ICA BOSTON PRESENTS ONE OF THE LEADING FIGURES IN CONTEMPORARY ART : MARK BRADFORD

Mark Bradford, Potable Water, 2005, Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, and additional mixed media, 130 x 196 inches, Collection of Hunter Gray, Photo: Bruce M. White.

This fall, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston opens Mark Bradford —the first museum survey devoted to one of the leading figures in contemporary art. Bradford is best known for his collage-layered paintings that express the energy and poetry of life in the city, particularly Los Angeles where the artist lives and works. A recipient of a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Award (known as the "genius grant"), Bradford uses found materials—peeling movie posters, homemade flyers, salvaged plywood, even the endpapers used to perm black hair—to create his vibrant, textured compositions. Pop culture, identity politics, the history of collage, mapping, and abstract painting, are just a few of his influences. On view from Nov. 19, 2010 through March 13, 2011, Mark Bradford features over 35 works, including painting, sculpture, installation, and video spanning the past decade.
We are very excited to welcome Mark Bradford and present his powerful work in Boston,’ says Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA. “His paintings, videos and sculptures capture the beauty, grit and complexity of contemporary urban society, and they do so with an honesty and an originality that makes us want to look deeper at the art and at ourselves.”
“Bradford’s visually striking canvases push the possibilities of contemporary painting—for instance, the artist does not use paint in his work.” says Helen Molesworth, ICA chief curator, who coordinated the exhibition at the ICA. “Through an innovative process of layering, embellishing and eroding materials, Bradford’s paintings are a kind of an archeology of the present, even as they explore the limits and possibilities of abstraction.”
The exhibition offers an overview of the main themes in Bradford’s art from 2000 to 2010, including urban space, music, black men and popular culture, and the fate of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. One of the earliest works in the show is Enter and Exit the New Negro (2001), a minimalist canvas made from perm endpapers—a material used in the straightening of African-American hair. Lined against each other in rows, the endpapers form an elegant, white and grey grid that references the history of abstraction as well as African-American culture. The work is also autobiographical inasmuch as the endpapers were gathered from the hair salon that Bradford’s mother owned and where the artist worked growing up. This multi-dimensionality is typical of Bradford’s compositions.
Music has been a source of inspiration to the artist throughout his career, and he often gives his works evocative titles that allude to 1990s hip hop or other musical sources. A new multimedia installation conceived for this exhibition, Pinocchio Is On Fire (2010) immerses the viewer in images and sound to reflect a deeper meditation on music and musicians, and the roles they play in our society. In this installation Bradford uses the persona of the recently deceased soul legend Teddy Pendergrass much as he uses his other materials—an image left behind, ready to be deconstructed, altered, and reincorporated into something new.
Mark Bradford (b. 1961) lives and works in his native Los Angeles, California. He earned his BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts. Bradford has received many awards, including the Bucksbaum Award (2006); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2002). His work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Website : ICA Boston

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LE MEILLEUR DES MONDES EST BELGE

Cent projets de 75 designers ! La sixième Triennale du design, au Grand- Hornu, mise sur l'humain, avec émotion et poésie.
Perché comme un merle blanc sur un bras de la table « Abacchus », prend-on l'apéro avec plus de plaisir attablé à ce cendrier géant ? Est-ce un luxe vital que le look futuriste du « Ben in Bad », drôle de coque blanche ergonomique, moulée pour recevoir le corps d'un James Bond assuré d'une eau à bonne température puisque l'ovni de salle de bains est relié au chauffage ? Ces deux propositions participent à la centaine de projets lancés par 75 créateurs, la grande vitrine du design belge mise en scène par la commissaire Lise Coirier dans le cadre dans la Triennale du design, au Grand-Hornu.
Le thème de Belgium is design, c'est l'humain, une meilleure vie ensemble. Mais par définition, le design n'est-il pas conçu pour améliorer l'environnement naturel de l'être humain ? Alors, ce n'est pas un peu redondant ? Dans la Grange aux Foins ainsi qu'aux Ecuries, -les deux grandes plates-formes de l'exposition, pénètre-t-on vraiment dans le Meilleur des mondes ? « L'exposition se veut expérimentale, précise Lise Coirier avec une conviction inébranlable. On interroge les grands défis du design, tant le développement durable que le désirable. Ce sont les valeurs véhiculées qui nous ont intéressés, les valeurs sociales et participatives. Epingler en quoi le design peut résoudre des problèmes de société, proposant un prêt à exister plutôt qu'un prêt à consommer. »

En parcourant les multiples espaces dessinés comme des chambres ou des petites maisons selon un code de couleurs qui nous indiquent si le produit répond à l'affectivité, à la sécurité, au jeu, à la mobilité etc, le visiteur peut évidemment se permettre de demeurer perplexe...
Et puis, il y a ces merveilles d'inventivité qui nous réconcilient avec la thématique, quand le design n'est pas un beau pansement appliqué sur notre quotidien mais une sorte de potion magique à réveiller tous les désirs. Parmi ces machines à désirer axées sur l'homme et la société, pour un design prêt à vivre, on croise ces objets/idées qui font appel aux besoins mais suscitent aussi l'émotion, ce brin de poésie souvent décalée propre à l'esprit belge.
Scénariser notre existence
Cabines pour user du téléphone portable en toute discrétion de Matthieu Gabiat, « Soft Bench » de Lucile Souffflet, service fantasque de Roos Van de Velde, mobilier urbain convivial de Beek Design, interrupteurs caméléons de Niko, casiers de Vincent Van Duysen, portemanteau « Baobab » de Xavier Lust sont là, parmi tant d'autres produits, pour nous faire comprendre le bien-fondé d'un mieux-être par le design.
Avec tout ce qui est proposé, on pourrait créer un monde idéal. « Oui-Oui au pays merveilleux du design » en quelque sorte... A condition d'avoir un portefeuille bien garni ! « On montre aussi des choses qui n'ont pas de prix, défend Lise Coirier. La notion de mobilier urbain réinventé est fondamentale dans la réappropriation participative et plus humaine de la ville ! »
Parcours hétéroclite, cette sixième Triennale lance un message : avec le design, s'approprier un objet offre un plus inquantifiable, -le ressenti, l'émotion, la poésie-, au-delà de toutes les super-technologies.

Belgium is design, Grand-Hornu Images, 82 rue Sainte-Louise, Hornu, jusqu'au 27 février 2011

Website : Grand Hornu

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

KUNSTMUSEUM WOLFSBURG PRESENTS AN OVERVIEW OF ALBERTO GIACOMMETTI'S WORK

Space does not exist, it has to be created... Every sculpture based on the assumption that space exists is wrong; there is only the illusion of space. - Alberto Giacometti, Notes, circa 1949.
For the first time in 12 years, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is presenting a comprehensive overview of Alberto Giacometti’s mature work in Germany. Around 60 sculptures will be displayed alongside more than 30 paintings and several drawings in the circa 2000 square meter exhibition space. The exhibition offers unique insights into the fascinating oeuvre of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.
Giacometti’s vision of situating his figures within their own space and temporality will be realized for the first time in Wolfsburg as the exhibition architecture has been specially designed and constructed around the sculptures on display. Each of the carefully chosen works is provided with the space it requires to unfurl its true strengths. The exhibition clearly demonstrates the continued relevance of the work of Giacometti, who died in 1966, and its lasting influence on subsequent generations of artists. With his completely new conception of the human figure in relation to space and time, Giacometti can literally be considered—and this is one of the exhibition’s key theses—the inventor of virtual space.
Organized in cooperation with the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the exhibition juxtaposes major works from Giacometti’s oeuvre with selected pieces from private collections and the artist’s estate. The works on show in Wolfsburg are drawn in large part from the estate holdings of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris; this is the first time they have been presented on this scale in Germany. The display also includes important loans from the Alberto Giacometti Foundation in Zurich, as well as works from leading museums and private collections in Europe and the United States.
With its high-quality collection of contemporary art since 1968, the Kunstmuseum Wolfburg offers the unique opportunity to vividly demonstrate Giacometti’s unbroken influence on subsequent generations of artists. A focussed selection of works which address related issues of figural depiction and space has therefore been partially integrated into the Giacometti exhibition and will also be presented in the upper galleries from 12 December 2010 until 30 January 2011 onwards, parallel to the major retrospective of the artist’s mature work. Positionings – The Question of Space in Contemporary Art, the selection includes works by Carl Andre, Andreas Gursky, Imi Knoebel, Joseph Marioni, Bruce Nauman, James Turrell, Jeff Wall and Franz West.

