MOIS DE LA PHOTO : LA MEP FÊTE SES COLLECTIONS

Visuel du Mois de la photo 2010, réalisé par le photographe brésilien Vik Muniz

Paris fête les 30 ans du Mois de la photo en novembre, avec 57 expositions dans les musées et galeries.
Le concept central du Mois de la photo 2010 sera "Paris collectionne" pour célébrer aussi les 30 ans des collections de la Maison européenne de la photographie, née en même temps que la manifestation.En pleine révolution numérique, le Mois de la photo fera également l'éloge de l'argentique.
Certaines expositions ont déjà commencé en septembre Parmi les grandes expositions, le Jeu de Paume propose une rétrospective André Kertesz, qui entend montrer comment le photographe hongrois a créé une poétique de la photographie, un "véritable langage photographique".
La Fondation Cartier-Bresson expose Harry Callahan, grâce notamment à un prêt de la MEP.A la BNF Depardon exposera sa France, qu'il a photographiée à la chambre, ainsi que quatorze jeunes photographes qu'il a choisis et qui montreront leur propre vision de la France.Le Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris présentera une rétrospective Larry Clark, de ses photos d'ados paumés des années 60 à ses films des années 2000.
Saul Leiter sera à la galerie Camera Oscura, Giacomelli à l'Institut culturel italien, la MEP parlera d'"extrême" avec Helmut Newton et les nouvelles images en 3D de Rodolphe Gombergh.
Le Musée des arts derniers s'intéressera au rituel de la pose dans les studios photo d'Afrique dans les années 1970.
Le Musée d'art et d'histoire et du judaïsme présente des portraits de ses collections, autour des portraits que Richard Avedon a faits de son père.
Dans les galeries on pourra Mohamed Camara, une des révélations de la photo africaine de ces dernières années, chez Pierre Brullé, le noir et blanc poétique et intime de l'Américaine Sally Mann chez Karsten Greve. La galerie Esther Woerdehoff présentera, 45 tirages noir et blanc, une installation et des vidéos du grand artiste brésilien Mario Cravo Neto, décédé il y a un an.
Le visuel de l'affiche du Mois de la photo a été réalisé par le photographe brésilien Vik Muniz avec des gamins des favelas qui lui ont apporté des objets qu'il a collés sur l'image projetée d'un Rolleiflex.

Website : MEP

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Bron/Source : France 2

POLITICAL DESIGN IN ASIA AND EUROPE ON VIEW IN STUTTGART

Jerzy Janiszewski, Solidarność-Logo, 1980. Courtesy: Jerzy Janiszewski.

With the exhibition Re-Designing the East: Political Design in Asia and Europe, held from September 25, 2010 to January 9, 2011, the Württembergischer Kunstverein is highlighting critical and resistive design practices in (Eastern) Europe and (South/Eastern) Asia from the nineteen-eighties through the present. Of particular focus is the role of both design and designers in the context of sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural upheaval. Re-Designing the East is based upon a cooperation between the Württembergischer Kunstverein, the Trafó Gallery in Budapest, the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk, and the Total Museum in Seoul. The exhibition comprises six sections, each of which has been developed by different curators from Europe and Asia.
Since the early nineteen-nineties, the world order that was familiar up to that time has radically and permanently shifted, especially through the fall of the so-called Eastern Bloc countries as well as through a global neoliberalism and the rampant development of information and communication technologies. The old concepts of the ideological “East” and “West” have become obsolete. In the far away East—as viewed from a Eurocentric perspective—countries like South Korea, Thailand, and India have (besides China) long asserted economic positions of global relevance. The onetime hierarchies beween center (the “West”) and periphery (the “rest”) has been disrupted. At the same time, there are numerous conflicts associated with the purported victory of the “Western” models of democracy and capitalism.
The title of the exhibition Re-Designing the East: Political Design in Asia and Europe already references the falloff or, in any case, the dubiousness of geopolitical ascriptions like “the East.” At the same time, the upheaval of the nineteen-eighties and nineties in Europe is to be placed into relation with that currently noted in Asia: and this against the backdrop of the question as to which role critical and resistive design practices play within these states of upheaval, meaning within the struggles for political, societal, economic, ecological, and cultural reshaping.
Here emphasis is placed on contexts such as the political transformation prevalent in the nineteen-eighties and nineties in Hungary, Poland, and former Czechoslovakia, as well as on the democratization processes—still accompanied by multifaceted conflicts today—and swift economic developments in India, Thailand, and South Korea.
The exhibition in the process sheds light on highly divergent design positions. Counting among the historical positions is, for instance, the logo of the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement created by Polish designer Jerzy Janiszewski. Also explored is the work of Czech designer Joska Skalník, who was actively involved in the so-called “Velvet Revolution” and who today, however, is faced with the accusation of having been an informant for Czechoslovakia’s secret intelligence system. Among the positions currently explored is the Indian network Design & People which furthers sociopolitical projects, thus making freely available, along the lines of the “copyleft,” its creative works as well as its knowledge for noncommercial purposes. The Thai designer Pracha Suveeranont in turn presents his extensive boycott campaign—developed in 2007 and directed against the establishment of a new constitution by election in Thailand—along with other graphic works that reference the current societal and political conflicts within the country.
The South Korean group Activism of Graphic Imagination (A.G.I.) is likewise engaged in activist contexts. Their works demonstrate opposition to the repressive politics reigning in South Korea, which have arisen through unchecked turbocapitalism and also through a newly emerging “Cold War” atmosphere.
The curators participating in the exhibition were given free reign both in conceptualizing their sections and in selecting the involved designers. Here the project fathoms the possibilities and limitations of multiperspectival, process-oriented curating.

Website : Wüttembergischer Kunstverein

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

LE BAL, UN NOUVEAU LIEU POUR LA PHOTOGRAPHIE A PARIS

Le Bal, nouveau lieu pour la photographie à Paris, 2010 (c) Janeth Rodriguez Garcia

Le Bal, un nouvel espace dédié à la photo et à la vidéo, a ouvert ses portes près de la place Clichy
Le Bal, lancé par l'association des Amis de Magnum Photos, présidée par Raymond Depardon, se veut un lieu de réflexion sur "l'image-document".
Il ouvre avec l'exposition "Anonymes, l'Amérique sans nom", qui présente des oeuvres d'artistes nord-américains sur la banalité du quotidien (jusqu'au 19 décembre).
Le Bal va proposer des expositions de photographies ou de films documentaires, de la pédagogie, un "laboratoire" de réflexion, et entend poser des questions sur l'utilisation des images, à l'heure de la révolution numérique.
Il est installé dans une petite impasse, face à un jardin public, dans une ancienne salle de bal. "L'idée est de dédier ce lieu à l'image-document, qu'elle soit fixe ou animée", souligne Diane Dufour, la directrice du Bal. "Avec Raymond Depardon, nous avons créé l'association des Amis de Magnum Photos et convaincu la mairie de Paris d'acheter les murs en 2006. Nous avons un bail de vingt ans", explique-t-elle.
Les locaux ont été complètement rénovés pour un montant de 2 millions d'euros, financés grâce au soutien d'une série de partenaires publics et privés (ville, région, ministère de la Culture, entreprises et un groupe de collectionneurs-fondateurs)."
Ce lieu totalement indépendant existe par la volonté d'amateurs, de collectionneurs, d'éditeurs, de cinéastes, de directeurs de musées qui ont cru en notre projet et nous ont aidé à le réaliser d'une façon ou d'une autre", raconte Diane Dufour.
Le Bal , qui s'étend sur 700 mètres carrés, compte deux salles d'exposition, une librairie et un "café" donnant sur le jardin public.
En ouverture, Anonymes, l'Amérique sans nom

L'exposition d'ouverture présente des photos et des films nord-américains autour de la banalité du quotidien et de l'anonymat.
Avec des images de Walker Evans sur les ouvriers de Detroit et les passants de Chicago, dans les années 1930-1940.
Le film expérimental "Necrology" (1969-1970) de Standish Lawder propose un étonnant défilé de personnes saisies de face sur un grand escalator à New York.
Des "tableaux photographiques" de Jeff Wall réalisés récemment figent des ouvriers en attente d'embauche à Vancouver. Ou encore des policiers à la recherche d'indices lors d'une enquête.

