museum of the state of Georgia. The permanent collection consists of American paintings, primarily 19th- and 20th-century; American, European and Asian works on paper; the Samuel H. Kress Study Collection of Italian Renaissance paintings; and growing collections of southern decorative arts and Asian art. From the time it was opened to the public in 1948 in the basement of an old library on the university's historic North Campus, the museum has grown consistently both in the size of its collection and in the size of its facilities. Today the museum occupies a contemporary building in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex on the university's burgeoning east campus. There, 79,000 square feet house more than 8,000 objects in the museum's permanent collection—a dramatic leap from the core of 100 paintings donated by the museum's founder, Alfred Heber Holbrook.Much of the museum's collection of American paintings was donated by Holbrook in memory of his first wife, Eva Underhill Holbrook. Included in this collection are works by such luminaries as Frank Weston Benson, William Merritt Chase, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Jacob Lawrence and Theodore Robinson. Over the years it has been impossible to separate the history of the museum from the story of Holbrook's generosity. Numerous museum exhibitions have traveled to national and international venues. When "Adriaen van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland's Golden Age" was exhibited at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, the catalogue quickly sold out, becoming a text for the study of 17th-century Dutch printmaking in classrooms across the United States. This exhibition also reflected the importance of prints and drawings in the programming of the museum, which houses one of the finest collections of works on paper in the Southeast. The collection includes Old Master prints, Parisian prints of the 1890s and American prints and drawings of the early 20th century. Exhibitions from international museums such as the National Gallery of Scotland, the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, the Rembrandt House and the San Carlos National Museum in Mexico City have all been displayed in the galleries of the museum over the past decade. The museum also offers traveling exhibitions formed from its permanent collection to other museums and art institutes around Georgia and the Southeast. Since the early 1970s the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, a support group of more than 1,200 members, have hosted fundraisers and openings for exhibitions and have sponsored exhibitions and educational programs at the museum. In April 1996, the Georgia Museum of Art opened a new building on the East Campus of the university as part of the Performing and Visual Arts Complex, which also includes the School of Music, the Performing Arts Center, and, now, the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The new building allowed for larger and more ambitious exhibitions and a new emphasis on professional practices, trends that will continue to hold true in 2011 and beyond. The museum has become a leader, in particular, among university museums, and its educational programs have been the most tangible example of the balance it strives to achieve among state, local, and university audiences as it seeks to fulfill its trifold mission of teaching, research, and service. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.georgiamuseum.org

Martin Lawrence Gallery exhibition marks the 25th Anniversary of Warhol's death Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:16 PM PDT NEW YORK, NY.- Attempting to justify why something is cool belies the word itself. Some things just are: The Rolling Stones, the Corvette Stingray, James Dean, Gibson guitars, Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Cash. Martin Lawrence Gallery presents all of the above in a unique survey of the Pop Art movement, with over 40 works by Andy Warhol (14 of those unique), a large-scale iconic collage by Roy Lichtenstein, original Keith Haring sumi ink drawings and a momentous canvas collaboration by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol, measuring over 14 feet wide. Juxtaposed with this rare, museum quality collection are the tangible embodiments of cool – an extraordinary selection of classic American electric guitars, Johnny Cash's infamous black fringed funeral coat from the Hurt music video, a 1975 candy apple red Corvette, a leather motorcycle jacket hand-painted by Keith Haring, and the famous 1971 custom painted Dodge Challenger Pro Stock racer (Pyscho II).

The Singapore Tyler Print Insitute Showcases BMW Young Asian Artists Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:15 PM PDT Singapore.- The Singapore Tyler Print Institute is proud to present "BMW Young Asian Artists Series III" on view at the institute from November 12th through December 17th. The exhibition features rising stars: Genevieve Chua (Singapore), Lyra Garcellano (Philippines), R.E. Hartanto (Indonesia) led by Chief Curator, Heman Chong (artist from BMW YAAS first series), in collaboration with co-curators, Joselina Cruz and Agung Jenong. Started in 2005, this programme identifies and enables young and promising Asian artists to make their mark. Each artist spent two weeks working alongside STPI's workshop team exploring new ideas and print techniques to create fresh, innovative and cutting-edge works.

