12441 - 20170312 - Exhibition brings together 260 Russian Avant-Garde works from MoMA's collection- New York - 03.12.2016-12.03.2017

.

Gustav Klutsis (Russian, born Latvia). Memorial to Fallen Leaders. 1927. Cover with lithographed photomontage illustrations on front and back, 13 1/2 x 10 1/4″ (34.3 x 26 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of The Judith Rothschild Foundation. © 2016 / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 

The Museum of Modern Art presents A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde, an exhibition that brings together 260 works from MoMA’s collection, tracing the arc of a period of artistic innovation between 1912 and 1935. The exhibition will be on view December 3, 2016–March 12, 2017. Planned in anticipation of the centennial year of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the exhibition highlights breakthrough developments in the conception of Suprematism and Constructivism, as well as in avant-garde poetry, theater, photography, and film, by such figures as Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lyubov Popova, Alexandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, and Dziga Vertov, among others. The exhibition features a rich cross-section of works across several mediums—opening with displays of pioneering non-objective paintings, prints, and drawings from the years leading up to and immediately following the Revolution, followed by a suite of galleries featuring photography, film, graphic design, and utilitarian objects, a transition that reflects the shift of avant-garde production in the 1920s. Made in response to changing social and political conditions, these works probe and suggest the myriad ways that a revolution can manifest itself in an object. A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, Department of Photography, and Sarah Suzuki, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints; with Hillary Reder, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints. 

 

 A series of works by artists including Natalia Goncharova and her husband and artistic collaborator Mikhail Larionov open the exhibition. Goncharova and Larionov sought to combine Western European developments such as Cubism and Futurism with a distinctly Russian character, drawing on history, folklore, and religious motifs for inspiration. One outgrowth of their efforts was Rayonism, an abstract style that derived its name from the use of dynamic rays of contrasting color, exemplified in Goncharova’s Rayonism, Blue-Green Forest (1913). A hallmark of this period was a fertile collaboration between painters and poets that resulted in illustrated books, also on view in the exhibition. These collaborations rejected fine-art book traditions in favor of small, distinctly handmade volumes, such as the rare book Worldbackwards (1912), shown in an astonishing four variations, each with a unique, collaged cover.      

Radical new efforts in painting and poetry are also featured, such as an unpublished, uncut sheet from poets Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov’s Te li le (1914), with images by Olga Rozanova. The sheet features a poetic language conceived in 1913 by the pair called Zaum (“transrational,” "beyonsense," or “transreason”), which frees letters and words from specific meanings, instead emphasizing their aural and visual qualities. Painters likewise sought to push their medium to its limits, dismissing the strictures of realism and rationality in favor of advancing new abstract forms. The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 (zero-ten), held in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in December 1915, highlighted two new models of abstraction. One, developed by Vladimir Tatlin, focused on a group of nonrepresentational Counter-Reliefs (“reliefs with a particular pronounced tension”). An example can be found in the exhibition in the exceedingly rare Brochure for Tatlin’s counter-reliefs exhibited at 0.10 (1915). The other, proposed by Kazimir Malevich, unveiled a radically new mode of abstract painting that abandoned reference to the outside world in favor of colored geometric shapes floating against white backgrounds. Because this new style claimed supremacy over the forms of nature, Malevich called it Suprematism. The exhibition includes Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (1915), which was featured in 0.10, and Suprematist Composition: White on White (1918), which ranks among the most iconoclastic paintings of its day.

While Suprematism’s focus on pure form had a spiritual bent, the adherents of Constructivism privileged the creation of utilitarian objects with orderly, geometric designs. In 1918, Rodchenko made Non-Objective Painting no. 80 (Black on Black), one of a series of eight black paintings he conceived in direct response to the group of white paintings by Malevich. By eliminating color almost completely, Rodchenko underscored the material quality of the painting’s surface. Around this time, he also produced a series of "spatial constructions" focused on kineticism, marking a significant leap from his exploration of the painted surface to threedimensional objects. 5 x 5 = 25: An Exhibition of Painting (1921), a brochure for an exhibition of the same title, typed by Varvara Stepanova, features contributions from Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, Alexandra Exter, and Aleksandr Vesnin. Held in Moscow at the All-Russian Union of Poets in September 1921, the exhibition featured five works by each of the five participants, and was the Constructivist group’s last presentation of painting.

Between 1919 and 1927 El Lissitzky produced a large body of paintings, prints, and drawings that he referred to as Proun, an acronym for “Project for the Affirmation of the New" in Russian. A particular highlight is the portfolio Proun (1920), made during Lissitzky’s short but prolific period working at the art school in Vitebsk, alongside Malevich. Lissitzky asserted Proun is “the station on the way to the construction of a new form,” and in these lithographs, he arranges geometric forms in dynamic, overlapping relationships to create imagined spaces. It will be the first time this rare portfolio, acquired in 2013, will be on view. New developments in theater are surveyed through the example of Alexandra Exter, an artist deeply engaged with theatrical design and production, including several examples of her innovative set designs and costumes for the science-fiction film Aelita (1924). These are shown alongside prints from Lissitzky’s portfolio Victory Over the Sun, which he made after seeing a 1920 restaging of the seminal Cubo-Futurist opera of the same name, and features characters from the production transformed into “electromechanical” figurines.

As the 1920s progressed, photography and film surpassed painting and sculpture as the chosen medium for the avant-garde, moving works from the studio to the public sphere. The exhibition includes an in-depth look at Soviet avant-garde cinema, in a gallery that features clips from seminal films by Alexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, highlighting a variety of strategies in montage, including disjunctive cutting, extreme close-ups, unusual angles, and image superimposition. At this time, Lissitzky began to describe his work as fotopis (painting with photographs), a neologism that first appeared in the title of a maquette for a mural version of Record (1926), a photomontage included in the show. After turning away from painting, Rodchenko also found new means to build networks of communication—in photographs and book design. He collaborated with the progressive writers Nikolai Aseev, Osip Brik, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Sergei Tret’iakov on covers and layouts for the journal Novyi LEF (1927–28), a complete run of which is on view. Eschewing the conventional belly-button view in his photographs, Rodchenko’s pictures of this era—such as Mother (1924), Assembling for a Demonstration (1928–30), and Pioneer Girl (1930)—favor dynamic camera angles. Advocating for a cinematic, fractured representation of his subjects, Rodchenko also tried his hand at film, designing intertitles for Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda newsreel series.

The ideology of the Revolution touched all aspects of daily life, from economy to education. The most significant artists of the day, in accordance with state orders, were soon applying avant-garde tactics to create propagandistic work that would be easily comprehensible to the Soviet public at large. The final gallery of the exhibition contains this kind of material, including children’s books created by Vladimir Lebedev and Samuil Marshak, whose book designs balanced sophistication and accessibility, drawing on Cubism and Suprematism, with stories that nourished the intellectual and visual imagination. Also on view are film posters, by the brothers Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, which feature radical uses of typography and color, underscoring the relationship between graphic arts and the burgeoning Soviet cinema. The Constructivist architect Iakov Chernikov applied his ideas to imagine a future reflecting the avant-garde culture of the new Soviet Union. His Architectural Fantasies: 101 Compositions in Color, 101 Architectural Miniatures (1933) featured here, however, never had a chance to materialize. Joseph Stalin's repressive regime effectively put an end to Constructivism and other avant-garde activities in the cultural sphere by the mid-1930s.

 

 

Website : Museum of Modern Art

 

Source : Artdaily

 

12440 - 20170319 - First U.S. museum survey of kinetic artist Julio Le Parc at Pérez Art Museum Miami -18.11.2016-19.03.2017

.

 

Julio Le Parc, La Longue Marché, Étape n° 6 (The Long March, Step n° 6), 1974. Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 inches. Courtesy the artist. Photo: © Julio Le Parc / Atelier Le Parc.