Website : Le Bal, 6 impasse de la Défense (au niveau du 20 avenue de Clichy), 75018 Paris

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Bron/Source : France 2

THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT'S FLEMING MUSEUM BRINGS CHRISTO TO BURLINGTON

Christo, The Pont Saint Angelo Wrapped, Project for Rome, Collage 1989, Pencil, enamel paint, photograph by Wolfgang Volz, wax crayon and tape. The Tom Golden Collection, Sonoma County Museum

The University of Vermont's Fleming Museum opened a special exhibition featuring original drawings, sculptures, and collages by the celebrated artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In addition to bringing this retrospective of their careers to Burlington, the Museum will also offer a unique opportunity to hear the artist Christo lecture about past and current projects.
Opened on September 21, the exhibition, Christo and Jeanne Claude: The Tom Golden Collection includes over 125 original works and photographs that trace the artists' impressive careers from 1972 to the present. "This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to experience one of the most engaged, and engaging artists of our time," said Fleming Museum director Janie Cohen, "In the course of realizing their remarkable projects around the world over the last 35 years, Christo and his late partner Jeanne-Claude have accomplished phenomenal feats of engineering, negotiation, and, above all, stunning beauty."
The collection, assembled by long-time friend and associate Tom Golden, captures the versatility, longevity, and international scope of Christo's and the late Jeanne-Claude's work. Drawings and collages of the large-scale public works, sold to fund the actual installations, are an important component of this collection. The projects include Running Fence, Surrounded Islands, The Pont Neuf Wrapped and Wrapped Reichstag, among many others. There are also a multitude of smaller projects represented in original drawings, from the whimsical Package on Radio Flyer Wagon to the haunting Wrapped Woman.
In 2001 Golden donated his collection of works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude to the Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa, California. Golden's personal and professional relationship with the artists began when he met them during the 1974 public hearings for their project Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin counties, 1972-1976. Golden went on to manage or assist with a number of the artists' large-scale projects including The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and the USA, 1984-1991 and, more recently, the as-yet unrealized Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River. Unique to Golden's collection are some small, poignant pieces made especially for him by Christo, including a wrapped bouquet of flowers. Actively engaged with the art he so loved for nearly 30 years, Golden passed away at his home in late 2002.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection was organized by the Sonoma County Museum from their collection and the tour is being organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California.
The exhibition will be on view through December 18, 2010.

Website : Fleming Museum

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LE MUSEE DE VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ ROUVRE LE 25 SEPTEMBRE

Créé en 1983 dans un parc ponctué de sculptures, dans la banlieue de Lille, le musée de Villeneuve-d'Ascq avait fermé quatre ans pour travaux.

Il rouvre au public le 25 septembre.
A l'origine du musée, la donation du collectionneur Jean Masurel à la communauté urbaine de Lille, rassemblait 219 peintures, dessins, gravures et sculptures représentatifs des courants artistiques de la première moitié du XXe siècle.
Conformément à la volonté du collectionneur, qui avait souhaité ancrer le musée dans l'actualité artistique, des salles d'art contemporain (qui succède à l'art moderne à la fin des années 50) étaient présentes dès le départ. La collection, régulièrement enrichie par des acquisitions, compte des oeuvres de Lewis Baltz, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren ou Pierre Soulages.
La collection "retrace l'histoire complète du cubisme, avec une salle entière de Fernand Léger, une salle entière de Modigliani", mais aussi des chefs d'oeuvre de Georges Braque, Henri Laurens, Joan Miro ou Pablo Picasso, explique la directrice du musée, Sophie Lévy.
L'orientation du musée s'est infléchie à la fin des années 1990, quand il a été sollicité par l'association l'Aracine, qui cherchait un lieu pour exposer la plus grande collection française d'art brut.
L'art brut, défini en 1945 par le peintre et sculpteur Jean Dubuffet, désigne les oeuvres de non-professionnels dénués de culture artistique, non influencés par les normes esthétiques, dont des malades mentaux ou des personnes en rupture sociale.
La collection de l'Aracine (3500 oeuvres) a été léguée en 1999 à la communauté urbaine de Lille.
En 1997, une exposition d'art brut avait attiré plus de 70.000 visiteurs. Après ce succès, il est décidé d'agrandir le musée pour inclure l'art brut. "Les gens viennent parce qu'ils se sentent proches de ces oeuvres, des créations spontanées, naturelles, qui les intimident moins", estime Savine Faupin, conservatrice en chef chargée de l'art brut.
Le LaM (Lille métropole Musée d'art moderne d'art contemporain et d'art brut) espère accueillir 200.000 visiteurs par an, sur 4000 m2 d'exposition. Il ouvre ses portes au public le 25 septembre.

Website : Lam

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Bron/Source : France 2

CENTRE POMPIDOU STAGES A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WORK OF NOUVEAUX REALISTE ARMAN

The Centre Pompidou is to stage a retrospective devoted to Arman, one of the major figures of post-War art. The exhibition will bring together almost 120 works from leading museums and private collections to offer a new and distinctive take on Arman’s work, from the second half of the 1950s to the last years of the 20th century.
A founder member of the Nouveaux Réalistes, a group that championed “new perceptual approaches to the real,” Arman developed a body of work intimately related to its own age, taking as its artistic material the manufactured products of the consumer society. In a presentation both lively and educational, the exhibition will highlight the two fundamental features of Arman’s work: the gesture, inherited from the practice of the martial arts, (through an exceptional selection of filmed records of the artist’s actions), and the object as vector of new artistic forms. The presentation is organised around seven themes that reflect Arman’s major artistic problematics, testifying to the originality and the evident contemporary relevance of his work.
“I started as a painter … I had a physical, practical need to physically touch the paint. I found this system of capturing the paint as it comes from the tube, fixing it in Plexiglas or polyester resin – it becomes an object. Paint becomes object. I had lots of fun with that. I made monochrome works, and others very colourful: I remade the painter.” Arman, “L’archéologie du futur ” interview with Daniel Abadie, (Cat. Jeu de Paume, 1998)
The artist was indeed a painter by training, but by 1955 he had abandoned the brush for the stamp, applying it to the surface of paper or canvas with “automatic” gesture. Influenced by great figures of the earlier avant-gardes, among them Schwitters, Picasso and Nikolaas Werkman (a typographer close to De Stijl), Arman would in 1958 also incorporate the large format and all–over composition of American Abstract Expressionism into his own artistic language.
In 1957, while in close contact with the concrete music milieu, Arman began to use objects covered in paint that left the trace of their passage across the canvas: these were the Allures d’objets, the ‘Gait of Objects’ works. In the course of these researches the object gradually began to impose itself within the pictorial frame, more particularly through the quantitative. From then on, the artist made the object part of his process of creation, seeing it as a “plastic fact.” The notorious Poubelles (Trashcans) thus present rubbish as an art material, locating Arman within a decisively post-modern approach.
To accompany the Arman exhibition, the Centre’s Children’s Gallery will offer an interactive workshop for children of three years and upwards, organised around aspects of the artist’s work. Object and gesture will serve as key themes, bringing together Arman’s artistic innovation with the sensuous experience of the child. Absorbed in this “poetical and contemporary factory” conceived by artist-designer Adrien Rovero, children will be able to explore together, through their own senses, the distinctive techniques that Arman uses (the stamp, the transsection of objects, the photofit), bringing a fresh eye to bear on the world around them.