Pablo Picasso's Original Vollard Prints on View at LewAllen Modern Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:14 PM PDT Santa Fe, NM.— The LewAllen Modern gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Pablo Picasso: Selections from La Suite Vollard", on view at the gallery's Railyard venue from June 10th through July 24th. This rigorously curated presentation of twenty-three original etchings and aquatints by one of Modernism's greatest agitators draws predominantly from the celebrated La Suite Vollard — a salient element of Picasso's (1881-1973) artistic achievement that is now recognized as one of the finest groups of prints produced in the 20th century. The history of the suite revolves around several key figures in the history of Modern Art. The body of work takes its name from its publisher, Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939), perhaps the most influential Parisian dealer and critic of his time, who had already championed the art of Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Rouault, and Vincent Van Gogh prior to organizing Picasso's inaugural Parisian exhibition in 1901. When Picasso had sought to purchase from Vollard several paintings by Renoir — an artist whom Vollard represented and regarding whom he had published a significant monograph — the dealer had suggested an exchange of these works for one hundred original prints by Picasso. Faithful to his agreement, the artist produced the resulting suite between between 1930 and 1937 and had personally edited its selection to appeal to Vollard's forward-looking sensibilities. By the end of World War I, Picasso's art had evolved through his Blue, Rose, Analytic Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism periods. He had pursued Cubism to its limits and was searching to define a novel artistic direction. In 1917, Picasso accompanied Jean Cocteau to Rome to design scenery and costumes for the ballet Parade, bringing him into focused contact with the classical forms that would inspire and revivify his practice. Rooted in this experience, he developed a new style in which he synthesized his revolutionary past achievements with an over neoclassicism, culminating in the Suite Vollard. A considerable undertaking even for an artist of Picasso's technical and creative capacities, the artist devided the Suite Vollard divided into principal five themes: Battle of Love; Sculptor's Studio; Rembrandt; The Minotaur; and The Blind Minotaur, as well as a further twenty-seven prints of disparate themes. Twenty of the works on view in the present exhibition represent the Sculptor's Studio theme within the suite. They explore the relationship between artist, model, sculpture, and the act of creation itself—offering rare insights into the working process of an often inscrutable artist. In the Sculptor's Studio series, Picasso presents images that depict artists and models considering sculptures, thus generating art from pictures of its spectatorship. By directly addressing the act of viewing and placing his audience's perspective within the studio, the artist transcends the prevailing segregation of the audience from the active development of art's meanings. Migrating the seemingly fixed forms of antiquity into the context of Modernism's conceptual and aesthetic prerogatives, Picasso's canny co-option of Neoclassicism exalted the lived experience of its audience no less than it heroized the sculpted figures depicted. That Picasso executed most of this democratically-spirited series between 1933 and 1934 speaks to his acute sensitivity to the ominous political climate in Europe prefiguring the single most powerful expression of modernity's struggle against the horrors of war: Guernica (1937). Accompanying the work from the Suite Vollard are three works presented here upon one of the rare occasions that they have been available for public exhibition. The etching Baigneuses sur la Plage III consists of a positive and negative impression—the former an edition of twelve and the latter of only four. En la Taberna. Pecheurs Catalans en bordée is from a special edition of 108, half of which are printed in a highly unusuaul  brown-black coloration. The richly modulated aquatint Venus et l'amour, d'apres Cranach represents one of fifteen artist proofs; its medium manifests one of printmaking's most complex, sensitive, and time-consuming procedures—producing very few high-quality impressions with the exquisite tonal effects easily perceived in the example on view. As proofs and products of experimentation, these images join the Sculptor's Studio series to provide additional insight into Picasso's sensibilities and techniques. Prized by contemporary curators, selections from the Suite Vollard have been exhibited within several of the world's most esteemed public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Norton Simon Museum. LewAllen Galleries is one of the oldest and largest galleries of leading contemporary and modern art outside of New York City. Exhibiting in three locations, LewAllen is widely respected as one of the leading fine art venues in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the nation's second largest art market. Operating for