 

Pérez Art Museum Miami presents the first U.S. museum survey of Argentine artist Julio Le Parc. On view through March 19, 2017, Julio Le Parc: Form into Action features over 100 works that spark a variety of visual and physical experiences. Including major installations and rarely seen works on paper and archival materials, the exhibition is a long-overdue exploration of Le Parc’s central role in twentieth-century art history. Julio Le Parc: Form into Action is organized by guest curator Estrellita B. Brodsky. 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

“Julio Le Parc’s investigations into ways of engaging and empowering the public have redefined and reinterpreted the experience of art,” says curator Estrellita B. Brodsky. “Driven by a solid utopian ethos, Le Parc continues to regard art as a social laboratory, capable of producing unpredictable situations and of playfully engaging the viewer in new ways. His radical stance has only gained relevance over the past six decades.”

Born in 1928 in Mendoza, Argentina, Le Parc moved to Paris in 1958. In 1960, he became a founding member of the artist collective Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV). Emphasizing the social power of unmediated, disorienting art objects and situations, Le Parc attempted to clear out structures and systems that separate the viewer from the work. His innovations in the fields of light, movement and perception were central to the Op and Kinetic art movements of the period, while his theories of immediacy and spectatorship as a vehicle for social and political change continued to inform the Parisian avant-garde from the 1960s on.

This spirit of art as an impetus for social empowerment moves throughout Form into Action, which divides PAMM’s two largest galleries into three thematic sections. The first, From Surface to Object, gathers early works on paper and paintings to show Le Parc’s use of color as a means of destabilizing the two-dimensional surface. On display are early 1958 two-dimensional serial ink and gouache on paper studies, as well as paintings from 1959 to the present. Also on view is the monumental Long March, a suite of 10 vibrant paintings flowing around a specially designed rotunda display.

In the next section, Displacement; Contortions; Reliefs, Le Parc’s revolutionary labyrinthine installations are displayed for the first time in a U.S. institution. First shown as part of GRAV’s participation at the 1963 Paris Biennale, the sequence of three light-infused rooms offer the viewer a powerfully disorienting sensorial experience. Finally, Play & Politics of Participation dissolves the physical and ideological walls separating the viewer, the work of art and the institution. A precursor to the Relational Aesthetics movement, this period of Le Parc’s career considers how art can encourage a new awareness of one’s social space.

“Le Parc set out to ‘demystify art’ by removing barriers between the artwork and viewer,” says PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans. “It is fitting that this immersive exhibition takes place in a museum architecturally designed to blur the distinction between inside and out, where carefully placed windows allow for views of Biscayne Bay and Miami’s urban core to filter into the galleries.

Form into Action is a retrospective survey of Le Parc’s wide-ranging practice, and an examination of his impact, both on his contemporaries within the Latin American and European Post-war avant-garde, and on subsequent generations of artists. Though historic in scope, the exhibition speaks powerfully to the present moment, demanding physical and perceptual presence from the viewer. Julio Le Parc: Form into Action introduces the artist to a new generation, allowing each museum guest to react to the work in a direct, personal manner.

Julio Le Parc: Form into Action is organized by Guest Curator Estrellita B. Brodsky. It is coordinated at PAMM by Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. Yamil Le Parc serves as Artistic Advisor on the project.

 

 

Website : Pérez Art Museum

  

Source : Artdaily

 

 

12439 - 20170319 - MoMA's first-ever monographic exhibition of Francis Picabia brings together some 200 works - New York - 21.11.2016-19.03.2017

.

Francis Picabia. Udnie (Jeune fille américaine; danse) (Udnie [Young American Girl; Dance]). 1913. Oil on canvas, 9′ 6 3/16″ × 9′ 10 1/8″ (290 × 300 cm). Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle, Paris. Purchased by the State, 1948. © 2016 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerdtchian/Dist. RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

 