Website : Centre Pompidou

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

COLLECTIE JEF RADEMAKERS NAAR RUSLAND

De schilderijenverzameling van de voormalige televisiemaker Jef Rademakers is vanaf 29 oktober te zien in de Hermitage in Sint Petersburg. Dit heeft Rademakers donderdag bekendgemaakt.Het gaat om zeventig werken van Nederlandse en Belgische meesters uit de eerste helft van de negentiende eeuw. De tentoonstelling, Door de ogen van de romanticus, vindt plaats in vijf zalen van het beroemde Russische museum.De schilderijen van Rademakers zijn tot 6 februari in Sint Petersburg te zien en reizen daarna door naar het Gemeentemuseum in Den Haag en het Museum M in Leuven. (ANP)

Website : The State Hermitage Museum

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Bron/Source : Parool.nl

GIACOMETTI, HODLER, KLEE...HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEVEN CENTURIES OF SWISS ART ON VIEW IN MUNICH

Albert AnkerMädchen mit Brot, 1887 - Öl auf Leinwand, 70 x 43,9 cm Kunstmuseum Bern

The Kunstmuseum Bern (Museum of Fine Arts) is Switzerland's oldest art museum with a permanent collection. This autumn, over 150 masterpieces from this institution are on show at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung (Hypo Cultural Foundation) in Munich. The selected paintings, drawings and sculptures were created by more than 60 Swiss artists. Thus, these works not only represent the Kunstmuseum's collection but also reflect the development of art in our neighbouring country.

In looking back over seven centuries, is it possible to detect a specific quality that is unique to Switzerland? Can certain themes or artistic expressions be detected within this countries art production? How can one define a national, a Swiss art? Can this be found in works by artists who, although they were born in Swiss cantons, spent their lives elsewhere, achieving glory from beyond the borders of their home country? In the same way, surely one should show the works of those artists who worked in Switzerland and set a precedent there, even if they never received a Swiss passport?
The exhibition poses such questions and, with a plethora of masterpieces, permits the visitor to see »Swiss Art« in a new light. The exhibition begins with altarpieces dating from the 15th century, a time when the Swiss achieved independence from the Holy Roman Empire. Portraits from the 16th to the 18th century bear witness to the dominant influence of Protestantism within the Alpine republic. Majestic mountain panoramas reflect the concept of a national state as glorified in Schiller's »Wilhelm Tell« (1804) and that was recognised under international law in 1848. Rooms dedicated to individual artists from Albert Anker via Karl Stauffer-Bern to Ferdinand Hodler illustrate an independent artistic development that also met with recognition beyond the Swiss border, to enter the international stage with the Giacometti family, Paul Klee and Jean Tinguely. Finally, artists like Franz Gertsch, Diether Roth, Daniel Spoerri or Pipilotti Rist set a contemporary tone.
The works for this exhibition were selected by Roger Diederen (curator at the Kunsthalle), Matthias Frehner (director of the Kunstmuseum Bern) and Christiane Lange (director of the Kunsthalle). Following the presentation in Munich, the Kunstmuseum Bern will show this group of works in its own galleries next spring. From September 2011, a slightly smaller variant of this exhibition will also be shown at the Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design in Oslo.

Website : Kunsthalle Der Hypo-Kulturstiftung

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

MAGNUM PHOTOGRAPHER'S UK EXHIBITION

Jackie Kennedy at JFK's funeral in Virginia, November 25th, 1963. ©Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos

Works by Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt have gone on show in the UK at the Magnum Print Room in London.

Elliot’s archive includes serious photojournalism – he famously caught the moment when Richard Nixon jabbed Nikita Khruschev in the chest in 1959 – as well as film star portraits and advertising shots.
Soft focus images of Marilyn Monroe in 1956 are displayed alongside stark portraits of racial segregation in 1950s North Carolina; the stricken face of Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s funeral in 1963 contrasts with Erwitt’s absurd portraits of dogs.
Other iconic Erwitt photos included in the exhibition are signed silver gelatine prints of Marlon Brando (1956, Grace Kelly (1956), Sophia Loren (1962) and Che Guevara (1964).
The exhibition marks the first time a set of four editioned 30” x 40” platinum prints are exhibited and available for sale in the UK.

Elliott Erwitt: Platinum Prints & Classic Snaps is open until 13 Nov 2010 at The Magnum Print Room, London, EC1.

For more information visit magnumphotos.com

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Bron/Source : The Independent

ALEXANDER DE GROTE IN DE HERMITAGE AMSTERDAM

De Hermitage in Amsterdam presenteert vanaf 18 september de tentoonstelling De onsterfelijke Alexander de Grote. Ruim 2300 jaar na zijn dood spreekt Alexander de Grote (356-323 v. Chr.) nog steeds tot de verbeelding. Het is de eerste keer in Nederland dat er een tentoonstelling aan hem wordt gewijd. De expositie duurt tot en met 18 maart volgend jaar.De expositie beslaat een periode van bijna 2500 jaar en toont beelden, vazen en voorwerpen uit de Oudheid. Ook zijn er schilderijen te zien uit de 17e en 18e eeuw die het leven van Alexander als onderwerp hebben.Onder zijn korte, maar heftige regeerperiode veroverde Alexander vanuit Macedonië een groot rijk dat zich uitstrekte van Griekenland tot de Indus. Als twintigjarige volgde hij zijn vermoorde vader op en begon een veldtocht die hem beroemd maakte. (ANP)

Website : Hermitage Amsterdam

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Bron/Source : Parool.nl

ROYAL ACADEMY TO EXAMINE BRITISH SCULPTURE OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Anthony Caro, Early One Morning, 1962. Painted steel and aluminium, 289.6 x 619.8 x 335.5 cm. Tate, London. Photo John Riddy / © Tate, London 2010. © Barford Sculptures Ltd/The artist.

In 2011, The Royal Academy of Arts will be presenting the first exhibition for 30 years to examine British sculpture of the twentieth century. The show will represent a unique view of the development of British sculpture, exploring what we mean by the terms British and sculpture by bringing the two together in a chronological series of strongly themed galleries, each making its own visual argument.
The exhibition will take a fresh approach, replacing the traditional survey with a provocative set of juxtapositions that will challenge the viewer to make new connections and break the mould of old conceptions.
Key British works include: Alfred Gilbert Queen Victoria, Phillip King Genghis Khan, Jacob Epstein Adam, Barbara Hepworth Single Form, Leon Underwood Totem to the Artist, Henry Moore Festival Figure, Anthony Caro Early One Morning, Richard Long Chalk Line, Julian Opie W and Damien Hirst Let’s Eat Outdoors Today.
Through these and other works, the exhibition will examine British sculpture’s dialogue within a broader international context, highlighting the ways in which Britain’s links with its Empire, continental Europe and the United States have helped shape an art that at its best is truly international in scope and significance.
The selection of works is not limited to the British Isles, but looks outward at Britain in the world including sculpture from Native American, Indian, and African traditions. These will be represented by a series of significant loans from the British Museum and the V&A, which will be shown alongside modern British sculptures from the period 1910-1930 to highlight the inquisitiveness of British artists when the Empire was at its peak and London was, almost literally, the centre of the world. The visitor will be invited to make comparisons between these pieces and consider the dramatic effect that non-western techniques, iconography and cultural sensibility had on the development of British sculpture at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The selection will also explore the choices constantly faced by the sculptor: the choice between figuration and abstraction; a choice that highlights the inherent tension in sculpture between its commemorative and political functions. Key juxtapositions exemplify these choices, including the striking comparison between Phillip King’s Genghis Khan and Alfred Gilbert’s Queen Victoria and Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph and Jacob Epstein’s Cycle of Life that opens the exhibition. Another juxtaposition encapsulates the choice between abstraction and figuration as represented by the work of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, and tells of the emergence of British sculpture as a brand on the international stage in the post-war era. The exhibition is designed to be site-specific in relation to its own location at the Royal Academy in London. It will show how, for over 100 years, London and its museums have had a powerful appeal for sculptors, and how the Royal Academy itself has played a significant and controversial role in shaping modern British sculpture. To highlight the extent of the Royal Academy’s influence, the exhibition will also feature sculptures by three of its former presidents – Frederic Leighton, Charles Wheeler and Phillip King.
The exhibition will provide a view onto this period of modern British sculpture without attempting to be comprehensive or definitive in its treatment of the subject. As such, it will represent a point of view about the work of the period and seek to highlight certain ways of looking at sculpture by thinking about its relationship with the wider world.

