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Masters of Photography Sale Including 275 Items at artnet Auctions

Written by Pilar Ortiz Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:43
NEW YORK, NY.- artnet Auctions offers continuous online auctions of fine art, prints and photographs. Starting April 15, artnet Auctions will present 275 exquisite photographs by artists from Berenice Abbott to James Van Der Zee in a special sale that ends April 29th. Leading the sale is an extraordinary group of photographs by f/64, a group of seven San Francisco artists known for their modernist images of natural forms and found objects. The magnificent gelatin silver print Dunes, Oceano 31SO, 1971 is one of 20 works by Edward Weston offered in this section (estimate: $25,000-$30,000). Other works by the f/64 include Two Callas, 1925, one of five floral prints by Imogen Cunningham (estimate: $2,000-$3,000) and Mandenhall Glacier, c.1935 by Brett Weston (estimate: $7,500-$8,500).

Read more: [Masters of Photography Sale Including 275 Items at artnet Auctions]

Christie's NY Announces Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale May 12

Written by Andrew Massad Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:42

NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s announces the auction of a finely honed private collection of important Contemporary art, with works from marquee artists such as Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami. The Private European Collection represents work from each major artist’s response to centuries of tradition, underscored with themes of loss, longing and desire. Comprised exclusively of cornerstone works from the 1960s to the present, the collection will be offered in afternoon session of Christie’s May 12 Day Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art. The collection is estimated to realize upwards of $8 million.

The collection’s top lot is Robert Indiana’s international icon, LOVE (Red/Blue) 1990 (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000). The sculpture acts as both an abstract configuration and a shaped poem with verbal and visual elements harmoniously juxtaposed. Damien Hirst’s All You Need Is Love, 2006 (estimate: $1,000,000- 1,500,000), a heart-shaped, monochrome butterfly painting, is exceptionally rare. The work created under the aegis of the waning 20th Century by the Beatles’ Paul McCartney and John Lennon, All You Need is Love makes bedfellows of hope, love and death with melancholic nostalgia with butterfly wings.

Takashi Murakami’s Kiki, 2000-2005 (estimate: $900,000-1,200,000) is another key highlight. Kiki, the Japanese warrior was originally conceived as one of two “acolytes” or guardians of the artist’s Oval Buddha, but she has become a celebrated character in her own right. In creating the work, Murakami played with the associations of the prodigious Kano style of the 16th Century Japanese painter Kano Eitoku and the legacy of Japanese culture. Delicate yet bold, with an ebullient smile revealing sharp fangs, the subversive Kiki is rife with dichotomies.

Andrew Massad, International Specialist, Head of Afternoon Session, comments: “Selected with a discriminating eye these exceptional works capture the zeitgeist of several decades. Each work of art reimagines traditional materials and images in a dialogue with art history. Christie’s is pleased to present this exceptionally cultivated collection.”

Additional highlights include:

Marc Quinn
Myth Venus
painted bronze, 2006
Estimate: $ 800,000 – 1,200,000

Mark Tansey
Study for Columbus Discovers Spain
oil on canvas, 1995
Estimate: $1,000,000 – 1,500,000

Andy Warhol
Beatle Boots (Negative)
synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas, 1986
Estimate: $600,000 – 800,000

Tom Wesselmann
Still Life #13
oil and printed paper collage on board, 1962
Estimate: $300,000 – 400,000

Gimhongsok
Love
enamel on steel, 2010
Estimate: $40,000 – 60,000

Auction: Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
Christie’s New York
May 12, 2011 at 2 pm

Viewing: Christie’s Rockefeller Center Galleries, May 7- 11

Pure Sixties, Pure Bailey, a Selling Exhibition at Bonhams in London

Written by Carol Vogel Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:40
LONDON.- A selling exhibition of David Bailey's iconic images of the 1960s - the 50th anniversary of a decade that changed our cultural history - will be hosted by Bonhams in New Bond Street. The 'Pure Sixties. Pure Bailey.' exhibition will be on view at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, from 7th March – 7th April, 2010. David Bailey's name is an integral part of the 1960s, that dynamic period which created a melting pot of talent drawn from music, fashion, literature, design and cinema. He captured images which remain a pictorial reminder of all that was best about it – new, edgy, exciting, & beautiful.