Website : Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

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ROBERT CAVALLI EXPOSE SES PHOTOS A MILAN

Roberto Cavalli à Milan, novembre 2010AFP. G.Cacace

Pour fêter ses 70 ans et ses 40 ans de mode, le styliste italien Roberto Cavalli expose à Milan ses photographies

L'icône de la mode, à la dégaine de rock-star, expose des clichés d'émotions simples et de nature vénérée qui l'aident à pouvoir exprimer encore sa "fantaisie". Cette exposition gratuite, "Le noir n'est jamais absolu", se tient jusqu'au 12 décembre au Palazzo Morando, musée situé au coeur du "quadrilatère de la mode", quartier du luxe.
«Cette exposition est mon journal intime, où il n'y a pas de jours ou de dates, mais plutôt un chemin qui raconte mon histoire de vie. Une petite sélection de mes photos d'archives, donnant à chacun accès à mon processus créatif, ce qui entraîne à son tour l'impression de mes toiles. Mes impressions sont toujours le résultat de mes photos et sont le fondement de mes vêtements. L'objet le plus normal a la capacité de remuer des souvenirs lointains dans mon esprit et de devenir une source d'inspiration pour une collection ou même un simple détail sur une robe. J'ai ces moments, les choses, les gens, immuable dans ma tête et dans mon appareil photo. J'ai regardé un ciel noir et attendu patiemment, pendant des heures, que le soleil brille à travers. Vous voyez, le noir n'est jamais absolu. Il ya toujours de la lumière derrière lui". explique Roberto Cavalli.
Le diaporama des photos de l'exposition"Toute ma vie, j'ai aimé faire des photos" en particulier pour trouver l'inspiration pour les collections, confie le styliste, mais "avec la naissance des petits appareils numériques, j'ai commencé à prendre à chaque instant durant mes voyages autour du monde, une scène, le rouge d'un verre de vin, un reflet sur le sable", s'enthousiasme-t-il. "Le fil conducteur, c'est ma fantaisie", lâche le créateur extravagant et jet-set, célèbre pour ses impressions sur cuir, ses patchworks ou ses imprimés léopard. "La mode est devenue trop industrielle, trop commerciale, ce qui ne permet plus la fantaisie. Quand on fait une pièce, il faut penser à la vendre" alors qu'avec la photographie, "je fais des choses absurdes", dit-il encore.A travers cette exposition, le styliste a voulu partager ce qui lui "apporte de l'émotion" comme "capter un nuage quand il passe", explique-t-il dans une salle aux parois recouvertes de miroirs reflétant un défilé de ses clichés de nuages. Comme pour ses collections de mode, la principale source d'inspiration est la nature: photos de poissons, de fleurs, de paysages désertiques tapissent les murs ou sont présentées, encadrées, dans les salles suivantes. "J'ai toujours dit que Dieu était le plus grand designer. Je préfère copier les vêtements que Dieu a créés pour le tigre ou le léopard que l'idée d'un collègue styliste", sourit-il. Des images de ses voyages autour du monde montrent un Roberto Cavalli amoureux des animaux, donnant le biberon à un tigre ou caressant singes ou dauphins. Et clin d'oeil à ses créations, les murs d'une salle sont recouverts d'imprimés léopard tandis que sol et parois d'une autre sont un patchwork de clichés de babioles, de bracelets ou de fruits pris sur des marchés.

A 70 ans, le styliste, issu d'une famille d'artistes, est plus que jamais déterminé à vivre comme il l'a toujours fait, en "cherchant à rendre la vie la moins ennuyeuse possible", et voit dans la photographie le moyen d'exprimer toujours et encore sa créativité. "Je ne fais jamais de programme, je ne peux pas dire ce que je ferai dans deux mois, je ne veux pas le savoir, je m'en fiche. J'espère que chaque jour me donnera l'idée juste afin d'être capable d'inventer avec un appareil photo des choses qui n'ont jamais été faites", espère-t-il.

Palazzo Morando Costume Moda Immagine. Via Sant’Andrea, 6 - Milano.

Museo di Milano e Storia Contemporanea
http://www.robertocavalli.com/

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EXHIBITION AT BAUHAUS DESSAU MARKS THE 10TH BIRTHDAY OF BAUHAUS STUDENT KURT KRANZ

Ingrid Kranz, widow of the Bauhaus-student Kurt Kranz poses at an exhibition, entitled Kurt Kranz - the Programming of the Beautiful, at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. The special exhibition presenting the works of the German artist, graphic designer and experimenal film maker runs until 27 March 2011. EPA/HENRDIK SCHMIDT.

The Bauhaus Dessau dedicates a comprehensive exhibition to the painter, graphic designer and photographer Kurt Kranz to mark his 100th birthday. In 1930, the then twenty-year-old lithographer came from Bielefeld to study at the Bauhaus Dessau, where he soon established himself as a pioneer of serial and generative methods. With his avant-garde work, Kranz’s methods anticipated those of later generations. Inspired by a lecture by László Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Kranz came to the Bauhaus Dessau in April 1930. In Walter Peterhans's photography class, Kranz began to experiment with photographic techniques and created some of the most striking abstract picture series to emerge from the Bauhaus. Alienated and abstracted faces and hands appear repeatedly in his dynamic picture series. These show Kranz’s early affinity for film as, page for page, the abstract forms interact with one another. Kranz drafted his first concepts for abstract films at the Bauhaus, although he was first able to realise these decades later in 1972. The exhibition to mark the artist's 100th birthday shows works from Kranz's Bauhaus years and his later work as an advertising graphic designer, and focuses on a selection of his large picture cycles. Strikingly diverse leporellos dating from the 1960s onwards take centre stage, as do the so-called "Matrix- und Schiebebilder".

19.11.2010 - 27.03.2011

Website : Bauhaus Dessau

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MOMA ANNOUNCES EXHIBITION OF PICASSO'S ICONIC GUITAR SCULPTURES FROM 1912-1914

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Bottle, Guitar, and Pipe. Paris, autumn 1912. Oil, enamel, sand, and charcoal on canvas, 23 5/8 x 28 3/4" (60 x 73 cm) Museum Folkwang, Essen. Acquired in 1964 with the support of the State of North-Rhine Westphalia and Eugen-und-Agnes-Waldthausen-Platzhoff-Museums-Stiftung.

Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 will focus on Pablo Picasso’s cardboard and sheet-metal Guitar sculptures, and the incandescent period of material and structural innovation these sculptures bracket in the artist’s long career. The exhibition will be on view in The Museum of Modern Art’s Special Exhibitions gallery from February 13 through June 6, 2011. Bringing together some 70 closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over 30 public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition situates Picasso’s modest yet revolutionary Guitars within his broader studio practice between 1912 and 1914. The exhibition is organized by Anne Umland, Curator, with Blair Hartzell, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.
The exhibition takes as its point of departure Picasso’s first Guitar construction, a sculpture made between October and December 1912. Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string, and wire—materials he cut, folded, threaded, and glued—Picasso’s silent instrument resembled no sculpture that had ever been seen before. Its creation coincided with Picasso’s embrace of a wide range of what were then unconventional materials, including cardboard, newspaper, wallpaper, sheet music, and sand. In 1914 the artist reiterated his fragile, papery Guitar construction in more fixed and durable sheet-metal form. In the early 1970s Picasso donated both works to The Museum of Modern Art.
Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 was catalyzed by the recent rediscovery of a still-life element in MoMA’s storage that once accompanied the cardboard Guitar in one of the artist’s well-documented but ephemeral Cubist assemblages. From this carefully composed still life, first published in November 1913, Picasso had saved both the Guitar and the semi-circular “tabletop” on which it had rested. Prompted by the careful study of a photograph of the 1913 assemblage by art historian Christine Poggi, the “tabletop” was rediscovered in MoMA’s collection in 2005. To reunite the two pieces is to recognize the variable installations that were integral to the artist’s practice in the years before World War I, and to consider anew the distinct yet interrelated histories of two of his most iconic works. Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 is the first time that cardboard Guitar will be publicly exhibited with this distinctive tabletop element.

Website : MOMA

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MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURED IN STIEGLITZ, STEICHEN, STRAND AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

Paul Strand (American, 1890–1976), Geometric Backyards, New York, 1917. Platinum print, 25.4 x 33.3 cm (10 x 13 1/8 in.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987 (1987.1100.12). Credit: Aperture Foundation, Inc., Paul Strand Archive.

Three giants of 20th-century American photography—Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand—are featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through April 10, 2011, in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of 115 photographs, drawn entirely from the Museum's collection. On view will be many of the Metropolitan's greatest photographic treasures from the 1900s to 1920s, including Stieglitz's famous portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, Steichen's large colored photographs of the Flatiron building, and Strand's pioneering abstractions.
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was a photographer of supreme accomplishment and a forceful and influential advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery "291" and his sumptuous journal Camera Work. Stieglitz also laid the foundation for the Museum's collection of photographs. In 1928, he donated 22 of his own works to the Metropolitan; these were the first photographs to enter the Museum's collection as works of art. In later decades he gave the Museum more than 600 photographs by his contemporaries, including Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.
Among Stieglitz's works to be featured in this exhibition are portraits, views of New York City from the beginning and end of his career, and the 1920s cloud studies he titled Equivalents, through which he sought to arouse in the viewer the emotional equivalent of his own state of mind at the time he made the photograph, and to show that the content of a photograph was different from its subject.
The exhibition will also include numerous photographs from Stieglitz's extraordinary composite portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), part of a group of works selected for the Museum's collection by O'Keeffe herself. Stieglitz made more than 330 images of O'Keeffe between 1917 and 1937—of her face, torso, hands, or feet alone, clothed and nude, intimate and heroic, introspective and assertive. Through these photographs Stieglitz revealed O'Keeffe's strengths and vulnerabilities, and almost single-handedly defined her public persona for generations to come.
Stieglitz's protégé and gallery collaborator, Edward Steichen (1879–1973), was the most talented exemplar of the Photo-Secession, the loosely-knit group of artists founded by Stieglitz in 1902, seceding, in his words, "from the accepted idea of what constitutes a photograph," but also from the camera clubs and other institutions dominated by a more retrograde establishment. In works such as The Pond—Moonrise (1904), made using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen rivaled the scale, color, and individuality of painting.
Steichen's three large variant prints of The Flatiron (1904) are prime examples of the conscious effort of Photo-Secession photographers to assert the artistic potential of their medium. Steichen achieved coloristic effects reminiscent of Whistler's Nocturne paintings by brushing layers of pigment suspended in light-sensitive gum solution onto a platinum photograph. Although he used only one negative to create all three photographs, the variable coloring enabled him to create three significantly different images that convey the chromatic progression of twilight. The Metropolitan's three prints, all donated by Stieglitz in 1933, are the only exhibition prints of Steichen's iconic image.
In 1908 Steichen photographed the plaster of Rodin's sculpture of Honoré de Balzac in the open air, by the light of the moon, making several exposures as long as an hour each. In Balzac, The Silhouette—4 A.M., the moonlight has transformed the plaster into a monumental phantom rising above the brooding nocturnal landscape. Steichen recalled that when he presented his finished prints to Rodin, the elated sculptor exclaimed, "You will make the world understand my Balzac through your pictures."
Among the unique early-20th-century works by Stieglitz and Steichen in the Museum's collection are Autochromes, an early process of color photography that became commercially available in 1907. Because of the delicate and light-sensitive nature of these glass transparencies, five original Autochromes by Stieglitz and Steichen will be displayed for one week only, January 25-30, 2011. During the other weeks of the exhibition, facsimiles of these Autochromes will be on view.
Stieglitz's and Steichen's younger contemporary, Paul Strand (1890–1976), pioneered a shift from the soft-focus aesthetic and painterly prints of the Photo-Secession to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism. Strand was introduced to Stieglitz as a high-schooler by his camera club advisor, Lewis Hine, the social reformer and photographer. He quickly became a regular visitor to "291," where he was exposed to the latest trends in European art through groundbreaking exhibitions of works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi.
Strand incorporated the new language of geometric abstraction into his interest in photographing street life and machine culture. His photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. Stieglitz, whose interest in photography had waned as he grew more interested in avant-garde art, saw in Strand's work a new approach to photography. He showed Strand's groundbreaking photographs at 291 and devoted the entire final double issue of Camera Work (1917) to this young photographer's work, marking a pivotal moment in the course of photography.
In From the El (1915), Strand juxtaposed the ironwork and shadows of the elevated train with the tiny form of a lone pedestrian. In 1916, he experimented with radical camera angles and photographing at close range. Among the astonishingly modern photographs he made that summer is Abstraction, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, one of the first photographic abstractions to be made intentionally. When Stieglitz published a variant of this image in Camera Work, he praised Strand's results as "the direct expression of today."
In the same year, Strand made a series of candid street portraits with a hand-held camera fitted with a special lens that allowed him to point the camera in one direction while taking the photograph at a 90-degree angle. Blind, his seminal image of a street peddler, was published in Camera Work and immediately became an icon of the new American photography, which integrated the humanistic concerns of social documentation with the boldly simplified forms of Modernism. As is true for most of the large platinum prints by Strand in the exhibition, the Metropolitan's Blind, a gift of Stieglitz, is the only exhibition print of this image from the period. Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand is organized by Malcolm Daniel, Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Photographs, assisted by Russell Lord, Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow in the Department of Photographs.

10.11.2010 - 10.04.2011

Website : The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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A SELECTION OF DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS BY STEPHEN FARTHING AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS

Boucher: The Back Story #2, oil on canvas. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