Website : The Royal Academy of Arts

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

LARGE-SCALE INSTALLATION BY SOL LEWITT AT GLADSTONE GALLERY IN BRUSSELS

Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition focused on a large-scale installation by Sol LeWitt that will occupy the two floors of the gallery. Long established as one of the leading figures in the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, LeWitt continually offered new ways of expanding the possibilities of the artist's role within the circulating channels of artistic creation, production and distribution. Through his vast body of works on paper, structures, and wall drawings, LeWitt makes evident the critical importance of methodology as a way of delimiting the field of artistic invention as well as conflating the expressive function of form, content, surface and support into a rationalist ideal.

Conceived in 1995, Wall Drawing #792: Black rectangles and squares underscores LeWitt's early interest in the intersections between art and architecture, which he distinguished and admired as a practice structured by predetermination, empirical logic, and collaboration. Spanning the two floors of the gallery, this major work consists of varying combinations of black rectangles, creating an irregular grid-like pattern that is representative of LeWitt's use of the elemental shapes and geometries found in the abstractions of the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. While aesthetically uniform, the differing scale, design, and dimensions of the gallery’s walls demand that each composition consider the unique architectural conditions of the site itself. On view in the garden is a concrete block structure from 2001, which acts as a compelling three-dimensional counterpart to the ideas demonstrated in LeWitt’s wall drawing. Motivated by this practical model of architecture, LeWitt developed a framework for identifying the artist as primarily that of a thinker bound to the processes of conceptualization rather than execution, a move that separated him from the romantic tradition of the artist as maker. Rejecting the ideological imperatives of Abstract Expressionism, LeWitt and his fellow allies established a counter polemic constituted by attitudes towards issues of non-hierarchy, repetition, and serialism, which centered upon the motif of the grid. Through both his elegant charting of the axiomatics of the surface space as well the stoicism of his concrete structure, LeWitt invites us to reflect upon the phenomenological effects of our unfolding experience, marking his continual insistence upon capturing the indomitable presence of the human mind.
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives at museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Kunsthalle Bern, and a long term exhibition of105 wall drawings at Mass MoCA, Massachusetts on view through 2033, among other international venues. His work remains in the collections of countless prominent art institutions, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre National d’Art Moderne Georges Pompidou

Website : Gladstone Gallery

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

TATE ANNOUNCES FIRST MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE OF JOAN MIRO IN FIFTY YEARS

Joan Miró, The Escape Ladder 1940. Museum of Modern Art, New York © Joan Miró and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

Tate Modern will present the first major retrospective of Joan Miró (1893–1983) to be held in London for almost 50 years. Opening on 14 April 2011, Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will bring together over 150 paintings, works on paper and sculptures by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. The exhibition will draw on collections from around the world to represent the astonishing breadth of Miró’s output. It will also explore the wider context of his work, bringing to light the artist’s political engagement and examining the influence of his Catalan identity, the Spanish Civil War and the rise and fall of Franco’s regime.

Miró was among the most iconic of modern artists, evolving a Surrealist language of symbols that evokes a sense of freedom and energy in its fantastic imagery and direct colour. Often regarded as a forefather of Abstract Expressionism, his work is celebrated for its serene, colourful allure. However, from his earliest paintings onwards, there is also a more anxious and engaged side to Miró’s practice, reflecting the turbulent political times in which he lived. This exhibition will explore these responsive, passionate characteristics across six decades of his extraordinary career.
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will examine the artist’s varying degrees of engagement over his lifetime. These are rooted in the complex identity politics associated with Catalonia, as revealed through Miró’s representation of its landscape and traditions. These depictions range across images of rural life, such as The Farm 1921-2 which Ernest Hemmingway bought from the artist in Paris, to the masterly sequence of the Head of a Catalan Peasant 1924-5. The tensions that erupted with the Spanish Civil War in 1935-9 elicited Miró’s explicit protests in Aidez l’Espagne and Le Faucheur 1937, as well as more private and troubled responses disguised in the renowned Constellation paintings of 1940, made in the Second World War.
Under Franco’s regime, Miró worked in a kind of internal exile in Spain while cultivating a reputation abroad as a hero of post-war abstraction. Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape will showcase masterpieces from this era, including the sublime The Hope of a Condemned Man triptych 1973. The exhibition will also reveal how he captured the atmosphere of protest in the late 1960s. Whether blackening or setting fire to his works, such as May 1968 and Burnt Canvas II 1973, or creating euphoric explosions of paint in Fireworks 1974, Miró continued to reflect the political mood in his radical and pioneering practice.
Joan Miró i Ferrà was born in Barcelona on 20 April 1893 and trained as an artist at the Galí Academy from 1912-15. From 1923, he spent part of each year in Paris and became a key figure in the Surrealist movement. With his young family he remained in France during the Spanish Civil War, but returned to Spain when the Germans invaded in 1940. Miró settled in Majorca and remained based there for much of the rest of his life, travelling for major commissions and exhibitions around the world. He died at home on 25 December 1983.
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape is co-organised by Tate Modern and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, where it will be seen in October 2011, before travelling to the National Gallery of Art, Washington in May 2012. The exhibition is conceived by Tate curators Matthew Gale, Marko Daniel and Kerryn Greenberg in collaboration with Teresa Montaner, curator at Fundació Joan Miró. Rosa Maria Malet, Director, Fundació Joan Miró, and Vicente Todolí, former Director, Tate Modern, are consultants.

Website : Tate Modern

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

POST-WAR AMERICAN ART : THE NOVAK / O'DOHERTY COLLECTION AT IMMA DUBLIN

Arnold Newman, Brian O'Doherty and Barbara Novak with their dog Flann O'Brien, 1984, black and white photograph, 32 x 26 cm, The Novak/O'Doherty Collection at IMMA. © Arnold Newman.

An exhibition of 76 artworks by many of America’s leading post-war artists gifted to the IMMA Collection by art historian Barbara Novak and artist Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 8 September 2010. Post-War American Art: The Novak/O’Doherty Collection, donated in association with the American Ireland Fund, comprises paintings and sculpture and an extensive range of works on paper, including watercolours, drawings, photographs and limited edition prints and multiples. Works by Joseph Cornell, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and a host of other celebrated artists are included in the exhibition.
The donation is particularly rich in works from New York of the 1960s and ‘70s; many the result of friendships with outstanding artists from that milieu. We can imagine the lives of Barbara Novak and Brian O'Doherty over 50 years – they married in 1960 – through these paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and prints. Many works were swops with other artists or tokens of friendship, inscribed with dedications or personal notes; others reflect their ongoing exchanges and correspondence through postcards and letters, such as the postcards sent by Sol LeWitt over the years incorporating sketches. Still other works were gifts, while some were purchased. Through them we see that Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty were central figures in the art community of the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond.
Four important works, by Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp, George Segal and Jasper Johns, were gifted in 2009. The forthcoming exhibition celebrates the arrival of the balance of their collection to IMMA. Other artists represented in the collection include Christo, Mel Bochner, William Scharf, Peter Hutchinson, Les Levine, Sonja Sekula, John Coplans, Arnold Newman, and Elise Asher. Some works were included in the recent exhibition Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts – appropriate since the composer Morton Feldman was a close of friend of the donors.
Born in New York, Barbara Novak is an enormously influential art historian as well as artist and novelist. She is the author of American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture and Voyages of the Self, recently published as a trilogy on American art and culture by Oxford University Press. She joined the art history department of Barnard College and Columbia University in 1958 and retired as Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor Emerita in 1998. A chaired professorship at Barnard College was named in her honour.
Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, Brian O'Doherty variously exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and in the RHA and Oireachtas exhibitions from 1950 to 1956. He moved to the United States in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the development of Conceptual Art and also a renowned writer and critic. He has had several retrospectives, most recently in New York University's Grey Gallery. His work has been seen in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and Rosc. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The influence of his ground-breaking collection of essays Inside the White Cube continues.
Commenting on the gift, Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections, said: ‘As IMMA approaches its 20th anniversary in 2011, it is its great good fortune to be the recipient of a most generous gift of artworks from the personal collection of Brian O’Doherty and Barbara Novak. Their gift to IMMA fulfills a longstanding wish of Brian O’Doherty, supported by Barbara Novak, to provide Irish artists and audiences with a collection of modern American art. While there are individual works by American artists in the Collection, the gift launches a whole new area of collecting and focus for IMMA, expanding its horizons to include an immensely rich seam of American art.
This donation cements an already important relationship: not only has IMMA in recent years acquired two superb examples of the artist’s Conceptualist work, even more powerfully since 2008 it is the location of The Burial of Patrick Ireland. Patrick Ireland was an identity which Brian O’Doherty assumed, in a performance enacted in 1972 called Name Change, whereby as a gesture of patriotic protest at the Bloody Sunday killings of 13 civil rights marchers, he pledged to sign his artwork Patrick Ireland “until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.” Thirty-six years later, in 2008, in a remarkable ceremony, an effigy of Patrick Ireland was interred in the formal gardens at IMMA, in a ceremony of reconciliation celebrating peace in Northern Ireland.’
IMMA’s Collection comprises more than 4,500 works in a wide range of media, having grown significantly, through purchases, donations, long-term loans and the commissioning of new works. It is shown in themed exhibitions at IMMA, and also throughout Ireland via the Museum’s unique National Programme. The presence of IMMA’s Collection abroad has increased substantially in recent years, with large-scale exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, China, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, United States, St John’s, Newfoundland, and San Sebastian, Spain, plus numerous loans of individual works to museums and galleries worldwide.