Read more: [Pure Sixties, Pure Bailey, a Selling Exhibition at Bonhams in London]

Double-Header of Andy Warhol Exhibitions Opening this Fall in Athens

Written by Claude Barringer Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:38
ATHENS.- Potnia Thiron Gallery and Haunch of Venison will present a double-header of Warhol exhibitions in Athens this autumn. Opening simultaneously, Warhol/Icon: The Creation of Image at the Byzantine and Christian Museum and Warhol: Screen Tests at Potnia Thiron Gallery, will explore Warhol’s obsession with fame through his work as a painter and filmmaker of ‘icons’. The emphasis across both exhibitions will be on the relationship between his Byzantine religious beliefs, Slavic background and devotion to his mystical mother, and his apparently unfettered celebration of an American celebrity culture. On view 7 October through 10 January, 2010.

Read more: [Double-Header of Andy Warhol Exhibitions Opening this Fall in Athens]

Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) ~ Magnificent Gallery Spaces Displaying The Best In Modern & Contemporary Art

Written by Yuri Tsereteli Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:32
The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMoMA) was inaugurated on December 15, 1999. It is situated at Petrovka, 25, near the Petrovsky Boulevard in central Moscow. The Museum's main building is the former Gubin’s mansion, an imposing monument of the late 18th century neoclassical movement, designed by the noted Russian architect Matvei Kazakov. Apart from that, the Museum owns two splendid exhibition venues: a vast five-storey building in Ermolaevsky lane, and a spacious gallery in Tverskoy boulevard, both fully refurbished for hosting large-scale projects. The founder and general director of the Museum is a well-known Russian-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the first state museum in Russia that concentrates its activities exclusively on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inauguration, the Museum has expanded its strategies and achieved a high level of public acknowledgement. Today the Museum is an energetic institution that plays an important part on the Moscow art scene. MMoMA was created with the generous support of the Moscow City Government, Moscow City Department of Culture and Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow. Its founding director was Zurab Tsereteli, President of the Russian Academy of Arts. His private collection of more than 2.000 works by important 20th century masters was the core of the Museum’s permanent display. Later on, the Museum’s keepings were enriched considerably, and now this is one of the largest and most impressive collections of modern and contemporary Russian art, which continues to grow through acquisitions and donations. The Museum’s extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21stcenturies at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. The Museum publishes «DI» (Dialog Iskusstv / Dialogue of Arts) magazine, heir to the authoritative «Dekorativnoe Iskusstvo» (Decorative Art). One of the Museum’s priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program — the «Independent Workshops» School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today’s culture. Visit The Moscow Museum of Modern Art at : http://www.mmoma.ru/en/
The Museum’s permanent collection represents main stages in formation and development of the avant-garde. The majority of exhibits are by Russian artists, but the display also includes some works by renowned Western masters. For example, graphic pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Giorgio De Chirico are on view, along with sculptures by Salvador Dalí, Armand and Arnaldo Pomodoro, paintings by Henri Rousseau and Françoise Gillot, and istallations by Yukinori Yanaga. Within the Museum’s holdings, a special emphasis is put on the assembly of Russian avant-garde. Many works have been acquired in European and American galleries and auction houses, and thus returned from abroad to form an integral part of Russian cultural legacy. The highlights include paintings and objects by Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Pavel Filonov and Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin and David Burliuk, as well as sculptures by Alexander Archipenko and Ossip Zadkine. Besides that, the Museum owns a unique collection of works by the famous Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani. An extensive section of the permanent display is devoted to Non-Conformist art of the 1960s-1980s. The creative activity of these masters, now well-known in Russia