The Royal Academy of Arts presents Artists’ Laboratory 02, featuring the recent work of Stephen Farthing RA. The exhibition displays a selection of drawings and large scale paintings, made since 2005, all of which examine the artist’s preoccupation with looking beyond the surface of the visual image by exploring the story behind the work.
Farthing has mixed writing, painting and drawing in varying proportions to produce a sequence of works that take aspects of the history of painting as their subject matter with a view towards better understanding how words and images can work together. Many of the drawings in this exhibition started life as a creative response to the work he carried out as executive editor of 1001 Paintings You Should See Before You Die. Farthing said ‘I decided to set the acquired knowledge of working in the studio, to turn what were masses of facts into something useful to me as an artist’.
Divided into five sections, the exhibition begins with Farthing’s Drawn History of Painting, a series of pen and ink drawings that consider the history of painting from the Valley of the Kings to the White Cube. Framed in pairs, one drawing outlines the main elements of the painting while the other pin points the work from an art historical perspective.
The story behind the painting is examined in The Back Story, where the artist acknowledges the additional layer which the story behind a work can bring to the image. This is examined literally with the writing behind the painting being clearly visible and appearing to seep through to the surface, fusing the image and story.
Painting the Atlantic is based on the journey frequently made by the artist between his studios in London and New York State. The painting is on a huge scale and the related drawings are studies in the details of the waves and are calligraphic in form.
A lone women situated in an imagined state of perfect harmony is the subject of the section Standing Lady. As examined in the related drawings, the objects around her form a unique pattern and serve to elevate her into a sublime state.
Finally, The Abacus series looks at the coming together of image and text. The counting system has references to the world of finance and recent collapse of the markets.
Born in London in 1950, Stephen Farthing studied at St Martin’s School of Art before taking his Masters Degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art where he received an Abbey Major Scholarship, taking him to The British School at Rome in 1976.
His extensive teaching career began as a Lecturer in Painting at Canterbury College of Art after which he was a Tutor in painting at the Royal College of Art. He went on to become Head of Painting and Head of Department of Fine Art at West Surrey College of Art and Design. From 1990 he was Ruskin Master at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Professorial Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford until 2000, when he moved to New York in order to take the position of Executive Director of The New York Academy of Art, Manhattan. In 2004 he was appointed as the Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor in Drawing at the University of the Arts, London. Stephen Farthing has exhibited extensively since his first solo exhibition at the Royal College of Art Gallery, London in 1977. His work, representing Britain, was shown at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1989, leading to many further international solo shows.
Farthing was elected Royal Academician in the category of Painting 1998 and in 2000 was made an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He lives and works in New York.

10.11.2010- 19.12.2010

Website : Royal Academy of Arts

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MATHAF : ARAB MUSEUM ANNOUNCES DETAILS OF ITS THREE OPENING EXHIBITIONS

Fateh al-Moudarres, Title Unknown, 1962. Mixed media on canvas, 69.8 x 99.7 cm © Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art revealed the details of the three exhibitions it will present when it opens to the public on December 30, 2010. Historic works of Arab modernism and a multitude of new works commissioned by Mathaf will be on view at two sites in Doha, Qatar.
The new Museum will open its 5,500-square-meter (59,000-square-foot) building with Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art. This will be the first in an ongoing series of exhibitions that will survey Mathaf’s unparalleled collection of more than 6,000 works representing major trends and sites of production of modern Arab art, spanning the 1840s to the present. Sajjil, an Arabic word meaning the act of recording, will feature paintings and sculptures by more than 100 artists, representing pivotal moments in the development of Arab modernism throughout the 20th century. Sajjil is organized by guest curator and consultant Dr. Nada Shabout, Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute at the University of North Texas; Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Mathaf’s Chief Curator and Acting Director; and Deena Chalabi, Mathaf’s Head of Strategy.
The historical exhibition Sajjil makes its own contribution to rethinking the position of Arab artists toward modernism and within the modernist movement. While making a space for modern art from the Arab world within the wider history of art, Sajjil explores the multiplicity of experiences that form modern art from the Arab world. Organized around themes that overlap and intersect, the exhibition emphasizes the several common moments that justify the discussion of a collective Arab identity, but at the same time acknowledges discontinuity and rupture as part of the story.
“The creation of Mathaf has been the result of many years of interactions with living Arab artists,” stated His Excellency Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al-Thani, founder of Mathaf and Vice-Chairperson of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA). “We have supported these artists in their work and learned about the inspiration they take from their predecessors. Our three inaugural exhibitions reflect Mathaf’s commitment to modern and contemporary art from the Arab world as a living history and a continuing exploration.”
At a new QMA exhibition space located on the grounds of the Museum of Islamic Art, Mathaf will also present the exhibitions Interventions and Told / Untold / Retold, which will be on view from December 30, 2010 to May 28, 2011.
Interventions: a dialogue between the modern and the contemporary, curated by Nada Shabout, will profile five major artists whose careers have spanned the years from modern to contemporary art. They are Dia Azzawi, Farid Belkahia, Ahmed Nawar, Ibrahim el-Salahi and Hassan Sharif. A new work commissioned by Mathaf from each of these artists will be shown in the context of existing works by the artists from the Mathaf collection.
The exhibition honors the lives and careers of these artists, who have forged and promoted modern art in their respective countries and remain influential today. Because Arabism was a major factor in the maturation of modern art from the Arab world when they came of age, their work has sometimes manifested a search for cultural identity and a desire to preserve cultural distinctiveness. At the same time, these artists have never sacrificed aesthetic growth, or abandoned the existential quest for understanding the modern self. In speaking of the artists, Shabout said, “All five have challenged many social conventions and on various occasions pushed the envelope of what was permitted publicly. We hope that Interventions will be the first of a number of exhibitions that will recognize key achievements in constructing the history of modern art from the Arab world, and that will provide spaces for writing this history.”
Told / Untold / Retold: 23 stories of journeys through time and place will present new works commissioned by Mathaf from 23 contemporary artists with roots in the Arab world. The most ambitious museum exhibition of contemporary art ever presented in the Arab world, Told / Untold / Retold will include painting, sculpture, photography, video, multimedia installations and interactive digital art. The participating artists are Adel Abidin, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Buthayna Ali, Ahmed Alsoudani, Ghada Amer, Kader Attia, Lara Baladi, Wafaa Bilal, Abdelkader Benchamma, Mounir Fatmi, Lamia Joreige, Amal Kenawy, Jeffar Khaldi, Hassan Khan, Youssef Nabil, Walid Raad, Khalil Rabah, Younès Rahmoun, Steve Sabella, Marwan Sahmarani, Zineb Sedira, Khaled Takreti, and Akram Zaatari. Told / Untold / Retold is curated by Sam Bardouil and Till Fellrath, the co-founders of Art Reoriented, a curatorial platform focusing on contemporary art from the Middle East. Told / Untold / Retold is a collection of 23 stories each vividly expressed in a new art work. Some stories are “Told,” evoking autobiographical accounts and nostalgia for the things that were. Other stories are “Untold,” anticipating an imagined future that speaks of things that could be. And there are those that are “Retold,” proposing an alternative narrative to the things that are. Central to each story is the use of time as a concrete compositional element and the reflection on the act of journeying, a condition that has come to describe the rampant fluidity of today’s society.
In discussing the curatorial theme of the exhibition, Bardaouil and Fellrath said, “Today’s artists are in constant transmigration across a diversity of cities and locations, yet never escaping redundant geographical labels through which their work is misconstrued. They are in perpetual metamorphosis, in a state of ‘in-betweenness’. These journeys occur not only in place, but also in time. When you move and leave things behind, you remember, recollect and reconstruct, but you also reorient and redirect yourself. These are all acts into which time is intricately weaved. This explains why time is often a significant formalistic component within contemporary artistic practice. In that sense, Told / Untold / Retold is a subversive confrontation, celebrating a willful act of uprooting that is reflective of the transient condition of our world.”
Mathaf is the outgrowth of more than two decades of activity by His Excellency Sheikh Hassan. The collection was adopted originally by Qatar Foundation, which safeguarded it for four years before QMA took on the Museum as a project in partnership with Qatar Foundation. Overseeing the establishment and opening of Mathaf is QMA Chairperson Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

Website : Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

JAN GOSSART, LE POLITICO-SENSUEL

C’est l’affiche de l’exposition : le « Portrait d’homme » égaré dans les réserves du Musée d’Anvers et remis en lumière par le Metropolitan © KMSKA

Voiles diaphanes, velours somptueux, peau gorgée de sève, ombre de l'aine, chevelure ou creux d'un genou, le sens du toucher est partout. Est-ce cela qui fait le succès actuel de l'exposition Jan Gossart au Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York ? Pourquoi se presse-t-on pour découvrir ce Jan Gossart, un « big deal » écrit le New York Times ? « Ce n'est pas uniquement en raison de ses sujets mythologiques, sourit malicieusement Maryan W. Ainsworth, conservatrice du département de peinture européenne du Metropolitan Museum de New York et directrice du catalogue raisonné paru au Fonds Mercator, mais parce que Jan Gossart est un incroyable novateur. Il a le sens de la forme, celle d'un peintre qui traduit sa pensée en 3D, et puis il y a cette sensualité, inédite à une telle intensité dans les tableaux des Primitifs flamands. Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers est une de mes œuvres préférées parce qu'elle est la symbiose d'un Jan Gossart novateur : naturaliste et réaliste, la scène est uniquement éclairée par la lune. C'est fantastique car il ose placer un personnage dans l'ombre avec les draperies uniquement placées sous la lumière ! »

