Prado Museum in Madrid announces schedule for 2010

In anticipation of the interest that may arise in which exhibitions that will take place at the Prado next year, the museum has released some information. The first one will open in March entitled "The Art of Power", the show was recently on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington with a public attendance of almost 250.000 people. During the months of January and February, two temporary exhibitions will still be open to the public: "Maíno and Dutch Painters at the Prado" together with the invited work of the Rijksmuseum, "The Company of Captain Reijnier Reael". The last temporary exhibition before the end of the year will be Turner and the Masters, currently at the Tate Britain. The venue at the Prado will open in June.

The Art of Power. Arms, Armour and Paintings from the Spanish Court
March 8 to May 16, 2010
Rooms A and B
Following the exhibition "The Art of Power: Armour and Portraits from Imperial Spain", held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 2009, in 2010 the Museo del Prado will be holding "The Art of Power: Arms, Armour and Paintings from the Spanish Court". The exhibition will comprise an outstanding selection of objects loaned by the Royal Armoury in Madrid, displayed alongside a major group of paintings that reveal how the great painters of the day emphasised arms and armour when representing the power of the Spanish monarchy from the Renaissance onwards. "The Art of Power: Arms, Armour and Paintings from the Spanish Court "provides a unique occasion to see a group of masterpieces that could only be brought together in the Prado, set within the context of the armed portrait.
Founded at the height of the Spanish monarchy’s international power and splendor, the Royal Armoury in Madrid is the oldest and one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. Largely built up by the Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and his son Philip II (1556-1598), it houses not only the personal arms and armor of the Spanish monarchs but also a number of military trophies and diplomatic and family gifts.

Invited work: "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit", 1882 by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)
March 16 to May 30, 2010
In the spring of 2010, the Prado will be exhibiting the portrait "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Massachusetts, USA). The painting will be exhibited at the Museum as part of its program "The Invited Work", whose aim is to present to the public paintings from other collections that, for various reasons, establish relationships and points of comparison with works in the Museum’s own collection. On this occasion, the comparison will be with "Las Meninas" by Diego Velázquez, a work that directly inspired Sargent, who was one of the leading portraitists of his day.
Sargent painted "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" in 1882, commissioned by Edward Darley Boit, an American collector and friend of the artist. Sargent admired the work of Velázquez, which he studied and knew well, producing various copies on the basis of a trip to Spain that he made in 1879. In the present portrait, which is one of his masterpieces, Sargent reveals the influence of Velázquez in the treatment of the light and atmosphere, which are the starting points for a work of mysterious naturalism and intense but restrained expressivity.

Willem de Pannemaker. "The Mercury Series"
June 1 to September 26, 2010
Active from 1535 to 1581, Willem de Pannemaker was a member of one of the most celebrated families of weavers in Brussels. Pannemaker is considered the great tapestry-maker of the Flemish Renaissance, working for the aristocracy and the principal royal families of 16th-century Europe. He supplied the courts of Charles I of Spain (Charles V of Germany) and that of his son Philip II with numerous masterpieces. Pannemaker’s monogram and the quality stamp of the city of Brussels and the Duchy of Brabant, which were obligatory on tapestries from 1544 onwards, appear on the series of "The Loves of Mercury and Herse", formerly in the Medinaceli ducal collection.
For the first time the Museo del Prado will bring together in its galleries this magnificent series of eight mythological tapestries, which are now dispersed among important collections and private institutions such as the Fundación Ducal Medinaceli, the Alba Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Prado. The latter has two from the series, which use gold and silk thread to depict Ovid’s verses on the loves of the god Mercury, son and messenger of Jupiter, and Herse, daughter of the king of Attic.

"Turner and the Masters"
22 June – 19 September 2010
On June 22, 2010 the Prado will inaugurate the major exhibition "Turner and the Masters", currently on show in London (Tate Britain, 23 September 2009 to 31 January 2010), and subsequently to be shown in Paris (Grand Palais, 22 February to 24 May). The exhibition looks at the way that Turner produced his work in full awareness of the art of the great Old Masters, whom he studied in depth, while simultaneously paying attention to the artistic activity of a number of his contemporaries.
For the first time, the exhibition establishes a dialogue between Turner’s most important paintings, works by masters of other periods and those contemporary with his own time. The version of the exhibition to be seen at the Museo del Prado, which will comprise 80 paintings loaned from European and American institutions and collections, will include various works not shown in London and Paris. These include "Shade and Darkness". "The Eve of the Flood", "Light and Color". "The Morning after the Flood", and "Peace". "Burial at Sea", three masterpieces from the end of Turner’s career.
Turner and the Masters aims to offer a complete overview of the artist’s oeuvre in order to reveal his connections with other painters of the stature of Rembrandt, Rubens and Claude Lorraine, among others, as well as the profoundly original way in which he absorbed their influence from the outset of his career to his final compositions.

Website : Prado Museum

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Moderna Museet's new venue in Malmo opens to the public at renovated power station

The Art map of Malmö will get an important addition: December, 2009 Moderna Museet Malmö will open John Smedberg’s electricity plant on Gasverksgatan 22 to the public. At the inauguration three opening exhibitions will be presented. Firstly Luc Tuymans from Belgium, who is considered one of the most influential contemporary artists of today. Secondly an exhibition with a selection of Moderna Museet’s collection with a focus on the 60s, and finally Astrid Svangren who is based in Copenhagen. This was presented at a press conference today. Moderna Museet Malmö will be of continous relevance and of international concern. With a total exhibition space consisting of just above 800 square metres, Moderna Museet Malmö will offer exhibitions with today’s greatest artists and modern classics, parallel with a selection from Moderna Museets large collection from the 20th-century and onwards. Moderna Museet Malmö will also offer gallery education on the highest level, in the form of guided tours, family activities, workshops and seminars. Programme activities connected to the opening exhibitions is being planned at the moment, and will be presented in months to come.
John Smedberg’s power station from 1901 has been carefully and extensively refurbished and redesigned by Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter, and an extension has been built as a contemporary addition – an annex with a striking orange perforated sheet metal façade. The premises have been adapted to fulfil the stringent demands of a contemporary modern art museum of international renown. In addition to the exhibition space of more than 900 sqm, Moderna Museet Malmoe also has an educational workshop, a cafe and a small museum shop.
The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is one of the most renowned painters of his generation, and the exhibition "Against the Day" presents 20 recent paintings. These new paintings are on themes such as staged and virtual images. It deals with the contemporary phenomena of reality TV and the world seen through the graphics that surround us constantly in a wide variety of media and electronic devices.
Copenhagen-based Astrid Svangren (b. 1972) strives in her work what I remember... to give the viewer the feeling of being enveloped by the work. By placing objects around the exhibition space, she generates a dialogue between image and object, while putting the focus on the viewer who is positioned in the midst of the work.
"SPECTACULAR TIMES: The 1960s from the Moderna Museet collection" is Moderna Museet Malmoe’s first presentation of the abundant Moderna Museet collection. Some 40 works have been carefully selected to highlight aspects of the American, French and Swedish art scenes. In addition to Robert Rauschenberg’s famous goat, "Monogram", the exhibition will include works by Andy Warhol, Judy Chicago, Öyvind Fahlström and Carolee Schneemann.
Moderna Museets new exhibition halls in Malmö will be marked exteriorly with a new annex with entrance, café and a new upper gallery. The annex will get its characteristics by a perforated orange red façade that both connects with the old electricity plant buildings brick architecture and stands out as a contemporary addition. On street level the façade is completely made out of glass so that the daylight filters through the perforated surfaces. Interiorly the building will have a totally new spatial order by the two new stairs that lets the visitor move between the high rooms of the turbine hall and the upper exhibition halls. The turbine hall is separated in three and contains except the exhibition halls a children’s art studio. The new museum will meet top quality demands on climate and security, to enable international borrowings and exhibitions with the foremost modern and contemporary art. In total Moderna Museet Malmö will offer 1,000 square meters of exhibition space including the children’s art studio for educational purposes.
The award-winning architects Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter are in charge of the annex and the interior remodeling of Moderna Museet Malmö.