Website : IMMA

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

EXPOSITIONS : UNE RENTREE EXCEPTIONNELLE A PARIS

La magie Orozco à Beaubourg
Il se défend d'être l'artiste mexicain par excellence, archétype de l'art qui ferait pendant au jeune cinéma mexicain d'un Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grammes, Babel ) ou d'un Guillermo del Toro ( Le Labyrinthe de Pan ) dont il «goûte peu l'expressionnisme et le baroque». Pensif, sophistiqué, mesuré, ce natif de Jalapa au Mexique (en 1962) qui voyage entre Mexico, New York et Paris, partage plutôt le monde reclus et poétique de Jorge Luis Borges. Comme l'écrivain aveugle aux contes savants, Orozco cherche des connexions presque magiques entre art et réalité. Baleine blanche à l'ossature entièreme nt recouverte de dessins, crâne humain mué en damier d'échecs noir et blanc, vénérable DS découpée, rétrécie et transformée en poisson équatorial… Après le MoMA à New York et avant la Tate Modern à Londres, Beaubourg lui ouvre large ses portes pour que ce sculpteur d'un monde premier y campe son univers limpide.
Beaubourg, du 15 septembre au 3 janvier

Gérôme, l'incendie pompier à Orsay
Puisque ses impressionnistes poursuivent leur tournée mondiale, le ­Musée d'Orsay joue malicieusement la contre-programmation. Avec Jean-Léon ­Gérôme (1824-1904), il installe sous les feux de la rampe le plus pompier des pompiers, l'ennemi juré des Renoir et des Sisley. Attention au coup de soleil : les scènes orientales, l'Antiquité fantasmée, les glorieux moments de la grande histoire en format CinémaScope et les guerriers improbables aux costumes chamarrés garantissent du grand spectacle. Précision du dessin, couleurs éclatantes, soin du fini et kitsch assuré. On ne va pas s'ennuyer dans cet académisme tellement ultra qu'il nous semble désormais décadent. Dommage seulement que l'épatant bachi-bouzouk du Metropolitan de New York ne soit pas au rendez-vous. Mais son petit frère de Baltimore a promis d'être là. L'expo de la rentrée ?
Musée d'Orsay, du 19 octobre au 23 janvier.

Kertész, en VO au Jeu de Paume
Vingt-cinq ans après sa disparition, André Kertész (1894-1985) s'est imposé comme le maître de la «photographie pensive», comme l'a qualifié Roland Barthes dans La Chambre claire en 1980. Épurées et sensibles, les images de ce Hongrois de New York respirent doucement, comme des dormeurs. Elles gardent cette faculté d'évocation de l'inconnu qui s'appuie sur une réalité détectée par le seul photographe. Pour la première fois, c'est une vision extensive de son œuvre qui est présentée, dont les deux tiers seront des tirages d'époque, trésors au satiné précieux.
Musée du Jeu de Paume, du 28 septembre au 6 février.

Basquiat, la fougue d'un météore au Musée d'art moderne
À la Fondation Beyeler, musée plein d'harmonie dessiné par Renzo Piano pour feu Ernst Beyeler dans la verte campagne bâloise, Basquiat avait trouvé une certaine paix. Comment Paris va-t-il regarder à son tour cet artiste météore, né à Brooklyn en 1960 et mort d'overdose à 27 ans, en 1988 ? Échos de la ville et de sa violence, son œuvre envahit tout, panneaux de bois, chambranles de portes, planchers, meubles récupérés, frigos et larges toiles qui multiplient les plans comme une page de BD ou un palais des glaces. La main de ce Haïtien de New York est joyeusement créative, sa palette souvent franche comme un fruit des îles. La fougue de ce « radiant child » cache un fond plus dur, plus accusateur pour le rêve américain.
Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris : du 15 octobre au 30 janvier.

«Baba bling», une autre Chine au Quai Branly
Rien de superficiel dans cette exposition. À Singapour, «Baba» désigne un «homme chinois». L'expo présente le style décoratif, très travaillé et qui nous apparaît comme très clinquant, de la communauté chinoise du détroit de Malacca. Un point nodal du commerce mondial depuis le XIVe siècle. Par-delà les lits de brocart, les soieries, porcelaines et les pantoufles de perles des intérieurs des riches commerçants émancipés de l'empire du Milieu, une leçon de pragmatisme et d'ouverture d'esprit.
Musée du quai Branly, du 5 octobre au 30 janvier.

Monet droit dans les yeux au Grand Palais
Le parangon de la peinture en plein air célébré en 169 œuvres au Grand Palais. Et aussi à l'Orangerie (billet couplé), Marmottan, Giverny… Et des livres à foison! Quatre-vingt-quatre ans après la mort du pionnier de l'impressionniste, son œuvre fascine plus que jamais. Peut-être est-ce parce qu'elle déborde du tiroir dans lequel l'histoire de l'art l'a rangée. Est-il d'ailleurs juste d'employer le terme d'impressionniste, à l'origine péjoratif, pour définir un artiste ayant toujours clamé son «horreur des théories» ? Ayant eu pour unique, simple et ambitieux souci celui de capter la lumière avec sa fugacité ? Réponse cet automne, saison idéale pour une réévaluation sensible des champs, des mers, cathédrales, nymphéas, et plus encore. Avec pour seule certitude que, du Havre au pont japonais, la main du grand Claude semble directement connectée à ses yeux.
Grand Palais, du 22 septembre au 24 janvier.
Marmottan, du 7 octobre au 20 février.

Les Incas, leur or, leurs ancêtres à la Pinacothèque
Aussi puissant que le romain, l'Empire inca aura également été un des plus fragiles de l'histoire. Les maladies occidentales l'ont foudroyé, tandis que les conquistadors fondaient son or. Il reste tout de même de fabuleux trésors d'orfèvrerie dans les musées péruviens. Ces derniers ont accordé le prêt d'une sélection significative à la Pinacothèque, laquelle entreprend d'en expliquer la fabrication et d'en décrypter la symbolique. Pour cela un retour aux nombreuses civilisations andines antérieures s'avère nécessaire. Une plongée passionnante dans les nécropoles mochicas et les pyramides nazcas, avant Cuzco et le Machu Picchu.
Pinacothèque de Paris, du 10 septembre au 6 février.