Assis entre deux chaises

Cet automne, avant que l'exposition ne rejoigne la National Gallery de Londres, le Metropolitan Museum of Art se targue d'une primeur : réévaluation complète d'un artiste délaissé, Man, Myth and Sensual Pleasures : Jan Gossart's Renaissance souffle sur les braises d'un peintre, dessinateur, graveur des Pays-Bas méridionaux quelque peu atypique. Certes l'humanisme de son époque plane sur toute l'œuvre de Jan Gossart (né à Maubeuge vers 1472 et décédé à Anvers en 1532), artiste flamand de la Renaissance, dit Mabuse.
Dommage pour Gossart qui fut aussi le maître de Lambert Lombard, il est assis entre deux chaises. Cette figure importante marche à l'ombre de deux époques : la tradition médiévale d'un Jan van Eyck et les réalisations baroques d'un Peter Paul Rubens. Tout à son honneur, il est le premier à peindre des nus érotiques dans ses scènes historiques et mythologiques. Pour des raisons purement « politiques » nous assure Maryan Ainsworth (lire notre entretien). Seins lourds de la Vierge à l'Enfant, jambes enlacées d'Hercule et Dejanire, étui pénien évocateur pour le Neptune, chairs marmoréennes des christs sont placés sous influence de son voyage à Rome (1508-1509) mais surtout de son protecteur Philippe de Bourgogne…
Superbe ouvrage, beau livre plus que catalogue raisonné aride, l'œuvre complet paru sous la direction de Maryan Ainsworth est l'occasion de découvrir les derniers soubresauts de l'aventure : « Le Portrait d'homme que l'on découvre pour la première fois à New York appartient au Musée des beaux-arts d'Anvers, raconte avec fierté Maryan Ainsworth. Je l'ai découvert dans les réserves, enduit d'un vernis sombre. Il paraissait sorti du fond vaseux d'une rivière ! La manière dont les yeux sont traités, le détail de la bouche, la position des doigts m'ont alertée. Comme pour Le Christ assis aux jambes tordues, avec ce bleu lapis-lazuli aussi cher que l'or que j'ai aussi découvert dans un dépôt à Budapest, j'ai demandé que l'on nettoie et restaure les deux tableaux à New York. Ils sont aujourd'hui authentifiés et présentés dans l'exposition ! »
Avec ses figures qui semblent sortir du tableau pour venir vers nous, Jan Gossart table sur le dialogue et déploie un véritable sens de la communication, bien différent de ses pairs, Raphaël et les romanistes avec leurs compositions séduisantes mais dépourvues de la troisième dimension sculpturale.
06.10.2010 - 17.01.2011
23.02.2011 - 30.05.2011 National Gallery de Londres

Website : Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

JOHAN THORN PRIKKER : BEYOND ART NOUVEAU AT BOIJMANS VAN BEUNINGEN ROTTERDAM

This autumn Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is showing more than 200 highlights from the multifaceted oeuvre of Johan Thorn Prikker (1868-1932). This is the first major exhibition devoted to one of the most prominent designers from the heyday of Dutch art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Beyond Art Nouveau illustrates Thorn Prikker’s enormous creativity and love of experimentation.
Johan Thorn Prikker gained recognition early in his career for his paintings and drawings, which are among the finest examples of Symbolist art in the Netherlands. However, Thorn Prikker soon became an ardent exponent of the applied arts. He abandoned traditional easel painting in favour of a wide range of other media from watercolours, textiles, book covers and stained glass to wall paintings, furniture, mosaics and carpets. Thorn Prikker was more than just an Art Nouveau designer; he was one of the first Dutch artists to enjoy an international reputation.

Stained glass
In the large Bodon galleries visitors will gain an insight into Johan Thorn Prikker’s diverse body of work. The exhibition embraces all the disciplines in which he worked. Thorn Prikker’s stained-glass windows occupy a prominent position within the display. At the centre of the exhibition is a chapel in which the visitor can experience the locations for which his stained-glass windows were originally designed. The light in this space brings the colourful designs to life. Several of the windows are part of the museum’s collection; one of them was donated by D.G. van Beuningen to celebrate the opening of Museum Boymans’ new building in 1935.

Johan Thorn Prikker, an international phenomenon
Johan Thorn Prikker (1868-1932) trained as a painter at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. In 1904, following his initial success, he left the Netherlands to teach at the School of Applied Arts in Krefeld (Germany). Here he gave full expression to his diverse creative talents. A few years later Thorn Prikker created his first stained-glass window for the railway station in Hagen with the appropriate title ‘The Artist as Teacher of Trade and Industry’. He ran his own department at the applied art schools in Munich, Düsseldorf and Cologne and so had an unrivalled influence on German monumental art. He enjoyed great success both in Germany and the Netherlands until his death in 1932.
Beyond Art Nouveau is a partnership with museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf, where the exhibition will be shown in the spring of 2011. The exhibition has been curated by the Thorn Prikker expert, Christiane Heiser, and is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with essays by twelve specialists from the Netherlands, Germany and Canada.

Until 13.02.2011

Website : Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

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MUSEUM FOLKWANG - ESSEN OPENS THREE EXHIBITIONS FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHS, DRAWINGS AND POSTERS

From November 6, 2010 to 16 January 2011 the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, is showing three new exhibitions of the departments of Photography, Drawings and the German Poster Museum.

With the exhibition Celebrity Design – Edward Steichen, the Fotografische Sammlung is dedicating a solo exhibition to the well-known American photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973) for the first time. The core is formed by a donation of 65 photographs by Joanna Steichen, which the Museum Folkwang in Essen received in 1983, exclusively in Germany.
In the center are Steichen’s fashion photography and photographs of prominent people from the 1920/30s, made mainly for celebrated Condé Nast magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair. The photographs mostly show American actors and actresses such as Alla Nazimova, Lillian Gish and James Hackett. Famed people from art, sport and politics are represented by Henri Matisse, Frank Lloyd Wright and Winston Churchill. Camera settings varying according to type, scenic staging and a very creative use of light impressively accented the famous people and models he portrayed, setting new standards for portrait and fashion photography in the printed media. The exhibition presents 77 photographs, magazines and a video.
Apart from Expressionist graphic works and contemporary works, 19th century drawings and printed graphic works forms a third focal point within the Grafische Sammlung of the Museum Folkwang. Therefore Ideal Landscapes and Reality. 19th Century Drawings and Aquarelles, the last of the Grafische Sammlung’s exhibition in the Cultural Capital Year – after Wishes and Acquisitions. Contemporary Drawing and Schlemihl Wozzeck Lenz. Expressionist Series, concentrates on these holdings.
Especially worthwhile was a look at the considerable, and extensive group of drawings and aquarelles on the theme of landscape and nature – as these works show a juxtaposition of two different conceptions typical of 19th century depictions of landscapes: on the one hand a continuation of traditional principle of the ideal landscape, which can often include a mythical event, and on the other the desire to reproduce a real situation as precisely as possible. The exhibition presents around 60 works by 25 artists from German speaking countries from a period between 1785 and 1898, including works by Caspar David Friedrich, Friedrich Preller the Older, Ludwig Richter and Adrian Zingg.
On 5 June, 1883, the Train Express d’Orient (Paris-Constantinople) was the first completely luxury train which also had sleeping and dining cars, the beginning of a success story which continued, with breaks, until 1939. Even today the names of such trains stand for luxury and adventure, although, like the Orient– Express or the Transsiberian-Express, they haven’t been running for decades.
Advertising for the luxury trains demanded more than just putting up a timetable, as it was not the transport, but the experience which was sold. The exhibition shows about 30 posters of important trains around 1900 as well as about 20 made in the 1920s. Taking the train through Europe. Poster on luxurious travel around 1900 also shows around 20 posters of preferred destinations throughout Europe and the luxurious hotels there. The posters in the exhibition come from the collection Reisen in Luxus, Essen, with over 300 posters, which the Deutsche Plakat Museum in the Museum Folkwang has been housing as a permanent loan since 2008.