The Museum of Modern Art’s Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, on view November 21, 2016–March 19, 2017, is the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in the US in nearly half a century, and the first ever to chart the full range of Picabia’s audacious, irreverent, and profoundly influential career. “Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction” is an aphorism coined by Picabia in 1922, and it aptly encapsulates the nonlinear, circular character of his artistic practice. This exhibition presents approximately 200 works in an array of mediums in order to advance understanding of Picabia’s unruly genius and its vital place within the history of modern art. Francis Picabia is organized by MoMA and the Kunsthaus Zürich. The curators are Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA; and Cathérine Hug, Curator at the Kunsthaus Zürich; with Talia Kwartler, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA. Prior to its presentation in New York, the exhibition was on view at the Kunsthaus Zürich.  ADVERTENTIE inRead invented by Teads Among the great modern artists, Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953) remains one of the most elusive; he vigorously avoided any one singular style or medium. He is also an artist with a strong connection to New York, where he first achieved fame as a leader of the European avantgarde. Though best known as one of the luminaries of the Dada movement, his career ranged widely—and wildly—from Impressionist landscapes to abstraction, from paintings of machines to photo-based nudes, and from performance and film to poetry and publishing. Picabia’s contributions to a diverse range of artistic mediums make him especially relevant for contemporary artists, and his career as a whole challenges familiar narratives of modernism. Francis Picabia assembles key selections and bodies of work, ranging in date from the first decade of the 20th century through the early 1950s. Picabia’s widely varied work as a painter is represented, along with his activities as a publisher and contributor to vanguard journals, and his forays into screenwriting and theater. The core of the exhibition comprises some 125 paintings, along with approximately 45 key works on paper, one film, a selection of printed matter, and sound recordings of selected poems and writings. Beginnings, 1905–1911 Picabia first made his name as an after-the-fact Impressionist painter, and the exhibition begins with works such as Effect of Sunlight on the Banks of the Loing, Moret (1905) and Untitled (NotreDame, Paris) (1906), which call to mind those by older artists such as Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley. But Picabia is believed to have worked from photographic postcards rather than immersing himself in nature and painting outdoors—subverting the original spirit of Impressionism and that style’s open-air techniques. This penchant for dispensing with established norms and appropriating readymade images would become a constant in his career, and these strategies would continue to elicit shock from critics and audiences alike. He quickly left Impressionism behind, cycling through a rapid succession of styles—another through-line in Picabia’s practice that is explored in this exhibition. Abstractions, 1912–1914 In the summer of 1912, Picabia turned to abstraction, exemplified by The Spring and Dances at the Spring [II]. Their inclusion at the Salon d’Automne that year, alongside abstract canvases by František Kupka and Fernand Léger, marked the arrival of non-objective painting in Paris. Critics reviled Picabia’s new work as “incomprehensible” although, several months later, the Armory Show opened in New York with four of Picabia’s abstractions on view, including Dances at the Spring [I], and there he was received as a “high priest” of modern art. When he returned to Paris in the summer of 1913, Picabia began work on a pair of monumental canvases that would become Udnie (Young American Girl; Dance) and Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), which are displayed together for the first time in the US. Critics almost universally mocked these works when they were unveiled at the 1913 Salon d’Automne in Paris, but they were subsequently heralded as early precedents for postwar abstract painting. Mechanomorphs and Dada, 1915–1922 The exhibition turns to Picabia’s work during World War I, as he sought exile in New York, Barcelona, and Switzerland. He painted, drew, and became active as a writer, but the mainstay of his activity was contributing to and editing journals. His engagement with the mechanics of journal production coincided with the appearance of the machine in paintings such as Very Rare Picture on the Earth (1915). In these works, the machine was both subject and model for a newly hard-edged, precise, and impersonal approach. After the war, Picabia returned to Paris, where he joined Tristan Tzara and other Dadaists in an all-out assault on the culture of rationality that they held responsible for the war. Noteworthy works on view from this period include The Cacodylic Eye (1921), an iconoclastic group portrait of the Paris Dada movement bearing the signatures of over 50 friends and acquaintances, and St. Vitus's Dance (Rat Tobacco) (1919–20, modified 1946–49), an empty frame strung with yarn between which words were suspended. Both works relinquished artistic agency in favor of automatic procedures and renounced individual authority, functioning as both irreverent in-jokes and as attacks on the grand European tradition of painting. Dalmau, Littérature, and Salon Ripolins, 1922–1924 On November 18, 1922, the Exposition Francis Picabia opened at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, featuring almost 50 new works on paper. A section of the exhibition pays homage to Picabia’s original display, based on archival photographs. The works encompassed a dizzying array of styles: portraits of doe-eyed Spanish women hung alongside optical abstractions and geometric drawings inspired by mechanical diagrams published in a popular science magazine. Picabia continued to submit paintings to the Paris salons. Instead of traditional oils, he used commercial enamel paints (commonly referred to by the brand name Ripolin) and worked on an imposing scale intended to attract attention, creating works in both abstract and figurative modes. The bold graphic character and sinister eroticism of The Spanish Night (1922) and Animal Trainer (1923) are also seen in the contemporaneous, black-and-white covers Picabia designed for the journal Littérature. Ciné-Theater-Dance, 1924 The composer Erik Satie approached Picabia about collaborating on a ballet in January 1924, and Picabia had the idea of also producing a film, which he imagined as “a parody of cinematic action.” Cinema and dance interacted spectacularly when the humorously titled ballet Relâche (“day off” or “no performance”) and the film Entr’acte (“intermission”) premiered on December 4, 1924. Entr’acte is screened in the exhibition alongside publicity photographs of Picabia’s sets and costumes and various related drawings by Picabia, including portraits of people involved in the ballet’s production. Collages and Monsters, 1924–1927 In January 1925, Picabia left Paris for the south of France, near Cannes, where he pursued his longtime passions for yachting, fast cars, and casino gambling. The move also precipitated an intensely productive period of painting, as seen in his so-called Monsters: pictures of embracing couples and carnival characters, rendered in the acidic colors and saturated sheen of commercial enamel paint. These works simultaneously indulged and mocked the fashionable high society in which Picabia found himself. His use of enamel paints intensified in the mid-1920s, as did his experimentation with other unorthodox materials and processes. Collages from this period incorporate things like matches, hairpins, dry pasta, and even the literal materials of art-making: paint-can lids, brushes, and stretcher wedges. Picabia also revisited older paintings with increasing frequency. Commercial enamels proved well suited to amending, adjusting, and covering over prior works, as seen in The Lovers (After the Rain) (1925), which Picabia painted over an earlier abstraction. Over-painting became a recurrent tactic within Picabia’s practice, as would masking and superimposition. Transparencies, 1927–1930 In 1927, Picabia began creating the “superimposed” works known as his Transparencies by alternating layers of paint with layers of resinous varnish, which allowed him to lay linear motifs atop one another while keeping them distinct. These richly layered, multi-referential compositions interweave an often dizzying array of contour images drawn from such diverse sources as Renaissance painting, Catalan frescoes, and contemporary popular culture. As seen in the exhibition, Picabia’s Transparencies range from the complex imagery of paintings like Sphinx (1929) to the masterful refinement of Aello (1930), Mélibée (1930), and Salomé (1930). Eclecticism and Iconoclasm, 1934–1938 The mid- and late 1930s was a period of intense material experimentation and reworking for Picabia, as he shuttled back and forth between Paris and the French Riviera. Works like Fratellini Clown (1937–38) and The Spanish Revolution (1937) exemplify the troubling malaise and sense of creeping doom that was spreading throughout Europe, as the threat of fascism and totalitarian ideologies took center stage. Despite the political unrest and looming threat of war, Picabia continued to organize lavish galas at the municipal casino for Cannes high society; he also created facial superimpositions and photo-based portraits, including one of his friend, the author and art collector Gertrude Stein. Photo-Based Paintings, 1940–1943 Picabia remained in the south of France throughout World War II, where he painted works that combine kitsch subjects, popular culture, and politics in an unsettling mix. Many of Picabia’s wartime paintings recombine images lifted from photographs published in late-1930s soft-core pornography magazines, often preserving those photographs’ artificial studio lighting, soft focus, and optical distortions created by the camera lens. His much-debated wartime paintings remain open to interpretation, bearing witness to the moral ambiguities of this dark historical moment, and to the intricacies of an individual’s response to seismic political change. Postwar Abstractions and Points, 1946–1952 “Figurative art is dead,” Picabia said in an interview in November 1945, announcing his return to abstraction. The exhibition concludes with Picabia’s post‐WWII abstractions, including a group of encrusted, thickly repainted monochromatic “point” or “dot” paintings, some of which have titles derived from Friedrich Nietzsche. Picabia’s final paintings, The Earth Is Round (1951) and La Terre est ronde / K.O. (c. 1951) are on view, along with a number of illustrated books he produced in his last years. After suffering a stroke in June 1951, Picabia died on November 30, 1953, in the same house in Paris where he had been born.     Website : MoMA         Source : Artdaily

12438 - 20170304 - Fairfield University Art Museum presents a new exhibition of works by Leonardo Cremonini - Fairfield, CONN - 04.11.2016-04.03.2017

.

This survey exhibition of close to forty works from the peerless holdings of The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation.

 

The Fairfield University Art Museum presents a new exhibition, “Leonardo Cremonini (1925-2010) – Timeless Monumentality: Paintings from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation,” on view from Friday, November 4, 2016, through Saturday, March 4, 2017, in the museum’s Walsh Gallery in the Quick Center for the Arts on the campus of Fairfield University 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

This survey exhibition of close to forty works from the peerless holdings of The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation—the first devoted to the artist in over two decades, presented at a moment of renewed interest in modern and contemporary Italian painting—will serve to introduce Cremonini to new audiences and foster a critical reappraisal of his art. William Louis-Dreyfus, long an admirer of Cremonini, collected his work in depth. He was a generous and enthusiastic supporter of the Fairfield University Art Museum’s exhibition and was energetically involved in its planning until shortly before his death on September 16. It is a great sadness that he did not live to see its realization. In tribute to this extraordinary man, whose profound kindness and generosity of vision in support of the Harlem Children’s Zone was the subject of a recent film, Generosity of Eye, by his daughter actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall, the exhibition is presented in his memory.

The Italian painter Leonardo Cremonini (1925-2010) attained the height of recognition and critical acclaim in the second half of the twentieth century. His British contemporary Francis Bacon was an early admirer and praised him to the poet W. H. Auden. Italian literary giants Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Alberto Moravia authored lyrical appreciations of his work. Another champion was William Rubin, legendary director of The Museum of Modern Art, who articulated the essential idea that Cremonini’s canvases embody a “spirit of timeless monumentality.”

Although he enjoyed this renown, and his work is to be found in numerous public collections across Europe and the U.S. (including MoMA), Cremonini is today largely unknown to all but a few art-world specialists.

Cremonini’s canvases are striking both for their obvious technical mastery and for their distinctive, haunting imagery. Psychologically remote, languid and detached, they are eternally frozen in train cars and bedrooms, in bathing huts or on seaside terraces, caressed by a sultry Mediterranean light that induces indolence rather than industry.

Although he lived and worked for much of his career in Paris, Cremonini’s art is fundamentally Italian in its privileging of a figurative idiom, and in its deliberate grounding in Italian art history. His geometric clarity and purity of form recall the still lifes of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). Surrealist elements invoke Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). Flayed and butchered animal carcasses, a favorite subject in Cremonini’s paintings of the 1950s, have a long tradition in European art, with some of the most celebrated examples—most notably Annibale Carracci’s Butcher Shop (1580)—having been produced in Cremonini’s native Bologna in the late sixteenth century. And the rigorously constructed architectural spaces that adhere to the geometric rules of perspective hark back even further, to Piero della Francesca and other artists of the Italian Renaissance.