more than 35 years on Palace Avenue near the New Mexico Museum of Art, the gallery maintains a robust show schedule each year in its 11,000 square feet of museum-like exhibition space. It has recently completed a stunning 14,000 square foot, architecturally forward new gallery building in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District. LewAllen also operates a satellite gallery at the luxurious Encantado Resort by Auberge in Tesuque, north of the City of Santa Fe. The Contemporary Division features work in a variety of media and its artists represent many schools of contemporary art, including Realist, Pop, Abstract, Color Field, Minimalist, Op, Geometric Abstraction and Expressionist. Its internationally diverse roster includes such noted artists as Audrey Flack, Woody Gwyn, Judy Chicago, John Fincher, Emily Mason, Bernard Chaet, Robert Natkin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Forrest Moses, Hiroshi Yamano, Janet Fish, Ed Mieczkowski and Bill Barrett, among others. During its history, the gallery has also presented the work of such historically notable artists as Fritz Scholder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Colescott, Luis Jimenez, Ida Kohlmeyer, Thornton Dial, Donald Roller Wilson and Larry Rivers, among many others. The Modern Division is fortunate to represent fine collections, museums, and individuals in assisting placement in the secondary market for American and European Modernist works of distinction and unusual quality. The Department employs professional art historical resources and prides itself on diligence regarding provenance and authentication as well as unusual levels of research, and curatorial attention dedicated to presenting museum-level exhibitions of signal works of the Modern era. Representative works of uncustomary importance to major international collections include those by such Modern masters as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Renoir, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and Amedeo Modigliani, among numerous others. With collectors from around the world, the gallery utilizes state-of-the-art technology, the Internet and other forms of distance communication in helping clients build important collections. The gallery has a large following among corporations, public art spaces, museums and prominent private collectors in whose collections the works of its represented artists appear. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.lewallengalleries.com

"Babar the Elephant" Is Coming to The Tyler Museum of Art Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:13 PM PDT TYLER, TX – The Tyler Museum of Art (TMA) announced plans for a summer exhibition that will lead visitors through a uniquely illustrated world that places the world famous, green-suited Babar the Elephant into classical works of art. The much-loved character will be the leading figure in Babar's Museum of Art, a collection of original watercolors and studies by Laurent de Brunhoff. The works will be on view at the TMA June 6 through August 22. Organizations from around the community are partnering with the TMA by hosting events and activities that incorporate characters and themes from Babar's Museum of Art.

Yves Saint Laurent retrospective comes to the Denver Art Museum Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:12 PM PDT DENVER, COLORADO - The Mile High City is not what most people think about when it comes to high fashion. But come Sunday March 25th, the Denver Art Museum hosts the only U.S. showing of "Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective," a sweeping look at 40 years of design from the late influential French designer best known for his tuxedo suit for women, Le Smoking. The retrospective consists of 200 mannequins dressed in mostly haute-couture ensembles spanning Saint Laurent's career. The ensembles were picked from an archive of 5,000 complete outfits conserved by the Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, the muscle behind the exhibit, and occupy 13,000 square feet on the second floor of DAM, itself an architectural landmark. On exhibition through 8th of July. Why Denver? Museum director Christoph Heinrich was the first to ask for it after seeing the exhibit, which originated in Paris in 2010. "The fabulous thing about this country is you have major events everywhere, all over the country," said Heinrich, who is from Germany. "It's not only everything happening in New York and Los Angeles." And what would Saint Laurent, who died in 2008 at age 71 (and never visited Denver), think? "He would be astonished," said Dominique Deroche, who worked closely with Saint Laurent as his publicist from 1966, when he opened his Paris boutique, to his retirement in 2002. "But he would be very proud." Curator Florence Muller spoke passionately of Saint Laurent's ability to weave his signature gender-bending styles fluidly. Muller said Saint Laurent didn't want to dictate what woman wore. His vision was to offer women many options - and most importantly, he wanted to be able to dress every woman equally, she said. Saint Laurent's final fashion show in 2002 in Paris plays on a big screen at the entrance to the exhibit. Just inside are six chiffon dresses from that collection. Then, Irving Penn's famous portrait of Saint Laurent, with one eye peeking out from his hand over his face, welcomes viewers to the galleries. The clothes begin with ball gowns and a set of four trapeze dresses, symbolic of Saint Laurent's first collection as head designer for Christian Dior in 1958, the year after Dior died.  