Website : Museum Folkwang

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SCHMALZIGAUG, SEUL FUTURISTE BELGE, SUR DES CHAPEAUX DE ROUE ...

Futuriste de la première heure, parmi les plus innovants, Schmalzigaug, né à Anvers en 1882, Allemand par son père, naturalisé belge, et francophone, fut le seul Belge à faire partie du célèbre mouvement futuriste d'origine, au même titre que Balla, Boccioni, Carra et autres défenseurs de la modernité galopante. Phil Mertens, notamment, ancienne conservatrice du Musée lui consacra bien un livre en 1984 et une expo en 85, mais Schmalzigaug reste peu connu.
Le sort de Schmalzigaug, comparé à celui des futuristes italiens, est exemplaire de la frilosité du milieu artistique belge de l'époque.

Il est possible que Schmalzigaug, s'il avait exposé en Belgique et vécu au-delà de 1917, date de son suicide, aurait été célèbre tant l'œuvre manifeste de qualité plastique au sein du mouvement italien.
Une œuvre ultrabrève, qui tâtonna pendant dix ans avant de donner cette variation lumineuse d'un futurisme que Paris lui avait révélé en 1910, et qui fit l'effet d'une bombe.
Schmalzigaug, au cours de séjours successifs à Anvers, Venise, Bruges et Paris, se cherche, picore, s'intéresse au pointillisme, au fauvisme, à l'expressionnisme, au cubisme. En 1913, après avoir assimilé les trouvailles de Jacob Smits en matière de lumière, il est mûr pour approcher à Venise la révolution futuriste et participer à l'Esposizione libera futurista internazionale, avec six tableaux majeurs.
Son langage surtout nourri de « simultanisme » à la française (Les Delaunay) y apparaît d'emblée différent.
Le peintre belge refuse les formules, la dissociation cubiste de la facture, cherche à s'affranchir de la couleur-forme sans compromettre la structure, élabore une théorie optique des plus rébarbatives, le « panchromisme ». Mais sur la toile, c'est le ravissement. Intérieur de Saint-Marc, Développement d'un rythme, Intérieur d'une salle de bal, Vitesse et Le soleil frappe l'église della Salute contribuent au mouvement entre 1913 et 1915 par un sensualisme jaillissant, un sentiment rare d'accomplissement.
La sensation de mouvement et de vitesse – d'un temps qui avance en boucle – y est totale. La touche est fragmentée, l'image éclatée mais harmonieuse, musicale, annonçant Kandinsky et l'abstraction. Son art marque une longueur d'avance. C'est cette originalité au sein du futurisme cosmopolite que le musée consacre.
Les tableaux les plus significatifs ne sont pas légion mais composent avec les travaux préparatoires sur papier, une exposition aussi belle que complète.
Exilé à La Haye pendant la guerre, le peintre broie du noir en dépit de ses recherches incessantes, de l'école d'artisanat qu'il dirige, de rencontres avec Rik Wouters, Willem Paerels, Frans Smeers. Les raisons de son suicide restent obscures. On sait seulement qu'il se sent isolé, miné par la nostalgie de Venise qu'il vénère à l'inverse d'autres futuristes ne rêvant, eux, qu'à l'anéantir !
Au diapason côté peinture, Schmalzigaug n'a en effet jamais partagé leurs vues politiques et moins encore leur enthousiasme pour la beauté logistique de la machine de guerre…

Website : Musée Art Moderne Bruxelles

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

MARTIN-GROPIUS-BAU SHOWS THE WORK OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EXPONENTS OF MODERNISM

Laszlo‚ Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) is one of the most important exponents of Modernism. Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau has mounted an exhibition of his art as represented by over 200 works: paintings, photographs (black-and-white and colour), photograms, collages, films and graphics. The show will focus on the years in which Moholy-Nagy was developing his theory of art as an art of light. This covers the period from 1922 to the end of his life and beyond, in view of the influence he exerted after his death.
For Moholy-Nagy was always a theoretician and practitioner in equal measure, always wanting to be a holistic artist. He approaches his work – painting, photography, commercial and industrial design, film, sculpture, scenography – from a wide variety of aspects and practises it as a radical, extreme experiment, by refusing to place his hugely differing works in any sort of aesthetic hierarchy. He also attaches enormous importance to education, which is why, at the request of Walter Gropius, he workes in this field for the Bauhaus in Weimar (1923-1925) and Dessau (1925-1928). In Chicago, where he settles in 1937, he again assumes teaching duties and founds the “New Bauhaus”, which sought to realise the programmes of the German Bauhaus in the United States.
Shortly afterwards he founds the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he is to remain active until his death in 1946. The institute is later incorporated in the Illinois Institute of Technology, which offers study courses to this day.
From Weimar to Chicago Moholy-Nagy retains his faith in his pedagogical ideal, which for him means not only teaching, but the moral education of human beings. He believes in education as a mean of developing all the abilities lying dormant in the students and as a means of paving the way to a “new, total human being”.
All of Moholy-Nagy’s theoretical contributions arose out of his artistic and pedagogical work. In his numerous writings he gradually presents his ideas, thus developing a complete artistic and pedagogical aesthetic. In his 1925 landmark essay Painting, Photography, Film he develops an aesthetic theory of light – light as a matrix of art and art as light. He applies his aesthetic theory of light not only to painting, photography and film, but also to theatrical and commercial design. From that point on light becomes the foundation of Moholy-Nagy’s practical and theoretical work. For him art of whatever kind only acquires meaning when it reflects light. Painting is also reinterpreted on the basis of this criterion. Moholy-Nagy describes his development as a painter as a shift away from “painting from transparency” to a painting that was free of any representational constraints and created the possibility of painting “not with colours, but with light”. This theory reaches its full potential in photography and film. Etymologically, the word “photography” means “writing with light”. The artistic essence of film consists in the portrayal of “inter-related movements as revealed by light projections”. Although he was not in charge of the photography classes in the Bauhaus, it was there that he wrote Painting.
Photography, Film, drawing upon his photographic experience. He invented the “photogram”, a purely light-based form of graphic representation, thus demonstrating an ability to create photographic images without a camera at the same time as the “Rayogram” was invented by Man Ray in Paris. He sees photography as a completely autonomous medium whose potential was still to be discovered. He criticizes “pictoriality”, propagating an innovative, creative and productive photography. He regards seriality as one of the main features of the practice of photography and opposes the “aura” of the one-off work in contrast to the infinite multifariousness of the photographic clich‡, thus anticipating one of Walter Benjamin’s theses.
For Moholy-Nagy the ability of a work of art to create something new (a basic feature of Modernism) is a key criterion. He postulates for painting, photography and film a moral and aesthetic imperative – the New. Art had to confront new times and an industrial civilization. In the systematic implementation of this thesis 1926 turns out to be the year in which his pictorial output was greater than his works in other fields, but 1927 witnesses a positive flood of photographic, scenographic, kinetic and film productions. Painting iss something he never abandoned. He decides to drop the representational painting inherited from the past and to devote himself to non-representational or “pure” painting instead. The emergence of photography gives painting the perfect opportunity to free itself from all figurative or representative imperatives. Artists do not have to decide in favour of one medium or another, but should use all media to capture and master an optical creation.
04.11.2010-16.01.211

Website : Martin-Grospius-Bau Berlin

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LISEZ LES MANUSCRITS DE LA MER MORTE EN LIGNE

Le département israélien des Antiquités et le géant américain de l'internet Google vont mettre en ligne les rouleaux de la mer Morte, qui contiennent quelques-uns des plus anciens textes bibliques. Ce projet, d'un coût de 2,5 millions d'euros, rend ces documents, qui datent d'il y a 2.000 ans, disponibles gratuitement.