Cremonini’s technique became increasingly painstaking and laborious over time. A meticulous and careful application, scraping away, and reapplication of paint layers resulted in the paradoxically smooth, tissue-like surfaces that his canvases so frequently exhibit. Reminiscent of the dilatory practice of Leonardo da Vinci a half a millennium earlier, his method often included long periods of scrutiny unaccompanied by any movement of the brush. Contemplation and permanence, rather than speed and flux, are the essence of Cremonini’s technique and subject matter alike.

 

 

Website : Fairfield University Art Museum

 

 Source : Artdaily

 

12437 - 20170115 - The Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College presents "Sunkoo Yuh: Grafted Stories" - Miami, FLA -30.11.2016-15.01.2017

.

Sunkoo Yuh, Hope Blower.

 

The Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College presents Grafted Stories, a solo exhibition by Korean-born artist Sunkoo Yuh 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

The exhibition includes a selection of large-scale ceramic sculpture, porcelain tiles, and works on paper created during the last twelve years. It offers an opportunity for visitors to experience lushly glazed, totem-like porcelain sculptures that respond to a bewildering, multicultural, diaspora existence, and evoke the artist’s personal history, aspects of cultural integration, and spiritual discovery that creates order out of chaos.

“My work as an artist,” Yuh says, “is to transform the images from my mind into tangible ceramic sculptures. The sculptures are sometimes monumental and then again sometimes small. My ceramic sculpture not only expresses physical realities, but psychological realities at the same time. The sculpture also reflects my relationship with people and life experience around me, encompassing front and back, inside and outside, present and past memories.”

Yuh’s work blends folkloric Korean iconography with tongue-incheek twists on politics, religion, and the family unit. He skillfully articulates these concepts through the expert use of stoneware and porcelain ceramic, defying the limits of what can reasonably be built and fired. Working in the round with a soft material offers a perfect medium for the artist to mix histories and clashing cultural influences.

The artist’s process is a painstaking one. Intuitive pen-and-ink drawings form the basis of his lively narratives and the ongoing dialogue he has with his day-to-day life. After working out ideas in drawing, he then moves to the process of rendering them three-dimensionally in clay, applying vibrant, multi-layered glazes reminiscent of historical T’ang pottery. Full of images from the Chinese lunar calendar, such as the pig, rabbit, and tiger, these dynamic, complex works reflect the depth of the artist’s cross referencing and invite the viewer to explore unique cultural perspectives through a byzantine narrative labyrinth.

Yuh’s work speaks to the combined confusion and delight of new beginnings coupled with the maintenance of cultural traditions. The cast of characters in Yuh’s sculpture and drawing create a bridge between his imagined universe and his travails as a bi-cultural citizen and artist. In essence, the work is the “residue” of his attempts to secure a sense of permanency in a fluid world.

A first generation Korean-American, Sunkoo Yuh received a BFA degree from Hong Ik University in Seoul, Korea, and an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics in Alfred, NY. He has taught at the Korean University of Art, Seoul, Korea, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Il., and has had numerous residencies and experiences as a visiting artist in institutions world –wide including Kent State University; The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts; Penland School of Crafts in Penland, N.C and at California State University in Long Beach. He is currently an associate professor of ceramics at the University of Athens, Georgia.

Yuh has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions around the globe since his first exhibition in 1988. Major group exhibitions include : SOFA New York, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, N.Y.; Poetics of Clay: an International Perspective (traveled to Philadelphia art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA; the Museum of Arts and Design, Helsinki, Finland, and the Houston Centre for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX); Regeneration, Los Angeles Folk and Craft Museum, CA: Life from Clay, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA.; Rendezvous 99, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE; Cloth and Clay, Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA. His latest solo exhibition prior to the Museum of Art and Design at MDC exhibition was Chaos – Sunkoo Yuh in Seoul, Korea. Yuh has received numerous awards including the Grand prize at the Grand prize in the second World Ceramic Biennale International Competition. His latest award in 2015, is the Albert Christ-Janer Creative Research Award.

 

 

Website : Museum of Art and Design

 

 Source : Artdaily

 

12436 - 20170305 - Philadelphia Museum of Art presents "Covering Letter" by contemporary artist Jitish Kallat - Philadelphia, PA - 13.11.2016-05.03.2017

.

 

View of Jitish Kallat: Covering Letter, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2016.

 

On November 13, 2016, Jitish Kallat: Covering Letter, an immersive installation by one of India’s leading contemporary artists, opened at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The presentation of Covering Letter celebrates a recent gift to the Museum from trustee Ajay Raju and is the premiere of this work in the United States. It will remain on view until March 5, 2017.

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

Covering Letter fills an entire gallery with a video projection onto a curtain of mist created by a ceiling-mounted fog machine. It features Mahatma Gandhi’s historical letter written to Adolf Hitler on July 23, 1939, just weeks before the start of World War II. In the spirit of Gandhi’s doctrine of universal friendship, his letter begins with the salutation, “Dear friend…” and offers a passionate plea to Hitler to pursue peace rather than war. In Kallat’s installation, the movement of the visitor’s passing body through the fog diffuses Gandhi’s text, echoing the fate of a plea that went unheeded. The artist describes the letter as a petition from a great advocate of pacifism to one of the world’s most vicious dictators. It is also an open invitation for self-reflection, as Gandhi’s utterances speak to the increasing manifestations of violence in the world today.

Kallat’s incorporation of Gandhi’s text aligns Covering Letter with the artist’s sustained interest in engaging history through the actions and words of noteworthy figures. In his Public Notice series, the artist staged sculptural and interactive installations that similarly appropriated texts by Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s first prime minister), and Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda. In revisiting these historical documents, Kallat calls attention to the possibilities of peace and tolerance in a world plagued by violence, control, and surveillance.

Covering Letter (2012) is the first work by the artist to enter the Museum’s collection. The exhibition is presented as part of the Museum’s Live Cinema series, which is dedicated to exploring the vast production of contemporary video and film work.

Born in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in 1974, Jitish Kallat has produced a diverse body of work, spanning painting, photography, drawing, video, and sculptural installations.

The artist first gained recognition in the United States in 2010–11 with the presentation of Public Notice 3, a large-scale site specific installation that lit up the grand staircase at the Art Institute of Chicago. Kallat’s work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2016); Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai (2016); the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2012); the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum (2011); the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (both 2007); and the Tate Modern, London (2001).

Kallat received his B.A. in painting from the Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai in 1996. His works are also represented in public and private collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Singapore Art Museum; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; and the Saatchi Gallery, London.

Kallat, who is based in Mumbai, last visited Philadelphia in 2014 to present a lecture at the Museum focusing on his efforts as Artistic Director of the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014, India’s first international biennial of contemporary art.

 

 

Website : Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

Source : Artdaily

 

12435 - 20170205 - European drawings from West Coast collections on view at the Crocker Art Museum - Sacramento, CA - 13.11.2016-05.02.2017

.

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, The Hanging, 1790-1799. Pen and brown ink, brush and brown washes over black chalk, 35.5 x 47.5 cm. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, gift of Mortimer C. Leventritt 1941.278.

 

“Reuniting the Masters: European Drawings from West Coast Collections” brings together related European drawings, separated over centuries and continents, that are now in the possession of the West Coast’s great art collections.

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

By coincidence or by design, drawings by the same artist, for the same project, and even from the same sketchbook, have made their way separately into galleries and museums on the West Coast. Bringing these long-estranged drawings together again illuminates the work and process of specific artists in the rich history of European draftsmanship and brings forward the history of drawings collectors and scholars in the West.