Website :Moderna Museet

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Chefs d'oeuvres miraculés de Wuppertal

Vert-de-gris et pas de l'oie : le national-socialisme n'aimait pas plus la couleur que la liberté. Il qualifia toutes les avant-gardes d'avant et d'après-guerre 14-18 de « dégénérées » puis se mit à en purger les collections dès qu'il mettait la main dessus. Par bonheur, non loin de Düsseldorf, à Wuppertal (Rhénanie-du-Nord-Westphalie) une partie du fonds du musée local a subsisté. Prévoyant l'orage, le banquier Eduard von der Heydt avait pris soin de déposer ses toiles à l'abri, en Suisse. Soit des travaux de Die Brücke (le Pont), groupe fondé à Dresde en 1905 qui rassemblait Kirchner, Heckel ou Nolde. D'autres du Blaue Reiter (le Cavalier bleu), formation qui avait pris la relève vers 1911 de la Nouvelle association des artistes de Munich, représentée par Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Franz Marc, Macke et Münter. D'autres encore issus de la « nouvelle objectivité » de Beckmann, Dix et Grosz ; des huiles signées d'expressionnistes autrichiens tels Kokoschka ou Oppenheimer, et de fauves français tels Dufy, Braque, Vlaminck et Van Dongen. Pour compléter cette internationale de l'anti-académisme, les von der Heydt avaient aussi acheté le Norvégien Munch, le Français Delaunay ou le Russe von Bechtejeff (fortement influencé par l'Art déco). Présentée à Marmottan en échange des trésors impressionnistes, la cinquantaine de pièces de cette collection révèle une véritable Europe de la création. Saturés d'outre-mer, de vert pétaradant, d'orange vif, de jaune soleil, de violet criard et de rouge pivoine, ou au contraire, dans des gammes si sombres et oppressantes qu'ils en deviennent prophétiques, ces tableaux témoignent d'une époque où des univers nouveaux surgissaient en rafales de tous les grands centres urbains, des deux côtés du Rhin. Leur lien ? Der Sturm, un magazine berlinois fondé par Herwarth Walden, lequel était marié à une poétesse de… Wuppertal.
Critique
Cette collection d'œuvres de fauves et d'expressionnistes, aujourd'hui considérée comme parmi les meilleures d'Allemagne, possède toujours sa charge d'audace. Elle ne vaut donc pas seulement parce qu'elle a échappé à l'autodafé, mais surtout par ses qualités intrinsèques : âpreté de la touche, violence du trait, sens de la caricature mordante. Et, bien sûr, palettes aux couleurs exacerbées, cadrages novateurs et thèmes touchants comme ceux de la femme, de la nature paisible ou au contraire de la ville dangereusement moderne.
Fauves et expressionnistes, de Van Dongen à Otto Dix , Musée Marmottan , 2, rue Louis-Boilly (XVIe) Paris.

Website : Musée Marmottan

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Bron/Source : Le Figaro

Icoon van de Russische fotografie in FOAM te Amsterdam

Het fotografiemuseum Foam in Amsterdam huisvest een grote overzichtstentoonstelling van de Russische kunstenaar, ontwerper en fotograaf Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956). Het is de eerste keer dat in Nederland werk te zien is van de 'icoon van de Russische fotografie'.De tentoonstelling omvat meer dan tweehonderd afdrukken, waarvan sommigen nog nooit eerder in het westen zijn vertoond. Rodchenko geldt als een van de vernieuwers binnen de avant-garde kunstbeweging aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw. Hij begon als schilder, beeldhouwer en grafisch ontwerper, maar koos in het begin van de jaren twintig voor fotografie.Rodchenko begon met fotograferen na de Russische Revolutie en was in die tijd een van de weinigen. ''Door de camera te hanteren, zorgde hij zelf ook voor een revolutie'', aldus Olga Sviblova, directeur van het Moscow House of Photography dat de tentoonstelling in Foam mede mogelijk maakt.

Website : FOAM

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Bron : Parool - Kunst

SMAK top focus on three key words by dutch ex-painter/artist Loek Grootjans

In 2008 Loek Grootjans launched the publication “Foundation for the benefit of the aspiration and the understanding of context (formerly known as the institute for immediate knowledge, real perception and logic features according to the most contemporary monochrome paintings)” in collaboration with the S.M.A.K. Call it a precedent for what is still about to come… In the exhibition “Leaving Traces” the focus is on three key works by the Dutch ex-painter/artist.
The Grandiose Artifice of a Dead Painter
Loek Grootjans plays for high stakes. Casual drivel, anxious fussing - all this is wasted on him. (I’m being careful about what I write here.)
'The Other'. Writing about Loek Grootjans’ work, I am constantly tempted to use capitals, but I will do my best to restrict this to the acceptable. We’re not dealing with pettiness here. Grootjans could never be accused of underestimating his task as an artist (Artist). Probably his seriousness, zeal and obsession are due to his great predecessors in the fields of abstract and monochrome painting: Mondrian, Malevitch, Newman, Reinhardt and Klein, who manifestly refused to compromise and who strove for the Absolute. Grootjans also recognised these qualities in Baruch de Spinoza’s writings where logicality and radicalism lead to clarity yet shake the established order to its very foundations and pull the carpet from right under your feet. Here, it’s not about going ‘to the bone’ or ‘to the bottom’, for there is no bone, no core, and no bottom. Today’s artists – i.e. from Spinoza onwards - see themselves confronted with that abyss, at least if they have some basic honesty.
Good Care
During his first visit to Opera Paese, Grootjans encountered election posters in the art centre’s neighbourhood that featured the surgically-enhanced head of a television magnate, which was crowned with the slogan: ‘He who takes good care of himself, takes good care of those who choose him.’ Grootjans remembered how, in his book Oneself As Another, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur made it clear that one can never imagine oneself in the place of another, that one can never reduce the Other to the image that one has of him or her. His or her Otherness is, in an absolute sense, irreducible. At Opera Paese, where Grootjans exhibited, he created a mural that confronted Silvio Berlusconi’s successful slogan with a network of the most divergent opinions, comments and points of view, all of which one may think but are never or almost never expressed out loud. He took his inspiration from Pasolini, including Pasolini’s defence at the various trials where he was charged with homosexuality.
The Opera Paese mural was repeated in various versions and contexts, and in a number of different languages. Moreover, this project was unexpectedly extended when not only Pasolini but also Spinoza and Perec poked their noses into this veritable Tower of Babel, and supplied the artist with sentences that resulted in him writing an entire book at a single sitting. It was called Vision of the Other Side, and consisted of a long testimony of, ode to and confrontation with the Irreducible Other. A print is included in the front of the book that shows these three fountains of words - the imperturbable Spinoza, Perec with his cat on his shoulder and Pasolini nervously jiggling around on a bar stool - meeting in the attic of the artist’s house. The Illustrious Dead drinking tea at the home of a dead monochrome painter. Death as the only real executioner, the sole source of irrefutable Truth and the perfect Absolute Otherness.
In 1998 Loek Grootjans has set up a Foundation ‘for the Benefit of the Aspiration and the Understanding of Context (Formerly Known as the Institute for Immediate Knowledge, Real Perception and Logic Features According to the Most Contemporary Monochrome Paintings)’. With its departments, sub-departments and offices, this Foundation has branched out considerably. All this functions as a gigantic construction around something that has been impossible for some time and is physically absent from Loek Grootjans’ oeuvre so that it increasingly determines and pervades all that he embarks and creates.