and abroad, was then in opposition to the official Soviet ideology. Among them are Ilya Kabakov, Anatoly Zverev, Vladimir Yakovlev, Vladimir Nemukhin, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Oscar Rabin, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Schwartzman, Oleg Tselkov, and more.The Museum readily supports the newest artistic developments and fills up its collection with works by our contemporaries. Now this part of the display presents pieces by Boris Orlov, Dmitry A. Prigov, Valery Koshlyakov, Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Oleg Kulik, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrey Bartenev, and many others. Apart from expanding the permanent collection and organizing multiple temporary exhibitions, the Museum engages in various other activities, including research and conservation work, book publishing, and others. One of the Museum’s priorities is to promote young and emerging artists, bringing them into contemporary artistic process. With this purpose the Museum launched a special education program – the “Free Studios” School of Contemporary Art. The two-year schedule includes practical activities in creative workshops, as well as lectures on contemporary art, studies of the art market and the new technologies in visual arts, and a broad spectrum of issues on today’s culture. Moscow Museum of Modern Art is always open to new initiatives and ready for collaboration.
The Museum’s extensive exhibition strategy aims at showing the artistic process of the 20th and 21st centuries at its maximum span and diversity. In all three buildings of the Museum, one can visit single-artist shows, group exhibitions and conceptual displays by well-known masters as well as by emerging artists or the ones that need to be rediscovered. Among the exhibitions currently showing at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is "THEM", the third key exhibition of Viktor Pivovarov in Moscow. The first one, "Steps of a Mechanic", took place in 2004 at the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum; the second one, "Lemon Eaters", was hosted by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Ermolaevsky Lane building) in 2006. The new exhibition is presented at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in the Gogolevsky Boulevard building. As were the previous ones, this project is prepared in partnership with XL Gallery. Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937), just like Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, represents the older generation of the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of Moscow conceptualist school and, just like Eric Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev, Pivovarov stands well beyond its limits. Being a truly radical romantic, Viktor Pivovarov has a special place among Moscow romantic conceptualists, as Boris Groys called them. The "THEY" referred to in the titles are themes, images, heroes, and ideas born in the artist’s mind; they are embodied in the creative process and continue their independent lives in the space of culture. The project displays works that the artist created during almost five years that have passed since his last Moscow show. The current exhibition comprises ten independent cycles, each having its own detached space: ‘Melancholics’, ‘Hermits’, ‘The Chosen Ones, or Time of the ROSE’, ‘The Glassy Ones’, ‘The Perfect Ones’, ‘Handsome Men’, ‘Milena and the Spirits’, ‘Philosophers, or Russian Nights’, ‘Immortals’. The 2010 album entitled ‘They Are Back!’ concludes the exhibition. A special place in the exhibition belongs to the series of portraits entitled ‘Philosophers, or Russian Nights’. The artist understands philosophy in its original meaning, as love of wisdom. That is why here, apart from portraits of the so-called ‘professional’ philosophers such as Alexander Pyatigorsky and Merab Mamardashvili, one can find images of poet Igor Kholin, visionary Daniil Andreev, poet and political activist Eduard Limonov, and writer Vladimir Sorokin. These are portraits of people who have created and still create the inimitable spiritual ambience of Russian and Moscow culture. Viktor Pivovarov’s radical romanticism lies, apart from other things, in his firm belief in the fact that, even in the new IT civilization, ideas and images of the old classic culture are omnipresent and they are still relevant to our formation. Dmitry Shorin: Festivals - The new project «Festivals» includes about 40 paintings, the presentation of the exhibition in Moscow Museum of Modern Art March 5 to Аpril 3, 2011. Also photography and installation by Rauf Mamedov on view.