« C'est la découverte la plus importante du XXe siècle et nous allons la partager avec la technologie la plus avancée du XXIe siècle », s'est réjouie la responsable du projet Pnina Shor.
Des images de haute résolution seront réalisées par le département des Antiquités grâce à une technologie d'imagerie multispectrale développée par la Nasa, l'agence spatiale américaine, qui permettra peut-être de découvrir de nouvelles lettres ou de nouveaux mots. Les images seront ensuite mises en ligne par Google, avec les traductions.
« Tous ceux qui possèdent une connexion internet pourront bientôt accéder à une des œuvres les plus importantes de l'humanité », s'est félicité Yossi Mattias, de Google Israël. Quand ? Les premières images seraient mises en ligne dans les prochains mois et le projet achevé d'ici cinq ans.
Les 900 manuscrits retrouvés entre 1947 et 1956 dans des grottes à Qumrân, au-dessus de la mer Morte, parchemins et papyrus, comprennent des textes religieux en hébreu, en araméen, et en grec, ainsi que le plus vieil Ancien Testament connu. Les documents les plus anciens remontent au IIIe siècle avant JC et le plus récent de l'an 70, au moment de la destruction du second Temple juif par les Romains.

Website : Israel Antiquities Authority

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Bron/Source : Le Soir

THE CHRISTIAN STEIN COLLECTION : A HISTORY OF ITALIAN ART AT THE VALENCIAN INSTITUTE OF MODERN ART

This exhibition, organised by the IVAM and the Museo Cantonale d'Arte in Lugano, presents for the first time in Spain a selection of over one hundred masterpieces of postwar Italian art from one of the most important and internationally prestigious art collection of gallery-owner Margherita Stein. In the best tradition of gallery-owners cum collectors, Stein chose the works that she felt passionate about rather than those that would further the art trade. This was a passion that she dedicated her whole life to and which earned her the staunch friendship of the artists whom she dealt with for more than forty years. The exhibition, thanks to the extraordinary collection of works that comprise it, documents crucial moments in the development of contemporary art with a view to reflecting the complexity of the historical-artistic moment and the constant evolution of the language of its protagonists.
The catalogue published for the exhibition contains texts by Consuelo Císcar; Marco Franciolli, Jean Louis Maubant; Francisco Jarauta; Bruno Corà, Giulio Paolini, and an interview by Catherine Francblin, and is illustrated with reproductions of the works displayed.
This exhibition reveals the existence of the most solid emblematic side of European art, showing great curiosity in examining and exploiting the possible continuations of the historic avant-gardes. But also a European art steeped in doubt at the rise to power of American art and another way of experiencing culture. The itinerary of the exhibition allows us to view different art styles in the work of, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Domenico Bianchi, Bruce Nauman, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Fausto Melotti, among others, and scrutinises the experimentation carried out by these artists in their search for innovative forms and methods in their production process.
The work of Manzoni, Fontana and Castellani is amply represented in the exhibition, as are artists not so well known to the Spanish public, such as Uncini, Lo Savio or Colla. One of the most original artists in the Italian art scene is also present: Fausto Melotti, Manzoni's unclassifiable friend. The ceramic pieces (Manzoni, Melotti) from the Albisola workshops, the monochromes and the sculptures that are a "manifesto" of conscious radicalness (Lo Savio, Fontana, Manzoni) tell the tale of northern Italy in the fifties and sixties, always full of classical and contemporary history, closely related to literary circles and reminiscent of constructivism.
The Galleria Stein opened in Turin in 1966. It soon became a daily meeting place for artists and Ms Stein, where important debates about art and culture were held. Some of the first artists who showed their work in the gallery were Calzolari, Boetti and Paolini along with Manzoni and Fontana. All or nearly all the artists that created the Arte Povera movement exhibited there. The gallery was an apartment at the same time; works were exhibited in the hall, the drawing room, the billiard room and site-specific pieces were made for certain places like the bathroom, the kitchen or the corridors.
Margherita Stein also worked with German and American artists. But her relationship with Mario and Marisa Merz, Luciano Fabro or Pistoletto, among other artists who frequented her gallery and whom she admired, led her to make the decision of collecting their works. In this way, she conserved all the work of Boetti, who held his first solo exhibition in the gallery in 1967. Later, Giuseppe Penone Gilberto Zorio, Giovanni Anselmo, Gino de Dominici and Claudio Parmiggiani showed their works regularly in the gallery. Remo Salvadori and Domenico Bianchi, among others, represent the generation that followed, in the eighties.
With this unique collection, the IVAM offers the opportunity to reflect about the art system and about a way to collect art for over fifty years in a European country, at a time when the commitment of artists was as great as that of collectors; when intellectual and spiritual complicity helped artistic production to prosper. And when the emotional content of a work of art could turn a gallery-owner into a collector, determined to conserve the testimonial function of art for future generations.

07.10.2010 - 23.01.2011

Website : IVAM Valencia

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58 EXPOS POUR LE MOIS DE LA PHOTO A PARIS

Comme tous les deux ans, Paris fête la photo tout le mois de novembre et au-delà

Pour sa 15e édition, le Mois de la photo organise 58 expositions dans les musées et galeries, autour de l'idée "Paris collectionne". La manifestation célèbre les 30 ans des collections de la Maison européenne de la photographie, née en même temps qu'elle.En pleine révolution numérique, le Mois de la photo fait également l'éloge de l'argentique.
La Maison européenne de la photographie, qui possède une collection de plus de 20.000 photos contemporaines, la met à disposition de tous pour le temps du festival. Ces oeuvres sont ainsi présentée hors les murs, en regard d’autres œuvres. Tables rondes, débats et colloques ponctuent le Mois de la photo.

Certaines expositions ont déjà commencé en septembre et en octobre. 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 expose sa France, qu'il a photographiée à la chambre, ainsi que quatorze jeunes photographes qu'il a choisis et qui montrent leur propre vision de la France.Le Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris présente une rétrospective Larry Clark, de ses photos d'ados paumés des années 60 à ses films des années 2000.
Saul Leiter est 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'intéresse 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 voir encore 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.Le Mois de la photo Off propose encore une centaine d'expositions à travers Paris. Une "sélection alternative, qui se veut plus jeune, plus dynamique, plus accessible et moins conventionnelle".

Website : Mois de la Photo

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Bron/Source : France 2

THE GIACOMETTI VARIATIONS, AN ORIGINAL PROJECT BY JOHN BALDESSARI, AT THE PRADA FOUNDATION

Sculptures by U.S. artist John Baldessari during a show at the Prada Foundation in Milan. The show called "The Giacometti Variations" features nine emaciated sculptures, each 4.5 meters high, dressed in colourful clothes and ironic accessories designed by Baldessari. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini.