Henry Moore de retour au Musée Rodin
Après Londres, Paris célèbre cet automne Henry Moore (1898-1986), sculpteur britannique régulièrement en vedette dans les ventes d'art moderne à New York. Au printemps, la Tate Britain avait souligné son ancrage en la terre du Yorkshire et révélé ses années d'avant-garde marquées par les arts premiers et le choc des deux guerres mondiales. Pour cette première rétrospective à Paris depuis plus de trente ans, le Musée Rodin évoquera son atelier à Perry Green, Hertfordshire, devenu selon les vœux de l'artiste la Fondation Henry Moore ouverte toute l'année aux visiteurs. Plus de 150 sculptures, une cinquantaine de dessins et trois albums de croquis, ossements, coquillages, morceaux de bois et débris propres à l'inspiration recréeront l'atelier de cet artiste couronné en son jardin.
Musée Rodin, du 15 octobre au 27 février.

1500, l'année charnière, au Grand Palais
1515? Marignan. Et 1500? Dans le royaume de France encore gothique mais où influences nordiques et italiennes abondent, c'est la fin du Moyen Âge. On aime les mises au tombeau et les vierges de pitié. Louis XII règne depuis deux ans. Il vient de faire annuler son mariage avec Jeanne de France et a épousé Anne de Bretagne. La branche d'Orléans est renforcée face aux Valois. Dans l'immédiat, les guerres d'Italie reprennent tandis que les foyers culturels du Val de Loire, du Bourbonnais, de Normandie, Champagne et Languedoc fleurissent. Le démontre ce panorama en deux cents sculptures, vitraux, tapisseries, pièces d'orfèvrerie, médailles, émaux peints, livre manuscrits ou imprimés. Et bien sûr les huiles sur bois exceptionnelles du Maître de Moulins, le peintre le plus célèbre de cette époque.
Grand Palais, du 6 octobre au 10 janvier.

La France en instantanés à la BNF
À quoi ressemble la France, aujourd'hui? En 2006, les Rencontres d'Arles mettaient en avant une nouvelle génération de photographes qui s'interrogent sur la représentation sociale et géographique du territoire français, comme Philippe Chancel vu à Metz lors de «Constellations» l'an dernier. Beaucoup de ces observateurs sans fin de la société et de ses aspérités étaient à Arles, cet été. «France 14», leur état des lieux photographique sera présenté à la BNF en regard de «La France de Raymond Depardon».
BNF site François-Mitterrand, du 30 septembre au 21 novembre.

Rubens et Poussin en regard au Musée Jacquemart-André
Quels sont les rapports entre la peinture baroque flamande et l'école classique française? Comment ont évolué ces influences mutuelles ? Réponse en une soixantaine de tableaux issus de collections privées et publiques françaises, et parfois étrangères. Aux cimaises donc, du sérieux, du beau. Rubens et Poussin bien sûr (Le Bain de Diane venu de Rotterdam et La Mort d'Adonis, prêt du Musée de Caen), mais aussi Pourbus, les frères Le Nain, La Hyre, Le Sueur ou encore Le Brun.
Musée Jacquemart-André, du 24 septembre au 24 janvier.

David Hockney, artiste numérique, à la Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent
Le plus excentrique des peintres britanniques fascine la France depuis longtemps, autant par son aisance que par son audace, de ses langoureuses Piscines au Grand Canyon . En 1999, le Centre Pompidou avait exposé «David Hockney, espace, paysage» et le Musée Picasso «David Hockney: Dialogue avec Picasso». Son retour à Paris sera virtuel puisque «David Hockney: Fleurs fraîches» présentera les créations numériques du peintre à travers trois supports, iPhone, iPad et des projections numériques. Une centaine d'images, pour le moins inédites en matière d'exposition, qui traduiront l'aptitude de l'artiste à manier l'image sur ordinateur, à commencer par l'application Brushes sur iPhone. À voir ou à méditer?
Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, du 20 octobre au 30 janvier.

Dans le cabinet des merveilles des Médicis au Musée Maillol
Cette dynastie de marchands, banquiers et princes, esthètes et humanistes régnant sur Florence durant trois siècles, aura donné deux reines à la France et deux papes aux chrétiens. Et plus encore: pour sa gloire et pour l'histoire, elle n'aura cessé de commander ou d'acquérir des chefs-d'œuvre de tous les arts. De ce faste inouï, émerge la personnalité des différents mécènes chefs successifs de la famille. Leur goût devrait pouvoir se lire aisément dans la découverte des cent cinquante objets précieux sélectionnés par Maria Sframeli, directrice de la documentation et de la recherche de la Surintendance de Florence.
Musée Maillol, du 29 septembre au 31 janvier.

Les sciences au Château de Versailles
Aux XVII e et XVIII e siècles, Versailles n'était pas seulement le centre du pouvoir et des arts. C'était aussi celui des sciences. Colbert, et plus tard le docteur Quesnay, l'abbé Nollet et ses «leçons de choses», les frères Mont­golfier, Diderot et d'Alembert ou encore Benjamin Franklin avec son paratonnerre le fréquentèrent avant tout pour cela. Sous Louis XIV, protecteur des sciences, la recherche s'épanouissait à l'Académie, dans la bibliothèque, et des démonstrations avaient lieu jusque dans la galerie des Glaces. Optique, hydraulique, mécanique, médecine, agronomie… Louis XV se passionnait pour l'astronomie et la botanique. Alors les sciences étaient empreintes de merveilleux. Encore un peu magique. L'exposition qui se prépare devrait l'être aussi.
Château de Versailles, du 26 octobre au 27 février.

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Bron/Source : Le Figaro

POSTERS CREATED IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AT GREY ART GALLERY NEW YORK

University’s Grey Art Gallery presents the first American museum exhibition of artists’ posters created in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the 23-year period preceding reunification. Opening on September 7, Künstlerplakate: Artists’ Posters from East Germany, 1967–1990 showcases more than 120 examples that were produced and circulated primarily in the country’s three principal art centers: Dresden, Leipzig, and Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). These artists’ posters―Künstlerplakate in German―reveal the art form’s evolution from early examples in the 1960s to impressive highpoints in the late 1980s. Drawn entirely from the extensive collections of and organized by the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, the exhibition also demonstrates the wide range of styles employed by East German artists.
Künstlerplakate function both as advertisements for cultural events and works of art in their own right, with most printed either by or in the presence of the artist. Limiting the editions to less than 100 copies, painters, sculptors, and graphic artists were, for the most part, able to bypass strict GDR censorship boards. While painting—with its associations of bourgeois conspicuous consumption―was discouraged by Communist officials, printmaking and graphic design―with their emphasis on reproducibility and visual communication―were encouraged. Artists’ posters thus provided a potent vehicle for individual expression and experimentation. Despite pressure to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, East German artists were challenged to produce creative and engaging posters while skirting the edges of ideological orthodoxy. Over time, GDR printing policies and censorship standards eased; a majority of the posters featured in Künstlerplakate date from the 1980s and many obliquely address the stifled promise of East German Communism.
“The Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz is thrilled to share these remarkable and vibrant posters with New York audiences,” states Ingrid Mössinger, executive director of the complex of museums located in Chemnitz, a major city in Saxony, and co-curator of the exhibition with Katharina Metz. “The posters, over 100 of which were donated to the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz by collectors Margrit and Gert Becker, demonstrate that the East German art scene was much more diverse than previously assumed. They also offer eloquent testimony to what artists had to cope with and what they suffered at the time,” observe Mössinger and Metz.
With tightly restricted access to Western newspapers, art magazines, and television, GDR artists had limited exposure to contemporary international art developments and turned their attention to historical avant-gardes. During the 1950s, impassioned debates about the proper role of the visual arts in East German culture flared regularly, pitting realism against formalism and abstraction. By the mid-1970s, artists were incorporating new techniques such as offset lithography and silkscreen. Posters produced throughout the 1980s until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 reveal East German artists’ interest in experimental art as censorship standards began to relax.
While the GDR sponsored “official” artists whose work met specific criteria and paid them a monthly stipend for living expenses, those outside this network had to support themselves via other means. They also faced significant obstacles in finding exhibition spaces. Before the founding of the state-run network of galleries—the Staatlichen Kunsthandel der DDR—in the late 1970s, this challenge was partly resolved through the establishment of public print fairs and markets. These venues provided exposure as well as an income stream for artists unable to secure state-funded commissions. A number of unofficial artists’ groups were also founded, including Autoperforation Artists, Dresdner Sezession 89, and Clara Mosch. The latter, whose name derived from the first few letters of the last names of its members―Carlfriedrich Claus, Thomas Ranft and Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, Michael Morgner, and Gregor Thorsten Schade―staged events in the spirit of Happenings, Fluxus, and performance art—which were known primarily through journals and magazines surreptitiously imported from the West. The group also operated an alternative gallery space in Chemnitz in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Carlfriedrich Claus, widely considered one of the most important “unofficial” artists in East Germany, was also a poet and philosopher who earned a living copying musical scores. In the poster he designed to promote an exhibition at Städtische Museen Karl-Marx-Stadt (now the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz) of his Sprachblätter (language sheets), he explores the intersection of text and image along with the graphic possibilities of noise as the source of music and gesture as the source of the alphabet.
Gerhard Altenbourg is another prominent East German artist in the postwar period. The poster promoting an exhibition of his woodcuts at Schloss Hinterglauchau in 1976 reproduces one of his brightly colored prints depicting a yellow lyre, green mountains, and a red zoomorphic form. Recognizing that Altenbourg’s artworks were in dialogue with contemporary Western art trends, local Communist Party officials attempted to prevent the show from opening. Although the public was finally allowed to view it, catalogue sales were restricted.
Künstlerplakate produced near the close of the 1980s reveal the uncertainty of the times. For his poster advertising his show at the Galerie Eigen+Art in 1990, Holger Fickelscherer combines the bold black, white, and red of early Communist propaganda posters with a Western cultural icon—Mickey Mouse. As a grimacing figure shovels a pile of Mickeys into the locomotive’s combustion chamber, the phrase “Lustig Lustig” (“Merrily Merrily”) appears above in a billowing cloud of smoke, signaling East Germany’s pending reunification with the West and its full-speed-ahead move into the global economy. Founded in 1983 by Gerd Harry “Judy” Lybke, Galerie Eigen+Art occupied a central position in the Leipzig art scene and operated under the radar until the end of the decade, offering often-controversial exhibitions and programs.