KLEE And America at Neue Galerie

Written by Yvonne Carney Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:31
NEW YORK– The Neue Galerie New York opens “Klee and America,” an exhibition that will address the enthusiastic reception for the artist’s works in the United States, especially during the 1930s and 1940s. The exhibition features more than sixty paintings and drawings by Klee, which will be on loan from private and public collections in the United States and abroad. It runs through May 22 at the Neue Galerie, before traveling to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The national sponsor of the exhibition is Altria Group, Inc. The exhibition has more than 60 Paintings and drawings. Josef Helfenstein, Director of The Menil Collection, is responsible for the concept of the exhibition and co-edited the catalogue with Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator at The Phillips Collection. “The influence of Paul Klee in America has never fully been investigated,” noted Helfenstein. “This exhibition seeks to document and analyze the reception and study of Klee, and thereby to restore an influential but often overlooked chapter to the history of modern art.”
Read more: [KLEE And America at Neue Galerie]

'LIFE AS A LEGEND: MARILYN MONROE' at BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

Written by Carolina Stoker Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:29
Boca Raton, FL - The Boca Raton Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of Special Exhibitions Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe; Graham Flint: Portrait of America, Images from the Gigapxl™ Project and Yozo Hamaguchi: Father of the Modern Mezzotint. The exhibitions will be on display through April 1, 2007. Yozo Hamaguchi will be on display through February 18, 2007.
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Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts 'Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake'

Written by Lonnie Mattis Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:25
Washington, DC - Jeremy Blake's (1971–2007) lush digital videos combine representational and abstract imagery in the service of visual narratives that are dreamy, historical, and richly psychological. Renowned for his shimmering, hallucinogenic “moving paintings,” which loop seamlessly without beginning or end, Blake was influenced as much by Hollywood culture as by the history of modernism. His coolly expressive digital and painted abstractions are slick, non-linear ruminations on topics as wide-ranging as reality television, vernacular architecture, mid-century Colorfield painting, the megamall, and the superchurch.
Blake’s cinematic video portraits are the final developments in a career that consistently challenged distinctions between painting, photography, and computer and video art. For these last works, Blake turned to portraiture, plumbing the life, imagination, and aesthetic vision of three extraordinary artists. He honored his subjects’ achievements through an innovative form that is its own contribution to the history of art.

Wild Choir features Blake’s two completed psychological pop portraits: Reading Ossie Clark (2003), a study of “Swinging London’s” preeminent fashion designer (late 1960s−early 1970s) as seen through the pages of his wild and colorful stream-of-consciousness diaries; and Sodium Fox (2005), a collaboration with David Berman, the poet and frontman of the rock band Silver Jews. The exhibition also includes material related to Glitterbest, Blake’s last portrait project, which remains unfinished. What was to be the third work in the series, Glitterbest is a portrait of and collaboration with Malcolm McLaren, the legendary and highly influential British fashion designer, boutique entrepreneur, punk rock band manager (Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Bow Wow Wow, and Adam and the Ants), and cultural impresario.

Subjects
Ossie Clark was the fashion designer for the glamour set of “Swinging London”―the era of British hip associated with the Beatles, James Bond, and the Mini-Cooper. With clients such as Marianne Faithful, Mick and Bianca Jagger, and Twiggy, Clark’s designs were showstoppers. Today they are emblematic of a time of optimism, hedonism, and cultural revolution. Reading Ossie Clark was inspired by the posthumous publication (1998) of Clark’s diaries, which are full of disorienting non-sequiturs, unabashed name-dropping, and confounding color-coded illustrations that evoke the remarkable, intoxicated world in which he lived. The script for the video is a prose poem comprising fragments from the diaries and is read by Clarissa Dalrymple, the New York art world luminary. Many people may recognize Clark and his wife, the textile print designer Celia Birtwell, as the subject of one of David Hockney’s most reproduced paintings, Mr. and Mrs. Ossie Clark and Percy (1970−71; Tate).

The poet and independent rock musician David Berman is the subject of Sodium Fox. A native Virginian who now lives in Nashville, Berman is a fascinating and complex figure, and the one portrait subject in the group who may be considered part of Blake’s generation. Reluctant rock star, Gen-X wiseguy, willfully isolated literary light, reformed drug addict, Southerner, Jew, patriot, and ex-guard at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Berman’s talent and influence among his contemporaries are equally matched by a desire to remain outside the public fray and the mass media’s voracious spotlight. With its prosaic, bathroom-wall style poetry, fluid streams of saturated color, and mysterious stripper-heroine, Sodium Fox is, as Blake described it, a “peep show for poets.”