"Through the generosity of our fellow West Coast institutions, we are delighted to unite these drawings, some separated for centuries, in our galleries," said Crocker curator William Breazeale. "They illuminate not only artists' working process but also a chapter in American patronage and scholarship that should be better known. West Coasters from E.B. Crocker to Vincent Price and Cary Grant have fallen under the spell of master drawings, and distinguished curators here have furthered their study."

Some works, such as François Boucher’s “Study of a Reclining Nude” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and his “Birth of Venus” at the Crocker Art Museum, relate to the same project, though one made its way to California a century later than the other. Pieter Quast’s “A Man in Oriental Dress” at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and “A Skater” at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco, come from the same sketchbook, where they originally appeared just pages apart. Others, such as Adolph Menzel's “Artist's Model in Eighteenth-century Costume” at the Cantor Center and “Study for a Tree” at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco illustrate contrasting aspects of the same artist's work.

“Reuniting the Masters” is presented in four sections representing the major European schools, showcasing the development of draftsmanship across the continent in a series of comparative pairs. Many of the most appealing artists from the 16th through 19th centuries are highlighted, including Italy’s Fra Bartolommeo and Guercino, the Low Countries’ Adriaen Frans Boudewijns and Anthonie van Waterloo, Germany’s Friedrich Heinrich Füger and Adrian Zingg, and France’s Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger. Among the objects are newly acquired and newly attributed drawings, representing the continuing work of patrons and scholars in the West.

Consisting of 52 drawings, “Reuniting the Masters” is accompanied by an 150-page, full-color catalogue authored by Breazeale; Cara Denison, curator emerita at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City; and Victoria Sancho Lobis, Prince Trust curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Reuniting the Masters: European Drawings from West Coast Collections” is on display at the Crocker from Nov. 13, 2016 until Feb. 5, 2017.

 

 

Website :  Crocker Art Museum

  

Source : Artdaily

 

12434 - 20170212 - Columbus Museum of Art presents "Thomas Cole: The Artist as Architect" - Columbus, OH - 18.11.2016-12.02.2017

.

Charles Herbert Moore, Untitled Landscape with Thomas Cole's First Studio, c. 1862-1868. Oil on canvas, 8 x 11 1/2 in. Framed: 12 1/4 x 16 in. Thomas cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY, Gift of Lynne Hill Bohnsack, TC.2001.2.1.

 

Columbus Museum of Art is presenting Thomas Cole: The Artist as Architect November 18, 2016 through February 12, 2017. This is the first exhibition to focus on the little-known fact that the renowned leader of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting realized three buildings and had plans for others before his untimely death. The exhibition also commemorates the recreation of Thomas Cole’s studio and includes paintings that reveal Cole’s architectural proclivity, drawings that document his recurrent focus on architectural structures, and elevations and floor plans for his built and visionary projects. 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

The Hudson River School of art, which Thomas Cole founded, dominated American visual arts between 1825 and about 1870 and helped to stimulate interest in environmental preservation, ultimately laying the groundwork for the establishment of the national park system. Hudson River School landscape art continues to influence contemporary artists. However, few people realize that Cole designed buildings. One of Cole’s notable architectural achievements is his design for the Ohio State Capitol and the exhibition includes drawings made by Cole of the Ohio State Capitol. It also includes Cole’s landscape paintings, some showing ancient ruins inspired by his European travels, others with 19th-century grand houses. Central to the show is Cole’s visionary painting The Architect’s Dream (1840), on loan from the Toledo Museum of Art and Cole’s The Cascatelli, Tivoli, Looking Towards Rome (circa 1832) from the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum of Art.

The exhibition is curated by Annette Blaugrund, an independent scholar, author, and curator who was director of the National Academy Museum, New York for 11 years. She has worked at the Brooklyn Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the New York Historical Society. She has taught at Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in art history. She has written numerous books on American art, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy in 2008, and was named Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 1992. CMA Curator-At-Large Carole Genshaft has organized the Columbus presentation.

Thomas Cole: The Artist as Architect was organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in association with the Columbus Museum of Art.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new hardcover catalogue of the same title published by The Monacelli Press. The 120-page publication contains 63 full-color images; directors’ forewords by Nannette V. Maciejunes and Elizabeth Jack; an essay by Dr. Blaugrund about Cole’s architectural endeavors as seen in his paintings, drawings, and realized projects; a contextual essay on the legacy of Thomas Cole by Franklin Kelly, deputy director and chief curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and a preface by Barbara Novak, professor emerita, Barnard College and Columbia University. Support for this publication was provided in part by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. The catalogue is available in the CMA Museum Store.

 

 

Website : Columbus Museum of Art 

  

Source : Artdaily

 

12433 - 20170219 - First exhibition on remarkable 18th century artist Pierre Gouthière opens at the Frick - New York - 16.11..2016-19.02.2017

.

New York’s Frick Collection presents the first exhibition devoted to Gouthière, a project that brings together twenty-one of his finest masterpieces. Photo: Michael Bodycomb.

Pierre Gouthière (1732–1813) was one of the greatest French artists of the eighteenth century. A master chaser-gilder, he created opulent objets d’art that were coveted by the wealthiest and most important figures of prerevolutionary France, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Louis XV’s mistress Madame Du Barry, and the Duke of Aumont. Like a sculptor, he made his own models and had them cast in metal. Using dozens of specialized tools, he then created patterns and textures on the surface of the metal objects before gilding them. So exceptional was his talent that his work commanded amounts equal to, and sometimes greater than, those asked by the era’s most famous painters and sculptors. Furthermore, such was the popularity and prestige of this work that over the last two centuries, many French eighteenth-century gilt bronzes have been erroneously attributed to him. This fall, New York’s Frick Collection presents the first exhibition devoted to Gouthière, a project that brings together twenty-one of his finest masterpieces, drawn from public and private collections across Europe and the United States. Many of these remarkable objects—from firedogs, wall lights, and doorknobs to elaborate mounts for rare Chinese porcelain and precious hardstone vases—have never before been shown publicly in New York, and their assembly in an exhibition provides the basis for a fresh understanding of his oeuvre. With new art historical and technical research by leading experts in the field, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue shed fresh light on the life, production, workshop, and clientele of this incomparable artist. Presentation of these works at the Frick is organized around the major patrons who commissioned them, bringing to life a sense of the extravagant world for which they were created. The exhibition is also accompanied by an educational video that illustrates how gilt bronze is made. It shows the recreation of one of Gouthière’s iconic pieces, taking viewers step by step through traditional techniques he would have used. Following its presentation at the Frick, the exhibition will travel to Paris, where a version will be shown at the Musée des Arts décoratifs from March 15 through June 25, 2017. 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court was organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection.

Comments Vignon, “With this exhibition, some five years in the making, we hope the public will appreciate the creativity and craft behind the works created by Gouthière. The beauty and perfection he achieved is worthy of special focus, and we’ve sought to clarify what can be attributed with certainty to his oeuvre while illustrating for visitors the steps of his remarkable technique, now only preserved in the hands of a few craftsmen. Our joy in turning to this topic—which was inspired by a remarkable object in The Frick Collection—is that we hope to kindle further interest in the subject and in other artists who contributed to this remarkable artform.”