Saint Laurent's use of transparent materials are represented by two black dresses, one long and completely see-through and the other short with an open lace back, in the center of a gallery that features his most controversial collection, from 1971. That collection was touted, according to a replica newspaper in the gallery, as the "ugliest show in town" for its use of a retro 1940's style. Saint Laurent sought to reflect France's troublesome years during World War II with designs like a green fox fur jacket and turbans. Also on display is Saint Laurent's Caban coat, which introduced to women the navy-style wool coat popularly known as a peacoat, Muller said. A similar style sits on a mannequin, shorter and paired with a dark dress. One gallery shows how the designer was influenced by his favorite artists, with a heavily embroidered jacket inspired by Vincent Van Gogh and a dress inspired by Pablo Picasso . "The Imaginary Journey" gallery features Saint Laurent's vision for fashion around the world - though he wasn't much of a traveler, Muller said. Its collection includes a Spanish bolero, jackets inspired by China and colorfully beaded Moroccan outfits from a ready-to-wear line. A 28-foot tall wall displays 40 incarnations of 'Le Smoking', perhaps Saint Laurent's best known design. It debuted in 1966. Opposite this wall are dozens of gowns in gold satin, black sequin and white tulle arrayed along a red-carpeted staircase. The final dress is an haute-couture black velvet ball gown with a "Paris rose" pink silk bow and sheath skirt from 1983. The show "has not only to do with beauty; it really has to do with the history of the last 50 years," said Heinrich, citing Saint Laurent designs like the trapeze dress, which are familiar classics whether they carry a YSL label or not. Heinrich's own safari jacket, he added, isn't YSL, but the design comes from Saint Laurent's "creative mind." The exhibit also includes artifacts from Saint Laurent's life. They include a replica of his work studio, a sampling of clothes owned by friend and French actress Catherine Deneuve, designs made for other famous friends and an Andy Warhol painting of the designer borrowed from the Berge foundation. Typically just 30 percent of Denver Art Museum visitors are from out of state, but that number is expected to spike for the YSL show. Ads have appeared in The New Yorker magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Women's Wear Daily and Texas Monthly, and hotel packages are being offered that include tickets to the show. High fashion has proven to be a big draw for museums. The Metropolitan Museum in New York ranked last year's Alexander McQueen show among its top 10 most popular exhibits ever, with more than 600,000 visitors, and the YSL show in Paris was seen by more than 300,000 people. Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent's business and life partner, said the designer would have been thrilled to have his work spotlighted in a city often better known for sunshine, outdoorsy lifestyles and Western heritage. "People ask me, 'Why Denver?'" Berge said. "My answer is, 'Why not Denver?'" "He loved to show his work to everybody and everywhere," Berge added. "I think in Denver probably many, many people like art - and why not fashion?" --- If You Go... YVES SAINT LAURENT: THE RETROSPECTIVE: March 25-July 8 at Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver; http://www.denverartmuseum.org or 720-865-5000. Museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on Fridays. Timed tickets are required for the Yves Saint Laurent show; adults, $22, children 6-17, $14, seniors and college students, $18. Read  more here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2012/03/23/1876449/yves-saint-laurent-retrospective.html#storylink=cpy

The William J. Dane Fine Print Collection at the Newark Public Library Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:11 PM PDT NEWARK, NJ.- Building and maintaining a library collection is no easy task, and doubly difficult when collecting art such as fine prints, portfolios and artists' books. Libraries have modest acquisition budgets (if any at all) and can never acquire the works of top–name artists at the height of their fame or auction value. Considering the fact that the collections at the Newark Public Library include works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and others, people might well wonder how these valuable items arrived here in Newark. The answer is threefold: generous people donated their treasures, foundations and individuals donated funds, and librarians tried to collect ahead of the trends. Luckily for us, The Newark Public Library's former "Keeper of the Prints", William J. Dane, contributed in all three ways – and by doing so, inspired others to give. Exhibition on views until 25 June.