Blake intended Glitterbest to explore the originality, flamboyance, and pioneering work of a cultural icon. Malcolm McLaren has been a major influence not only on musical production and fashion, but also on contemporary art. Widely acknowledged as a key force behind the creation of Punk Rock in the 1970s―the music, style, and attitude—McLaren is famous for having cultivated one of the most notorious generation gaps of the postwar era. Since then, he has inspired successive younger generations through his continuing, groundbreaking work in a variety of cultural forms. While Blake never completed the portrait, it is clear from the still images featured in the exhibition that Glitterbest would have been¾as Sodium Fox and Reading Ossie Clark are¾a dense and decadent romp through the life and aesthetic vision of a creative force whose accomplishments are symbolic of an era.

Technique
Trained as a painter (Cal-Arts, M.F.A., 1995), Jeremy Blake was a bricoleur who employed a wide variety of media and an assortment of tools to make his art. Graphics and animation programs helped him to combine his own drawings and paintings with found materials, including photographs, 8mm and 16mm film, and mass- and printed media, to create richly layered digital C-prints and videos. Typically, the C-prints are not stills derived from the finished videos, but rather sources for the videos that he animated.

Blake’s enthusiasm for the handmade was central to his aesthetic and figured importantly in all aspects of his creative process. Using a computer, he rendered and animated each frame of his digital work. Despite the cool, dispassionate, and sleek appearance of its digital format, every aspect of his finished works bears the touch of his hand, albeit mediated by digital technology. This distinguishes his art from that of many of his contemporaries, such as Matthew Barney or Douglas Gordon, who also work in a cinematic format. Like these and other artists of his generation, Blake’s videos embrace subjects as broadly appealing as Hollywood films, popular music, and fashion. However, by rendering or manipulating each frame individually, Blake’s work is also linked to First Person Cinema, a tradition of experimental filmmaking that includes the work of artists such Man Ray, Harry Smith, and Stan Brackhage.

Background
Jeremy Blake was born in 1971 and grew up living with his mother in Takoma Park, Maryland, a Washington, DC suburb; and with his father in the District neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. He took his first art classes at the Corcoran during his eighth-grade summer. He attended Takoma Elementary School, Piney Branch Middle School, Takoma Junior High School, Blair High School, and the Einstein Art Magnet School before matriculating at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned his B.F.A. in 1993. Today he is internationally renowned, with his work collected by and shown in major museums throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. He produced the animated abstract sequences in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and contributed artwork and video for Beck’s album, Sea Change (2002). Blake committed suicide on July 17, 2007 by drowning himself off Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York. The Associated Press confirmed his death on July 31, 2007.

On exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art though March 2, 2008. Visit www.corcoran.org

DeCordova Sculpture Park Installs Roy Lichtenstein’s "Five Brushstrokes"

Written by Clarence Bishop Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:24
LINCOLN, MA.- DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum announced the arrival of Roy Lichtenstein’s Five Brushstrokes, a monumental addition to the Sculpture Park on Thursday, July 22.. The 2010 fabrication of Lichtenstein’s iconic Five Brushstrokes showcases his bold, colorful graphics and humorous portrayal of the brushstroke, an integral yet uncommon subject in art. Rising 20 feet high, Five Brushstrokes pays homage to Lichtenstein’s position as a central figure of the 1960’s Pop Art movement. Lichtenstein’s dynamic, stylized brushstrokes will enliven deCordova’s campus for the next two years.
Read more: [DeCordova Sculpture Park Installs Roy Lichtenstein’s "Five Brushstrokes"]

The Lentos Museum of Modern Art Shows "Ralo Mayer - Obviously a Major Malfunction"

Written by Abigail Troughton Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:22