GOUTHIERE’S EARLY LIFE AND TRAINING
Almost nothing is known of Gouthière’s early life, except that he was born in 1732 in the Champagne region of France, where his father was a master saddler. His training mostly took place in the Paris workshop of the chasergilder François Ceriset, who died in 1756. Two years later, after Gouthière had become a master, he took over his former patron’s workshop and also married his widow. At the beginning of his career, Gouthière carried out a considerable amount of work for Francois-Thomas Germain, the silversmith to the king, who certainly played a role in his early success. Gouthière famously made the gilt-bronze mounts for two incense burners and a vase, which were purchased in 1764 in the Parisian workshop of Germain by the Polish merchant Casimir Czempinski, on behalf of Stanislas-August Poniatowski, an art connoisseur and the future king of Poland. Gouthière claimed their authorship in an undated letter he and the silversmith Jean Rameau boldly wrote to the Polish sovereign to circumvent Germain:

[We take] the liberty of very humbly representing to Your Majesty that, for a long time, we have both been running the works of Germain, silversmith to the king of France; the former for gilding and chasing, being the only one to possess the color in which Your Majesty’s works are gilded, and the latter, for silversmithing; … and [we] dare to assert that Germain, who appeared to be their author, was absolutely incapable of making them, or indeed of bringing them to perfection...

Gouthière’s collaboration with Germain certainly put him in contact with the silversmith’s dazzling clientele, thereby giving him the opportunity to expand his business. Unfortunately, no other works by Gouthière from this period are known. Gouthière’s output during the second half of the 1760s is more familiar to experts, largely because he signed and dated a handful of pieces in 1767, including two ewers included in the exhibition. Like most bronze-makers, Gouthière did not sign his work, except in 1767 to celebrate his appointment as gilder to the king, which he received on November 7 of that year “on the basis of testimony … as to the intelligence, ability and integrity of Mr. Gouthière, merchant gilder in Paris.”

CLIENTELE IN THE FRENCH COURT
During the next twenty years, Gouthière collaborated with several celebrated architects, who provided him with innovative neoclassical models that he masterfully interpreted into extravagantly rich and exuberant gilt-bronze objects. His clientele comprised the powerful and wealthy members of Louis XV’s and Louis XVI’s courts, including Louis XV’s mistress, the Countess Du Barry. By 1772, Gouthière was known as the “very famous [gilder], the one who worked for Mme Du Barry” and was described as such in the directory of the best craftsmen working in Paris assembled by Colonel St. Paul of Ewart, secretary and later diplomatic envoy to the king of England.

Gouthière’s commissions for Madame Du Barry include the knob for a French window that he made for the countess’s pavilion of Louveciennes, one of France’s most lavish eighteenth-century buildings, designed by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Although it can no longer be appreciated in its original setting (the interior decoration was removed and sold to various collectors after the French Revolution), rare elements like this knob made for the pavilion’s Salon en Cul-de-Four, as well as Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s four panels depicting The Progress of Love, painted for the same room and now in The Frick Collection, attest to the pavilion’s former glory. Each myrtle leaf, a symbol of the goddess Venus, is rendered in exquisite detail, forming a sort of lacework that contrasts with the smooth surface of the interlinked D and B, the royal mistress’s initials. The knob alone confirms the recollections of the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who, writing in the 1830s about her time spent in Du Barry’s residence decades earlier, recalled that the “salon was ravishing … the chimneypieces, the doors, everything was fashioned in the finest possible way; even the locks could be admired as masterpieces of the goldsmith’s art.”

When the fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette arrived at Versailles, in 1770, she was surprised to learn of her grandfather-in-law’s official mistress, who had apartments near those of Louis XV in each of the royal residences and owned such an extravagant private residence as well. The rivalry between the future queen and Madame Du Barry is notorious, dividing the court of France between the pro-Marie Antoinette camp and those who preferred flattering Madame Du Barry. Gouthière managed to work for both. In 1777, he was asked to create several items for Marie Antoinette’s small Cabinet Turc at the Château de Fontainebleau. This prestigious commission included a pair of firedogs, a chimneypiece, a chandelier, a pair of wall lights, and a shovel and tongs with handles in the shape of “African heads.” Only the firedogs and chimneypiece (still in situ at the Château de Fontainebleau) have survived. A firedog is the decorative façade of an andiron, a metal support that holds burning wood in a fireplace. The design of these examples, in the shape of seated dromedaries, was in keeping with the oriental decorative theme of the Cabinet Turc, which was meant to transport the queen into a world of fantasy, sensuality, and refinement. The bases are adorned with an elegant arabesque frieze characteristic of the neoclassical style favored by the queen.

EXQUISITE COMMISSIONS FOR THE DUKE OF AUMONT
In addition to the king and his mistress, Gouthière’s clientele comprised other wealthy members of the royal court. He produced some of his masterpieces for Louis-Marie-Augustin, the Duke of Aumont, who directed the MenusPlaisirs et Affaires de la Chambre du Roi, an administrative body of the king’s household that managed the monarch’s personal effects and organized his entertainment, creating sets for theatrical productions and significant occasions such as marriages and funerals. The artists employed by the Menus-Plaisirs were free to develop new ideas without constraint, and their workshops were the locus for the forging of new fashions. The Duke of Aumont employed several artists from the Menus-Plaisirs (including Gouthière) to create objects for his personal cabinet of curiosities, housed in his sumptuous residence on Place Louis XV in Paris, now the Hôtel Crillon, Place de la Concorde. The cabinet was renowned among connoisseurs for its exquisite antique marbles, mounted porphyry, Asian porcelain, and gilt-bronze objects.

For about ten years beginning in 1770, Gouthière created for Aumont unique objects after designs by the duke’s favorite architect, François-Joseph Bélanger (also from the Menus-Plaisirs), including the mounts for a pair of alabaster vases. So perfectly do they capture the density and variety of a laurel branch laden with berries that they seem to have been cast from nature. Gouthière also created for Aumont the stunningly beautiful mounts illustrated on the vase shown on the exhibition catalogue’s cover, which take the shape of seated female figures, looking in opposite directions. Though at first glance the figures seem identical, one represents a female satyr who wears a crown of ivy and holds a branch of the same; the second figure, a mermaid, bears a laurel crown and clutches a laurel branch. Gouthière’s masterful chasing techniques breathe life into their expressions and transform decorative elements into sculptures in their own right. He accentuated his superb chasing with unique gilding techniques, including dorure au mat, or matte gilding, which gives a soft hue to the skin and contrasts with the burnished (shiny) elements, such as the fabric draping each.

On a pair of Chinese vases (originally used as garden seats), Gouthière created for the Duke of Aumont mounts after a complex design by François-Joseph Bélanger, whose composition of arabesques, snakes, and harpies was considered the height of fashion in the 1780s. Gouthière’s gilt-bronze interpretation of the architect’s design shows his command of the medium. The snakes’ backs are chased to create the illusion of small scales, while their bellies feature larger scales to imitate the skin of a live snake. Although bronze makers usually attached their mounts to porcelain by drilling holes in it, Gouthière again demonstrates his virtuosity by creating mounts that fit securely on the vases without piercing the fragile ceramics.

A MASTERPIECE BY GOUTHIÈRE THAT INSPIRED THE EXHIBITION
Several of Gouthière’s masterpieces were commissioned by Louise-Jeanne de Durfort, Duchess of Mazarin, a faithful client who was the daughter-in-law of the Duke of Aumont and heiress to the vast Mazarin fortune. Most of the objects made for her by Gouthière were intended for the gallery-salon of her residence on the Quai Malaquais in Paris (since razed and now the site of the École des Beaux-Arts).