Website : SMAK Ghent

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Volutes d'acier sous le soleil

Le soleil tape dur à Holon, à une vingtaine de kilomètres de Tel-Aviv, en Israël. Même en ces mois d'automne. L'acier Corten du Musée du Design flamboie sous le ciel d'un bleu profond. Les bandes d'acier de cinq teintes de rouille déroulent leurs spirales comme un double symbole. Celui du talent de Ron Arad d'abord, celui de l'ambition de Holon ensuite, cette ville de 190.000 habitants qui veut se faire plus culturelle que les métropoles.
Ron Arad, vous connaissez. Ce designer israélien est né à Tel-Aviv en 1951 mais il vit et travaille à Londres. C'est lui qui a inventé la fameuse étagère bibliothèque Bookworm, qui sinue sur les murs branchés. Ses chaises, ses fauteuils, ses objets ont des formes nouvelles, originales, sculpturales. Le design d'Arad sculpte l'espace et fait surgir des émotions. C'est aussi un architecte. On le connaît à Liège : il a imaginé la Médiacité.
Holon, c'est normal, vous ne connaissez guère. Cette ville moyenne se veut une grande. Et son moyen d'y parvenir est d'ouvrir la ville aux enfants et à la culture. Holon s'est dotée d'une série de jardins d'enfants, de parcs, de parcours, d'un musée pour les jeunes publics. D'un Musée de la caricature et de la BD aussi, où l'on retrouve les dessins et la patte de Michel Kichka, le caricaturiste d'origine belge. D'un parc de loisirs, Yamit 2000. D'un festival de musique, d'un autre de marionnettes. D'un Digital Museum. D'une Médiathèque. Et, bientôt, d'un Musée du Design.
« Holon, personne ne connaissait, raconte un adjoint au maire. Nous possédions une image grise. Comment changer cette image ? On l'ignorait, on a réfléchi. On a commencé par un bâtiment pour accueillir les enfants, ça a été un succès. Alors on a construit le Holon's Israel's Children Museum, puis la Médiathèque et la Cinémathèque qui lui est adjointe. C'est comme ça que c'est parti. Aujourd'hui, les touristes affluent. En 2008, 400.000 visiteurs ont payé leur ticket pour une des attractions payantes de la ville. »
Et tout ça est financé par la ville. Chaque année, sur un budget global de 250 millions de dollars, elle en consacre 30 à 35 % à la culture et à l'éducation. « En shekels, c'est davantage qu'à Tel-Aviv », sourit-on à Holon.
Alors, le maire, Motti Sasson, 62 ans et travailliste, réélu sur ce programme depuis 1993, a osé se lancer dans le challenge d'un Design Museum Holon. Et qui d'autre pouvait imaginer un tel musée que le designer israélien par excellence ? Ron Arad a relevé le défi. Depuis quatre ans, on travaille à Holon. Et là, c'est quasiment terminé : on inaugure le musée le 31 janvier 2010.
A côté de l'architecture géométrique et colorée de la Médiathèque, comme en contrepoint, Ron Arad a développé ses volutes d'acier. L'architecture en est assez extraordinaire. La cour intérieure du bâtiment est enveloppée et surmontée de gigantesques bandes d'acier en spirales de différentes teintes de rouille, construites à Bergame, en Italie. Comme des rubans de papier. Un jeu entre le dedans et le dehors. Les volutes de métal délimitent le musée sans le limiter, l'ouvrant vers la ville et vers le ciel généreux.
« Nous avons créé une hiérarchie d'espaces extérieurs, commente Ron Arad, de telle façon qu'on peut se promener sous le bâtiment dans une cour semi-couverte, où on a le choix : emprunter la route dans l'air conditionné ou celle exposée aux éléments. L'enveloppe n'est pas qu'un joli espace, c'est une structure. »
On entre alors réellement dans le musée. Une petite galerie de 250 m2, toute en rondeurs, une autre de 500 m2 sans aucun pilier, où on pourra exposer de grandes pièces, avion ou voiture. On y verra des expositions éphémères : cent items des années 80 d'abord, puis les fibres artificielles, le textile ensuite.
« Ce musée doit être une plate-forme pour discuter du design, dit Tamar Zadok, directrice du marketing. Mais j'espère aussi avoir une expo Ron Arad incessamment. » Problème : le musée ne possède pas encore de collection propre. Il fait appel aux mécènes. Obligé : pour être reconnu comme musée en Israël, il doit en avoir une.
Holon a dépensé 17 millions de dollars pour édifier ce musée. Sur fonds propres. Et la municipalité va aider le musée à vivre pendant cinq ans. On espère 100.000 visiteurs la première année.
« Holon est une ville qui se réinvente culturellement, commente Ron Arad. Avec des projets ambitieux qui investissent dans la culture. Le concept de ce musée sous le soleil du Moyen-Orient en est un bel exemple. La ville a été assez courageuse pour oser le confier à Ron Arad Associates. J'espère que ce sera bien reçu par le public. »
« Nous espérons de notre côté, reprend l'adjoint au maire, que cela fera pour Holon ce que Frank Gehry et le Guggenheim ont fait pour Bilbao. »

Website : Ron Arad Associates

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Bron/Source : Le Soir - Culture

Schirn to present first survey in Germany of Georges Seurat's work

The French Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat (1859–1891) is considered to be one of the icons of nineteenth-century art and the most important exponent of Pointillism, a style of painting he developed. With about sixty paintings, oil studies, and drawings from public and private collections in London, Paris, Zurich, New York, San Francisco, a.o., the exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle offers a representative survey and, at the same time, focuses on a crucial aspect of Seurat’s oeuvre: the figure in space. No other pictorial subject tells more about Seurat’s art. Both his paintings and drawings testify to his great interest in the subject, which he dedicated himself to throughout his entire creative career. The artist initially looked to groups such as the École de Barbizon, to epochs like the Renaissance, or to fellow artists such as Puvis de Chavannes, but realized his subjects in a new painting technique and innovative compositions. Examining the Impressionists’ pictorial solutions and the most recent scientific insights in the fields of physiology and chromatics, Georges Seurat developed the method that went down in art history as Pointillism and became an important source of inspiration for later artists.
Together with Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), and Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Georges Seurat, who was born in Paris in 1859, numbers among the most important pioneers of modern art. He produced a significant oeuvre before his early death from diphtheria at the age of 31. He had already begun to draw and dedicate himself to art-theoretical writings in his schooldays. After taking drawing lessons for two years, he entered the École des Beaux Arts in 1878 and began to study with Henri Lehmann, a pupil of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Initially, he continued his training in the classical vein, devoting himself mainly to the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Holbein, Poussin, and Ingres. After only one year – probably not least under the impression of the fourth Impressionist exhibition – Seurat left the Paris Academy and increasingly abandoned its traditions.
In the following years, Seurat extended his knowledge in the theory of colors and the effects of colors on the human eye beyond any academic constraints. He studied the works of the art theorist Charles Blanc, the writer and color theorist Charles Henry, and the American physicist Ogden N. Rood. He was also decisively influenced by the French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul’s theory of pigments regarding the perception of colors and additive color combination. Chevreul primarily explored the laws of simultaneous contrast and how colors change with increasing distance. Around 1883, Seurat, inspired by these scientific findings, developed his method of painting based on the simultaneous contrast of adjacent colors, which was to become famous under the name of Pointillism. Paints were no longer mixed on the palette, but dabbed onto the canvas with a brush as pure colors in the form of meticulously applied and densely packed dots. The overall impression of a surface’s or painting’s coloring only comes about in the eye of the beholder as an optical mixture when perceived from a certain distance.
“Un Dimanche à la Grande Jatte” (1884–1886), a key work of Neo-Impressionism and Seurat’s most remarkable composition, in which he uncompromisingly relied on the Pointillist technique for the first time, is presented in the Schirn in the form of several small-size preliminary studies. Widely discussed in the context of the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, this work made Seurat the leader of the new avant-garde around Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, and Maximilian Luce. With their new technique and understanding of what a picture is, Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists overcame the Impressionist maxim according to which reality was transferred to the canvas as a spontaneous and individual sensation. The Neo-Impressionists no longer regarded pictures as records of snapshots, but as well-planned compositions with rules of their own. The Impressionists’ nervous, short brushstrokes suggesting movement and revealing a definitely individual character were reduced to dots of an almost grid-like uniformity and regularity. This new technique also went hand in hand with a systematization or elimination of the artist’s individual hand.
The treatment of the figure in space, which is also the central subject of the exhibition in the Schirn, is an issue running all the way through Seurat’s oeuvre. The artist’s work as both a painter and a draftsman gives evidence of his great interest in experimenting with the subject. His studies at the Academy and early drawings like “Garçon des dos” (Boy from Behind, 1882/83) already show the artist’s intense devotion to the human figure, which for him was inextricably linked with the space surrounding it. In numerous studies for his paintings, Seurat explored his figures from different perspectives, varied them, and captured them in different close-ups. Thus, he gradually arrived at the final composition of his paintings, in which he brought together the figures of his preliminary studies.
Yet even when depicted together with others in groups, Seurat’s figures strike us as isolated, still, and withdrawn. Their linearity and geometrization endows them with an almost abstract character. In the case of Seurat, this immobilization or frozen representation, i.e., the decision to render states instead of goings-on, evinces archaic traits and documents his study of the masters relying on linearly closed forms like Raphael, Poussin, or Ingres, to whom he had dedicated himself in his youth. His figural subjects are manifold: Seurat captured the urban bustle of Paris and life in the suburbs and made the working population the theme of his paintings and drawings. Small-size wooden panels show people sailing, anglers, or Sunday outing scenes. In his last major works he focused on the activities of circus artistes, clowns, and musicians: “Le Cirque” (The Circus, 1890/91), one of Seurat’s major works presented in the Schirn, shows the virtuoso performance of a female horseback acrobat in the manège. However, Seurat’s figures do not always have to be human; in his landscapes, views of cities, and maritime works, their function is, as it were, fulfilled by trees, hills, or masts.
Seurat’s oeuvre of drawings is of equal importance as his achievements as a painter. For almost all his drawings, the artist used a soft Conté crayon, a deep-black charcoal stick. The strokes cover the quite grainy paper as a dense web of rhythmic hatching and crosshatching, making the motif emerge or disappear as something floating and indefinite. Pronounced contrasts between light and dark shroud and accentuate the figures and lend them an unreal presence. Seurat’s drawings are both independent works and preparatory studies. Especially his later sheets – as well as his numerous oil sketches, which, contrary to the final paintings, are often characterized by quick Impressionist strokes – helped the artist find and perfect his compositions.
Seurat’s Pointillism proved to have a far-reaching impact on the development of Modernism. Artists like the Italian Futurists enthusiastically picked up Seurat’s thread and transferred his scientifically driven dynamics into the twentieth century. Bauhaus representatives raved about his unusual compositions and the geometrization of both his figures and his landscapes. Artists such as Agnes Martin found a basis for their drawing in Seurat’s graphic work.