Linz, Austria.- The Lentos Museum of Modern Art is pleased to present "Ralo Mayer: Obviously a Major Malfunction", on view at the museum through October 23rd. Featuring 4.56-billion-year-old meteorites, a painting from the collection of the Lentos, a closed eco system and a checklist that travelled to the moon and back with the astronauts on board Apollo, such diverse objects are used by Ralo Mayer in the first part of his exhibition to throw light on his own work from the last few years. Ralo Mayer is the winner of the Triennale Linz Award, which was first presented in summer 2010. Space, the history of its exploration and utopias that tried (in the past) to predict what the world would look like in the future form the thematic backdrop for these works. Like all science fiction that deserves the name, they are deeply rooted in present-day reality and transfer social and economic facts into multifaceted stories.

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Grand Rapids Art Museum shows Richard Avedon ~ ' Larger Than Life '

Written by Jessica Farrell Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:15
GRAND RAPIDS, MI.- The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM), presents the work of Richard Avedon in an exclusive exhibition by one of the most important American photographers of the modern era. Richard Avedon: Larger Than Life traces the artist’s dynamic career from the postwar years of the late 1940s in Europe to the early 21st century. Avedon set new precedents in fashion and portrait photography with his innovative approach to the medium. He also established a reputation as one of the greatest camera portraitists of our time.
Richard Avedon: Larger Than Life is organized by the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography for an exclusive presentation at the Grand Rapids Art Museum through January 4, 2009. The exhibition includes over 80 photographs drawn from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, which houses the Richard Avedon Archive. A Membership Drive launched with a Special Guest Speaker attending the Members Exhibition Preview on October 2, 2008: Nigel Barker, renowned photographer and judge on the hit television show America’s Next Top Model, was Guest Speaker for the Exhibition Preview.
After World War II, Avedon began taking photographs of street performers in Italy while doing freelance fashion photography for Harper’s Bazaar, where he subsequently served as chief photographer until 1966. During his years at Harper’s, Avedon created a new kind of fashion photography that transformed models from posed mannequins into actresses. He set his models in the city streets, bistros, and urban landmarks of Paris. In the studio, he required them to move and leap like dancers. The 1957 film Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn, cast Fred Astaire as fashion photographer, Dick Avery, a character based on Avedon, who consulted on the film and designed the opening titles.
In 1966 Avedon left Harper’s for Vogue and shifted his focus to portraiture, which he had begun in the late 1950s. Through the rest of his life, Avedon created powerfully engaging and unsparing portraits of actors, artists, writers, politicians, and intellectuals. His portraits are distinguished by their minimalist style. Posed in front of a sheer white background, the subject looks squarely into the camera. Avedon considered portrait photography a collaborative process. He admired his subjects and captured them in revealing moments as they paused in conversation with him. Avedon’s subjects were often larger than life personalities. His photographs of President Gerald Ford, Rose Kennedy, The Beatles, and Louis Armstrong are portraits that document the 20th century. The famous and familiar people that he photographed were distinctly un-glamorized, yet their images are monumental in presence. His subjects also included sitters such as the Napalm victims he photographed on his 1971 visit to Vietnam. Avedon’s series In the American West, 1979–84, included drifters, miners, field hands, and working people from the western United States. However anonymous these subjects were, they have the same psychological presence and dignity as Avedon’s portraits of the powerful and celebrated.
Richard Avedon died suddenly in 2004 from a brain hemorrhage while shooting in San Antonio, Texas, for The New Yorker magazine. His project was titled On Democracy, befitting an American photographer who defined the stylish optimism of postwar modernism and immortalized the forthright faces of people who, in their time, were larger than life.
For the past two decades Nigel Barker has been taking the world of fashion by storm. He began his career as a model working for top designers and photographers and collaborating with the industry’s elite. As his love for fashion grew, so did his desire to create beautiful images as a photographer.
In 1996, Nigel opened his photo studio in Manhattan’s hip Meat Packing District. His photography career took off, with his work appearing in such publications as GQ, Interview, Paper, Lucky, Seventeen, (t)here, Cover, Zink!, Razor Red and People. Nigel raises the bar with every project by leading with an infectious enthusiasm and ceaseless dedication for capturing the essence of his subjects. This success has led him to create advertising campaigns for brands such as Beefeater Gin, Sean John, Leviev Jewelry, Pierre Cardin, Pamella Roland, Nicole Miller, OP, Ted Baker, Land's End, Lexus and Frederick's of Hollywood.
Coming full circle, Nigel has once again stepped in front of the lens, as a judge and photographer in the hit television show, “America’s Next Top Model.” With 10 seasons under his belt, Nigel has redefined the photography industry by giving it new meaning to the millions around the world who tune in each week to see and hear his take on beauty and fashion.
Nigel’s celebrity has enabled him to bring new dimensions to all his projects, including his work with several charities. Nigel is partnered with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and has shot groundbreaking ad campaigns for the foundation and regularly grants wishes. He also shoots and promotes charitable projects for Edeyo, Do Something and The Humane Society of the United States. Nigel Barker lives in New York City with his wife, Cristen, and their son Jack.
Visit Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) at : www.artmuseumgr.org/