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Presents "The Impressionist Revolution" Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:10 PM PDT Memphis, TN.- The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is pleased to present "Monet to Cézanne/Cassatt to Sargent: The Impressionist Revolution", on view through October 9th. The exhibition of over 95 paintings and works on paper features masterpieces never before seen together by leading Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Jean-Louis Forain, Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Cecelia Beaux, and others that capture the rise of Impressionism in Paris, its revolutionary underpinnings, and its arrival and influence in America. This exhibition also illuminates the strength of Impressionist holdings in the American South, drawing on the Brooks' highly regarded permanent holdings as well as those of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, and important private collections. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works—whether landscapes, genre paintings, portraits, still lifes, or city scenes—are arguably the most recognizable and popular visual art in the world. However, because of their familiarity and immediate appeal, it is easy to forget how these loosely painted, light-filled canvases first shocked and then eventually transformed the art world. Monet to Cézanne/Cassatt to Sargent: The Impressionist Revolution will consider the emergence of the movement, and trace its avant-garde — and widely varying — development through the nineteenth century and into the modern era, both in France and the United States.  "One of the things about Impressionist pictures that always beguiles us is their seemingly eternal freshness and spontaneity," says Stanton Thomas, Curator of European and Decorative Art at the Brooks. "After a century and a half, they have lost none of their power to both inspire and intrigue us. Of course, the Impressionist Revolution still continues — it reverberates in contemporary artists' attempts to break the machine, to use color arbitrarily, or think to outside the conventions of visual tradition—even now, we see ripples of that shock wave." Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an art museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The Brooks Museum, which was founded in 1916, is the oldest and largest art museum in the state of Tennessee. The museum is a privately funded nonprofit institution located in Overton Park in Midtown Memphis.The original Beaux-Arts building, a registered U.S. National Landmark designed by James Gamble Rogers in 1913, was donated by Bessie Vance Brooks in memory of her husband, Samuel Hamilton Brooks. The cylindrical extension, opened in 1955, was designed by Memphis architect Everett Woods. The Brooks' facilities also include the Brooks Museum Store, the Brushmark Restaurant, the Holly Court garden, and a grand terrace that overlooks the greens and trees of Overton Park. In 1989, the building was expanded and reoriented by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The expansion, which doubled the square footage of the existing building, included a new public entrance as well as a three-story gallery space where the old and new buildings join. The facility consists of 29 galleries, art classrooms, a print study room with over 4,500 works of art on paper, a research library with over 5,000 volumes, and an auditorium. The collection has over seven thousand works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and examples of the decorative arts. Of particular note are the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, the Hugo N. Dixon Collection of Impressionist paintings, the Levy Collection of American prints, the Goodman Book Collection, and the Goodheart Collection of Carl Gutherz paintings, drawings, and archival material.Paintings in the permanent collection include works by Italian Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionist, and 20th-century artists. The Kress Collection is one of numerous collections of paintings distributed by this philanthropist among American museums. The Brooks also has a fine collection of English portraits, including works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence, and Romney. There are impressionist works by Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and many American impressionists: Winslow Homer, Thomas Hart Benton, Childe Hassam, and Robert Henri. The contemporary collection includes paintings by Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell, and Nancy Graves, plus the nationally-known Memphis artist Carroll Cloar. The Brooks Museum also conserves a selection of 19th and 20th century sculpture and decorative arts, including furniture and textiles. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.brooksmuseum.org

"Louvre Atlanta" Partnership Brings in Over 1.3 Million Visitors to the High Museum of Art Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:09 PM PDT ATLANTA, GA.- The closing of the exhibition "The Louvre and the Masterpiece" last weekend marked the culmination of "Louvre Atlanta," the High Museum 's unprecedented three-year partnership with the Musée du Louvre in Paris. During the course of the partnership, the High welcomed over 1.3 million visitors to the museum for seven exhibitions that brought a combined 493 treasures from the Louvre's collection to Atlanta. Masterworks from all eight of the Louvre's curatorial departments have traveled to the High, including rare works by artists including Raphael, Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Velázquez.

Hood Museum of Art presents a Comprehensive Display of European Art at Dartmouth Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:08 PM PDT HANOVER, NH -  The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College presents its largest display ever of the museum's remarkable holdings of British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish art from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. From August 30, 2008 to March 8, 2009,  will feature over 120 works of European art, including paintings by Perugino, Claude, De Heem, Van Loo, Batoni, and Picasso; sculptures dating from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century; and prints by Dürer, Rembrandt, Canaletto, Goya, Archapiho, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. It is part of an ongoing series focusing on the museum's permanent collection, following last year's celebration American Art at Dartmouth.

Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) opens First Retrospective for Cy Twombly in Austria Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:07 PM PDT VIENNA, AUSTRIA - For the first time in Austria, MUMOK presents a retrospective of Cy Twombly's work. Twombly, one of the most important artists of his generation (b.1928), has been based in Italy since the late 1950s. His work diverged from the abstract expressionist tradition dominated by such figures as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. Twombly first gained recognition with large format, monumental paintings with gestural and often textual inscriptions. His works have been influenced by poetry and classical mythology but also by Mediterranean landscapes and lighting. The exhibition "weaves together" approximately 200 works from every period, bringing his much lesser known photographic work together for the first time with his paintings, sculpture and drawings. On view through 11 October, 2009. Since his studies in the 1950s — Twombly studied at the same time as Robert Rauschenberg at the legendary Black Mountain College — his work has developed concurrently in many different media: Painting, Sculpture, Photography and drawing have corresponded with each other in a process of continual transference. Twombly uses drawing in his paintings, oils in his drawings, paint on his sculptures and makes references to his pictures and objects in his photographic work. The retrospective at the MUMOK shows a collection of all of the different media heightening an awareness of their simultaneity and subtle interconnectedness. The exhibition has been organized into relatively loosely defined categories such as the establishment of white, the use of writing, the significance of the principles of collage and aesthetic means of expression, as well as the movement on the canvas of impasto paint. Hardly any other artist in the 20th century went as far to approach the "zero point" of modern art as Cy Twombly did. Children's handwriting exercises, thoughtless scribbling and graffiti constituted contemporary points of departure for actualizing the experience of mythical stories, drawing a connection to the major themes of Mediterranean culture, with works that alternate between sensibility and rawness, fine filigree precision and expressivity. The color white, that has remained constitutive both for Twombly's paintings and his sculptures, represents the matrix of this process of transformation. It registers the multiple traces of the work process, opening up a poetic space of possibilty that Twombly suggestively fills with inscriptions, names and lines from poems by poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke or Sappho. Up to now, few people have been aware of the fact that Cy Twombly has worked with photography since the early 1950s. His rich photographic work will be shown together with his other works for the first time at the exhibition in Vienna. Stylistic devices such as the intentional use of the effects of over exposure or blurry focusing can in many ways be seen in connection with his use of white or the way he lets colors and forms flow down the surface of the painting. But the photographs also offer insight into the environment surrounding his creative process — evoking the images of Constantin Brancusi's studio — whether in his adopted country of Italy, in Rome, in Bassano di Teverina, or the coastal village Gaeta, or, more recently, in the city of his birth Lexington, Virginia. Cy Twombly was born April 25, 1928 in Lexington, Virginia. He began his studies in 1947 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then in 1945/50 at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. In 1950, he went to New York and continued his studies at the Art Students League. It was here that he got to know Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. One year later, he transferred to Black Mountain College in North Carolina where he studied with Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Together with Rauschenberg, he traveled through South America, North Africa, Spain and Italy in 1952. Twombly taught at the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia in 1955/56, and then returned again to Rome in 1957. Two years later, he finally moved to Italy. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center presented his first retrospective in the United States, followed by large international exhibitions: The retrospective at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1987) traveled to Madrid, London and Paris. While the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (1994) continued on to Houston, Los Angeles and Berlin, followed by a large retrospective at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006). In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery run by the Menil Family was opened in Houston. The most recent retrospective began at the Tate Modern in London (2008) and went from there to Bilbao and Rome. Visit the Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) at : http://www.mumok.at/

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:06 PM PDT MILWAUKEE, WI.- The first major exhibition of furniture and decorative art by the protean American craftsman and designer Charles Rohlfs begins its five-venue national tour at the Milwaukee Art Museum June 6 through August 23, 2009. The product of an innovative three-institution partnership, the exhibition's scholarship is based on the Rohlfs family archives and newly discovered period sources, and brings together over forty pieces from ten museums and several private collections. The exhibition's tour concludes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the fall of 2010.