Website : Schirn Kunsthalle

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Tentoonstelling Vincent Van Gogh in Londen

De Royal Academy of Arts in Londen presenteert 23 januari een tentoonstelling over Vincent van Gogh. Het is de grootste expositie over Van Gogh in Groot-Brittannië sinds 1968 met in totaal 95 schilderijen en tekeningen. Dat heeft de instelling bekendgemaakt.

Centraal staan 35 brieven van Van Gogh, waarin hij uitgebreid ingaat op de getoonde schilderijen. Het Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam stelde bijna alle brieven beschikbaar. De curators van het Van Gogh Museum onderzochten vijftien jaar lang de correspondentie van de schilder met onder meer diens broer Theo van Gogh. Deze brieven zijn tot 3 januari nog in het Van Gogh Museum te zien.

Ook leent het Van Gogh Museum twaalf schilderijen uit voor de expositie in Londen, onder meer Zelfportret als schilder (1888) en Het gele huis (1988). Andere werken voor de expositie zijn afkomstig van het Kröller-Müller Museum, enkele beroemde Amerikaanse musea en privécollecties. De tentoonstelling duurt tot en met 18 april.

Website : Royal Academy of Arts

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Bron/Source : Parool - Kunst

Le CNCS accueille l'exposition "Opéras Russes à l'aube des ballets"

À l’occasion du centenaire des Ballets Russes (1909-1929), le CNCS participe aux commémorations en présentant une exposition de costumes d’oeuvres lyriques de compositeurs russes, montées par Diaghilev ou par des théâtres parisiens dans le premier quart du XXe siècle. Parallèlement, à Paris (BNF, Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra), à Monte-Carlo (Nouveau Musée National de Monaco), à Stockholm (Dansmuseet), à Munich (Theater Museum) et bientôt à Londres (Victoria and Albert Museum)… de nombreuses expositions commémorent ce centenaire et rappellent l’action de Serge Diaghilev dans tous les champs de la création artistique.
En 1908, l’année qui précéda l’arrivée à Paris de Nijinski et de Pavlova, l’opéra russe, grâce à Diaghilev, avait déjà conquis le public avec au Palais Garnier Boris Godounov, opéra de Moussorgski, avec Chaliapine dans le rôle titre, dans des costumes de Bilibine. Albert Carré, directeur de l’Opéra-Comique, avait donné dans son théâtre Snégourotchka, opéra de Rimski-Korsakov, dans une production inspirée des illustrations de Bilibine et réalisée sous l’égide de la Princesse Tenichev. Sibéria, opéra de Giordano, était créé en 1911 au Palais Garnier, avec des costumes venus du Bolchoï, dessinés par Golovine sur les conseils de l’archéologue V. Sizov pour la création en 1901 de La Pskovitaine (Ivan le Terrible) de Rimski-Korsakov à Moscou. Enfin, c’est en 1913, l’année du Sacre du printemps, que Diaghilev récidivait, avec une nouvelle production de Boris Godounov et la création de Khovantchina, autre opéra de Moussorgski, dans des costumes de Fédorovsky.
Des costumes de ces quatre productions se trouvent aujourd’hui dans les collections du CNCS, via le fonds patrimonial de l’Opéra national de Paris. L’esthétique somptueuse, brillante, dorée et brodée de Bilibine et de Bakst pour Snégourotchka et Boris Godounov, contraste avec celle, très moderne, des costumes peints de couleurs vives et de motifs géométriques de Fédorovsky pour Khovantchina, ou encore avec les costumes quasi ethnographiques d’Ivan le Terrible.

Cette exposition rassemble 130 costumes de ces quatre productions, dans la grande majorité présentés pour la première fois, avec à l’appui maquettes, dessins, documents de travail et d’inspiration, et en complément une programmation de films dans l’auditorium du CNCS.