This Week in Review in Art Knowledge News

Written by Editor, Art Knowledge News Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:15
This is a new feature for the subscribers and visitors to Art Knowledge News (AKN), that will enable you to see "thumbnail descriptions" of the last ninety (90) articles and art images that we published. This will allow you to visit any article that you may have missed ; or re-visit any article or image of particular interest. Every day the article "thumbnail images" will change. For you to see the entire last ninety images just click : here .
When opened that also will allow you to change the language from English to anyone of 54 other languages, by clicking your language choice on the upper left corner of our Home Page. You can share any article we publish with the eleven (11) social websites we offer like Twitter, Flicker, Linkedin, Facebook, etc. by one click on the image shown at the end of each opened article. Last, but not least, you can email or print any entire article by using an icon visible to the right side of an article's headline.

The Art Institute of Chicago (ICA) exhibits " A Case for Wine "

Written by A.J. Mattil, Jr. Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:12
CHICAGO, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago presents A Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today, opening on July 11, 2009, in the museum’s Regenstein Hall, marking the first time a fine arts museum has explored art through the vine. On view until September 20, 2009, this major exhibition features more than 400 objects drawn from the Art Institute’s extensive encyclopedic collection, in addition to loans from other cultural institutions and private collections. The Art Institute is the sole venue for A Case for Wine. Exhibition of Hundreds of Objects Trace the History of Wine and its Consumption.

Read more: [The Art Institute of Chicago (ICA) exhibits " A Case for Wine "]

Masterworks by Major Pop Art Artists on Sale at Artnet Auctions

Written by Victoria Mandela Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:11

NEW YORK, NY.- Artnet Auctions presents “Masterworks by Pop Artists,” a selection of important Pop paintings, prints, and sculptures by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Mel Ramos, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg, and other top Pop artists. A highlight of the sale, an extremely rare Andy Warhol painting in brilliant tones of blue and green entitled Flowers, 1978, 22 x 22 inches, is expected to fetch between US$1,100,000–1,500,000. In a private collection since 1995, it is one of only four Flowers paintings from this period recorded by The Andy Warhol Foundation archive.

Read more: [Masterworks by Major Pop Art Artists on Sale at Artnet Auctions]

The Butler Institute of American Art Hosts the 75th National Midyear Exhibition

Written by Colin Charteris Wednesday, 08 February 2012 20:10

Youngstown, OH.- Now on exhibit at the Butler Institute of American Art are 100 works of art selected to be included in the 75th National Midyear Exhibition from over 1000 entries. This annual juried exhibition is open to artists over 18 years of age who reside within the United States and/or its territories, artists from 24 States are represented in the exhibition. The 2011 show has now been judged and visitors can the results for themselves. The exhibition runs through August 28th.