The Kunsthaus Zürich presents Albert Welti ~ Landscapes in Pastel Posted: 13 Jun 2012 08:05 PM PDT Zurich. - The Kunsthaus Zurich is pleased to present "Albert Welti - Landscape in Pastel", on show through March 4th. This cabinet exhibition will feature the colourful landscapes of the Swiss painter, graphic artist and draughtsman Albert Welti (1862-1912). A  pupil of Arnold Böcklin and a native of Zurich, Welti received numerous national commissions and is known both in Switzerland and abroad for his painting of the citizens' assembly in the chamber of the Swiss Council of States. His works express the turn-of-the-century mood: a time of transitions, as with the motif of the bridge, the cycle of ageing and the depiction of dream-like twilight scenes in nature. Albert Welti loathed the impressionistic in all its forms. He was reluctant to exhibit his pastel works, and most remained hidden  away in his studio throughout his life. Reportedly, he never showed his colour improvisations even to his closest friends, regarding them as nothing more than 'pastel nature sketches' – study material at best, that served its purpose in terms of picture composition. Posterity has come to view them differently. The Kunsthaus Zürich was quick to recognize his genius, staging a major, comprehensive exhibition of his work as early as 1912. The most recent significant presentation, curated by Bice Curiger in 1984, featured drawings and graphic works from the Kunsthaus collection on the theme of 'Walpurgis Night.' Marking the 150th anniversary of Welti's birth, the new exhibition is centred around 45 pastel landscapes whose intense, hyper-natural chromatic effect speaks directly to the viewer. They helped Welti to break free from the influence of his mentor and model Arnold Böcklin and develop his own artistic style. In fact, these 'improvisations' are masterpieces in their own right. Using a selection of 25 studies for paintings and engravings – including one pastel that served as a draft for the celebrated mural of the citizens' assembly in the chamber of the Council of States at the Swiss Federal Parliament building – curator Bernhard von  Waldkirch demonstrates the various functions of pastel drawing. The majority of the works are from the artist's estate in the Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, the Kunsthaus Zürich and private collections. Welti's art is imbued with the specific atmosphere of the turn of the century. Its Janus-faced quality is most productive where his pictures depict a transition, as with the motif of the bridge, the cycle of ageing and the depiction of dream-like twilight scenes. Welti is at his most carefree in his Post-Impressionist pastel landscapes; drawing on a still-fresh apprehension of the scenery and without recourse to Symbolist personification, he hints at  the presence of the unconscious. He exhibits a particular penchant for  twilight scenes – those moments in nature at which chiaroscuro is utterly transformed into colour. In his boldest efforts, Welti ventures into the field of chromatic improvisation; but unlike with Kandinsky, he remains firmly anchored in the visible world. Throughout his life, Welti drew on the rich treasury of folk tales, myths and legends. Guided by the painting technique of the Old Masters, he became skilled in the iconography of classical history and landscape painting. Yet in many ways, his conception of the image is resolutely modern. His uncompromising advocacy of imagination opens up lines of communication with our earliest childhood memories and creates a bridge to the formal language of the preconscious. As brain research has taught us, dreams are not limited to sleep. Even when we are awake, many brain activities link us to the regions associated with dreaming: here too, the transitions are fluid. Albert Welti was born in 1862 in Zurich-Aussersihl, an area that was still rural at the time. His father ran the successful Welti-Furrer transport company. In 1880, Albert embarked on an apprenticeship in photography with his uncle Oswald Welti in Lausanne, though he abandoned it after a year. His father allowed him to move to Munich where, from 1882 to 1886, he trained as a painter at the Academy. He received his first painting lessons from Ludwig von Löfftz, an outstanding pastel artist with whom Karl Stauffer-Bern and Lovis Corinth also studied. The Weltis' circle of close friends in Munich included Ernst Kreidolf and Wilhelm Balmer. Welti spent two years in the Zurich studio of Arnold Böcklin, to whom he retained a debt of gratitude throughout his life. In 1894 he married and settled in the Zurich district of Höngg. 