The Frick Collection’s table—commissioned by the Duchess in 1781 and the inspiration for this exhibition—is certainly one of Gouthière’s masterpieces. The mask at the center of its entablature is one of the most beautiful faces ever to have been created in gilt bronze. Its fine features follow the classical canon then in fashion, but instead of the rigidity or coldness of some models inspired by Greco-Roman examples, it is animated by eyes that look to the right under slightly lowered eyelids and a mouth that expresses a pensive self-confidence. Is it a young man or a beautiful woman? Gouthière’s 1781 invoice refers only to a “head.” It is placed between two thyrsi (a staff topped with a pinecone and entwined with ivy, usually carried by Bacchus) and surrounded by ivy leaves (a living allegory of the Roman god’s eternal youth), thus Bacchus springs to mind; the braids and pearls suggest a female. Either way, he or she is deep in thought. The hair—a tour de force in itself—is wavy, arranged into curls or plaited into braids that intermingle with a strand of pearls and branches of ivy. Both the branches and the veins of the ivy leaves are irregular, presenting an appearance so natural they seem to be actual specimens dipped in gold. Adding further refinement to the leaves, Gouthière employed a technique called dégraissage, or “paring back,” in which he reduced the thickness of the metal on edges and sides to render it more delicate. The leaves are matte gilded, while the fruit is burnished to emphasize the contrast between matte and shiny surfaces. The daring design (with some leaves overlapping others) and the lightness achieved thorough dégraissage are admirable.

Gouthière also made a pair of large wall lights for the large gallery-salon of the Duchess of Mazarin. The extreme richness of the poppy branches with numerous varieties of flowers, almost every one unique, is particularly remarkable. Some of the flowers are only buds, while those that form the candleholders are in full bloom. Because the lights were intended to be hung relatively high, the undersides of the flowers were burnished so they would sparkle with reflected light. To appeal to a client eager for symbolic objects, a quiver of Cupid’s arrows completes their design.

In the 1770s and 1780s, the elite of Paris were eager for Gouthière’s work. Jean-Baptiste-Charles-François, Marquis of Clermont d’Amboise, may have commissioned the pair of pot-pourri vases from Gouthière in the early 1770s before he left for the court of Naples, where he served as ambassador from 1775 to 1784. Achieved by employing a range of treatments of the bronze, the naturalism of the swans is particularly impressive. Their flashing eyes express fury: as if about to attack, they raise their wings on either side of the porcelain pots. Their aggressive posture is also indicated by their slightly open beaks, which are edged with burnished gold. The shape of their beaks identifies these birds as mute swans, a species common in Europe.

Despite Gouthière’s success, a series of financial setbacks—including enormous sums owed to him by the Duchess of Mazarin and the Duke of Aumont, who died in 1781 and 1782, respectively, without paying their debts—forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1787. He worked very little after that and died in poverty on June 8, 1813. He has long been lauded by collectors, critics, and art dealers alike as one of the most important artists of the period, and, with this exhibition, the public finally will be introduced to this incomparable chaser-gilder.

Website : Frick Collection

  

Source : Artdaily

 

12432 - 20170702 - University of Richmond Museums presents four new exhibitions - Richmond, VA - 17.08.2016-02.07.2017

.

Jackie Battenfield (American, born 1950), James River Spring I, 2003, screenprint with pigmented linen and pulp painting on handmade abaca paper, 20 x 36 inches, Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, Gift of the artist, H2011.23.03 © Jackie Battenfield.

 

The Beauties: Print Series by Willie Cole is on view August 17 through December 4, 2016, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Modlin Center Booth Lobby. Contemporary artist Willie Cole (American, born 1955), is known for using domestic objects, such as shoes, steam irons, and now ironing boards, as content in his work. His newest series is The Beauties, which features prints created by flattening ironing boards to become printing plates, inking them as the matrix of the image, and printing them using the intaglio method, running each “board” through an etching press. The works in the exhibition are selected from his series of twenty-seven prints, each labeled at the bottom in letterpress with a female name that hints at an earlier time. For the artist, the names are a metaphorical link to his African American lineage, from slaves to domestic servants, connoting his ancestors and giving the ironing boards a compelling narrative.

This series continues his exploration of the cultural and aesthetic associations embedded in images using common, everyday objects. As arts writer Mary Abbe wrote, “Cole’s genius is in conveying the spiritual potential of the most ordinary domestic objects, finding beauty in the mundane, and honoring these otherwise forgotten individuals and their histories.”

Annual Student Exhibition is on view August 17 through September 18, 2016, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. Selected by the studio art faculty, this exhibition features works by visual media and arts practice majors and minors along with non-majors enrolled in beginning through advanced studio art classes during the University’s 2015-2016 academic year.

Night and Day the River Flows: Waterscapes from the Harnett Print Study Center Collection is on view from August 17, 2016 to July 2, 2017, in the Modlin Center Atrium and Booker Hall Lobby, University of Richmond. The exhibition presents a selection of artworks that offer a variety of interpretations and depictions of waterways, from abstract to realistic and from topographic to contemplative. The works are presented with quotes from novels, books, songs, and poems that complement the pieces by reflecting on the common theme of the relationship between humanity and water.


Bodies of water have populated artistic creations throughout history, acting as descriptive features of landscapes and as metaphors of life and spirituality. While the artworks in this exhibition are primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, they capture the timelessness of the subject matter, along with its grace and vitality. The diversity of the accompanying quotes, which range from the mid-1800s to today, underlines the individual nature of how we experience waterways and how we interpret and express those experiences.

To emphasize the meditative and introspective qualities of the screenprint James River Spring I by Jackie Battenfield (American, born 1950), the print is presented with a quote from Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha (1922), which reads: “The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth… in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.”


The luminous spread of water and shore in the nearly abstract aquatint June: Silver Clouds by Bernard Chaet (American, 1924-2012) brings to mind peaceful afternoons, such as those heralded in John Lubbock’s book The Use of Life (1894): “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

An intimate etching juxtaposing a small boat with an expanse of water and reeds, On the Lagoon (In Laguna) by Livio Ceschin (American, born 1962), contemplates stillness and isolation. This print is paired with the quote, “To know you is to have solitude of you and in you to rest of the rest forgetfulness,” from Alfonso Reyes’s poem “River of Oblivion” (1932) for a thoughtful reflection on the stilling of the heart around a massive body of water.

The exhibition is on view in the Modlin Center Atrium and the Booker Hall Lobby in the Modlin Center for the Arts

 

 

Website : University of Richmond Museums

  

Source : Artdaily

 

 

12431 - 20170205 - One of the most comprehensive collections of South Asian art outside India featured in major exhibition - Princeton, NJ - 19.11.2016-05.02.2017

.

Kulu or Bahu, India, The demon Dhumraksha leads his army, ca. 1700-10. Opaque watercolor on paper. Edwin Binney 3rd Collection.

 

One of the most significant collections of South Asian painting outside of India is on view in a monumental exhibition of narrative art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Encompassing more than 90 paintings representing the major narratives, regions and styles of South Asian art from the 16th through the 19th century, Epic Tales from India: Paintings from The San Diego Museum of Art is on view from Nov. 19, 2016, through Feb. 5, 2017. The paintings, which are drawn almost exclusively from the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art, have been arranged by book or literary category, allowing individual paintings to be seen as part of larger narratives.

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

“The art of the Indian subcontinent comprises one of the world’s richest cultural traditions,” noted James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher - David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “This exhibition is our most ambitious exploration of South Asian art to date, and is essential viewing for anyone interested in the vital connections among visual art, music, literature and religion.”

Edwin Binney 3rd (1925-1986), an heir to the Crayola fortune, amassed one of the finest and most encyclopedic collections of South Asian painting outside of India. The Edwin Binney 3rd Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art includes more than 1,400 works of art created during the 12th through 19th centuries, at the Mughal, Deccani, Rajasthani and Pahari courts.

The exhibition is curated by Marika Sardar, associate curator of southern Asian and Islamic art at the San Diego Museum of Art. The organizing curator at the Princeton University Art Museum is Zoe S. Kwok, assistant curator of Asian art. Epic Tales from India will subsequently travel to the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin and the San Diego Museum of Art.

The exhibition presents paintings from the “Bhagavata Purana,” one of Hinduism’s 18 great histories; the “Ramayana,” one of the longest ancient epic poems in world literature; the “Ragamala,” a set of verses that celebrate a range of musical melodies and expression, a favored subject in later Indian court paintings; and works of Persian literature, including the “Shahnama,” or Book of Kings, written by the Persian poet Firdausi.