Website : CNCS

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Bron/Source : France 2

New works on paper section attracts first-time exhibitors to TEFAF Maastricht

François Boucher 1703-1770 - Charlotte Sparre holding a cup of coffee

The new TEFAF on Paper section at TEFAF Maastricht, the world’s most influential art and antiques fair, has proved a huge attraction to international specialists in Old Master and modern drawings, limited edition prints, photography, antiquarian books and manuscripts, watercolours and Japanese prints. When The European Fine Art Fair opens at the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre) in the southern Netherlands from March 12-21, 2010, 18 of the 19 dealers exhibiting at TEFAF on Paper will be new to the Fair. Other specialists in these fields who have been exhibiting at TEFAF for many years will remain in the existing Paintings, Drawings and Prints and TEFAF Modern sections.
When TEFAF on Paper was announced as a new initiative in July 2009, the Fair’s Executive Committee said that it would only go ahead if there was sufficient support from dealers. The response was quick and positive and the new section is now full with 19 exhibitors from eight countries most of whom will be at TEFAF for the first-time. They will be housed in the upstairs hall where TEFAF successfully launched TEFAF Design at the 2009 Fair. TEFAF Design, which was a great attraction to visitors to the Fair, will move downstairs next to the TEFAF Modern section.
TEFAF is constantly evolving to reinforce its pre-eminent position in the international art and antiques market and TEFAF on Paper will expand the range of works that the Fair offers in a wide variety of disciplines. The addition of TEFAF on Paper is the principal reason for the record number of 260 exhibitors at the Fair in 2010. However the new section will be the final expansion of the Fair because the exhibiting space is now full.
The variety and quality of works that the TEFAF on Paper dealers will bring to Maastricht will be extraordinary. Leading photography specialists in the section will include Galerie Johannes Faber from Vienna who will exhibit the Austrian Rudolf Koppitz’s stunningly sensual 1925 vintage silver print "Movement Study". The photograph of three dressed and one undressed Russian female dancers shows the link between modernism, symbolism and the Viennese Jugendstil in Koppitz’s work. It will be priced at €160,000. The gallery will also exhibit an important and previously unpublished gum pigment print of the German composer Richard Strauss taken by Edward Steichen in 1904, which will be on sale for €420,000. Michael Hoppen Gallery of London will bring Men Wrestling, New York, one of a series of photographs commissioned in about 1975 by Francis Bacon and used by the Dublin-born British artist as working documents to paint from. It is not known who took these unique photographs which came from Bacon’s studio.
Old Master drawings will form an important part of TEFAF on Paper and Arthur Ramon Antiquari from Barcelona will be exhibiting The head of "Giulio Contarini" after Alessandro Vittoria by the great 18th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (€200,000). This red and white chalk drawing on blue paper is one of a series of 15 executed by Tiepolo and believed to date from 1742-3. Day & Faber from London will bring a superb chalk drawing by François Boucher (1703-1770). Charlotte Sparre, holding a cup of coffee was acquired from the artist by the sitter’s uncle Count Carl Gustaf Tessin and later by her brother Count Fredrik Sparre and remained with the family until recently. It will be offered for sale for a price in the region of €400,000.
E.H. Ariëns Kappers from Amsterdam will show a series of 22 lithographs by Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri-Gabriel Ibels entitled Le Café Concert. The 1893 series depicts life in Parisian dance halls and portrays, among others, Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, Mary Hamilton and Aristide Bruant.
One of the most fascinating modern works to be exhibited at TEFAF on Paper will be a 16 sheet notebook compiled by Pablo Picasso. Emanuel von Baeyer of London will bring this highly important document written by Picasso in 1904-1905 and used primarily in the execution of the painting "Famille de Saltimbanques", which now hangs in The National Gallery of Art in Washington. Picasso listed the color pigments he bought and used to paint the picture. The notebook was part of the artist’s estate and in the Marina Picasso Collection (price: €72,000).
A magnificent illustrated book containing 10 original lithographs by the painter Oscar Kokoschka will be brought to TEFAF on Paper by Ursus Books of New York. Die Träumenden Knaben, was published in Vienna in 1908. It is the earliest issue of this remarkable book in its original Wiener Werkstätte binding and was the first graphic work by Kokoschka. The price will be about €34,000.
Galerie Antoine Laurentin of Paris will hold a special exhibition of more than 80 important and previously unseen works on paper by Aurélie Nemours, a leading exponent of post-war geometrical abstraction. All the periods of her working life will be represented, mostly by preparatory works for paintings which were crucial in her artistic evolution. A major exhibition of her ‘research’ paintings such as this would normally only be found in museums.
One of the highlights of the Japanese works of art on show at TEFAF on Paper will be an extremely rare original 1920 Hashiguchi Goyō print on the stand of Galerie Tanakaya from Paris. The blocks for the prints that he produced were destroyed in the great Kanto earthquake in Japan in 1923 as were many of the prints themselves. Goyō died in 1921 and today original works by him are among the mostly highly prized of all shin hanga prints. This example is in very good condition.

Website : TEFAF

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announces landmark Picasso exhibition

Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a landmark exhibition of 150 works by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), will present an unprecedented opportunity to view the Met's extensive collection of the artist's work. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 27, 2010, this first exhibition to focus exclusively on works by Picasso in the collection will reveal the Museum's complete holdings of the artist's paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics—never before seen in their entirety—as well as a significant selection of his prints.
The exhibition encompasses the key subjects that variously sustained the artist's interest: the pensive harlequins of his Blue and Rose periods, the faceted figures and tabletop still lifes of his Cubist years, the monumental heads and classicizing bathers of the 1920s, the raging bulls and dreaming nudes of the 1930s, and the rakish musketeers of his final years. Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will feature 34 paintings, 58 drawings, a dozen sculptures and ceramics, and a representative selection of prints (some 50 from a total of 400), all acquired by the Museum over the past 60 years. Importantly, the exhibition includes many works on paper by Picasso that have rarely, if ever, been exhibited before at the Metropolitan. Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art continues the Museum's tradition of organizing major exhibitions that bring to light its impressive collection of works by a singular artist or period of particular importance, such as Goya in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995); Toulouse-Lautrec in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1996); John Singer Sargent Beyond the Portrait Studio: Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection (2000); Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic (2002); and The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007–8).
The Metropolitan's collection reflects the full breadth of Picasso's multi-sided genius as it asserted itself over the course of his long and influential career. The works range in date from a dashing self-portrait of 1900 (Self-Portrait "Yo") by the 19-year-old Spaniard to the fanciful Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer (1968), created when the artist was 87. Picasso's iconic portrait of Gertrude Stein from 1906—a bequest of the writer herself in 1946—was the first painting by Picasso to be acquired by the Metropolitan. Over the next six decades, the holdings were shaped by a succession of purchases and gifts from more than 25 donors, among them other pioneering champions of modernism, such as Alfred Stieglitz and Scofield Thayer, and such illustrious collectors as Florene M. Schoenborn, Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, and Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The collection is notable for its remarkable constellation of early figure paintings, which also include: Seated Harlequin (1901), from the beginning of his Blue period; At the Lapin Agile(1905), in which the artist depicts himself dressed as a melancholy harlequin; and a self-portrait from 1906 that reflects Picasso's encounters with African and Iberian sculpture. Among the many other celebrated paintings in the exhibition are Woman in White (1923), The Dreamer (1932), and Dora Maar in an Armchair (1939).
The Metropolitan's collection of Picasso's works also stands apart for its exceptional cache of drawings, which remain relatively little known, despite their importance and number. Examples of the numerous compelling drawings in the exhibition are: Standing Female Nude (1910), one of the key works shown in Picasso's first U.S. exhibition, at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery in 1911; and Head of a Woman (1922), a powerful chalk drawing from his Neoclassical period, which lasted from 1918 to 1925.
In preparation for this exhibition, all of Picasso's works in the collection have been studied closely, and many were conserved to reveal the artist's intentions or to restore their physical integrity. The exhibition will disclose a number of exciting discoveries made during the conservation process.
Complementing the presentation of the artist's works will be photographs of Picasso by Man Ray, Brassaï, and others, also drawn from the Museum's collection.
The exhibition is organized by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman, with Susan Alyson Stein, Curator, both of the Metropolitan's Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.

Website : Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Benefit exhibition announces at the Guggenheim

Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both sitespecific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition "Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum".

Organized by Nancy Spector, Chief Curator, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, the exhibition will feature renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that will emphasize the rich and diverse range of the proposals received. "Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum" will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from February 12 to April 28, 2010.
Aristotle famously pronounced that nature abhors a vacuum, an idea that still resonates in art today. In designing the Guggenheim Museum, Wright flaunted the notion of the void, leaving the center tantalizingly (or threateningly) empty. Over the years, when creating site-specific installations or exhibition designs for the building, artists and architects have imbued the space with their presences, inspiring unforgettable works by Matthew Barney, Cai Guo- Qiang, Frank Gehry, Jenny Holzer, and Nam June Paik, among others.
For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim invited scores of artists to leave practicality or even reality behind in conjuring their proposals for the space. In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment. Conceived as both a commemoration and a self-reflexive folly, Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.
Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, Joris Laarman Studio, and Studio Job; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8. In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, "Contemplating the Void" will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition Web site, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.