Website : New York University's Grey Art Gallery

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

AUTOMNE CULTUREL A VENISE

L'automne à Venise est riche d'événements culturels et insolites. Laissez-vous tenter par une visite des lieux, ponctuée de rendez-vous musicaux, de musées confidentiels et de fêtes traditionnelles.

La Régate Historique
La régate Historique traditionnelle se déroulera le dimanche 5 septembre. Cette course de barques plates, à rames, permet à des équipes de différents quartiers de Venise, mais aussi de villes proches, de rivaliser en stratégie et en vitesse sur les eaux du Grand Canal. Se tenir à partir de 11 heures du matin sur les rives pour ne rien manquer du spectacle. Pour l'occasion, visite spéciale de l'exposition Mapping the Studio, François Pinault Collection à la Punta della Dogana.
La Biennale de théâtre
Près de 170 artistes de 15 pays différents y participent. Une occasion exceptionnelle de montrer toute leur créativité dans des spectacles étonnants et originaux. Ce festival international de théâtre propose de multiples représentations, ainsi que des expositions ou des conférences. Du 12 octobre au 31 décembre 2010.Site internet : http://www.labiennale.org/

Ca'Pesaro
Ce palais datant du XVIIème siècle abrite une belle collection de peintures XIX-XXème siècle, tandis que le musée d'art oriental expose une des plus importantes collections d'arts japonais. Sur les trois étages du palais, l'exposition Tony Cragg présente une quarantaine d'œuvres en verre, bronze, acier, plastique, bois, pierre, mais également des dessins, des esquisses et des aquarelles, réalisés par l'un des maîtres contemporains de la sculpture britannique. Du 05 Septembre au 06 Janvier 2011.
Site : http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/

Le Théâtre de la Fenice
"la Fenice" (le phoenix), un nom assez prémonitoire car, depuis sa construction en 1832, il ne cesse de renaître de ses cendres. Visites guidées possibles en français, réservation recommandée. Programmation : Rigoletto, musique de Giuseppe Verdi. Chef d'Orchestre Myung-Whun Chung. Du 25 septembre au 6 octobre 2010. / La Traviata, musique de Giuseppe Verdi, version 1854. Chef d'Orchestre Myung-Whun Chung. Du 5 septembre au 3 octobre 2010./ L'Elixir d'Amour, musique de Gaetano Donizetti. Chef d'Orchestre Matteo Beltrami. Du 29 octobre au 7 novembre 2010.
Site : Théâtre de la Fenice
La fête de San Martino
Le 11 novembre 2010, venez fêter avec vos enfants la fête de San Martino. Les meilleurs pâtissiers de la ville confectionnent des gâteaux spéciaux représentant Saint Martin sur son cheval. Tous les enfants envahissent les petites ruelles en tapant sur des casseroles et vont chez les commerçants demander un cadeau.Renseignements auprès de l'office du tourisme d'Italie, tél. : 01-42-66-66-68.
Site internet : Ville de Venise

Le Festival International de Musique Contemporaine
Depuis 1930, ce festival prestigieux qui fait partie des événements de la Biennale, présente les œuvres d'illustres compositeurs contemporains. Une trentaine de concerts donnés par une dizaine de chœurs, des orchestres et des solistes sont organisés. Du 24 septembre au 2 octobre 2010. Site internet : http://www.labiennale.org/

Le Musée Fortuny
Ce petit palais gothique a appartenu à la famille Pesaro avant d'être acheté par l'artiste Mariano Fortuny pour en faire son atelier de photographie et de peinture. À la mort de l'artiste, en 1956, sa femme donne son palais à la ville de Venise. Il vient d'être restauré et d'ouvrir ses portes à des espaces dédiés à la communication visuelle et à des expositions temporaires. A voir: Les travaux de l'artiste sur la peinture, la lumière, le textile.
Site : http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/
Fête de la Madonna à la Salute
Tous les 21 novembre, on rappelle la fin de la peste de 1630 par une procession sur un pont établi entre l'église de la Salute et le campo Santa Maria Zobenico. Cette fête, qui conserve son aspect religieux est assez solennelle et très belle à voir. Chaque participant est invité à suivre la procession avec une bougie allumée à la main. Possibilité de visiter l'Église de la Salute.Le Palazzina GrassiPosé au bord du Grand Canal, le tout nouveau Palazzina Grassi est un hôtel furieusement contemporain et vénitien. Une réussite superbe entre l'histoire et le style vénitien du 16ème siècle et l'hypermodernisme d'une décoration imaginée par Starck. Situé à quelques minutes du pont de l'Accademia et du campo Santo Stefano, au musée du Palazzo Grassi, de la collection Guggenheim, du Théâtre de la Fenice et de Ca Rezzonico. Du luxe, du beau et de l'art.
Site : http://www.palazzinagrassi.com/

Le Palais Grimani
Le Palais Grimani qui possède une façade sur le campo Santa Maria Formosa et l'autre sur le Rio di San Severo fut la demeure du Doge Antonio Grimani, un homme cultivé et passionné d'archéologie. Après 23 ans de restauration, il est de nouveau ouvert au public qui pourra admirer les peintures décoratives de Giovanni da Udine, Francesco e Giuseppe Salviati, Camillo Mantovano e Federico Zuccari.L'architecture, la galerie, la cour, l'escalier et la décoration sont une intégration de style toscan-romain et vénitien.Site officiel : http://www.palazzogrimani.org/

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Bron/Source : EVENE.FR

FIRST MILLET EXHIBITION IN MORE THAN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AT MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON

Jean-François Millet’s depiction of the arresting beauty of the natural world is the subject of Millet and Rural France, an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), that invites visitors to rediscover one of the most important artists of the 19th century. On view September 4, 2010, through May 30, 2011, in the MFA’s Mary Stamas Gallery, the exhibition presents 46 works—many of them rarely seen in the past quarter century—the majority of which are major pastels and drawings, along with lively watercolors, sensitively handled etchings, and a powerful woodcut. All are drawn from the Museum’s renowned Millet collection, one of the finest in the world. The exhibition is supported by the Cordover Exhibition Fund.
Millet and Rural France offers an intimate view of the work of Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), whose images of agricultural life are among the most recognized and beloved in the history of art. The exhibition predominantly features works on paper and showcases Millet’s engaging scenes of rural France—primarily near Barbizon—for which he is best known. It highlights the artist’s draftsmanship and technical skills, in particular, his use of light and color—precursors to Impressionism. Examples include preparatory studies in conté crayon for Millet’s major painting Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz) (1850–53), which is on view in the exhibition. Among the drawings are Boaz (1851–53) and Seated Harvesters I (1851–53), which show how Millet planned and constructed the complex scene—from detailed figure studies and delicate sketches of gesture and expression, to broader outlines for the finished work. The artist’s sensitivity to the effects of light, especially as it depicts times of day, is seen in The Knitting Lesson (about 1858–60) (a recent gift, to be shown at the MFA for the first time) and Morning Toilette (about 1860–62), drawings of tranquil domestic settings that recall Johannes Vermeer and his use of soft light filtered through windowpanes. Millet’s deft drawing technique is seen in the gentle conté crayon portrait of his second wife, Madame Jean-François Millet (Catherine Lemaire) (about 1848–49)—one of the finest drawings in the Museum’s works on paper collection—and in his depictions of 19th-century France, from the beauty of rural surroundings in Farm in Normandy (1870–71), to the harsh realities of peasant life in Faggot Gathers Returning from the Forest (about 1854), a scene of women burdened with heavy bundles of sticks (faggots), a work that looks forward to the drawings of Georges Seurat.
Millet’s exquisite use of color is evident in his pastels of the French countryside, such as Twilight (about 1859–63), where sunlight, depicted in myriad strokes of multicolored pastel against buff paper, creates a glowing backdrop for a man and a woman seated on a donkey, recalling the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. The rural scene of a farmer working in his vineyard, Training Grape Vines (about 1860–64), features golden browns and soft blues, and the landscape Path through the Wheat (about 1867) highlights vibrant greens and reddish browns. Millet’s dramatic pastels Primroses and Dandelions (both 1867–68) illustrate not only his mastery of light and color, but also his ability to depict the close-up beauty of simple things.
In addition, Millet and Rural France highlights the artist’s work in other media: lush watercolors of French landscapes, such as Orchard Fence near Vichy (1867) and Road from Malavaux, near Cusset (1867); a red conté crayon drawing, Young Woman Spinning (1850–52); an unfinished woodcut, Man Turning over the Soil (1863); and several oils, including a compelling and rare Self-Portrait (about 1840–41); a striking image of rural life, Man Turning over the Soil (about 1847–50); and a still life of golden fruit, Pears (about 1862–66). Nine light-sensitive works will be rotated at the midpoint of the exhibition.
“The exhibition offers an exceptional opportunity to view a number of the most beautiful and poignant images of rural life ever created. Millet was one of the great draftsmen and colorists of the 19th century, and he used his impressive skills to emphasize the dignity of living in harmony with nature. He influenced Van Gogh and Seurat, and his works retain an extraordinary freshness and relevance today,” said Helen Burnham, assistant curator in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, who organized the exhibition.
Millet was born October 4, 1814, in Gruchy, a small farming community in Normandy. Although he was raised to work his family’s land, the boy received a good education and when his talent for drawing became apparent, he was sent to study art—first in the nearest city, Cherbourg, then on scholarship to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied the work of the Old Masters from 1837–39. Disenchanted with city life, Millet eventually returned to the countryside in 1849, choosing to live in Barbizon near the Forest of Fontainebleau and the Plain of Chailly in north-central France. The artist spent the majority of his remaining years in that agricultural setting, documenting the humanity and majesty of hardworking people. His images depicting the nobility of peasants toiling in the field were sometimes seen as political statements about the inequities of the classes, especially given the societal changes in Europe occurring in the mid 1800s. By 1867, Millet had achieved long-overdue recognition of his talents, and he was invited to show his work at the Exposition Universelle. The following year, he was named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. Millet died on January 20, 1875.
Many of the works in the exhibition have not been on view since the Museum presented its major Millet exhibition in 1984, Jean-Francois Millet: Seeds of Impressionism, which drew from the MFA’s collection of the artist’s work given to the Museum by several prominent Bostonians. The painter William Morris Hunt; the MFA’s first president, Martin Brimmer; and the entrepreneur Quincy Adams Shaw were three early collectors of Millet who recognized in his powerful images that he would become one of the most important artists of the 19th century. The Museum is now the largest repository, outside of France, of works by Millet, with one of the most important collection of the artist’s pastels in the world.
In addition to the works in the exhibition, paintings by Millet are on view in the MFA’s Leona R. Beal Gallery and its Polly B.& Richard D. Hill Gallery, both on the second floor.

Website : Museum of fine Arts Boston

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

DES VERSAILLAIS CONTRE MURAKAMI

Deux ans après l'exposition Jeff Koons au château de Versailles, l'exposition Murakami fait de nouvelles vagues.

Certains crient au scandale à l'idée que le plasticien pop japonais inspiré des mangas puisse installer ses oeuvres dans les appartements royaux de Versailles.
A l'approche de l'ouverture, le 14 septembre, de l'exposition Takashi Murakami, des pétitions ont été lancées, assorties d'une menace d'action judiciaire.
Les protestations "émanent de cercles d'extrême-droite intégristes et de cercles très conservateurs", considère Jean-Jacques Aillagon, président de l'établissement public du Château de Versailles. Ils voudraient faire de Versailles "un reliquaire de la nostalgie de la France de l'Ancien Régime, d'une France repliée sur elle-même et hostile à la modernité", ajoute-t-il.
"Murakami et Cie n'ont rien à faire au château de Versailles !", proclame une pétition sur internet intitulée "Versailles mon amour", qui a recueilli 3.500 signatures depuis fin juin.
La pétition a été lancée par Anne Brassié, une Versaillaise qui anime une émission littéraire sur Radio Courtoisie et a écrit notamment un livre sur l'écrivain d'extrême droite Robert Brasillach. Elle est épaulée par un étudiant en gestion de l'université Paris II Assas, qui opère sous le pseudonyme d'Eric Martin. Le jeune homme, qui se dit "de centre-droit et catholique", ne divulgue pas sur internet le nom des signataires car "ne pas aimer l'art contemporain pourrait être mal vu par de futurs employeurs", affirme-t-il.
Mais, à la demande de l'AFP, il a accepté de montrer sur son ordinateur la liste des pétitionnaires et leurs commentaires qui seront remis, dit-il, au ministre de la Culture Frédéric Mitterrand et à Jean-Jacques Aillagon.
Une manifestation "ludique" est prévue devant le château le 14 septembre, jour de l'ouverture au public de l'exposition, indique "Eric Martin".
Anne Brassié pointe certaines oeuvres de Murakami . "Le petit bonhomme au sexe pointé dont le jet de sperme forme un lasso, la petite bonne femme aux gros seins dont le jet de lait forme une corde à sauter n'ont rien à faire dans les appartements royaux", affirme-t-elle.
Pourtan, il n'a jamais été envisagé de présenter ces deux réalisations impertinentes, My lonesome cow boy et Hiropon, à Versailles. Les oeuvres de l'exposition Murakami "ont été choisies avec soin afin qu'elles puissent être vues par tout le monde, comme c'était déjà le cas pour Jeff Koons", indique Jean-Jacques Aillagon.
Une autre pétition "Non aux mangas. Contre les expositions dégradantes au Château de Versailles", émanant de la "Coordination de défense de Versailles" a recueilli pour sa part 3.700 signatures depuis la mi-juin. Animée par Arnaud Upinsky, président d'une association intitulée Union nationale des écrivains de France, qui avait déjà mené le combat contre l'exposition Jeff Koons au château de Versailles, cette pétition a reçu notamment le soutien du prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon Parme, un des descendants de Louis XIV.
Son neveu Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon Parme avait saisi la justice en 2008 pour tenter de faire interdire l'exposition Koons. Il avait été débouté.

L'exposition Murakami a lieu au château de Versailles du 14 septembre au 12 décembre.

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Bron/Source : France 2 Culture