Read more: [The Butler Institute of American Art Hosts the 75th National Midyear Exhibition]

Schirn Kunsthalle to host A Major Retrospective of The Hungarian Artist László Moholy-Nagy

Written by Kurt Hausmann Tuesday, 07 February 2012 22:49
FRANKFURT.- The Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) became known in Germany through his formative work as a teacher at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1928. His pioneering theories on art as a testing ground for new forms of expression and their application to all areas of modern life are still influential today. Comprising roughly 170 works – paintings, photographs and photograms, sculptures and films, as well as stage set designs and typographical projects - the retrospective encompasses all phases of his oeuvre. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, it will thus offer a survey of the wide range of Moholy-Nagy's creative output to the public for the first time since the last major exhibition of his work in Kassel in 1991. On exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle from 8 October through 7 February, 2010.

No other teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, nor nearly any other artist of the 1920s in Germany, an epoch so rich in utopian designs, developed such a wide range of ideas and activities as Moholy-Nagy. His work bears evidence to the fact that he considered painting and film, photography and sculpture, stage set design, drawing, and the photogram to be of equal importance. Whether in his early work at the Bauhaus or in his late work in the USA, he continually fell back upon these means of expression. Using them alternately, he varied them and took them up again as parts of a universal concept whose pivot is to be seen in the alert, curious, and unrestrained experimental mind of the "multimedia" artist himself. Long before the word "media designer" was invented and people began to talk about professional "marketing," Moholy-Nagy worked in these fields, too – as a guiding intellectual force concerned with new technical facilities, design and educational instruments. "All design areas of life are closely interlinked," he wrote about 1925. Despite his motto expressing "the unity of art and technology," Moholy-Nagy was no uncritical admirer of the machine age, but rather a humanist who was open-minded about technology. His fundamental attitude as an artist may be summed up as aimed at improving the quality of life, avoiding specialization, and employing science and technology for the enrichment and heightening of human experience.

Moholy-Nagy's aesthetically and conceptually radical approach already becomes apparent in the classical arts, in painting and sculpture. His so-called Telephone Pictures, which he dictated to somebody by telephone, exemplify this dimension: using a special graph paper and a color chart, he worked out the composition and colors of the pictures and had them executed according to his telephonic instructions by the employees of a sign factory. He also pursued new paths with his famous Light-Space Modulator of 1930, describing his gesamtkunstwerk composed of color, light, and movement as an "apparatus for the demonstration of the effects of light and movement."

It was equally new territory he conquered in the fields of photography and film: with his cameraless photography, his photograms, and his abstract films such as Light Play Black, White, Gray from 1930, Moholy-Nagy is still regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century photographers. Presenting his The Room of Our Time, the Schirn offers a concise abstract of the artist's work. The sketches for this environment, which assembles all his theories, date back as far as 1930 and will be realized in the Schirn on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2009 for the first time. This theory and presentation space will confront the visitor with Moholy-Nagy's innovations in the new media, in exhibition design, and in light projection in a condensed form.

The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT is one of Europe’s most renowned exhibition institutions. Since 1986, more than 180 exhibitions have been realized, among them major surveys dedicated to Vienna Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, to "Women Impressionists" and the history of photography, to subjects like shopping and the relationship between art and consumerism, the visual art of the Stalin era, the Nazarenes, or the new Romanticism in present-day art. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Bill Viola, Arnold Schönberg, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, and Carsten Nicolai were presented in comprehensive solo shows. Visit : www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/index.php?lang=en

Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I"

Written by Casey Forester Tuesday, 07 February 2012 22:46
Oberlin, Ohio - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1915 painting Self-Portrait as a Soldier and four powerful self-portraits by Max Beckmann serve as the focal point of this exhibition of primarily drawings and prints dating from about 1910 to 1925. The emotional drama and psychological intensity of the works on view—underscored by Kirchner’s disturbing vision of himself as a soldier with his painting hand chopped off—suggests the increasingly varied ways artists sought to express the human condition. On exhibit through 7 June, 2009
Read more: [Allen Memorial Art Museum shows "In the Shadow of World War I"]

Sunday, 12 February 2012 13:12

Sunday, 12 February 2012 13:12

Sunday, 12 February 2012 13:12

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