Website: Guggenheim Museum NY

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Kunsthaus Zürich announces program to celebrate 100th anniversary

In 2010 the Kunsthaus Zürich will celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Switzerland’s oldest combined collection and exhibition space opened its doors in Karl Moser’s late Jugendstil museum building on the Heimplatz in 1910, and now, in honor of the centenary, the Kunsthaus will showcase its opulent collection, including many donations, and mount a major Picasso show in tribute to its tradition of key exhibitions. In 2015 the artistic idea of a dynamic museum for the 21st-century will become reality, and the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft’s success story, which owes its inception in 1787 to the initiative of local burghers, will have been continued in a further exciting chapter – the Kunsthaus extension.
Chronology of the Kunsthaus and Its Collection as of 1910
On April 17, 1910, on land donated by City Councillor Landolt, the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft opened the ‘Kunsthaus’ – neither a museum nor an art gallery, but rather, as noted by architect Karl Moser, both at once. The word ‘Kunsthaus’ in its name signaled the Kunstgesellschaft’s will to inscribe itself in the tradition of other democratic institutions, such as the guild hall and the schoolhouse. To this day, the Kunsthaus is committed to openness and continuity.
Swiss Art Sets the Tone
The first conservator, Wilhelm Wartmann (director until 1949), initially focused on Swiss art, a reasonably circumscribed field, and complemented the store of contemporary work, which enjoyed particular interest at the time, with groups of paintings from the Late Gothic period as well as by Johann Heinrich Füssli. When its major exhibition of work by Ferdinand Hodler in 1917 made it clear that the Kunstgesellschaft did not have sufficient means at its disposal for acquisitions, the silk magnate Alfred Rüetschi founded the Vereinigung Zürcher Kunstfreunde (Zurich Association of Friends of the Arts), which to this day regularly enhances the Kunsthaus collection with the purchase of significant pieces. Rüetschi himself made several of Hodler’s large compositions and key landscapes available.
Daring to be Avantgarde: Impressionism and Expressionism
In 1920 the Kunsthaus was bequeathed Hans Schuler’s collection, and thus acquired its first works of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the form of pieces by Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh and Bonnard. Years of preparation had gone into Wartmann’s first show of work by Edvard Munch when it opened in 1922, followed in turn by his inauguration of the largest collection of Munch’s art outside of Scandinavia.
In 1925 Karl Moser added to the Kunsthaus complex, and in 1929 the banker Hans E. Mayenfisch began to purchase paintings by living Swiss artists, amassing over 450 works by the time of his death in 1957. Nobel Prize laureate Leopold Ruzicka made a foundation in 1949 of his extraordinary collection of 17th-century Dutch painting.
René Wehrli succeeded Wartmann as director in 1950 and shifted the museum’s main focus to French painting after Monet, two of whose large water-lily paintings were acquired with the help of the industrialist Emil Georg Bührle in the wake of the Monet retrospective. In 1958 the main exhibition hall, with its infinitely adjustable configuration, was inaugurated. In planning by the Pfister brothers since 1944, its construction had been financed by Bührle.
Old Masters, Dada and Photography
A group of art-lovers led by the Bechtler brothers created a foundation in 1965 of the leading collection of art by Alberto Giacometti, who himself donated further works. In 1966 Nelly Bär endowed the Nelly and Werner Bär gallery and donated a key group of sculptures by Rodin and Richier, among others. The comprehensive collection of work by Marc Chagall was initiated in the 1970s thanks to Gustav Zumsteg, soap manufacturer and owner of the Kronenhalle restaurant, and with the support of a number of patrons and the artist himself.
During the same period, Erna and Curt Burgauer began donating examples of modern art to the Kunsthaus, and in 1976 Erwin Müller’s extension was opened, providing an excellent venue for contemporary genres above all. Felix Baumann replaced René Wehrli as director that same year. In 1980, thanks to numerous donations, an extensive collection of works documenting the Dada movement was established, while the Johanna and Walter L. Wolf collection added new works of French art from Impressionism to classical modernism in 1984. Art dealers Betty and David M. Koetser donated their important collection of Dutch paintings and works of the Italian Baroque and the Venetian Settecento as a foundation in 1986.
To mark the sesquicentennial of the photographic medium in 1989, commodities trader Marc Rich presented the Kunsthaus with a handsome gift: 74 photographs, mainly original prints, tracing the development of classical art photography from the mid-1900s to the present day. Finally, in 1995, Walter Haefner presented the Kunsthaus with twelve outstanding paintings by artists such as Monet and Magritte.
Restoration
In 1998 the Kunsthaus became the first art museum in Switzerland to have its own website. Restoration of the Villa Tobler as the new home of management and to serve as a venue for representational purposes was completed in 2000. In September of that year Christoph Becker succeeded Felix Baumann as the new director and the electorate of Zurich voted in favour of a loan of 28.5 million Swiss francs for renovation of the Kunsthaus.
The collection and exhibition rooms were thoroughly overhauled between 2001 and 2005 and re-opened with an accrochage of newly acquired contemporary works. The Kunsthaus remained open throughout this period. The works of Alberto Giacometti were given their own suite in what had been the administrative wing of Moser’s construction. The Collection of Prints and Drawings was enhanced with 55 master engravings by Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), the gift of Landamman Dietrich Schindler. In 2001 the Kunstrat decided on a new strategy: internal working groups and experts were to participate in public hearings on the future of the Kunsthaus, and thus underpin plans for structural modernization; acquisitions were to come increasingly from the contemporary art world; and Old Masters from various collections were to be integrated into a joint presentation, which would enable them to attain international renown. Bruno and Odette Giacometti favored the Kunsthaus in 2006 with a donation to the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, whose holdings enhanced with over 90 bronzes and original plasters make it the world’s key Giacometti collection.
The Future: An Extension for Art and the Public
In May of 2002 the President of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, Thomas W. Bechtler, together with Director Christoph Becker and Mayor Elmar Ledergerber made the case for an extension on the Heimplatz. Walter B. Kielholz, who in June of 2002 succeeded Bechtler at the head of what has now become, with some 20,000 members, one of Europe’s largest art associations, also lent his support to the plan, whose aims included continuing to accept donations and in future to show 20 percent of the museum’s own collection, in particular art produced since 1960, rather than the ten percent exhibited at present.
The Kunsthaus extension, to be built by the Kunstgesellschaft in partnership with the city of Zurich and the Stiftung Zürcher Kunsthaus and with a planned completion date in 2015, is to meet the demands of a 21st-century public. The design submitted by David Chipperfield was the winner of the architecture competition held in 2008. Joined by an underground passageway, the ensemble comprising the existing building with the extension will constitute the New Kunsthaus, Switzerland’s largest art museum. The agreement reached in 2006 with the world-renowned Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection laid the groundwork for the leading centre of French painting and Impressionism outside of Paris.
The future international ranking of the Kunsthaus Zürich will likely be established in 2011/2012, when Zurich’s electorate votes on a credit facility for the Kunsthaus extension. If the project, a joint undertaking with thecity of Zurich and the Stiftung Zürcher Kunsthaus, is approved, as of 2015 the New Kunsthaus will receive 400,000 visitors annually, an increase of more than30 percent over current footfall. For the Kunsthaus, this fourth extension is a key milestone in its history, while the city of Zurich will have a rare chance to take a leading position in the international cultural sweepstakes.
Among the project’s enthusiastic boosters are high-level collectors and patrons, the very kind who played a frequent role in the museum’s century of success by supporting the ambitions of a director and making crucial donations to the collection. Thanks to the contributions of its members and the public sector, the Kunsthaus Zürich has always been able to provide the infrastructure required for exemplary presentation and up-to-date outreach. The whole city of Zurich is the better for it, and it looks like the success story will continue beyond the anniversary year.
Centenary Programme
Indeed, the shows planned for the Kunsthaus Zürich’s centenary in 2010 are eagerly awaited: from ‘Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet – The Bührle Collection Visits the Kunsthaus Zürich’ to a reconstruction of the first public collection of paintings in Switzerland, the Gessner Cabinet, and a tribute to Pablo Picasso and his first-ever museum retrospective, mounted in 1932 at the Kunsthaus Zürich and to this day unrivalled in its comprehensive presentation of work from the artist’s first 35 years of creation.