1892 saw a fateful meeting with the East Prussian landowner Franz von Doehlau, who supported him until his death. Welti travelled to Berlin, Breslau, Dresden, Vienna, Paris and Venice. In 1901 he was commissioned to paint the glass windows in the  stairway of the Federal Parliament building on the subject of 'the textile  industry in eastern Switzerland.' In 1906 the family spent time in Innertkirchen and Vättis, where Welti painted numerous pastels from nature. Hermann Hesse was among those who admired his art. In 1907 he worked on the designs for the image of Wilhelm Tell's son to appear on the 25-centime stamp. The following year he moved to Berne to begin work on the commission for the painting of the citizens' assembly in the Council of States chamber of the Federal Parliament. The numerous sketches, drawings and cartoons that Wilhelm Balmer executed as a mural continued to occupy him until his sudden death in 1912. Hermann Hesse, who visited Welti on a number of occasions, published a monograph on him in 1917 for which he wrote the foreword. Pastel painting has been a recognized technique in its own right since the 18th century. It was revived in the last quarter of the 19th century by artists such as Manet, Degas, Redon and Picasso, and experienced an upsurge in popularity in the context of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. In Switzerland Augusto Giacometti, with his decoratively abstract pastel paintings, is regarded by art historians as its chief pioneer. Manipulating the pastel crayon,  a dusty, porous material that can be used on paper to create painterly nuances or spontaneous improvisations, requires supreme skill; and yet the technique's consummation is its union of drawing and painting.  The Collection of Prints and Drawings of the Kunsthaus Zürich is represented in the exhibition by four pastels and the engraving 'The Journey into the 20th Century,' a critique of the era. It was Kunsthaus director Wilhelm Wartmann who in 1912 – the last year of the artist's life – published the first catalogue raisonné of his graphic prints and organized an exhibition. He considered Welti to be the leading Swiss Symbolist, alongside Hodler. The Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft subsequently acquired the entirety of Welti's graphic prints. Today, the Kunsthaus possesses the most comprehensive collection of paintings, drawings and graphic works by the master and some of his contemporaries. The opening of the Kunsthaus extension will provide sufficient  space for these treasures to be shown to the public at more frequent intervals than has hitherto been possible. Founded in 1787, the Künstlergesellschaft began to collect works of art in 1794 and in 1812, obtained the first presmises. In 1847 the rotating exhibition organized by the Swiss Kunstverein provided the impetus to annex a tiny gallery, designed by Gustav Albert Wegmann, the architect responsible for the Villa Tobler and the Kantonsschule, to the original premises. For a long time the new 'museum' was dominated by the collection donated by Colonel Keller zum Mohrenkopf in 1854, a representative selection of Zurich painting from Hans Asper to the 18th century. It was not until 1910 that the 'Kunsthaus' was opened on a plot of land donated by city councillor Landolt – neither 'museum' nor 'art gallery', as the architect Karl Moser pointed out, but both. The name 'Kunsthaus' (house of art ) consciously reflects its democratic aspirations and wish to bring art to a broad public. When the Kunsthaus held a large Ferdinand Hodler exhibition in 1917, it became clear that the financial resources of the 'Kunstgesellschaft' were insufficient, and Alfred Rüetschi responded by founding the 'Vereinigung Zürcher Kunstfreunde' (Society of Zurich Friends of Art), which even today regularly helps to extend the Kunsthaus collection with significant acquisitions. In 1920 the Kunsthaus received as a legacy the collection of Hans Schuler and with it for the first time works of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism including, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard. After many years of preparation the Kunsthaus organised its first exhibition with Edvard Munch in 1922 and began to build up the largest collection of works by the Norwegian artist outside of Scandanavia. The Kusnthaus was extended throughout the twentieth century and by 1957 the collection had increased to over 450 works. From 1998 to 2000 the Villa Tobler was restored in a manner befitting its status as a new renaissance palazzo to become the new home of management and to serve as a venue for representational purposes. On the 28 May 2002 the departing President of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, Thomas W. Bechtler, Director Christoph Becker and the Chairman of the City Council, Elmar Ledergerber, presented plans for a further extension of the building at Heimplatz. The extension building is scheduled to be realized by 2015. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kunsthaus.ch

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