The Prada Foundation presents “The Giacometti Variations,” an original project by John Baldessari (born 1931, National City, CA), curated by Germano Celant, featured at its space in Via Fogazzaro 36, Milan, from October 29 to December 31, 2010.
“The Giacometti Variations” is an installation conceived specifically for the exhibition spaces of the Prada Foundation and consists of nine sculptures made of resin and steel and sprayed with bronze, each 4.5 meters tall. Inspired by the imagery of the Swiss sculptor, the huge, oversized female figures take the slender, emaciated character of their bodies to an extreme: a vision of a monumental mannequin.
Arranged in a row between the space’s columns and under its arches, the figures as a whole, in their stasis and linearity, recall a snapshot of a fashion show. Taking their cue from La petite danseuse de quatorze ans (1879-1881) by Edgar Degas, the original bronze of which featured a cloth bodice and a tutu of white tulle, every figure of “The Giacometti Variations” is dressed in garments and objects designed by Baldessari himself. Their look is inspired by archetypes whose origins lie in the imagery fostered by the interrelationship between film and fashion, as well as by the fanciful interaction between art-world novelty and the continual updating of the messages conveyed in advertising and commerce. They range from the hot-pink bow in duchess satin—an ironic revisiting of the 1950s Hollywood glamour of Marilyn Monroe—to Rapunzel’s long blond tresses; from the burning pyre of St. Joan of Arc to Dorothy’s ruby slippers in “The Wizard of Oz; from the nineteenthcentury crinoline of “Gone with the Wind” to Humphrey Bogart’s trench coat in “Casablanca.”
At the same time the artist takes into account the rapidity with which images and trends in dress and fashion are consumed, and this process is reflected, as the show unfolds, in the changes of décor for the statues. Eighteen different overall looks are thus born and presented in rotation: from October 29 to November 15; from November 16 to December 6; and from December 7 to December 26. Through this process of transformation John Baldessari reminds us, as it were, of the dizzying speed of consumption and obsolescence affecting the fetishes of body aesthetics, objects as well as clothes, and underscores the linguistic exchange between art and fashion. It is an osmosis in which everything becomes indistinguishable, as it is thrust into the vortex of novelty, which the monumentality of art history may, perhaps, survive.
Born in National City, California in 1931, John Baldessari is one of the most influential artists of his generation and a major exponent of American conceptual art.
His work is centered around processes of choice and selection and manages to create surprising narrative sequences through the continual removal and replacement of elements. His works have been shown in more than 200 solo exhibitions and over 900 group shows in the United States and Europe. His projects include artist’s books, videos, films, billboards, and public works. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has won the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rolex Mentor prize and the Protegé Arts Initiative, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts for the State of California, the Kokoschka Prize, the “Spectrum” Internationaler Preis für Fotografie, the 2008 BACA Internazionale, and the Golden Lion for career achievement at the Venice Biennale of 2009. He has received honorary degrees from the Irish National University, from San Diego State University, and the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design. Recent projects include shows in New York, Madrid, and Los Angeles, including the Pure Beauty retrospective that opened at the Tate Modern in London (October 2009 – January 2010), continued at the Museu d’Art Contemporani of Barcelona (February – Aprin 2010) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (June – September 2010), and will close at the Metropolitan Museum of New York (October 2010 – January 2011), as well as installations at the Museum Haus Lange at Krefeld, Germany,and Sprüth Magers in London. Works in progress for 2010 include a new work for the Kaldor Art Projects in Sidney, Australia, as well as the show at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

Website : The Prada Foundation - Milan

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

FIFTH ANNUAL NEW YORK ART BOOK FAIR OFFERS THE BEST IN CONTEMPORARY ART-BOOK PUBLISHING

Printed Matter, the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to publications by artists, presents the fifth annual NY Art Book Fair, November 5–7 at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens. Free and open to the public, the Fair hosts over 230 international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists and publishers from twenty-one countries, offering the best in contemporary art-book publishing.
Philip Aarons, Chairman of the Board for Printed Matter, said: “The NY Art Book Fair is the premier venue to find what’s new in art publishing. While it has spawned a new generation of independent art book fairs world-wide, it remains the biggest, the best, and by far the most fun.”
The NY Art Book Fair includes special project rooms, screenings, book signings, and performances, throughout the weekend. Other events include the third annual Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference and The Classroom, a curated series of informal conversations between artists, together with readings, workshops and other artist-led events.
Artist’s Project
Leidy Churchman takes over the lobby with a large set of facsimile book paintings on wood. Drawing upon the stacks at the Museum of Modern Art Library Library with friend and librarian David Senior, Churchman traces a unique and fetching portrait of artists’ publications from the last hundred years.
Special Project Rooms
Select exhibitors take over entire galleries: AA Bookstore with Bedford Books (London), Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI; New York), Fillip and AAAARG.ORG (Vancouver; Los Angeles), and Picturebox (Brooklyn). Andrew Roth (New York) exhibits a retrospective of PPP Publishing. Goteblüd (San Francisco) presents an exhibition of more than six hundred Riot Grrrl zines, with a working photocopy station. Werkplaats Typografie (Arnhem), the Dutch super-school, brings its entire student body to design, produce, and sell books while you watch.
The Classroom
The Classroom is a curated series of informal conversations between artists, workshops, readings and other artist-led events, with continuous enrollment for all fair-goers throughout the weekend. Participants include: Casco (Utrecht), f.ART magazine (New York), Golden Age (Chicago), J&L Books with Jason Fulford (Atlanta), Kodoji Press with Erik Steinbrecher (Zurich), Little Joe (London), The New Dreamz with Rose Luardo and Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Philadelphia), Onomatopee (Eindhoven), Roma Publications with Jo Baer (Amsterdam), Seems (San Francisco), Sumi Ink Club (Los Angeles), Swill Children (Brooklyn), Triple Canopy (New York and Los Angeles) and Alexis Zavialoff of Motto (Berlin), among others. The Classroom is organized by David Senior, The Museum of Modern Art Library.
Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference
The Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference is a dynamic, two-day event focused on emerging practices and debates within art-book culture. This year’s sessions address a wide array of subjects, including: experimental libraries, the so-called zine renaissance, fusion of art and design in typography, contemporary criticism, and new pedagogical approaches to the ever-expanding field of artists’ books. The first day of the conference ends with a lively pecha kucha, a rapid-fire event in which invited speakers have just five minutes to comment on an artwork. Full-conference registrants receive a specially commissioned book by Emily Roysdon, an interdisciplinary artist and writer who examines the intersections of choreography and politics. Roysdon’s book is a meditation on vintage photographs of the New York piers by queer photographer Alvin Baltrop.
Featured Countries
This year, the NY Art Book Fair celebrates eighteen cutting-edge publishers from The Netherlands, including a project room by Kunstverein Amsterdam (Amsterdam) and Witte de With (Rotterdam), together with a variety of book launches and informal presentations in the Dutch Pavilion. Other countries represented include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.
Antiquarian Dealers
Exhibitors present collections of rare Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Fluxus, and the avant-garde from Japan, Europe, and North America. Exhibitors include: John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz (East Hampton), Harper’s Books (East Hampton), Marcus Campbell (London), Steven Leiber (San Francisco), Sims Reed (London), Stefan Schuelke (Cologne), and others.
Artists & Activists
This diverse group of politically minded artists and collectives focus on the intersection of art and activism. Exhibitors include: Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (Los Angeles), GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand (New York), The Yes Men (New York), Bread and Puppet (Glover, Vermont), Center for Urban Pedagogy (Brooklyn), and Temporary Services (Chicago), among others.
Zines by Artists
A lively selection of international zinesters will represent independent publishing at its most innovative and affordable. Exhibitors include: The Holster (Brooklyn), Nieves (Zurich), Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), and ZINE’S MATE (Tokyo), among others. A special section of queer zines includes our favorites, from Original Plumbing (San Francisco) and Girls Like Us (Amsterdam) to PINUPS (Brooklyn).
Limited Editions
Printed Matter presents new limited editions by artists Rachel Harrison, Christian Holstad and Misaki Kawai, published on the occasion of the NY Art Book Fair 2010. Purchase of these editions supports the Fair, ensuring the event remains free and open to the public.

Website : The NY Art Book Fair

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Bron/Sourtce : Artdaily