Website : Kunsthaus Zürich

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Memorial Art Gallery opens new galleries of ancient art

Two new galleries showcasing the Memorial Art Gallery’s ancient art collections will open December 2009. Renovation and reinstallation of the second-floor galleries, which began this summer, was made possible by one of the largest gifts in Gallery history—a $1 million donation from long-time MAG friend and supporter Helen H. Berkeley.
The Helen H. Berkeley Gallery of Ancient Art will bring together works from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, including objects never before on view. Among its highlights are two of the most important acquisitions of recent years—the rare pair of fourth-century Egyptian coffins that were until recently in MAG’s Gill Discovery Center. A few steps away, At the Crossroads features works from the ancient Middle East and the Islamic world, among them a medieval Qur’an, a large architectural frieze from northern India and ceramics on loan from the Buffalo Museum of Science.
“The Berkeley gift put into motion a project that has been in the planning process for a number of years: the reinstallation of the oldest objects in the Gallery’s collection in the most up-to-date museum environment,” says Nancy Norwood, curator of European art. “The opportunity to present these significant works of art within the context of new research and interpretation continues the Gallery’s mission of bringing the world within reach of our visitors—a group that includes the many students and teachers who make extensive use of this part of the collection.” Additional support for the project was received from the National Endowment for the Arts and through State funds secured by New York State Senator Joseph E. Robach.
Helen Berkeley
Helen Berkeley served as president of the Gallery Council, an all-volunteer fund raising organization, from 1990 to 1992. She has been a member of the Gallery for more than 30 years, most recently as a member of the Director’s Circle, and was a donor to “Let the Art Live On,” the MAG endowment campaign that concluded in 1997.
In 2008, Mrs. Berkeley was a sponsor of the major traveling exhibition "American Impressionism: Paintings from the Phillips Collection". She is a member of the Board of Directors at Graham Corporation, where her late husband, Frederick D. Berkeley III, served as CEO. “Helen’s magnificent and visionary gift honors the Gallery’s collection, mission and near 100-year legacy,” says director Grant Holcomb. “Her generosity and personal commitment underscore the community-based support that has made the Gallery one of the finest regional art museums in the country.” Adds Andrew Gallina, president of the Gallery’s Board of Managers, “We are pleased and fortunate to receive this level of support, which will help the Gallery to further its mission in our community.”

Website : Memorial Art Gallery

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

La donation Graindorge

De grands projets muséaux à Liège valent à la donation Graindorge – septante tableaux et sculptures – un retour aux cimaises.

Dans l'ardente terre de Liège, le collectionneur et mécène Fernand Graindorge (1903-1985) fait un peu figure de héros. Tôt requis par les charmes d'un art qui, à l'époque, se situait à la fine pointe de l'avant-garde, l'industriel se trompa peu, achetant les bons artistes au bon moment, constituant une vaste collection qu'on redécouvre aujourd'hui, en partie, à la salle Saint-Georges. Ainsi à vingt ans à peine, l'homme acquit un relief de Arp, premier d'une longue et belle série de trente-cinq pièces.

Au début des années quatre-vingt, il fit don de soixante-six tableaux et de quatre sculptures à la Communauté française. C'est donc légitimement que l'institution prête aujourd'hui son concours à l'organisation de l'exposition et collabore avec la nièce du mécène, Dominique Mathieu. Graindorge, de son côté, avait tenté, pendant des années, de rallier la Ville de Liège à un projet digne de la collection qu'il voulait lui offrir. Sans aboutir. De guerre lasse, il avait fini par vendre ses têtes d'affiche – Monet, Kandinsky, Pollock, Klee, Picasso… – au plus offrant.
Une donation émasculée
Si elle est amputée de l'essentiel, la donation faite à la Communauté française comprend encore de belles pièces qu'on redécouvre aujourd'hui au gré d'un accrochage qui, une fois de plus, doit batailler avec les cimaises particulièrement ingrates du Saint-Georges. Exposition d'hommage, elle profite aussi d'une opportunité puisque ces septante œuvres conservées d'ordinaire au Musée de la Boverie (Mamac) doivent vider les lieux comme le reste des collections. Le Mamac, en pleine restructuration, est en passe de devenir une sorte de centre d'art sans collections propres, où devraient se succéder, si le nerf de la guerre le permet, des expos de niveau international. Les travaux sont prévus de 2011 à 2015. Le musée gagnera en surface, passant des 2.500 mètres carrés actuels à 4.000. De nombreux bureaux d'architectes sont sur ce coup que l'Europe finance à raison de 23 millions d'euros. Mais dans le petit monde de l'art liégeois on est parfois sceptique, parlant de folie des grandeurs et de poudre aux yeux.
Le Musée d'art wallon, pour sa part, se verrait investi du titre enviable de Musée des beaux-arts, accueillant notamment les anciennes collections du Mamac. Ce lieu, vrai tombeau de béton pour l'œuvre d'art, reste une misère, défiant tout effort muséographique. Constantin Chariot, qui chapeaute aujourd'hui l'ensemble des musées liégeois, se veut rassurant. « Le réaménagement se fera de fond en comble, du moins au chapitre esthétique car techniquement, la structure est parfaite. »
La collection Graindorge se montre donc pour le moins inégale. Le haut de gamme y côtoie l'œuvre mineure, falote, l'artiste oublié. L'idée de commencer l'exposition en accrochant Richard Heinz n'est pas des plus grisantes même si elle met en valeur, par contraste, l'éclat d'autres artistes sans vrai statut international mais puissants comme Mambourg. Passionné par l'art wallon, Graindorge entendait, en bon patriote, accrocher le wagon de l'art régional à des locomotives plus puissantes. De ce point de vue ne demeurent aujourd'hui qu'un Germaine Richiez, un Magritte, de magnifiques Magnelli, un Dewasne, un Riopelle et un dessin de Matisse de premier choix qui n'empêchent pas l'impression globale d'une collection émasculée. On peut se faire une idée de ce qu'elle fut réellement grâce au beau catalogue et au disque qui l'accompagne.
La collection, version décalée
Aux Brasseurs, juste en face, le thème de la collection a été pris au bond par huit artistes contemporains. Il s'agit surtout d'accumulations, d'archivage, de collections fétiche et d'un bon petit bouquin sur la question publié chez Yellow Now. On retrouve notamment Jacques Charlier et sa dévotion sarcastique à sainte Rita, patronne des causes perdues, une accumulation dont la valeur subversive commence à s'émousser, à force ! La collection un peu… lapidaire de Joëlle Tuerlinckx, les bocaux façon Broodthaers de Denmark et la « maison malade » de Jeanne Susplugas sont trop évidents pour forcer l'intérêt. En revanche, la belle installation de Joan Fontcuberta qui joue du fictionnel et du scientifique sur le thème de l'homme-sirène, le cycle de photographies de Karen Knorr recèlent un vrai potentiel signifiant et poétique.

Website : Musée de l'Art wallon

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

Atlanta Olympic Park Area: 3 New Museums, 5 years

New York City has Times Square. New Orleans is known for the French Quarter, and in San Francisco, camera-toting tourists flock to Fisherman's Wharf.
Now, city leaders in Atlanta hope to add Centennial Olympic Park — and the growing roster of museums dotting it — to the list of popular urban tourism corridors.
The downtown district, once home to rundown buildings and dark streets, was transformed in the mid-1990s into the town square for the 1996 Olympic Games. Now the 21-acre park is bordered by the world's largest aquarium, the international headquarters for CNN, the World of Coca-Cola, a children's museum and the National Museum of Patriotism.
In the next five years, three new museums will open around the park — the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the National Health Museum and the National College Football Hall of Fame (which is moving from its current location in South Bend, Ind.). And the Georgia Aquarium will premiere its $100 million dolphin wing.
Meanwhile, a private investor is considering opening a pirate museum on the park, capitalizing on a surge in the popularity of swashbuckling culture thanks to Disney's ubiquitous "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie franchise.
"It is really spectacular," said William Pate, president of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Whether you're coming for college football or with kids or just with your spouse to relax, we've really got this wonderful compact set of assets at the park that really gives you a starting point."
With the museums have come other improvements to the district: restaurants like Boston's famous Legal Seafood, nearly 15,000 hotel rooms within walking distance and the disappearance of the seedy strip joints that once ruled the area.
Want to visit the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library or the King Center? How about the Wren's Nest, the historical home of Uncle Remus author Joel Chandler Harris, or the Margaret Mitchell House? All are just a short train ride from the park.
On a recent warm afternoon, Michelle Marbry, 23, and Tammy Loudermilk, 39, took photos by the Olympic ring fountain at Centennial Olympic Park. They had just arrived an hour earlier from Charlotte, N.C., for a conference in downtown Atlanta.
"It's beautiful," Loudermilk said. "There's such an advantage that you can come to one place and it's all right there."
Nearby, Amanda McGovern and her family stared at sharks and touched sting rays at the Georgia Aquarium. The family traveled the 215 miles from Hendersonville, N.C., for an overnight trip and a visit to the aquarium downtown.
McGovern's two children — 2-year-old Destiny and 3-year-old Reagan — were looking forward to exploring one of the playgrounds at Centennial Olympic Park before the family headed back home.
"We're only in town for a day, so when we finish, we don't have to go all the way across town or get on transit," McGovern said, looking at the museums around the park.
Much of the most recent evolution started in 2001 when Home Depot co-founder and philanthropist Bernie Marcus announced he wanted to build the world's largest fish tank in Atlanta. He envisioned creating a district like Harbor Town in Baltimore, which began with the National Aquarium.
Since the aquarium opened in 2005, it has brought in nearly 11 million visitors and spurred up to $4 billion in construction downtown.
"We'll end up one day where tourism will be synonymous with the city of Atlanta," Marcus said in a recent telephone interview. "We have a lot going for us here."