A 150-page illustrated publication, edited by Sardar, accompanies the exhibition, as will a slate of affiliated programs, including a lecture by the curator, family day activities and a film series.

Contemporary Stories: Revisiting Indian Narratives, an exhibition organized by the Princeton University Art Museum in conjunction with Epic Tales from India, considers the continuing power and role of narrative in South Asian art by practitioners based in post-partition India and Pakistan and abroad. Featuring major works by internationally renowned artists such as Shahzia Sikander and from the Princeton University Art Museum collections as well as loans from private collections, the artists and their galleries - the exhibition suggests the varied ways in which Indo-Pakistani artists draw on the past while grounding their work unambiguously in the realities of the 21st century. Contemporary Stories is on view in Princeton from Oct. 22, 2016, through Jan. 22, 2017.

 

 

Website : Princeton University Art Museum

 

 Source : Artdaily

 

12430 - 20170219 - New Orleans Museum of Art presents first comprehensive museum retrospective for Louisiana native George Dunbar - New Orleans, LA - 04.11.2016-19.02.2017

.

George Dunbar, Red M, 1959, Acrylic and paper collage, 50 x 47 inches, Collection of the Artist.

 

George Dunbar: Elements of Chance is the first comprehensive museum retrospective for the artist George Dunbar (American, b. 1927), who played a pivotal role in introducing abstract art to the South. The exhibition explores the evolution of Dunbar’s art from his early paintings from the 1940s and 1950s to his most recent contemporary work in clay relief. A New Orleans native, Dunbar studied in Philadelphia and New York before returning to Louisiana in the 1950s to create paintings, sculptures, assemblages, and prints that marry the stark geometry of modern art with lush, elemental materials like clay and gold leaf that call forth Louisiana’s distinctive local landscape.

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

“NOMA is delighted to celebrate the career of one of Louisiana’s most influential and talented artists,” says Susan M. Taylor, Montine McDaniel Freeman Director. “The opportunity to showcase the work of an artist so closely connected with the New Orleans’ arts community and NOMA’s own history is especially meaningful as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of NOMA’s Odyssey Ball this fall.”

Dunbar’s richly textured works explore abstract art’s connection to landscape and place, and his unique vision for abstraction highlights Louisiana’s pivotal—if widely underestimated—role in the broader story of 20th century American art. “George Dunbar’s work,” says Katie A. Pfohl, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, “truly helped create a context and place for contemporary art in New Orleans, introducing the city to vanguard new ideas about art making.”

“Being a native New Orleanian, I've had the privilege of exhibiting my work at NOMA several times but have never had a true retrospective of my work,” said George Dunbar. “I am honored and humbled that NOMA has chosen to show the entire progression of my career as an artist.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited-edition artist book created in collaboration with George Dunbar, which contains an in-depth interview with the artist by NOMA’s Director, Susan M. Taylor and an essay that contextualizes Dunbar’s work within the rich history of 20th-century American art by Katie Pfohl. The catalogue is available in the Museum Shop alongside a variety of other holiday gift items that celebrate Dunbar’s unique vision for abstract art and stunning artworks in gold and silver leaf.

 

 

Website : New Orleans Museum of Art

Source : Artdaily

 

 

12429 - 20170115 - Norton showcases 2016 nominees in Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers Exhibition - West Palm Beach, FL - 10.11.2016-15.01.2017

.

The Norton Museum of Art is presenting the work of the 2016 nominees for the international Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers in a special exhibition on view Nov. 10, 2016 – Jan. 15, 2017. The Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers features more than 48 photographs, videos, and installation works by Clare Benson, Elizabeth Bick, Alexandra Hunts, and Wesley Stringer, who were nominated by Arno Minkkinen, Shirin Neshat, Rineke Dijkstra, and Michael Kenna, respectively. The exhibition is curated by Tim B. Wride, the Norton’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography. 

ADVERTENTIE

inRead invented by Teads

“The 2016 Rudin Prize nominees’ bodies of work encapsulate their continued growth as photographers and curiosity as observant artists,” said Wride. “We look forward to revealing to both the jury and visitors how these young artists have pursued in-depth discovery of ideas ranging from femininity and performance to the environment and childhood.”

Each artist is being individually showcased in a monographic installation within the group show. The nominated photographers are known for expressing themselves through cross-disciplinary practice and process. The Rudin exhibition showcases the complexity of their ideas and the inventiveness of their visual communication to express them. Each takes the form of traditional photographic prints; yet for each there is an additional element within the installation—sculpture, hand-made books, integration of color prints with black-and-white prints, video, and multimedia—that elevates their discourse.

Clare Benson’s artistic practice includes still-photography, performance, video, and sculpture. On view in the Norton’s exhibition are selections from the artist’s ongoing series The Shepherd's Daughter through which she poetically investigates gender roles, the capriciousness of memory, tradition, and mythology. Benson’s single image of the same title features her trekking across the starkly rural Michigan landscape, hoisting a massive antelope head upon her back. What could be read as a subsistence hunting scenario is complicated by the anomaly of the artist’s burden being a taxidermy trophy of an African beast.

Elizabeth Bick trained as a dancer before turning to photography. Her hard-won understanding as a performing artist still pervades her work as a visual artist. She is drawn to those situations that isolate yet simultaneously reinforce placement and gesture. Among her works on view is an example of her Street Ballet series in which she uses the camera to organize and “choreograph” the random placement of urban pedestrians and Every God XXV (2016) from her series of the same name, which was made within the depths of the Roman Pantheon. The figure and her biblically expressive gesture is spotlighted against a deeply shadowed interior by the light streaming in from the central oculus.

Alexandra Hunts is intrigued with the interaction of digital and analog photography; consumed with the seeming inability of photography to show—not merely describe—abstract concepts; and obsessed with using photography to define the invisible. As a result, she has brought all of her creative powers and technical expertise to bear on the concepts of time and mass. Examples of her visual mediation of each are on view in the Norton’s exhibition. A work such as Substance of Time and Space (2015) studies both a shifting object and time by documenting the evaporation of a glassful of water. Every 12 hours, the artist made a photograph of her subject: a glass and the water it contained until the glass was empty. She then folded and assembled all 154 photographs into a single image of a glass of water transitioning from being filled to being empty.

Wesley Stringer is a traditional photographer who also crafts handmade books. Both undertakings derive their significance and meaning from the artist’s subtlety of sequencing and empathetic understanding of the exponential accumulation of meaning available through visual haiku. His work is highly contemplative and populated by environmental imagery that recalls his home-schooled upbringing in rural Oklahoma. His search for quiet moments within a rapidly developing landscape results in expressive images of abandoned areas and hidden spaces. His most recent body of work traces the seasonal cycle and will be on view with three of his handbound books.

The Rudin Prize is awarded every two years to an emerging photographer on the leading edge of their field, but who has not yet had a solo museum exhibition. The winner, who will receive a $20,000 cash prize, will be selected by the Norton’s Photography Committee, comprised of the Norton’s Executive Director, photography curator, collectors, and trustees, and announced on Jan. 5, 2017 during Art After Dark. Visitors will be able to vote for a “People’s Choice” selection which will also be announced on that date.

The Rudin Prize, named in honor of the late New York City real estate developer Lewis Rudin, was initiated by Norton Museum staff and Beth Rudin DeWoody, who is a member of the Photography Committee at the Norton and President of The Rudin Family Foundations and Executive Vice President of Rudin Management Company. Past winners of the award include Argentine Analia Saban, nominated by John Baldessari, in 2012; and Israeli Rami Maymon, nominated by Adi Nes, in 2014.

Website : Norton Museum of Art

 

Source : Artdaily