Website : Centennial Olympic Park

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

La cérémonie du thé à Mariemont

Un univers passionnel fait de gestes précis et délicats pour faire naître le breuvage. C'est au XVIe siècle qu'apparaissent la théière et le thé consommé sous forme d'infusion.
Spirale de Jade pour un thé vert très rare, cultivé au cœur de la province de Jiangsu. Puits du Dragon ou thé Gunpowder Long Tching. Guanyin de fer, un Oolong cultivé près d'un temple… Autant d'invitations mystérieuses et fascinantes à découvrir l'univers du thé et celui des céramiques destinées à sa préparation et à sa consommation.

Au beau Musée royal de Mariemont en pleine mutation puisque l'institution vient d'inaugurer son nouveau et lumineux parcours Extrême-Orient, l'exposition montée par Catherine Noppe « Le thé, histoire d'un art de vivre » évoque tant un breuvage hissé au rang d'identité nationale qu'un rituel de bienvenue.
Soixante-trois œuvres issues des collections du Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware (collection du docteur K.S. Lo), – un département du Art Museum de Hong Kong –, ainsi que des pièces de la collection du Musée royal de Mariemont introduisent le visiteur dans un univers passionnel fait de gestes précis et délicats pour faire naître le breuvage qui apaisera la soif, réjouira les amis et fera de l'adepte l'égal des Immortels.
Servi dans l'opulence des émaux ou la blancheur des porcelaines, l'histoire et l'art de vivre du thé se racontent d'abord à travers des objets. Parmi les œuvres exposées, des verseuses et des bols en grès des fours Tang (618-907) et Song (960-1279) les plus réputés déploient leurs lignes d'une pureté formelle absolue. Le thé bu à la cour Tang était alors une poudre de feuilles recouvertes d'eau chaude, un thé bouilli donc puis battu chez les Song où, de consommation royale et de lettrés, il va gagner toutes les couches de la population. Les ateliers du nord et du sud du pays vont produire des pièces tout à fait remarquables. Ce n'est qu'au XVIe siècle qu'apparaissent la théière et le thé consommé sous forme d'infusion.
Les porcelaines Ming et Qing (1644-1911) aux formes plus complexes intéressent pour leurs décors documentaires comme on peut le voir avec une théière impériale du XVIIIe siècle qui montre les détails de la cueillette et de la préparation du thé.
Bel ensemble aussi que ces théières pourpres de Yixing des Ming et des Qing que les spécialistes considèrent comme le trésor de la collection chinoise invitée à Mariemont. A l'inverse de la porcelaine produite en atelier, chaque théière Yixing est une œuvre individuelle, signée par le potier qui l'a créée à partir d'une plaque de terre brune ou pourpre et dont la légère porosité conserve l'arôme du thé qui y infuse.
Un cadeau au reste du monde
Le thé est aussi un présent de la Chine au reste du monde. Le Japon s'en empare dès le XIIe siècle et en fait une philosophie liée au bouddhisme zen. Merveilles de design que ces bols chinois « fourrure de lièvre » qui étaient produits en masse à destination des moines…
L'Europe des milieux fortunés adopta le thé avec passion, découvrant les porcelaines d'exportation à décor bleu et blanc dans le sillage de ce produit de luxe. Dès le XVIIe, le thé devient un important produit d'exportation. L'Angleterre le fit payer tellement cher à ses colonies que l'Empire donna ainsi le coup d'envoi à la lutte pour l'indépendance, non sans envoyer le botaniste Robert Fortune dérober à la Chine les secrets de sa culture et de sa fabrication pour les mettre en œuvre à Darjeeling !
Thé, tea, chá en portugais, tchaï en russe, la plupart des mots pour dire le thé viennent de l'une ou l'autre prononciation du mot thé en chinois : cha (prononciation cantonaise et mandarine) et tê, teh (en dialecte du Fujian, puis en javanais). Nos langues usuelles reflètent l'origine chinoise du thé, du moins le rapport étroit entre la Chine et le thé.
L'histoire du thé, c'est également celle du commerce international et de la mondialisation, celle de la céramique créée pour sa dégustation, ce qui apparaît clairement dans le décor des porcelaines accompagnant les cargaisons de thé destinées à l'Europe. Quelques pièces révélées par les épaves du Witte Leeuw (1613), Hatcher Junk (1643) et Geldermalsen (1752) sont présentées à Mariemont.
Musée royal de Mariemont, Morlanwelz, jusqu'au 21 février. Infos : http://www.europalia.eu/

Website : Musée royal de Mariemont

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

Chinese artists' collective Madeln exhibits at SMAK in Ghent

DAH...DAH...DAH...DAH... Madeln - 2009

In the context of europalia.china S.M.A.K. will be holding the “Seeing One's Own Eyes” exhibition by the artists’ collective MadeIn. Although the focus here is on contemporary art in the Middle East, most of all, the exhibition reveals the paradox of ‘looking’ at other cultures.

MadeIn was established early in 2009 in Shanghai with the aim of stimulating the creation, support and dissemination of contemporary art. The founder of the collective is Xu Zhen (b. 1977, Shanghai), one of the most important conceptual artists who, since the 90s, has been active in a contemporary China that is rapidly evolving. Xu Zhen is dedicated to studying social, public and political processes, which he incorporates into his work in a way that is both theatrical and humoristic. In 8848 – 1.86 (2005) for example, the artist has made a valiant attempt to remove the top of Mount Everest and exhibit it as an archaeological object. More recently, Xu created an international fuss with The Starving of Sudan (2008), a reconstruction of the distressing situation the photographer Kevin Carter encountered in the Sudan in 1994, and which won him the Pullizer Prize. The visitor is given the opportunity to photograph the vulture and the dying child with his own camera. In “Seeing One's Own Eyes” the artist presents himself as the invisible brain behind the exhibition. Xu Zhen uses an extensive underground strategy to come with a project that breaks through cliché expectations of the contemporary art circuit, as the view of the Middel East and China is disrupted.

“Seeing One's Own Eyes” focuses on contemporary art from the Middle East. It offers a sample of what the Middle East aims to present in the field of contemporary art. This is expressed in a collection of space-filling installations, objects, sculptures, photos, paintings and video. The West mainly associates the Middle East with death and violence, human suffering and a continuing political and religious deadlock. Madeln’s aim is to counter this negative perception with an exhibition that focuses on a rich and flourishing art scene from this region. It presents us with surprising work, which remarkably extends beyond the context from which it originates. We see, for example, Perfect Volume, a circle made up of the tips of combat shoes. The shoes are silent; their owners have been killed. Another (two-dimensional work) DAH…DAH…DAH…DAH was cut out of a rusty sheet like a sound wave. Although it appears innocent, we see depicted the sounding board of speeches made by Middle East politicians – which leave the spectator ignorant about the persons in question let alone the message they are proclaiming.
MadeIn’s aim is not only to point a finger at social or political wrongs. It also reflects on the mechanism of the global contemporary art scene. “Seeing One's Own Eyes” portrays the paradox of ‘looking’ at other cultures but also denounces the frenetic search for originality.

Website : SMAK

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Bron/Source : Artdaily